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If I, Anthony St. John,
Were the United States’ Ambassador to Italy…
I.
I would order immediately—with the consent of the President—all ambassadorial and consulate personnel in Italy to the new United States’ Embassy in Afghanistan.
II.
I would require all personnel attached to my offices throughout Italy to speak the Italian language.
III.
I would demand immediately that all members of the Central Stupidity Agency serving in Italy be returned to Washington for intelligence tests of their brains.
IV.
I would make a compartment of a Ferrovie dello Stato train my ambassadorial office and travel throughout Italy Mondays through Fridays.
V.
I would create a television program, An Afternoon Communicating with the United States’ Ambassador to Italy, to be presented every Saturday from 4 pm-6pm, with phone-in and cultural spots.
VI.
I would apologize to the Italian people on behalf of all previous United States’ ambassadors (cretini!) who served in Italy and did not speak Italian and did not communicate with the
Italian people.
VII.
I would create the United States’ Embassy of the Italian and American Peoples—open to all
without being a clubhouse for representatives of special interest groups.
VIII.
I would seek to open a dialogue—in italiano, finally!—with the Italian people.
IX.
I would seek to bring Italians and Americans together in a spirit of friendship and respect.
X.
I would seek to enhance throughout the world the role of both Italy and the United States of America as examples of peace and goodwill.
1 January 2002
Please distribute this plea to your friends.
Send it to the United States’ Embassy in Roma.
FAX: 06-467.42.623
Anthony St. John,
The Outside the Box Ambassador
Monday, May 11, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
The Art of Survival
The imperative to survive is confronting us more than at any other time in human history. There are very many more people; a haunting vulnerability pervades the air. An unmatched surge in the world’s population is guesstimated to propel humanity to the inconceivable head-count of 8,000,000,000 in 2025 and 10,000,000,000 in 2050. There is the never-ending desire for decent lodging, prosperous employment, low-cost mobility and lifelong wellbeing. Nevertheless, it has been by now substantiated that the Earth’s resources cannot gratify, even partially, the unrelenting yearnings of all of us. Multiplying social, political and economic disproportions are certain to instigate further discontent that in turn will egg on more conflicts and more dislocations upsetting whatever hopes of tranquility we may have aspired to.
Not all people care to survive. Many others care only that they themselves should survive. Individuals might concern themselves about living on and that others belonging to the very same global community of which they are a part will also live on. Although not necessarily infirm, people who are not particularly interested in enduring will do little to allow themselves to endure and generally are not vexed about the continuation of their fellows. They might not look properly after their health, they might “vegetate” their lives away in a slothful passivity, and they are baffling not only in their intimate social circles, they cause difficulties for their superiors and co-workers where they are engaged. They do not have to be criminals. These someones have no zest for life, sound off frequently, and are miserable and apathetic. They merely exist and at length become burdens on society which has to ante up for their untrustworthiness and refusal to exist for the betterment of their confrères. Most people who hate others first loathed themselves.
Then there are those whose individual self-interest is the actual motive of all conscious action, the valid end of their human activity. These types might dominate a close-knit grouping or even an establishment, and they must hold control of the system they superintend manipulating the network's subordinates to satisfy their cravings for power. Their sphere of activity is often constrictive and it is of course based on experience, tradition and more often than not family linkups. These swellheads thrive on what is determinate, and theirs is the exclusive mode to perform during whatever exigence that might emerge. Superficially, these egocentrics induce us to believe that their often sadistic modi operandi serve in fact the methodicalness of the governing body they and their underlings are ranked under, and so doing, their “beneficial” actions come to serve all, are for everyone's gain. They are not.
The third category is that to which this essay is directed, and it is the one from which we may derive a sense of hope—hopefully, too, the means to attain the expectations we are seeking. There are those causal agents to whom we may ascribe attributes unbeknown to the majority of society at large. These subjects need to make a contribution on behalf of others by caring for themselves foremost and subsequently reaching out to assist those with whom they subsist. All sound, forward-looking societies have had these characters to set the stage to set in motion an epoch of progress. These members of society are at the ready to take part, to contribute to the welfare of themselves and those in their company. They understand what it means to survive.
I am a survivor—so far! I have outlasted three 122mm Chinese rocket attacks, three or four mortar blasts, four months with an infantry company in the jungles bordering Laos and Cambodia, a plane crash, two robberies at gunpoint.... Still, I do not consider myself an expert. But I do recognize that I had something to do with my endurance. I have followed definite precepts that were taught to me. Notwithstanding, I have always been gifted with the will to enjoy life. Scito te ipsum!
My introduction to the theory of survival happed upon me when I entered the US Army on active duty as an artillery lieutenant in September 1966. Until that time I had drifted along in life not even thinking I might have to come through one day. In the artillery I was made to make myself self-sufficient and more important, careful. Discipline and anticipation of events were emphasized over and over and over in my training. In Vietnam, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, our 105mm howitzer artillery batteries could be hoisted into the air by Chinook helicopters, and then planted into some different point many kilometers distant. The routine for us was identical after each and every insertion. We followed the same rules, we erected the indistinguishable battery emplacement, we checked our instruments, secured the area, and were ready to shoot and communicate after being dropped into an often unknown, unfriendly environment. Above all, we could think that we might be transferred again in a matter of hours, or remain fixed in our new location for weeks or months. Maintenance was obligatory although not much appreciated, but it kept disgruntled unit members alert.
Parenthetically, the US Army was not up to sustaining itself in Vietnam, nor did it give its soldiers the motive, and the means, to create a new, propitious set of events. Soldiers were ill-equipped. Undisciplined. Apathetic. Many of them, lacking any hint of patriotism, shot themselves in the calf (The Million Dollar Wound), neglected to take their anti-malaria medication and then winded up in bathtubs filled with chunks of ice, and some even sought to kill themselves by volunteering—deriving pleasure or death from undergoing pain, abuse and cruelty—for hazardous missions: “Lieutenant, I'm not returning home.” The US Army accentuated, very stridently, that they had prepared us to fight in combat. This is not so. Most soldiers refused to trust anyone ranked above them. Disobedience was the norm in Vietnam where I had to hold up against both the “enemy,” whoever and whatever that was, and my own fellow combatants! In Vietnam, the US Army was a contradiction of its own terms and consequently doomed to failure.
