HELEN THOMAS'S GRAND FINALE

On May 27, 2010, while attending the Jewish Heritage Celebration Day at the White House, Rabbi David Nesenoff asked if Thomas had any comments on the state of Israel. Her shocking answer was:

"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine!

["Whoa!" Rabbi Nesenoff interjected, and Ms. Thomas laughed at the effect of her statement]

"Remember, these people are occupied, and it's their land; it's not German, it's not Poland's."

[Then Rabbi Nesnoff asked where Israeli Jews should go or what they should do?]

"They should go home" to "Poland, Germany – America and everywhere else."

Wow! and Whoa! is right!

Of course, when the video made its way to YouTube the fallout was immediate, enormous, and typically unforgiving. Helen had spoken the unspeakable, and she was duly placed upon journalistic death row.

Watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=RQcQdWBqt14 

She apologized for the hurt feelings and to the downright angered and outraged. But she did not grovel as most journalists and politicians do. In actuality, her apology was another statement. Thomas subsequently issued this apology on her personal web site:

"I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."

In both Ms. Thomas's offending statements, and her apology, Pridger sees not bigotry or prejudice, but despair, hopelessness, and acute frustration and disappointment at the 62 years of the Israeli history. She seems to be saying that the time for peace, mutual respect, and tolerance seem to be long past. There is no longer any hope at all for peace in Palestine, or peace for Israel.

There can be no "two state solution." The wounds run far too deep for meaningful reconciliation. The problems are intractable and have only got worse, never any better. It's too much to hope that Israel will ever allow a viable independent Palestinian State. And it is too much to hope that the Palestinians will ever give up their struggle to regain all of Palestine even if they gain full statehood in the now also occupied lands of Gaza, the Golan Heights, and West Bank. They, quite understandably, see the entire region known as Palestine as being occupied by a hostile foreign power.

(Correction – Gaza is no longer occupied. It's become a self-governing concentration camp, guarded and locked down from outside by Israel!)

There can only be a "One State solution" – and the Israelis and Palestinians appear to agree on this. The Zionists could perhaps have created that ideal solution, in cooperation with Arabs, as they moved toward independence after WWII. Unfortunately, they were far too impatient and eager to make their Homeland (the erstwhile Holy Land, holy to three major religions), into an exclusively Jewish State, exclusive of Palestinian Arabs as co-equal citizens in a plural and democratic society. There would be no democratic multi-racial, religiously tolerant, State which provided a Jewish Homeland as well as a homeland for Palestinians in a Holy Land. There must be an exclusively Jewish State! And therein they made their, perhaps fatal, mistake.

The Jewish settlers in Palestine, and the various Zionist organizations, got it wrong from way before the beginning. From the 1920s onward they made their intentions clear to the Arab population and the surrounding Arab States. Their intention was to take Palestine over completely, despite the fact that Palestine had been in Arab hands for many centuries – so many centuries, in fact, that there was scarcely any historical evidence, aside from the Jewish scriptures themselves, that a Jewish kingdom had ever existed there. And it was upon the strength of those scriptures alone upon which the Jewish People declared their right to re-occupy what the Old Testament stated was their "Promised Land." 

It is far too late now, and would be far too difficult, for the Israelis to change their mind and set more tolerant and democratic goals for themselves and the Palestinians. To them, sharing power with the Palestinians is as unthinkable as it would now probably prove to be suicidal. The survival of their State, as an exclusively Jewish State, depends on maintaining exclusive control, using every contrivance and coercive means and  at their disposal. Yet, as long as the State survives in its present form, it will continue to be surrounded by hostile peoples.

This is a lamentable thing for the "Holy Land." It should be a land of Jews, Christians, and Moslems where all peoples can live or visit in perfect safety.

JQP

---

 THAT REMINDS ME...

What Helen said, and her editor's response, reminds me of a famous quote from another journalist who got off a parting shot at the end of his career. It was probably in 1880, that John Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist, was the guest of honor at a banquet given for him by fellow leaders of his craft. One of the attendees offered Swinton a toast to the "independent press." His colleagues were shocked by his reply:

 

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.

 

"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.

 

"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?

 

"We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

 

(Source: Labor's Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)

That went over about as well as Helen Thomas's "Parting Words." Both had articulated inconvenient and unpopular truths. Fortunately, both were ready for retirement.

