Copyright © 2007 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. (25 January 2007)
Contents
Miscellany: Commentary on Recent Events and Reading. 2
The Magazine for People Who Can’t Think. 2
Californication in Progress. 3
The Cost of the US-Mexico Border Fence. 3
Remembering Martin Luther King. 6
Instate Tuition for Illegal Aliens. 9
Schwarzenegger’s Evil Ploy: Mandatory Health Insurance. 9
Americans Killed by Illegal Immigrants. 20
The Cost of the War in Iraq. 26
Environmental Destruction Caused by Immigration. 27
All Illegal Aliens Are Criminals. 31
How Can the US Criticize Terrorists?. 32
US Leaders Encourage Destruction of US Environment, Culture, and Quality of Life. 32
Things Aren’t Always What They Seem: Donating Used Clothing Destroys Jobs. 34
The State of the Union Address: Solving the Problem of Illegal Immigration 34
Iran: The US Is a Paper Tiger! 37
Rock and Roll Is NOT Black Music. 40
Rapid Population Growth Destroys Everything. 41
Snowflakes: The Eighth Wonder of the Natural World. 54
Nostradamus: The New City Shall Be Destroyed. 58
When I was much younger, I had a friend who referred to Life magazine as the magazine for people who could not read and Time magazine as the magazine for people who could not think. (For older readers, Life was a weekly current-events magazine containing mainly pictures – Time was the same familiar magazine as exists today). His disparaging remarks were rather on the mark, although USA Today, which did not exist then, may take honors for the top-ranking vehicle for uncritical reporting of current events.
In the latest issue of Time, there was an article in which the term income per head was used, instead of the more common income per capita. This is a good example of how Time dumbs down its vocabulary. When I was a boy, ordinary people knew what the term per capita meant. They knew what capital punishment meant, and what capitation taxes were. It is sad to see the cultural literacy of the country slowly disintegrate, as it is flooded with two million uneducated immigrants each year.
The January 20-26, 2007, issue of The Economist contained an article about the Californication of America’s western states. From the article, it is clear that the author had not heard the term before. It is not a new term. When I moved to Florida in 1953, the population of that state was a couple of million. It is now 18 million, and increasing by about 1.4 million per year. In 1953, Florida was an idyllic, mainly rural state. It is now an urban nightmare. Many years ago, as the population started to soar, old-time Florida residents would display the bumper sticker, “Don’t Californicate Florida.” The term is very old. The process has been going on for many years, and continues now, spreading like a cancer as the country’s population explodes, is evident in many other places.
On the 12 January 2007 issue of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, it was reported that the Congressional Research Service had estimated that it would cost two billion dollars to construct a US-Mexico border fence, and that it would cost 49 billion dollars to maintain the fence for 25 years. It was reported that the US is currently spending about three billion dollars per year in “border-control” activities.
These costs are really high. If the US were serious about protecting its border with Mexico, a much more cost-effective measure would be to set up a number of machine-gun posts along the border, and to shoot invaders. This could easily be accomplished within our normal Army budget, at no additional cost whatsoever.
The headlines of the December 30, 2006, issue of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal proclaimed “Iraq Hangs Saddam.” This headline is very misleading, since Iraq is at the present time a puppet state totally controlled by the US. Saddam Hussein was in US custody until a few minutes before his execution, and whether he was to be hanged or not was in the sole discretion of the United States. The misleading headline is understandable, in view of the fact that South Carolina is a Republican stronghold, and would do nothing to denigrate President George Bush.
President Bush is playing a very dangerous game. In previous times, war was regarded as the “sport of kings.” No king wanted to be executed in the event that he lost the war, and so kings rarely executed other kings. Bush has chosen to execute his defeated adversary. He has “upped” the ante to a level that more prudent men rarely seek. His action makes it entirely justifiable, even necessary, for the enemy – Sunni Iraqis, Sunni Arabs, disaffected Moslems – to execute him. By making the fight “personal” and executing the enemy’s leader, he has ensured that they will make every effort to kill him, in retaliation. Furthermore, since Bush has caused the killing of Saddam Hussein’s family members, the retaliation will almost surely include assassination of Bush’s family members, in like manner.
It was rumored that US President John Kennedy tried to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, but he failed, and that Castro then attempted to assassinate Kennedy and succeeded. Whether this is true will probably never be known, but the point is that if one leader tries to kill another, then that action not only justifies the other leader’s doing the same, but, for survival reasons, absolutely demands it. In the realm of human social behavior, it is universally understood and expected that if someone tries to kill you, you are justified in defending yourself – in trying to kill them before they kill you. Furthermore, it is understood and expected in most cultures that the relatives and supporters of one leader slain by another have a moral obligation to retaliate.
While he is in the White House, Bush is well protected. I would imagine that he will be assassinated within a year after leaving the White House. America’s borders are wide open, and terrorists are free to enter our country and move about it essentially unhindered. It is incredible that Bush would execute Saddam Hussein, since he is himself so vulnerable. It is said that Hussein was protected by 15,000 bodyguards. Bush will be protected by a handful of Secret Service agents. It would appear that Bush and his family are doomed.
Last year, three members of the Duke University lacrosse team were indicted by the Durham County (North Carolina) prosecutor for the alleged rape of a stripper who had performed for the team. It turns out that DNA testing showed evidence of semen on the stripper from four men, none of whom were charged. The prosecution proceeded solely on the basis of the word of the stripper. The results of the DNA tests were kept secret by the prosecutor until quite recently, when this fact became known from another source. As a result, the prosecutor dropped the rape charge, but the three men are still charged with sexual assault and kidnapping.
It is a sorry day when the lives of three young college men are seriously disrupted solely on the word of a stripper, who, it turns out, is also an unwed mother, twice over.
On January 15, “Martin Luther King Day,” the role of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the US civil rights movement of the 1960s was recognized. In view of the fact that King was a moral reprobate – he shamelessly humiliated his wife with an endless succession of extramarital affairs – it is a shame that this day honors the man, rather than simply the movement. Whenever King’s profligate adultery is mentioned, one often hears it said that John F. Kennedy was also a libertine, but that people respect him, so why shouldn’t they respect King, too.
Well, some people may respect Kennedy, but I am certainly not among them. Early in my career, I worked at the Research Triangle Institute, near Durham, North Carolina. An associate of mine was a US Army colonel, who had spent much of his career in Washington. He told me that Kennedy had a list of over 800 women that he had seduced. This was in 1963, in the days when the press did not talk about the personal affairs of leaders. Apologists for Kennedy’s sexual excesses state that some of the medications that he took for his back pain caused him to become excessively “randy.” This is very hard to believe, since whatever this medication was it would have quickly become an eagerly-sought-after aphrodisiac.
The difference between Kennedy and King is that Kennedy was a declared politician, whereas King, despite his political activities, was a pastor. As Henry Kissinger once noted, “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Political leaders are constantly barraged by propositions from women, and the public understands their being seduced and their seducing others. But in many cases, for distinguished statesmen of the past, it is a “sometimes” thing, such as Franklin Roosevelt’s affair with Lucy Mercer or Dwight Eisenhower’s affair with Kay Summersby (his wartime driver / secretary). The public can even understand and pardon a succession of affairs, as in the case of Bill Clinton. Kennedy’s sexual exploits are legendary, but then, he was just a politician. On the other hand, a pastor, such as King, is supposed to be a role model. He is not supposed to leave a succession of sexual conquests in his path. Kennedy was not a pastor, and did not represent himself as a religious or family role model. King was a pastor, and preached against adultery. He was a shameless hypocrite. In no way does he deserve personal recognition as a hero of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Day should be renamed as Civil Rights Day or Black Recognition Day or something that does not honor a man who is unworthy of this recognition.
The US went to war in Iraq in order to gain access to Iraqi oil. But US leaders were too spineless to admit this fundamental reason for the war, and so they concocted a lie to justify their invasion. Their initial justification was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which might be used against us or our allies. But there were none. So then the rationale was that Iraq was a breeding ground for terrorists. But the war in Iraq caused more hatred and spawned more terrorists. So then it was asserted that the rationale was that democracy should be installed in Iraq, because democracy – our purported system – is supposedly better than any other system: it would benefit the Iraqi “people” (there is in fact no Iraqi “people”) and bring stability to the Middle East region. But democracy has never worked in the Arab Middle East – it is an alien (and repulsive) concept of government for the Arabs and the Moslems, and it is not taking hold. And the Middle East, with us in Iraq, is far less stable that it was under Saddam Hussein.
Having seen that all three reasons for the war were untrue, invalid or impossible to achieve, one would think that we would therefore now leave. But we cannot, since the real reason for the war was to obtain access to Iraqi oil, and the government believes that it still may be possible to achieve that objective. What makes the war difficult for the government to continue, however, is that the American electorate is unwilling to spend one hundred billion dollars a year and lose one thousand American lives each year to achieve the stated objectives in the war – to implement democracy in Iraq, or reduce terrorism, or make the Middle East region more stable, or even save Iraq from total destruction (balkanization into its original three parts – Kurdistan, Sunnistan, and Shiastan). The US government has lied about the real reason for the war, however, and is stubbornly unwilling to admit this deceit. If the government had told the US people from the start that we could no longer operate our cars or heat our homes without access to Iraqi oil, many people would have agreed to the war and would still agree to it, although certainly not conducted in the incompetent fashion in which it is now being waged. (It does not require the endless expenditure of one hundred billion dollars per year to gain access to the oil. As I have written previously, all that is required, as Machiavelli observed, is to divide the country into three parts, representing its three major ethnic groups, and set a puppet leader, beholden to us and willing to give us access to whatever oil they may possess, in charge of each part.)
As Sir Walter Scott famously remarked, “Oh, what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
Some state universities in the US are now offering “instate” tuition to illegal aliens, while US citizens from other states, and even legal aliens from other states, must pay “out-of-state” rates. This absurd situation shows how sick the attitude of many Americans toward illegal aliens is, viewing them as poor refugees who must be given aid, comfort, employment, social and medical services, and even US citizenship, when they are in fact common criminals who have invaded our country. The cost of health care and education has risen greatly because of mass immigration. It is amazing that middle class Americans, who must bear the brunt of the cost of providing free or reduced-cost services to illegal aliens (through taxes and increased cost to themselves), continue to put up with this obscene situation, which is condoned and encouraged by their treacherous government.
The US health system is completely broken. In the 1940s, health care was of reasonable cost. Physicians earned about what other skilled professionals made – about $10,000 – 15,000 per year. Then, in the 1950s, the US government and the American Medical Association colluded to restrict the supply of physicians, in order to increase physician salaries. This conspiracy worked, and physician salaries soon started to rise far above the salaries of other similarly educated professionals.
The government was not content, however, simply to increase the cost of physician salaries. It worked diligently to increase the cost of drugs, medical equipment, and surgical procedures. The reason for this was twofold – to increase wealth for America’s wealthy elite, and to increase gross national product. The government funded, through massive research grants, the development of fabulously expensive drugs, equipment and operations that could not possibly be paid for by people of average means, and so it promoted a system of employee-provided health insurance to pay for these expensive modalities of treatment. At first, few people made use of the exotic products and services, but, eventually, as the population aged, as people were kept alive to extreme ages, as stressful living and environmental conditions caused many illnesses (e.g., asthma, cancer, autism, restless leg syndrome), as “fake diseases” were invented (e.g., erectile dysfunction and other normal conditions / consequences of aging), and as medical advertising was introduced and then greatly expanded, they were in large-scale use. Just as a junkie is addicted to drugs, the American public is now “hooked” on expensive drugs and operations that extend and improve the quality of life. The “pushers” of these expensive drugs and operations are the US government and the medical establishment.
As medical costs skyrocketed and the demand for life-enhancing drugs and procedures increased, medical insurance became very expensive. Under the US policy of massive international free trade, it eventually became impossible for US firms to compete against foreign firms, whose employees made a few dollars a day. As a result, firms started dropping employee medical-insurance coverage as an employee benefit, and at the present time, an estimated 47 million Americans (about 30 percent of the labor force) have no medical insurance. Furthermore, because medical services are now so expensive, they cannot afford any medical care at all.
