Copyright © 2006 Joseph George Caldwell. All rights reserved. Posted at Internet website http://www.foundationwebsite.org. May be copied or reposted for non-commercial use, with attribution to author and website. (19 October 2006)
Contents
Miscellany: Commentary on Recent Events and Reading. 2
If You Don’t Know Who You Are…... 3
Swiss Vote to Adopt Strict Rules on Asylum.. 6
US Government Refuses to Enforce Immigration Laws, and to Defend the Country from Invasion. 7
The Border Wall Won’t Work – That’s Why the US Government is Building It! 9
Census: Diversity Increases across US. 12
Jean Raspail’s Prophetic Vision. 18
Iraq Is Breaking Up – No Kidding! 23
Shaming Punishments Are Making a Comeback. 25
Cancer Treatment – the Cure Is Worse than the Disease. 31
Katy Couric’s CBS Evening News. 32
How Many H-1B Visas? – Nobody Knows! 33
Senator Byron Dorgan’s New Book, Take This Job and Ship It! 35
Patrick Buchanan’s New Book, State of Emergency. 39
Why Can’t Johnny Read? Or Do Arithmetic?. 47
One More Cost of the War in Iraq. 49
E. O. Wilson’s New Book, The Creation. 55
The Border Patrol Verdicts. 58
Local Attempts to Control Illegal Immigration. 65
Lou Dobbs Is Wrong: All Mass Immigration – Legal or Otherwise – Is Bad for the US. 71
The Assault on Privacy: Continued Abuse of the SSN.. 83
Ibuprofen (and other NSAIDs) Kills! 87
Barack Obama Our Next President? Not a Chance. 89
It was reported by the US Census Bureau on Tuesday, October 17, 2006, that the official US population has reached 300 million. This figure does not include illegal aliens, who are not counted in the official figures. That population is estimated to be another 12-20 million. The October 15 issue of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal featured an article on US population growth entitled, “As US approaches milestone, consumption causes worries” (Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press) The article noted that US population reached 200 million in 1967, which implies a 50 percent increase in 39 years.
The article commented on many of the evils of population growth. An excerpt:
“America’s population is on track o hit 300 million on Tuesday morning, and it’s causing a stir among environmentalists.
“People in the United States are consuming more than ever – more food, more energy, more natural resources. Open spaces are shrinking and traffic in many areas is dreadful.”
It seems, now that the US environment has been heavily damaged, its wildlife decimated, and its original-growth forests largely destroyed, that people are beginning to notice the degradation of quality of life that massive population and overcrowding bring. Most people in the US now live in crowded conditions and have little access to the open spaces that their ancestors enjoyed. The amount of time spent in commuting in many large cities is extreme – as long as people in destroyed Third-World countries spend in seeking wood or water. Unlike Americans of 1950, when the population was 150 million, young Americans can no longer expect to own a nice home and a car and educate their children, unless both work in the competitive labor market. They cannot expect to camp in the Grand Canyon or white-water-raft down the Colorado River without making a reservation a year in advance and paying thousands of dollars per person.
America’s environment and quality of life has been destroyed by overpopulation – most of it from immigration, and a large portion from illegal immigration condoned by the country’s leaders. It is a shame that Americans refused to listen to the many voices that spoke against the perils of massive population growth, and have now destroyed the high quality of life in their country.
The Sunday, October 15, 2006 issue of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal contained an interesting piece in its NewsQ&A section, in which it answers readers’ questions.
Q: Where did the term “African-American” come from? Every 20 years, I am saddled with a new term to describe me: I have been colored (on my birth certificate), Negro, Afro-American, black and now African-American. I refuse to be identified by that term.
A: According to the American Heritage Book of English Usage, African-American is the most recent in a long list of terms used to describe the group.
People of color, persons of color, Negro, black and Afro-American have all been used.
During the black power movement of the 1960s and 70s, the term Afro-American gained acceptance alongside the term black.
The word expressed a pride in black American culture and its African origins.
African studies programs began as many colleges and Afros [a bouffant hairstyle] and African dress were popular.
In the 1980s, it was replace by the term African-American. It was popularized by Jesse Jackson and other black leaders.
It conforms with other ethnic descriptors such as Irish American or Italian American.
[End of SHJ article.]
It is sad when an ethnic group has so little sense of identity that it does not know what to call itself.
Many blacks, such as Whoopee Goldberg, join the writer of the above question in forcefully rejecting the term “African American” to describe themselves. As Ms. Goldberg once noted, something to the effect of, “I have visited Africa, and seen it. I have no desire to be labeled as an ‘African American.’ I am simply an American.
When I was a boy, I was taught that it was improper to refer to refer to Americans as “hyphenated Americans,” such as Italian-Americans or Irish-Americans or Franco-Americans or Jewish-Americans – that once you were an American, that was all there was to it.
In their collective confusion, some blacks attempted to rewrite history, claiming, for example, that Socrates and Cleopatra were black. These “black history” courses have largely been debunked (see Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History by Mary Lefkowitz, Basic Books, 1996).
The foolishness of emphasizing one’s African links was expounded by Keith B. Richburg in his book Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa (Basic Books, 1997). Sample excerpt: “But I’m tired of lying. And I’m tired of all the ignorance and hypocrisy and the double standards I hear and read about Africa, much of it from people who’ve never been there, let alone spent three years walking around amid the corpses. Talk to me about Africa and my black roots and my kinship with my African brothers and I’ll throw it back in your face, and then I’ll rub your nose in the images of the rotting flesh. Come with me, if you’re willing, and I’ll take you on a journey – it’s my own personal journey, much of it taking place inside my head. It won’t be pretty, but that’s my point. I want you to feel it like I did. Touch it, smell it. Let me be your guide, and try to follow along as I lay out for you here why I feel the way I do – about Africa, about America, and mainly about myself and where it is I now know I belong.”
I recently visited Portugal for a couple of weeks (part tourism, part business), and had easy access to international newspapers. The Monday, September 25, 2006, issue of the International Herald Tribune presented, on the front page, an article entitled, “Swiss vote to adopt strict rules on asylum: Rejected applicants can be deported or have aid cut off” (Associated Press). Excerpt: “Geneva: Swiss voters have ratified new asylum and immigration laws Sunday, making it more difficult for refugees to receive assistance and effectively blocking non-European unskilled workers from entering the country.”
The US should take note. For years, it has been welcoming massive numbers of refugees. These refugees have arrived in such large numbers that there is no attempt to assimilate them into the previous American culture. Many now live with their own kind in ghettos. On the 13 October 2006 issue of the CNN television program Lou Dobbs Tonight, it was reported that the US State Department has announced that the US has agreed to permanently accept 10,000 refugees from Burundi.
Will the US never learn? Mass immigration to the US is destroying the US environment, and the overcrowding caused by massive population growth is destroying the quality of life for all Americans. Recent immigrants to America are responsible for the deaths of thousands of American citizens, from murder and automobile accidents.
Why has the US government embarked on a program of mass immigration, which is destroying US culture and the US environment? The answer is very simple: for the money. The US is committed to a program of “growth-based” economics. Even though mass immigration is destroying the US environment and the quality of life of the US middle class, it generates billions of dollars of wealth for America’s wealthy elite, though expansion of the economy.
On CNN, there are frequent commercials from a coal lobbying group. In the latest one, a young girl states that the US has a 250-year supply of coal, and refers the viewer to the website http://www.learnaboutcoal.org for more information. This is so stupid. By maximizing energy consumption, the human species is destroying the biosphere. The only way to save the biosphere and prevent the extinction of the human race is for the human species to consume vastly less energy, not more. After 250 years, when all of the coal is gone – and the biosphere has been destroyed – what is proposed next?
On the 13 October 2006 edition of CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight, it was reported that a US federal judge has refused to deport eleven illegal aliens. He has stayed their deportation for a year, on the basis that he believes that the US law might change in this time, and they would then be allowed to remain in the US. It was also reported that Elvira Arellano, a female Mexican illegal alien, has remained sequestered in a Methodist church in Chicago since August 15 – a period of 64 days. The US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is very aware that Arellano has taken sanctuary in the church, and refuses to arrest her and deport her, claiming that they “have more important things to do.” What can be more important that enforcing the law, especially in the case of a flagrant, in-your-face violation? This case should go to the top of ICE’s list, not to the bottom.
Giving sanctuary to criminals (by cities, churches) was outlawed by Congress in 1996. The Arellano case is a “double-whammy” – ICE refuses to deport her, and continues to allow her to claim illegal sanctuary.
The US President refuses to obey his oath of office to uphold the Constitution and protect the country from invasion, in this case by millions of illegal aliens. The US Congress is complicit in this, by refusing to pass laws to stop the invasion (the invasion could be stopped, and all illegals would voluntarily leave the country within a few weeks, if Congress would simply pass a law making illegal immigration a capital crime, and hanging an illegal immigrant in public each day – not a “cruel and unusual” punishment for nonuniformed invaders of one’s country).
The US President and many members of Congress are guilty of gross dereliction of duty and treason in not protecting the country from invasion. The Justice Department is also complicit in this conspiracy. When the US government refuses to enforce its own laws, particularly those related to invasion, it has renounced its loyalty to the citizens of the country. When the President and many members of Congress have committed treason by refusing to protect the country from invasion, they have abrogated their right to govern. They are traitors to the Republic, and they should be brought to book.
The Sunday, October 8, 2006, issue of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal contained an article entitled, “Smugglers already looking for ways to beat border wall,” by Olga R. Rodriguez (Associated Press). An excerpt:
Tijuana, Mexico: Rising from the Pacific surf and zig-zagging along the border for 14 miles, Tijuana’s border fence has done little but push illegal migrants into the Arizona desert and feed the smuggling industry since it went up in 1994.
Today, as the US prepares to build a high-tech barrier with 700 miles of extra fencing, motion detectors and remote controlled devices, smugglers are already figuring out how to beat the new security.
Even before President Bush signed the $1.2 billion funding bill Wednesday to strengthen busy crossing points, border patrol figures indicated that smugglers have been hiding more migrants in vehicles, or diverting them across one of the most inhospitable sections of the border – a mountainous stretch of searing desert near Yuma, Arizona.
Some experts predict that smugglers could turn to boats and tunnels, two methods popular with drug smugglers but seldom used by migrant traffickers.
“It doesn’t matter what they do. There isn’t a wall that can stop people because there will always be someone who finds a way to cross,” said 37-year-old Jose Lopez, a construction worker who said he had just been deported to Tijuana after being detained in San Francisco.
Because he has three children still in the US, Lopez is considering crossing again, even though he risks three years in jail because of prior arrests for carrying fake ID.
No amount of border security will stop illegal immigration; the reality is that roughly half the estimated 12 million undocumented foreigners in the United States entered on bona fide visas and stayed after they expired.
While the interview process for visas has become tougher, it has failed to stop these so-called “overstays” from reaching for the American dream.
If they cannot get a visa, there’s a smuggling business that moves millions of people from Mexican towns to employers throughout the United States.
The increased enforcement that began with Operation Gatekeeper in 1994 – and produced the corrugated metal and chain-link fence – dramatically cut illegal border crossings in the Tijuana-San Diego area, but overall, they kept their pace. Total arrests along the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico has ebbed and flowed since then but changed little: 1.3 million in 1995, compared with [sic] 1.2 million in 2005.
High Costs
Trafficking has flourished; the average price for being smuggled through a port of entry in the Tijuana-San Diego area – usually in the trunk of a car or using false or borrowed documents – shot uup from $300 in 1994 to $2,500. Crossing through the Arizona desert can cost up to $1,800.
[End of SHJ excerpt.]
Of course the border wall will not work – as I have written before, the US government would not build it if it had any chance of working. The purpose of the wall is to generate business for the construction industry in the US and to make it look as if the US government is fighting illegal immigration, not to stem the flow of illegal aliens. It has been and remains the policy of the US government to operate a “catch and release” system for illegal aliens – once they are caught, they are released unless they are suspected of a violent crime. The US government has no intention of doing anything to reduce the flow of cheap labor to the US, since it generates much wealth for the wealthy elite who control the country. Because of massive international free trade, US businesses cannot compete with foreign labor costing as little as a dollar a day, and so it welcomes illegal aliens as a partial remedy. If the border wall in fact were – quite accidentally – to prove to be effective, then the US government would simply convert the illegal aliens to US citizens. It is already allowing about a million aliens into the country legally, and would seek ways to raise this to two or three million.
The wall is to include motion sensors to detect violators. When they are caught, they will simply be released, or in some cases returned to Mexico, to try again. If the US were serious about the wall, it would man it with machine guns, not motion sensors. (Actually, if the objective were to stop people from crossing the border illegally, the wall is not needed at all. Simply placing machine gun nests every three hundred yards, and shooting all invaders, would be far more effective, and less costly.) The point is, the US government wants to look as if it is doing something about immigration, when in fact, under its addiction to growth-based economics, it is committed to a population growth rate of about one percent per year. It will take whatever steps are required to keep the population growth rate at about one percent, until global petroleum production starts to decline significantly (“Hubbert’s Peak”). If it can increase the gross domestic product by building border walls that don’t work, or by catching and releasing millions of illegal aliens each year, that is fine. But don’t expect it to do anything that will reduce the population growth. And please, please, don’t continue to be surprised or exasperated, when the US government’s phony attempts to reduce immigration – legal or otherwise – are revealed to be shams.
The SHJ article notes that the US government’s “efforts” to stop illegal immigration by employing more and more sophisticated means has caused the price of smuggling to increase from $300 in 1994 to about $2,000 today. From an economic viewpoint, these increases are fabulous – they increase the gross domestic product (GDP), not just for the US, but for the many countries from which illegal aliens come. The US and the countries from which illegal aliens come have a vested interest in keeping this illicit industry alive. In fact, just recently, the US Treasury Department introduced regulations to make it easier for illegal aliens to send their remittances back to their own countries. Such actions on the part of our government to encourage illegal immigration defy understanding, until it is realized that the US government wants high levels of immigration. The only way illegal immigration will be reduced (prior to the advent of Peak Oil) is for legal immigration to increase.