JQP

---

June 3, 2010

A SEA OF OIL?

It's pretty hard to feel sorry for a mega-oil corporation, but Pridger is beginning to feel sorry for BP. The whole blame for their mega-accident is falling on them. But the government that allowed that deep water drilling in the Gulf in the first place ought to assume more of the blame than BP. BP is a mere industrial contract agent of a oil-hungry world, and a nation desperate to free itself from dependence on foreign oil.

If it ever comes up as a criminal case in court (which it probably will), BP and the drilling company would just be the hired guns trying to get the job done. Who effectively hired them? The banks and investors, confident that the U.S. People would ultimately pay the bills and provide their profit by buying the oil. Who made it all possible? Those who are encouraging, allowing, and supporting deep sea drilling, and letting out the deep sea lease blocks, before working out all the contingency safety details – that is, the government itself. So the buck stops there.

Ironically, the environmental movement also shares in the blame. They thought deep sea drilling would be safer for the environment than drilling in relatively shallow coastal waters!

And this government of ours has demonstrated just how much money it can give to super-bankers, super-insurance companies, and foreign nations. But it expects BP to foot the bill for a mind-boggling disaster for which the government is ultimately to blame.

The "give-a-mint" (As Al Capp's Li'l Abner once called it), ought to be covering the containment and cleanup on both land and sea, so BP can concentrate its full attention on its attempts to stop the catastrophic oil flow. BP should also be attempting to contain and harvesting surface oil where it is surfacing.

Wouldn't it be a perverse poetic justice if (while the whole world is fretting and hand-wringing over slow and even questionable "global warming") we ended up – in a wink of an eye – overwhelmed by a literal sea of oil infecting all of the world's oceans? Wouldn't it be ironic if our oil shortage turned into a globally destructive mother of all commodity surpluses? And we started getting oily rain instead of acid rain? Talk about climate change! We'd really have it then!

It won't be very cost effective, but somebody ought to be out there not "skimming and destroying," but skimming and salvaging, the surface oil. That is a job for government to undertake. Government is good at not being cost-effective, and creating public sector jobs.

Pridger, as a retire American seaman, favors the Jones Act. But in emergencies like this, skimming ships from wherever available should have been chartered from wherever they may be available. An immediate waver of the Jones Act in this case would have only constituted common sense. But, in fact, there's such a waver written into the Jones Act, allowing for emergency situations where "no American flag vessels are available" at any given time or any given circumstance. The hubbub is coming strictly from politicians who are hostile to the Jones Act itself, and to the American maritime industry itself. 

As it is, if they don't get that well capped soon, I expect we are going to begin smelling oil up here in Illinois whenever we have a few days of southerly breeze. Can you smell it there yet?

JQP

---

May 10, 2010

A NATION OF THE MOST EXTENSIVE CORRUPTION?

Is that what we have? Thomas Jefferson told us:

"If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface..." 

As with so many of Jefferson's salient predictions and warnings have come to full fruition. We seem to have the perfect storm of systemic corruption. It turns out that the fruit has rotted and the tree is dying. Jefferson's quote goes on...

"...This [corruption] will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable."

The time has come where reform or revolution – one or the other – is the only remedy for our national woes. Unfortunately, though we can hope otherwise, neither reform nor revolution is likely to provide satisfactory remedies. It was impossible for Jefferson to foresee just how shrewd, insidious, and successful, the purveyors of corruption would become during an age of high finance and high technology. Nor could he have imagined the great moral corruption that would come to engulf the population in an age of systemic cultural, educational, and monetary, debasement.

The Civil War was the great turning point in our history, but not for the reasons that are still being celebrated. The Civil War brought our country under the single, and increasingly heavy-handed, government that Jefferson warned against, and it also brought a great expansion in industrialization and the precursors of today's international corporatism.

English historian, Thomas Babington Macaulay, provided another warning in a letter to an American friend in 1857, just prior to the Civil War.

"Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand; or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the Twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the Fifth – with this difference... that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions."

Elected to the presidency just three years later, Abraham Lincoln seized the power necessary to preserve the Union, and thereby bring this country under a single government which Jefferson warned against. Lincoln saved the Union, but had betrayed the principles set down in the Declaration of Independence and ignored constitutional restraints – paving the way for future imperial presidencies and forever rupturing the Constitutional Republic. 