My military experience, however insufferable, did inculcate in me a respect for life—my life! It made me appreciate the gift of being alive. That life had almost been taken away from me. Today, I am content to be alive. And I continue to follow the basic rules for survival many of which I learned in the US Army and employ even when I write this essay.
If you have set your heart on surviving, please listen to me. You cannot remain alive more than your family members, friends and colleagues by just wishing to. You must do your utmost to make it become a reality. Above all, you have to respect yourself before you can go on to esteem others. In fact, you are obliged to study, contemplate and seek responses to the uncertainties, about yourself and others, which haunt you.
One of the actions of great consequence to be taken is that one we are already familiar with: anticipation. Think before you act, and reflect habitually. Plan your days, weeks, months.... Set an endpoint you are inclined towards. Understand that victory comes hesitantly and has to be tracked down unswervingly and with adroitness. Do routine tasks as soon as possible to get them out of the way. With the time left over, concentrate on the various more pressing undertakings before you. Always endeavor to judge what is coming next. When you exit a bus, look to the left/right for oncoming vehicles. (I remember when the plane I was in was about to crash about an hour's flight from Caracas, I grabbed to my chest the four-year-old next to me, and realized that in four seconds we might be dead. My body was shaking with fear but I knew we all had to escape immediately when the twin-engine hit the water. In Vietnam, when 122mm rockets were incoming, my body shook convulsively but my voice was steady as a rock on my telephone operator's PRC-9 radio.) Do not go very fast—speed kills and not just on the highway. Sleep enough to be efficient. Eat correctly and be healthy. Without exception imagine that by not doing what is right for yourself and your body and mind, future complications will be caused by your negligence and stupidity.
It is accurate to say that preparedness is crucial to the prolongation of life or existence. In Vietnam, for every soldier on the battlefield, seven were backing him up. Helicopters had to be serviced, admin clerks typed reports, cooks prepared meals, doctors cared for the sick and wounded.... In our ordinary daily lives we must wash, clean our teeth, water the lawn and plants, iron our clothes for work on Monday.... We hold responsibilities that require us to react, and the realization of their success depends on our efficiency and enthusiasm. Being primed in advance is an enormous asset for achieving prosperity and living longer than most others.
To accomplish our mission (survival) we must cultivate the skill of self-discipline. To be in a state of readiness for whatever which might turn up, our attitude has to be set to change state to suit the challenge at hand. Repetition is an ugly word. So is routine. But these two sober-minded “axioms” must be complied with. We cannot secure anything worthwhile without being zealous and steadfast while doing our best to substantiate the meaning of our lives. If we fail to discipline ourselves when we forge ahead on the way to our last stop, we will ripen into very discomfited and discontented individuals.
Learn the meaning of the words “hard” and “strong.” We cannot be hard on ourselves unremittingly while being fervent about getting to our target. This is not clever. A person is strong when he or she knows when to be tenacious and when to be toned down. You ease up to be fit for the next bothersome occasion.
Authored by Anthony St. John
1 May 2009
Calenzano, Italia
www.anthonystjohn.blogspot.com
* * *
Not all people care to survive. Many others care only that they themselves should survive. Individuals might concern themselves about living on and that others belonging to the very same global community of which they are a part will also live on. Although not necessarily infirm, people who are not particularly interested in enduring will do little to allow themselves to endure and generally are not vexed about the continuation of their fellows. They might not look properly after their health, they might “vegetate” their lives away in a slothful passivity, and they are baffling not only in their intimate social circles, they cause difficulties for their superiors and co-workers where they are engaged. They do not have to be criminals. These someones have no zest for life, sound off frequently, and are miserable and apathetic. They merely exist and at length become burdens on society which has to ante up for their untrustworthiness and refusal to exist for the betterment of their confrères. Most people who hate others first loathed themselves.
Then there are those whose individual self-interest is the actual motive of all conscious action, the valid end of their human activity. These types might dominate a close-knit grouping or even an establishment, and they must hold control of the system they superintend manipulating the network's subordinates to satisfy their cravings for power. Their sphere of activity is often constrictive and it is of course based on experience, tradition and more often than not family linkups. These swellheads thrive on what is determinate, and theirs is the exclusive mode to perform during whatever exigence that might emerge. Superficially, these egocentrics induce us to believe that their often sadistic modi operandi serve in fact the methodicalness of the governing body they and their underlings are ranked under, and so doing, their “beneficial” actions come to serve all, are for everyone's gain. They are not.
The third category is that to which this essay is directed, and it is the one from which we may derive a sense of hope—hopefully, too, the means to attain the expectations we are seeking. There are those causal agents to whom we may ascribe attributes unbeknown to the majority of society at large. These subjects need to make a contribution on behalf of others by caring for themselves foremost and subsequently reaching out to assist those with whom they subsist. All sound, forward-looking societies have had these characters to set the stage to set in motion an epoch of progress. These members of society are at the ready to take part, to contribute to the welfare of themselves and those in their company. They understand what it means to survive.
I am a survivor—so far! I have outlasted three 122mm Chinese rocket attacks, three or four mortar blasts, four months with an infantry company in the jungles bordering Laos and Cambodia, a plane crash, two robberies at gunpoint.... Still, I do not consider myself an expert. But I do recognize that I had something to do with my endurance. I have followed definite precepts that were taught to me. Notwithstanding, I have always been gifted with the will to enjoy life. Scito te ipsum!
My introduction to the theory of survival happed upon me when I entered the US Army on active duty as an artillery lieutenant in September 1966. Until that time I had drifted along in life not even thinking I might have to come through one day. In the artillery I was made to make myself self-sufficient and more important, careful. Discipline and anticipation of events were emphasized over and over and over in my training. In Vietnam, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, our 105mm howitzer artillery batteries could be hoisted into the air by Chinook helicopters, and then planted into some different point many kilometers distant. The routine for us was identical after each and every insertion. We followed the same rules, we erected the indistinguishable battery emplacement, we checked our instruments, secured the area, and were ready to shoot and communicate after being dropped into an often unknown, unfriendly environment. Above all, we could think that we might be transferred again in a matter of hours, or remain fixed in our new location for weeks or months. Maintenance was obligatory although not much appreciated, but it kept disgruntled unit members alert.