The Tuesday, August 15, 2006, issue of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal presented an article entitled, “Census: Diversity increases across US” (by Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press). The article observes that, because of massive immigration, the ethic diversity of the country is exploding. Excerpts:
Washington: America’s growing diversity has reached nearly every state.
From South Carolina’s budding immigrant population to the fast-rising number of Hispanics in Arkansas, minority groups make up an increasing share of the population in every state but one, according to figures released today by the Census Bureau.
“This is just an extraordinary explosion of diversity all across the United States,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “It’s diversity and immigration going hand in hand.”
West Virginia is the exception, with its struggling economy and little history of attracting immigrants.
Frey said states that attract large numbers of immigrants can consider it a “badge of economic success.” There have, however, been backlashes.
“In some places it will be awhile [sic] before they are accepted by the locals,” Frey said. “All we have to do is look at this immigration debate.”
Immigration policy is a big issue in this year’s midterm congressional elections, and the new data help explain why. Immigrants – legal and illegal – make up a growing portion of the population in 46 states and the District of Columbia. Nationally, they went from 11.1 percent of the population in 2000 to 12.4 percent last year.
…Hispanics increased their hold as the country’s largest minority group, at 14.5 percent of the population, compared with [sic] 12.8 percent for blacks.
Hispanic is a term for people with ethnic backgrounds in Spanish-speaking countries. Hispanics can be of any race, and most in the US are white.
Whites are a minority in four states – Hawaii, New Mexico, California and Texas – and the District of Columbia. The share of white people fell below 60 percent in three other states – Maryland, Georgia and Nevada. Nationally, non-Hispanic whites make up about 67 percent of the population, down from 70 percent at the start of the decade.
California, New York, Texas and Florida have the nation’s largest immigrant populations. The new data show that immigrants will travel beyond those states if there are jobs available.
South Carolina’s immigrant population grew by 47 percent since 2000, more than any other state.
Michael MacFarlane, South Carolina’s state demographer, said immigrants and Hispanics were attracted by a healthy economy that offered jobs requiring few skills.
“They are in all sorts of construction, food processing, service jobs, the whole spectrum, where they used to be primarily in agriculture,” MacFarlane said.
[End of SHJ excerpt.]
As Thom Hartmann once observed, diversity is a wonderful thing, and we are losing it. As massive flows of population occur across the globe, the diversity of the world’s regions is diminishing. The world is homogenizing at a rapid rate, as ethnic groups mix.
In the long term, the massive population flows spell disaster for the immigrants to developed countries, such as the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia. As long as global petroleum production is maintained, the global economy will continue to function and developed countries will be able to provide for their exploding populations. Since all developed countries now exceed the solar carrying capacity (i.e., the ability to support their populations with solar-based agriculture), all countries of the world will face starvation and population decline (“die-off”) as soon as global oil production declines (“Hubbert’s Peak,” or “Peak Oil”). Because global oil production fluctuates, it is not possible to tell exactly when Peak Oil is occurring, but evidence is increasing that it has already occurred.
As global oil production starts to decline significantly, chaos will erupt. The first major resource wars over oil – the first Gulf War (in Iraq, over Kuwait) and the second Gulf War (the current war in Iraq) – have already occurred. There will be more, and larger, resource wars soon. Very soon, the world’s economy, which is heavily dependent on oil, will collapse. At that time, people in all countries will begin a time of great stress. People will not simply sit around and starve to death – they will wage war. At first, the wars will be wars between states, and then they will be civil wars within states.
When war begins, it is always rationalized by differences – differences in religion, in race, in language, in ethnicity, in political philosophy. The coming resource wars will see the diverse ethnic groups that mass immigration from alien cultures has brought about turning against each other and destroying each other.
When things begin to fall apart – and, if Hubbert’s Peak is occurring now, that is probably within 2-5 years’ time – civil war will rage in America. History shows well what the course of this civil war will be – it will be the whites (or more specifically, white European Christians), exercising their “right of primacy” against all other ethic groups. The whites – the most aggressive of all ethnic groups – will slaughter all minorities. By its policy of extreme overpopulation (exceeding the solar carrying capacity), the nation has committed itself to a massive die-off as soon as the planet starts its slide down the back side of Hubbert’s Curve. In its rush to diversity, the US has fragmented itself profoundly, and thereby has defined the nature and outcome of the coming social collapse. Under its program of massive, rapid immigration, there has been no assimilation of recent immigrants. They are quite recognizable to the primal population, and they will be quickly exterminated.
In previous times of population collapse or conquest, ethnic minorities were often exterminated, e.g., as in the case of the Israeli extermination (genocide) of the many tribes previously occupying the “Promised Land.” In other cases, such as the Spanish conquest of Central and South America, the indigenous populations were enslaved to support primitive agriculture. As the Petroleum Age draws to an end and the world returns to solar-based primitive agriculture, some minority populations may be spared extermination, to provide labor for primitive agriculture. As the world slides further into darkness from primitive agriculture to hunting and gathering, however, there is no use for agricultural slaves, and the minorities will then be exterminated.
Did you know that the original meaning of the word “apocalypse” is “uncovering,” or “revelation,” and that the meaning “great or total devastation” or “doom” is a derived meaning stemming from the cataclysmic events of the Biblical book of the Revelation of St. John?
The 25 September 2006 edition of the English edition of El País (published with the International Herald Tribune) contained a cartoon (“El Roto”) on the editorial page showing an airplane destroying crops with herbicide. The caption read, “De las plantas sagradas hicieron drogas, y luego procedieron a fumigarlas” – Apocalipsis. The English translation is “From the sacred plants they made drugs, and then they proceeded to fumigate them” – Revelation of John.
This cartoon caught my attention because the word “fumigate” did not seem to me to be a “Biblical” word. When I read the cartoon, I was in Lisbon. When I got back home to the US, I checked the concordance in my Bible, and did not find the listing “fumigate,” or even “sacred plants.” I checked the Internet website http://www.biblegateway.com for these terms, and they were not to be found (in several Bible versions).
Since El País is a respected publication, I am a little puzzled why I cannot corroborate the quotation in its cartoon.
In any event, the cartoon got me to thinking about sacred plants, civilization, and religion. When mankind lived in nature, all people had access to sacred plants (psychotropic plants, such as peyote and the plants of ayahuasca), and could experience a transcendental experience at will. As soon as civilization arose – agriculture, that is, – sacred plants were banned from use. Social governments and organized religions worked hand in hand to control the labor supply, and they could not permit every “Tom, Dick and Harry” from having his own profound religious experience.
Today, the US government invests billions of dollars every year to make sure that private individuals do not have access to sacred plants. This policy not only enables the government and organized religion to more effectively control and work the populace, but it has the additional side effect – economic benefit – of generating a massive worldwide criminal infrastructure for supplying sacred plants, along with a massive worldwide legal infrastructure in fighting it. This is not to mention the massive amount of economic activity required to replace or address the labor, theft and destruction caused by the requirement for individuals to pay thousands of dollars for medicines (“drugs”) that could be free or cost at most pennies.
If you every become interested in immigration, two of the most interesting books on this subject are The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail (The Social Contract Press, 1975; originally published in French as Le Camp des Saints, Editions Robert Laffont, 1973), and Alien Nation by Peter Brimelow (Random House, 1995). Jean Raspail’s book was a prophetic novel about the coming time when shiploads of impoverished immigrants would sail – in ships such as the Golden Venture – from undeveloped countries to overrun developed countries.
The September 4, 2006 edition of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal contains an article entitled, “1,200 Africans caught fleeing to Canary Islands” by Mar Roman (Associated Press). An excerpt:
“Madrid, Spain: Police caught nearly 1,200 people trying to reach the Canary Islands in overcrowded boats that left from the west African nation of Mauritania, setting a record for a weekend, officials said Sunday.
At least 12 boats reached the islands in the span of 36 hours, Civil Guard officials said. All the migrants, including children, were in good health, they said. Some 674 people arrived Saturday and 533 reached shore Sunday.
With routes through Morocco being gradually sealed, the rising wave of African migration to Europe has been pushed hundreds of miles south, forcing many to make a perilous voyage in open boats to Spain’s Canary Islands, their gateway to the prosperous European Union.
More than 20,000 Africans have been intercepted so far this year in the archipelago, and the total for August was 6,000, compared with [sic] 4,751 for all of last year, according to Spanish authorities.
Spain has asked the European Union, the United Nations and the international community to assist with the situation.
[End of SHJ excerpt.]
If you look at demographic trends, it is very easy to extrapolate and predict what is going to happen. Jean Raspail may be called a “visionary,” but his novel was simply an extrapolation of what had to happen if current trends were allowed to continue. I am often puzzled why the people with whom I speak cannot see that the world is destined for imminent collapse, as global oil production starts to fall. I am not alone in this assessment – a number of others have written many books and articles on the subject. But if you speak to people about it – anybody, from local friends to national political leaders – they simply reject the notion out of hand.
Denial that the catastrophe may occur seems to be a common and strong human trait. In 1912, two years before the outbreak of World War I, people bragged that the world had not seen a major war for a hundred years, and that world peace was here to stay. The US government had funded studies that asserted unequivocally that New Orleans’ levees would fail and the city would be inundated in the event of a category 3 hurricane, but they did absolutely nothing to prepare for this expected event.
I wonder whether anyone at IBM saw that their enterprise would be placed in grave danger with the introduction of the microcomputer? Did anyone at Ford mention to the management that global oil production is peaking, and that gasoline prices will soar, making their large personal trucks and SUVs undesirable?
There are strong signs that Hubbert’s Peak is now occurring (it does not occur at a single instant in time, because of the fluctuations in oil discoveries and oil-field exhaustions and demand), yet all governments are proceeding “business as usual.” It does not matter to them that global warming is occurring, and that polar ice caps and glaciers are melting. It does not matter to them that 30,000 species are made extinct every year. All that matters to the world’s leaders is that economic activity increase.
The world economic system will collapse, catastrophically, in just a few years. It is absolutely amazing that nobody cares. All that matters is Monday Night Football, Oprah Winfrey, iPods, and cell phones. It is so amazing. The biosphere, on which mankind depends totally to exist, is being destroyed by mankind’s insane obsession for increased human population, economic activity and industrial production. Mankind is producing millions of automobiles that burn fossil fuels and cause global warming. All world leaders are calling for improved standards of living and increased industrial production – none are calling for smaller human population and decreased economic activity. Mankind is destroying the Amazon rain forest – the lungs of the planet – to produce hamburgers. The human species is so ludicrous. This planet will be very easy to take over, once global oil production starts to fall.
Many books have been written about the arrival of “Peak Oil.” These include (from my personal library – there are many others):
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, by Thom Hartmann (Three Rivers Press, 1998)
Hubbert’s Peak, by Kenneth S. Deffeyes (Princeton University Press, 2001)
The Party’s Over, by Richard Heinberg (New Society Publishers, 2003)
Power Down, by Richard Heinberg (New Society Publishers, 2004)
The End of Oil, by Paul Roberts (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004)
Twilight in the Desert, by Matthew R. Simmons (John Wiley & Sons, 2005)
When I wrote Can America Survive? In the 1990, Hubbert’s Peak was generally considered to be a decade or so away. Now, there is a growing consensus that it is probably occurring at the present time (because of fluctuations in oil discoveries and field exhaustions, and also because of fluctuations in demand, global oil production fluctuates substantially, so it is not possible to identify Hubbert’s Peak until some time after its occurrence). It is really amazing that, although global oil production is peaking, and this event will have a profound impact on industrial civilization and human population, almost no one is paying any attention.
An increasing number of books is being written on the general subject of the imminent collapse of global industrial civilization (apart from those focused on oil, as those cited above). These include:
Overshoot, by William R. Catton, Jr. (University of Illinois Press, 1980)
The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Joseph A. Tainter (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
The Sixth Extinction, by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin (Anchor Book, 1995)
Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond (W. W. Norton & Company, 1997)
Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, by Thomas F. Homer-Dixon (Princeton University Press, 1999)
Resource Wars, by Michael T. Klare (Metropolitan, 2001)
Collapse, by Jared Diamond (Viking, 2005)
Plan B 2.0 by Lester R. Brown (W. W. Norton, 2006)
The Creation, by E. O. Wilson (W. W. Norton, 2006)
State of Emergency, by Patrick J. Buchanan (Thomas Dunne Books, 2006)
These books document well the environmental catastrophe that is taking place as a result of large human numbers and industrial activity. There is no question that our civilization is about to collapse, and very soon, yet almost no one is paying any attention to this problem, and almost no one is doing anything to prepare for the very different future that will soon be upon us.
America is not listening to its scientists – or to its visionaries or spiritual leaders, or to any other group except the oligarchs who control it. It is refusing to acknowledge the very different future that is just around the corner, and hence is certainly not preparing for it. It will pay dearly for this denial and blindness. It is forfeiting its chance to lead the world, as the world moves to the post-petroleum, post-global-industrial era.
Our industrial civilization will soon self-destruct, catastrophically, and yet almost everyone on the planet is going about his own business, as if the current paradigm will last forever.
A quote from Can America Survive?: Economics is the driving force that has corrupted mankind and is destroying the planet. Economics – the dismal science. Mathematician John Maynard Keynes observed (in his 1930 essay, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”) the fatal limitations of economics as a long-term basis for human society:
“Some day we may return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue – that avarice is a vice, that the extraction of usury is a misdemeanor, and the love of money is detestable. But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little while longer.”
I wrote a couple of years ago that the only way to “win” the war in Iraq was to recognize the fact that Iraq was in fact three different countries, to partition it, and to place a local family in charge of each part. It is interesting to see that, slowly, other people are coming to a similar conclusion. For example, the October 14, 2006, edition of The Economist contains an article, “Iraq: Divisa in partes tres,” on this topic. The three major ethnic groups in Iraq are the Kurds (in the north) the Sunnis (in the middle) and the Shias (in the south). The three new states could be called Kurdistan, Sunnistan, and Shiastan.
