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Saturday, 30 June, 2007

THE REWARDS OF FREE TRADE, INTERNATIONAL INTERDEPENDENCE, AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER

Quite a few Americans have figured out that being dependent on others elsewhere for most of our energy needs is not a good idea. For some strange reason, we're hearing calls for energy independence again. That's about as un-globalistic as you can get.

Back in the early 1970s, when we got our first big energy dependency wake-up call, a lot of people woke up too. Their were long lines at the gas pumps, and tempers flared. There was inconvenience involved, and Americans didn't like it at all. Scariest of all, a lot of gas stations ran out of gas. Then they went back to sleep – including all those astute national leaders who were at the switch.

President Carter had even given the alternative energy movement a special boost, actually giving the campaign to develop alternative energy sources a democratic base. Individuals could easily get alcohol fuel plant permits. Pridger even got one. And the development of alternative energy sources qualified anybody and everybody for tax breaks on one kind or another.

A lot of small alternative energy companies sprouted up and – well, just in the nick of time the fuel shortages and high prices evaporated again and saved the day. We found there was still a glut of petroleum available in the world – no need to become energy independent after all. No need for everybody to become familiar with alcohol making, building windmills, experimenting with 12 volt systems and solar panels. A lot of small alternative energy hopefuls folded.

The time wasn't right yet. As Pridger predicted, "alternative energy" would not catch on until the "big boys" (the oil giants, in particular), could dominate the field and save the day with mega solutions. There was the threat that alternative energy production would be somewhat of a democratic affair, and personal independence might begin to re-emerge.

There was a "back to the land" movement on and people were reading magazines like Mother Earth News, and books like M. G. Kain's Five Acres and Independence (1935) were being resurrected and read. New books like John and Sally Seymour's Farming for Self-Sufficiency Independence on a 5-Acre Farm (1973), and Merril and Joann Grohman's The Cow Economy (1975) were published, along with dozens of others. E. F. Schumacher published Small Is Beautiful – Economics as if People Mattered in 1973, and people were reading it – this just to mention a few titles that remain handy on Pridger's "ready reference" shelves.

That back to the land movement, and the notion of small farm self-sufficiency and independence, and the idea of local food production, etc., had to be squashed, because it did not mesh with the New International Economic Order that was being planned for us in the hallowed halls of corporate power and bought politicians. Corporate solutions were being planned to save the world and every man, woman, and child in it.

Soon were were flooded with foreign oil – problem solved. After the false start, the family farm continued to disappear from the rural American scene. Farmers continued to get bigger or get out of the business. The mantra was no longer self-sufficiency and independence, but "get out there and produce major cash crops for the export market."

The back to the land movement died out in the prosperity of the 1980s, and we went on to become a society of super mega-consumers – hooked on the idea that free trade and foreign production was the key to prosperity unlimited. Hooked on the idea that self-sufficiency and independence are as undesirable in nations as in individuals and families. There would not be five or ten million independent family farms producing an abundant variety and profusion of wholesome food stuffs, along with their own energy needs – there would be a couple hundred thousand big produces, just as heavily dependent on foreign oil and the major grocery chains as the average family in suburbia.

Now that some of our leaders are becoming "worried" about becoming energy independent again, the systems are in place for major corporations to do all the necessary footwork and production. Whatever energy solutions that are welcomed will be mega-solutions, compliments of mega-corporate efforts – massive wind farms, rather than a small windmill on every farm and solar panels on every roof. A few massive fuel alcohol production plants owned by huge corporate interests rather than thousands of plants owned by the people at the farm, town, and community level. And, hopefully, more nuclear power plants.

If the nation is to become energy independent, it will be because big corporations have decided the time has come, and significant profits are to be made thereby.

While big grain farmers are gearing up to cash in on the alcohol fuel demand that is now being created, the corporate powers and their free trading political representatives are making sure that a significant percentage of the grain and any alcohol produced will be imported from elsewhere – places like Brazil. This, of course, to make sure that American farmers cannot demand American parity prices, and there will certainly continue to be no place for "small farmers" in the alcohol grain production industry.

The New International Economic Order and the imperative of international interdependence aren't going to be allowed to go away just because we've "finally come to realize" we need to produce more of the energy we use. It'll all be carefully managed to insure that the New World Order apple cart won't be unduly threatened or its corporate infrastructure shortchanged.

Besides being too dependent on the Middle East and nations like Venezuela for our petroleum needs, we have become far too dependent on others elsewhere to provide just about everything else we need, from food items and electronics to heavy machinery.

Recently we found out how we depend on China to feed our pet dogs and cats, and farm animals – and how dependence on others elsewhere has led to the sickness and death of many beloved pets, as well as poultry, and hogs. This should be sort of a wake-up call.

It would seem that the bread basket of the world should be self-sufficient in dog and cat food, and such essential things as wheat gluten. But no, the only feasible way to cause self-sufficiency in such things is through some sort of "protectionism" – and that has become a cardinal sin, and about as politically incorrect as one can get.

A great industrial nation such as ours ought to be self-sufficient in such things as tooth paste. But we have learned recently that a lot of our tooth paste is coming from China. As Pridger writes all tooth paste from China is being taken from the nation's shelves. Like the pet food and wheat gluten, our imported tooth paste is laced with toxic substances. This should be considered somewhat of a wake-up call.

Many other things from China have been taken off the shelves in the past. One that comes to mind was children's crayons a few short years ago. The kids were using toxic crayons. That should have been a wake-up call. But it wasn't, we're more dependent on China today for our manufactured goods than the original thirteen colonies were on England and Europe.

As for our food supply, it's bad enough that domestic growers, in order to be sufficiently "big," have gone to toxic agriculture practices as a matter of routine, and are now going the extra mile into uncharted ground by providing us with genetically modified foods (both plant and animal), without the informed consent of consumers. We're hell bent on becoming a net food importer. Some say we will be a net food importer by the year 2050. Others say we're almost there now.

Wake-up call? No, merely an "inconvenient truth" – this is what we get, whether we like it or not. This is a New World Order my friends! We're not supposed to complain, because the New World Order has been decreed the best of all worlds. It's much better than, say, national independence (where accountability is actually possible). We're supposed to get used to it – global corporate mega-solutions for everything – certainly not try to go back to isolationism, protectionism, self-reliance, or independence.

If anything goes wrong with the corporate machinery and their supply chains, that corporate machinery – not you and I – will provide the solutions. Heaven forbid that a independent class of people ever reemerge within our national framework! Independence and self-reliance is being stamped out globally just as fast as free trade agreements can be negotiated.

SMOKE, MIRRORS, VOODOO ECONOMICS, AND PROSPERITY

One gauge of prosperity in the modern world is the shear monumental size of our solid waste problem, and how it is dealt with. In poor countries it piles up, and in rich countries such as ours, it is buried or exported.

In the U.S. it is deemed much more economic to bulldoze an old house or historical building than to preserve it and restore it to mint condition. Even old houses and buildings that are perfectly sound and full of fine, reusable timber are routinely reduced to landfill material.

It is more economical to burn or bury all that good lumber and timber than to salvage it, though environmentalists have managed to make recycling much solid waste somewhat fashionable – and large corporations are beginning to answer the call. As in everything else, recycling has come to be a matter for large corporate sized interests rather than individuals.

There continues to be a major building boom going on in many parts of the country. People (mostly developers), are building bigger houses than ever before. A few short generations ago, a big house was often needed because married couples tended to have big families – lots of kids. Prosperous families had big houses. Often houses started out modest and grew as the children came.

Today we have huge new homes occupied by a couple who usually don't even have the time or inclination to have children. At most, they might allow themselves one or two. Most big families still live in relatively small houses, because they tend to be relatively poor. Whether children result from a marriage or not, most homeowners become married to thirty year mortgages. The mortgage payment is a fact of life almost until death do them part.

Many of today's modern "homes" are really nothing more than investments. There is a profit motive in owning a house, and often houses never really become homes. Our present prosperity permits a well healed minority of the population speculate in big homes as the great unwashed masses speculate on how to find a decent job.

Voodoo Economics has invaded the housing market. People can buy today at zero money down, make interest payments only on the mortgage, and thus never pay a dime on the principle, and hopefully sell at a large profit a couple of years later. How long can this Never Never principle hold up?

Where does all the prosperity come from? Clearly, most of it is on Wall Street, and GDP figures tell us we're more prosperous than ever.

We hear from the Democrats that three million manufacturing jobs have fled the country just since Bush II entered office. But we've been losing our manufacturing base since the 1970s – no! since the 1950s! We tend to forget that American industrial jobs first started disappearing (or failing to materialize) when we first opened our markets to the Japanese (and others), after World War II. Japan soon dominated the electronics market, and made serious inroads into the automotive market, thereby relieving Americans of those potential jobs. Surely tens of millions of manufacturing jobs have disappeared or failed to materialize. Since the 1980s (When President Reagan got the government off the back of big business to pave the way for a new international economic order), they have largely been migrating to Mexico, Korea, Indonesia, Bangladesh, China, etc. The great growth of jobs during the same period here at home have not been the sort of jobs that allow a young couple to purchase a big house – or any house at all.

