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WEDNESDAY, 13 APRIL, 2011 BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH The March 11th earthquakes, tsunami, and ongoing nuclear catastrophe in Japan remind us just how frail and vulnerable we are in the face of the forces of nature as well as forces of our own making. This, once again, provides a major learning experience that we should not forget as quickly as we tend to forget the more mundane lessons of history. The bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima introduced Japan and the world to the destructive potentials of nuclear energy. Perhaps the genie should have been put back into the bottle immediately after that terrible demonstration. But that power was too great to either bury or forget. "Atoms for peace" as well as atoms for war have reshaped the human prospect since 1945. And it appears that Atoms for Peace could ultimately take a higher toll on mankind than the growing atomic weapons arsenals of the nuclear powers. It's tragically ironic that after repudiating militarism, war, and nuclear weapons after World War Two, Japan has once again become a major victim of the nuclear genie. But this time the nuclear event was self-inflicted because the power plants were there at the time of a major earthquake and tsunami disaster. Nuclear power would supposedly save the industrialized world from dirty coal-based power plants but at what ultimate cost! The present catastrophe will impact the entire world and degrade the global environment. To what degree, we can only speculate at this point. Of course the specter of nuclear war remains and ever-present threat to humanity, which could very quickly surpass the depredations extracted through the various "Atoms for Peace" projects now threatening us. Nuclear weaponry engender the specter of "quick death" for tens of millions, whereas Atoms for Peace threaten the death of a thousand cuts invisible cuts for hundreds of millions over long periods of time. There is no such thing as safe nuclear power at this point. It is only safe as long as there is no accident, miscalculation, or failure. And even then it isn't safe, because the spent fuel itself remains a huge problem which has not yet been addressed. JQP TUESDAY, 8 MARCH, 2011 NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE "Never again for anyone!" says Dr. Hajo Meyer. Dr. Meyer is a Jew, a Holocaust survivor, and former Auschwitz inmate. He takes a significantly different lesson from his experience than what we here from most Holocaust survivors. He points out something that seems to have been lost to Zionists and many Jews somewhere early in the twentieth century that is, that Judaism also has a Golden Rule too:
Besides advocating the Golden Rule itself, Dr. Meyer differs with most others in that he doesn't see the Nazi Jewish Holocaust as the larger than life event strictly exclusive to the Jewish experience. And most importantly, with regard to the Jews, the Holocaust should not be considered an excuse for Israeli Jews to treat Palestinians as the Jews were treated by Hitler's National Socialist regime. We all acknowledge that the Nazi Holocaust was a horrible event, but there have been many, many, holocausts and genocides throughout history. The Jewish Holocaust, in fact, was but tiny fraction of the larger holocaust which was World War Two itself. In fact, holocausts have been all too routine, and they go on to this day. We seldom acknowledge that something very similar to what went on in Nazi Germany has been going on in Palestine for many decades. It is difficult not to believe that, were it not for the eyes of the world being upon them, the Israeli government's treatment of the Palestinians would be a lot more ruthless than it has been. Yet it has been bad enough. We ignore that while constantly being taught to wring our hands and practically worship at the temples and museums dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Jewish Holocaust. It's actually considered anti-Semitic to bring this inconvenient truth up. Read and watch some of what he has to say at: http://www.neveragainforanyone.com/ JQP MONDAY, 7 FEBRUARY, 2011 DAMNED IF THEY DO, DAMNED IF THEY DON'T We're stuck between a rock and a hard spot. We've crossed so many lines in the sand over the last generation or so that we're in a hopeless situation as a nation. We're our own worst enemy that is, our government is its own worst enemy. It is hamstrung, and we're headed for the rocks, because of it's own policies its own monetary, economic, trade, and foreign policies. The present imperatives of government are to decrease spending and create jobs and, of course, "keep us safe." It keeps us safe by spending billions and making us less safe and less free and the only kind of jobs government can create naturally and necessarily increase federal spending, while decreasing federal spending must just as necessarily cost jobs. The federal government has become the nation's largest employer, and federal jobs have increasingly become very good paying jobs, with an array of benefits that makes most private sector employees look pretty bad. In fact government now pays its workers better than most private sector "good jobs." Federal employment numbers have finally surpassed workers engaged in manufacturing industries. It exceeds the numbers of farm and agricultural workers, and resource extraction workers. This is to say that the government employs more than all of the wealth-creating industries of the nation. To make matters worse, the largest private sector is now comprised of service work of one kind or another, and these do not create any kind of wealth. When federal, state, and local government employment is taken into consideration, along with all of the various government subsidies and entitlement programs, government spending almost accounts for a huge portion of our national GDP and GDP itself has become a very deceptive gauge of our economic health. The true measure of our national "prosperity" is denominated in the "3-Ds" Deficits, Debts, and Deception. Federal and state debts and deficits tell the true tale, and our trade deficit does too. Among other things, the figures tells us that we (the most prosperous and well endowed nation in the world), is no longer capable of earning its own way in the world. It is dependent on the rest of the world for its support. This is a relatively new development in this country, and the fact that there are more public sector union jobs in our country than private sector union members is just one of the bellwethers of our economic decline. This wasn't what organized labor was supposed to be about. Organized labor in the private sector was a necessary counterbalance to the power of large corporate employers. It prevented corporate exploitation of labor, and forced corporations to pay labor a fair wage with desirable benefits. The corporations were almost always very profitable in spite of strong labor unions extracting a large share of the profits. Organized labor took it's fair cut from corporate profits, and these profits were the result of production actual wealth creation. Public sector employees, take their wages and benefits from the taxpayer. If they strike, they strike against the public purse themselves and all taxpayers. There are no "profits" upon which to base their demands. They produce no wealth, and many do not even provide a valuable or necessary service. Of course all workers deserve decent wages and retirement benefits, and most public sector workers get them. They are doing very well so far (but troubles are obviously coming to the fore as government seeks to cut costs). Public sector employees have benefited from organized labor in the private sector union scale became the benchmark which tended to raise all boats because the public and non-unionized industrial and service sectors had to compete in the labor market with private organized labor employers. I the private sector, union members attempt to coerce employers to share more of the profits with employees. In the public sector, union members coerce the public to pay them through higher taxes or increased public debt.
Note the similarity between the graph above and the one below. The same forces are involved in both cases. The decline of organized labor in the private sector is driven by the decline in our industrial capacity, the decline of "good jobs", and thus the decline in numbers of well paid industrial workers and the middle class in general. The rise in public sector organized labor has not offset the decline of private sector industrial labor. The decline in private sector organized labor and the once prosperous middle class that it once produced has obviously contributed to the wealth of the wealthiest 1% of taxpayers that now pays more taxes than the bottom 95% of the taxpayers. These two graphs are indicative of an ongoing systemic reordering of our national economy. Both point toward the end of economic sustainability, and a system that is on the brink of collapse.
What all of this means is simply that public policy has been selling us down the river over a period of more than a generation. There is little we can do about it but suffer the consequences and hope that somebody or something will pull a cute little bunny out of the hat. We hope it won't be this...