The government has succeeded well in its program of vastly increasing the cost of medical care, and generating massive wealth for doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and manufacturers of medical equipment and supplies. Unfortunately, the cost of medical care is now so great that many firms cannot afford to offer medical insurance as an employee benefit, and middle-class Americans cannot afford medical care at all. So what is to be done?
Well, what is to be done is that the government is now in the process of passing laws making it mandatory to purchase medical insurance. Early in Bill Clinton’s presidency, Hillary Clinton once proposed such an idea, but it was roundly rejected. Now, the state of Massachusetts has passed such a law, and, just last week, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California proposed that California also adopt such a law. Schwarzenegger wants to require all people to have medical insurance – even illegal aliens. In this way, he would address the absurd current situation in which illegal aliens obtain free medical care from hospital emergency and maternity wards. He proposes that assistance will be provided to anyone who cannot afford the insurance – such as almost all illegal aliens.
What is wrong with this proposal is that it would gradually wipe out the assets of most unemployed middle-class Americans, unless they are old enough to qualify for Medicare. Any medical insurance scheme would cost $500 – 1,000 per month. An unemployed or retired person with assets, such as a house, furnishings, and a car, would not qualify for assistance, because of these assets. Eventually, all of his retirement savings would be consumed in paying for mandatory medical insurance. The government is determined that much of an average person’s income, and eventually, all of his savings, will be transferred to the wealthy-elite medical establishment. Previously, a person would at least have the option of refusing high-cost medical care. Now, the government is going to force you to pay for it, whether you like it or not, whether you use it or not, or whether you can afford it or not. If you are an average middle-class American, the government is going to transfer almost all of your income and assets to the medical establishment, and there is going to be nothing that you can do about it.
On the January 8, 2007, edition of Lou Dobbs Tonight, some interesting statistics were presented. At Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas (where President John Kennedy died), 12,000 babies are delivered each year, free, to illegal aliens. Parkland is a public hospital, and so taxpayers have to foot the bill for this. (The really big cost is that all of the babies born to illegal aliens are granted “birthright” citizenship, even though their parents are criminal invaders. Each one of those babies will eventually cause the destruction of an acre of natural land, and contribute to the destruction of American culture and quality of life for its middle class.) In California in 2004, 43 percent of all births covered by the state’s Medi-Cal program were to illegal aliens, and these births cost $400 million. Once again, taxpayers have to pay for this.
What the government wants to do is to shift the cost of providing free medical services directly to the taxpayer, so that the massive cost of allowing alien invaders to have access to free services in this country is not so obvious. So what Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hillary Clinton, and others who propose mandatory insurance are in effect saying is that American citizens are going to be forced to pay directly for the free medical services to illegal aliens, whether they like it or not. This is an outrage. A person will no longer have the choice of simply not using medical services and paying nothing. Instead, he will be forced to pay for the average amount of use, via mandatory insurance. What is even worse is that the illegal aliens will pay nothing for the insurance, because they have little income and no assets. Middle-class or poor Americans who have some assets – savings, a house – will be forced to pay for the insurance until they are wiped out, and made as poor as the alien invaders.
Mandatory medical insurance is an evil ploy to force people to transfer a massive amount of their income and savings to wealthy health care providers. The government has succeeded in increasing the cost of medical care to stratospheric levels, so that middle-class people can no longer afford services, or even medical insurance – even treatment for ordinary illnesses is now very expensive. And now that the government has allowed the country to be flooded with illegal aliens who are provided free medical care, it is going to force all Americans to pay directly for this, directly, via mandated medical insurance. This movement is an outrage, and just one more example of how the US government is waging war on the US middle class. When is the American public going to rebel against the fascist dictatorship that is, through its policies of mass immigration and massive international free trade, driving it into the ground?
In case you object to my use of the word “fascist” to describe our government, refer to my article, “Is America Fascist”: a fascist government is one in which the primary interest of government is business, with little regard for the individual. In the present case, the government has, in complete abrogation of its vows under the Constitution, allowed the country to be invaded by tens of millions of illegal aliens, to whom it is rendering billions of dollars worth of social, economic and medical services, which it now demands be paid directly by the American citizens. It is totally aligned with business, and cares not that mass immigration and massive international free trade are destroying American environment and culture and the quality of life for the American middle class. It is a plutocracy that serves only the wealthy-elite oligarchy – in its view, the American middle class exists solely to generate income and wealth for the wealthy elite who own the country. It is patently clear that the US government is a fascist dictatorship, and it will fall, quickly, just as all other fascist dictatorships before it.
Just for the record, here follows part of the January 8, 2007 edition of Lou Dobbs Tonight, from which I cited some statistics.
PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing that everyone in his state, including those here illegally, be required to purchase health insurance.
GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R), CALIFORNIA: If you can't afford it, the state will help you buy it, but you must be insured.
VILES: He argues that since the state is obligated to pay for emergency room treatment for illegal aliens, it makes financial sense to force them to buy subsidized health insurance.
SCHWARZENEGGER: Our question, the decisions that our team has made, was not should we treat them or not treat them. The question really is, how can we treat them in the most cost-effective way? We are trying to be realistic here and not live in denial.
VILES: Republicans immediately criticized the governor's plan, saying it would attract and reward illegal aliens.
MICHAEL VILLINES, CALIF. STATE ASSEMBLY: If they break the law coming into our country, they will get benefits that they wouldn't receive if they played by the rules. And that kind of message is a very dangerous message for a nation that supposedly believes in the rule of law to send anywhere around the world, especially in our own neighborhoods.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This would be a further validation of saying illegal behavior is OK, and I don't think that's where Californians want to go. Californians have been very clear about that.
VILES: Schwarzenegger estimates the cost of subsidizing insurance for illegal aliens at roughly $2.5 billion a year. California already spends heavily on healthcare for illegals.
In 2004, an estimated 43 percent of all births covered by the state's Medi-Cal program were to illegal aliens. The cost of those 105,000 deliveries was $400 million.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VILES: And Lou, this is a national problem, to be sure. At Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas, the hospital where President Kennedy died, it's now estimated 75 percent of the babies born at that hospital are born to illegal aliens -- Lou.
DOBBS: Seventy-five percent.
VILES: And this is one of the biggest maternity wards in the United States, 16,000 babies born there every year, 12,000 of them born to illegals.
DOBBS: Now, correct me if I'm wrong in this, Pete, but the very generous Governor Schwarzenegger, who now describes himself something as a centrist, even as he proposes something this radical, which is -- you've got to love about California and really American politics -- 43 percent of Medicaid is going to -- say that again -- in California.
VILES: Forty-three percent of the births in this state that are subsidized by the state's health program, 43 percent are to illegal aliens. And that number has been growing a little bit in the past couple of years.
DOBBS: It's remarkable. The reaction to this, I suppose, I think it's fair to say, is only beginning to set in.
Peter Viles, thank you very much, reporting from Los Angeles.
That brings us to the subject of our poll tonight. Do you believe the United States should provide taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal aliens? Yes or no?
Please cast your vote at loudobbs.com. We'll have the results here upcoming.
Toys 'R' Us tonight says it will give a $25,000 prize to the parents of a newborn baby. The prize, part of the store's new year baby contest.
Now, originally, Toys 'R' Us said it would not give the mother the prize because she is an illegal alien from China. A firestorm of criticism apparently erupted from Chinese illegal immigrant groups and some elected officials in New York who support those illegal immigrant groups, and Toys 'R' Us has reversed its decision.
An estimated 300,000 babies are born to illegal aliens in this country each and every year. And as you just heard Peter Viles report from California, at no small expense to taxpayers.
A Dallas-based pizza chain has decided that the U.S. dollar is no longer the only currency it will accept at its stores. In Texas, starting today, Pizza Patron customers will pay for their pizza in pesos.
Pesos at Pizza Patron. It's got a ring to it.
A spokesman for Pizza Patron told us the company caters to the Hispanic community and many of their customers visit Mexico, frequently, they say. And they have a few extra pesos in their pockets. So this is the way to serve those customers who frequent Mexico and keep a few pesos. The company's trying out the peso plan. If I get one more "P" into this, I will have to apologize for another two months. The chain operates in Texas, Arizona, California, Colorado and Nevada. And if we spent much time, we could think about what all of those states have in common.
[End of Lou Dobbs segment.]
Last week, two Texas border-patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and José Compean, were put in prison – for terms of ten and eleven years – for shooting an illegal-alien drug dealer. The illegal-alien drug dealer was given immunity from prosecution for testifying against the agents, whose “crime” was evidently an administrative error (border patrol agents must discontinue a chase whenever a suspect breaks a law, such as running a stop light, and they must contact headquarters for permission to proceed). The criminal illegal alien is now suing the US government for five million dollars because of the incident. The US government is letting the illegal-alien drug smuggler go free, and has put the border patrol agents in prison for pursuing him.
The US government wants for illegal aliens to be able to cross over the Mexican border at will. Illegal aliens are good for business, and generate much wealth for the wealthy elite who own the country. Low-wage illegal workers are desired because the government’s policy of massive international free trade has made it impossible for US firms to compete against foreign firms whose laborers earn but a few dollars per day. The government cannot bring itself to admit this to the US citizens who are losing their jobs and incomes to foreign workers, so it goes through the motions of protecting our borders with such foolish programs as the “catch and release” system. It has sent a clear message to all border patrol agents that they had better follow the rules of allowing illegal aliens to enter uncontested, or they will go to prison.
In 2005, the US granted naturalized citizenship to 600,000 foreigners. Last year, it granted naturalized citizenship to 700,000 foreigners and 300,000 more by reason of “birthright” citizenship to children of illegal aliens or visitors. The massive immigration – the legal immigration approaching a million a year and the illegal immigration of about two million per year – is destroying the US environment and quality of life. Each person added to the US population causes the destruction of one acre of natural land (conversion to roads, buildings, and other infrastructure), overcrowding, traffic jams, increased commute times, more pressure on our agricultural land. Each immigrant to the US uses about ten times as much commercial energy as he did in his former home, resulting in a massive increase in contribution to global warming. There is nothing good about immigration – legal or illegal: it is destroying the US environment and destroying the culture and quality of life for the previous US citizens. The only reason why the government is promoting immigration so intensely is to generate wealth for the wealthy elite.
A rather bizarre incident occurred in Arizona a couple of weeks ago. Part of the Mexican border was being patrolled by a unit from the Tennessee National Guard. A group of armed men approached from Mexico, and the National Guard men retreated. Believe it or not, they were obeying orders! They are under orders not to shoot invaders to our country! On the news last night, it was announced that the Tennessee National Guard Headquarters had awarded them a commendation for obeying orders, and retreating. Can you imagine that! Being granted an award for following orders. Being granted an award for not shooting invaders to our country.
If I were in the Tennessee National Guard, I would be very embarrassed that I was deployed along the border, but prohibited from shooting enemy invaders. I would tear up the award and throw it at the feet of the disgusting leaders who mandate retreat of our soldiers in the face of invading enemies.
Every year, illegal aliens kill an estimated 1,400 - 4,400 Americans (murders and automobile accidents) – precise data are not available, and the estimates vary substantially. This is greater than the number of US soldiers being killed in the war in Iraq each year. Every day, the US government allows several thousand more illegal aliens to invade our country. The country is in desperate need of defense, but our government refuses to do this or allow this, and it will imprison anyone who tries to do so on his own. It wants mass immigration. It wants open borders. It wants mass immigration. It wants massive international free trade. It refuses to enforce the Constitution, which requires it to defend the country from invasion. Our government leaders are traitors, who are destroying the country – destruction of the natural environment because of increased population, destruction of American culture and quality of life from mass immigration and massive international free trade, and the killing of many Americans by illegal aliens. Our government is oppressing us far more than England ever oppressed the American colonies when they rebelled. It is just a matter of time until the US population rises in rebellion against its treacherous government.