There's a false sense of prosperity, because in spite of stagnant or declining wages, the consuming masses have been able to afford the cheap foreign imports that have been flooding their market – often called "American products produced abroad" or APPAs (because so many "American" companies now do their production elsewhere). And this ability to continue consuming at an accelerating pace has been taken as evidence of prosperity – that things are getting better all the time – even though much of the money is being divvied up among Wall Street investors, corporate CEOs, and others elsewhere rather than American workers.

Consumers pay and consume, but do not produce. And, in the end, a service economy is a consumer economy, without any real visible means of support. This mass prosperity is a child of Voodoo Economics.

We are told that America is still prosperous is because GDP and Wall Street are the gauges of our national prosperity, and both have continued to climb. Wall Street is still up, even after a few embarrassing corrections a few years ago. But Wall Street stocks and bonds are not an accurate gauge of broad-based prosperity. The lion's share of Wall Street wealth is owned by the richest five percent of the population, and the richest one percent owns most of that.

Yet stocks and bonds rise in value largely because of bidding competition as investors wrangle for profits, bidding them up in value whether real value is actually there or not. And, because we have become a nation of gamblers, it doesn't really bother us that stock prices have outstripped real values in many industries a long time ago.

Many industries proved to be almost all smoke and mirrors, as was evidenced in the "dot-com" bubble and burst, as well as Enron, WorldCom, and others. But as long as people continue to play, the stakes go up. And, fortunately, reality isn't likely to assert itself in the modern world. Institutionalized Voodoo Economics has an amazing ability to buoy public confidence in the markets.

If Wall Street stocks and bonds are largely monetary hype, and super-inflated with warm air, GDP is really somewhat of dangerous deception. One of the things that keeps GDP up and makes us feel good about ourselves and our economy is that a form of creative accounting is now used in its calculation.

This is Voodoo Economics applied to national accounting principles and methods. For example, whenever a job goes to China, and a mega-corporation thereby realizes a savings, that savings is added to GDP as an economic gain to the economy. In other words, our losses are counted as gains. Isn't that amazing?

What this means is that every job, factory, and industry that goes foreign for savings in production costs, boosts our GDP and makes us richer as a nation. So, because we have to buy almost all of our stuff from Mexico, China, and elsewhere, we've been piling up riches according to GDP accounting principles. None of the real losses are deducted from GDP – they are added! This is the wonder of Voodoo Economics!

Let's look at it another way. If an American industrial worker who made $20.00 an hour loses his job to a Chinese worker who makes only $.50 an hour, $19.50 is added to our GDP every hour of the work year. That savings to a corporation is treated as a gain to the American economy. Talk about national wealth! We've got it!

Another way to put it is that we've really got ourselves into a Never Never Land situation. If reality ever does dawn upon us, we're in for trouble.

Hypothetically, the stock and bond markets are probably worth about half what the market says they're worth, and GDP may be about half of what it is carefully calculated to be. Now subtract from those reduced figures the amount of the national debt, and factor in the dollar amount of our ongoing trade deficit, and we have a little more realistic idea of just how rich we are as a nation.

Others have noticed these things too, of course, a recent column by Paul Graig Roberts, entitled "Phantom GDP" points out that "U.S. economic growth statistics shown to be highly flawed; Negative effect of 'offshoring' may have been minimized.

Roberts, along with Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat of New York) "scandalized the economics profession and Washington policymakers" with a New York Times article entitled "Second Thought on Free Trade," which "noted that the two conditions on which the case for free trade rests no longer exist in the present-day world and that there was no basis for the assumption that offshoring of U.S. jobs was beneficial overall to Americans." He mentions "Global Trade and Conflicts of National Interests" published in 2000 by the M.I.T. Press, where authors Ralph Gomory and William Baumol "show that the case for free trade is a special case and had never been one of general validity."

In light of such common sense observations, "...Economists simply closed ranks and ignored the points..." They ignoring those points because they are effectively on the payroll of the free traders, and behind the free traders is where the big corporate money that runs the think tanks which politicians and economists take seriously, and that funds our universities and schools of economics.

In this new economic climate where "free trade" is supposedly God, Roberts notes:

"In the 21st century, the U.S. economy has been able to create new jobs only in nontradable domestic services, such as waitstaff, bartenders, health and social services. Moreover, the growth in productivity and GDP attributed to the U.S. economy were inconsistent with the stagnant real incomes of Americans. Somehow, productivity and GDP were growing strongly, but it wasn't showing up in American imome... Economists have found it difficult to think about the issues that I have raised. Economists are taught that free trade is a good thing and that anyone who disputes it is a protectionist in the pay of some industry scheming to raise prices that consumers have to pay. The notion that there could be any problem with free trade is beyond the imagination of most economists."

Roberts points out that economists have an "unexamined commitment to free trade" essentially because they believe in cooked GDP statistics, and "thought GDP and productivity statistics trumped job data."

To make matters much worse for Americans, the government and its prostituted economists are now obliged to fret that the dollar is overvalued even as it's purchasing power leaks out like air from a thorn-pierced bicycle tire. Imagine that! And think about the full implications! We want our own money devalued, so we can compete with the very international competition that we went out of our way to build! And we're begging China to help out of our quandary!

In other words, our sterling court economists have ascertained that the consumer goods we are getting out of China and elsewhere are too cheap! The only way to rectify the situation before it eats us alive is to cut our own throat again!!!

If we get our wish, and Communist China (excuse the expletive), revalues the Yuan upward by the factors our trusty leaders are demanding, we'd be sunk in a hurry. We could no longer afford to get our stuff from Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart would be in trouble, along with all of us on fixed retirement incomes or minimum wage jobs.

The goal is supposedly to get Mexico and China to buy more "American made" industrial products so that Americans can regain the jobs that our policy makers have already actively given away. None of this makes sense when common sense is applied. But, when it comes to recruiting New World Order policy makers, those with common sense need not apply.

The dual imperatives are perpetual corporate expansion and increasing corporate profits. The Utopia of free trade would be when and where all products on American consumer market shelves should continue to be labeled "Made in China" (or elsewhere), and all the products on Chinese consumer market shelves (and elsewhere), should be "Made in America."

Such an Utopian situation, however, is about as likely as solutions for the threat of global warming and environmental degradation under the present New World Order model.

As things stand, the only proposed solutions for our national malaise remain more, stronger, and larger doses of poison. National suicide has been our national policy so long already that nationalists, protectionists, and constitutionalists are effectively banned from serving in high elective office. So, when it come to real remedies, we're in a Catch-22 situation. We simply can't get there from here.

John Q. Pridger

Sunday, 24 June, 2007

THE NATION OF A HUNDRED MEN

It was a small nation of only a hundred men with their families. But it was a happy nation. Fifty of those men were farmers who lived happily and independently on the land, whose produce fed themselves and the others in splendid profusion. Thirty of the men were craftsmen, artisans, miners, millers, and builders, and they produced everything that the farmers and other citizens needed for an comfortable life. Ten of the men were wholesalers and merchants who made a handsome living by helping the farmers, workers, and others sell their produce and production, and and gave all the opportunity to purchase the production of the nation in their shops and stores. Seven men were artists, poets, teachers, and healers. And the remaining three made their living by cleverly providing various services of one kind or another to the others.

The government of the nation was the people themselves. They, in fulfilling their various occupations and roles, were self-governing. However, to help coordinate and organize their individual and collective efforts, and look to their national defense, they elected a small number of their fellow citizens to serve as their "government," and to keep an eye on the borders lest they be invaded by barbarians or other nations coveting their wealth, land, and happy situation.

One of the more innovative and cleaver citizens figured out a system of currency by which money could be used in trade rather than barter, and the government adopted the idea and issued enough currency into circulation to provide fluidity to commerce. The dollar had an agreed upon value in terms of a bushel of wheat or hour of labor.

In time, the national economy became more sophisticated, and a credit system was devised so that cash would not be needed for every transaction. Clever men devised more efficient means of production, and the nation became more prosperous. The farmers didn't have to work so hard, and neither did other workers. Everybody was wealthier and had more leisure time to enjoy their prosperous situation.

The nation was comprised of the settlement and the hinterlands, which were the farm lands. Both grew more prosperous, but since the farmers were becoming more productive along with the workers in the settlement, it was seen that more workers were required in the settlement while fewer farmers were required to produce sufficient food.

So, in time, there were only twenty-five farmers and fifty-five producers of consumer goods. Life was still very good for all, and it looked as though there may come a time when almost everybody would be able to prosper with very little effort at all. Clever citizens were figuring out ways to do this.

Pretty soon there were only 2 farmers left, 50 production workers, 20 merchants, 10 professionals, and 10 full time bureaucrats, and 8 very clever persons: lawyers, bankers, and a well paid consultants.

With a total of 28 professionals, bureaucrats, and very clever persons, a lot of thinking, innovation, rationalization, and change was assured. The nation was more prosperous than ever before because of these people. In fact, it turned out that about 3 of these people had somehow managed to gain title to just about all of the productive land and machinery. The producers were paying the wages of all the non-producers, and the clever 3 were paying most of the wages of the producers.

In spite of their prosperity, they could figure no valid reason to have to pay those wages. There were other nations beside their own, where workers worked a lot cheaper. And, since this nation was so prosperous, why not make all other nations just as prosperous? It was time to share the wealth – giving opportunity to other nations.