And here we are, some 145 years after the breech, plundered, confused, and directionless, as un-elected forces pull the stings that control our president and Congress. If "those powers" continue to have their way, our national destiny will no longer be recognizable as American.

What, other than corruption in high places in both government and finance, could bring this nation to the level of economic ruin in which we now find ourselves? 

JQP

---

THE GREAT PRESIDENTIAL "BLEEP"

Speaking of general moral downgrade and the erosion of common decency (otherwise known as the culture war), we have finally got a fully grown-up president who isn't afraid to use adult language before an admiring public. The other day, at some sort White House banquet, president Obama bragged on the fair by stating something like, "That was one 'bleeping' big meal!" Naturally, it was followed by laughs and applause from the fawning attendees. 

That most American of all adult words is now officially presidential! It's presidentially cool! It sends a pretty helpful message to those young admirers who might still be a little reticent about using such formerly taboo language. (We've come a long way since Civil Rights and the counter-culture movements!)

Of course, the word was bleeped out on the network news, and maybe actually at the banquet too – but the message was nonetheless clear. Obama talks adult language – the language of the top box office R-rated movie stars – so why shouldn't you? It's "cool!"

Naturally, we're no longer shocked at such language. It's all over the place ever since Civil Rights forced the liberalization of the First Amendment. Naturally, Hollywood fell in love with it. It has since become perhaps the favorite American word – more culturally American than mom and apple pie ever were, except among the most die-hard traditionalists who still feel there was value in what was once called "common decency" in both language and deed.

Some of us, however, had held out hope that it would not make an appearance in presidential speeches for perhaps a few more years. Pridger doesn't even believe Bill Clinton rolled it out in a public event during his presidency. Richard Nixon didn't either, though the public was shocked a his language recorded on secret White House tapes – which, of course, had to be made public.

It took a real smooth progressive to transform the word into presidential fair. But that's what Obama is about – change. The "we" in "Change We Can Believe In" excludes quite a few of us.

Of course, this particular change is not exclusive to the left, the right has been effected too, since the key word is "adult."

JQP 

---

May 9, 2010

THE PARANOID NATION

We've come a long way as a nation since 9/11/2001. Everything and everybody are considered potential terrorist threats. Even church donations are no longer safe. A donation to an Orando, Florida, church was blown up by the local police "just in case." They blew the package up because they feared it might be a bomb addressed to the pastor. But it contained about $2,500.00 in paper cash and nearly 500 silver dollars!

Fortunately, nobody was harmed by the blast, and the silver dollars survived – and the remains of the paper money will probably be replaced by the Treasury.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-05-08/news/os-suspicious-package... 

We have become a paranoid nation. Every package is a potential bomb, and every man, woman, and child is a potential terrorist. The costs of reacting to all of these national security threats, to say the least, is fast becoming quite unwieldy.

This isn't progress.

JQP

---

THE GULF COAST OIL CALAMITY

It occurs to Pridger that drilling offshore oil wells into the seabed in depths of almost a mile makes even less sense than building 110 story sky scrappers. There are some things we simply shouldn't do just because we can. There are almost insurmountable potential problems when something goes wrong a mile under the sea's surface. Drilling and producing oil from relatively shallow water depths are demonstrably hazardous enough. Under sea oil drilling and production are difficult enough to deal with when things don't go according to plan.

As in the case of 110 story buildings (which are blatant provocations to both God and a whole array of perverted malcontents), the cost-benefit ratio of a major oil mishap at a mile's depth can never be very good. Even with the best possible emergency procedures in place, the potential for disaster ought to have precluded the dangerous activity.

The same principle holds true is for the gargantuan VLCC (very large crude carrier) ships, and massively large container ships. Each one is literally a major disaster waiting to happen. Mishaps are inevitable in the fullness of time. This also goes for all of the other massive corporate-operated "mega-systems" that we are increasingly becoming dependent upon.

Mega-systems inevitably lead to mega-problems. And mega-problems cry out for draconian mega-solutions with ever-greater mega-consequences, often of an unintended variety. Just look at corporate finance, Wall Street, and the mega-banking and insurance systems that are threatening to bring us into ever-more "interesting times"! 

JQP

April 26, 2010

Common sense from economist Milton Friedman on the subject of drug prohibition.