JQP
SUNDAY, 9 JANUARY, 2011 WHERE DID AMERICA JUMP THE TRACK? To answer that would require a book-length diatribe. But There was a definite point in semi-recent memory when we made the definitive initial plunge into globalization, and I'm sorry to report that it was on President Reagan's watch. Now Pridger liked Reagan and certainly believes his heart was in the right place. In fact, in Pridger's estimation he was our very last great president. But, sadly, in spite of his wonderful accomplishments and always inspiring rhetoric, our conservative icon was badly snookered. This matter almost never comes up in conservative discourse because of the continued high esteem most of us have for Ronald Reagan both the president and the man. Reagan naturally believed in free markets and free market capitalism, as do most Republicans, conservatives, and even quite a few Democrats and liberals. But he was also, perhaps, too much of a blind Utopian, and he easily fell prey to the advise of one of the greatest free market economists of his time his economic advisor, Milton Friedman. This is not to say that Milton Friedman was not a great economic thinker, or that he intentionally led President Reagan astray. He was a great thinker, but he was certainly not infallible and it is quite likely that he had an agenda which was much more aligned with international capital interests than the welfare of the American people and their, theretofore, very successful republic. Unfortunately, as is true with all presidents, including many of the best of them, President Reagan had some serious blind spots. While many are well up on American history and ideals, few are up to snuff on economics and the economic history of their country. They rely on the experts in those fields wherein they have little knowledge or understanding, as Reagan did. Pridger can imagine what Reagan's reasoning must have been. It was obvious to him, as well as the rest of us, what free market capitalism had done for the United States. Why couldn't it do the very same thing for the whole world? Convinced that it could, Reagan forged polices that he believed would greatly benefit his fellow Americans as well as the rest of the world. After all, what could be wrong with international free markets and opening the world to the "American Way" to prosperity? What President Reagan apparently failed to see was that the main reason the United States had been so successful was that it's free market economy, and the industrial powerhouse that had developed therein, were internal. Things were already changing quite fast, of course. For decades, large multi-national corporations had been building global empire and acting as a front-line force in accomplishing governmental geopolitical and foreign policy goals. This outreach for control of vital global resources, mainly by and on behalf of the military-industrial complex, began with the end of the Second World War and expanded steadily throughout the Cold War period. Until World War Two and the great economic and industrial expansions that ensued, we had all of the human and natural resources that we required right here within our own borders and under conditions of freedom and liberty, internal free markets, and beneficial levels of foreign trade, those resources were harnessed to build our great industrial powerhouse. With good national economic planning and stewardship, that circumstance could probably have lasted indefinitely. Our uniquely favorable circumstance produced the most broad-based prosperity in the history of nation-states. We had a vast and rich territory with 50 nation-sized states wherein there was a totally free market, but the nation itself the federal government exercising powers conveyed to it by the Constitution regulated foreign trade to protect that wonderful internal free market system, harnessing it to the national purpose for the benefit of We the People. Mr. Friedman effectively advised the president to do away with that system, deregulate trade and corporations, open our borders, begin taking down protective tariffs, and make the whole world a free market system, as our internal market had always been. What President Reagan failed to see was that to do so would destroy the system that had served us so well. It might open the world to international financial and capital interests, but in time it would kill the goose that had lain the golden eggs and dim the lights of that "shining city on the hill" of which he so eloquently spoke. While the Reagan revolution appeared successful in so many ways, including it's apparent benefits to the economy, it was in fact his global free market and deregulation initiatives that set our course into what has since been labeled globalization. The Reagan economic miracle wasn't an increase in real productivity, but the beginning of the business and industrial cannibalization, de-industrialization and the rise of financial services and bubble economics. Certain types of businesses flourished, but wealth production began to decline. Globalization and the New World Order plans predated the Reagan administration by many decades, of course, but international free trade was one of the primary prerequisites, and Reagan did more than his share in promoting the international system which would eventually bring our great national success to its knees. His successor, and former vice president, went a giant step further and pulled the New World Order out of the closet. So much of the rest writes a dishearteningly sad chapter in our history. British jazzman, author, and activist, Gilad_Atzmon (an Israeli-born critic of Zionism), has some interesting things to say about Milton Friedman in this recent article... Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and the Jews" Revisited
If Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman didn't really realize what he was doing, perhaps we can forgive President Reagan for leading us into the trap the greater public is only now fully awakening to. JQP MONDAY, 3 JANUARY, 2011 WILL THIS BE ANOTHER DOWNER YEAR? Most American's have made it through the past year without too much trouble, but Pridger senses there was, and continues to be, a great deal of hopelessness and despair out there, and a feeling of impending doom of some sort. Perhaps it's a feeling that we and our nation have passed a critical point and are beyond a precipice simply treading air before the plunge. Most people simply seem to be attempting to ignore it in hopes the feeling will turn out to be unfounded after all. At some levels, reality seems to have gone beyond fiction and the national circumstance beyond reprieve. Too many of the so-called "conspiracy theorists" have been proven to be right, even beyond their own allegedly paranoid fears. As the saying goes, "Just because one is paranoid, doesn't mean that he isn't being followed." DON'T ASK WHY BOTHER? Why concern ourselves with "Don't ask, don't tell"? We may still have a great military, but there are signs that it has already become badly infected with moral decay and is becoming as morally corrupt as the rest of the culture at least the entertainment media culture of the nation it defends.
But even if our military is still the greatest fighting force in the world, what good is it if the nation it defends has become rotten and corrupt at its core morally, culturally, politically, financially, and economically? If the nation had not become morally corrupt, the matters of homosexual marriage and open homosexuality in the military would never have come on the table. Such things could never have gained any traction whatsoever in a moral society based on what was once referred to as the American Creed founded in Christian morality. And even if it did, Congress wouldn't stand for it. The Commander-in-Chief wouldn't stand for it. The Secretary of Defense wouldn't stand for it. The Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps wouldn't stand for it. The Joint Chiefs of staff wouldn't stand for it. It simply couldn't be an issue a military coup would come first! But it appears that the military is going to roll over for it. The Commander-in-Chief is for it, and the Congress might go for it, and the Supreme Court just might go for it. The government has become so corrupt that a great military establishment should no longer answer to its directives. The proof that the government is hopelessly corrupt has been proven during these last two years neigh! these last thirty years and more! JQP STRIKE OUT THE "N" WORD! It has become a frighteningly funny and sad world. People are so sensitive about minor things that have been pumped up as politically incorrect that we are becoming paralyzed. We're so afraid of offending someone especially non-white people, and MOST ESPECIALLY black people that freedom of expression has effectively evaporated for some of us while becoming a no holds barred affair for others. Take the "N" word, for instance. Now THAT word has become a scary one. Who is afraid of the "N" word? White people mostly, of course but brown, yellow, and red people need to be very careful with it too. On the other hand, black people can, and do, use it whenever they happen to think it appropriate. Non-African-Americans can only use the word at their own peril so we politely just call it the "N" word, or even the "n" word. Childish, but true. What has been lost in all of the PC nonsense is the fact that when the "N" word was in common usage, it didn't always carry negative connotations. The tone, context, and intend were much more important than the word itself. For many of the unwashed masses, white or black, the "N" word merely meant "Negro" or Colored person. Only a relatively few people cultured people, whether rich or poor, made an effort to avoid the "N" word for reasons of respect, or fear that it might offend. So it was in the later part of the nineteenth century when Mark Twain penned his Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin novels. The "N" word was used because in those days the "N" word was the most commonly used word when referring to not only black slaves, but often for just about any non-white race. But now this...