Parenthetically, the US Army was not up to sustaining itself in Vietnam, nor did it give its soldiers the motive, and the means, to create a new, propitious set of events. Soldiers were ill-equipped. Undisciplined. Apathetic. Many of them, lacking any hint of patriotism, shot themselves in the calf (The Million Dollar Wound), neglected to take their anti-malaria medication and then winded up in bathtubs filled with chunks of ice, and some even sought to kill themselves by volunteering—deriving pleasure or death from undergoing pain, abuse and cruelty—for hazardous missions: “Lieutenant, I'm not returning home.” The US Army accentuated, very stridently, that they had prepared us to fight in combat. This is not so. Most soldiers refused to trust anyone ranked above them. Disobedience was the norm in Vietnam where I had to hold up against both the “enemy,” whoever and whatever that was, and my own fellow combatants! In Vietnam, the US Army was a contradiction of its own terms and consequently doomed to failure.
My military experience, however insufferable, did inculcate in me a respect for life—my life! It made me appreciate the gift of being alive. That life had almost been taken away from me. Today, I am content to be alive. And I continue to follow the basic rules for survival many of which I learned in the US Army and employ even when I write this essay.
If you have set your heart on surviving, please listen to me. You cannot remain alive more than your family members, friends and colleagues by just wishing to. You must do your utmost to make it become a reality. Above all, you have to respect yourself before you can go on to esteem others. In fact, you are obliged to study, contemplate and seek responses to the uncertainties, about yourself and others, which haunt you.
One of the actions of great consequence to be taken is that one we are already familiar with: anticipation. Think before you act, and reflect habitually. Plan your days, weeks, months.... Set an endpoint you are inclined towards. Understand that victory comes hesitantly and has to be tracked down unswervingly and with adroitness. Do routine tasks as soon as possible to get them out of the way. With the time left over, concentrate on the various more pressing undertakings before you. Always endeavor to judge what is coming next. When you exit a bus, look to the left/right for oncoming vehicles. (I remember when the plane I was in was about to crash about an hour's flight from Caracas, I grabbed to my chest the four-year-old next to me, and realized that in four seconds we might be dead. My body was shaking with fear but I knew we all had to escape immediately when the twin-engine hit the water. In Vietnam, when 122mm rockets were incoming, my body shook convulsively but my voice was steady as a rock on my telephone operator's PRC-9 radio.) Do not go very fast—speed kills and not just on the highway. Sleep enough to be efficient. Eat correctly and be healthy. Without exception imagine that by not doing what is right for yourself and your body and mind, future complications will be caused by your negligence and stupidity.
It is accurate to say that preparedness is crucial to the prolongation of life or existence. In Vietnam, for every soldier on the battlefield, seven were backing him up. Helicopters had to be serviced, admin clerks typed reports, cooks prepared meals, doctors cared for the sick and wounded.... In our ordinary daily lives we must wash, clean our teeth, water the lawn and plants, iron our clothes for work on Monday.... We hold responsibilities that require us to react, and the realization of their success depends on our efficiency and enthusiasm. Being primed in advance is an enormous asset for achieving prosperity and living longer than most others.
To accomplish our mission (survival) we must cultivate the skill of self-discipline. To be in a state of readiness for whatever which might turn up, our attitude has to be set to change state to suit the challenge at hand. Repetition is an ugly word. So is routine. But these two sober-minded “axioms” must be complied with. We cannot secure anything worthwhile without being zealous and steadfast while doing our best to substantiate the meaning of our lives. If we fail to discipline ourselves when we forge ahead on the way to our last stop, we will ripen into very discomfited and discontented individuals.
Learn the meaning of the words “hard” and “strong.” We cannot be hard on ourselves unremittingly while being fervent about getting to our target. This is not clever. A person is strong when he or she knows when to be tenacious and when to be toned down. You ease up to be fit for the next bothersome occasion.
Authored by Anthony St. John
1 May 2009
Calenzano, Italia
www.anthonystjohn.blogspot.com
* * *
Monday, April 6, 2009
History Is Back!
In 1989 History Came to an End!
In 2009 History Came Back Again!
Once upon a time there was a big ship. It was tall and strong and beautiful. It sailed the seas so stately-so. It visited all the oceans. It withstood storms. Resisted high waves. Broke chunks of ice and tilled on through to its destination. In its wake its friends followed comfortably. They depended on the big ship to open new frontiers for them. For decades everyone was happy. Then the ship stalled. It began to take on water. Will it sink? Will it slurp into the deep and suck along with it the leading industrial nations? Why not?
If one needs evidence that the DisUnited States of Northamerica has lost its stature as the so-called “leader of the world,” it might be wise to visit one of the hundreds upon hundreds of think tanks in existence where muddled “thinktankers,” in disarray and desperate, can be scrutinized. It is as if these intellectual obscurantists have mislaid all sense of reality—theirs! They have been smitten cruelly, and their haughtiness has been placed on a backburner. One of them—who, as did Columbus—presumed the world was flat, that it was finally a level economic playing field for the entire globe, has so much egg on his face, he hesitates to appear before public audiences to avoid being pelted even more.
For twenty years these dabblers, these eradicators of History rode high on their megalomania touting here, there and everywhere that their Northamerican-Anglo dynasty, their Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalism was humankind’s best destined political aspiration, the winner of the tug-of-war between autocracy and democracy, and that the globe would be showered with the manna, from the heavens above, produced by the unselfish efforts of a worldwide oligarchy working night and day for all our benefits. Amen, brothers and sisters, Amen! Amen!! Amen!!!
Listen to once-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, The Little Fat Witch, on 19 February 1998: “We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.” They certainly do! As of today, each and every Northamerican, all 300,000,000 of them, owes Chinese banks $3000! And who knows how many other liabilities Northamericans will have to reimburse in coming decades to pay off their bacchanalia of greed and corruption.
Those Jesuit-like conventionalists, padded with the lovability of their verbal drivel, who had divided the world up among the DUS, Europe and China, are in for another merciless jolt: the free-falling deterioration of respect for Western Civilization and its Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalist hegemony suspected by all on all corners of the globe.