Among other things, the federal domestic and international War on Drugs, is another example of the federal government operating outside its constitutional authority. It is an unconstitutional attempt to regulated individual personal behavior and flagrantly usurp 9th and 10th Amendment prerogatives. As with all wars, the collateral damage has been, and continues to be, appalling.

WATCH OUT! ANOTHER SHOE IS ABOUT TO FALL

If S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, is passed we will have taken another step into the abyss of the tyranny of globalization (held by many of our astute leaders as the most wonderful thing since sliced white bread).

"If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public's right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes.  It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one's choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God."  ~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower

Here are some videos featuring Vandana Shiva, on the Internationalized Food Laws being imposed in India and Europe under United Nations and EU auspices – under the banner of food safety. But what it is really intended to accomplish is the disenfranchisement of small producers and the further empowerment and enrichment of the corporate global big boys.

As Pridger has been saying for many years, globalization is about making sure that every necessity of life, as well as every life-sustaining mouthful of nourishment, will have to be purchased through approved corporate channels. No fair trying to be self-reliant or independent – and that goes for individuals as well as nations.

GREAT STUDY IN WHAT GLOBALISM REALLY ALL ABOUT
FOOD LAWS – FORCING PEOPLE TO GLOBALIZE

 

MORE of Vandan Shiva's wise council...

State Imposed Violence ... to snatch resources of ordinary people
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onw_PkVvpts&feature=related

Corporate Rule
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PwqUQ_HIlg&feature=related

Reclaiming Economies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXoJHG-er7A&feature=related

JQP

---

April 9, 2010

It's a sad day when a great patriot simply throws in the towel and gives up in despair. But apparently that's what Paul Craig Roberts is doing. He's effectively saying "All attempts to awaken the public over the years have proven futile – what's the use? Nobody is listening." In spite of a supposed great awakening that is underway because of the alternative media on the Internet, most of those who are tuning in tend to hear only parts of the message – leaving only the confusion of half-truths and continued denial of some of the most important ones. Roberts will be writing no more of his instructive and insightful weekly columns, and the long career of a distinguished patriot has come to an apparent end. Hopefully Mr. Roberts will continue his campaign for truth and common sense through books. 

When people like Roberts quit in despair at this particular time of crisis and gathering storms – we suffer a great loss. If such a man, with his long experience in government and the major media, an on-going broad and devoted readership – has come to feel helpless and the situation hopeless, there's little wonder that people such as Pridger feel the same way and find themselves taking the "cure" too. To us, all hope for America seems lost at this late date, and not even a revolution (bloody or otherwise), will be capable of resurrecting government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

It's a devastatingly crushing admission to become resigned to the fact that our generation has witnessed the swift decline and fall of a great nation and the end of a great and noble experiment. The cause of freedom, liberty, and justice for all, while it still echoes, only echoes hollowly, impotently, and hopelessly.

Even as the Internet has facilitated a broad and widening forum, by which truth is being broadly disseminated across the land and throughout the world, the sad fact remains that our nation continues to rush, at even accelerating speeds, toward the broad and deep abyss from which no great nation has ever successfully arisen.

Presently perhaps our best hope is for a slow and soft landing, without total war, without bloody revolution, and without a total breakdown of society. Therein lies the only best hope – for the combined enemy has become so powerful, and so overarching across the globe, that it can no longer be thwarted or defeated through peaceful democratic means. The time in which there were peaceful solutions has passed. And the alternative is far too ghastly for most people to willingly subject themselves to.

Our choices, as they say, are as clear as mud. (1) Either we will continue to be robbed and enslaved by corporate masters, remain over-fed, continue to retain most of our frivolous diversions, cake, and circuses, or (2) revolution and prolonged crisis and chaos will take the corporate masters down, leaving us pretty much helpless and perhaps ill-entertained and hungry for some time. It would likely be a dog eat dog world out there

Should the revolutionaries actually have a plan with regard to how to fix this country, it had better be a lot better than the one our government has had with regard to fixing Iraq, Afghanistan, and the American economy.

Revolution could perhaps correct our national course, or it could finish destroying our nation so that it might be reborn. But it is not a very comfortable prospect. There's no certainty that such a revolution would be successful. And even if successful, the odds are that the leadership which would emerge would turn out to be agents of the enemy itself – a young and upcoming Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, or Hitler. Obviously, we have no broad-based constitutionally articulate revolutionary leadership right now, and in the event of revolution, we'd be no better at choosing leaders than we have been in choosing representatives or presidents.