Now there is 1 farm worker, 4 production assistants, 2 corporate merchants, 40 professionals, bureaucrats, and very clever persons, and 53 welfare recipients, homeless, unemployed, or retired workers in the nation – all living on the production and/or credit provided by others elsewhere – whose nations are just beginning to learn by the example our nation of 100 people.

John Q. Pridger

Wednesday, 20 June, 2007

HOPE?

Of all the presidential hopefuls, there's only one that Pridger would get out of bed to vote for thus far. That's Texas Congressman, Ron Paul – the enigmatic, "Mr. No" of the House of Representatives. He is a "conservative" Republican of an older variety, a constitutionalist, and he is sometimes considered a libertarian. His nickname, Mr. No, was gained by his refusal to endorse legislation that does violence to the Constitution, the Republic, or the people. He says "No!" to spurious legislation and tax increases. He has said "no" to bigger and bigger government many times, and "no" to out of control spending just as often. He said "no" to the war in Iraq. And he is the only presidential contenders of either party with enough guts to point out that the 9/11 terrorist attack was the result of errant Middle East foreign policy over a number of years. For this truth, it was decreed that he "lost" the recent Republican presidential debate.

Unfortunately, Congressman Paul will not become our next president. He represents things that our body politic can hardly relate to any more. He'd stop the wars – and the saber rattling. He'd rather negotiate with the enemy than continue to cause the death of tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. After all, no "nation" is at war with us. No nation has attacked us. So why have we gone to war with nations that have done us no harm? And why are we threatening to go to war with others?

While almost all the other presidential contenders are attempting to show that they have a spiritual side – in order to connect with the growing power of the religious right – Paul is simply and unabashedly for doing the right things, for the right reasons – without making a show of false piety.

The only reason that Ron Paul has not been rooted out of public life is that he is a mild and gentle person – a true gentleman – who is liked by most of his colleagues, including those who don't agree with his views. And his constituents like him too, and keep electing him to represent them. If he were a fiery bombastic person of strong and forceful voice, he'd be dealt with in no uncertain terms by the media, and if he didn't tone his rhetoric down, he'd probably be in danger for his life.

As it is, Mr. Paul is a quiet and unassuming voice of reason – but only a very small cry in a wilderness of loud, bombastic, politically correct voices. As such, he can be safely ignored in hopes few will catch his message.

The very fact that Ron Paul has entered the presidential race is ample proof of his courageous spirit.

Friday, 1 June, 2007

MAIL BAG – FEEDBACK

Pridger doesn't get much feedback on this blog. Either his insights are generally too profound to elicit comment, nobody is paying attention, or this site is set too far back in the bushes for anybody to find. (On the other hand, maybe Pridger's insights are simply beneath serious consideration.) But every once in a great while something does come in along with the standard spam (which seems to make it through no matter how well hidden a Internet personality contrives to be).

The dissertation on the existence of God was fabulous. My husband is a die-hard atheist, but I believe in God for the exact reason that you gave. I believe the universe was created and therefore for the sake of good sentence structure I have to believe in a Creator. The great noun and verb connection is the answer to the universe!

"The great noun and verb connection is the answer to the universe!" Now that's a pretty novel way of validating Pridger's recent spiritual message! And the idea that one should believe in a Creator, "for the sake of good sentence structure" is downright profound. Pridger hadn't thought of putting it that way! Of course, the dissection of sentence structure, was never one of Pridger's strong points in high school. Without doubt, the writer must have been an English teacher – and one with a sense of humor as well as deep spiritual commitment!

Pridger's iteration that we should embrace a belief in God in the hope of officially retaining at least a modicum of "God-given rights" – even if some of us have to slightly redefine the word "God" in order to do it – is as contingent on word-smithing as it is on religious fervor. It now occurs to Pridger that if he really knew how to properly dissect a sentence, he could probably come up with scientific proof that God is alive and well, and still generously extending His array of inalienable rights to all men (and women), whether they are receptive or not.

The Atheist, of course, can have no claim to God-given rights. He's got to make do with just "natural rights" and hope his government won't mess too much with them. The only trouble with natural rights is that any tyrannical atheistic government (or even an unduly paternalistic or maternalistic government), can and will abridge them at almost every meeting of its legislative body, or any the whim of the tyrant, Big Brother, Big Sister, or over zealous president.

We're extraordinarily fortunate that the very founding document of our nation stated very unequivocally that we have God-given rights which cannot be continuously up for amendment, adulteration, abridgement, or revocation.

When we speak of the several checks and balances built into our republican form of government, intended to keep tyranny at bay, we must not forget that the greatest check and balance of all was written right into the Declaration of Independence – that there is a Higher Law (higher than any government), and an unassailable giver of rights. We must remember that those rights are a gift of God to "people" not governments. Under our unique American system, government can only legitimately gain its "rights" from the people, and supposedly only exists "by consent of the governed."

The greatest check to government power, short of perhaps a massive armed rebellion, is not the balance between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, or the balance between the powers of federal and state governments. The greatest check to government power is, or ought to be, that a large majority of "We the People" hold God and His Higher Law to be superior to government and all other contrivances of men, and that government exists to serve the people, rather than rule them – and that "We the People" continue to hold certain truths to be self-evident and above the powers of government to tamper with. And this has been proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence, "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world... with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence..."

Too many of us have forgotten this, thus government is no longer limited as it should be, and has assumed powers far in advance of anything our founders intended. To deny the existence of God, or that this should be a Christian nation, is to defeat the greatest check and balance mechanism of all.

Unfortunately, we have a very influential class of so-called sophisticates in this country who, having thrown off "superstition" and looking strictly at the contrivances of man, insist on throwing the baby out with the bath water. They would purge God and Christianity from the national identity and thereby purge the concept of God-given rights and a Higher Law – above that of government itself.

Equally unfortunate, we have a class of self-proclaimed Christians that continues to give the faith a bad name, throwing many of the faithful and the nation into self-defeating confusion. They seek to destroy the nation (or unwittingly contribute to that end), under the false color of Christian faith and service to God, proclaiming they are working God's will by such mechanisms as "police powers," bullets, missiles, and bombs.

Errant religious zeal has caused many problems throughout the Christian era. But it can easily be shown that all of these problems have been the result of ignoring the most essential Christian message – the fundamental teachings of Jesus. Righteousness – tolerance, compassion, and brotherly love – for friend and errant foe alike – and "do unto others as you would be done by," etc. And forgiveness!

Salvation is embodied in those simple lessons. And though ours is a secular government (as civil administrative powers of men should be to prevent errant religious fervor from taking head), a government comprised of Christian men and women (or simply righteous men and women), cannot be anything other than a peaceful, just, and "Christian" government. And "Christian" men and women need not be professing "Christians" of any particular church identity, but only men and women of right mind and motive, combined with an ample measure of good common horse sense.

Christianity is not an affront to people of other faiths (as we are continuously taught these days by supposedly enlightened do-gooders [both secular and sectarian]), it is an all-inclusive philosophy of love. If we, as a nation, actually treated all other peoples (of whatever nationality or faiths), as if we were indeed a Christian nation, the hatred we feel others have for us would eventually evaporate for lack of interest – the motives of and for divisiveness would simply disappear.

John Q. Pridger

Saturday, 26 May, 2007

WITNESSES OF JEHOVAH

About once every two years Pridger receives his courtesy call from a car load of Jehovah's Witnesses. Pridger always enjoys their visits and tries to learn a little with each one.

Usually two Witnesses will come to the door and another two or three will remain in the car as backup. Pridger has always imagined that the ones in the car have their hand on something with a button or trigger on it, ready to address any emergency that may develop.

The two (in this instance, a distinguished looking middle aged man and an attractive young woman), began their talk by asking whether Pridger thought the end of the world was near. "I don't know how near the end is – though all things must must certainly end some time," Pridger answered, "But, whether or not it ends in the short term, I do believe God is going to rattle our cage soon."

They could tell from this that Pridger is somewhat of a Bible scholar, and they were gratified to learn that Pridger believes in God. And they could relate to the prospect of "God rattling our cage" pretty well too.

They brought up the subject of hell-fire and damnation, wondering if Pridger believed God would really put anyone into hot flames for an eternity. Pridger allowed that it was unlikely, since that would constitute cruel and inhumane treatment even by our post 9/11 war on terrorism standards.

They reassured Pridger by saying that the Bible never said anything about burning in hell. How could a good God do any such thing, since even most of us earthly sinners wouldn't even burn a dog at the stake?

"Or even a cat," Pridger contributed. And then, after a second's pause, he added, "Well, maybe a cat – but certainly not a dog."

This elicited a laugh from the Witnesses. After all, they allowed, cats do kill little birds and mice. But, of course, we were all joking. We wouldn't subject even a cat to what many believe God subjects errant humans too. And, naturally, it's a little difficult to swallow the proposition that a "good and just" God would do to people what most of us wouldn't do to even a cat.

The gentleman pointed to a few words in his Bible that seemed to confirm God's goodness, and Pridger dutifully put on his reading glasses to take a look at the passage.

"Why do you think God allows pain and suffering?" the man asked.