One can observe that the most vociferous proponents of the anti-autocracy crusade are those who have become tyrannical themselves. Very often they are in cahoots with authoritative coteries that influence, flagrantly, the mechanisms of that “democracy” they define as the one which belongs to the people. These elites block the average citizens’ likelihoods of participating in their government by employing economic, legislative and judicial obstacles which serve to wall out qualified political personages in opposition to them. The despots spiel on about the “openness” of their “democratic” system, but, in fact, it is “clubby” and restricted to the few. When elections are held little choice is offered. There is a political echo rebounding throughout the “democratic” domain: “One party is just about the same as another.” Voters do not choose, they ratify. Government is under surveillance. The legal arrangement is used viciously to punish political enemies. For minor political reprobates there are prison stretches often founded on trumped-up charges. The DUS’s detention system is a shameful, shoddy conglomeration of injustice and inequality both of which promote recidivism.
The media too often works hand in hand with this oppressive cabal, and at press conferences queries are posited to accommodate political postures. All journalists know well what questions they dare not ask. Any individual who possesses the minimum inkling as to what is evolving in this world, can predict, sarcastically, the questions noodle-headed penny-a-liners posit at these journalistic jamborees.
The conservation of supremacy has become more critical than the endeavour to manage an economy more resourcefully and fairly for all. That is an obvious imperative. Body guards, super-protected limousines, isolated summit latitudes and longitudes (Bill Gates pronounced that video-conferencing will be the next stage in the electronic evolution) and foodstuff tasters come together to deflect our attention from pertinent issues. The image of a supernatural-like, almost religious happening is screened for us to give the sense that there is in progress some only one of its kind paranormality.
While concentrating on matters considered more important than ones which truly affect the lives of citizens on our planets, politicos have been irresponsible and dangerously naive. Particularly after the Second World War—yet well before that—three crucial life-threatening dilemmas afflicting the human race and the planet upon which it exists were marginalized and discussed, as a rule, with put-off-to-tomorrow expressions of aloofness:
I. The Population Upsurge. In 1961, there were more or less 3,000,000,000 Earthly inhabitants. Today, the world is approaching 7,000,000,000. Modern science has designed agricultural methods which have removed for many the burden of having to grow their own food. As a consequence, people have roamed from rural areas into enormous megatropolis. There they have stressed unimaginably the Earth and the resources it offers us endangering their own lives and those of their neighbours. The strain in the biosphere and the consequent disasters that ensue are corollaries that necessitated consideration at least a century before.
II. The Spectre of Injustice & Inequality. Throughout the world people are outraged and violence, more and more, has become the exclusive outlet for many. Half the world lives on a daily pittance that would buy someone a bag of French fries/chips in an industrially advanced nation. The distribution of wealth is dramatically lopsided. Poor people believe that they are the victims of the industrial world’s voracious appetite for their natural resources, and the historical sense of grievance they bear, exacerbates their condition and goads them on to voice disapproval.
III. The Haves & The Have-Nots. The world is tending to divide itself into two mammoth movements: the “rich” and the poor, those who have and those who have not—if but a little. Already, rage is being foisted upon the Robber Barons of the Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalism, and people, from all socio-economic strata, duped by banks and financial organizations, are rebelling as never before. The situation is so desperate, government leaders are joining forces to plug those gaps left by the horrible debauch of self-indulgence and sleaze now that the party is over.
There is a money factory in Washington, DC. Officially, it is called the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Engraving money is a complicated process which involves more than sixty-five separate and distinct steps. The Money Factory declares that in FY2008 38 million notes/bills were produced each day with a face value of about $629 million. In FY2008, a total of 7.7 billion notes, at a cost of 6.4 cents per note, were delivered. Ninety-five percent of the notes printed each year are used to replace notes both in and out of circulation. (By the way, if you had ten billion $1.00 notes and spent one every second, it would require 317 years for you to go broke. [See http://www.moneyfactory.gov/]).
Well now, where do we go from here? Multiply 7.7 billion by 6.4 cents and see what you come up with! Enough to see the Dow Jones drop another 100 points? Enough to realize that a little more than one note, of differing denominations, is printed for each and every human being on Earth. What does this say about economic planning? What does this mean for Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalism and Socialism?
We are not going to solve the world’s problems printing paper money! What is at stake is very much further from the lone consideration of economic factors. If the world is to survive, it must come to reflect on those basic concerns which affect each and every one of us. People must come together. Governments must encourage the interplay of social and political affairs which reach out to all. President Barack Obama will not be able to “pull it off” because the DUS has not the respect of the rest of the world.
Authored by Anthony St. John
6 April 2009
Calenzano, Italia
In 2009 History Came Back Again!
Once upon a time there was a big ship. It was tall and strong and beautiful. It sailed the seas so stately-so. It visited all the oceans. It withstood storms. Resisted high waves. Broke chunks of ice and tilled on through to its destination. In its wake its friends followed comfortably. They depended on the big ship to open new frontiers for them. For decades everyone was happy. Then the ship stalled. It began to take on water. Will it sink? Will it slurp into the deep and suck along with it the leading industrial nations? Why not?
If one needs evidence that the DisUnited States of Northamerica has lost its stature as the so-called “leader of the world,” it might be wise to visit one of the hundreds upon hundreds of think tanks in existence where muddled “thinktankers,” in disarray and desperate, can be scrutinized. It is as if these intellectual obscurantists have mislaid all sense of reality—theirs! They have been smitten cruelly, and their haughtiness has been placed on a backburner. One of them—who, as did Columbus—presumed the world was flat, that it was finally a level economic playing field for the entire globe, has so much egg on his face, he hesitates to appear before public audiences to avoid being pelted even more.
For twenty years these dabblers, these eradicators of History rode high on their megalomania touting here, there and everywhere that their Northamerican-Anglo dynasty, their Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalism was humankind’s best destined political aspiration, the winner of the tug-of-war between autocracy and democracy, and that the globe would be showered with the manna, from the heavens above, produced by the unselfish efforts of a worldwide oligarchy working night and day for all our benefits. Amen, brothers and sisters, Amen! Amen!! Amen!!!
Listen to once-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, The Little Fat Witch, on 19 February 1998: “We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.” They certainly do! As of today, each and every Northamerican, all 300,000,000 of them, owes Chinese banks $3000! And who knows how many other liabilities Northamericans will have to reimburse in coming decades to pay off their bacchanalia of greed and corruption.