Pridger may be unduly pessimistic, of course, and he certainly hopes this is the case.

JQP  

---

April Fools' Day, 2010

BLOG THIS!

Former CIA Agent, Robert D. Steele, speaks out to encourage patriotic bloggers, who he says are destined to be the "Intelligence Minutemen" of this century. He speaks with optimism that the activities of bloggers are about to bury the "rule by secrecy" that has driven both our intelligence community and our corrupted political system for many decades. He actually believes constitutional government can be restored, but also fears that an eventual break-up of the United States could be in store. 

Mr. Steele is not a conspiracy theorist, though he recognizes that conspiratorial groups exist and have probably played a roll, but not the most significant roll. As he says, given the choice between conspiracy and incompetence as the major factors in bringing the Republic to its knees, he opts for incompetence as the dominate factor.

Pridger agrees – a combination of incompetence and corruption among our rulers, combined with broad-spectrum ignorance and lethargy on the part of the public, have played the major roles in allowing a shrewd financial and corporate elite to gain the upper hand in their conspiracy to gain the world.

The Internet is changing this, and bloggers are a major force in an ongoing enlightenment of at least a small but significant, and growing, percentage of the masses. The question is, will the Internet finally be censured or muzzled as the powers that be realize the tide is beginning to turn against them? The global war on terror could easily be the rationale for doing this – and, of course, always "the greater public good."

There are a couple of reasons that stand in the way of serious Internet censorship by the United States: (1) It is still necessary to maintain "a face of freedom" to the rest of the world, and (2), the massive surveillance capabilities the Internet provides government – it is actually a "two way mirror" for them. 

Every wonderful technological innovation has it's darker uses. Pridger noted a long time ago that our communications and computer technologies, and the Internet, while wonderful, are bound to be seen as sheer Utopia by both law enforcement and national intelligence establishments. The Internet is undoubtedly crawling with "false flag" and government provocateur sites. There are probably many entrapment sites, especially in such areas of pornography and conspiracy theory.

If private lone wolf hackers can generate viruses and Trojan Horses that can plant malicious software and content onto home and business computers, just think of the capabilities the intelligence and military agencies must certainly have!  

While the Internet presently appears to be the key to popular information liberation, it is a multi-edged sword. It is leading to an Orwellized society – in fact, that particular downside is more than inevitable. It's a fait accompli. While we still have complete freedom to speak out, various "agencies" (foreign and domestic), are undoubtedly watching all of us, taking notes, names, and making lists. Sooner or later there will probably be a crack-down, and certain outspoken individuals will disappear from view.

Certain politicians and groups have been calling for political Internet censorship for a long time. It hasn't happened, in Pridger's opinion, simply because doing so would limit the ability of authorities to "watch" our every move while encouraging everybody, including the kids, to climb on board and "stay connected."

Bloggers and politically oriented web sites are not the only ones being watched, or potentially watched. Literally everybody's email and web surfing habits are being recorded and kept in databases accessible to the authorities. Just whose data is pulled for closer attention and inspection is now probably confined to matters of "probable cause" with regard to allegations of wrongdoing.

But at some future point a comprehensive dragnet approach may be used to net huge numbers of people who are deemed "politically incorrect," or "potential terrorists," for one reason or another. And remember, every man, woman, and child on the planet can be construed as a potential terrorist. All it takes is an act of Congress, an executive order, or perhaps something as simple as a mouse click, to establish who the next targeted enemy of the state is. Even more likely, the process by which such a "new law" may be enacted, may be totally secret.

Today, TSA obviously takes the position that literally everybody boarding an airplane is a potential terrorist. Today, it's in the airports, tomorrow it could be everywhere.

Currently, the only thing that is actively being suppressed on the Internet in the United States appears to be child pornography and incitement to specific violent acts. Political blogs and other political content are not yet being suppressed or censored, but the reason for this would seem obvious. And the reasons have nothing do do with government wanting to promote freedom or information liberation.

The government is obviously going out of it's way to encourage and facilitate Internet access for everybody as a national and international goal. The motive is supposedly purely positive – the bait is "freedom" – but (as we have observed many times before), things political are seldom what they seem.