"Well, the way I see it," Pridger opined, "it's just part of the human condition. And that condition is certainly not confined to humans – just think of those poor little mice and birds that are unfortunate enough to fall prey to our feline friends. And think of those feline friends that are unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of mischievous young pranksters armed with a string and tin cans, or even fire-crackers! Humans are only unique in that they have the God-given ability – gift – to truly experience love, beauty, and fellowship – and remorse for their willful transgressions, whether against cats or fellow humans."

The Witnesses then asked if Pridger believed in Heaven and a better life after death. Pridger admitted that he had less faith than hope for such a reward, and not much of that – and that in the mean time he preferred to make the most of the life and wonderful rewards that God had already given him. But then the subject of the division of wealth came up.

The gentleman brought out the May issue of Awake! and opened it to the lead article "Prosperous Times for Whom?" The article pointed out, according to a recent United Nations publication, the "wealth of the world's three richest individuals is greater than the combined gross domestic product of the 48 poorest nations."

"Do you think anything is wrong with that?" the gentleman asked.

"Well, if you asked Rush Limbaugh, he'd say it was perfectly just," Pridger said. "He'd merely point out that they had excelled in whatever it was that brought them success, and succeeding in life was their inalienable right in a free and just capitalist society such as ours. He'd say that everybody has not only the the right, but the duty, to be the very best he can be."

"But what do you think?" the comely lady inquired.

"Of course, I think there's something fundamentally wrong with a system in which individuals can accumulate such magnitudes of wealth while half the world struggles in poverty and most of the rest are lucky to have a minimum wage job and are financially ruined if they happen to get seriously ill."

"What do you think makes that possible?" the man inquired.

"I think it's possible because we live in a world in which the reigns of political and economic power are firmly vested in the hands of those who worship at the altar of Mammon." Pridger answered.

We had a fairly animated discussion all in all, and Pridger believes all three of us enjoyed it. But the Witnesses' time was limited, for they had other calls to make.

The lady reached into her bag and drew out a copy of Watchtower magazine to add to the Awake! already at hand. "Have you ever seen these magazines?" the man asked.

"Well, you're hardly the first Jehovah's Witnesses to pay me a visit," Pridger replied as he accepted the copies, "And I once delivered a whole barge load of them to starving Ethiopians. I'm sure they gained considerable inspiration, if not nourishment, from them."

"I'll be glad to look them over – maybe even read them – in hopes of gaining as much," Pridger said as he thanked the pair and shook hands as they parted.

Most of Pridger's visits from Jehovah's Witnesses have gone similarly. It's always a pleasant exchange. They are kind and sincere people out trying to accomplish some good – trying to insure their own salvation by showing others the way to the same. Unfortunately they are not always kindly received.

John Q. Pridger

MAIL BAG – GLOBAL WARMING

I subscribe to a financial news letter by John Maulden. Buried in this weeks
missive was this aside; which to me, nails the present level of debate on
global warming.

//My studied remedy is for everybody to go out and kill 9 people...//
cheers
o'b

And speaking of environmentalism, I close with this gem from good friend Dennis Gartman, who often hits it out of the park with his comments. This one goes 500 feet.

"CATECHISM CLASS: Raised as good Lutherans back in Ohio, we always understood how the selling of Indulgences helped bring the Catholic Church low in the 16th Century. Indulgences were the pieces of paper sold by the Pope that allowed 'sinners' to pay down their debts they had incurred through sinning. One could sin, buy an Indulgence from the Church, and go about one's life with a sense of having done something worthwhile for the building of more churches AND in curtailing one's time in purgatory or actually buying one's way into heaven. Indeed, we learned that one of the Popes of the age, Leo X, actually sold such large Indulgences, costing such large sums of money, that he was able to finance the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica. Having been to St. Peter's, in retrospect, perhaps this was not such a bad idea given the stunning beauty of the church.

"But the whole notion of Indulgences is being revisited these days by the new religion of global warming, for if we consider what Mr. Gore has recently done by buying carbon offsets from those who plant trees to offset his enormous carbon footprint, or knowing what Sen. Edwards has done by buying offsets to the electricity and energy needed to power his enormous home in Chapel Hill, N. Carolina, we are hard pressed to see where this practice differs from the 16th century selling of Indulgences.

"Parishioners in the 16th century bought their way out of Purgatory and/or Hell; 21st century tree-hugging energy users can buy their conscience clear by buying offsets. We look for arguments from our global warming friends out there." Yea and verily.

Well, Pridger doesn't advocate the first remedy, though it would certainly do the trick. If everybody killed nine people, the murderer finally left standing (if there was one left standing), would hardly have much opportunity to enjoy the wonders of a reinvigorated planet. He'd undoubtedly soon find himself overwhelmed by larger or more physically fit predators – and nobody would be around to lament his passing.

As for the modern environmental "Indulgences" known as Carbon Credits or "carbon offsets," one can hardly expect more in a corporate world. The corporate managers, heeding the cry of influential environmentalists (increasingly backed up by apparently hard corporate science), must invent corporate remedies and solutions for corporate problems – and (most importantly), it must be done without short-circuiting corporate profits, corporate expansion, or increased global trade. Carbon Credits are such a solution. Money changes hands, profits are made, and the corporate machinery continues to plunge on in a frenzy aimed a preserving only a global business Utopia.

The system might accomplish some good in widely scattered, particularly threatened, natural areas. But the whole thing is a lot like the old shell game, or some other game of shifting things around and making good appear by means of deception or diversion of attention from one place to another. It might be likened to the environmental equivalent to Voodoo Economics.

Pridger wonders how many carbon credits it would take to ease his own environmental conscience. And he wonders how much they would cost, who would get the money, and what good they might do.

Pridger's "carbon footprint" is embarrassingly large, especially considering his relatively "simple" country life-style. By rights, in a sane world, Pridger's carbon footprint should be much smaller than it is. But the complexities of modern life continually put creeping demands for "conveniences" in the path of life, which inevitably enlarge the footprint in spite of good intentions.

But the family that lived on this same ground for sixty years prior to Pridger's purchase was about as close to zero as is possible in the modern world. That's how close we are to consumptive sanity – in this case, a single ownership generation.

Of course, they were pretty poor people. But they didn't think of themselves as particularly poor. They had plenty to eat, and the lack of electricity had been a fact of life since man first walked the earth. They were modern enough to have coal oil lamps. They heated with wood which was abundant. And going to bed early made rising at the crack of dawn to do chores as easy and natural as going to bed early was.

The farm was poor clay ground, and hardly produced enough in the way of crops to feed the horses and other livestock. The livestock produced enough manure to fertilize the garden place, albeit with very little left over to spread over the fields where corn was grown. But the garden was always profuse and provided more vegetables than the family required. Horses pulled the plow and other farm equipment, as well as provided family transportation. The horses ate grass rather than gas.

Chickens provided eggs for breakfasts and meat for those special Sunday dinners. Hunting supplemented the family diet, with squirrel, raccoon, and possum meat filling in between the Sunday diners of fried chicken and the ham and bacon from the yearly hog slaughter. A single milk cow provided more than enough milk and butter for the family throughout most of the year, with plenty of milk left over to provide the hogs with extra nourishment.

"Trading" was done at the local store, a little over a mile away. There, eggs and butter could be traded for such things as salt, coal oil, and canning jars. Most of the cash income was from the woods. The old man and boys, cut trees and hewed out railroad ties and mining timbers, for which there was a ready market. And they made a little whisky during their leisure hours in order to squeeze a little more cash out of the meager corn crop.

Life was made up of both work and pleasure, and the work was adequate to insure that all got sufficient exercise to remain strong and healthy. The children walked to school, a little over a mile away. Their carbon foot print was small indeed, as was that of the school itself. Great fleets of buses were not necessary, and they got their daily exercise free of charge.

Modernity was beginning to intrude during the years that family lived here. The first family pickup truck probably débuted in the 1930s or 40s. Rural electrification came about 1956. These two things required more money than the family had been accustomed to having. Coal was cheap since this is coal country, and soon the household heated with coal rather than wood.

With electricity came an increasing array of nice modern conveniences and labor saving devices. All of these required more money than the family had been accustomed to having. The old man finally passed away, and finally the old lady. Now the boys owned the farm. They no longer cut trees with axes and hewed timbers with broad axes. They had to buy chain saws so they could get more work done. But the sale of logs didn't produce enough income to pay all the expenses. They had to find off farm jobs to keep the modernized household functioning.

They didn't have much time to farm any more. It required full time jobs to keep the truck, the chain saws, and other modern conveniences running. And they had to buy a lot more of the food they ate, coal they burned, and pay increasing taxes and electric bills.

In the end, the remedy was credit, and finally the only way to keep up with the new life-style and pay the bills was to mortgage the farm – something the old man would have never done.

When Pridger bought the place from the financially distressed boys the farm had been mortgaged for ten years. In spite of making semi-regular payments the mortgage was greater and more oppressive than it had been when they first took it out. They had to sell their family homestead to get out from under the debt burden.

Though Pridger had hoped to establish a simple country life, all the conveniences of former era had become necessities. An array of monthly and annual bills were fixed facts of life that required much more cash than a small farm could hope to produce. But, since Pridger had an established means of making money, and the wife had the typical domestic expectations of a modern housewife, the carbon footprint, in spite of having the "infrastructure" for simple self-reliance, became almost that of the average city dweller.