Those Jesuit-like conventionalists, padded with the lovability of their verbal drivel, who had divided the world up among the DUS, Europe and China, are in for another merciless jolt: the free-falling deterioration of respect for Western Civilization and its Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalist hegemony suspected by all on all corners of the globe.
One can observe that the most vociferous proponents of the anti-autocracy crusade are those who have become tyrannical themselves. Very often they are in cahoots with authoritative coteries that influence, flagrantly, the mechanisms of that “democracy” they define as the one which belongs to the people. These elites block the average citizens’ likelihoods of participating in their government by employing economic, legislative and judicial obstacles which serve to wall out qualified political personages in opposition to them. The despots spiel on about the “openness” of their “democratic” system, but, in fact, it is “clubby” and restricted to the few. When elections are held little choice is offered. There is a political echo rebounding throughout the “democratic” domain: “One party is just about the same as another.” Voters do not choose, they ratify. Government is under surveillance. The legal arrangement is used viciously to punish political enemies. For minor political reprobates there are prison stretches often founded on trumped-up charges. The DUS’s detention system is a shameful, shoddy conglomeration of injustice and inequality both of which promote recidivism.
The media too often works hand in hand with this oppressive cabal, and at press conferences queries are posited to accommodate political postures. All journalists know well what questions they dare not ask. Any individual who possesses the minimum inkling as to what is evolving in this world, can predict, sarcastically, the questions noodle-headed penny-a-liners posit at these journalistic jamborees.
The conservation of supremacy has become more critical than the endeavour to manage an economy more resourcefully and fairly for all. That is an obvious imperative. Body guards, super-protected limousines, isolated summit latitudes and longitudes (Bill Gates pronounced that video-conferencing will be the next stage in the electronic evolution) and foodstuff tasters come together to deflect our attention from pertinent issues. The image of a supernatural-like, almost religious happening is screened for us to give the sense that there is in progress some only one of its kind paranormality.
While concentrating on matters considered more important than ones which truly affect the lives of citizens on our planets, politicos have been irresponsible and dangerously naive. Particularly after the Second World War—yet well before that—three crucial life-threatening dilemmas afflicting the human race and the planet upon which it exists were marginalized and discussed, as a rule, with put-off-to-tomorrow expressions of aloofness:
I. The Population Upsurge. In 1961, there were more or less 3,000,000,000 Earthly inhabitants. Today, the world is approaching 7,000,000,000. Modern science has designed agricultural methods which have removed for many the burden of having to grow their own food. As a consequence, people have roamed from rural areas into enormous megatropolis. There they have stressed unimaginably the Earth and the resources it offers us endangering their own lives and those of their neighbours. The strain in the biosphere and the consequent disasters that ensue are corollaries that necessitated consideration at least a century before.
II. The Spectre of Injustice & Inequality. Throughout the world people are outraged and violence, more and more, has become the exclusive outlet for many. Half the world lives on a daily pittance that would buy someone a bag of French fries/chips in an industrially advanced nation. The distribution of wealth is dramatically lopsided. Poor people believe that they are the victims of the industrial world’s voracious appetite for their natural resources, and the historical sense of grievance they bear, exacerbates their condition and goads them on to voice disapproval.
III. The Haves & The Have-Nots. The world is tending to divide itself into two mammoth movements: the “rich” and the poor, those who have and those who have not—if but a little. Already, rage is being foisted upon the Robber Barons of the Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalism, and people, from all socio-economic strata, duped by banks and financial organizations, are rebelling as never before. The situation is so desperate, government leaders are joining forces to plug those gaps left by the horrible debauch of self-indulgence and sleaze now that the party is over.
There is a money factory in Washington, DC. Officially, it is called the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Engraving money is a complicated process which involves more than sixty-five separate and distinct steps. The Money Factory declares that in FY2008 38 million notes/bills were produced each day with a face value of about $629 million. In FY2008, a total of 7.7 billion notes, at a cost of 6.4 cents per note, were delivered. Ninety-five percent of the notes printed each year are used to replace notes both in and out of circulation. (By the way, if you had ten billion $1.00 notes and spent one every second, it would require 317 years for you to go broke. [See http://www.moneyfactory.gov/]).
Well now, where do we go from here? Multiply 7.7 billion by 6.4 cents and see what you come up with! Enough to see the Dow Jones drop another 100 points? Enough to realize that a little more than one note, of differing denominations, is printed for each and every human being on Earth. What does this say about economic planning? What does this mean for Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalism and Socialism?
We are not going to solve the world’s problems printing paper money! What is at stake is very much further from the lone consideration of economic factors. If the world is to survive, it must come to reflect on those basic concerns which affect each and every one of us. People must come together. Governments must encourage the interplay of social and political affairs which reach out to all. President Barack Obama will not be able to “pull it off” because the DUS has not the respect of the rest of the world.
Authored by Anthony St. John
6 April 2009
Calenzano, Italia
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Jews & The Israelis & Me
When I was a kid—barely a teenager—there were two reasons for me to cross over the Williamsburgh Bridge into Manhattan from my Woodhaven, Queens home: one, to pick up and take home my grandfather, Gramps, from his small grocery store on the Lower East Side’s Rivington Street; or, to look for my father at his workplace in Greenwich Village, the Department of Justice’s Federal Detention Headquarters which all in my family referred to as “FDH.”
The Lower East Side and Greenwich Village were two colourful locales in the early 1950s. Their ambiences aroused in me dominant emotional effects and appeals that remain with me today. I could sense a fervour for life among the people populating these places although I was too youthful to know why I was living or what even for. These areas also suggested an exciting disparity to the rows and rows of Archie Bunker Queens suburban dwellings, victims of urban planning, which populated my neighbourhood. The Hasidic Jews on the Lower East Side and the “crazies” in the village were reasons alone worth making the jaunt into Manhattan.