NewSouth would have young readers growing up thinking that naughty little southern boys used to call all black men "slaves" rather than "niggers" back in the nineteenth century. It's more than a matter censorship, it changes context and meaning at a fundamental level. It changes the language, which will no longer reflect on how people actually talked in Cap'n Clemen's day. The "N" word is deemed so offensive to the modern ear these days that cultural history itself must be rewritten and PC censorship applied to classic novels. Leaving out the word Injuns! Now that's patently ridiculous! No mention is made as to what the Injuns are called in the new edition. Maybe Indigenous Americans or Native Americans. Surly it wouldn't be Indians the PC crowd has been trying (largely without success), to get American Indians to be outraged and insulted by that handle for decades. There are probably some PC Indians who may insist on being called Native Americans, but most of them seem to be happy with the word Indians. After all, that is the English word that has been used for centuries. A wise old Indian once told Pridger, "I'm an Indian. You and I are both Native Americans. We were both born and raised here, and equally qualified by birth to be president." This was, of course, a racist society, with discriminatory race laws that have lasted until this day. Since the 1960s all the "legal" discrimination has been against whites because they favor non-whites. One injustice has merely been replaced with another. The United States was born a racist nation. No two ways about it. Almost all white people in all walks of life believed in white racial and cultural superiority, whether they admitted it or not even if they believed and fought against all forms of racial discrimination under the law. That's a simple fact. That's what European colonial conquest was all about and, don't try to kid yourself, most white people still secretly believe themselves to be of a superior race and culture, in spite of the fact that most have been cowed into denying any such thing (while others are increasingly making fools of them). While most white people still believe they belong to a superior race and culture, fortunately a great percentage of them also believe in justice and equal treatment under the law. Those that don't are at least willing to go along with it. And what is wrong with racial pride, no matter what the race may be? Many races and cultures are just as certain they are superior to the White man as the White man thinks of himself. Go try to become a Japanese citizen, and you'll find you aren't qualified and you aren't qualified for a good reason. You aren't Japanese. And Pridger would be sorely disappointed should he ever learn that the Maasai of Kenya don't consider their own race and culture head and shoulders above ours. The only race in the Western World that has considerable power, and seems perfectly capable of effectively declaring themselves as the super race without receiving a lot of flack from the PC crowd is the Jewish Race. Wherever they are, they are proud of being Jewish, and they have very effectively proven their superiority. Try immigrating to Israel and becoming a citizen. Even though one is of a similar race, he cannot simply convert to Judaism and become a citizen. One has to be Jewish through inheritance. Of course, like individuals, races and cultures can only be judged by their track record. There are two main criteria. (1) Have they managed to survive as a people with a racial and cultural identity? And (2), what impact, whether positive or negative, have they had on the world around them? Clearly, during the last several centuries, the European colonial powers have shaped the world we know today, and are still doing so to a great extent to this day. That's not to say they are superior to other races in the long run, for the long run is still running, and other races and cultures may be about to dish out a little humble pie in the fullness of time. In fact, we may be there now. The West seems to be dying and the East is rising. JQP TUESDAY, 28 DECEMBER, 2010 JEWISH DOCUMENTARY Here is a very good, full-length, documentary history of the Jewish people, covering much of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. (From JewishHistory.org). The historical narrative ends on the eve of the First World War, and does not cover the tumultuous wars of the twentieth century. Nor does it present a full history of political Zionism, the history of Jewish immigration to Palestine, or the founding of Israel. All in all, it does give us a very nice insight into the experience of diverse Jewish groups in semi-modern times, including the many conflicts within and among their various groups. It honestly acknowledges the large role Ashkenazi Jews played in formulating and fomenting socialist and communist revolutionary thought as the result of the persecution they experienced in Czarist Imperial Russia and other eastern European countries, and revolutionary activities that spread to both western Europe and the United States. It explains the difference between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews and hints at the power that the financial class of Jews (a very small minority of mostly Ashkenazi Jews), had attained prior to and during the period covered. It tells that "German Jews were particularly successful in banking and commerce" mentioning some familiar names still associated with some of the most prominent banking dynasties of our day such as Marcus Goldman, the Leman Brothers, Abraham Kuhn, Solomon Lobe, Jacob Schiff (banking), and Charles Bloomingdale, (commerce), etc. The documentary also points out that Oscar S. Straus was the first representative of the Jewish minority to be appointed to a cabinet level position in the United States (Secretary of Commerce and Labor, 1906-09, appointed by Theodore Roosevelt). The film points out that Mr. Straus was particularly "known for his opposition to exclusionist immigration policies." This was perhaps the first cabinet level official to begin working toward open immigration, and what would later become known as diversity and multiculturalism.
This documentary also tells us that before World War One and the famous Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British government offered the Zionists a homeland in its colony of Uganda, in British East Africa an offer that was flatly rejected by eastern European Jews which had become the rank and file of the Zionist movement.
Zionism, for all the high and altruistic goals of most of its founders and followers, has demonstrably impacted the United States and much of the rest of the world negatively now for over a century. The big mistake seems to have been their "natural" choice of Palestine for their future homeland and Jewish State a exclusively religious motive and identity for what was supposed to be a progressive secular state. Pridger doesn't call the motives of the Zionists into question. What he does call into question is the wisdom of creating a Jewish Homeland, and finally the Jewish State, on what was clearly somebody else's real estate, and the ultimate goal of forcing the former inhabitants to flee the land they had occupied for thousands of years. Of course, many nations have been established in this manner in the past the United States, Canada, and Australia being only the most significant examples but such nations came into being over periods during which the time-honored doctrine that might makes right was in force, and when the rights of indigenous peoples could effectively be ignored without international outcries by the then Great Colonial Powers, which were then the only powers that counted. The sad and tragic irony with regard to the State if Israel is that its establishment came about at the very time when the doctrine of might makes right, and the right of colonial conquest, were coming to an abrupt end. They were in the process of being banned, or already banned, by international law. Indigenous peoples, who had been ruled by the great colonial powers, were re-inheriting control over their own lands. The cry was international justice! India for the Indians, Indonesia for the Indonesians, Africa for the Africans, etc. But what happened to the cry of Palestine for the Palestinians? It was there, of course, but only in the Arab world of which it was a part. The Great Western Powers ignored it, and backed the Zionists in their claim that Palestine was theirs by holy writ (just check the Bible!) and that Palestine itself was a barren, largely uninhabited, region until the Jewish settlers came and made the desert flourish and bloom. But the Arabs had been there continuously since biblical times and before! And, even more importantly, the region that became known as Palestine was, and still is, surrounded by Arab states that would stand up for their kindred people's rights those of the Palestinian people. Thus the establishment of Israel may in the end become the greatest embarrassment in the history of the formation of nation states. There had been several proposals to locate or resettle Jews during modern history. (See: Proposals for a Jewish state). Some, such as the British Uganda Program, were considered and rejected by the Zionists. Others, such as the Nazi Madagascar plan, were apparently never seriously considered by the Zionists. The Soviets created a Jewish "Homeland" in what became, and is still officially known as, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Russian far east, though the Jewish population has declined to about 1.22% of the population. But the Zionist consensus was that it must be Palestine. NOR WERE THE FOLLOWING COVERED
Wilson and the American people did not have any real business in the great European War, and the best solution was at hand when Germany, having bested the allies, offered the olive branch and a return to how things were before Wilson's then hoped for, "Peace without victory." But Zionist influences changed everything. Their great hope and purpose became to entice the United States into the First World War to insure that the British would triumph so the Zionists could realize their dream of a Homeland in Palestine and eventually create a Jewish State. The British had promised them Palestine, and the great Jewish hope "Tomorrow Jerusalem!" was possibly about to be fulfilled. And for this specific reason, the "Great War" became a much bigger, and longer, "World War." "Jewish financial resources" (read: Lord Lional Walter Rothschild) made it all possible, significantly contributing to the circumstance that Zionism would be at the epicenter of conflict throughout the twentieth century, with the United States finally evolving to become the center of Zionist power.
The Rothschilds financed much of the Zionist land purchases and costs of settling Jews in Palestine during the first half of the twentieth century and continued to finance the State of Israel after the establishment of the state of Israel.
At the same time, however, the British and French had made other promises to the Arabs in and around Palestine.