Not only did Pridger have to have a pickup, but the wife had to have her own automobile too. A telephone was required, and a television, a washer and drier, and dozens of other little and not so little things. Satellite TV became a requirement, and a cell phone for the wife. And, of course, Pridger has allowed himself the indulgence of a computer addiction. And real estate taxes continually crept upward until they resemble paying rent to live in the home Pridger supposedly owns.

And that's where it remains today. Though Pridger is retired with what should be a comfortable retirement income, it barely makes ends meet. There has been no escape to the simple life, which is still there for the taking (all that would be required, would be to give up all those frivolities that masquerade as necessities). But we've learned to live with a large carbon footprint in spite of all. It's been pretty easy, all that it required was for Pridger to remain at least sporadically committed to his outside "career" for forty years.

The only good thing is that there is no mortgage, and no debts with compounding interest. And if the bottom falls out of the "system" we could easily make do with about a tenth of the conveniences that we have – and life would be better, easier, and much more relaxed from Pridger's perspective. But cutting those attachments to "modern conveniences" would be the hard part, particularly for the wife.

John Q. Pridger

Monday, 21 May, 2007

OLD QUOTES BEHIND THE WORLD DISORDER

"Jesus Christ never uttered a more profound truth than when He declared, “where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.” The loan of $500,000,000 to England by American capitalists, to say nothing of the profits of munitions manufacturers, has destroyed the semblance even of neutrality in the United States, and will probably lead us into war. ... I will not stultify my conscience nor stain my hands with the blood of my countrymen."
— Congressman Robert N. Page, North Carolina, February, 1916.

Woodrow Wilson pointed out: "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

From the New Freedom A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People (Page 24), by Woodrow Wilson. A SPECTRUM BOOK, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Read more at:
http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/vegyes_/wilson_11.html

Saturday, 19 May, 2007

WAKING UP?

During the past year it seems that the subject of global warming is being taken seriously by a significant number of people.

If the threat is real, will we get on the right track fast enough to avoid catastrophe? Not likely – not even maybe. It isn't just global warming we have to worry about. That's perhaps the least of our worries in the shorter term. We, as the most powerful and influential nation in the world, are still trying to build the New World Order – the wrong kind of New World Order. We're building a New World Order that is not only a total repudiation of everything this nation once stood for, but flies in the face of both historical experience, gathering science, and just plane old horse sense.

This means that we're not only on the wrong track, we are barreling down the track in the wrong direction. We're likely to enter a tunnel at breakneck speed while the tunnel builders are trying to complete their job. The train has no brakes, only a throttle that can speed it up but not slow it down. In other words, our national trajectory is still about 180 degrees off course with a full head of steam.

What our leaders are are still building at breakneck speed cannot adjust to "limits" or moderation because it is built on a corporate model that craves unlimited expansion of all systems in order to thrive and survive. It worships at the altar of one deity only – Mammon – and it recognizes only four holy grails, the need for: (1) speed, (2) efficiency, (3) the economics of scale, (4) and, above all, profits.

The "march of progress" is taking us into dangerous and uncharted waters at breath-taking speed. Yet there have been many red lights flashing all around us for a long time. But our governing body has not only ignored them, but officially decreed that the red lights are actually green lights.

Now some people claim to be waking up. But the hands of power are still on the throttle, and the remedy is always to stoke the fires and pile on more steam.

John Q. Pridger

WAKING UP TO THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION PROBLEM

After all the wake-up calls, Congress appears to be falling into the same old non-solution pattern that won't satisfy anybody. We're going to get a handle on the problem by somehow legalizing the illegals. Nobody is going to be happy with it.

The real problem is that we have willfully been importing a whole new working under-class for almost fifty years. Now that it is here in the tens of millions, it's too big to deal with. So, we're going to stop it by saying "we need that working underclass" and ought to make it possible for it to come out into the sunshine and be a legitimate part of America.

THEN, while acknowledging that we actually need more immigrants to do the work that doesn't pay enough to tempt "regular Americans," we'll start controlling our borders. We've heard that line before. We can be fairly certain that whatever "immigration reform" bill passes, it will simply be a compromise aimed at protecting our elected officials from the large and growing Mexican-American voting block.

Those of us who consider ourselves "old time Americans" might as well realize that we can't get to where we want to go from here. It's impossible. For one thing, in spite of all the hand wringing over illegal immigration, it's merely a major symptom of what our leaders continue to plan for our country – or what used to be the country we thought we had.

If our leaders are going to build a North American Union, or a Union of the Americas, illegal immigration is hardly relevant. We're supposed to become a single happy hemispheric family with open borders anyway. So why worry about a few million Latin American immigrants?

The hope of getting our representatives to represent the American majority of fifty years ago is hopeless. Even getting them to represent the majority of today's Americans is an impossibility. When the Constitution was effectively abandoned half a century or more ago, the nation of our founders was certain to wither away in the fullness of time.

The Civil War era was perhaps the key turning point in hour history. Not because the slaves were freed, but because "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" began to perish from this earth even as Lincoln vowed otherwise at Gettysburg. The war that preserved the Union also killed the notion of a Union of independent republics, replacing it with an all-powerful federal State – something destructive of the principles upon which it had been founded, and incapable of preserving the freedoms we once thought our birthright.

John Q. Pridger

THE FARM BILL AND FOOD CONTAMINATION

The 2002 farm bill had a "Right to Farm" section. That sounds pretty good. But it doesn't mean what it appears to mean. It doesn't mean that Pridger can now farm on his farm. He's always had the right to do that. What it really means is that large corporate scale "farmers" can't be prevented from constructing huge toxic animal concentration camps called "farms" just because they stink and pollute and destroy the quality of life for everybody for miles down wind.

This is mega-pollution and inhumane treatment masquerading as a "food supply solution."

Meanwhile, our food supply is causing problems of a nature that hardly existed before the era of mega corporate farms and massive feed-lot operations.

The E-coli contamination of greens is being blamed on cattle in pastures surrounding vegetable farms in California. The liability lawyers are saying, "Get those cattle further away from those fields!" The fields must be contaminated with wind-blown cow manure or methane gases.

One wonders how small diversified farms used to operate with general mixed farming and stock raising in close approximation? Cattle and horse manure was the fertilizer of preference on the garden, truck, and field crops. But somehow that worked, and we'd never heard of E-coli. And we never imagined importing tainted wheat glutton from China.

John Q. Pridger

Thursday, 10 May, 2007

PROVING THAT GOD EXISTS

CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" has been running a whole series on "What is a Christian," and last night Pridger watched Nightline for a few minutes as a Hollywood actor, turned preacher, and a friend, "prove" God exists, and an equally stellar atheist "proves" otherwise. The studio audience, of course, consisted of the usual mix of faithful and skeptical – with "true believers" on both sides.

It's difficult to believe that we are still "seriously" involving ourselves in the very same silly discussions and arguments about religion that has occupied the atheists and believers from time immemorial. One has to wonder why these questions are never settled to the satisfaction of everybody. Let the believers believe, and the non-believers believe what they will. Why continue arguing apples and oranges?

Pridger hasn't really been following the programs or debate, but he did watch Nightline long enough last night to hear the following exchange (paraphrased). It went something like this:

BELIEVER: (Holding up a framed painting) If you have a painting, the painting itself is proof that there is, or was, a painter. So, if you have an Universe – a "Creation" – this in itself is proof that a Creator must have existed to create it. And since the Universe is a living, ongoing thing, the Creator must still be around to keep things oiled and running.

NON-BELIEVER: (Smug, confidently, and slightly condescendingly) Where did the creator come from? Who or what created him? If there is a painting, you can call up the artist and talk to him. (Even atheists believe in artists). But you can't call up the creator of the Universe and chat with him. Nobody has seen him.

Firm believers and non-believers are hard-headed people. Both readily claim that "You simply can't get a blind man to see anything, or a deaf man to hear." The non-believers' refuge is in science (a discipline of tangible proof), and "common sense," and the believers' refuge is usually a combination of scripture, and "common sense." The common sense part for the believer is "if there is something there, there must be something behind it."

Thus far, it has proven literally impossible to prove that God does or does not exist through debate or argument – at least to the satisfaction of opposing parties. What is proof to the believer is merely a speculative leap to the non-believer. And what is proof to the non-believe is nothing more than lack of quantifiable scientific evidence that he can put his finger on. The believer, though seldom up to the task of convincing the non-believer, actually has the best argument. The non-believer can only say that what he cannot see and touch, and what science has not proven, must not exist.

Pridger's old Pappy told him when he was a small child, that the only difference between a Christian (believer), and an atheist is that, "A believer believes in a Universe created by a self-created God, and an atheist believes in a self-created Universe." Both positions are pretty difficult to swallow, so Pridger's Pappy took refuge in agnosticism – the simple, and very reasonable, admission of ignorance of ultimate Truths.

Agnosticism seemed like the only sensible way of avoiding claim to "knowledge" of things that are still impossible to scientifically prove – so Pridger hung that sign around his neck for a long time. But then he started thinking.