I did not know it at the time, but the mania of McCarthyism was an important concern of my parents, older family members, and other grown-ups in my circle of acquaintances who were adamant about politics. When I went into Manhattan to dawdle about these places furtively, I did not realize that a lunatic fringe of Northamerican politics was affecting all of us very profoundly, and was, on each trip, tainting my own innocent spirit with hatred, and was impressing on my subconsciousness, by frequent repetition, the painful emotions of humiliating disgrace and disrepute. Those about me did not understand what they detested, and so they feared what they scorned. There is no glory or pride when one loathes. McCarthyism’s distortions fettered freedom so proficiently, my family members were burdened with strong regret, censure and reproach—effects they could not understand were playing havoc with their blind adherence to conservatism and their desire to be happy, productive citizens.
One evening I was with my uncle going over the Williamsburgh Bridge on our way to pick up Gramps. On my lap was The Daily News. I knew very well that the headlines, proclaiming the execution of two Jews (one of whom was a woman) who had been convicted of providing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets, did not sit very well with my uncle. There was some small connection between my grandfather and these sacrificed Jews. I do not know if Gramps was familiar with them in the neighbourhood, or that he was friendly with some of their relatives, but there was a precise reference to a building across the street and around the corner where people, linked to the event, lived. I was excluded from knowing the exact details of this relationship, but I did surmise that no one was very satisfied about what had happened to these two people at Sing Sing, and my kinship were all silent, afraid concerning the matter. The look on my uncle’s face as we crossed the bridge had been one of resoluteness—not typical of the blustering, swaggering conduct displayed by a 1950s’ surefire conservative. I think he was ashamed. My grandfather was distressed.
In the 1950s and 1960s I enjoyed in New York City the fruits of a location which was truly tolerant—at least the most forbearing of any other city I have known since. The Jews, in particular, for all the narrow-mindedness that has been heaped upon them during their history, could profess their “Jewishness” in the open without fear of being attacked for doing so. Jews mingled freely with the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, Puerto Ricans, Afroamericans and all other ethnic groups (cryptic New Yorkers!) living in The Big Apple. Inter-marriages were common. Most of us would not be ashamed to bring a Jewish friend home. The “spy” story was a blow to many who had Jewish friends, and the horror of McCarthyism was blamed for stirring up the basest of feelings of those who were less charitable than others. Some years later my Jewish girlfriend, who I loved very much, sobbed to me about this tragedy. She was terribly despondent about what had happened to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and she proclaimed vociferously their innocence to me.
I have often felt comfortable with the movement, on the part of Jews worldwide and Israelis in their home, to “rub the human race’s nose” in the accursed acts perpetrated on Jews, the ROM, gay persons and other factions singled out for destruction during the incomparably atrocious Second World War. While perhaps film footage does not authenticate the “6,000,000” number, it does, nonetheless, confirm acts of violence that demand universal condemnation. The Jewish and Israeli communities do well to harp on these massacres for the benefit of humanity. It is disgusting for political organizations to make reference to this calamity as some sort of Zionist plot to increase Jewish and Israeli economic and political hegemony. And it does not surprise me, as repulsive as it might be, that there are Roman Catholic organizations and even prelates, members of a religious body that offered succour to the Nazi regime during the Second World War, who are willing to make biased hay for the “Holy” Mother Church at the expense of another spiritual entity. How low can they go?
Nevertheless, it can be argued that the Jews and Israelis exaggerated in their efforts to condemn and, out of feelings of intense grief and justified bawlings for rectitude, compromised their own position in light of the political and economic realities of today. Instead of aligning themselves with the protests of other victims of historically-neglected exterminations, the Jews and Israelis went along alone. History itself has not been kind to the victims (200,000,000) of not only the First and Second World Wars, no one ever thinks about the millions and millions of natives purged by the Europeans in the Americas, the Vietnamese bombed to death by the Northamericans, the African slave trade...an ad infinitum inventory of the revulsions committed by men and women throughout the world’s olden times. The Jews and the Israelis gave the world the impression that their reversal was something more special than the staggering blows executed upon others. They possessed the savvy and means, something maybe the Northamerican Indians did not, to put their case before the world and seek its pity. Many of us offered them compassion. It is a terrible shame that History consigned the efforts of the Jews and Israelis to the heap of so many other human-made catastrophes, and permitted the Jewish holocaust to pale and take its ordinary place among them. “The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of millions is History.” Stalin said that.
Our mea culpas for the Jews and Israelis can be grasped still further by analyzing in a more revisionist political sense, not a particularly historically religious one, the post-Second World War dividing up of the spoils of that calamity. Shocked beyond belief, military and political leaders attempted to deal with the catastrophic loss of life and the rubble of bombed-out cities which they surveyed had befallen the European continent. Death and destruction horrified all of us, and still today we carry in our psyches the enormously scarred memories of the deathly twentieth century and the two world wars forever blotting its history. What was to be done? Where was one to begin to reconstruct? Who would have what? How would a continent be rebuilt on the shambles it had twice made of itself? How could it?
One would have to distend his or her imagination quite a long stretch to believe that the United States and the United Kingdom had purely sentimental and honourable objectives in their minds when they guaranteed European Jews not only a safe exodus to their promised land, but even the assurance that they would be protected from any hostility that they might encounter during their settlement activities, attempts to fulfil their religious dreams, and then those expectations of establishing the State of Israel. The Jews had come to stay, and they would be sustained militarily, politically, economically and morally by the victors of the Second World War who enjoyed tremendously to wield their newly-discovered global powers.
As immediately as the Jews and the soon-to-be Israelis comprehended that their religious and chauvinistic stakes in a sliver of terra firma, more or less half the size of Switzerland, was not appreciated by their Mashreq (Middle East) neighbours, those inhabitants similarly, hastily revolted at the notion that several newly invigorated Western nations were to be the determiners, not them, of the Jews and the not yet Israelis in the centuries-old homelands of an awesome amount of Arab-speaking peoples. This was an intolerable state of affairs. Blood was shed. It continues to be.
Having wedged a handful of Hebrews between the Christian world and the Islamic sphere, the exponents of Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalism, shown the way by the soon to be DisUnited Kingdom and the DisUnited States of Northamerica, had put their foot in the entryway of Mashreq, had fortified their turf with a strategy of long duration in mind, and had started in on looking forward to counting on the petroleum reserves in that area which would be needed to fuel their expansionist aspirations brandishing, in one hand, the vicious, dog-eat-dog MBA dogmas of Harvard University and the University of Chicago, and, in the other, the St. James bible. Psychoanalysts describe this as the “double bind” syndrome. Others simply refer to it with the more mundane appellation— two-facedness.