National security concerns naturally dictate two primary things: (1) The ongoing use of the Internet as a vast spy and propaganda network – that is a given – and (2), to maintain or establish effective "operational control" over the Internet infrastructure, with the ability to manipulate it or shut it down on command without handicapping their own military and intelligence operational capabilities. It can be easily rationalized that to do otherwise would be totally irresponsible from a national security perspective.

National security concerns are, of course, one of the major constitutionally legitimate  mandates of our government. But the scope and focus of what constitutes "national security" has markedly expanded over the last several decades as the "right to privacy of the individual" has been eroded. There is no right to privacy for individuals on the Internet or on any of our public communications systems. There's no reason to expect it. Only governments have the right to totally privacy and secret operations.

We think of the Internet as the "public commons," but it is really under the control of our "betters," whether government agencies or private corporations. We the People are the irresponsible children, and they are our adult supervisors. 

It should come as no surprise that our government has become confused as to just what master it serves. Is it We the People, as it should be, or is it Wall Street and big international corporate interests? The answer to that has become quite obvious.

John Q. Pridger

---

A HUMANE RESPONSE TO THE PROBLEM OF IRAN?

Robert Baer, another former CIA man, who spent his career in the Middle East, speaks out on Iran, telling us that while Iran is presently perceived as our greatest enemy, that could and should change. War with Iran would be a much bigger disaster for the United States, the Middle East, and the world, than Iraq has been. Iran, however, is not the threat to the United States or Israel that we are being told it is – yet it is perhaps even more dangerous than we are given to belief.

Mr. Baer tells us, that if Iran was to be recognized as the major regional power that it is and ought to be, and is allowed to play a constructive role in the region, it could be not only an ally, but the key to peace and stability in the Middle East – a Middle East from which we could finally disengage from militarily.

We've smashed Iraq and will have a major mess on our hands for a long time to come. If we choose to break Iran too, we'll look back on our Iraqi nightmare as a comparative cake walk. In such case, in Pridger's view, we will be fully and totally exposed as the world's predominate pariah state, and we're close enough to that already. There would be no security for Israel after an attack on Iran, and there will be a lot less security for the United States. Chances are the entire Arab world would unite against us and Israel with the full sympathy of most of the rest of the world. 

---

THE CHINA TRADE

In a nutshell...

Is China manipulating it's currency as charged? Our leaders say it is, but it appears to Pridger that our leaders gave the Chinese an exceptionally good deal when they gave OUR MARKET to China. They have goofed badly, and now want to put the blame on China. Our leaders didn't have the right to give our market to China or anybody else. The Constitution gives them power to protect our markets and our nation, not give them away or sell them.

China pegged it's currency to the dollar when the trade deals were first made – and our leaders were ecstatic with the incredibly shrewd deal they thought they had made. They actually believed that, in the long run, they had gained China's market! But, surprise, China intends to keep what is theirs – and since we give it our market, it'll keep that too, thank you very much!

China is merely maintaining monetary stability vis-a-vis the dollar – the only rational thing for them to do since they intend to grow their economy and their power. But now that it is so obvious to all that our leaders sold American workers and producers down the river, the leadership has become uncomfortable, and wants to throw the blame for their bungling onto the Chinese. Now they want to change the fundamental rules.

They claim China is cheating. But it's our own "free trade policy" that sold us out and cheated the American people out of their markets and their livelihoods. China didn't do that. Our own leadership managed it.

It seems our trusty trade negotiators presumed China would act in our interests rather than their own. They were eager for the trade, but presumably missed the more than obvious consequences. Now they expect China to act against its interests just as we acted, and continue to act, against our own.

Unlike China, we don't own our central bank and our trusty leaders cannot manipulate our currency – only the Federal Reserve bankers can do that, and only by manipulating interest rates and by monetizing more and more debt. China owns its own banks and can do whatever it perceives is best for China. It could devalue its currency, but why should it? Price and currency stability are important to them.

Steady economic growth is China's goal, and the best way to maintain it is to maintain monetary stability. That's only common sense. But we expect China to abandon common sense and to subvert it's economic advantages merely because our leaders have abandoned common sense and our economic advantages.

We have a major dilemma on our hands, and it could get ugly if we are not careful. Most of the cards are in China's hands because we dealt them. It has taken thirty year to get where we are today. Nothing was done to correct our own errors, though they have been obvious all the while. Now we have to bargain from a weak position of our own making, and China drives a hard bargain.