To be perfectly truthful, Pridger didn't "catch religion" until he became politically aware. And he never did get baptized, saved, or otherwise sanctified by any holy practitioner. But at some point he realized that in a world (or nation) of atheists and agnostics, the very concept of "God-given rights" would unavoidably be considered nothing more than the "silly little notion" of the ignorant and superstitious.

Yet, our nation itself would not have come into being as it did had our founders not had a faith in God, because the Declaration of Independence leaned heavily upon the existence of a Creator and a Higher Law.

Our nation does exist, but if it were universally acknowledged that it is based on fallacy and fraud – that the notion that our founders assuming on behalf of the people, and among the powers of the earth, "the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them" was a falsehood – then we must assume we have been living a national lie since 1776.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness... appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions... with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence..."

If all of this (upon which our nation was founded and our Constitution stands), was empty, meaningless, and errant rhetoric (which must be discarded in the light of scientific enlightenment), then we must admit that we have no God-given rights. We must admit that the notion of God-given rights was, and is, a fraud.

In such case, all we have are a few privileges granted by a government fraudulently foisted upon us by frauds or fools. If that be so, Big Brother would be the nearest thing to a Heavenly Father that we can hope for – and government the "ultimate power" among men, and the Supreme Court would stand in place of any notion of a Higher Law (as it already tries to do).

Pridger found these things troubling because he knows in the very core of his being that his fundamental rights are (or at least ought to be), inviolable and not simply a matter for other men to grant or withhold at their whim. He didn't get those rights from either the government or the Bill of Rights. He was born with them – and if they aren't a gift of God, then Pridger's claims on them are pretty flimsy and difficult to defend.

It had always perplexed Pridger that such men as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, and many of our other founders, strongly relied on a belief in God, in spite of their dim view of religious dogma and most orthodox Christian beliefs. These were men of scientific mind, without any "faith-based" notions of religion – except their faith in God. And they were men with an abundance of good, common, horse sense. Yet they not only insisted on a belief in God, but the fundamental validity and goodness of Christianity – the essence of which was to be found in the teachings of Jesus (rather than what they considered the adulterated teachings of any "Church" or the broader Scriptures). Were those men frauds? Pridger doesn't think so.

The advent of Darwin's theory of evolution didn't change anything at all, in spite of all the argument it has caused among supposedly intelligent men. (Who are we to take issue with "just how God did it" and continues to do it?) At bottom, the "arguments" are all superficial, and really unworthy of truly intelligent men of broad understanding and outlook – though intelligent men repeatedly and continually set their feet firmly into the mire, taking one side or the other. Intelligent Design? Who are we, whether believers or non-believers, to dispute that notion?

It's obvious that Genesis doesn't tell the whole story, but it's equally obvious that the "science" of evolution is also missing several entire chains, rather than just a link or two. And, at the far end of any and all evolutionary chains, remains the great unknown. They are two very incomplete records – one written thousands of years before the scientific era, and the other based in many assumptions that seem to have a scientific validity. In the overall scheme of the Universe, Genesis and evolutionary science displace just about as much space. The issues only loom large from our acutely handicapped position and severely limited perspective.

As for proving the existence of God, Socrates said that knowledge begins with the careful definition of the words being employed. It does little good to argue apples and oranges – or for blind men to argue over what an elephant looks like after each has felt a foot, trunk, or the tuff of hairs at the end of the tail.

Socrates also defined God in a way that helped bring Pridger a little closer to the light. "God is truth, and light his shadow." Eventually Pridger adopted this along with another definition that a close friend stated – "God is the Universal Living Truth."

Few challenge the notion that the term enlightenment is symbolized by light. There's hardly anybody, whether a card carrying atheist or true Christian who doesn't believe in Truth – or at least un-capitalized truth. Literally everybody believes in truth, insofar as he believes it to be true.

Heaven help us if the meaning of the words "true" and "truth" are transformed in the manner of such formerly well understood words as "gay" and "marriage"!

The atheist believes in nature and natural causes. But the capitalized word "Nature" might easily be put in the place of "God," for what is nature but the embodiment of All in the Universe, including the as yet unknown attributes, laws, and components, of nature?

Herein is proof that God exists, without waxing poetic or into spiritual or scientific devolutions. It's a matter of defining what God is – the actual meaning of the word – as well as a concept that can be grasped by even the spiritually challenged. And it doesn't matter whether the word is God, Jehovah, Yahweh, or the Great Spirit.

Atheists deny the existence of God because they do not agree on what the word refers to – it refers to something scientists have not yet shown them. Atheists do believe in truth, even though they would readily admit that most truth is as yet unknown. But, if most truth is unknown (and perhaps even unknowable), it becomes a matter of faith that it is nevertheless "out there" and true, and merely waiting to be discovered.

When it comes to arguments over a "personal, caring, God", "personal Savior", or the literal veracity of written scriptures, the issue also becomes one of faith. But, to the faithful, that faith is the result of proofs that an atheist is incapable of seeing or even rationalizing. Pridger doesn't address arguments of this nature, but merely allows that the faithful have a perfect right to believe what they will as do non-believers. But Pridger also believes that Christian faith (as well as other religions), is essentially a very positive thing for most of the faithful. Among the faithful there are perceived truths to which the atheist is blind. There are no arguments, scientific or otherwise, that will bring them closer together.

The atheist may have faith that we will continue to accumulate scientifically provable facts, and he may even accept science-based theory as fact, yet denies that God would be part of it. The religiously faithful believe they already know truths that science has not yet verified, and is thus far incapable of verifying.

To prove the existence of God to himself, Pridger discarded all scripture and (for all practical purposes), religion itself. "Faith in God" has to do with how men perceive God. Orthodox religions have more to do with what they believe with regard to the scriptures of their own particular sects. But God (as a concept of Ultimate Truth and One and All powerful Supreme Being, or Cosmic Force) can be perceived without reference to, or dependence on, either faith or science. It's simply a matter of properly defining one's terms.

Of course, these lines of thought on God are not new. (Nor is Pridger going to go very far with them here.) But Pridger has always been one to come at some things the hard way – re-inventing the wheel, if necessary, in order to haul fertilizer to the garden in a wheel borrow. All of this has been covered over and over by thinking men for millennia, of course, and similar rationalizations (most often greatly embellished, of course), serve as the basis for some of the esoteric "mysteries" of cabalism, theocracy, secret societies, etc. In the end, there is never a scientific answer to the mysteries, no matter how much scientific or metaphysical rationalization is employed in defining what God is.

Pridger was once asked by a friend (the son of a Baptist minister), who proclaimed himself an atheist, if Pridger believed in God. Knowing that Pridger was the son of a notorious local free thinker, and not exactly a church-goer, he was a little surprised at the answer.

"Yes, I do." Pridger said.

"On what can you possibly base such a belief?" he asked.

"That," Pridger said, "depends on how you define the world 'God'."

"What do you mean by that?" the friend asked. "How would you define God?"

"First, let me ask if there anything that you claim not to know?"

"Yes, quite a lot." the friend admitted

"Well, let me define God as consisting of all that you do not know – along with all that you do know – or think you know. That is how I define God, and how I know He exists."

Pridger's friend was not converted, of course, but he did scratch his head a little. The point is, there is so much that we do not know, and are not yet able to scientifically quantify, that there's still plenty of room for God. And if there is a God, we Americans (and others too), might be able to continue to enjoy most of our "God-given rights" without apology or any by-your-leaves from those who do not believe such things exist.

Voltaire once poignantly observed that, if God did not exist, we'd have to invent Him. Fortunately, God does exist, and the only thing we've had to invent were the words by which to describe or deny that existence – though many cannot see the import of the message.

As for Christianity, Pridger believes the Christian message is embodied in the fundamental teachings of Jesus. While Pridger may be considered a heretic by fundamentalists and other orthodox Christians, he nonetheless considers being "Christian" the most important aspiration in his life – and this position perhaps has much more to do with right conduct and basic morality than anything that might be considered strictly "spiritual." The spiritual aspects of religion do not belong in "political" discussions.

This is not to say that the message of "Christ" is exclusive to Christians. Other great men and religions have very similar messages which work just as well in their own societies and cultures – just as the Christian message ought to work for those of us who are children of the Christian tradition.

While recognizing the "family of man" and the universality of human aspirations, Pridger believes in "differences." Differences make for a much more interesting, colorful, exciting, and wonderful world than an universal "sameness" would. But if everybody lived their lives in strict accordance with the core messages of their respective religions, these differences could never be cause for conflict. (Unfortunately, there are errant "religions" and "churches," just as there are errant faithful individuals who miss the most important message.)

This doesn't exclude atheists and agnostics by any means. Their non-faith or non-religion, or their secular humanism, is their "religion" – and they may be as good and "righteous" as anybody else – but they (not unlike the faithful) must develop and nurture their own "goodness" by means of personal rationalization processes, tapping into those "self-evident" non-spiritual "truths" that have somehow found a fertile seedbed in the hearts of all "right-minded" men everywhere throughout the history of mankind.

Yet the atheist and agnostic must, by the necessity of exclusion, defer to government as the ultimate power among men and their earthly societies. And this, in Pridger's opinion, would be a dangerous position for the majority of "We the People" to allow ourselves to be placed in.