So here we have a very brief outline of one of the greatest planned and ongoing injustices of the twentieth century. Now, some 62 years after the establishment of Israel, the problems continue to be intractable. Perhaps there will be no solution for the continued conflict and suffering in Palestine. Now Israel is a nuclear power, able not only to protect itself, but threaten it's neighbors as well as nations much further afield. JQP MONDAY, 20 DECEMBER, 2010 BYE-BYE "DON'T ASK DON'T TELL" Well, it looks like our military is about to cave to the peculiarly powerful homosexual lobby. This is a lamentable sign of the times in Pridger's humble view. And the times are not all that good. Pridger has no objections to homosexuals serving in the military after all, they are people too. But when it comes to being able to be openly homosexual in the military, Pridger believes the military is headed down a mighty slippery slope. What does openly gay actually mean? Perhaps San Francisco's notorious "Gay Parades" give us a few hints. Everybody should be aware of the blatantly promiscuous sexual nature of a high percentage of homosexual men. In the general public, we see very little of it because, since the dawn of most civilizations, homosexuals have generally been constrained and restrained when it comes to displaying their homosexuality among the general public. They were discrete. In short, there has always been a "don't ask, don't tell" component to the homosexuals in our society. In fact, all nature of sexual display has been frowned upon in public. This may be about to change it certainly has in the Hollywood movie industry. It will probably become illegal to ban homosexual hand-holding and kissing in public in the military. Romance in the military will become common place because of the very nature of sexuality and young men and young women. The testosterone levels of men of military age, whether heterosexual or homosexual, are notoriously high. In the past, the soldier or sailor (being "men"), had to go off base, or ashore, in order to find feminine companionship and sexual pleasure. But now, the barracks, and the tight berthing compartments aboard naval ships, are going to become very different social environments. Covert sex acts will undoubtedly begin to become a service-wide phenomenon and, perhaps, somewhat of a problem. Even some heterosexual men will undoubtedly find it very difficult to avoid availing themselves of convenient forms of sexual release. Undoubtedly, some of them will find themselves 'recruited' and 'converted'. Naturally, there will be much potential for conflict among the troops over inappropriate sexual advances and the things that will inevitably come front and center in closed military environments. Of course, there will undoubtedly continue to be regulatory restrictions against sexual activity in the barracks or aboard ship, but those regulations will become extraordinarily difficult to enforce once homosexuality has become less stigmatized. Nature will take its course.. "Don't ask don't tell" was a sane and rational policy that worked for the military. But it was flawed in that the very fact of being discovered to be homosexual constituted an "offense." That should never have been the case. It should have been "Don't ask, don't tell and never mind as long as no specific actual sexual offense was committed on base or aboard ship." JQP SUNDAY, 12 DECEMBER, 2010 9/11 TRUTH AND WHY WERE WE ATTACKED ON 9/11? Nine years after the attack that changed the nation and the world, we've still got a major problem when it comes to coming to grips with truth. There are two major truths that are still alluding far too many Americans. The first is why we were attacked. The second has to do with the nature and mechanisms of the attack. The first truth was obvious to most thinking people at the very time of the attack. In a nutshell, we were attacked for one predominate reason because of our Middle East meddling and foreign policies. Particularly, because of our unqualified support for Israel, and our total lack of concern for a wronged people over a period of at least forty years. President George Bush, of course, told the American people that the radical Muslims hated us because of our freedoms and our way of life, and most Americans believed him. Here are a series of videos by Representative Press.org that make the true reasons crystal clear. (http://www.youtube.com/watch...) The actual mechanics of the attack are much more muddled than the matter of "why?". Somewhat surprisingly, though even Geraldo Rivera has finally weighed in on the matter, Representative Press, does not go into the "9/11 Truth" controversy except to "debunk" it (see: http://911truth.org/). They accept the establishment view that 9/11 was pulled off by a few rabid Islamic terrorists. Geraldo has become "much more open-minded about" alternative scenarios. The alternatives to the official story of 9/11 address several provocative questions. Building No. 7 is the primary smoking gun the one that is impossible to ignore and write off. The terrorist hijackers (supposedly a ragtag bunch of Arab terrorists and amateur pilots), had pulled off the perfect, made-for-live-TV, attack a spectacular contemporary Pearl Harbor! except for that one critical screw-up.
The plane that was apparently supposed to bring Building Seven down had failed to show up. Obviously, the building came down anyway. It came down perfectly, as it was supposed to, and it must have been rigged to come down well ahead of time. It was so certain to come down that the BBC News even reported its collapse some 20 minutes before the fact. Fires in the building have been blamed for the spontaneous collapse. There were a lot of fires going on in the building, but apparently none that would threaten its structure under ordinary circumstances. The building's leaseholder was apparently forced to "pull it" even though no airplane had materialized to give the event some credibility. "And they pulled it, and we watched it come down." Even if it were possible that the "fires did it," nobody has yet even explained how all of those several fires got started in the first place. They were inside the building on several floors. Could falling debris from the Twin Towers have set them? Highly unlikely. Did a band of terrorists sneak in and set them? Equally unlikely. After all, that building housed Mayor Giuliani's emergency command center and major CIA offices. Pridger naturally wonders about these things. And there are an awful lot of other questions with regard to the several events of that sad and shocking day. It seems to Pridger that it must have required a combined and coordinated effort by several unknown "groups" or organizations. Al Qaeda might even have been involved as reported they certainly had ample motive. But could they have pulled off such a nearly perfect operation strictly on their own? Pridger has a lot of difficulty giving them that much credit. If they had help, as they apparently must have had in the case of Building Seven, who was it? They may have been knowingly or unknowingly "used" by another, much more professionally capable and connected, group. Who knows? At some point, something like Wikileaks might provide some critical answers perhaps damning answers. Wikileaks itself may already have been compromised with regard to 9/11 and the full truth on other sensitive subjects with regard to certain nations. But they have set a precedent that others, perhaps without restrictive side agreements, are certain to follow. That is, if "governments" don't manage to silence truth and free speech on the Internet, as several of them (particularly ours) clearly intend to attempt to do. The whole truth may come out in time. When it does, it could change the world once again. By then, however, we'll probably be preoccupied by a lot of other problems. There seems to be some sort of perfect storm brewing around us and around the world. 9/11 EXPLOSIVES DEBUNKED? Meanwhile, as 9/11 Truthers begin to garner some mainstream media attention to peculiarities of the Building Seven collapse, at Representative Press.org, we find a counter-force telling us that the two Twin Towers were clearly not brought down by explosives. Attention is being called to videos showing the bowing of facing panels just below the aircraft impact floors just minutes prior to the collapse.
This does seem a little puzzling, of course, but it doesn't necessarily debunk the explosives theories. It merely adds more questions as to what sort of alternative incendiary devices might have been employed to produce the heat required to initialize the collapse without obvious explosions. The heat, melt, and collapse at the crash site floors doesn't explain the totality of the collapse nor account for it's symmetry and free-fall speed. Some videos of the Twin Towers appear to to show molten metal cascading from areas just below the impacted floors before the collapse. This melting, of what is apparently steel, clearly would not have been caused by a normal "explosion" nor (according to Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth) could it have been caused by the jet fuel and office fires. Perhaps it could have been caused by some sort of slower acting steel-melting chemical or incendiary device planted to initiate the collapse before actual explosives devices kicked into action further down as the buildings collapsed. Of course, this is mere speculation on Pridger's part. It certainly seems like a logical possibility and things do still seem to be a little fishy, to say the least. But even if the Twin Towers were actually brought down by the airplane damage and fires, as the official story tells us, nobody has yet explained either the pouring molten metal or the many "secondary explosions" that were heard (and/or observed) in the Twin Towers prior to the collapse. This new information, supposedly debunking the controlled demolition scenario in the case of the Twin Towers, doesn't touch on Building Seven. And it is Building Seven which continues to be the proverbial, and very provocative, "smoking gun" which everybody with eyes can see must have been a controlled demolition. What Pridger asks is, why would Representative Press take the position that the "controlled demolition theories" are mere distractions from the "whys and wherefores" of the attack itself? They point out, and correctly in Pridger's humble opinion, that the causes for the attacks were our unqualified support for Israel and our general Middle East foreign policies. But they apparently feel very comfortable in their believe that the attack was really pulled off by a rag-tag bunch of unassisted Islamic terrorists intent on extracting a bit of revenge. Something smells a little fishy about this too. Could the authors or reporters at Representative Press be attempting to build a cover for someone while still trying to cast some needed light on some other widely ignored truths? That's the way it looks to Pridger, but Pridger doesn't know anything. JQP SUNDAY, 5 DECEMBER, 2010 DEFLATING BILLIONAIRES According to Forbes, last year the world had 1,125 billionaires. Today there are (only) 793 left standing. Apparently, some $1.4 trillion simply vanished. This must be the deflation the Federal Reserve is worried about.