It is often commented—frequently by Jews spread out throughout the world and Israelis and Jews suffering markedly in Israel—that the Jews and Israelis are remarkably bright people. That they have been the victors of a fifth of the Nobel prizes, and that this worldwide group of approximately 13,000,000 people, chosen by God (their god!), individuals very often atheistic, is therefore some kind of “untouchable” ethnic group. Not being necessarily arrogant about their knacks, the Jews and Israelis are quick to explain that their gifts have been forged throughout the ages not on account of any particular pre-eminence, but because their minority complexion has compelled them to be sharp in order to survive. So be it. I doubt that Jews and Israelis are outstandingly quick as a group. We all have known some of them who are not clever—are far from being astute. History is replete with races which were astonishingly sophisticated but are no longer with us. Likewise, the Jews and Israelis look as if they, too, might be in grave difficulty attempting to prolong their lineage. They are not a super people. They are not out to get us. They do not control the world’s financial and media institutions. No one does. We are obligated to be of assistance to the Jews and Israelis. We must help them to continue to exist not because of their religion or nationality, but for the reason that they are human beings as all of us are.
If the Jews and Israelis have won a fifth of the Nobel prizes, this is not evidence of intellectual dominance. The Nobel is not an IQ test. The award is often influenced by political rationales. Jean-Paul Sartre refused it. Henry “The Carpet Bomber” Kissinger and Mother Teresa are Nobel laureates. One Nobel winner (1921), born into a Jewish family, Albert Einstein, regretted very much his part in the invention of the nuclear energy that would eventually massacre tens of thousands at Nagasaki and Hiroshima and terrorize millions in a protracted Cold War. Still another Jew crowned with a Nobel laurel wreath (1976), Milton Friedman, intimidated hundreds of millions of people, bringing too many of them to the brink of destitution—an E=mc² for them—when he concocted a fruitless economic ideology based on the exploitation of individuals’ toil, an absolute, autocratic aversion to government intervention to assist those in need, one that vied for the “perfection” of the marketplace, hinted that eventually some kind of concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly intelligent group of people is the best of all economic possibilities available, an economic mafia that did what it could to benefit multinational companies, cultivated a creed which encouraged the use of repression to put into operation the Chicago Boys’ economic policies in at least Chile and Indonesia, and viewed a human being as some sort of homo economicus. He was a mentor to Ronald Reagan and the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. Ironically, he also helped develop a new proximity fuse for anti-aircraft projectiles! A veritable hard-nosed skinflint who set the tone for bankers, financial advisers and stockbrokers to bring the DisUnited States of Northamerica to its knees after an unprecedented spectacle of graft and corruption never recorded in world history previous to nowadays.
All Jews and Israelis must consider the following:
1. Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalism is a lethal fusion of repugnant inanity and unrepentant malfeasance. It has been that now for more than four-hundred years, and will continue to be so until its last gasping breath. Already this more or less spent system of elitism has become the laughingstock of many throughout the world, and it is especially ridiculed by the three billion human beings who live on two dollars a day. A new DUS president, skimming over the top of this reality with a stiff upper lip and repetitive supplications for rectitude, is not going to alter, substantially, the course this economic shipwreck is pursuing. The ship has been brought to a standstill. Still afloat, it is taking on water. It risks sinking into the nethermost depths of the sea. With the loss of the world’s dominant economic power to cover for it, Israel is also treading in an ever more treacherous territory. Contrary to many buoyant prognostications, the DUS will not stay put at the center of the international economy.
The Lower East Side and Greenwich Village were two colourful locales in the early 1950s. Their ambiences aroused in me dominant emotional effects and appeals that remain with me today. I could sense a fervour for life among the people populating these places although I was too youthful to know why I was living or what even for. These areas also suggested an exciting disparity to the rows and rows of Archie Bunker Queens suburban dwellings, victims of urban planning, which populated my neighbourhood. The Hasidic Jews on the Lower East Side and the “crazies” in the village were reasons alone worth making the jaunt into Manhattan.
I did not know it at the time, but the mania of McCarthyism was an important concern of my parents, older family members, and other grown-ups in my circle of acquaintances who were adamant about politics. When I went into Manhattan to dawdle about these places furtively, I did not realize that a lunatic fringe of Northamerican politics was affecting all of us very profoundly, and was, on each trip, tainting my own innocent spirit with hatred, and was impressing on my subconsciousness, by frequent repetition, the painful emotions of humiliating disgrace and disrepute. Those about me did not understand what they detested, and so they feared what they scorned. There is no glory or pride when one loathes. McCarthyism’s distortions fettered freedom so proficiently, my family members were burdened with strong regret, censure and reproach—effects they could not understand were playing havoc with their blind adherence to conservatism and their desire to be happy, productive citizens.
One evening I was with my uncle going over the Williamsburgh Bridge on our way to pick up Gramps. On my lap was The Daily News. I knew very well that the headlines, proclaiming the execution of two Jews (one of whom was a woman) who had been convicted of providing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets, did not sit very well with my uncle. There was some small connection between my grandfather and these sacrificed Jews. I do not know if Gramps was familiar with them in the neighbourhood, or that he was friendly with some of their relatives, but there was a precise reference to a building across the street and around the corner where people, linked to the event, lived. I was excluded from knowing the exact details of this relationship, but I did surmise that no one was very satisfied about what had happened to these two people at Sing Sing, and my kinship were all silent, afraid concerning the matter. The look on my uncle’s face as we crossed the bridge had been one of resoluteness—not typical of the blustering, swaggering conduct displayed by a 1950s’ surefire conservative. I think he was ashamed. My grandfather was distressed.
In the 1950s and 1960s I enjoyed in New York City the fruits of a location which was truly tolerant—at least the most forbearing of any other city I have known since. The Jews, in particular, for all the narrow-mindedness that has been heaped upon them during their history, could profess their “Jewishness” in the open without fear of being attacked for doing so. Jews mingled freely with the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, Puerto Ricans, Afroamericans and all other ethnic groups (cryptic New Yorkers!) living in The Big Apple. Inter-marriages were common. Most of us would not be ashamed to bring a Jewish friend home. The “spy” story was a blow to many who had Jewish friends, and the horror of McCarthyism was blamed for stirring up the basest of feelings of those who were less charitable than others. Some years later my Jewish girlfriend, who I loved very much, sobbed to me about this tragedy. She was terribly despondent about what had happened to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and she proclaimed vociferously their innocence to me.