One of the principal differences between my proposal and others I have seen recently is that others observe that under a partition, the Sunnis would have no oil, and so some arrangement would have to be agreed to under which they would receive a portion of the revenues from oil occurring in the Kurd and Shia areas. In my view, lack of oil in the Sunni area does not matter a whit. Mali and Mauritania and Haiti do not have any oil either, but I do not see a compelling argument to take some of the oil occurring in other places, such as Kurdistan or Shiastan, and sharing it with them. So the Sunni area would be impoverished. What does this matter? They are the ones who happened to settle in an oil-poor area, so who better to be without oil than they? In any event, in a few years, when global oil reserves are depleted, none of the three regions will have any oil.
Present-day Iraq is an artificial non-nation consisting of three ethnic areas that the British took from the Ottoman empire, and formed into a single country. Yugoslavia is another example of a synthetic agglomeration of ethnically diverse areas forced into one country. Czechoslovakia is another, and the Soviet Union is another. Eventually, such diverse states must collapse (America: take note – as you diversify, so too will you one day fragment). It is easier to let it happen sooner rather than later – many fewer American soldiers would die if we did not try to maintain Iraq as a single nation.
I will close with a quote from The Economist article:
“Three years ago, just after the American-led invasion of Iraq, an American sergeant based in the northern city of Kirkuk, then the main focus of ethnic and sectarian competition, offered your correspondent his own interpretation of what was going on. “You know what all this is about? Undoing what you British did at the end of World War I.” He was referring to the peace settlements that followed the collapse of the Ottoman empire, when the British took control of the former provinces of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul and proceeded to lump them together into a single unified state, with a Sunni monarchy in charge. There has been ethnic and sectarian-based conflict ever since.”
Machiavelli offered three solutions for administering a conquered state: (1) destroy it (i.e., kill everyone, as the Israelis did in taking over the Promised Land); (2) move so many of your own people into it so as to overwhelm the previous population (as the Chinese are doing in Tibet, and the Europeans did in North America); or (3) place a strong local family in charge, and tell them that they may remain in charge as long as they maintain order and cooperate (i.e., in the case of Iraq, provide us with access to the oil). The US does not wish to follow any of these options, and it is continuing to fail to conquer Iraq.
The US has been caught in a lie – or series of lies – and is finding it difficult to extricate itself from the conflict. First, it claimed that the reason for invading Iraq was to destroy weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was supposed to have had. He didn’t have any. Then, it claimed that it was trying to spread democracy. The Iraqis don’t want it. Then, it claimed that it was preventing the spread of terrorism, but terrorism is fast increasing – much of it because of the Iraq war! It steadfastly refuses to admit that the principal – the only – reason for invading Iraq was to obtain access to Iraqi oil. But with all of the turmoil, it is not gaining access to the oil. It does not want to be caught in a lie, and so it fights on, purportedly attempting to install democracy in a culture that is inimical to it. The US will not prevail in Iraq, or have access to Iraqi oil, unless and until it follows one of Machiavelli’s three options for administering a conquered country.
Eventually, the US will take steps to obtain access to the oil (e.g., by partitioning Iraq), or it will withdraw. It will be interesting to see which of Machiavelli’s options the US finally adopts.
In my draft platform for the American Independence Movement, I proposed that public short-term punishments (stocks, pillories, caning) be authorized for minor criminal offenses. It was with some interest that I read an article promoting this approach in the October 14, 2006, issue of The Economist. Excerpt:
Ingenious Punishments: Their object all sublime; A vogue for shaming wrongdoers. On September 30th students at the University of Massachusetts threw a toga party. The cops showed up, uninvited. They charged the host, James Connolly, with under-age drinking, making too much noise, and having a keg without a license. For punishment, he had to put on his toga again and stand in front of the police station for an hour.
Dan Markel of Florida State University reckons that such “shaming punishments” are on the rise. In 2003 a couple of teenagers who defaced a nativity scene in Ohio had to parade through town with a donkey. “The punishment must fit the crime,” explained the judge, Michael Cicconetti. Several cities have aired the names of men caught soliciting prostitutes on “John TV.” In 2004 a federal appeals court agreed that a mail thief could be made to stand outside a California post office wearing a sandwich board. “I stole mail,” it read. “This is my punishment.” In Virginia, if you fail to pay child support, you may find your car wheel clamped: pink if you are neglecting a girl, blue for a boy.
Many support shaming punishments. Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University has argued that they are a good way to express communal values. Fines, in contrast, imply that you can buy a clear conscience. And shame seems to be a powerful deterrent. Mr. Cicconetti says he sees few repeat offenders. Cheerful Hobbesian types want everyone to know who the bad guys are, so that decent citizens can avoid them.
Others are doubtful. According to Mr. Markel, shaming punishments undermine human dignity. He suggests alternative punishments that omit the public-humiliation factor. A landlord who flouts the health code, for example, could be made to stay in one of his own slums. And it is true that there is something unpleasant about the desire to see other people humiliated. Remember the matron who objects to Hester Prynne’s [of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter] scarlet letter: “Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or suchlike heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever!”
But voters appear to be comfortable on the high horse. Ted Poe, a former district judge from Texas, made his reputation by issuing a string of embarrassing sentences. He called this “Poe-tic justice.” Once, he sentenced a man who stole pistols from the Lone Ranger (technically the actor Clayton Moore) to shovel manure in the Houston police stables. In 2004 Mr. Poe was elected to the House of Representatives at his first attempt.
[End of The Economist excerpt.]
On Wednesday, October 18, Lou Dobbs hosted a CNN television program special from Kansas City, Missouri, entitled, “War on the Middle Class.” It was an hour long, and showed how fed up and frustrated the American middle class is with its government.
The sad thing is that Americans evidently feel strongly that none of their leaders, from either party, and none of the parties’ candidates, offers any solution to their deteriorating social and economic situation. The real income for middle-class Americans is shrinking, as a direct result of America’s policies of massive international free trade and open borders. Many young people can no longer look forward to owning their own home, even if both work in the competitive labor market. The quality of life is deteriorating from the mass overcrowding caused by America’s policy of mass immigration – the population has doubled since 1950, mainly from immigration causing destruction of the environment, loss of open space, long commutes, and loss of access to natural recreation. The massive immigration is causing the breakdown of traditional American culture and values. Americans of modest means can no longer afford to educate their children or purchase good health care.
The traditional advice to people who are dissatisfied with their leaders is to vote them out of office and replace them with new leaders. The problem in the US now is that it takes millions of dollars to run a political campaign, so that all of the people running are committed to the capitalist system that made them or their contributors wealthy. It has been said that the Republicans represent families making $200,000 per year, and the Democrats represent families making $100,000 a year, and that nobody represents people making the average family income of about $46,000 per year. The system is oriented solely to making the wealthy elite wealthier. The fact that the middle class has lost its quality of life and is getting poorer economically, environmentally, and culturally is not of the least interest to the wealthy owners of America.
Over the past several decades, America has converted its health care system to a health-insurance system that is incredibly expensive. For a family, the annual cost of health insurance is about a thousand dollars a month, or $12 thousand per year. If you are destitute, you qualify for Medicaid, but if you make an average per capita income of $27,000, it is impossible to pay this amount for health insurance (difficult even for a family with median family income of $46,000). Employers are now dropping medical insurance as a fringe benefit because of its high cost, and one-third of all Americans now have no medical insurance. The cost of routine medical procedures is now very high. A few days in the hospital can wipe out the assets of many households. Many Americans now face loss of their homes, which they worked long and hard to purchase, when they encounter their first major illness (median household net worth of $40,000 will not cover the cost of many illnesses involving hospitalization; Medicaid is not available if you have major assets, such as a modest home). Prescription drugs are phenomenally expensive (e.g., my wife takes an injection for anemia that costs $2,500 every two weeks).
So many Americans are being wiped out by medical expenses that the bankruptcy rates were soaring. In response, the government has made it more difficult to declare bankruptcy. If you become ill, it is in effect US government policy that you will lose your house to pay for your medical bills. You must, essentially, lose all of your assets before you qualify for Medicaid.
Americans are being flooded with offers for credit cards, even when their credit ratings are poor. They are being offered credit by banks and credit-card companies, even when it is obvious that they cannot repay. As soon as a major medical bill arrives, the temptation is great to accept the credit card. Immediately, it is impossible to repay. At that point, the credit card issuer exerts the full force of the law to attach assets and incomes. The US government is complicit in this scheme – it recently passed legislation to make it much harder for people to declare bankruptcy when burdened by massive debt, and promotes efforts of lawyers and lenders to attach incomes and assets of people who are not able to cope with the insidious capitalist system that generates massive wealth for doctors, lawyers, and banks, paid for by people earning very little money.
The US President and Congress and Justice Department refuse to do anything effective about illegal immigration and the alien invasion. These leaders all take an oath to uphold the Constitution, which requires them to protect the country from invasion. They are guilty of gross dereliction of duty and treason, but nothing can be done to require them to obey their oaths of office – mass migration is wanted by the wealthy elite who have placed them in power, and they will not do anything to offend their masters.
America’s policies of massive international free trade, mass immigration, and open borders are destroying the environment and the quality of life for the middle class, all in order to generate more wealth for the wealthy elite. The American voter has nowhere to turn. Simply replacing the current elected officials with more of the same, who will continue to destroy the country’s environment, culture and middle class, accomplishes nothing. Boycotting elections, refusing to vote, or voting for “none of the above” does not work, either.
The leaders of America have abandoned the American middle class. The quality of life has been sliding for some time, and unrest is growing. As soon as global oil production starts to decline significantly, the quality of life of the American middle class will plummet. At that time, the American middle class will revolt against the destructive policies of its leaders. The frustration of the American middle class will first become noticeably evident with a sharp increase in acts of terrorism – domestic terrorism caused by primal Americans, not by alien invaders or foreign terrorists. These will be similar to the Unibomber, Oklahoma City, and Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park incidents. As global oil production continues to decline, social and economic conditions will worsen. Primal Americans will turn en masse against recent immigrants. Civil war will ensue, followed by revolution.
While checking out of the supermarket a couple of days ago, I noticed that one of the “scandal sheets” showed a picture of a ravaged Farrah Fawcett, who is evidently dying of anal cancer. It is reported that she is going to treat the disease “aggressively,” by chemotherapy.
My first wife died of cancer, and I have firsthand experience with this disease. After she discovered her cancer (breast cancer, initially), she followed the advice of doctors, and started chemotherapy. These treatments make you very sick. They make your hair fall out. They seriously destroy the quality of the little remaining life you may have. I can assure you that the treatment is worse than the disease. After an agonizing year of chemotherapy – and a disfiguring mastectomy – my wife accepted that she was dying. She then switched to morphine, marijuana, and steroids, and enjoyed the last six months of her life.
The other night, on Turner Classic Movies, I caught the tail end of the movie, A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters. There is a scene in which Montgomery Clift’s character is about to be executed, and his mother is telling him not to fear death, that there are worse things than death. There are indeed worse things than death. Chemotherapy is one of them.
Every month I see figures on “new housing starts.” The government is always very anxious that new housing starts number in the thousands. In the long run, it is not possible for new housing starts to number in the thousands every month. Our government is addicted to economic growth – that is a major reason behind its population policy of mass immigration to support a population growth rate of about one percent per year (three million people per year). Our society has spawned a construction industry that has to continue to produce homes, buildings, bridges and roads, even when they are destroying the planet’s biosphere. Our government is committed to feeding this voracious monster, even to the point of destroying the country’s environment, culture and middle class.
In a healthy, sustainable society, new housing starts would be zero, or almost zero (to allow for destruction by fire or natural disaster). Every time you hear a report in the news about new housing starts, read it as an indicator of how sick our society is. A society based on ever-continuing growth must ultimately fail.
On September 4, 2006, Katy Couric took over as the CBS evening news anchor. My wife and I usually watch CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight each evening, but we wanted to see how Katy fared in her new job, so we watched a few segments. There is a feature each evening about “free speech,” in which an invited guest spends perhaps a minute presenting his view on some topic. I believe it was on September 5 when a lady (Ms. Nazario?) was featured, presenting her views on how the poor illegal aliens were being oppressed in this country. She had evidently sneaked into the US from Central America, and was now complaining that her wages were so low that she could not even afford to pay to have her children smuggled into the US!
(A couple of evenings ago (September 18), Lou Dobbs reported that most illegal aliens obtain work within a month, and that they make about $900 dollars per month – about the minimum wage. That is many times what citizens of Central American countries can make in their own countries. The tragic thing is that when a worker moves to the US from Central America, he consumes many times as much energy as he did in his home country, thereby generating many times as much pollution as he did before.)
On the September 4, 2006 issue of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, it was reported that someone had requested the government to specify how many H-1B visas had been issued to foreigners. H-1B visas are issued to skilled foreign workers; at the present time up to 65,000 H-1B visas may be issued each year. They are usually valid for six years. The regulations governing the issuance of H-1B visas are a little complicated (see the ImmiHelp.com website, http://www.immihelp.com/visas/h1b/ for information about H-1B visas).
Here follows the Lou Dobbs segment on the H-1B visas. Ms. Kitty Pilgrim, CNN Anchor, is reporting.
PILGRIM: There is shocking
new evidence tonight that our nation's temporary worker visa program is
woefully mismanaged. In fact, this new information shows that the government
has little, if any, idea how many H1-B visas are being issued each year.
Bill Tucker reports.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE) BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Attorney John
Miano had a simple request. He wanted to know how many H1-B visas were issued
in the years 2004,2005. The government would not tell him.
So...
JOHN MIANO, CO-FOUNDER, PROGRAMMERS GUILD: I filed a Freedom of Information Act
request to get copies -- electronic copies of the records and applications for
H1-B guest worker visas.
TUCKER: H1-B visas are temporary guest worker visas which allow foreign workers
with specialized skills to work in the United States. Miano's reasons for
wanting to know the information are basic.
MIANO: We do not know how many of H1-B visas are being issued each year. The
second big question we would know is who is getting these visas?
TUCKER: So, what was the government's response to Miano's request?
"We have completed our search for records responsive to your request but did
not locate any."
In other words, they've lost the records.