Bill Gates, of Microsoft fame, saw a decline in his fortunes of $18 billion in the last year or so. The poor man only has about $40 billion left, and in spite of all his misfortune, he was catapulted into the position of being the world's richest individual once again! Way on down the list, we have celebrities like Oprah Winfrey pulling in $315 million per year for her contribution to society as a "Media Personality." She's on the billionaire list with an alleged $2.7 billion net worth. She's supposedly the 3rd most powerful lady in the world, just behind Michelle Obama and Kraft Foods CEO, Irene Rosenfeld. In spite of inflation, a billion dollars is still a lot of money. For example, if we consider a decent industrial wage as $25.00 an hour, the resultant $52,000.00 per year, provides ordinary people a pretty good middle class lifestyle. A forty year working life at that wage would render up $2,080,000.00. A billion dollars is therefore worth about 480 commoner working lifetimes! To put it another way, a person with a stash of one billion dollars could pay the lifetime wages of 479 other individuals, plus himself. If he chose to hire those individuals at something closer to minimum wage, he could provide a lifetime wage to about three times that number, or something like 1,440 minimum wage workers. He could do that without requiring himself, or any of his "employees," to do anything at all to earn it! The money wouldn't have to be earning interest of dividends on stocks there enough bare purchasing power there to run a village for forty years! That's how much a billion dollars is still worth. Of course, with systemic inflation built into the system, it's pretty difficult to plan ahead. When Pridger was a young man, a dollar an hour looked pretty good, and $3.00 an hour was a good industrial wage that's about $6,240.00 a year and a man who was worth about quarter of a million dollars was a wealthy man. Such a net worth is barely considered "middle class" now. Times change. When $1.4 trillion dollars can simply vanish, it becomes obvious that there is a great smoke and mirrors component in our economy. But a billion dollars is still a lot of money by almost everybody's standards. Oprah's $315,000,000 annual income is worth 6,058 $52,000.00 annual incomes, or 18,173 annual minimum wage incomes. Today we find our politicians debating as to whether people like Oprah should be required to pay more than they currently do in income taxes. Not to pick on Oprah (Pridger probably should have chosen a white male for this example please consider this example race and gender neutral), but the ability of anybody to attain an obscene degree of wealth or net worth ($2.7 billion in this case), in a matter of two or three decades (for Winfrey wasn't born rich), would seem somewhat extraordinary. Could it be that she, and those like her, have been both over-paid and under-taxed somewhat? She certainly hasn't been overtaxed. Oprah's fortunes have benefited a lot of other people, of course. But just what is it that she has actually contributed to the actual physical wealth of the world? There certainly must be something, of course, but Pridger doesn't know exactly what. By in large, Oprah is in the entertainment business, and her fortunes have been facilitated by the nature of the mass media! Bill Gates, now with only $40 billion to his name, has demonstrably provided a valuable product and facilitated the making of many subsidiary fortunes for other individuals, but could it be that he and his corporations have been somewhat under-taxed as well? The average net worth of Americans is all over the board these days, and, as many have been finding out the hard way, a lot of it (home values, for example) has proven to be very downwardly mobile. The Wall Street Journal has pegged it at $182,000.00, but that includes the super-rich five percentile group. The actual median is probably closer to $60-$80,000.00. A huge percentage of poorer Americans, however, have almost no net worth at all. But let's call the average $70,000. This is a household figure rather than an individual one, but let's call it the average net worth per worker. Is Mr. Gates really (or ought he or anybody else be), worth 571,429 of his fellow gainfully employed Americans? Ought anybody be that rich while there is a homeless man or woman, or hungry child, in the country? INCOME TAXES If a minimum wage waitress or burger flipper, or $10.00 an hour laborer, or $20.00 an hour factory worker, are taxed at all (through income tax), they are over-taxed. The sweat of one's brow should not be taxed certainly not in a free country. When the state lays claim to a the wages of a man's actual labor, to that extent the government owns him to that extend the man is a slave.
When the Income Tax Amendment was passed in 1913, it was pretty well understood that the tax targeted only the wealthy. Nominal tax rates were 1% on the first $20,000.00 of annual income. Those making half a million or more (the super-rich) were taxed at the top rate of 7%. Remember that $20,000.00 in 1913 would translate into about $100,000.00 of today's inflation adjusted dollars. An average worker at the Ford factory made about $5.00 a day at that time, or about $1,300 a year and that was considered a very good wage! A hundred-thousand dollar income is still considered very good income today. Half a million dollars circa 1913 would translate into about $24,500,000.00 today. This would appear to be quite a blow for the super-rich of the day. However, it was the super-rich who had written the laws associated with monetary policy, finance, and taxation, and they had looked out for themselves. It was at about this time that "tax-exempt foundations" came into being as a place for the super-rich to shelter most of their vast wealth from the income-tax laws. For others, it was still possible to become well off, or even wealthy, but almost impossible to join the rarifies breed we now call the super-rich. 1913 - The very-rich of the day were to pay rates 7 time higher than the merely rich, well-off, and "poor." With the advent of the First World War, the tax on the "poor" and middle class shot up to 6%, and those making more than a million dollars shot way up to 77%! The actual "poor," however, pretty much stayed off of the IRS radar screen until World War Two when even most of the working poor were taxed through payroll withholding. 1918 - The rich were paying rates 12.8 times more than the middle class. By 1931, the middle class was taxed at the rate of 1.5% and the taxes of the rich were reduced to 25%. 1931 - The rich were paying rates 16.7 times more than the middle class. In 1942 the contingencies of World War Two had the working man's share mushroom to 10% of his wages and the rich (then $200K and above) were paying 88%. 1942 - The rich were paying rates 8.8 times more than the middle class. Broad-based taxation of labor didn't occur until payroll withholding was instituted during World War Two a temporary war measure that became permanent. By 1944, the rates were 23% for the working and middle classes and 94% for the rich. 1944 - The rich were paying rates only 4.1 times more than the middle class. Peace brought 20% tax rates to the poor and continued 90%+ for the rich. And by 1960, when Pridger was unleashed onto the job market, the middle class rate was 20% and the rich rate (over $400K per year), was 91% (for married filing jointly). 1960 - The rich were paying rates 4.5 times that of the working poor and middle class. By 1963 rates were moderating with 16% and 77% respectively and they continued to decrease slightly over a period of years. 1963 - The rich were paying rates 4.8 time higher than the middle class. By 1980 the tax schedule was 14% at the low end and 70% at the high end. 1980 - The rich were paying rates 5 time that of the lowest bracket. The Reagan administration began reforming and simplifying the income Tax Code, and by 1989 the graduations in the graduated income tax scale had shrunk to only two brackets (down from 55 in 1918, 23 in 1960, 15 in 1980) 15% for those making $32,450.00 or less and 28% for everybody making more than that! 1989 - The rich were paying rates only 1.9 times higher than those in the low bracket. The era of the super-business growth had begun! But it was a new kind of business growth. The age of globalism and free trade was upon us! Reagan proudly proclaimed a "post industrial America" with productive industries being replaced with a "service economy." Though he did reject the Law of the Sea Treaty [LOST] treaty, he conceded it was time for a new international economic order. (Pridger cannot find the direct quote from Reagan [which he distinctly remembers hearing], but a quick search on the subject produced this letter by Betty J. Mills, written in 1986, entitled, As I See It An Open Letter to Members of (Phyllis Schlafly's) Eagle Forum. The Democrats were indignantly decrying "tax cuts for the rich!" as Republicans were proclaiming, "The wonderful New World is here!" and a whole New World Order was in the offing. When Reagan did cut taxes, not only had bracket creep already propelled most middle class wage earners into the upper bracket, the truly rich and the corporate super-rich had gained the kind of wings required to begin undermining the real economy in a wholesale manner by exporting their production plants to low wage countries around the world progressively cutting the legs out from under not only American industrial workers, but the entire national economy. It seems nobody noticed, because an extraordinary amount of money shuffling was going on. A lot of "new rich" emerged, and the income gap began to go onto steroids. In the midst of this unprecedented business boom, the deficit and debt tripled, and Reagan had early given up balancing the budget apparently it was no longer feasible. The Republicans and mainline "conservatives" had found a new truism "tax cuts for the rich equal prosperity!" and "globalization and free trade are working wonders!" George H. W. Bush (after pledging, "Read my lips! No new taxes!"), increased taxes and added a tax bracket in 1991, and since 2002 there have been 6 tax brackets. George W. Bush cut taxes in 2001 from 15% to 10% at the lower end, and from 39.6% to 39.1% and, (in 2003), to the current 35% for the rich. So, since 2003... 2003-2010 - The rich are paying rates 3.5 higher than the average wage earner. (Basic information derived from http://www.taxfoundation.org/ math mistakes, if any, are strictly compliments of yours truly. JQP) During the prosperous post war period, before so many industrial jobs fled the nation, it was the great middle class that paid the lion's share of income taxes. But now, the top 1% is paying more than the bottom 95% of the taxpayers. Something is wrong with this, of course. Yet the richest 1% of the population is still under-taxed in this poor man's opinion.