In Pridger's opinion, if there were no God nor Higher Law, we'd still be very well advised to cling to the fiction that there is, and to keep government from occupying the position our founders very wisely reserved to God alone. Once government becomes "Government, Omnipotent, and Deified" (G.O.D.), government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," will have perished from this earth. We've gone far enough down that road already.

John Q. Pridger

Wednesday, 9 May, 2007

BACK TO BASICS

With the various wars going on, mass killings on college campuses, devastating tornados, pets and chickens dying of imported food poisoning, and the Imus crises, it's easy to get distracted from the important issues at hand – the things this blog is intended to address.

Some of these distractions, of course, are the result of the major issues that are the subject of this blog. Our wars, for example, and the matter of importing wheat gluten from China when the United States produces more than enough wheat to satisfy our need for wheat gluten.

The price of gas is on the way up again, and this is one of the core problems we face because we've simply been on the wrong track as a nation for far too long.

But $3.00 gas really isn't that surprising. Pridger goes by what he knows or has experienced. Since about 1960 average consumer prices have increased by a factor of at least 10. Some things have gone up much more, and other things by much less. Gas was about $.30 a gallon in 1960, so $3.00 per gallon would seem about right by now. Since it had apparently been under-priced for so long, playing catch up will undoubtedly become part of the game currently unfolding.

Pridger bought his first car in 1963 after getting out of the Navy. It was a 1960 Ford Falcon. Pridger bought it from a dealer for $500.00. It's pretty difficult to find a three year old car for $5,000.00 today.

By 1960 we were already beginning to import large numbers of small cars from Japan, and many Americans liked them for both their quality and fuel efficiency. And the German Volkswagen "bug" was one of the most popular cars on the road. The Falcon was one of Ford Motor Company's first answers to that challenge – one of the first relatively small American cars since the days of the Model T and Model A.

It seemed that Ford was on the right track with the Falcon but, in American fashion, the Falcon grew bigger as new models came out. Soon Americans were buying more and more Japanese cars. Today Toyota has not only surpassed Ford, but GM too, as the world's largest automaker. Half the American car market it in the hands of Japanese and other Asian automakers, and the big three U.S. automakers are in dire straits – turning out big cars, SUVs, monster pickups, and tanks like Humvees.

Our gas appetite has progressed right along with with the continued planned growth of the automotive society – where the cities, towns, and the whole country have been reengineered to make automobiles necessities for everybody. Like the cars most people can afford, we are obliged to import most of the oil required to power and lubricate our American lifestyle.

Importing more fuel efficient cars, however, isn't getting back to basics. Getting back toward basics would be relearning how we once produced almost everything we needed for ourselves – that once one of the great advantages of living in a town or city was that one didn't have to have a car at all – and that it was once possible to catch a train in every little town with connections to every other little town in the whole country.

John Q. Pridger

BAD RAP

No, Pridger didn't hatch this up – it's from the old email bag. Christ has been taken out of X-mas, but now they will want to take the "ho" out of it too. "Bah humbug!" has been suggested to replace Santa's offensive "Ho, ho, ho!"
     Being so astutely learned in geography, foreign cultures, etc., many Americans will be wondering how a "ho" can become so famous as to have a major Asian city named after her, and her "uncle" a national hero.
     Pridger understands the word is bantered about quite a bit in China. One of his Chinese friends tells him the word "ho" simply means "good" in Chinese.
     Too bad Imus wasn't made aware of this before apologizing to the Rutgers team. He had an out but didn't know it.
     It's a pity such a lovely little word has inadvertently been tarnished in this country – much in the way that the English word "gay" has been downgraded to mean something totally different than its historical meaning.
     The famous painting of the "Man with a Hoe" has taken on a new meaning, since the man is standing beside a woman formerly taken to be his wife.

Tuesday, 8 May, 2007

THE FOREST AND THE TREES

As the old saying goes, it's sometimes difficult to see the forest for the trees. Each tree becomes an obstruction hiding the forest. And there are so many trees at the edge of the forest! And malevolent things can hide behind the trees. They're dangerous!

In this day and age, the remedy is usually to get out the old chain saw and bull dozer and remove all the trees. But if we wanted to see the forest, because of it's innate mystery and beauty, it becomes obvious that our solution has fallen somewhat short of our goal. Though the bothersome trees are gone, we still can't see the forest. Though we started out to do a good thing, the results aren't anything like we imagined they would be. The forest is gone.

An artificially forested theme park, of course, is the answer. But lo! Even artificial forests must have trees!

Sometimes we wish we could just go back to something that seemed to work petty well before. Maybe the natural forest, with all it's obstructive trees, was really the best thing after all! And though artificial trees may be wonderful, they are expensive and require maintenance, whereas the natural trees grew by themselves.

Our "Wonderful New World" is a lot like a corporately built and administered theme park. Carefully planned to the nth degree, and proclaimed by the builders the most wonderful thing since way before sliced bread, somehow things just don't seem right.

TAKE THE PET FOOD SCARE FOR EXAMPLE...

If there's one area in which the the United States is still internationally competitive, it's in the production of grains and meats. For some reason it doesn't seem right that we should be importing large quantities of either animal foods or feed products or from China. Yet American pets have been dying, and hogs and poultry have been contaminated with melamine-tainted Chinese wheat gluten. An estimated 2.5 million American broiler chickens have dined on tainted Chinese imports. Some of the animals and chickens have already passed into the human food chain. Many have died. We've got farmers who are going to have to euthanize thousands of hogs and perhaps hundreds of thousand of chickens.

David Acheson, chief medical officer for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said, "I want to emphasize none of this contaminated product ended up directly in human food." Only indirectly, in diluted form, if that makes you feel any safer.

Earlier this year, one Chinese company shipped more than 700 tons of wheat gluten labeled "nonfood" product through a Chinese textile company. This enabled the shipment to bypass both Chinese and U.S. food inspectors. One of these days we'll probably find that a million tons of tainted pizza crusts, peanut butter, and fortune cookies have arrived (last year), from IBM China, Inc., labeled as ipods, cell phones, and printer ink.

In a sane country – and one able to feed itself and have plenty left over for export – one would think that the only sort of food items we'd import from China would be the more exotic things that aren't produced in this country – and those in very limited volumes and subjected to careful food safety inspections.

John Q. Pridger

Thursday, 3 May, 2007

GLOBAL WARMING, TRAVEL, SPEED, AND FREE TRADE

One of the reasons global warming has become such a problem is our societal and cultural fixation with speed. As a people, we've been in far too big a hurry at least since the automobile replaced foot and horse travel, and airplanes replaced steamships, trains, and leisurely passages by land or water. Speed has become a necessity for many of us, and for many, that means flying in big jet liners.

Though most of the focus is on automobile emissions and coal fired power plants as the biggest producers of CO2, some concerned environmentalists are finally beginning to point out that jet air travel is one of the biggest culprits of all – and there is no technology on the immediate horizon with which to attack the problem. Jet airliners are about as efficient as current technology allows. But they are big polluters – delivering their gaseous emissions right up into the upper atmosphere where it has to most immediate effect – and air travel is expected to double in the next few decades.

The problem was recently pointed out in George Monbiot in "Flying Into Trouble – why most airplanes must be grounded" (The Nation, May 7, 2007).

"Jets produce staggering amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases that accelerate global warming... The CO2 produced by planes is augmented by the other greenhouse gases they release, magnifying its efect by 270 percent. This means that flying is one of the most destructive things we can do.

"...Because our economy has been built around the rapid mobility of goods and people (the volume of US airfreight grew by 372 percent between 1980 and 2004), this could be our greatest political challenge."

Our problem seems clear. We travel altogether too much, and too far, without compelling reasons – and we all need to get there in too much of a hurry.

Our increasing trade is another big problem that almost nobody ever focuses on as a problem. There are more than 40,000 huge containerships and tankers plying the oceans on our behalf, and their contribution to the problem of climate change is significant and growing as our trade volumes increase.

This problem seems clear too. We trade altogether too much, over too great of distances, without any compelling reasons, other than to relieve American workers of good production jobs so large global corporations can make a good profit as we're compensated at the Wal-Mart checkout counter.

But both more travel and more trade, always at the fastest possible speed state of the arts technologies can produce, are expected, and both are on policy auto-pilot.

If there is a focus, it's seldom on the real problem of too much travel or too much trade. No, more of everything is the holy grail of progress. The "solution" is supposed to be in finding out how we can travel more efficiently at even higher speeds. In the mean time we're expanding airports and preparing for twice as many air travelers. And the idea of cutting our volume of trade is literal political heresy. We're trying to figure out how to increase it, and how to make 40,000 ships, plus 40,000 more in the next few years, less polluting. Even if we can make 80,000 ships less polluting than 40,000, we have still got a much bigger problem than before – and it is dependence on trade as well as environmental degradation.

DIGRESSION BOX

Dependence on trade (interdependence), is "dependence" – the very antithesis of independence. Our trade policy is based on the total repudiation of any significant degree of national economic independence. The leadership tells us that "we Earthlings are all internationally interdependent whether we like it or not, and whether we admit it or not – and that we must strive to become even more internationally interdependent through more free trade.