The response came from the person in charge of handling Freedom of Information
Act requests. We asked the USCIS for a clarification, and a spokesman told us,
"The response was a mistake, the letter was sent in error."
The mistake came to their attention after LOU DOBBS TONIGHT brought it to their
attention. The agency tells us that the information Miano is looking for would
be available for an additional fee of roughly $4,500 to $5,000.
The former director of the Office of Internal Affairs at USCIS is stunned.
MICHAEL MAXWELL, FORMER DIRECTOR OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS, USCIS: I have never heard
of a taxpayer being asked to flip [foot?] the bill for publicly available
information. In fact, USCIS is required to provide these H1-B statistics
annually to both the Senate and the House Judiciary Committees and they have
not done that.
TUCKER: That the USCIS does not have an immediate database as to who holds
these visas or where these people are raises national security implications.
(on camera): Problems with the program are well known. there have been a number
of government reviews critical of its management. Yet the Senate, instead of
fixing the problem, stands ready to double the size of the H1-B program and it
its so-called immigration reform bill, it will add additional guest worker
programs for USCIS to administer.
Bill Tucker, CNN, New York.
[End of CNN segment.]
The following is an excerpt from the CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight show of September 4, 2006, about Senator Byron Dorgan’s new book, Take This Job and Ship It. It provides a good summary of how the US government is failing to protect the interests of the American middle class.
PILGRIM: Senator Byron Dorgan
says the exporting of American jobs is mortgage our country's fortune, our
principles and our way of life.
Senator Dorgan has written a critically important new book, "Take This Job
and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain Dead Politics Are Selling Out
America."
Lou Dobbs recently sat down with Senator Dorgan to discuss what "brain
dead politicians" are doing to the American people.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
SEN. BYRON DORGAN (D), NORTH DAKOTA, AUTHOR, "TAKE THIS JOB & SHIP IT:
A $700 billion a year trade deficit, $2 billion a day. That's the amount that
we import over that which we export. We're selling part of our country every
single day.
Attendant to that is the shipping of American jobs overseas, which will shrink
the middle class, stripping away health insurance and pensions and reducing
salaries.
We're moving in the wrong direction, in my judgment.
LOU DOBBS, HOST: Well, the title of your book is "Take This Job and Ship
It."
You take it far beyond that, explaining in detail some history of what has
happened to the country and what you think will happen. But here's what you
said: "But because their main offices" -- referring to the
corporations -- "remain in the United States, they know they would receive
American protection if a rogue interest were to try to expropriate their assets
overseas. I personally think that if they run-into trouble, they should call
the Bermuda Navy."
How likely is that?
DORGAN: Well, my point is if they want to, what they call, do an inversion,
renounce their American citizenship so they can not pay taxes, become Bermudan
countries, let them call the Bermudan Navy. They now -- I should mention to
you, in the book I have a picture. This picture is of a five story building, a
white building on Church Street...
DOBBS: If we could see this. This is fascinating.
DORGAN: ... in the Cayman Islands.
OK.
This picture is a picture of the Ugland House, five stories. It is -- Dave
Evans, an enterprising reporter for "Bloomberg," did the research. It
is home to 12,748 corporations. Now, they're not all there. That's just their
address. And they use that address to avoid paying U.S. taxes.
They ship jobs overseas, run-the income through the Cayman Islands, sell the
product in America.
I mean, I'm just saying this doesn't work for our country's long- term economic
growth.
DOBBS: And, we might point out, too, the Cayman Islands doesn't have a navy
either.
DORGAN: That's true.
DOBBS: This is a remarkable story, as you point out, the fact that corporate
America just doesn't care.
I mean is there anything that you can do, your colleagues in Congress,
Washington can do, to change our direction?
DORGAN: Well, I use the term "brain dead" in the title and I mean
that, brain dead. You know, we actually, Lou, say, if you fire your American
workers, close your American manufacturing plant, move the jobs to China, I
tell you what? We'll give you a tax cut. We'll give you a tax break.
That pernicious tax cut, I've tried to abolish that four times in the Senate.
You can't get it done.
I mean the fact is these big corporations that benefit from all of this have a
lot of friends and the American people know, however, that what's going on is
wrong. It's going to injure this country. It's going to shrink the middle
class. It's going to hurt our future.
And so, I mean I decided to write a book about it because it's -- it's
something this country has to sink its teeth into and deal with.
I'm not suggesting building walls around America. I'm just saying that as this
global economy moves forward, there has to be some rules. You know, you have to
have thoughtful rules on how to protect the standard of living that we've
created in the last century.
DOBBS: And to be clear, this important book will make clear, as you read it --
and I urge you to do so -- Senator Byron Dorgan is no protectionist. In point
of fact, he is calling for expanded markets for U.S. exports.
It is also a critical examination of what this country is doing to itself and
what we are permitting our political establishment and our business
establishment to do to us.
DORGAN: I've tried to tell the truth here in this book. Jim Hightower said tell
the truth then ride a fast horse. Well, I don't have a fast horse, but I've
tried to tell it like it is. And I think what is happening in this country is
wrong and is going to hurt this country's economic future.
DOBBS: And the fact that you don't have a fast horse, that you stand firm and
tall in Washington and everybody knows where to find you, is even a greater
testament to your courage and to the importance of this book.
We thank you for writing it.
Appreciate it.
Good to be with you, sir.
DORGAN: Lou, thanks very much.
[End of CNN segment.]
Patrick J. Buchanan recently published a new book, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (Thomas Dunne Books, 2006). The book describes the current alien invasion of the United States in considerable detail, and is highly recommended as a summary of the current situation.
Buchanan points out many of the unfortunate aspects of the alien invasion, such as the slaughter and rape of US citizens by murderous gangs of illegal immigrants, the ridiculous granting of “birthright” citizenship to children of illegal aliens, the introduction of serious diseases to the US population by aliens, and the provision of costly medical care and social services to illegal aliens.
I have commented more than once on the fact that President Bush and members of Congress are bound by their oaths of office to protect the country from invasion, and by allowing the alien invasion they are guilty of gross dereliction of duty and treason. I was encouraged to see that Buchanan raises the same point. I quote:
“Twice, President Bush took an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,’ Article IV, Section 4, reads, ‘The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion.’
“Yet, with perhaps 4 million illegal aliens having broken in during Bush’s five and a half years in office, and our border states being breached by thousands more, can anyone say President Bush has protected the states of this Union against that invasion? In an earlier America, this dereliction of constitutional duty would have called forth articles of impeachment.”
It is amazing to me that the President’s gross dereliction of duty and treason are now apparent to everyone, and being written about by widely read authors such as Buchanan, and yet no one has taken action to indict, try, and – when found guilty – punish the President for his treachery.
Buchanan singles out the President as being derelict in his duty to uphold the Constitution and defend the country from invasion, but he does not cite other government officials for this crime. All senior government officials, including members of Congress and the Justice Department have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, and are therefore bound by the requirement to protect the country from invasion. With very few exceptions, they are all refusing to do so. All who refuse to do so are guilty of gross dereliction of duty and treason, and should be indicted and tried along with the President. Perhaps Buchanan realizes that since most of the government are guilty of the same crime, there is little chance that anyone will be taken to task on this issue.
Buchanan points out that the Bush administration has simply stopped enforcing immigration laws. He writes:
“George Bush has taken an oath to see to it that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed. The immigration laws are clear. Businesses that hire illegal aliens break US law and are subject to sanctions. Yet, as the columnist John O’Sullivan writes, ‘in the [Clinton] years 1995, 1996 and 1997 there were between 10,000 and 18,000 work-site arrests of illegals annually. In the same years about 1,000 employers were served notices of fines for employing them. Under the Bush administration, work-site arrests fell to 159 in 2004 where there was also the princely total of three notices of intent to fine served on employers.’
“’In this dramatic relaxation of internal enforcement’ under George W. Bush, O’Sullivan concludes, ‘is the explanation of the rapidly rising estimate of immigrants living and working illegally in this country.’
“Can anyone say that, with this record, President Bush has faithfully executed the immigration laws of the United States?”
Unlike most authors, who simply “wring their hands” about the situation, Buchanan proposes a number of actions. These include:
1. An immediate moratorium on all immigration.
2. No amnesty for any illegal aliens.
3. Terminate birthright citizenship to children of illegal aliens.
4. Terminate “chain migration” (allowing alien relatives of citizens to migrate to the US)
5. End dual citizenship.
6. Require all employers to match Social Security numbers and names of all prospective employees with records in the Social Security Administration.
7. Impose fines for every instance of hiring an illegal alien.
8. If a business is found to have hired illegals, all tax deductions for the wages of those workers should be disallowed and penalties and interest on the back taxes owed should be imposed.
9. Require citizens to provide proof of citizenship, or proof that they are in the United States legally, in order to receive welfare benefits.
10. Make illegal aliens ineligible for Social Security or the earned income tax credit.
11. Do not allow asylum to any asylum seeker who has fled to another country before coming to the US.
12. End the Diversity Lottery under which 50,000 people are brought in each year.
13. State and local officials, especially law enforcement, should be empowered by the US government to inquire into the immigrant status of every suspect, and to arrest on sight known deportees who have committed felonies by sneaking back into the United States.
14. Cities that enact “sanctuary” policies where police are forbidden to ask a suspect about his or her immigration status – i.e., are forbidden to assist in enforcing immigration laws – should have their federal funds reduced.
15. US funding for colleges and universities that grant in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens that they deny to out-of-state Americans should be reduced.
16. The “other than Mexicans” caught at the border should be held in expanded Department of Homeland Security detention facilities and expeditiously deported.
17. Immigration laws, like trade laws, should be designed to protect the wages of Americans and the standard of living of their families.
Buchanan’s approach is, in his words, to “remove the magnets” that draw illegal aliens to the US. In my view, this is a feckless, cowardly approach. A much better approach, which would rid the US of all illegal aliens in a few weeks, would be to make illegal invasion a capital crime and hang an illegal alien in public each day.
The US has a massive number of illegal aliens because the government wants a large number of immigrants, legal or otherwise. It wants a population growth rate of about one percent per year, or about three million per year, to prop up its sick economy, to keep its construction industry booming, and to provide obscenely high incomes to its health-care industry, which provides government-paid medical services to most immigrants, legal or otherwise. It knows, however, that the American population does not want to be flooded with immigrants, so it was not prudent to allow three million to enter legally. Hence it embarked on the path of allowing anyone to enter, in clear violation of the country’s immigration laws. This approach had the drawback that the government does not wish to be seen to be flaunting its own laws, and so it goes through sham motions of pretending to protest the immigration invasion, such as its “catch and release” program. Like an Alice in Wonderland scene, it claims that there is nothing that can be done to stem the flow of illegal aliens.
Deception, lies, untruths. The government – in tow to the wealthy elite – is committed to a high population growth, and will force mass immigration on its people, whether they like it or not. If it is forced by popular opinion to stem the tide of illegal aliens, and is not permitted to convert illegal aliens to citizens (“amnesty”) it will simply process more legal immigrants. In any event, the US environment and culture and middle class will be destroyed – all simply to generate more wealth for the wealthy elite who own / control the country.
The government condoned the breaking of immigration laws, thereby committing treason, in allowing millions of aliens to invade the US and allowing them to stay. But it now forbids anyone to break any laws in arresting or deporting aliens on their own – that is labeled “vigilante” justice, and will be forcefully punished. Since the government will not obey the country’s laws, it has lost its authority and right to govern. The US electorate now sees that it is impossible to replace its current treasonous leaders with any different from them, since all candidates set forth by the corrupt system are worshippers of Mammon (either wealthy individuals who can finance their own campaigns, or poor individuals who must depend on contributions from the wealthy, and are hence beholden to them). The government is bent on destroying the environment, native culture, and the middle class, all to generate more wealth for the wealthy.
Since corrective change is no longer possible within the system, via the ballot box, the only alternative is revolution. The two sides in this revolution will be citizens who wish to restore their culture and environment versus the wealthy elite, who desire to perpetuate and increase their wealth. One side is inspired by moral and cultural values and passion and righteous anger, and the other is inspired by lucre and greed and lust for power. Guess which side will win.
Buchanan falls right in line with the government approach, in proposing weak, ineffectual methods, instead of forceful, direct, effective ones. The government has allowed millions of people to invade the country, and now does not want anyone to use forceful methods to expel them – for fear they might actually leave, and hurt our economy. (Almost all of the arguments presented by government and academics in favor of immigration rest on economic issues, not on environmental or cultural values.) The proper way to defend against an alien invasion is to kill the alien invaders – seek and destroy, not beg them or try to “motivate” them to leave.
The last American president to protect the country from invasion by illegal immigrants was Dwight Eisenhower, in his “Operation Wetback.” Every president since then has encouraged or condoned mass illegal immigration, and is guilty of gross dereliction of duty and treason. They have disgraced themselves, dishonored their high office, and betrayed their people. They have sold their country down the river to generate income for the government and wealth for the oligarchy. They have destroyed America, robbed it of its chance to play a significant role in the planet’s future. History will note their betrayal of their own, and of the destruction of America. As historian Will Durant observed, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.” America’s leaders destroyed it.
Buchanan quotes historian Arnold Toynbee: Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. Civilizations arose when creative minorities devised solutions to the great crisis of the age. They perished when they failed to resolve that crisis. The great crisis of our age is that, because of a one-time access to fossil fuel, human population has soared to over six billion, and large human numbers and industrial activity are destroying the biosphere. Global oil production is now peaking, so that human population will soon begin to plummet and global industrialization will soon collapse. The individuals and groups who devise a good solution to this problem will inherit the future.
The impending decline in global oil production has been foreseen by petrogeologists for decades, yet the US has done nothing to prepare for it. US and world leaders are ignoring the warnings of their scientists. Under solar-energy-based agriculture, the US can support at most about 63 million people, at a low level of living. Instead of attempting to reduce its population to match the carrying capacity of solar agriculture, however, the US embarked on a program of massive population growth, doubling the size of the US population from 150 million in 1950 to 300 million today (2006), and on the development of a high-energy-consuming industrial society that is very dependent on oil. As a result of these foolish policies, the US population and its high-energy-consuming oil-based society will soon collapse, as global petroleum supplies exhaust (or are destroyed, as Moslem terrorists have vowed to do).