To modern style Republicans and elitist so-called conservatives, the great burden presently being shouldered by the richest 1% or 5% of the population is cited as evidence of the importance of this super-rich class to the nation's economic health. It is the major argument against raising income tax rates for that exulted and valuable class. From Pridger's point of view, however, it actually tells us something very different. It tells us that the super-rich are making far too much money and the middle class and working poor are making far too little! It tells us that our wealth distribution has become acutely polarized and the economy grossly out of balance. It tells us that trickle-down hasn't been working. Far too much wealth is being retained at the very tip-top of the economic pyramid, and too little is trickling down to where it would do the most good to the largest number of people. The creation of this top-heavy wealth pyramid has coincided with the literal mushrooming of deficits and the national debt. The reasons are obvious. The productive, wealth-creation wherewithal of the middle class has been methodically withdrawn through free trade and corporate globalization policies while the increasing burden of artificially sustaining the "American way of life" for the increasingly poor middle class has been shifted to the backs of the general taxpaying public. The upper one percent makes so much money that it pays more than the lower 95%. With the overall tax base in sustained decline at the lower end, the burden is shifting to the upped end. Social spending programs are steadily increased to support what was once a productive poor and middle class. It has created an unsustainable situation which has been obvious for over three decades even to the untrained eye. But apparently nobody in the hollowed halls of government noticed. They (politicians and economists alike), proclaimed the Wonderful New World was at hand, and called for more of the same! Pile more coal onto the fire, raise more steam! There's a light at the end of the tunnel! It's finally blown up in our face the light was a mirror propped up against the bedrock at the end of the blind tunnel! Train wreck! The knee-jerk reaction has been to "pile on more steam!" Throw bundles of money into the fire-box! Refund the wealth bubbles at the top of the pyramid without addressing, or even noticing, the real causes of the train wreck add insult to injury! And this was supposed to get the economy booming along again! Today, the Democrats want the tax cuts for the rich those earning $250,000.00 or more annually to expire at the end of this year. Republicans are saying raising taxes for anybody especially the rich would be disastrous for our already depressed economy. Imagine poor ol' Oprah having to pay a 50% income tax on her $315,000,000.00 annual income! She'd be stuck with only $157,500,000.00 to survive on! (But they aren't contemplating that much of an increase, but only a marginal one.) But if the $54,000.00 a year worker has to pay only 10% in income tax, he's left with only $48,600.00 to survive on. (These numbers, of course, ignore the standard and dependent deductions for simplicity in making the point.) Why are we so worried about raising taxes on the super-rich? The Republicans tells us it's bad for business. But so many of the super rich are in anything but productive businesses. A high percentage of them are in banking, financial services, hedge funds, and other types of speculation, literally playing games with bonds, currencies, and Wall Street investors and investment firms. A lot of others have gained super-rich status by literally playing games, in the professional sports fields. Another large group of the super-rich and very wealthy are strictly in the entertainment business. Many, of course, are actually engaged in some sort of constructive businesses activities, but most who are are overpaid financial officers and CEOs whose expertise is in hostile takeovers, mergers, the outsourcing of labor and production, and monopoly capitalism of one kind or another. The average billionaire cares for only one thing. Increasing his own fortunes. He could live like a king on a tenth or twentieth of his income or net worth, but avoids higher taxes like the plague. He wants the working man the great unwashed public to shoulder "his rightful tax burden." WHAT'S THE POINT? Here's the point Pridger would like to make. The Depression Era notwithstanding, the era of the highest marginal tax rates on the rich in this country was our nation's greatest period of industrial production and job growth. During that period, the nation reached industrial maturity and it resulted in the growth of the largest, most broad-based, prosperity any nation had ever known! The economic decline with which we are grappling now began (just coincidentally), when tax rates for the rich came tumbling down. Since that point, our national fortunes turned a sharp corner. Since then, income disparities between rich and poor have been increasing and still are. Much of the "new business" stimulated by deregulation and the huge tax cuts for the rich were in non-productive sectors of the economy finance and pure money shuffling, corporate services and corporate chains replacing mom & pop businesses across the nation. The era of hostile buy-outs, mergers, and consolidations (mostly of theretofore profitable businesses, some of which had been around for decades or a century or more), became the rule for the corporate entrepreneur class. And this "new prosperity" undermined the productive real economy across the board. It became the era of the corporate collectivization of the entire economy, and the gutting of the industrial base, which was shipped south of the border or overseas. This became the new "business model" the smart thing a new brand of American Capitalism, especially tailored for the Big Boys with unlimited access to easy credit. It's somewhat amazing that Ford, GM, and Chrysler have survived as domestic brands. They almost didn't. But scores and scores of once viable business enterprises simply disappeared. The grand old American brand names that survived were no longer "Made in America." They are made elsewhere, by others. The American middle class survived primarily as consumers on the back of stored social capital. But consumption is not an engine of wealth creation when it is decoupled from production. Patriotic Americans are told to do their share to stimulate the economy by buying and consuming more. We're told we have to export more in order to solve our trade problems. What we really need to do is learn how to provide for ourselves again. Manufacture what we consume so we don't have to buy it from foreign producers. But we need a government that is on our side in order for this to happen. Unfortunately, we don't have that luxury anymore. Our government not only refuses to protect our markets, it has gone out of its way to give our markets away to foreign producers and global corporate interests in order for Wall Street to prosper while Main Street withered. In other words, it seems that our economy functioned much better, and was much more productive, when the rich were taxed at 91% of their personal income. There were no obscene corporate salaries or bonuses in those days. Money and profits went into production and the pockets of labor rather than strictly into the pockets of high-rolling corporate CEOs and Wall Street. There were no Media Personality or sports star billionaires. But they all did very well for themselves nonetheless there was no shortage of wealthy people and there was a very prosperous industrial working middle class. And that broad-spectrum prosperity raised all boats. Pridger isn't fond of obscenity, whether its in the local tavern, on the TV, or in the form of overpayment for services supposedly performed to perfection. No CEO is worth 500 times the hired help, and no "celebrity" is worth 6,000 assembly line workers. In fact, to keep workers, the unemployed, the retired, along with their children and grandchildren, from having to pay more than their just share of the debt (incurred on behalf of some of the richest men and institutions in the country and world), Pridger wouldn't object to an emergency tax on the super-wealthy in order to save him and people like him from having to bear the full brunt of the impending combined austerity, price inflation, and tax increases. With nearly half the "working class" population unemployed, underemployed, or retired, it would behoove the richest sector of the economy to make a contribution to saving the various social safety nets. After all, they provide the wherewithal for the consumption the corporations so desperately need! People like Pridger (who, after all, did put in the best part of his life actually "earning a living"), live close enough to the edge already. How close to the edge would people like Oprah be if the government clipped the point-7 off of her $2.7 billion? Oh what a hue and cry would go up if the upper 1 to 5% of the population were thus threatened with such an inconvenience! JQP WHAT COULD $12.3 TRILLION BUY? They tell us that the Federal Reserve has distributed about $12.3 trillion since the economic crisis struck. That would be about $40,000.00 for every man, woman, and child in the nation! Just think what a stimulus it would have been had it been distributed to the people! They spread the money around the world to all the poor banks that needed a helping hand. But nothing is getting any better. Of course the idea of distributing $12.3 trillion among every man, woman, and child in the nation would be considered ridiculous. But, for some reason, it isn't considered ridiculous for every man, woman, and child in this country to be indebted to that extent without their consent. JQP CONSPIRACY AND TAX-EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS... Here's a very informative video on the subject a 1982 interview with Norman Dodd, conducted by E. Edward Griffin. Norman Dodd was a Congressional Investigator on tax-exempt foundations (the Reece Committee 1953-54), investigating as to whether or not the foundations were engaged in anything that could be construed as "un-American activities": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Dodd JQP FRIDAY, 3 DECEMBER, 2010 LIGHTING THE NATIONAL MENORAH As we celebrate the separation of church and state this Holiday Season with hearty proclamations of "Happy Holidays!" and "Season's Greetings!" many Americans will attempt to be politically correct by trying to refrain from mentioning the offensive C-word. Christ appears to be disappearing from Christmas in America at least in the public domain. The message seems to be that "Christians should respect their betters." There may be a National "X-mas Tree" or "Holiday Season Tree" on the White House lawn again this year, but there will probably be no Christian symbolism in evidence. There might, however, be a Star of David at the top. However, there is, and will be, at least one very prominent religious symbol in evidence in front of the White House. The candles of the large "National Menorah" will be ceremonious lighted each and every day of Hanukkah. Chances are, there will be high government officials making it a point to be part of the ceremony. This would appear to be a bold message to each and every American. They tell us it's "a celebration of religious freedom and hope." No disrespect to our Jewish friends intended, of course, but... HOW IN THE WORLD DID WE GET TO THIS POINT?