There are several rationales for our leaders' desire to coerce all nations to abandon any national independence they may have once had. It stems from that dirty word "nationalism." The rationale is that we should all become so dependent on one another than no nation will ever again be able to declare war on another without hurting itself just as much as the enemy. (Of course, until we reach that perfect goal, we [the USA], can still attack non-compliant states that still hanker for national independence rather than "American style" freedom, liberty, and democracy. And, in such cases, we don't even have to comply with our own standards of justice – enemies of American style freedom and democracy, can be treated like ordinary animals).

The still unarticulated real goal of free trade and globalism, however (behind the legitimate policy-making level), is effectively aimed at attaining a state where everybody everywhere, depends on everybody everywhere else for everything – so that literally every commercial transaction that takes place at every level of commerce produces a profit for a relatively few major multinational corporations.

Given our levels of industrialization and consumption, we recognized that there is too much pollution some time ago, and the strides that we made in cleaning up "our" air and environment have been pretty impressive. But many of those gains were merely problems swept under the rug – destined to become somebody else's problem. Dirty industries were merely shipped off to others where they become bigger global polluters than before – and the industries even more profitable (usually under the same ownership, but different workers). And, as for the massive and growing solid waste problem, we merely bury it in massive land-fills scattered all around the country and the world.

Trains could replace domestic personal automobiles and air travel at great benefit to the environment, but there are two big problems. We've already junked our once great passenger rail infrastructure, with Amtrak just barely holding on in long distant service, serving too few places, on tracks that belong to big international freight corporations. And we're now in too much of a hurry for ordinary train travel over long distances. Because we are in such a hurry, any new passenger train rails and rolling stock will have to be of the super-fast, bullet train, variety. And with super high-speed trains, energy consumption advantages collapse.

These are times when everybody wants instant gratification. The trip or the voyage is no longer part of the adventure. A long trip is considered lost time. Everybody wants to "be there" and be there now!

Even a few hours' flight is considered quite an inconvenient imposition. So why not just stay home and speed back and forth to the store in our SUVs? If we hanker to see exotic places, in front of the TV is the best and safest place to be. But nobody really wants to be known as a couch traveler. The thing to do is to "buy a package" and take a couple days off and fly over to experience the "real thing."

What bothers Pridger is that, in this speed-shrunken world, it's getting to where almost everywhere is just about the same as everywhere else.

Still, Pridger would actually travel more, if he could travel by train or ship. But we've got so far advanced that it's almost impossible to get anywhere that way any more. In Pridger's case, the nearest airport, bus stop, and Amtrak station are one county up and two counties over. And finding passage on any kind of ship, simply to go somewhere, other than on a fantasy cruise, has become nearly impossible. There aren't any passenger ships plying the seven seas, only cruise ships for retired jet-setters.

Pridger seldom flies, but his phobia is less due to a fear of flying than a deep-seeded dislike for what the "convenience" of air travel is doing to the world – it's both shrinking and debasing it. It's making our big and wonderful world embarrassingly small, and Pridger is disturbed by that. As he's said before, the world is getting so small, Pridger is becoming ashamed of it.

The most practical mode of local transportation ever invented for humans was the bicycle, which produces no polluting gases at all (except, perhaps, during manufacture). But when people want to travel a few blocks or mile or two, they hop in the SUV or Humvee. Meanwhile, almost everybody needs a lot more exercise than they are apt to get. Rather than getting useful exercise, they pay money to go to a fitness center, or buy some sort of home-bound contraption to peddle, pump, or otherwise wrestle with in front of the TV.

The country should be the place where a guy could put a bicycle, or even a horse, to good use. But our highways are speed strips where a bicyclist or mounted traveler is in great danger of being mistaken for a deer and made into road kill. And most of the local stores have disappeared so people have to speed to town for the convenience of trading with Kroger or Wal-Mart rather than their neighbors. Horses are now used for recreation (and a good recreation they perhaps are), but recreation means riding around, usually to nowhere, or in circles, or trailering one's horse to some distant trailhead in order to ride – usually to nowhere that has any more than a recreational value.

The high speed automotive culture is going to be around for a while, regardless of soaring gas prices. Yet in a sustainable and practical world, most local transportation should be free and relatively clean and slow, as they once were, and mass transit would satisfy the needs of the urban commuter who lives too far from work to walk or peddle.

A city, at least, should be a place where people could live comfortably without having to have an automobile. But the urban well-to-do are likely to find a four wheel drive SUV, Humvee, or massive pickup truck a necessity – for self-defense, if nothing else. If fully armored tanks were available, there's a class of consumer who'd buy them for commuting to the store.

Just the other day Pridger took the wife off on an expedition to trade with the enemy. The local SAM's warehouse store is located about 30 miles from Paradise Ridge. In passing through the wonderful countryside on rural roads that took them through several little towns and villages, Pridger once again took note of what seems to be largely an American phenomenon.

It struck Pridger, as it always does, that he was able to travel that distance, through several towns, and into the fairly urbanized destination – without spotting so much as a single pedestrian! There were many horses to be seen at pasture on several farms, but not one rider on horseback traveling anywhere. These days, pedestrians only venture out between car and door, whether at home or at the big store.

Pridger's hometown is a "city" over almost 10,000 people. But one can drive through town any number of times without spotting a pedestrian on the streets or sidewalks. The shopping center parking lots are the only places people are likely to be seen walking – between their car and the front door of a store.

To Pridger's Asian wife, this is the saddest, most disconcerting, thing of all about "American life," and why she often pines for the country of her roots. In most nations, and most particularly Asian nations, everywhere one goes, whether in the city or the country, people are seen everywhere – doing things and going places, on foot, or riding bicycles or motorbikes. There are innumerable small mom and pop businesses everywhere people live in any numbers, pass, or congregate. And the people are seemingly happy and their societies vibrant. Our brand of modernity, with all of its conveniences, has produced a very sterile, lackluster, and drab society.

Americans tend to stay in the controlled comfort of their air-conditioned homes – expending large amounts of energy as they recline before the TV. Or they will venture out in their climate controlled automobiles, to the air-conditioned mall or workplace.

Pridger isn't so old that he doesn't remember when things were a little different here. But even in his youth he lamented our societal commitment to an increasingly sterile modernity. Yet kids, at least, still did a lot of walking and bicycle riding, though our parents had already largely succumbed to the automotive culture. But it wasn't until Pridger got out to see the world that he fully realized just how hopelessly sterile our society had become in comparison to the "have-nots" elsewhere.

So, now that we've found out that we have a serious problem with global warming which is being fed by our ultra-modern way of life, we are coming to realize that we have been getting things wrong (very wrong!). Yet we're still actively pushing to bring the very same ulta-consumptive and wasteful modernity to all the rest of mankind. We call it the "American way of life" and we are eager to make it the global standard, under the amazingly capable hand of corporate systems under our seriously flawed capitalist model.

Meanwhile we continue to consume far too much, travel too much, too far, and too fast, and we trade far too much, over too great of distances, producing far too much in the way of greenhouse gases with every corporate managed or facilitated activity. And this fundamentally flawed system works so well that it is now literally on autopilot and is unstoppable except through catastrophic events, either through the intervention of economic realities, war, or an act of God, or all three. And all are very much in the offing, if not already in the picture.

John Q. Pridger

PRIDGER vs. The New World Order
John Q. Pridger's COMMENTS ON NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Politics, economics, and social issues as seen through Pridger's mud-splattered lenses.
E-Mail pridger@heritech.com Why Pridger writes this Blog?	WHAT PRIDGER'S CRUSADE IS ALL ABOUT The question is no longer whether or not there has been a conspiracy to bring about globalism and the new international economic order (a.k.a. New World Order). Whether you believe in a grand conspiracy or not, the New World Order materialized several years ago, ready or not – whether we like it or not – and it effects all of us intimately. It arrived as a "done deal," a fait accompli, compliments of a combination of our elected misrepresentatives and unaccountable global movers and shakers. It came with no advanced public advertisements; no public assessment period; no comment period; and, of course, no up or down vote. In other words, both democratic processes and the informed "consent of the governed" were scrupulously avoided. If it was not a conspiracy, then what was it? An act of God? No doubt there is evidence of "Intelligent Design." But, of course, the New World Order isn't done yet. It's very much still a work in progress – being accomplished without the informed consent of any electorate. And along with the "building" it is a process of destruction, and of burning bridges, to insure that we cannot correct our course or go back. For all the high sounding rhetoric and possible good intentions on the part of many, the New World Order is about consolidation of global corporate hegemony, under the regulatory umbrella of United Nations agencies – world governance with international capital interests in the driver's seat. This is what globalization and our current Crusades abroad are essentially all about. Pridger laments that we Americans have been sold down the river by the collective national leadership, and that the nation of our founders – of which we were rightfully proud – has effectively ceased to exist! The questions are: is there any way for We the People to regain control? And, is there any hope for a return to government of the people, by the people, and for the people?
Pridger's Home Page Pridger's Web Host Heritech.com NAAAP Archive	A pretty comprehensive history of the New World Order can be read on the Overlords of Chaos web site. The material presented is very extensive, and the annotations well written. Though presented with an obvious religious bias, the facts presented stand on their own merit. Even the most pragmatic and skeptical will find the information very enlightening.

WHAT PRIDGER'S CRUSADE IS ALL ABOUT