Had the country prepared for the end of the Petroleum Age, by keeping its population low and culturally homogeneous, it could have transitioned smoothly from an oil-based society to a solar civilization. With US population now far beyond the carrying capacity of solar-based agriculture, that option is no longer available. Instead, as petroleum exhausts and hard times arrive, its culturally fragmented subpopulations will turn on each other in violent civil war. The first indications of this bleak future have already occurred, with the occurrence of sporadic terrorist attacks by US citizens (e.g., the Oklahoma City bombing). Such occurrences will increase in number soon, as the quality of life continues to deteriorate for the native US population. Very soon, the internal conflict will move from isolated terrorist acts to open civil war, as patriotic militias take up arms to exterminate recent immigrants.
I learned reading and arithmetic the “old fashioned way” – reading by phonetics (which is a little difficult for English, but doable) and arithmetic by rote (memorizing multiplication tables and division algorithms). These methods work very well for anybody, regardless of native ability. I have a PhD in mathematical statistics, and my learning arithmetic by rote did not harm me in any way. It certainly did not suppress my enthusiasm for higher mathematics or repress my creative mathematical abilities.
At some point in the past – in the 1960s, as I recall – the people who run our educational system decided that there must be a better way to teach reading and arithmetic. They introduced the concept of reading a word as a whole, without pronouncing it. This approach is rather idiotic (since letters represent sounds), and an entire generation of schoolchildren arose who could not read. Similarly, our educators decided that children should learn advanced mathematical concepts such as “set theory” as a foundation to their performing arithmetic. Still later, educators decided that children didn’t really need to know how to add, subtract, multiply, or divide at all, and cold simply use electronic calculators to perform these rudimentary functions. This approach was just as dumb, and produced many students who could not do basic arithmetic.
Certainly it is easier to learn when there is an understanding of the basic concept involved, and some people can benefit from a more advanced, concept-driven approach. But many people do better simply learning the basics, without knowing much of the theory. You don’t have to be a chemist to be a good cook.
In the September 12, 2006, edition of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, a segment was presented discussing the fact that educators are now realizing that the “New Math” approach to teaching basic numeracy skills such as arithmetic has been a failure. An excerpt follows:
DOBBS: There's a new
conclusion tonight about the best way in which to teach our students
mathematics. An influential math teachers group has now determined that the
best approach is not the so-called new math in which children are issued
calculators early on. Instead, it's back to basics. An approach that parents
and mathematicians have been asking for this for years.
Christine Romans reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In math class across America,
it's back to basics. According to the influential National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics, by first grade students should grasp basic addition and
subtraction. Second grade, quick, accurate multi-digit addition and subtraction.
Third grade, multiplication, division and fractions. A list of basic math
skills laid out clearly through eighth grade.
JIM RUBILLO, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF MATHEMATICS: What is it that
students really need to know? What are the building blocks, the core ideas upon
which all of the other important ideas are built? And so this is an attempt to
do that. It's saying the concept of focusing is the important thing here.
ROMANS: Education experts hope these new guidelines put the so-called math wars
to rest, a war begun with a directive from this same group in 1989 that critics
say de-emphasized math fundamentals for children in favor of calculators and
vague problem solving skills.
TOM LOVELESS, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: It's true that they need to be able to
solve problems and learn how to apply their knowledge in a practical sense to
solve real world problems. But they also do need to know some basic
computation. They need to know how to add and subtract and divide and multiply
whole numbers.
ROMANS: Consider these whole numbers. In fourth grade, students in Singapore,
Hong Kong and Japan have the best math skills. American students rank twelfth.
By eighth grade, American students ranked 15th and are outskilled by students
in Latvia, Russia, and the Slovak Republic.
According to the Thomas B. Ford (ph) Foundation, two-thirds of children attend
schools in states with mediocre education standards or worse. And they give
American math education a D plus.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: Those students in the rest of the world are getting a very focused
fundamental early education, and it's working.
DOBBS: New reason for hope for American's bright future and our kids. Thank you
very much, Christine Romans.
My wife and I recently visited Portugal as tourists. I had some business in Lisbon, and so we decided to take a short vacation prior to my business meetings. We had a great time, and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the sights, talking with the people, drinking the fine Portuguese wine, and enjoying the delightful Portuguese food.
Portugal had been touted as one of the less expensive than other places in Europe, and so we expected to see some bargains. I had not vacationed much in Europe since 1965, and so I had little recent knowledge of prices in other European countries. Were we surprised!
A few years ago, the price of a euro was about USD0.80. Because of the massive expenditures for the war in Iraq, however, the US dollar has undergone a massive loss in value relative to the euro, and the euro is now worth about USD1.26 (or USD1 = EUR0.79). As a result, the relative value of goods and services in Portugal (and other euro-denominated countries) has risen dramatically relative to the US dollar. There were still some bargains – you can get a good bottle of Portuguese wine for a couple of dollars. But a night in an international hotel (Radisson, Marriott, Best Western, etc.) can easily cost $350. As I was leaving for the airport on mylast day in Lisbon, I saw a billboard that advertised a Chrysler 300 sedan. The price was 67,000 euros, or about $85,000. This car in the US might cost $30,000. Evidently Portugal works aggressively to keep foreign imports out of the country. The US should take note. Overall, we found Portugal to be no cheaper than the US. This implies that if we are to visit some other European countries in the near future, we will find them expensive, since Portugal is considered to be less expensive.
President George Bush’s (and his predecessors’) extravagant fiscal policies (the war in Iraq, massive international free trade, open borders, massive immigration, provision of social and economic services to millions of illegal aliens) have seriously weakened the value of the US dollar, making the cost of tourism for US citizens much higher than before. The advantage of this situation to the country is that US goods and services are now relatively inexpensive, which should have a beneficial effect on our balance of trade. The unfortunate thing that has happened, however, is that the US, through its policies of massive international free trade, outsourcing, and open borders, has destroyed its basic manufacturing capacity, so that it has very few goods and services to sell to the rest of the world. For example, China now makes most of the US consumer goods, and we have nothing to sell to it n return, so our trade deficit with China is massive. As a result, we have nothing left to sell but our assets, such as our companies, real estate and ports, and we are now in the process of doing just this very thing. The latest indicator of the catastrophic failure of US economic policy is the piling up of thousands of empty shipping containers in the US – the containers were shipped to the US from China filled with Chinese manufactured goods, but we have nothing to sell back to them.
A few weeks ago saw the introduction of a new term – Islamo-fascist – to describe the Moslem terrorists. This term is really inappropriate. The term “fascist” properly refers to a state in which there is little regard for rights of the individual and a strong alliance of the state with business interests. Since the Moslem terrorists are very loosely affiliated with any state, the term “fascist” does not apply to them.
As I discussed in my article, “Is America Fascist?” the term “fascist” could conceivably be applied to the US, since there is a strong alliance between business and the state, but there is a high level of individual rights (albeit decreasing, with the severe overcrowding being caused by mass immigration and the restriction of civil liberties being promoted in response to the “War on Terrorism”). But it is simply the wrong term to apply to Moslem terrorists.
I have written on numerous occasions about the treason being committed by US President Bush, many members of Congress, and some members of the Judicial Department in not defending the country from the ongoing alien invasion. Here is some information about the oaths of office taken by senior US government officials. The information is taken from the Internet website http://www.loveallpeople.org/oathsofoffice.html . For additional discussion see also “Ben’s Guide to US Government, Songs and Oaths: The Oath of Office” at http://bensguide.gpo.gov/3-5/symbols/oaths.html and “Oath of Office” at http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Oath_Office.htm .
Oaths of Office in the United States, by Rev. Bill McGinnis, Director - LoveAllPeople.org
The Constitution specifies the exact oath of office to be taken by the President of the United States. And it outlines the requirements of oaths of office to be taken by other public officials, in the Federal Government and in the States. The United States Code then specifies the exact oaths of office for three different categories of Federal personnel: Most Other Officials, Federal Justices and Judges, and Military Enlisted Personnel.
Oath of office for the President, as specified in the Constitution, Article II, Section 1:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Source: Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section1 http://www.loveallpeople.org/usconstitutiona.txt
The oath of office for most other federal officials, other than the President (including the Vice President, Cabinet members, members of Congress, Presidential civilian appointees, military officers, and civil servants), as outlined in the Constitution and specified in the United States Code, 5USC3331:
"I, ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."
Source: United States Code - 5USC3331 - located at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/uscode/
The Oath of office for Supreme Court Justices and other Federal Judges:
"I, ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as ___ under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."
Source: United States Code - 28USC453 - located at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/uscode/
The Military Enlistment Oath (for enlisted personnel):
"I, __________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
NOTE: Military enlisted personnel swear to obey the orders given to them by their officers, up through their chain of command, to the President. No people other than enlisted military swear any kind of oath to obey the President. The first obligation of Military Officers and Government officials is to obey the Constitution and the duly-enacted Laws, not to obey the President. Even Executive Branch officials must not obey the President if he asks them to do anything which is unlawful. This is their Constitutional obligation, which their oath of office compels them to obey.
Source: United States Code - 10USC502 - at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/uscode/
For an excellent discussion of military oaths, please see this official essay at http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj02/win02/ keskel.html
[End of McGinnis excerpt.]
The salient feature of all oaths taken by US government officials is the requirement to uphold the Constitution. With respect to the ongoing alien invasion of the US, the Constitution is very explicit: Article IV, Section 4, states, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion. Furthermore, the Constitution expects the Congress to repel invasions: Article I, Section 8, states, “The Congress shall have Power…To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”
It is very clear that the Constitution requires the President to protect the country from invasion, and expects Congress to call forth the Militia to repel invasions. The President and the Congress are completely derelict in performing this duty. Article III, Section 3, states: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” The alien invaders are destroying our environment, killing US citizens, and reducing their quality of life. The alien invaders are enemies of the American people. To give them aid and comfort, as the President and Congress are doing, is an act of treason.
A few weeks ago, Edward O. Wilson’s new book, The Creation, was published (W. W. Norton & Company, 2006). Here follow some comments posted on Yahoo! News on September 1, 2006.
Author sees science, religion saving environment by Daniel Trotta, Friday September 1, 11:30 AM ET
Scientist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author E.O. Wilson is out to save life on Earth -- literally -- and as a secular humanist has decided to enlist people of religious faith in his mission.
The Harvard professor sees science and religion as potential allies for averting the mass extinction of the species being caused by man, as he argues in his latest book, "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth" (W.W. Norton), due out on Tuesday.
Asked whether he could unite two groups with clashing world views, Wilson immediately responded, "I know I can."
Among people of religious faith, "There is a potentially powerful commitment to conservation -- saving the creation -- once the connection is made and once the scientists are willing to form an alliance," Wilson told Reuters in a telephone interview on Thursday.
"There are two world views in conflict -- religious and secular -- but yet they can meet in friendship on one of the most important issues of this century," he said.
Wilson, 77, wrote "The Creation" in the form of a series of letters to an imaginary South Baptist minister -- just the opposite of preaching to the converted.
While the scientist believes in evolution, the evangelical Christian interprets the Bible as the literal word of God.
"I may be wrong, you may be wrong. We may both be partly right," Wilson writes.
"Does this difference in worldview separate us in all things? It does not," he goes on, drawing on his former experience as a Southern Baptist to find common ground.
Wilson, who won Pulitzers for general non-fiction in 1979 and 1991, documents how human activity has accelerated the mass extinction of species and says habitat preservation is most urgent. He writes that the world's 25 most endangered hotspots could be saved with a one-time payment of $30 billion, a relative pittance compared to the wealth that nature generates for man.
In the Reuters interview, Wilson called the religious community in the United States a "powerful majority." The Southern Baptist Convention says on its Web site it has 16 million members in 42,000 churches.
Wilson is no longer one, having drifted away from religion in his youth. Wilson considers himself neither atheist nor agnostic but a "provisional deist."
"I'm willing to accept the possibility that there is some kind of intelligent force beyond our current understanding," he said.
As such he said he gets a "uniformly warm response" from Southern Baptists ministers, and sees mainstream public opinion as getting greener.
"The public opinion in the United States has become pastel green, and the green seems to be deepening," he said. "This could be just foolish optimism, but we could be approaching the turning point."
[End of Yahoo article.]
This new release attracted my attention since it is my belief, too, that the planet’s environmental crisis will be solved by spiritual means. I have written much about this – this view is the basis for my consideration of synarchy as a means for planetary management. Others, such as Thom Hartmann and Neale Donald Walsch have presented similar views (i.e., that the solution of the environmental crisis must involve spiritual means).
I purchased a copy of The Creation, and have skimmed through it. It is interesting reading about the biology of Earth and the current crisis of the biosphere. Unfortunately, like most books on the subjects of the environment and/or spirituality (e.g., Lester Brown’s Plan B 2.0, Thom Hartmann’s The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, or Neale Donald Walsch’s various Conversations with God books), its presents little insight or operationally useful recommendations for suggesting how science and religion might work together to accomplish the objective of resolving the environmental crisis.
Last night on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight (October 20, 2006), it was reported that US Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were sentenced to prison terms of over ten years for shooting a previously deported illegal alien who was attempting to smuggle seven hundred pounds of illegal drugs into the United States. The agents were convicted on the testimony of the drug smuggler, who was given immunity from prosecution by the US prosecutor – and is now free. Their crime was that they did not follow correct administrative procedures in pursuing the smuggler – they are supposed to apprise their superiors of their actions in the field, and to break off pursuit of suspected illegal aliens if the illegal alien breaks any law (such as running a stop sign or smuggling drugs).
The US government has chosen to jail the law enforcement officers who were pursuing an illegal-alien drug smuggler, and grant immunity from prosecution to the criminal. Why not the reverse? Why not grant immunity to the Border Patrol agents in order to jail the criminal? Is it not better to jail illegal aliens for drug smuggling than to jail Border Patrol agents for failing to follow correct administrative procedures in the pursuit of an illegal-alien drug smuggler? What is going on here? On the surface, it does not make any sense. There is some talk that President Bush wanted to please or appease Mexico’s President Fox by sacrificing the Border Patrol agents. Could this be true?