Some time ago I wrote a piece in which I estimated the number of Americans killed by illegal aliens to be about 1,400 per year. I did this by assuming that the murder rate and the deaths from motor vehicle accidents were the same for illegal aliens as for US citizens. This is a very conservative approach, since it is known that Mexicans, who are by far the largest component of the illegal alien group, are reported to be poor drivers (prone, for example, to driving while drunk on the weekend). I constructed this estimate since the government does not issue detailed statistics about the number of US citizens killed, maimed, or assaulted by illegal aliens.
Recently, I came across an article by Joseph Farah that estimates of the number of Americans killed each year by illegal aliens to be 4,380 per year. This is quite a number! If true, more Americans are killed each year by illegal aliens than US soldier have died in Iraq over the four-year period since the war began (just over 3,000 total to date). If true, more Americans are killed each year by illegal aliens than were killed in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. (2,997). If true, more Americans are killed each year by illegal aliens than were killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (2,390).
It is rather remarkable that Americans are so squeamish about deaths from the war in Iraq, when it is directed toward an objective that is very important to most of them – access to Iraqi oil. One thousand deaths per year in Iraq is very small compared to the number of immigrants added to the US population – about three million per year. Each day, about 8,000 people are added to the US population, the vast majority by illegal immigration and birthright-citizenships to children of illegal aliens. That is, in four years, we have had no more soldiers killed in Iraq than are added to the US population each day.
Illegal aliens are slaughtering US citizens at a rate comparable to the rate at which Iraqi insurgents are killing US soldiers. The really significant difference, however, is that the US is invading Iraq, and the Iraqis should be killing us! How is it that Americans do not bat an eye when illegal-alien invaders enter our country at the rate of about two million per year and slaughter us at the rate of 1,400 - 4,400 per year, and yet are outraged at the annual death of 1,000 of our soldiers, who are in fact invaders of Iraq?
Here follows the article that I read on the estimated number of Americans killed each year by illegal aliens. It is posted at the web site http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53103 .
INVASION USA. Illegal aliens murder 12 Americans daily. Death toll in 2006 far overshadows total U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, Afghanistan. Posted: November 28, 2006, 1:00 a.m. Eastern. By Joseph Farah, © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – While the military "quagmire" in Iraq was said to tip the scales of power in the U.S. midterm elections, most Americans have no idea more of their fellow citizens – men, women and children – were murdered this year by illegal aliens than the combined death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since those military campaigns began.
Though no federal statistics are kept on murders or any other crimes committed by illegal aliens, a number of groups have produced estimates based on data collected from prisons, news reports and independent research.
Twelve Americans are murdered every day by illegal aliens, according to statistics released by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. If those numbers are correct, it translates to 4,380 Americans murdered annually by illegal aliens. That's 21,900 since Sept. 11, 2001.
Total U.S. troop deaths in Iraq as of last week were reported at 2,863. Total U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan during the five years of the Afghan campaign are currently at 289, according to the Department of Defense.
But the carnage wrought by illegal alien murderers represents only a fraction of the pool of blood spilled by American citizens as a result of an open border and un-enforced immigration laws.
While King reports 12 Americans are murdered daily by illegal aliens, he says 13 are killed by drunk illegal alien drivers – for another annual death toll of 4,745. That's 23,725 since Sept. 11, 2001.
While no one – in or out of government – tracks all U.S. accidents caused by illegal aliens, the statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests many of last year's 42,636 road deaths involved illegal aliens.
A report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Study found 20 percent of fatal accidents involve at least one driver who lacks a valid license. In California, another study showed that those who have never held a valid license are about five times more likely to be involved in a fatal road accident than licensed drivers.
Statistically, that makes them an even greater danger on the road than drivers whose licenses have been suspended or revoked – and nearly as dangerous as drunk drivers.
King also reports eight American children are victims of sexual abuse by illegal aliens every day – a total of 2,920 annually.
Based on a one-year in-depth study, Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute of Atlanta estimates there are about 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States who have had an average of four victims each. She analyzed 1,500 cases from January 1999 through April 2006 that included serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides and child molestation committed by illegal immigrants.
As the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. increases, so does the number of American victims.
According to Edwin Rubenstien, president of ESR Research Economic Consultants, in Indianapolis in 1980, federal and state correctional facilities held fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. But at the end of 2003, approximately 267,000 illegal aliens were incarcerated in all U.S. jails and prisons.
While the federal government doesn't track illegal alien murders, illegal alien rapes or illegal alien drunk driving deaths, it has studied illegal aliens incarcerated in U.S. prisons.
In April 2005, the Government Accountability Office released a report on a study of 55,322 illegal aliens incarcerated in federal, state, and local facilities during 2003. It found the following:
The 55,322 illegal aliens studied represented a total of 459,614 arrests – some eight arrests per illegal alien;
Their arrests represented a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses – some 13 offenses per illegal alien;
36 percent had been arrested at least five times before.
"While the vast majority of illegal aliens are decent people who work hard and are only trying to make a better life for themselves and their families, (something you or I would probably do if we were in their place), it is also a fact that a disproportionately high percentage of illegal aliens are criminals and sexual predators," states Peter Wagner, author of a new report called "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration." "That is part of the dark side of illegal immigration and when we allow the 'good' in we get the 'bad' along with them. The question is, how much 'bad' is acceptable and at what price?"
[End of Joseph Farah article.]
Some time ago I wrote an article on the danger of ibuprofen. This dangerous drug has caused serious damage to my wife’s kidneys, to the point where she has “stage 4 renal disease” – one step away from stage 5, which requires kidney dialysis.
Here follows an article appearing in the December 20, 2006, issue of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal.
FDA: Use caution when taking acetaminophen, aspirin, ibuprofen. Sterner warnings proposed: Remedies still safe, effective when taken properly. By Andrew Bridges.
WASHINGTON - Federal health officials, on Tuesday proposed sterner warning labels for acetaminophen, aspirin and ibuprofen, again cautioning millions of Americans who take the nonprescription pain relievers regularly of potentially serious side effects.
The over-the-counter drugs remain safe and effective when used as directed, the Food and Drug Administration said. However, overdoses of acetaminophen can cause serious liver damage, even death, the FDA said.
For aspirin, ibuprofen and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, there is a risk of gastrointestinal bleeding and kidney injury even when patients take the correct dose. The drug are linked to thousands of deaths a year. The FDA said the risk is rare when compared to the number of patients who take the drugs.
The drugs are found in hundreds of products sold to treat pain, headache and fever. Health officials worry that the wide availability of those combination products allows patients to unwittingly overdose.
The FDA has updated the labels on the drugs multiple times in the past to warn patients of their risks. In 2004, some of the warnings contained in the new proposal were included in pharmacy brochures and public service ads - a move that some critics said at the time didn't go far enough.
The latest proposed changes largely would beef up and highlight those warnings on the labels of the drugs. They also would require the more prominent disclosure, using fluorescent or bold-faced type, the presence of the drugs among a medication's ingredients.
For acetaminophen, the labels also would warn of the risk of severe liver damage if patients take more than the recommended dose or consume three or more alcoholic drinks a day while on the drugs. The labels also would warn patients not to take multiple medicines that contain acetaminophen. In any given week, an estimated 48 million Americans take an acetaminophen product.
For aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, their labels would have to contain additional warnings of the risk of stomach bleeding.
The labels would note the risk is higher in patients older than 59, or in those who have stomach ulcers, take blood-thinning drugs or steroids, use other drugs that contain an NSAID or remain on the medications for an extended period. An estimated 17 million Americans take an NSAID daily.
Acetaminophen is sold under the brand name Tylenol and in multiple generic versions. Acetaminophen sends an estimated 56,000 people to the emergency room each year, the FDA said. About 100 people die each year after unintentionally overdosing on the drug.
Ibuprofen is sold under the brand names Advil and Motrin and in generic form as well. Naproxen is best known as. Aleve, but is also sold generically. The NSAIDs are blamed for sending more than 200,000 Americans to the hospital every year, and are linked to an estimated 16,000 deaths; the FDA said.
While all the affected rugs are available without a prescription, they also are used in multiple combination products sold: only with a doctor's note.
The proposal won't take effect until a year following its: scheduled Dec. 26 publication, in: the Federal Register.
[End of Andrew Bridges article.]
On television these days, an ad is being shown for Children’s Motrin (a brand of ibuprofen). It is criminal that the US government and medical establishment is promoting and peddling drugs that cause so much kidney disease and death. The motivation for the medical establishment – the sale of incredibly expensive kidney dialysis machines and services – is clear. The motivation for the government is also obvious: servicing stage 5 renal failure causes a substantial contribution to gross national product – much more than the loss in salaries and wages for the hapless patient who falls into this spider’s web. The pharmaceutical industry likes to refer to itself as “Merchants of Life,” when in fact they are very much “Merchants of Death.”
The war in Iraq is costing about 100 billion dollars per year – that is 400 billion over four years. This is a lot of money. Many Americans do not realize how large this amount is. The size of the US labor force is about 151 million people. Dividing 400 billion dollars by 151 million people gives $2,632. That is the approximate amount that each worker in the US has had to pay so far for the war. The purpose of the war is to obtain access to Iraqi oil. The issue to address is whether the US war in Iraq has saved each US worker $2,632 in cost related to oil since the war began. Since the start of the war the US has received very little Iraqi oil. So far, the war is a net loss.
Ever since the time of US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, US presidents have striven for mass immigration to the US, from alien cultures. Under Eisenhower, immigration to the US was about 175,000 per year, mostly from Northern European cultures. According to Wikipedia (“Immigration to the United States”): “In 1952, The McCarran Walter Immigration Act affirmed the national-origins quota system of 1924 and limited total annual immigration to one-sixth of one percent of the population of the continental United States in 1920, or 175,455. The act exempted spouses and children of U.S. citizens and people born in the Western Hemisphere from the quota. In 1953, the Refugee Relief Act extended refugee status to non-Europeans.”
President John F. Kennedy was strongly in favor of increased immigration from non-North European cultures. He wrote a book, Nation of Immigrants, in which he set forth his views. After his assassination, his brother, Senator Edward Kennedy, worked hard for passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which opened the floodgates to mass immigration from alien cultures. The Kennedys were Catholics, and resented the domination of US culture and politics by Protestants. Mass immigration from alien cultures would help dilute the white Protestant control of the US. Along with support from Jewish organizations, which also sought mass immigration as a means of weakening white Protestant control of the US, they succeeded in obtaining passage of the Act. Few people put up a fight against the Act, afraid to be branded as racists. Senator Sam Ervin, Jr. of North Carolina warned that the Act would dramatically alter US culture, but his voice was silenced by the powerful Jewish efforts on behalf of the Act, and public sentiment over John Kennedy’s assassination.
By 1965, when the Act was passed, the birth rates of Americans – both whites and nonwhites – had dropped to near-replacement levels. Prior to 1965, most of the population growth of the US was from births from US citizens, not from immigration. Had immigration been kept at low levels, the country’s population could have been stabilized at about 200 million people. It is now 300 million, and increasing by about one percent (3 million people) each year, mainly from immigration and births to recent immigrants (who have high birth rates).
Immigrants destroy natural land, and immigrants kill Americans. Each immigrant to the US causes the destruction of about one acre of natural land, which is destroyed to make room for roads, buildings, and other infrastructure. Mass immigration to the US causes a substantial increase in greenhouse gasses, since each immigrant to the US uses about ten times as much more commercial energy in the US than in his home country. It is estimated that illegal immigrants alone kill about 1,400 - 4,400 US citizens each year (murder and automobile accidents).
Here is a list showing the US population increase from 1965, when the Immigration Act of 1965 was passed. The column headings are: Date, National Population, Population Change, and Average Annual Percent Change.