Of course, China will accommodate us by limited degrees in order to prevent us from taking steps to protect our market. The Yuan will inevitably appreciate against the dollar at a natural pace, as wages and living standards improve in China. Our trade imbalance with China will slowly improve as more of its production is redirected inward to its own vast market. We'll never sell much in the way of manufactured goods to China. China simply doesn't need any of them. We're the ones that need China's manufactured goods – and their credit with which to buy them.

John Q. Pridger.

---

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

We’ve heard a lot about the new world order in recent decades. We’ve heard it from many different quarters — both from prominent establishment movers and shakers, and conspiracy theorists. It's what this blog has been about.

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings — and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity — during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” (David Rockefeller, June of 1991)

Just what was Mr. Rockefeller saying and why? Essentially, he’d said that they’d really put one over on the American people, and their agenda was unstoppable — with many thanks to the establishment media for keeping the public ignorant about what was going on.

For a decent New World Order overview, see: A Chronological History of the New World Order.

By now just about everybody ought to be aware that what President George H. W. Bush and others have referred to as a “new world order” is corporate globalism and a thinly disguised “world government” apparatus designed to appear nothing short of the most wonderful thing since the advent of sliced white bread.

As it turned out, however, sliced white bread wasn’t such a great thing. Most people loved it — seeing it as pure, clean, nourishment. Some, however, always knew that old-fashioned whole wheat bread was much more nutritious and beneficial. As for white bread, Pridger’s old Pappy always used to say, “The more white bread, the sooner you’re dead.”

The New World Order is a lot like white bread. It looks pretty good in the Madison Street ads, and it’s easy for the unwary to swallow, but it isn’t good for the average man or beast.

As was intimated by Mr. Rockefeller, globalism has not come about through any public vote or by the informed consent of the governed. It was planned and has been executed over a long period of time by invisible forces which are answerable to nobody.

If we believe in freedom, liberty, and justice under representative constitutional government, it should be obvious that the seamless solutions of the globalists do not in the least qualify. They are not instituting “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” but are rather abolishing the possibility that any such government should ever in the future exist.

Maybe, as it appears Mr. Rockefeller was confident, it is already too late to recover the nation we once had.  If this is true, it is truly lamentable, for then there would be little hope for mankind except to humbly serve un-elected masters.

On a more hopeful note, however, it is never too late to change the trajectory of our destiny.  People power is still capable of trumping powerful elite interests and changing the course of history. But in order to do that, there must be an awakening in a critical mass of the people.  It need not be the majority of the people, but merely an enlightened and determined minority.

Perhaps the Tea Party movement is the beginning, though it’s focus is beginning to become somewhat muddled as the Republicans and neo-cons seek to co-opt what was initially a populist movement.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the idea of “world order.” We need world order, just as we need order in our personal, community, and national lives. There’s no doubt that a “new world order” could be a good thing if its goal was merely peace on earth and good will toward men. But the new world order that has been coming down the pike has nothing to do with peace on earth or good will toward men. The wars and destruction we are engaged in today are part of the corporate globalist program. There is nothing about it that resembles anything egalitarian, commensurate with our constitutional or national ideals, government by consent of the governed, or the highest aspirations of mankind as advertised.

It’s about building seamless corporate solutions for everything — mega-systems of production, marketing, transportation, and corporate provided services — all facilitated by mega-financial systems and monetary and credit manipulation. All of this is well calculated to insured automated perpetual profit-taking by the financial and corporate managers. For the rest of us, it’s about creating and maintaining a carefully and intimately controlled docile global corporate citizenship and workforce, totally dependent on its corporate masters.

It’s about the destruction of all nature of personal, community, regional, and even national self-reliance and independence. It’s about the destruction of all nature of “local economies,” cultures, and religions. It’s not only about dividing and conquering, but it even more about conquering through combining, mixing, and destroying human differences, distinctions, and identities, and producing a unified global corporate culture. They call it diversity!

It effectively mandates that everything that we need for both survival and comfort shall be provided, perhaps even in great abundance, by and through corporate channels. It’s about total dependence for everything on corporate mega-systems, in which we work for the systems, are fed and provided for by the systems, and intimately controlled by the systems in every way. And it seeks to accomplish all of this while making us believe that those wonderful systems and the men behind them are our great benefactors.

JQP