Here is an excerpt from the program:
DOBBS: The government today
answers critics of its decision to prosecute two Border Patrol agents who were
sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for shooting a drug smuggler that was
given immunity by the prosecutors. And illegal aliens tonight receiving another
helping hand from the ACLU.
Casey Wian reports on federal prosecutors who now claim they had no choice but
to offer a drug smuggler immunity and no choice but to prosecute two U.S.
Border Patrol agents.
We'll find out.
And Bill Tucker tonight reports on the ACLU's latest effort to undermine the
efforts of local governments trying to deal with the illegal immigration
crisis.
We begin tonight with Casey Wian in Los Angeles -- Casey.
CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Lou, federal prosecutors are finally talking
about their case against two Border Patrol agent who shot a Mexican drug
smuggler. As you mentioned, prosecutors said they had no choice to offer that
drug smuggler immunity from prosecution but throw the book at the agents.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WIAN (voice over): Hours after the sentencing of former Border Patrol agents
Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean to 11 and 12-year prison terms respectively,
federal prosecutors defended their controversial case. U.S. attorney Johnny
Sutton also complained about critics of his department's prosecution of the
agents, while granting immunity to the man they are convicted of shooting in
the buttocks, admitted drug smuggler Oscar Aldrete Davila.
JOHNNY SUTTON, U.S. ATTORNEY: Some in the media have suggested that Agent
Compean and Agent Ramos should get medals for shooting this drug suspect. I
disagree.
I think that this jury did exactly the right thing by holding these two agents
accountable for what they did. The United States of America is a country where
the rule of law applies. It applies to all citizens. It applies to police
officers.
WIAN: But apparently not to drug smugglers. Sutton claims investigators had no
case against Aldrete Davila, even though there's no dispute he was driving this
van loaded with 743 pounds of marijuana, ignored agents' repeated orders to
stop, scuffled with Agent Compean, and fled back across the border.
Sutton says there was no case, because no fingerprints were found in the van,
and agents couldn't identify Aldrete Davila.
SUTTON: I feel no sympathy for this alien. I feel that he deserves to be in
prison. If we ever find him again smuggling drugs into this country, we will
happily put him there.
WIAN: Sutton says he had no evidence to substantiate reports Aldrete Davila was
caught smuggling drugs into the United States a second time after his
confrontation with agents Ramos and Compean. An El Paso homeland security
official read this statement from DHS inspector General Richard Skinner...
JAY SMITH, DHS OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL: "These two agents have
betrayed the trust placed in them by the Department of Homeland Security, their
fellow agents, and the public. I again commend the United States Attorney's
Office for their successful prosecution of this important case."
WIAN: Prosecutors say the 11 and 12-year sentences are just, but when asked why
the agents were originally offered plea bargains of one-year prison sentences,
Sutton would not answer.
The convictions will be appealed while Ramos and Compean for now remain free on
bail.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIAN: That appeal is expected to focus on a decision by Judge Kathleen Cardone
to dismiss a motion for a new trial based on new information from three jurors
who now say they were coerced to vote guilty.
Meanwhile, family members and others involved in the defense side of the case
say the best hope for the agents right now might be a presidential pardon --
Lou.
DOBBS: A presidential pardon. The idea -- that becomes somewhat problematic
given the relationship between President Bush and President Fox, and the
suspicion in many quarters, and critics of this case, that this prosecution was
carried out primarily to satisfy the interests of the Mexican government.
What do you think?
WIAN: Well, defense attorneys say they can't figure out why the government was
so insistent on prosecuting this case. You know, raising the question of
offering these agents one year in prison as a plea bargain and then, you know,
going -- going completely the other side. There sure is a lot of speculation
about pressure from the Mexican government, though we have not seen any direct
evidence of it.
DOBBS: Absolutely. And there is also considerable speculation down there on the
border, in El Paso, that -- that the drug cartels in Mexico hold immense
influence on the northern side of the border, and are also playing a role in
some of the political decisions that are being made there.
We're going to be investigating that as well in this broadcast for some time to
come. It's going to take a while, but we're going to continue along both of
those lines.
I'm interested in something that the U.S. attorney, Casey, said about the rule
of law applying. Did -- did anyone ask the U.S. attorney why the federal
government then is not enforcing U.S. immigration law?
And I was interested to see a DHS official there. Did anyone ask him to explain
why this government is not securing our southern border with Mexico?
And thirdly, what, then, makes this case against two U.S. Border Patrol agents
who served with distinction so important?
WIAN: Well, to take your last question, first, they say it's important because
police officers, federal agents, anyone who has the authority to shoot someone
under the color of law has a higher responsibility to obey the letter of that
law. They pointed to what they call the cover-up in this case, and they say
that that's why this case needed to be prosecuted the way it was. As to the
broader question of border security, that didn't come up. But the Homeland
Security Department official and Johnny Sutton both said that they are proud of
Border Patrol agents who put their lives on the line every day to defend this
nation, yet they said they had no choice but to prosecute these two.
DOBBS: Did they explain why they had no choice but to give this drug smuggler
immunity in order to carry out the prosecution? Because the reason I ask that
is, I'm sure that U.S. attorney Johnny Sutton knows that the top three revenue
sources for a corrupt and incompetent government in Mexico are oil revenues,
remittances primarily from illegal aliens in this country, and tens of billions
of dollars in drug money that flow across that border.
WIAN: No, they -- the only thing they said about the decision to offer him
immunity and to not prosecute him was they didn't have enough evidence to make
a case against the smuggler. And they said his testimony was critical to
convicting these two agents. It sure seems to me that they put that interest
before the interests of enforcing the law against the drug smuggler -- Lou.
DOBBS: And this question is going to be followed, of course, by congressional
investigators. At least two dozen congressmen saying that they are going to
proceed with an investigation of this case. A case that many are calling an
outright travesty of American justice.
We thank you very much.
And that goes to the subject of our poll.
Casey Wian, thank you.
Do you believe the prosecution of U.S. Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean
to more than 10 years in federal prison a travesty of American justice? We'd
like to know what you think. Yes or no?
Cast your vote, please, at loudobbs.com. The results coming up here later.
Next, the ACLU defends illegal aliens again, filing more lawsuits.
[End of Lou Dobbs excerpt.]
This case demonstrates very clearly the US government’s policy of flaunting the laws on immigration, yet demanding that no one else take any steps to enforce those laws. The US attorney pompously asserted that the US obeys the law. This is a complete lie. It does not enforce the laws on immigration at all. And, as the Ramos / Compean verdicts show, it will deal harshly with anyone who attempts to interfere with its program of encouraging mass immigration.
The illegal alien crisis arose because the US government refused to enforce the country’s immigration laws. Since the government wants more immigration, to satisfy the wealthy elite, it is not going to do anything effective to reduce total immigration, and it is not likely to do much to counter illegal immigration now that it is such a large component of total immigration. Its approach in this matter is unusual – it breaks immigration laws in allowing mass illegal immigration to happen and to continue, and it reacts forcefully against any attempt by others to enforce the law to end illegal immigration. It flaunts the Constitution and laws when that works to promote illegal immigration, but insists that the laws be obeyed whenever that promotes illegal immigration.
In the Ramos / Compean case,
it is easy to see why the US government jailed the agents and freed the drug
smuggler – it sided with the money. The massive illegal-drug industry (law
enforcement, legal expenses, judicial costs, replacement of wealth stolen to
pay for drugs at artificially high prices, etc.) is a major component of GDP.
It was created and is nurtured by the US government’s policies, and they do not
want to see anything effective done to diminish it or to decrease immigration,
either.
Since the federal government has completely abrogated its responsibility to rid the country of illegal aliens, a number of states and local governments have recently enacted legislation in an attempt to address the problem. These attempts are not having much of an effect, but they are a very public reminder of the fact that the federal government is doing nothing about the problem. It is interesting to observe that the illegal immigration problem has arisen and is continuing because the federal government refuses to act, but at the same time the federal government does not want to allow any individuals or state or local governments to act in the matter, either. It is blatantly breaking the law in allowing this problem to arise and to continue, but it adamantly refuses for any other entity to take any steps, legal or otherwise, to resolve the problem.
CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight regularly comments on the failure of the federal government to act to repel the alien invasion, and its efforts to thwart other groups (states, local governments, militias, anti-immigration organizations, individuals) to take effective action against the illegals. Many local governments, such as Hazleton, Pennsylvania, Escondido, California, and Costa Mesa, California, have attempted to pass local ordinances preventing employers from hiring illegal aliens, preventing landlords from renting to them, allowing local law enforcement officials to arrest illegal aliens, and making English the official language. These efforts are being stymied, because they infringe on the authority of the federal government to act in this area. The fact that the federal government refuses to act is not an issue – it will not relinquish this authority to the states. This is not just a matter of principle, but it is part of the federal government’s program to keep immigration (legal or illegal) at high levels, in order to generate wealth for the country’s wealthy elite.
The September 12, 2006, edition of Lou Dobbs Tonight presented discussion of this situation. On the program it was noted that 85 percent of all countries have an official language. I recently worked in a country, East Timor, that has two official languages (Portuguese and Tetum) and two working languages (English and Bahasa Indonesia).
The Sunday, August 20, 2006, issue of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal presented an article summarizing the legal issues involved in state and local efforts to enforce immigration laws. Here is an excerpt from that article.
Fighting Illegal Immigration. States’ efforts to enforce laws might be unconstitutional, by Erik Schelzig (Associated Press)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Legislatures around the country are passing state laws to get tough on illegal immigration, but legal experts say many of those laws will turn out to be unconstitutional.
More than 550 bills relating to illegal immigration were introduced in statehouses this year, and at least 77 were enacted, according to a survey presented last week at the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
However, NCSL analyst Ann Morse told lawmakers at the conference that a 1986 federal law forbids states from enacting stricter criminal or civil penalties for illegal immigration than those adopted by Congress.
"The federal government decided it was too complicated for the states to enact their own competing laws on this," she said.
So what about the laws passed this year?
"I believe they'll be tested in court," she said.
Cracking down
State bills aimed at illegal immigration this year have included measures on education, employment, driver's licenses, law enforcement, legal services and trafficking.
"Unique among the states, Georgia introduced a bill that addressed all these different policy arenas, and passed it as one bill earlier this spring," Morse said.
Lawmakers like Tennessee state Rep. Gary Moore are frustrated that proposed federal legislation on illegal immigration has stalled in Congress.
"If we could get the federal government to give us a little more leeway, we would see a lot more reforms at the state level," said Moore, a Democrat, who said a survey of his constituents found immigration was a top concern.
It's unlikely the federal government will want to relinquish enforcement of immigration laws to the states, said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Washingtonbased Migration Policy Institute.
"This is a prerogative that the feds really guard, particularly in Congress, with a passion that is probably unlike anything else," he said.
Still, the states are likely to try to acquire as much authority on the subject as they can.
"Because the Congress is unable to act, people at your level - and the local level - are beginning to take things into their own hands," Papademetriou told lawmakers at the conference. "I think we're seeing the beginnings of something that will gradually transfer more power to the states."
Papademetriou was critical of enforcement-only proposals to address illegal immigration. Some other proposals, like increasing the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents by 2,000 each year for the next six years, are unlikely to succeed, he said.
"I venture to say, in my humble option, that there is no way ... you can come close to that number and sustain it," he said.
It would take tens of thousands of applicants to have enough candidates to qualify, to pass training and to become experienced border patrol agents, he said.
[End of SHJ article.]
On a recent Lou Dobbs Tonight program (October 20, 2006), it was noted that the American Civil Liberties Association (ACLU) is bringing suit against Riverside, New Jersey, to prevent it from enforcing anti-immigration measures. (It is rather clear from recent ACLU activities that it is more interested in promoting the interests of illegal aliens than it is in promoting the interests of Americans, but that’s another story.) It appears that any efforts on the part of municipalities to make illegal immigration a local crime will fail. As a result, these municipalities are taking actions within their normal sphere of authority, such as rescinding business licenses of business owners who hire or rent to illegals, in an attempt to rid themselves of this scourge.
Their efforts will be in vain, however, since the federal government is determined to keep immigration levels high to appease the wealthy oligarchs, however it has to do it.
Here is an extract of the Lou Dobbs segment on the Riverside / ACLU incident.
DOBBS: Attempts by local
communities to deal with illegal immigration are now under attack by the
American Civil Liberties Union. The town of Riverside, New Jersey, has been hit
with a lawsuit that seeks to overturn its ordinance aimed at preventing
employers of illegal aliens and preventing landlords from renting to them.
Riverside is hardly alone. Dozens of towns and cities across the country have
drafted measures and efforts to deal with the failure of the federal government
to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws.
Bill Tucker reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The township of Riverside, New
Jersey, passed its ordinance in the face of loud demonstrations. Now it's
staring into the teeth of a lot of lawyers who want the city to back down from
its attempt to prohibit local employers from hiring illegal aliens and
landlords from renting to illegal aliens.
The American Civil Liberties Union, along with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense
Fund, People for the American Way and other attorneys say Riverside can't pass
or enforce such an ordinance.
JAMES KATZ, ACLU ATTORNEY: Municipalities are creatures of state law. They only
have those powers that the legislature affords them. And they simply have no
authority to be involved in regulating matters of immigration.
TUCKER: To the contrary, argue the lawyers from the other side. They say
Riverside and communities like it are following the letter of the law.
CHRIS KOBACH, IMMIGRATION REFORM: Federal law, it says, you can't make this is
a city crime to hire an illegal alien, but you can impose other sanctions,
including taking away the business's license. And so that's what these cities
are doing, is they are closely conforming to federal law and saying, OK, well,
if we can't make it a crime, can we at least take away the license? That's what
we'll do.