None of this could be possible if the symbol happened to be, say, a "Cross of Calvary." That would undoubtedly be viewed as an abomination and an affront to Jews, Israel, and all non-Christians around the world. It seems like the largest Menorah in the world especially one called "The National Menorah" would be located in Israel rather than Washington. No doubt they have one in Israel, but apparently we are eager to outdo it in size and notoriety. Apparently our Jewish friends, and their friends, would like to make a point, and make it crystal clear. The "celebration of religious freedom and hope" aside, this ceremony obviously represents a great triumph of the world Jewish community, and a proclamation of our national compassion for the long-suffering Jewish people, our national pride in their military triumphs. Of course, along with the Holocaust Museum, it also represents a measure of our own ongoing national penitence for the Holocaust, the Inquisitions, and various other pogroms, perpetrated against Jews by our fellow Gentiles throughout the Christian era. The message appears to be that Christian Gentiles should accept perpetual guilt, whereas the Jews remain perpetually blameless (even when it comes to their own treatment of Palestinians). In honor of the 25th anniversary of the National Menorah, apparently every state in the union dutifully proclaimed its support (similar to that of New Jersey shown below). For all practical intents and purposes, these proclamations of support were mandatory. If any politician objected, his career would immediately be threatened. All else aside, it seem rather peculiar to this old reprobate, that our nation is effectively required to officially celebrate the Hanukkah Festival of Lights, though Jews comprise only about 3% of our population, but cannot officially celebrate its own traditional Christmas. It's unconstitutional to erect Christian symbols on public property these days. The ACLU and several prominent Jewish organizations have been drumming that into our heads and the national conscience for decades. We never even thought of having a National "Cross of Calvary" on the White House grounds, but now we've got National Menorah that we're supposed to be particularly proud of and reverential to. A National Menorah is okay, apparently, because it is Jewish and, after all, are not the Jews the Chosen People of the Christian God? If we still have a Holiday tree on the White
House lawn for a few weeks this year, it's only by your leave of powerful Jewish
groups. Our Jewish friends are actually quite fond of the Holiday Season that As former Israeli diplomat, Moshe Leshem, wrote in his book Balaam's Curse (later Israel Alone [1989]), "Jews will sue to have a cross removed from a Marine Corps base or a Nativity scene from a public square, for the right of an air force psychologist to wear a yarmulke..." (but) "...American Jewry does not challenge the observance of Christmas as an official holiday no doubt because Christmas has become so commercialized from which Jews profit in no small measure that its religious character can be overlooked." (emphasis added) All we are being prompted, or required, to do is to take Christ out of it.
OUR CUP RUNETH OVER WITH GOOD WILL TOWARD ISRAEL OUR LEADERS WAIL AT THE WALL
Few of our founders were particularly hostile toward Jews. In fact, the most prominent of them were very liberal minded when it came to religious tolerance. They never imagined the day would come, however, when this nation would lose its core religion and its leaders abandon the council of Jesus in favor of the Old Testament religion of Moses. Of the Jews, Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to De La Motte, in 1820: (I am) "happy in the restoration, of the Jews particularly, to their social rights, and hope they will be seen taking their seats on the benches of science, as preparatory to their doing the same at the board of government." Nonetheless Jews were quite naturally generally regarded with suspicion. After all, they had quite a notorious reputation, and almost all British-American colonists were avowed Christians of one fundamentalist stripe or another. They certainly had no reason to encourage a people that rejected their own religion outright. Both George Washington and Benjamin Franklin have been credited with expressing the opinion that it would not be wise to encourage a great many Jewish immigrants into the new nation. One oft quoted passage of this nature is called the "Franklin Prophecy," in which he was alleged to have said something like, if Jews come to our shores in great numbers, they will own the whole country within two centuries. Scholars have supposedly proven it a forgery, of course yet, even to the untrained eye, the prophecy itself seems to be pretty much on target. The National Menorah seems quite symbolic of this. The Jews have taken "their seats on the benches of science," as well as "at the board of government" and they have done so in spades! They are the most over-represented minority class in almost every scientific and profession field in finance and banking, and at every level, and in every facet, of government at the federal level. Their members and financial influence have played a major role in reforming the national political and social culture. There is no more influential group in the nation. They have excelled, and continue to excel, in their every endeavor on both the positive and negative sides. We're definitely a changed nation but, unfortunately, not necessarily a better nation in Pridger's humble opinion. We're certainly no longer a Christian nation, though a majority of Americans claim to be of that faith. Additionally, a large number of American Christians support Israel as much as they support their own country (perhaps more!), believing present day Jews are the biblical Chosen People, and the establishment of Israel the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. They probably see the National Menorah as a positive sign. Ironically, they are praying for an early Armageddon and damned if they might not have their prayers answered! Some Christians (including fallen ones like Pridger), aren't all that all-fired eager for Armageddon, or any serious facsimile thereof. Our present wars, depression and threatening economic doom, are already scary enough. There's a powerful lot of symbolic significance in the advent of a National Menorah, our national devotion to the memory of the Holocaust, and devotion to the Jewish State. The signs are not all that heartening in the humble opinion of yours truly. But what does Pridger know? Some opinions aren't worth a plug nickel. Still, it seems that we have very little "Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men" to celebrate here anymore. Things like Christian compassion, true tolerance, and forgiveness love, compassion, tolerance, and forgiveness of even our enemies seem to be in very short supply in the American genes of today. We're a "hate crime" and "life without hope of parole" nation at home, and a Crusading nation abroad. But ours are certainly not Christian Crusades (there were never any really Christian Crusades Jesus would undoubtedly have disavowed and abhorred them). We've adopted a national global war policy against "terrorism," in which every man, woman, and child, both at home and abroad, is a potential terrorist suspect. We've adopted a belligerent preemptive policy of aggression against "nonconforming" nations and cultures, and have occupied and largely destroyed two nations that had never threatened us one of them the very cradle of western civilization. We've adopted torture as mere "enhanced interrogation technique," and indefinite detention without formal charges or legal council, and treat "enemy combatants" (encountered and "captured" on foreign soil, defending against foreign invaders), as illegitimate fighters that do not qualify for Geneva Convention protections and, in fact, apparently have no human rights at all. In short, we've not only betrayed our own Constitution, but our religion and our once acclaimed national creed. Christianity can no longer be officially recognized as part of what has historically been called the American Creed. We Crusade for "full spectrum global military dominance," economic hegemony, defense of Israel, and for "American commercial interests abroad." We seem to have regressed from a nominally Christian nation to another "eye for an eye" Old Testament nation, and have apparently adopted the familiar motto "Never Forgive, Never Forget!" This is all reflected in the National Menorah and our national devotion to Israel supporting it right or wrong. Why? How has it happened? Anybody who gets too deeply into the answers is automatically labeled anti-Semitic, and nobody wants to be labeled anti-Semitic. Being anti-Semitic is worse than being labeled a mere racist. Jews that speak out against Israel or Zionism (and there are a lot of them), are labeled "self-hating Jews." But even that label is nothing compared to a Gentile who is called "anti-Semitic." A Gentile who is anti-Semitic is considered a Hitlerite or Hitler wannabe. So, if you are a Gentile, and don't want to be considered a Hitler wannabe, don't criticize Israel, "Jews," or Zionism! Because of this fear, our country is effectively being converted from a Christian nation to a Judaized nation despite itself. There is no longer many threads of the Christian Golden Rule woven into either our domestic or foreign policy. We do not bring peace and brotherly love to our nation or the world, but deliver our doctrine of "democracy" and "globalism" where they aren't necessarily wanted, evangelizing with bombs, bullets, missiles, and drones. The amount of blood on our hands is appalling yet a significant percentage of Americans still believe we are engaged in the "good fight" against "terrorists." We celebrate our national conversion in a big, globe-straddling, way. This isn't the America envisioned by the founders, who hoped to create a nation based in freedom, liberty, and founded on Christian moral philosophy. Washington and Jefferson's "Friendship with all nations that are friendly to us, and entangling alliances with none!" is passι. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, "I fear for my country when I reflect that God is just." Jefferson was alluding to the evil institution of chattel slavery. Here we allude to what appears to be a broad-spectrum loss of fundamental national morality. Pridger has a great deal of admiration and respect for the Jewish people and he wishes Israel (and all the peoples of Palestine) well. If the most influential Jews of America were truly our friends, with undivided national loyalties, this nation could, and undoubtedly would, become a much greater nation than it is now. But this will never happen as long as so many American Jews, and American Christian Zionists and politicians continue to have divided loyalties and/or have a palpable fear of being critical of anything "Jewish." This country would be much better off if there were a lot more of influential Jews on our side, and a lot fewer influential Americans on Israel's side. Pridger favors Israel insofar as it is right, but withholds his support insofar as it appears to be wrong. Unfortunately, there appears to be a lot more wrong than right in Israel. Many Jews are loyal, un-hyphenated, Americans, of course. Unfortunately, however, not many of the most influential in media and politics seem to be in our corner. The most influential of them are represented by what has become universally recognized simply as "The Lobby" and The Lobby is devoted to the Zionist cause rather than America or American interests. There's nothing particularly wrong with that, of course. That's what lobbies do. What is perhaps wrong is the magnitude of influence this particular lobby happens to have over our politicians and our foreign policy. As the photos on this post show, this is more than just self-evident. Happy Hanukkah! "Peace on Earth, and Good Will Toward All Men" John Q. Pridger WEDNESDAY, 1 DECEMBER, 2010 PERFECT STORM?
Ad to these as subtle growing "2012 End Of Time" hysteria. A perfect storm brewing? At the very least, Pridger believes this generation is destined to continue to live in interesting times. JQP WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? The Federal Reserve has become the largest holder of the U.S. national debt, and it's share is increasing. Should we look at this as an alarming development, as most do? Yes and no. The reason Pridger says yes and no is because we should all know that debt is bad, but at the same time we should certainly realize that debt to foreigners is far worse than owning the debt ourselves or at least to an entity that is reputed to be a domestic national public asset such as the Federal Reserve System. The FED might be a banking cartel that falls considerably short of being "We the People," but at least it isn't China, Japan, or the European Union. We have somehow reached a situation where we believe debt to foreign nations is superior and more beneficial to ourselves than debt to ourselves. How did this happen? The following graph and short article by Tyler Durden, published at Zero Hedge.com, calls our attention to what he points out as the "Beginning of the Ponzi End."
Is it better to be in debt to China, Japan, and the United Kingdom than to the Federal Reserve? From Pridger's perspective, when the "inevitable surge in interest rates finally happens" the less interest going to foreign debt-holders the better. American taxpayers are going to be caught on the hook no matter to whom or what the interest is payable. It's better for American taxpayers to be have to pay interest into their own system than into the coffers of foreign competitors, or offshore hedge funds. The statement that "That honor is now strictly reserved for American taxpayers" appears ridiculous. The honor goes to American taxpayers no matter who owns the debt! It's an unfortunate fact that the share of our debt owned by the Fed is money manufactured out of nothing for the benefit of international financial interests, and was largely created for nefarious purposes masquerading as job and economic stimulus. It is inflation money, of course, and the chairman of the Fed has admitted that higher inflation is part of the goal with QE2. But the money that is created by foreign purchases of Treasury bonds are inflationary in their own right, and the debt is external and it grows if the necessary interest is added to it thus more dangerous to American taxpayers than if it was internal "to themselves." With interest rates at zero, and the dollar continuing to lose purchasing power, it would seem to be madness for anybody to buy Treasury bonds. The only reason they would, is to both help us in our dilemma and protect their markets to some degree. But those incentives have been wearing very thin. No meaningful interest, no incentive to loan money to us. So, if we have to print money, why does it have to be the result of debts to foreigners rather than debts to Americans who should have a controlling stake in their own currency? Why, lacking foreign creditors, does it have to be to a banking cartel such as the Federal Reserve System? Why not just print Treasury notes as money rather than marketable bonds? Treasury notes as money (greenbacks), satisfy the debts they are printed to satisfy and do not perpetuate them as continuing debt plus interest. The internal debt, in terms of national currency circulation, would effectively be self-canceling. To prevent domestic inflation under a greenback system, the American taxpayer then repays part of the "debt to himself" through taxation, preferably without direct taxation on personal incomes. The taxes would support the government the American government without the need to incur external debt in order to simply have what should be our own money. Of course, the government should never be allowed to print money simply for it's own purposes. The money must be the property of the people, not the property of the government. The reason we cannot do it now is that we must first have (return to), a nation system in order to have a national currency and a nation economy. Only thus could we hope to regain control over our own national destiny. If our mis-representatives continue to march to the drums of the international financial interests intent on building a "Wonderful New World," there is no hope for a national recovery. The misplaced hope would continue to be for subservience of America and all other nations to some form of global government. In order to remedy this threatening development, a majority of our representatives in Washington would have to be representatives of the American people, rather than agents of international corporate interests. Their oaths of office to protect and defend the American Constitution would have to be genuine rather than mere ceremony engaged in with a wink, nod, and crossed fingers. Of course, there must be a workable and stable international currency of account. Under a greenback system, with other nations following suit with their own national currencies, gold and silver could return to it rightful place as the international currency of account. In time, national currencies would find their appropriate value levels with regard to gold and silver, and once again the world would be on a de facto precious metals standard. Is there any hope? Pridger isn't holding his breath. JQP
GIVE US PROTECTION AND PROSPERITY! Protectionism is considered heresy today, but look where free trade and globalism have gotten us so far! We're literally up a creek without a paddle or more accurately, down the river! Our nation the richest nation in the world is no longer able to pay its own way in the world! Rather, we have to beg credit from our competitors even resent enemies who were once sworn to effect our destruction, and remain ideological foes. Everybody knows we have a serious problem, but nobody is looking at the source of the problem. No politician or news commentator has the guts to state the obvious. What is obvious is that our national marketplace has been given away. The national marketplace is synonymous with the national economy, and if the management does not protect that market in the interests of the owner-operators if it allows others to invade and take over that marketplace profits will no longer accrue to the rightful owners. Unemployment sill soar. This is what is happening, and it is why the once most productive nation in the world is no longer productive enough to supply its own basic necessities, and must borrow to finance it's consumption and living standards. These are the fruits of free trade which is neither free nor cheap and it's not as if nobody ever told us. Here's a political speech from over a century ago, and it needs to be given in the halls of Congress once again!
GIVE US PROTECTION AND PROSPERITY!Give us Protection and Prosperity! Do not cheat us with free trade dreams! JQP All quotations and excerpts are based on non-profit "fair use" in the greater public interest consistent with the understanding of laws noted at http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html.
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