Date Population Pop. Chng. % Change
July 1, 1998 270,298,524 2,554,929 0.95
July 1, 1997 267,743,595 2,553,801 0.96
July 1, 1996 265,189,794 2,424,846 0.92
July 1, 1995 262,764,948 2,475,711 0.95
July 1, 1994 260,289,237 2,543,134 0.98
July 1, 1993 257,746,103 2,751,586 1.07
July 1, 1992 254,994,517 2,867,115 1.13
July 1, 1991 252,127,402 2,688,690 1.07
July 1, 1990 249,438,712 2,619,482 1.06
July 1, 1989 246,819,230 2,320,248 0.94
July 1, 1988 244,498,982 2,210,064 0.91
July 1, 1987 242,288,918 2,156,031 0.89
July 1, 1986 240,132,887 2,209,092 0.92
July 1, 1985 237,923,795 2,098,893 0.89
July 1, 1984 235,824,902 2,032,908 0.87
July 1, 1983 233,791,994 2,127,536 0.91
July 1, 1982 231,664,458 2,198,744 0.95
July 1, 1981 229,465,714 2,241,033 0.98
July 1, 1980 227,224,681 2,169,194 0.96
July 1, 1979 225,055,487 2,470,942 1.10
July 1, 1978 222,584,545 2,345,120 1.06
July 1, 1977 220,239,425 2,204,261 1.01
July 1, 1976 218,035,164 2,061,965 0.95
July 1, 1975 215,973,199 2,119,271 0.99
July 1, 1974 213,853,928 1,945,140 0.91
July 1, 1973 211,908,788 2,012,767 0.95
July 1, 1972 209,896,021 2,235,344 1.07
July 1, 1971 207,660,677 2,608,503 1.26
July 1, 1970 205,052,174 2,375,228 1.17
July 1, 1969 202,676,946 1,970,894 0.98
July 1, 1968 200,706,052 1,993,996 1.00
July 1, 1967 198,712,056 2,151,718 1.09
July 1, 1966 196,560,338 2,257,375 1.16
July 1, 1965 194,302,963 2,414,172 1.25
According to this table (and extrapolating to present time), the US population increases under each president from 1965 on are as follows:
Johnson (1965-1972): 15.6 million
Nixon (1973-1974): 3.9 million
Ford (1975-1976): 4.2 million
Carter (1977-1980): 9.2 million
Reagan (1981-1988): 17.2 million
Bush (1989-1992): 10.4 million
Clinton (1993-2000): 20.7 million
Bush (2001-2006): 15 million
These numbers are indicators of the destruction of America – its environment, its culture, and its people – caused by the presidents of the US since passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. Each number is actually the estimated number of acres of natural land destroyed by immigration, but it is a reflection of destruction in other areas as well. The cumulative effect of mass immigration to the US has been an increase in population from about 194 million in 1965 to 301 million today (2007). This corresponds to the destruction of 107 million acres of natural land due to immigration, since passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 (the total 107 is somewhat larger than the sum of the figures, since the population figures were revised upward as a result of the 2000 Census).
I heard an interesting quotation the other day, attributed to Britain’s Sir Winston Churchill: “You can always depend on the Americans to do the right thing – after they have tried everything else!”
I read once an interesting anecdote about Henry Ford. He sent a team of men to automobile junk yards to examine worn-our Fords, and assess the condition of each part. After completing the survey, the team reported back to him with the result that all parts of the junked cars showed ranges of wear, often extreme wear, with the exception of a single part – the king pin (a rod holding a front wheel on). He then instructed his design engineers to reduce the diameter of the king pins on all future models.
Nature works the same way. No part of an animal’s body is engineered to a strength or capability far beyond the others – all parts are all of comparable quality and capability. They pretty much wear out together. In its design of living creatures, nature is exceedingly intelligent and skillful. Henry Ford realized that Mother Nature is very intelligent and very efficient, and he wisely sought to emulate her.
Someone commented recently (Lou Dobbs Tonight, 29 December 2006) that social, economic and medical services should be withheld from criminal illegal aliens. This is so silly. All illegal aliens are criminals – they have broken the law by being in our country illegally. All services should be denied illegal aliens, except a boot in the rear end.
While on the golf course a few weeks ago (until recently this has been a very mild winter), my partner mentioned to me that all of the dogs had disappeared from this section of town (near Camp Croft, where Henry Kissinger became a US citizen). It turns out that Spartanburg had accepted a large number of Laotian refugees, and they have a taste for dogs. Shortly after their arrival, all of the dogs in that neighborhood disappeared.
You often hear the US President George Bush criticizing terrorists on the ground that they kill innocent women and children. But the US bombed many cities in Germany, even after the (Second World) war was clearly won, and we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, after the war against Japan was clearly won. The US has bloody hands – it has wantonly and gratuitously killed many innocent women and children. The pot is indeed calling kettle black.
By its policies of mass immigration and massive international free trade, the US government is destroying US environment and culture, and the quality of life for the American middle class. Since passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, about one hundred million people have been added to the country’s population. By 1965, the birth rates of the then-current population had dropped to about replacement level. The population has increased from about 194 million then to 301 million now almost solely because of immigrants and their progeny. Each immigrant to the US causes the destruction of about one acre of natural land, in conversion to roads, buildings and other infrastructure. This means that our government, through its policy of mass immigration, has willfully caused the destruction of one hundred million acres of natural land.
The country is now very crowded – commute times are severe, quality land is very expensive, there is severe overcrowding, and the wait times to enjoy our national parks and wild rivers is up to a year in many places. It now costs thousands of dollars to take a raft trip down a wild river. Wildlife has disappeared from most parts of the country. Under its policies of massive international free trade, the US government is requiring the US worker to compete with labor in Third-World countries earning a dollar a day.
Under the US Constitution, the President and other leaders are required to protect the country from invasion. But the country has been invaded by 10-20 million illegal aliens, and the government does nothing. In fact, it encourages more to come, under its policies of providing free social, economic, and medical services to them, and by granting birthright citizenship to their newborn children (estimated at 300,000 per year). It is estimated that illegal aliens are now slaughtering about 1,400 - 4,400 US citizens per year – a number comparable to our annual losses in Iraq. The US presidents who have allowed this to happen – Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush, are all guilty of gross dereliction of duty and high treason. These traitors should be dishonored if deceased and taken to task if still alive.
The US government is now a fascist dictatorship that serves only to generate massive income and wealth for the wealthy elite who own the country. It has lost sight of its purpose and goals as a Republic, to promote life, liberty and happiness for its citizens.
In the December 25, 2006, issue of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, there was an article praising the donation of used clothing to poor African nations. The article claimed that everybody won from this practice – the brokers, the shippers, the bundlers, the wholesalers, and the retailers. The article never mentioned that the practice of donating used clothing destroys local clothing manufacturing capacity in the recipient countries.
The December 29, 2006, issue of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal contained an article, “FDA gives nod to cloned food,” in which it was reported that the FDA had “concluded that milk and meat from cloned animals pose no unique risks to consumers.” This is really sick. Genetic modification and cloning reduce genetic variability, which is crucial to our long-term survival. Cloned foods and genetically modified foods are not safe.
On 23 January 2007, President George Bush gave his annual State of the Union Address. One of the items that he mentioned was that he proposed doubling the number of border patrol agents along the US/Mexican border. But border patrol agents are prohibited from shooting at illegal aliens. Two were recently put in jail for shooting an illegal-alien drug smugger, who was granted immunity from prosecution for testifying against them, and who has now lodged a five million dollar suit against the US government for his shooting. A couple of weeks ago, National Guarsmen in Arizona retreated when confronted by armed Mexican invaders – they were under orders to do so! The US government operates a “catch and release” system under which illegal aliens, once apprehended, are released unless they are believed to have committed a “serious” crime.
The US government does not want to stop the flow of illegal aliens across our borders, since the wealthy elite who own the country want lots of cheap labor, in order to compete with Third-World countries with whom they must compete under the US policy of massive international free trade. The US policies of mass immigration and massive international free trade are destroying the US environment, culture, and quality of life for the middle class, all to generate income and wealth for the wealthy elite. The government does not want to appear to be sacrificing its citizens’ welfare for the sake of the wealthy, however, and so it pretends to be fighting illegal immigration, when in fact it is not fighting it at all – it is actively encouraging it! How does it have the gall to claim that it is fighting illegal immigration, with its policies of open borders; catch and release; free social, economic and medical services to illegal aliens; birthright citizenship to children of illegal aliens; amnesty; and proposing guest-worker status for illegal aliens who are already here. Our government is a deceitful, arrogant, venal, fascist dictatorship that functions solely for the wealthy elite, and is destroying the country for everyone else.
All of the US government policies mentioned above are designed to maintain the flow of illegal aliens into the United States. Under its current policies (don’t shoot illegal aliens; catch them and release them, etc.), it does not matter how many border patrol agents or National Guard soldiers there are on the border. The President’s proposal to double the number of border patrol agents is patently absurd, since twice as many agents doing nothing will not accomplish any more than the original number doing nothing. Is our government so stupid that it cannot see the absurdity of its actions, or is the American middle class so stupid that it believes that the government is helpless to stop the flow of illegal immigrants across our borders? Or both?
The flow of illegal aliens across our borders could be stopped immediately, and all illegal aliens removed by their own volition in a few weeks, if the government would simply make illegal immigration a capital crime and start hanging illegal aliens. If we did this, they would stop coming immediately, and those already here would flee the country as fast as they could. There is no need for a border fence, or any program to try to “motivate” employers not to hire illegal aliens. This policy would not only immediately solve the illegal alien problem as almost no cost, but it would save thousands of American lives each year, since illegal aliens slaughter about 1,400 - 4,400 US citizens each year. But the US government will not do this, or take any other action against mass illegal immigration, because it wants it.
It is understandable why the government wants massive immigration and massive international free trade, since those programs help make the wealthy elite much wealthier. But the hypocrisy over this issue is unbearable. The government claims that it is doing these things to help US citizens, to make them better off. In fact, America’s wealthy are getting much wealthier, but the middle class are becoming worse off year by year. Free-trade programs like NAFTA and CAFTA obviously hurt the lower and middle classes, but the government keeps insisting that we or most of us will be better off in the long run. This is such a lie! The people know that these programs will hurt them, and they say so. Ordinary Americans are not at all in favor of giving their country away to alien invaders. They have no political power, however, and their voices of protest are simply ignored or suppressed. The US public is not stupid in realizing that America’s policies of mass immigration and massive international free trade are destroying their environment, their culture, and their economic status. The government is not stupid in realizing that these policies are benefiting the wealthy elite. But the government is very stupid in thinking that it is pulling the wool over the public’s eyes. The public is very wise to what is going on, but it is not capable of doing anything about it in today’s fascist America. Regrettably, the situation will continue to the “tipping point” – the straw that breaks the camel’s back – and then it will be too late. The American people will arise in rebellion and destroy the fascist dictatorship that has robbed them of their good quality of life.
The US, the most powerful nation in the world and the world’s only superpower, is unable to win a war against a rag-tag group of insurgents in Iraq and Iran. It is hard stretched to field an army of 140,000 soldiers, because it has developed an exquisitely expensive war machine. The cost of the Iraq war is 100 billion dollars per year. Dividing 100 billion dollars by 140,000 soldiers shows that the average cost per fielded soldier per year is about $714,000 per soldier per year. But we are fighting an enemy for which the average cost per soldier per year is practically nothing. Our strategy is stupid: We will run out of money long before the enemy runs out of soldiers or money. All it has to do is to continue as it is doing, with improvised explosive devices, and we will eventually leave.
Recently, we have been making threatening gestures toward Iran, hoping to motivate it to stop its program to develop nuclear weapons. Iran is ignoring our threats. Why shouldn’t it? It knows that we are losing badly in Iraq, and cannot possibly afford another land war, and cannot possibly win another land war, under our policy of fielding soldiers that cost almost a million dollars each per year. It knows that the only way that we can defeat them militarily is to annihilate them with nuclear weapons, and it knows that we are very reluctant to do so (since this would escalate global warfare to global nuclear warfare, and we might promptly be destroyed ourselves).