TUCKER: In other words, create regulations that are in line with federal law.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute has served as legal counsel to the
communities of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and Escondido, California, among others.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TUCKER: We contacted Riverside's attorney today, who says the current ordinance
is being amended and should be approved this coming Wednesday to put in it line
with the ordinance in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. A legal challenge to that
ordinance, Lou, is expected within two weeks before it goes into effect.
DOBBS: What's the ACLU representing here? Who? What's the interest here?
TUCKER: The plaintiffs in this case, they say, are the immigrants in the
community...
DOBBS: Oh, they're using...
TUCKER: ... who face possible discrimination.
DOBBS: So they are representing the illegal alien, is that correct? Or are they
just using immigrant -- how are they using them? Are they making any
distinction between illegal immigrant and immigrant?
TUCKER: No, they are not.
DOBBS: Good work, ACLU. Thank you.
[End of Lou Dobbs segment.]
Frequently when he is discussing immigration, Lou Dobbs makes the point that he is not opposed to legal immigration, but only to illegal immigration. Because he is such a prominent spokesman against the destruction of America by the US government, it is unfortunate that he does not realize that it is mass immigration of any kind, legal or illegal, that is destroying our environment, security, culture, and quality of life for the middle class. Illegal immigration has the added drawback that it shows that the government – the President, the Congress, the Judiciary – are all breaking immigration laws and committing treason. But to focus on illegal immigration is missing the main point. It is mass immigration, massive international free trade, and open borders that are destroying America, not just illegal immigration. If laws were passed today granting amnesty to all illegal aliens, and granting all immigrants rights to enter the US, then there would be no illegal immigration at all. But the country’s environment, security, culture and quality of life for the middle class would be just as threatened and ultimately, destroyed.
Wake up, Lou! All mass immigration is bad for the US, not just illegal mass immigration. Please lend your powerful voice to help stop mass immigration, massive international free trade, and open borders, and stop diminishing the value of your efforts by focusing on an irrelevant aspect of the problem. Illegal immigration is certainly bad, since it corrupts the country’s legal ethics. It reveals the treachery of America’s leaders, but even if it were, by fiat, eliminated tomorrow, the real problems – mass immigration, massive international free trade, and open borders – would continue unabated.
Lou Dobbs has written a book entitled, War on the Middle Class, which describes how the US government has adopted policies and programs that are destroying the quality of life for the US middle class. I have not yet read the book, but I imagine that I am rather familiar with its contents from watching CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight television program.
The US government has indeed declared war on the US middle class. Over the past several decades, it has adopted policies that are destroying it, economically, culturally, and environmentally. The principal policies that are destroying the US middle class are mass immigration, massive international free trade, and open borders. By means of massive international free trade, the US worker, who makes on average about a hundred dollars a day, is forced to compete with foreign workers who often make as little as one or two dollars a day. With this wage disparity, it is impossible, under massive international free trade, for most US workers to keep their high wages and high standard of living. Our manufacturing companies cannot compete with foreign firms on this basis – either we have to stop massive international free trade, or US workers’ wages have to come down.
Decades ago, when the US had a massive advantage in technology (and restricted the flow of goods – and people – from low-wage countries), we could pay our workers more, because our machines were doing much of the work (“productivity”). But now that technology is available around the world, foreign firms can be as productive as US firms. Under free trade, if we are to compete, the wages of US workers must fall to the levels of foreign workers. If not, then manufacturing firms must go out of business, or relocate to low-wage foreign countries, or outsource their labor to low-wage foreign countries, or import massive amounts of low-cost foreign labor. All of these things are happening. What US workers do not seem to realize, however, is that as long as the US continues its policies of massive international free trade and open borders (allowing low-wage alien workers into the country), their wages will continue to fall.
The US is in the process of converting itself into a Third-World country, with a large poor class and a small wealthy class. The only people who benefit from massive international free trade, massive immigration and open borders are the wealthy elite – the oligarchs who own the economy and control the country. They make their billions of dollars in wealth no matter how poor the middle class become, or whether their manufacturing facilities are relocated to other countries. America’s government is totally in thrall to the wealthy elite. The US is in fact a plutocracy – a government run for the benefit of the wealthy.
When I was young, US workers made far more than those in other countries, and the quality of life was good for most Americans. A father of a family of four could afford to purchase a home and a car and educate his children, and pay for medical care – and have his wife stay at home with the children, if she wished. Because of massive international free trade, mass immigration, and open borders, that lifestyle has vanished for most of the middle class. Most young Americans will not be able to afford these things, unless – or even if – both the husband and wife work in the competitive labor market.
In 1950, the population of the US was 150 million people. The country was stable, powerful, and had a large, well-off middle class. Then, the US government passed the Immigration Act of 1965, which opened the floodgates to immigration to alien cultures. Mainly because of immigration, the US population has exploded to 300 million. Crowding is severe. In 1950, there was still much open space, and it was possible to visit state and national parks, such as the Grand Canyon, on demand or on short notice. Such visits now require a reservation a year in advance. A raft trip down a wild river on a white-water raft cost very little in 1950 – now, because of overcrowding, it costs a couple of thousand dollars per person. In 1950, many middle-class people could afford to have a farm, a mountain cottage, or a place at a lake or the beach. That is now a luxury reserved mainly for the wealthy, since there is no longer any such space near most cities, and the prices of these items is now out of reach. In 1950, commute times to jobs were very reasonable. Now, many people have to commute to work an hour each way.
When I purchased my first home in 1964 – a new three-bedroom two-bath brick home on a three-quarter lot in a new subdivision, Parkwood, in Durham, North Carolina – it cost $17,300. This amount was a little more than I was making while finishing my graduate studies, and less than my salary at my first job after graduate school. A Volkswagen “Beetle” cost $1,600 and a Ford Falcon or Mustang cost $1,800. Income taxes were about ten percent of my salary. A person of average means could easily purchase a late-model or new car – costing a fraction of his salary – with cash, without the need for a loan. Now, inexpensive cars cost $15,000 - $25,000 – about the average (median) income of a US worker – and the median price of a US home is $264,000 (in October, 2006) – about ten times the median per capita income and six times the median family income. The US government has truly destroyed the quality of life of its middle class. Why is the middle class doing nothing about this!
Personal safety is a thing of the past. When I was young, few people locked their homes. The ignition switch in a 1955 Chevrolet could be turned on and the key left at home. Loitering was not permitted. Our country was safe. It is now a very dangerous place. Overcrowding has reduced the civility of the population, and mass immigration has allowed hundreds of thousands of vicious Hispanic gang members to terrorize our population, slaughtering our people at will and gang-raping our women and girls. The wealthy, of course, are largely immune from all of these problems. They can still afford a vacation home, a white-water raft trip down the Colorado, low commute times, and to live in a gated, guarded community.
Our American culture is being destroyed. In 1950, the country was about 90 percent white-Christian, English-speaking European-stock, and about ten percent black (also Christian and English-speaking), with virtually no Hispanics or Moslems. Now, whites are minorities in many places. The government can only win elections by pandering to minorities. The country has been fragmented into a hodge-podge of very different ethnic groups.
By embarking on costly social programs, such as the War on Poverty, and on expensive wars, such as the War in Vietnam and the War in Iraq, the government has placed a severe economic burden on the middle class, whose taxes must pay for all of this. With mass immigration, the government now provides free schooling, medical care, and social services to millions of immigrants – both legal and illegal. Most of this is paid for by the American middle class, and not by the immigrants (legal or otherwise), who pay relatively little in taxes and consume massive amounts of government services.
The American middle class is being straddled with an incredible burden of cost, for programs and policies that they did not ask for and did not want. Because of massive international free trade, our manufacturing capacity has been destroyed, and we now import most consumer goods from China and other Third-World countries to which our manufacturing capacity has been transferred. The American middle class is being worked to death, to support policies that benefit only the wealthy elite. In 1950, there were discussions about how the amount of free time would increase for workers, now that technology and energy were doing much of the work. After World War II, the work week did decrease from 44 hours to 40 hours, but then, over just a few decades of the US government’s pernicious policies, not only did the work week not decrease, and it became necessary for the wife to work in the competitive labor market, and for many people to hold down two jobs. All of this extra work is required to pay for the US government’s programs that benefit only the wealthy. In 1950, the two parents in a home worked about 44 hours a week, combined. Now, they work about 80 hours combined.
The quality of life was high for Americans in the 1950s because machines did much of the work, and most of the benefit from this machine work accrued to the worker. Usually, only about one person (the husband / father) worked in a family, and the tax burden was low (e.g., 10 percent of the labor of one person). Nowadays, most of the benefit of the productivity of machines accrues to the government or to the wealthy elite. Both parents in a family must work, sometime at two jobs, and much of the benefit of their labor (their human work or the work of the machines that they produce and operate) goes to the government (e.g., 50 percent of the labor and income of two people, vs. 10 percent of the labor and income of one). The benefit of the productivity of machines, and a good portion of the labor of the family adults, goes to the government for payment of costly government programs, or to the wealthy owners of the American economy. In 1950, the government budget was a much lower proportion of GDP than it is today, and the GDP was a lot lower. All of this additional economic wealth (the difference between the government budget in 2006 and the government budget in 1950) is being taken from workers, who produce it, and transferred to the government to spend on its programs, or to the wealthy to increase their wealth.
The US government, with its deliberate policies to increase its income and make the wealthy wealthier, has placed an extreme burden on the middle class. It is working twice as hard as it did 50 years ago, and its environment, culture, and income have been seriously degraded. Productivity (work by machines) has increased dramatically since 50 years ago, but all of this increase has gone into additional wealth for the wealthy elite, not for improved quality of life for the middle class. As Lou Dobbs has indicated, the US government has indeed declared war on the US middle class. Why does the middle class continue, year after year, to allow this?
The average American middle class worker has been transformed, in 50 years, from a relatively well-off citizen to an incredibly oppressed slave today, and must pay for massive government programs that he does not want (political wars, health and welfare services to immigrants, an exquisitely expensive health-care system, transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy elite).
The US government has destroyed the environment and US culture, and is now working its people to death simply to generate more wealth for the ruling elite. Economists are right that massive international free trade (e.g., NAFTA, CAFTA), massive migration, and open borders will increase the economy. But they refuse to discuss the fact that the increase in economic production is going either to the government budget or to the wealthy elite. They refuse to discuss that the open space, environment, quality of life and income of the middle class is being destroyed as the wealthy get wealthier, and the US is transformed into a Third-World country with an wealthy ruling elite and an impoverished population living in overcrowded tenements, in a country and culture that is no longer their own.
Our national security is a shambles. Under its policies of massive international free trade, millions of tons of uninspected shipping containers enter the country every day. Millions of illegal aliens flow across the borders every year, to slaughter and rape our people, destroy our environment, and reduce our quality of life from overcrowding, disease, theft, and use of government-provided services.
I have lived in worked in many countries of the world. I know what conditions are like there. Even in Portugal, which I recently visited, and which is a developed first-world country, most people cannot live in single-family homes, but live instead in crowded apartments and bear long commutes to work. The US government has opted for this oppressive, bleak future for its own people. It has willfully destroyed the wonderful, uncrowded, ethnically homogeneous (in language, religion, and culture), stable, secure, wealthy country that existed in 1950. It has driven its middle class to desperation by reducing its wages and forcing it to pay for unpopular wars and massive medical and social programs for illegal aliens. It has devised an insidious medical care system that makes instant millionaires of its doctors, while requiring the middle class to pay about twelve thousand dollars a year for medical insurance. Many middle-class Americans who worked hard all of their lives to buy a house for their retirement will see it lost when they have to pay for their first major medical incident. Through its destructive policies, the US government has caused overcrowding, destroyed open spaces, introduced massive traffic congestion, fragmented the country into myriad ethnic groups, and exposed the country to severe risk of attack.
The amazing thing about what has happened – the destruction of quality of life for America’s middle class – is that it did not have to happen. In 1960, America was on top of the world. US productivity was high, much of the benefit of labor went to the workers, and they were well-off compared to workers in the rest of the world. Productivity was increasing every year, and Americans could have enjoyed more free time, not less. The birth rate had fallen to replacement level, so the country, as long as it restricted immigration, could have remained as uncrowded as it was then. There was no need to flood more people into our beautiful, low-population-density, homogeneous-culture country. Our borders were secure. Our population was culturally homogeneous. All of this was destroyed – and for what? Simply to generate more income for the government, and more wealth for the wealthy. The economists told the wealthy elite what to do ot generate increased economic activity and increased wealth, and the elite instructed the politicians to proceed to do it. The economists lied that everyone would be better off economically. Politicians such as Senator Ted Kennedy lied that the Immigration Act of 1965 would not flood our country with people from alien cultures and destroy our own culture, as prescient leaders such as Senator Sam Ervin warned it would.
People do not notice change that happens slowly. As the quality of life disintegrated for the American middle class, few people spoke up and warned what was happening. Now that massive change has occurred, in just a few decades, people are very upset – with the exorbitant cost of medical care, with the decline in income, with the burden of paying for wars and social programs and mass immigration that they did not ask for, with the loss of environment and overcrowding from mass immigration, with extreme commute times, with the loss of cultural homogeneity, with the loss of personal security, with the conversion of America to a Third-World country – all to provide massive wealth to the billionaire elite.
People will bear almost anything to have food, shelter, and security. There is a strong reluctance to reject our current government, which has betrayed us, for fear that the alternative could be worse. As oppressed as people are, and as much as they have been robbed of quality of life by their government, they will not risk losing what they still have – adequate food and shelter – for an uncertain future that could be far worse.
People will endure much hard work and suffering if they know that they are all in it together, working for a common, worthwhile cause and equitably burdened. But the situation today in which the middle class quality of life has been destroyed – sacrificed to provide obscene wealth for the wealthy elite – is an unbearable one. The decline in the quality of life of the American middle class was not caused by an external force, such as an attack from another nation or a natural disaster. It was deliberately caused by the wealthy elite, simply to make them wealthier at the expense of the middle class. As a result, an intense resentment and anger is building within the American middle class, directed against the wealthy elite that has destroyed its environment, culture, economic well-being, and general quality of life. When things reach the “tipping point,” they will attack in rage against those who have betrayed them.
The American people have been brainwashed into thinking that, because we live in a “democracy,” it is they, the people, who are running things. They would like to change things. They are frustrated that the government will not listen to them, and send the immigrants back home and end the war in Iraq and introduce basic, low-cost medical care. They are now realizing that under our “two-party” system, in which both parties are in thrall to the capitalist elite, things cannot be changed. It is not possible to “throw the bastards out,” because the system produces only other similar bastards – members of the wealthy elite or slaves to it – as candidates.
Because most US citizens are not homeless and starving, they continue to put up with the status quo, in which the have been robbed of their rich heritage by the ruling elite. They fear revolutionary change, because radical change could make things even worse. But this situation will not persist for long. As soon as global oil production starts to fall, the quality of life for many Americans will decline rapidly, from its current level to far lower levels. The change will not occur over five decades, but over a year or so. The change will be drastic, and it will be apparent that even greater change – mass starvation, global resource wars – is all that is ahead. It will be apparent to everyone that things are going to get far worse under the current system and that there is little risk in rebelling against it – people will have nothing to lose in revolution. At that time, the American people – the original, European, primal Americans – will rise up to destroy the system that sold their culture, environment, and way of life to the wealthy elite. At first, domestic terrorism will increase. Then, as conditions grow rapidly worse, the situation will degenerate into civil war. The American primal society – white, Christian, European, English-speaking culture – will exercise its right of primacy and turn against all of the recent immigrants from other cultures. It will turn against the political leaders and wealthy elite who have betrayed them, because they will see that they have nothing to lose. America will disintegrate into the “nine nations of North America” for a time, and then pass into oblivion.
This future was not necessary. It did not have to happen. It was chosen by America’s political leaders and wealthy elite, starting shortly after the Second World War. But it has happened, and there is no going back. The nation’s borders were opened, our society has been overrun by invaders, and our government has no wish or will to repel them. The wealthy elite are committed to the generation of wealth that open borders, mass immigration and massive international free trade bring. The government is not only committed to supporting the wealth-generation of its masters, but has convinced itself of the philosophical correctness of the rationalizing lies that it told itself to justify its actions in support of the wealthy elite. It is committed to “free trade,” “open borders,” “economic efficiency,” “democracy,” and to transforming the US into a “multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural conglomerate” (as Pat Buchanan calls the US). It views all of these as lofty goals that were well worth the sacrifice of the quality of life of its middle class. It betrayed the American middle class – its own people.
The US government justifies the war in Iraq in terms of stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction, of stopping the spread of terrorism, and of spreading democracy, when in fact the real reason for the war was access to Iraqi oil. Similarly, it justified its policies of mass immigration, massive international free trade, and open borders as being in the interest of all Americans, to make them wealthier. But it has not made them wealthier. It has made them poorer. And it has also destroyed their environment, their culture, and their quality of life. It has transformed America into a stable, secure, well-off, homogeneous society into a Third-World country with a massive income gap between its wealthy and everyone else. It made only the wealthy elite wealthier.
Immigrants are attracted to English-culture countries, such as the US, Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand. They reject their own cultures and choose to live in the English cultures, if they possibly can. As Pat Buchanan noted, this proves the superiority of English culture over the others. So why did the US government choose to destroy this culture in America? According to Professor Kevin MacDonald (Culture of Critique, 1st Books, 1998), it was the Jews who worked for passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 and the dilution of American white Protestant culture. According to others, it was Senator Ted Kennedy, principal sponsor of the Act, who desired the same goal. According to others, it was liberal economists who wanted to expand the world economy, no matter what the human or social cost, to America or anyone else.
But these players were not the principal actors in the drama. They are bit players, political pawns, hired hands. Who really killed cock robin was the wealthy elite: the same white, Christian, English-speaking, European-stock people as the American middle class they were exploiting and condemning to economic and social destruction. They turned their backs on their own people. The wealthy elite are in fact their own culture – citizens of the world, with ties to no culture but Mammon. As Walt Kelly’s Pogo commented, “We have seen the enemy, and it is us.” When things fall all to pieces, and civil war emerges, the American middle class, realizing who destroyed their society and culture, will turn with a vengeance on those who worked to bring it down – the wealthy elite. But they will also turn on their pawns – the President, the members of Congress, and the members of the Judiciary – who refused to protect the country from invasion. And, as things degenerate, they will turn on all who are different – different religion, language, culture, ethnicity.
A few months ago, I was informed by American Express Ameriprise that my “data” had been stolen, and that as a result I should be especially vigilant to guard against fraud or identity theft. A total of 158,000 customers and 58,000 financial advisors were informed of this theft of personal data. In March, 98,000 records of graduate students and graduate-school applicants were stolen from the University of California at Berkeley. August a year ago, 1.1 million database records were stolen from Berkeley. AT&T Inc. announced in August that "unauthorized persons" illegally accessed personal data, including credit card information, from several thousand customers who purchased Internet equipment through the company's online store. Also in August, Sovereign Bank announced to thousands of its customers that some of their account information might have been stolen in the theft of three employees' laptop computers. In May, The Veterans Affairs Department announced that records containing personal identifying data of 26 million veterans had been stolen.
The list goes on and on. The fact is, personal data stored in computers is being stolen, in massive amounts, from both private and government facilities.
The thing that makes data so valuable to the data thieves is the fact that almost all data bases are based on a single unique numerical identifier – the Social Security Number (SSN). Once thieves have this number, they can easily link the stolen data to other data bases, and they can easily accomplish fraud or identity theft. If this number were encrypted, so that it could not be read by the thieves, the problem would be less severe, but the fact is that it is not usually encrypted. Data theft is occurring in epidemic proportions, and fraud and identity theft are rampant because of it.
Our government does not care that personal data are being stolen. Data thefts and the work required to unravel the fraud and identity theft that result simply increase the gross national product (GDP), and the GDP is the government’s primary performance measure. If the government did care, it would prevent use of the SSN as a universal identifier – as it promised to do when the SSN was introduced at the time of the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935, when the American public protested in anger over the introduction of an individual numerical identfier for all citizens.
The government has taken a few steps to limit the use of the SSN as a universal identifier. Under the Privacy Act of 1974, it is illegal for any organization that accepts grants from the US government to set up any system of records based on the SSN. It is my belief, however, that this law is routinely flaunted, since many universities and teaching hospitals, both of which usualy receive government grants, appear to use the SSN as an identifier. In a token step in the right direction, just this year the government banned the use of the SSN as an identifier on state driver’s licenses. These steps are of insignificant consequence, however, and simply underscore the hypocracy of the government with respect to concern for personal data vulnerability caused by the widespread use of the SSN.
As I have mentioned earlier, my local physician group uses the SSN as an identifier in its office records. Since it evidently processes insurance claims through an intermediary that uses the SSN, it refuses to process medical insurance claims unless you provide your SSN to them, and allow them to store it in their data base and give it to others. When I complained about this practice, they informed me that they imposed strict rules on who could access my data. When I informed them that the risk was not from legal use by office personnel but from illegal use by the thieves when the data was stolen, and that the SSN made the data very useful to the data thieves, they became silent and refused to discuss the matter further. They did not have an answer for this, and did not want to address it, discuss it, or evidently even consider it. Theft of the data from them was not something that they cared to think about. The lady struck me as the android in The Matrix – I had asked a question that she had not been programmed to answer, of which her data banks had no knowledge, and her response was to slip into a “sleep” mode.
My wife recently underwent a number of medical tests at various medical providers, and each one gave us a copy of their “privacy policy.” The policies never discuss the fact that their systems are based on the SSN. They never indicate that critical identifying data are encrypted so that they are of no value to thieves. All they ever discuss is their own legal use of the data. Their legal use of the data is not the problem. Their own use of the data is not the problem. It is the lack of security of their data bases, and the fact that they contain the SSN identifier that is the problem. When a stolen data base contains an SSN, the data thieves are provided with a powerful key that enables them to cause tremedous harm to the patient. And that is the issue that the government and the organizations storing customer, client and patient data refuse to acknowlege or address. They blame the data thieves for the problem, and never their own corrupt policies and laws.
This current system of personl data security is so corrupt, and so vulnerable, and so uncaring of the patient’s (consumer’s) data, that it defies understanding how it could countinue in a society that purports to care for the individual. It is but one more example of how the quality of life for the American middle class has been compromised by the US government. The US government introduced the SSN, and it promised that the SSN would never be allowed to become a universal identifier (my Social Security card, issued in 1958, bears the legend, “Not for Identification” – that legend no longer appears on Social Security cards). It lied. Largely because of the government’s refusal to control flagrant abuse of the SSN, citizens’ personal data is now essentially in the public domain. Of course, the US Constitution does not include a right to personal privacy, so this is of no great concern to the government. It did promise in 1935, however, not to allow use of the SSN as a universal identifier, and it should be held to this promise.
My wife has had Type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes for a couple of decades. It has been under control since she started taking insulin injections (twice daily) several years ago. Prior to that, she tried to control it with diet and oral insulin pills. That approach did not work, and the diabetes caused some damage to her organs – conjestive heart failure and some damage to her kidneys.
Once she switched to the insulin injections, the damage to her organs stopped, and she was able to continue a reasonable lifestyle. Until a few months ago, that is, when her kidneys suffered a serious decline. What happened is that, perhaps a year ago, she started taking ibuprofen for minor aches and pains. What she did not know is that diabetics should never take ibuprofiin (e.g., Motrin, Advil, Nuprin) or any kind of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (“NSAIDs”). Aspirin and acetominophen are all right for control of minor pain, but the NSAIDS are not, since they restrict the capillaries of the circulatory system (as part of their “anti-imflammatory” effect).
Proper functioning of the capillaries is essential for proper functioning of the kidneys. In the case of my wife, her kidneys operated adequately, but not within normal range. The main indicator of kidney function is a chemical (a protein) called creatinine. If the kidneys are not functioning properly, they allow an increased amount of creatinine into the urine. The level of creatinine is easily tested from a urine sample. For my wife, this “out of normal range” condition was probably caused by the diabetes. Fortunately, although operating out of range, the kidneys performed sufficiently well that my wife enjoyed good health and was able to pursue all normal activities (e.g., golf, bridge, shopping, home-making, touristing, living in underdeveloped countries).
After taking ibuprofen for some time (many months), however, she became quite ill. She lost all of her energy. This happened while I was working in East Timor. When I left in March, she was fine. When I arrived back home in July, she was exhausted.
We immediately visited our personal physician (an internist), who took blood and urine specimens and had them tested. The creatinine levels were much higher than just a few months ago, and so he referred her immediately to a nephrologist (kidney specialist). After a series of questions, the nephrologist became aware that Jackie was taking ibuprofen each day, and had been doing it for some time. He explained that ibuprofen restricts the capillaries in the kidneys. Hers weren’t that great before, but they were performing adequatly. The ibuprofen, it seems, had damaged them to the point where they no longer sent proper chemical signals to the marrow of the bones to produce red blood cells. As a result, she was severely anemic. The nephrologist explained that she could not take ibuprofen or any other NSAID, ever.
As an immediate response to her condition, the nephrologist prescribed injections of a chemical, Aranesp (darbepoetin alfa), every two weeks. This chemical would stimulate the bone marrow to produce red blood cells, and her energy should return in a few weeks. It did. Also, as soon as she stopped taking the ibuprofen, her creatinine levels reduced substantially, although not back to the previous levels. It is still necessary for her to take the Aranesp shots, perhaps for the rest of her life. Each shot costs $2,500.
The nephrologist informed us that there are cases where healthy young men took the prescribed dose of ibuprofen for a couple of years, and ended up with severe kidney damage and the need to use kidney dialysis machines. He explained that the US military had been using an NSAID painkiller, and had experienced similar problems.
Ibuprofen and other NSAIDs are very dangerous drugs, that can cause renal (kidney) failure, even in young, healthy people. It is strange that these dangerous drugs are sold “over the counter.” In the case of my wife, none of her physicians ever thought to ask her whether she was taking an NSAID, or to warn her that, with diabetes, she never should – until she became seriously ill. This is but one more example of the insidious US health care system. It allows the indiscriminant, unmonitored use of dangerous chemicals, in full knowledge of the fact that they may lead to serious chronic or fatal illness. Why would it do this? The money. In the case of my wife, the country’s gross national product (GNP) has just risen by $2,500 every two weeks, or $65,000 per year, just for the medication, not counting the nephrologist’s bill.
The October 23 issue of Time magazine features a picture of Senator Barack Obama, with the caption: Why Barack Obama Could Be The Next President. This is really outlandish. A black man will never be president of the United States. The native American population (white European-stock) will never allow the presidency of the nation to be given to a member of the ethnic group whose ancestors were their slaves. Talk was that when Gen. Colin Powell was encouraged to run for President, his family talked him out of it, convinced that he would be assassinated. The environment that motivated Powell’s family to counsel him not to run has not changed. If anything, the mood of the American people has become even more angry, as its quality of life continues to decline. Colin Powell understood the American psyche; Barack Obama does not.
A woman, such as Senator Hillary Clinton, could certainly be President of the United States, and probably will, if it lasts that long. But a black person will never be. If Obama is risk-averse, he should content himself with being a Senator. That is a good job, and a safe one. If he is a risk-seeker, then go for it!
FndID(101)
FndTitle(Miscellany 30: US Population Explosion; US Government Refuses to Enforce Immigration Laws; The Border Wall Won’t Work; Apocalypse; Jean Raspail’s Prophetic Vision; Mass Immigration Is Bad for the US; Ibuprofen (and other NSAIDS) Kills!)
FndDescription(Miscellany 30: US Population Explosion; US Government Refuses to Enforce Immigration Laws; The Border Wall Won’t Work; Apocalypse; Jean Raspail’s Prophetic Vision; Mass Immigration Is Bad for the US; Ibuproein (and other NSAIDS) Kills!)
FndKeywords(US population explosion; US government treason on immigration; border wall won't work; apocalypse; Jean Raspail; mass immigration; ibuprofen kills; NSAIDs kill)