A second thing that Iran knows is that the US is very squeamish about losing soldiers in Iran. Currently, it is losing about 1,000 soldiers per year, and the US electorate is starting to press for withdrawal. This is rather amazing, since the illegal-alien invaders of the US are killing a comparable number of US citizens per year, and nobody is uttering a peep! But the fact remains, the US electorate is complaining about the 1,000 deaths per year in Iraq, to the point that, if we don’t run out of money first (at 100 billion dollars a year cost), then we may be forced to withdraw because of the casualties. This would really be incredible, since, under its policies of mass immigration, the US population is increasing by about 8,000 per day!
The American people are so duped and befuddled by their government, however, that they are being killed at the rate of several thousand per year by the enemy (1,000 per year by the Iraqis, who are simply defending their own country from US invasion, and 1,400 - 4,400 by illegal-alien invaders, whom our government aids and abets), while the illegal-alien invaders are being encouraged to remain, safe and sound, in the US, provided not only with employment, but also with free social, economic and medical services and birthright citizenship for their children.
Why do we allow illegal aliens to remain safe and sound and well-supported in the US, when 1,400 - 4,400 US citizens are slaughtered by them every year? No illegal aliens are serving in the war in Iraq, or in Afghanistan. Why do we allow these invaders to remain safe and sound and well-supported in the US, when the US citizens whose taxes support them have to go to war – to be killed and maimed – in Iraq? Go figure!
Tokyo Rose would have had a field day with the current farce. The US government is ignoring its Constitutional responsibility to repel the invasion of illegal aliens. As a result, there are an estimated 10-20 million of them in the US, and they are slaughtering an estimated 1,400 - 4,400 US citizens a year. Nevertheless, the US government aids and abets those already here, and encourages more to come. When it catches them it releases them. It provides them free social, economic and medical services. It provides birthright citizenship to their children. It allows them to remit 45 billion dollars each year to their homelands. It orders our National Guardsmen to retreat from alien invaders and it jails border patrol agents who fire on them. The US government not only condones this invasion, but encourages it! Our leaders have broken their vows to protect the country from invasion. They are traitors, yet no one takes them to task. How long will the US population continue to take such abuse from its leaders?
US soldiers are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the US has invaded for oil, while the US government aids and abets the invasion of the US by millions of illegal aliens, who are killing many US citizens every year. The US government is sending its young men and women to die halfway around the world, while it permits illegal aliens to kill and rape their family members back home. Worse, it aids and abets the illegal-alien invaders through the provision of free social, economic and medical services, and the granting of birthright citizenship to their children. The US government has invaded Iraq – we are the invaders there, and the Iraqis are quite justified in trying to repel us. The important war that US soldiers should be fighting is the invasion of the US by millions of illegal aliens. US soldiers: Who is your enemy? Your government took a vow under the Constitution to protect the country from invasion, and it has committed high treason in not repelling the present invasion. In a sane world, you would be killing the illegal-alien invaders, who are killing and raping your loved ones, not killing Iraqis, whose country the US has invaded for its oil.
Last week, my wife and I vacationed in Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee. Nashville is the home of country music and Memphis is the home of rock-and-roll (and resident to lots of jazz and blues). We had a great time enjoying the food, the scenery, and the music. Tennessee is a pretty state. We traveled the length of it – 500 miles – from the North Carolina border to the Arkansas border, along Interstate 40.
In Nashville, we visited bars and restaurants in Printers’ Alley and Broadway. We attended a session of the Grand Ole Opry in the Ryman Auditorium, where I heard one of my favorite singers, Connie Smith. In Memphis, we visited Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, and Beale Street, where we had an excellent Cajun meal in the King’s Palace restaurant.
The only thing that bothered me on this trip was the reference, more than once, that rock-and-role had evolved from “black music.” Now, I was raised in the South (South Carolina), and I have spent about 15 years living and working in Africa, and I can tell you very directly that rock-and-roll was not derived from black music. In fact, it is quite the other way around. The black slaves in America sang, and the black Christians in Africa today sing, hymns that are derived from white Christian hymns. Rock-and-roll was essentially a new music form. The slaves did not pick cotton while singing Carl Perkins’ Blue Suede Shoes; Elvis Presley’s You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog or Heartbreak Hotel; Buddy Holly’s Peggy Sue or That’ll Be the Day; or J. P. Richardson’s Chantilly Lace or The Big Bopper; or anything remotely similar in sound or content.
In the “Black Pride” movement, we were told that Socrates and Cleopatra was black and that Greek philosophy had been stolen from Egypt. In Not Out of Africa, Mary Lefkowitz deflates these absurd claims. It is a shame she did not take time to dispel the myth that rock-and-roll music is also from Africa. If I hear this one more time, I will be hard-pressed not to explode in hilarious ridicule.
The Bible tells us that a large population is a king’s glory. This is true. In order to generate vast wealth, large populations are required. This is a principal motivation for the US policy of mass immigration. Bill Gates can make much more money selling operating systems to 300 million people than to 100 million people.
In the long run, however, endlessly growing populations destroy everything. You hear from time to time the US government stating that we can help solve the oil problem by conservation. But if you conserve by reducing consumption by 10 percent, and in ten years your population has grown by ten percent (as is the case in the US), nothing is accomplished. Another lie from the deceivers for the gullible.
Large populations destroy the natural land. They cause overcrowding, long commute times, incivility, crime, and pollution. In earlier times, families could be large because children were lost to disease, famine and war. Today, the world’s population is exploding, because none of these factors is working significantly to counter humankind’s high birth rate. As the world population explodes, we are seeing more and more examples of countries that are totally destroyed by large populations. Haiti, Sierra Leone, Malawi and Zimbabwe are a few examples of once-beautiful countries destroyed by overpopulation.
Even resource rich countries are not immune. With one of the highest birth rates in the world (a total fertility rate of about seven children born to a female in her lifetime), Saudi Arabia’s population has skyrocketed from six million in 1970 to 22 million in 2000. Once fabulously wealthy and able to provide it citizens with much wealth, Saudi Arabia is now hard-pressed to provide for its citizens, and is facing a future of revolution and destruction from internal dissent. It threw it all away. It squandered the birthright of its people by its policy of explosive population growth. Indonesia is another example of an oil-rich country that could have had a rich country, but has squandered its future to one of penury and a destroyed environment because of population growth. Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru all had vast oil reserves, but have thrown away the chance to have a rich future, because of massive overpopulation.
I recently saw some ads for consulting work in Angola. Now that Jonas Savimbi has been killed, that country’s quarter-century civil war (following its ejection from Portugal’s colonial empire) has ended, and it is now in the process of developing its massive oil and diamond reserves. But its population growth rate is 2.9 percent per year. At this rate, its current population of 13 million will, in about 24 years, be 26 million. And this rate will surely continue, because the developed world wants rapid population growth in developing Third-World countries (to generate more wealth for the West’s elite; to keep them crippled in debt to, and in thrall to, the West; and to force them to industrialize (and generate even more wealth for the West) in order to support bloated populations that can no longer be supported by the country’s natural resources without massive industrial inputs). Population control is not included in the Millennium Development Goals, or in any other development program sponsored by the West, because it would eventually free developing countries from the “cycle of poverty,” and that is not what the West wants. It wants them to remain impoverished and mired in debt, with populations too large for them to be self-sufficient without adopting Western industrialization. (See John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Penguin, 2004) for discussion of this).
Organized religions, too, are in favor of massive population growth, since they spawn poverty, famine and war, which are great for religion. Organized religions wither and die in rich countries (witness, e.g., England, where only one percent of the population now belongs to the Church of England (Anglican Church)). Religions thrive where people are suffering. Men pray when they go into battle, and women pray when their children are dying from disease and hunger.
The West’s population growth rate dropped because of a phenomenon referred to as the “demographic transition,” under which low mortality rates encourage low birth rates, and the population eventually stabilizes. But the demographic transition is a phenomenon that occurred only in the West, and before populations were so large as to destroy the countries. It did not occur in Africa or Asia, either at all, or not until those populations were so large as to destroy virtually all natural land. China realized that it could not develop into a superpower as long as its population soared, and so it implemented its famous “one-child” policy (one child allowed for urban dwellers, and two for rural dwellers). China and the West do not promote population control for Africa or Latin America, because they want them to remain poor and helpless, so that they can control them and take all of their resources from them.
Population growth is the great destroyer, and the great enslaver. It is the most powerful weapon that the West and China (the world’s next superpower) use to keep the rest of the world suppressed. It is, nevertheless, a shame to see a country such as Angola, which could become prosperous from its natural wealth, going down the road to total destruction, as it heeds the Siren’s call of the West and China to “develop.”
Did it ever occur to you how many famous men have the rather unusual name, Nicholas? There is, of course, St. Nicholas (Father Christmas, Santa Claus), followed by Nicolas Copernicus, Niccolò Machiavelli, Nicolaas van Rensburg, Nicholas Roerich, Nicholas Baker (Niels Bohr) and Nikola Tesla.
In a bookstore a few months ago I noticed a book about Nikola Tesla. The book caught my eye as I was walking toward the computer-books section – it was the last book on the row, at eye level, with the cover showing. I stopped, picked up the book, and skimmed through it. It was quite thick, and contained descriptions of many of Tesla’s inventions. I decided not to buy it at the time.
During my college days, I had worked as a guide in the Buhl Planetarium in Pittsburgh. The three most famous exhibits in the Planetarium – apart from the Zeiss planetarium projector itself – were the Christmastown Railroad, a two-story Foucault pendulum, and a giant Tesla coil. The Tesla coil was the first thing that visitors saw as they entered the planetarium, and they delighted in seeing the bolts of lightning jumping from the machine and standing their hair on end.
In November, my wife and I saw the movie, Who Killed the Electric Car? It is a fascinating story of the rise and fall of the electric car in California over the period 1996-2003. At the end is a brief clip on Tesla Motors, manufacturer of the Tesla Roadster – a high-performance electric sports car that has a top speed of 130 miles per hour, can accelerate from zero to 60 mph in four seconds, and has a range of 250 miles per charge – and costs USD100,000.
Tesla was born on July 12, 1856, and last year many cities sponsored celebrations of the 150th anniversary of his birth. I noticed some coverage of this on the Internet at the time, but did not think much more about it.
In New Age books that I have read recently, there have been increasingly frequent references to Tesla. Here is a sample, from David Icke’s book, The Robot’s Rebellion (Gateway, 1994).
Franklin D Roosevelt was a close friend of Nikola Tesla, the scientific genius who was to say that much of his knowledge came from ETs. One of Tesla's students, Guglielmo Marconi, set up a secret group which claimed to have built flying saucers in the 1940s, and to have landed on the Moon in the early 1950s. Interestingly, a ridiculous number of Marconi scientists and others working in similar areas have had strange and inexplicable deaths. Roosevelt asked Tesla, some researchers claim, to become the director of a project which is now known as the Philadelphia Experiment. His number two was Dr John Von Neumann and the team based themselves at Princeton University before everything was moved to the Brooklyn Naval Yard in 1940 and code named Project Rainbow. The brief was to make an American ship invisible both to radar and the human eye. They achieved this with a minesweeper by generating intense magnetic fields. Tesla was given a battleship for his next experiment in 1942, but protested when he learned that this time there would be a crew on board. He felt they would be in danger and, it seems certain, he sabotaged the test which didn't work. Tesla left and ten months later he was said to have been found dead in his New York hotel room. Von Neumann took over and on July 20th, 1943, he conducted the experiment again on the US destroyer escort, `The Eldridge'.
It worked, but the crew went hysterical and were sick. Von Neumann asked for more time to perfect the technology, but the Chief of Naval Operations insisted it was finished by August 12th, 1943, because they wanted to use this capability in the war. He said, however, that he would accept only radar invisibility. This they achieved in Philadelphia Harbor, but then, after a blue flash, the Eldridge physically disappeared for three hours. Now it gets complicated because we are about to cross frequencies of time and space. Two young scientists on board, Edward and Duncan Cameron, came on deck to find the crew suffering from extreme hysteria and the two of them jumped overboard. The story claims that they didn't land in water, but in the Montauk Army Base on New York's Long Island where they realised that it was now 1983 - forty years later. Yes, I know it sounds crazy, but stay with me!
The general background to the Philadelphia Experiment has been told in a feature film, and the basic themes of it are said to be correct. In the underground centre at Montauk the Camerons were taken to see Von Neumann, now of course a much older man than the one they had known in 1943. Von Neumann was reported to have died in 1957, but that was part of the cover for his work. He told them that they had to be transported back in time to the Eldridge in 1943 to smash the equipment because the experiment had created a `bubble in hyperspace' which threatened to cause catastrophe on this frequency. Von Neumann had by now (1983) perfected the technology for time travel thanks to the extraterrestrial input since the 1950s, this story claims. The Camerons were transported back to the ship and 1943 where they smashed the equipment. When that happened, the Eldridge reappeared physically. See, I said it was complicated, and it's even more so when you read the full story as documented in other books. It is hard to comprehend all this if we remain stuck with our version of time rather than a version in which the past, present and projected future are happening together. Perhaps most amusing was the fact that when Cameron, back in 1943, told Von Neumann what had happened to him in 1983, his boss refused to believe him!
Again I say that I am not suggesting that I believe every word of this. I don't know. There are some amazing stories coming out, but I do believe that at least the Illuminati scientists are working in these sort of areas, including inter-frequency and, possibly, time travel.
It is said that when the Eldridge returned to the physical world of 1943, it was a nightmare to behold. The time-space-molecular synchronisation had been so scrambled by what happened that many of the crew members were found to be part of the superstructure of the ship. Others were insane and still others would disappear or burst into flames. Talk about cleverness without wisdom. The mad professors are out of control. The researchers making these claims say the project was stopped after the Eldridge disaster and Von Neumann went to Los Alamos to work on the development of the atomic bomb. But by 1947 curiosity, and the potential for power presented by what had been learned in the Philadelphia Experiment got the better of them. It was re-started under Von Neumann as Project Phoenix at the Brookhaven National Laboratories in New York. He also worked with the recovery of the crashed spacecraft and extra-terrestrials, like the one near Roswell. Some researchers say that a number of craft were deliberately brought down by the American military when they realised how they could be seriously destabilised. Von Neumann and Dr. Vannevar Bush were two who worked with the extraterrestrial from the Roswell crash known as EBE, it is suggested.
The development of Project Phoenix into the 1980s has, some claim, produced the knowledge and technology to travel through time. One story says they have travelled forward in time, but when they reach 2011 everything enters a dream-like state. 2011 links in with the predictions of the Maya and others for the time of great change. There is so much speculation that looking at the themes rather than all of the detail, claim and counter-claim, is probably far more productive. It is further said that Von Neumann and the secret scientists have also perfected the technique of making a person older or younger by breaking their ‘time lock'. Tesla was working on time locks before he died, or disappeared. We are time-locked at birth into this frequency's version of time. On physical death, the time lock breaks and we are free to move on to other space-time worlds. Without this time lock during a physical life it would be chaos, and the sort of things that happened to the crew of the Eldridge would be happening to all of us. But if you can remove the time lock in a controlled way, you can advance or regress the age of the physical body, or so some investigators have said. The Brotherhood elite know how to change the weather in a limited way, and from the grotesque experiments they carry out on their abducted victims these insane scientists also know how to create clones. Some of the ‘little greys' which people often report seeing could be from their laboratory and I'm sure they have developed the ability to create a human body, Frankenstein-style. To think we are having discussions about the morality of genetic engineering while this is going on! Thousands of people go missing in the world every year and are never seen again. A number of them, I have no doubt, end up in the underground laboratories.
Their understanding of anti-gravity technology - spacecraft - is now very advanced and many of the UFO sightings we hear about will be craft being tested and flown by human pilots. The bright light or glow around a UFO as reported by so many people is caused by the magnetic field produced by the craft which affects the gravitation field to create anti-gravity. There are many different technologies that these craft use to harness the natural energy fields.
Prompted by the repeated glimpses of Tesla, the next time I was in the Barnes & Nobel bookstore I looked for the Tesla book that I had seen before, but, alas, it was gone. I asked the information desk whether they had any other books on Tesla, and they did. One they stocked was a Barnes & Noble edition of Tesla, Man out of Time, by Margaret Cheney (1981, Barnes & Noble edition 1993). This book is really interesting, and I recommend it highly.
My brother, Charles, from Atlanta visited us a couple of months ago, and, at one point in our conversation, strongly recommended that we see the move, The Prestige, starring Michael Caine and Hugh Jackman. In his youth, Charles had been an amateur magician, and he explained that the “prestige” was the last stage of a magic trick (the “pledge” and the “turn” are the first two stages). The film arrived in Spartanburg a few weeks ago, and so, based on my brother’s enthusiastic recommendation, my wife and I went to see it. At one point in the movie, the protagonist visited Colorado Springs, Colorado. The time was late in the nineteenth century. As he arrived in town, in the evening, he observed that most of the houses in the town had electric lights, which was quite unusual for a town in that area at that time. A few minutes later, he was walking up a mountainside, where he encountered an electric fence. I whispered to my wife that I had just read in Tesla’s biography that he had set up an experimental station for in Colorado Springs for six months in 1899. Lo and behold, the property was in fact the site of Tesla’s laboratory, and Tesla had a role in the movie.
Tesla was an incredible man. He promoted the use of alternating current (AC) to transmit electricity over long distances, and invented the polyphase AC induction motor and radio. He is, in my opinion, the greatest inventor of all time.
I am somewhat of a mystic bent, and so, as a result of the many coincidences about Tesla, I decided to write a proposal to the US government to develop a lightweight, low-cost electric vehicle. I will be interested to see how this develops.
As you can tell from my articles, I often watch CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight on the evening television. Although I do not always agree with him, I like Mr. Dobbs’ point of view on many subjects. Dobbs is author of a book, War on the Middle Class, in which he discusses the fact that the US government is destroying the quality of life for the US middle class. He is right on the mark – the US government is in fact a fascist dictatorship that serves only the wealthy elite. Its policies of mass immigration, massive international free trade, massive population growth, and growth-based economics are destroying the US environment, US culture, and the US middle class.
The December 19, 2006, issue of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal contained an editorial by Rich Lowry, entitled, “Dobbs is still singing same old alarmist, centrist song.” Here follows his piece.
Listening to Lou Dobbs – the CNN business anchor who has built his show around a straight-talking populism – there is inevitably a moment when you nod your head and think, "Yeah, right on."
One day recently when he was speaking at a luncheon event in Manhattan, my nodding moment came when he complained that the Iraq war has been going poorly, yet "not a single general has been fired for his failure." That seemed like bracing common sense, but with Dobbs, the longer you listen, the more self-discrediting he becomes.
His trick is to spout clichés drawn from the right and the left - any one of which has a 50-50 chance that the average person will agree with it - and give them a patina of freshness by wrapping them in angry and dire rhetoric. That rhetoric is their essential glue, making Dobbs the country's foremost practitioner of apocalyptic centrism.
There are various ways to tap into public disgust with partisan politics as usual. One is with a tonal centrism. That is what is offered by Barack Obama, a liberal who presents himself with a tone of sweet reason. Then there is a technocratic centrism: the bland, policy-oriented politics of the sort former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner would have offered Democrats had he run for president.
Economic populism
Finally, there's an apocalyptic centrism, spiced up with paranoia and economic ignorance and warning of the end of America as we know it. Think Ross Perot.
Dobbs is in the Perot tradition. He has taken Dennis Kucinich, Pat Buchanan and a dash of John Bolton, thrown them into a blender and come up with a worldview that is nationalist and populist. while giving both of those things a bad name.
Dobbs once made a living at CNN hosting a show that flacked for corporate America. After leaving to try to cash in on the dot-com bubble just as it burst, he has returned to make a living at CNN hosting a show that trashes corporate America. (Full disclosure: I am a commentator for the rival FOX News Channel.)
Dobbs is no ordinary corporate basher since he also rails against political correctness, illegal immigration, "Communist China" and radical jihadists. His economic populism is always sold in terms of the middle class and the national interest. Unless we address the foreign economic threat, he warns, "this century will be named for another nation."
Indeed, he says, "We're facing a real crisis that will materialize in a couple of years, and we'd better hope that it takes that long."
Evidence of this imminent crisis is thin. Dobbs basically has to ignore the record stock market, an unemployment rate of 4.5 percent and the 20 years of growth since the early 1980s, interrupted by only two brief recessions.
Anger and outrage
Dobbs is worried because the U.S. imports more than it exports and because China sends a lot of its capital here, making us "a debtor nation." But his alarmist case really relies on the tired stupidities of old-fashioned protectionism.
At the luncheon, he thundered: "Ninety-six percent of our clothing is imported. This nation cannot even clothe itself." But if we literally couldn't clothe ourselves, we'd be naked. Dobbs' line is like saying we can't feed ourselves because we buy groceries from supermarkets.
Textiles inherently are not an advanced, high-paid industry, and it is no wonder that an economic superpower doesn't do a lot of textile production. Would Dobbs prefer that more of us were hunched over sewing machines rather than employed in industries like software development, financial services, law, accounting, bio-tech and pharmaceuticals?
But never mind. Dobbs demands action now! We need to "do far more, and do it with a vengeance." For him, what other way is there to do something except vengefully?
Someone in the 2008 primary sweepstakes from one of the parties will probably embrace some of the Dobbs shtick. Meanwhile, he pledges "to continue to raise a lot of hell" - naturally enough, since anger and outrage are mostly what apocalyptic centrism is about.
Rich Lowry is editor of National Review. His e-mail address is comments.lowry@nationalreview.com .
[End of Rich Lowry article.]
If the worst that Dobbs can be charged with is being a purveyor of “apocalyptic centrism,” he does not have much to worry about. Lowry is way off base, and Dobbs is pretty much on the mark. Not all Americans can be software developers, financial advisors, lawyers, accountants, bio-tech scientists, as Lowry would evidently propose. Some people, with limited intelligence and ambition, can only do low-skill or menial jobs such as working as servants or operating equipment, but we have exported many of these industrial jobs overseas. Without protective tariffs, we cannot continue to pay low-skill workers high salaries, as we did for many decades before we transferred technology to the rest of the world and, under our policies of massive international free trade, forced our workers to compete with workers making a dollar a day. The only way we can continue to pay middle-class Americans high wages is by restricting the flow of imports from low-wage countries, either by tariffs that equalize the labor component of cost, or by outright banning of products from low-wage countries.
Lowry’s implication that all Americans can work in high-skill jobs is as absurd as Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon, where every child is above average. If America insists on exporting all of its low-skill, industrial jobs overseas, then it must decide what to do with its people of low intelligence or low ambition. Is it going to put them all on welfare, supported by our rocket scientists and highly subsidized physicians? Or is it going to export them, too? Or just send them off to be killed and maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan, while it supports the millions of illegal-alien invaders that it has allowed to enter our country, to kill and rape their loved ones?
Quite some time ago, I wrote an article describing seven natural phenomena that I found quite amazing, and for which I was unaware of any satisfactory explanation. The article was entitled, “The Seven Wonders of the World.” The “wonders” were:
1. Existence and life
2. Megaliths
3. The Moon
4. Crop Circles
5. Dolphins, Sharks and Fish Schools
6. Remarkable Coincidences (“synchronicities”)
7. Remarkable Cures, “Miracles”
I recently came across another very remarkable phenomenon, which could be added to this list. It is snowflakes. These ice crystals are remarkably varied and amazingly hexagonally symmetric. They are not exactly symmetric. Evidently no two are alike. Even more remarkable, no two arms of the hexagonal crystal are exactly alike, even though they are uncannily similar. They are all of similar size.
What brought snowflakes to my mind was a set, consisting of a small book and a number of Christmas cards, for sale in Barnes & Noble. The book is The Little Book of Snowflakes, by Kenneth Libbrecht (Voyageur Press, 2004). The book is filled with photographs of actual snowflakes, taken by the author with a special photo-microscope.
In order for a snowflake to grow into a highly symmetric design, each part of the snowflake, as it grows, must have knowledge of where it is in the snowflake and what is the nature of the snowflake design in other parts already formed. This is an example of the “nonlocal communication” that transcends space and time and is so fascinating to “New Age” or “quantum” physicists (e.g., the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) effect), or Bell’s Theorem (see Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters (Bantam, 1979) for explanations)). It is the same phenomenon as cell growth in a biological organism, such as a human being, that consists of many different types of cells. Each cell in a particular part of the human body is similar to other cells in that part. It is obvious that the cell growth is controlled by a “master plan” or “master controller” or “spiritual template,” which is the spirit that creates physical life from spiritual consciousness. Snowflakes are a similar phenomenon. They are not at all mindless, homogeneous crystal growths, such as solid ice or quartz, but elegant creations, all similar from a “macroscopic” viewpoint, but all different in detail.
Snowflakes are living creatures, such as blades of grass, leaves, amoebas, and human beings.
A few years ago, my wife and I were playing golf with a lady, here in Spartanburg, South Carolina. At one point, on the putting green, the lady suggested that I remove a “spock mark” lying between my ball and the hole, before I putted. Bewildered, I asked her what a “spock mark” was. Equally bewildered, and a little impatiently, since she could not believe that I did not know what a “spock mark” was, she explained that a “spock mark” was the indentation made by a “spock” in a golf shoe. Oh. “Spike marks.”
A few days ago, in a medical facility, someone spilled something, and the receptionist asked the janitor for some “wops” to “wop it off.” This time, I knew what she was talking about: “wipes.”
Quite some time ago, when my wife was driving through West Virginia, a service-station attendant suggested that she needed to add a little air to her “tar.” She proceeded to ask him what “tar” was on the car, and why did it need air. When he pointed to the “tires,” she understood.
I feel for the poor French tourist who must cope with southern accents. I was raised in the South, and they still throw me from time to time.
I saw a really interesting docu-drama on television a few months ago, called Einstein’s Big Idea. It provides some background into the history leading up to Einstein’s famous formula relating matter and energy: E = mc2 . It was based on the book, E = mc2 : A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation, by David Bodanis (Berkley, 2001). The TV program was produced by Public Broadcasting System (PBS), and first aired on 11 October 2005. A description of the TV program is at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/about.html , and a transcript of it is at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3212_einstein.html .
One of the most interesting parts of the feature is a segment on the role of Emilie du Châtelet. The narrator (John Lithgow) says this about her: “Emilie du Châtelet would have a huge effect on physics in her tragically short lifetime. Unheard of, for a woman of her time, she would publish many scientific works, including a translation of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, the greatest treatise on motion ever written. Du Châtelet's translation is still the standard text in France today.”
The really interesting thing is that Newton mistakenly believed that the kinetic energy of an object was given by mv, where m denotes mass and v denotes the speed component of velocity. In Germany at that time (early 1700s), Gottfried Leibniz had proposed the idea that the energy of an object was equal to ½ mv2. That is, the kinetic energy of a moving object increases with the square of its speed. This makes a massive difference – it shows, for example, that a small high-speed bullet will do much more damage than a heavy, slow-speed one (believe it or not, the US Army did not pick up on this until the Vietnam War). A Dutch scientist, Willem ‘sGraveesande, was doing experiments – dropping lead balls into clay – that clearly demonstrated that the kinetic energy of a moving object was in fact ½ mv2. Du Châtelet became aware of ‘sGravesande’s work, and publicized it.
During the program, the narrator comments, “Du Châtelet learned from the brilliant men around her, but she quickly developed ideas of her own. Much to the horror of her mentors, she even dared to suspect that there was a flaw in the great Sir Isaac Newton's thinking.” “Despite the overwhelming support for Newton, Du Châtelet did not waver in her belief. Eventually, she came across an experiment performed by a Dutch scientist, Willem 'sGravesande that would prove her point.”
Judith Zinsser (of Miami University) comments, “She created an institution to rival that of France's Royal Academy of Sciences. Many of the great philosophers, poets and scientists of the day visited.” “Emilie du Châtelet published her Institutions of Physics in 1740, and it provoked great controversy. Voltaire wrote that ‘she was a great man whose only fault was being a woman.’ In her day that was a great compliment.”
It was almost 30 years ago, about 1978, when the US decided that it would build a large-scale ballistic missile defense system. This system, called the MX System, was based on a “racetrack” design. The MX missiles (by the way, MX stands for “missile experimental”) would be placed in underground silos, mainly in the western US. These missiles were not just small “terminal defense” missiles, but powerful missiles capable of reaching the enemy (then the Soviet Union) and annihilating it, in the event that we were subject to a ballistic missile attack. This “defensive” strategy was called “Mutual Assured Destruction,” or MAD. The concept was that if the enemy was convinced that if it attacked with ballistic missiles or atomic weapons, they would instantly be annihilated in return, then they would never attack in the first place. An earlier version of the concept already existed, in the form of long-range bombers that were always in the air and ready to destroy Russia with atomic bombs – that version was the subject of the famous movie, Dr. Strangelove.
To prevent the enemy from being able to destroy all of our missiles, it was planned to build many “dummy” or “decoy” silos – so many that it would be very unlikely that the Soviet Union would be able to destroy all of them, even using MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles). All of the silos in an area would be connected with a railroad track. A train on the track would carry a real or fake missile, which could be placed in any of the silos at any time. Pictures of the concept usually illustrated the railway in the shape of a racetrack, hence the name “racetrack” system.
Well, I had worked in the field of ballistic missile warfare (both offense and defense) for some time, and I did not think that the idea was a very good one. About that time, I won a contract to do some work in the Philippines, and, because Manila was twelve time zones from my home in Alexandria, Virginia, I could not sleep at night. I hence I decided to write a book – a fictitious spy novel – that would ridicule the system and therefore cause its cancellation. The book was titled, MX. I wrote it using a pseudonym, Jack Christian. As it turned out, the MX “racetrack” system was eventually cancelled (but the MX missile was not), but I have no idea whether my book (which I distributed to every member of Congress, free) had anything to do with the cancellation.
At the beginning of some chapters of my book, I decided to present some quotations from Nostradamus, so I looked for a copy of his book. At that time, it was evidently not in print in the US. It was not available in local bookstores and there were no copies in any local libraries, and so I went down to the Library of Congress in downtown Washington, DC, to look for a copy there. They had a copy, but it was in French, not in English. I have a working knowledge of French, but I am not totally fluent, and the French used by Nostradamus was several centuries old, and so it was difficult for me to translate. I asked a friend to help me with some of the quatrains, and was able to obtain what I needed.
Here follow a few of the quatrains that I included in MX.
Such a great famine due to plague
By a long rain the length of the Arctic Pole
The Samarobryn a hundred places in the hemisphere
They shall live without law, without political order (VI:5)
One of the features of Nostradamus’ prophecies, like most prophecies, is that they are ambiguous, and not very useful for predicting particular events at particular times. It is interesting, however, to consider them in light of history, after the fact. When I wrote MX, I used this quatrain to symbolize a great ballistic-missile nuclear war in the northern hemisphere, and the social and political chaos that would result from it.
To date, the word Samarobryn remains an enigma to students of Nostradamus. As I reread this quatrain recently, it occurred that the word Samarobryn could be a cryptogram of Osama bin Laden: Samarobyn – Osama bin – and referring to the fact that he is located “in a hundred places.” Students of Nostradamus (e.g., Erika Cheetham, John Hogue, Peter Lemesurier) translate this quatrain rather differently from the above. In French, the quatrain is:
Si grand famine par vnde pestifere
Par pluye longe le long du polle arctique
Samarobryn cent lieux de l’hemisphere
Viuront sans loy exempt de pollitique
The key difference is in the word lieux. Cheetham, Hogue, and Lemesurier translate this as the plural of the French word for league: lieue. But the plural of lieue is lieues, not lieux. Lieux is the plural of the word for place. An old French league varied between 2.5 – 4.5 miles, and the common suggestion is that the quatrain refers to a space station a hundred leagues, or 250 – 450 miles, above the Earth. But space stations as close as 250-450 miles are not in synchronous orbits (which are located 22,241 miles from Earth) – they traverse all over both hemispheres (or around the equator, which is in neither hemisphere), and so this does not make a lot of sense.
Another quatrain that I used was the following well-known one:
At five and forty degrees the sky shall burn
Fire shall descend upon the great new city
Instantly a great flame shall disperse
When the Normans are required to attest (VI:97)
The French is:
Cinq et quarante degrés ciel bruslera
Feu approcher de la grand cité neufue
Instant grand flame esparse sautera
Quand on voudra des Normans faire preuue
When I used this quatrain, I was referring to large-scale nuclear war (“the sky shall burn”) over the US (“the great new city” referring to the entire country, which is highly urbanized). There is no “great new city” at 45 degrees latitude or longitude. One possibility is that Nostradamus used cinq to refer to .5 degree, rather than 5 degrees. With this interpretation the position is 40.5 degrees, and could refer to New York City. In this case, the “instant grand flame” could refer to the airplane attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. But what would the reference to Normans mean (Normans, Frenchmen, people of the northern hemisphere)?
I was born in Kingston, Ontario, Canada in 1942, the year that the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb began. It is hard to conceive how much the world has changed in the half-century since my birth. The other day, I got to reminiscing about how many things were different from today, or nonexistent, in my childhood.
Milk was delivered to your door in bottles, from a milk wagon drawn by a horse or a motorized van, depending on the dairy. The milk bottles had cardboard caps, which had printed designs that differed by dairy and type of milk. The children would collect and trade milk-bottle caps. The milk was delivered early in the morning, and in the wintertime, when we collected it from outside the door, the milk, which was about 1/5 cream on the top, would have frozen and pushed the bottle-top about an inch or two out of the bottle.
Our bread was also delivered by a breadwagon, later in the day. Each horse had a leather-and-canvas “feeding bucket” hanging from its head, and it ate as it moved along. An advantage of a horsedrawn wagon is that the horse learns where to stop, and the delivery man (always a man) did not have to spend much time directing it. One day, a friend of mine and I hitched a ride on the back of wagon. Unknown to us, the “breadman” had seen us in a mirror. He stopped the wagon, ran around to the back, and promptly gave my friend and me a boot in the behind.
Our first refrigerator was not electric. It contained a box, in the bottom, for a large block of ice. The ice was delivered each week by an “ice man,” once again in a horsedrawn wagon.
A “popcorn” man made the rounds of our neighborhood, in a fancy wagon pulled by a horse. Children would buy popcorn from him. At one point, in the late 1940s, the city passed an ordinance banning the sale of food from horsedrawn wagons. (I imagine that the city fathers decided that there was something unhealthy about the horse dung from the horsedrawn wagons. Funny, it never seemed to hurt us, although we did watch where we stepped.) Well, that was the end of the popcorn man. He tried to continue operations from a little shop down on a street several blocks from where we lived, but had to close before very long.
Our telephone was a large black one, mounted on the wall. It had a mouthpiece that was fixed (but could be moved up or down) and an earpiece on a long cloth-wrapped electrical cord. All electrical cords were cloth-wrapped, not plastic-molded.
The toaster was not a “pop-up” one, but one with a door on each side. You opened the door from the top, and placed a piece of bread inside. You watched it until it was toasted on one side, and then turned it over.
A small loaf of bread cost nine cents, and a large loaf cost 11 cents. Sliced bread cost a penny more. My sister and I each got 25 cents allowance each week (Dad was a tool-and-diemaker at the Aluminum Company of Canada (ALCAN), making $2.12 per hour – very good pay in those days). Each Saturday we walked downtown to the movie theater to see the latest movie, including previews, a serial, and a cartoon. The movie cost 10 cents. A soft drink (usually a Coca-Cola) cost a nickel, as did a wide variety of chocolate bars and other confections. If it was raining, we might take the bus back home. The bus cost five cents, which would use the rest of our allowance, and so we rarely did this. A nickel could buy all sorts of things, such as an ice-cream cone or a telephone call from a telephone booth. Most candies, such as Double-Bubble “bubble” chewing gum, were two pieces for one cent. Wrigley’s chewing gum was five cents for five sticks, but Black Cat chewing gum was five sticks for two cents.
Mother’s washing machine was electric, meaning that it had a motor-operated gyrator and motor-operated rollers for squeezing the water from the clothes after they were washed or rinsed. She also had a small washboard for washing occasional items through the week. One day, my friend, Dennis, stuck his arm in the wringer. It pulled him in, but had an emergency release, so that, although startled and frightened, he was not injured.
Many cars in the 1940s still had running boards, and a few older ones had manual crank starters and manual spark advances (on the steering wheel, around the horn button). Dad bought two 1936 Terraplane cars and refurbished them, to make a little extra money. The car of our neighbors across the street and two doors down burned up one day. It took several months before they rebuilt it (plywood, stuffing, fabric, and a new leather top). It was still the “box” style, black, like an old Model T Ford.
Our toys were quite simple. We enjoyed assembling cardboard “service-stations” (Esso, Texaco). For a birthday, getting a cardboard Texaco Fire-Chief hat was really special, along with a cap pistol and a device that generated sparks from flint as you pressed a plunger. The most fabulous present was a brass steam engine, run on Sterno gelled fuel, from my grandparents.
In the 1940s, our relatives who lived on farms in Shawville and Grand Cascapedia, Quebec, had no electricity. The house got really cold in winter, and we children would stay close to the kitchen stove until it warmed up in the early morning. The lights were kerosene oil lamps with wicks, or Coleman lanterns with special bag wicks and “mica” lenses. The telephone had a hand crank, and everyone was on a “party line,” which you answered when you heard your assigned number of rings. Sewing machines were operated with a foot-driven treadle. I don’t recall what powered the milk homogenizer, but it made a really loud whining noise. The plumbing was outside. The path to the outhouse, lined with stinging nettle, was memorable. The toilet tissue was always last year’s Sears and Roebuck mail-order catalog, which was still made using non-glossy paper. The ice house kept ice, cut from the river, all summer long. My folks in Grand Cascapedia still used the horse and buggy on occasion, but tractors and automobiles were in wide use by farmers in the 1940s, even though rural electrification had a long way to do.
The first computer had not yet been invented when I was born. My grandparents had an old Royal typewriter. The National Geographic magazines were all in black-and-white. Most people still had a “victory” garden – a carryover from the Second World War. In 1945, everyone had dark green opaque blinds on the windows. Gradually, these were all replaced by translucent beige ones.
Margarine was invented, but the butter lobby got the government to pass a law that it had to be sold uncolored – white. This was the same color as lard, and not very appealing. It was permitted to sell a package of coloring powder with each package. One of the children’s assigned tasks was to stir the coloring into the margarine. This takes a while. My grandparents in the Gaspé still made butter from a churn. This takes a while, but the “buttermilk” byproduct certainly is good!
The wood stoves contained a water tank. For shaving, the men would take some hot water in a shallow enamel bowl, lather with a brush, and use a straight razor. The wood for the stove was cut during the summer, and stacked fairly close to the house. A ready supply (not covered with ice and snow) was kept in a small room or woodbin at the back of the house. My grandmother’s house had a hand waterpump at the kitchen sink – that was really an improvement over having to haul pails of water from the well, as at my aunt’s house.
We made many of our toys by hand – cut-out tommy guns for playing “Commandos,” slingshots, scooters, and kites. Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. A favorite game was marbles – “potsies,” in which the last person to get his marble into the “pot” (hole in the ground) wins all of the marbles. Other favorite toys were India-rubber balls, “Spaldeens” (Spalding) balls, hop-scotch, and red-rover. In wintertime the streets became packed so hard with snow that we would play ice-hockey on them, under the streetlight (it was dark by about 4-5 o’clock). Girls always owned figure skates and boys owned hockey skates (and a hockey stick and puck). Few children owned roller skates (which clipped on to your shoes), because there were not many smooth concrete places to use them. My first tricycle and wagon were used ones that my father had refurbished. I remember when my sister got a store-bought brand new tricycle, and feeling a little short-changed.
In the spring and fall we wore sweaters or “windbreaker” jackets. In the winter we wore parkas. I remember my favorite winter trousers. They were called “breeks” and they were grey. They had side flares like “Mounty” pants, a leather patch on the seat, leather patches on the elbows, and laces near the bottom of the legs. My grandmother would knit me a special sweater containing two opposing moose on the front. A year later, when I had grown, she would unwind the entire sweater and knit it in a larger size. When I was in the third grade, in 1950, my father gave me a “trench coat” – exactly the same as Claude Rains wore in Casablanca. By that time, I was socially aware of clothes. None of my friends wore trench coats, and I refused to wear it. My father explained in no uncertain terms that it was that coat or no coat at all. I wore the coat, eventually got to liking it very much, and was sad to “see it go” when I outgrew it.
Our shoes in the wintertime were either tall rubber boots or short, stubby rubber shoes. One kid in the neighborhood – Conrad – had a pair of leather boots. He had a paper route, and had purchased them with his own money. In the summertime we wore black sneakers or leather sandals. Some of the kids were lucky enough to own “Doonesbury”-style leather pilot caps with Bakelite earphones in them.
About 1950, a family on our street (my friend Winston) got a television set. The neighborhood children were allowed to peek in the window to see it – children were rarely allowed into other people’s homes back then. My friend Bobby’s family had an 8 mm silent movie projector, but no neighborhood children were ever allowed to watch the movies. Bobby owned his own personal cartoon. I was impressed! On the few times when the weather had been bad for days, we were allowed to invite a friend over for a while. We usually played Chinese Checkers or “tin soldiers,” or read comic books.
Comic books cost a dime, which was a lot of money. Each child owned a number, say 5-20, and we would trade them. Our favorites were Dell Brand (Tarzan, Hopalong Cassidy / Bill Boyd, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Lone Ranger, Johnny Mack Brown, Lash Larue, Wild Bill Hickok, Wild Bill Elliot, Mighty Mouse, Donald Duck, Daffy Duck, Super Duck, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Woody Woodpecker, Tom and Jerry, Little Lulu, Henry Hawk and Foghorn Leghorn); DC (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Plastic Man, Blackhawks, Aquaman, Submariner, Unknown Worlds); Archie; or Faucett Publications (now owned by DC Comics) (Captain Marvel, Captain America, The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, Ibis the Invincible, Sheena, Nyoka). My favorites were Tarzan, Superman and Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel was rather different from the Captain Marvel of today. Captain Marvel was an ordinary man (Billy Batson) who became Captain Marvel after saying “Shazam.” The word “shazam” was an acronym from the initial letters of some ancient characters (Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury). There was also Captain Marvel, Jr. and Mary Marvel, whose ordinary personas were a crippled boy (Freddy Freeman) and a girl (Mary Batson, Billy’s sister). They transformed into their super beings by saying “Captain Marvel.” Some of us collected Classics Illustrated, which cost 15 cents. The Catholic Church would give free Classics Illustrated to all of the Catholic school children. They had the same basic story, but with rather thorough modifications throughout to emphasize Catholic tradition, morality and culture. Propaganda was alive and well in the Catholic Church.
The Sunday comics were quite different from today. They were serial stories, such as Superman, Tarzan, Dick Tracy, Prince Valiant, Mary Worth and the Phantom. Except for Blondie (Dagwood Bumstead), they did not contain the silly “cartoon” type of feature that dominates today’s Sunday comics.
Our records were all 78 rpm. Our friends across the street had some Edison-style cylinders and a player. We would occasionally listen to Victor Borge or Burl Ives or Strauss Waltzes.
Radio was a popular source of dramatic entertainment. During the daytime, my grandmother would listen to the various “soap operas,” such as The Romance of Helen Trent; The Second Mrs. Burton; Mary Noble, Backstage Wife; Ma Perkins; Our Gal Sunday; Lorenzo Jones; Young Doctor Malone; The Guiding Light; Stella Dallas; Just Plain Bill. In the evening, we would listen to the Green Hornet; Hopalong Cassidy; Death Valley Days; Superman; Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons; Fibber McGee and Molly; Father Knows Best; Ozzie and Harriet; Jack Benny; Arthur Godfrey; Baby Snooks; Our Miss Brooks; Bob Hope; The Great Gildersleeve; Michael Shayne; Bing Crosy; the Big Bands; Boston Blackie; Milton Berle; Bob and Ray; One Man’s Family.
I could go on and on, but don’t have the time right now (or the justification). I’ll reminisce further some other time. The thing that strikes me is that very many of the things that we take for granted today either did not exist at all or were in limited availability. No cell phones, no Walkmans or mp3 players, no computers, no tape cassettes or CDs, no calculators, few color prints in magazines, no faxes, no color television, no video games, no microwave ovens, no transistor radios, no transistor anything, no space ships, no artificial satellites. Polio season every year.
Some things, however, have hardly changed at all. Automobiles have essentially the same functionality as they did in the 1940s. Telephones have about the same quality sound (and for me, the same functionality, since I do not use any of the “special features,” and rarely use cell phones at all, unless I am in a less-developed country that has poor land-line access). Clothes are about the same, with the addition of “permanent press.” Basic tools for home or auto repair are about the same. Movies are about the same – Technicolor was invented about 1939 (e.g., The Wizard of Oz), and has never been improved upon. Although special effects (via digital processing) are vastly more exotic, we were just as fascinated by Flash Gordon and Superman in the 1940s as we were by Star Trek and Star Wars several decades later, even though they were in black and white with few special effects.
Home furnishings are about the same. Overall, most household appliances are functionally about the same as 50 years ago – sinks and faucets, toilets, electric lights, telephone, radio, television, stoves, refrigerators, mixers, toasters, tea kettles, pots and pans, utensils, musical instruments, heating systems – although air conditioning was not widespread and available mainly in movie theaters.
Perhaps the biggest change is in the access or availability of telephony, music and video entertainment – of limited access and modest fidelity in the 1940s, but of ready access and very high fidelity today (e.g., cell phones, color television with movies on demand, iPod). With respect to music and movies, the difference is one of degree and not of kind. But interactive video games do represent a difference in kind – there was nothing like them in the 1940s – unless you consider pinball machines! And cell phones represent a substantial change from telephone booths.
It is interesting that the only thing that modern science has been able to do that could not possibly be done in the 1940s, without computers, was to put a man on the moon and return him to Earth. The computer is absolutely necessary to make the rapid orbital computations that are essential to space flight. Many other things have been improved by computers, such as doing accounting by computer rather than by hand and computerized tomography (CT scanners, MRI scanners), but these are just improvements, perhaps even quantum improvements in functionality, and they do not represent new functionality (e.g., the X-ray was already available and widely used in the 1940s). With digital signal processing via computer, it is possible to do incredible image and voice processing, such as Karaoke systems that can change key and tempo, but these, once again are simply dramatic improvements – in the theaters of the 1940s, we had “follow the bouncing ball” Karaoke-type singalongs, although in a single key and tempo.
FndID(108)
FndTitle(Miscellany 37: Instate Tuition for Illegal Aliens; Americans Killed by Illegal Aliens; Mandatory Health Insurance; Ibuprofen Kills; Rapid Population Growth Destroys Everything; Environmental Destruction Caused by Immigration; All Illegal Aliens Are Criminals)
FndDescription(Miscellany 37: Instate Tuition for Illegal Aliens; Americans Killed by Illegal Aliens; Mandatory Health Insurance; Ibuprofen Kills; Rapid Population Growth Destroys Everything; Environmental Destruction Caused by Immigration; All Illegal Aliens Are Criminals)
FndKeywords(instate tuition for illegal aliens; murder by illegal alien; mandatory health insurance; ibuprofenn kills; rapid population growth destroys everything; environmental cost of mass immigration; all illegal aliens are criminals)