I have often felt comfortable with the movement, on the part of Jews worldwide and Israelis in their home, to “rub the human race’s nose” in the accursed acts perpetrated on Jews, the ROM, gay persons and other factions singled out for destruction during the incomparably atrocious Second World War. While perhaps film footage does not authenticate the “6,000,000” number, it does, nonetheless, confirm acts of violence that demand universal condemnation. The Jewish and Israeli communities do well to harp on these massacres for the benefit of humanity. It is disgusting for political organizations to make reference to this calamity as some sort of Zionist plot to increase Jewish and Israeli economic and political hegemony. And it does not surprise me, as repulsive as it might be, that there are Roman Catholic organizations and even prelates, members of a religious body that offered succour to the Nazi regime during the Second World War, who are willing to make biased hay for the “Holy” Mother Church at the expense of another spiritual entity. How low can they go?
Nevertheless, it can be argued that the Jews and Israelis exaggerated in their efforts to condemn and, out of feelings of intense grief and justified bawlings for rectitude, compromised their own position in light of the political and economic realities of today. Instead of aligning themselves with the protests of other victims of historically-neglected exterminations, the Jews and Israelis went along alone. History itself has not been kind to the victims (200,000,000) of not only the First and Second World Wars, no one ever thinks about the millions and millions of natives purged by the Europeans in the Americas, the Vietnamese bombed to death by the Northamericans, the African slave trade...an ad infinitum inventory of the revulsions committed by men and women throughout the world’s olden times. The Jews and the Israelis gave the world the impression that their reversal was something more special than the staggering blows executed upon others. They possessed the savvy and means, something maybe the Northamerican Indians did not, to put their case before the world and seek its pity. Many of us offered them compassion. It is a terrible shame that History consigned the efforts of the Jews and Israelis to the heap of so many other human-made catastrophes, and permitted the Jewish holocaust to pale and take its ordinary place among them. “The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of millions is History.” Stalin said that.
Our mea culpas for the Jews and Israelis can be grasped still further by analyzing in a more revisionist political sense, not a particularly historically religious one, the post-Second World War dividing up of the spoils of that calamity. Shocked beyond belief, military and political leaders attempted to deal with the catastrophic loss of life and the rubble of bombed-out cities which they surveyed had befallen the European continent. Death and destruction horrified all of us, and still today we carry in our psyches the enormously scarred memories of the deathly twentieth century and the two world wars forever blotting its history. What was to be done? Where was one to begin to reconstruct? Who would have what? How would a continent be rebuilt on the shambles it had twice made of itself? How could it?
One would have to distend his or her imagination quite a long stretch to believe that the United States and the United Kingdom had purely sentimental and honourable objectives in their minds when they guaranteed European Jews not only a safe exodus to their promised land, but even the assurance that they would be protected from any hostility that they might encounter during their settlement activities, attempts to fulfil their religious dreams, and then those expectations of establishing the State of Israel. The Jews had come to stay, and they would be sustained militarily, politically, economically and morally by the victors of the Second World War who enjoyed tremendously to wield their newly-discovered global powers.
As immediately as the Jews and the soon-to-be Israelis comprehended that their religious and chauvinistic stakes in a sliver of terra firma, more or less half the size of Switzerland, was not appreciated by their Mashreq (Middle East) neighbours, those inhabitants similarly, hastily revolted at the notion that several newly invigorated Western nations were to be the determiners, not them, of the Jews and the not yet Israelis in the centuries-old homelands of an awesome amount of Arab-speaking peoples. This was an intolerable state of affairs. Blood was shed. It continues to be.
Having wedged a handful of Hebrews between the Christian world and the Islamic sphere, the exponents of Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalism, shown the way by the soon to be DisUnited Kingdom and the DisUnited States of Northamerica, had put their foot in the entryway of Mashreq, had fortified their turf with a strategy of long duration in mind, and had started in on looking forward to counting on the petroleum reserves in that area which would be needed to fuel their expansionist aspirations brandishing, in one hand, the vicious, dog-eat-dog MBA dogmas of Harvard University and the University of Chicago, and, in the other, the St. James bible. Psychoanalysts describe this as the “double bind” syndrome. Others simply refer to it with the more mundane appellation— two-facedness.
It is often commented—frequently by Jews spread out throughout the world and Israelis and Jews suffering markedly in Israel—that the Jews and Israelis are remarkably bright people. That they have been the victors of a fifth of the Nobel prizes, and that this worldwide group of approximately 13,000,000 people, chosen by God (their god!), individuals very often atheistic, is therefore some kind of “untouchable” ethnic group. Not being necessarily arrogant about their knacks, the Jews and Israelis are quick to explain that their gifts have been forged throughout the ages not on account of any particular pre-eminence, but because their minority complexion has compelled them to be sharp in order to survive. So be it. I doubt that Jews and Israelis are outstandingly quick as a group. We all have known some of them who are not clever—are far from being astute. History is replete with races which were astonishingly sophisticated but are no longer with us. Likewise, the Jews and Israelis look as if they, too, might be in grave difficulty attempting to prolong their lineage. They are not a super people. They are not out to get us. They do not control the world’s financial and media institutions. No one does. We are obligated to be of assistance to the Jews and Israelis. We must help them to continue to exist not because of their religion or nationality, but for the reason that they are human beings as all of us are.
If the Jews and Israelis have won a fifth of the Nobel prizes, this is not evidence of intellectual dominance. The Nobel is not an IQ test. The award is often influenced by political rationales. Jean-Paul Sartre refused it. Henry “The Carpet Bomber” Kissinger and Mother Teresa are Nobel laureates. One Nobel winner (1921), born into a Jewish family, Albert Einstein, regretted very much his part in the invention of the nuclear energy that would eventually massacre tens of thousands at Nagasaki and Hiroshima and terrorize millions in a protracted Cold War. Still another Jew crowned with a Nobel laurel wreath (1976), Milton Friedman, intimidated hundreds of millions of people, bringing too many of them to the brink of destitution—an E=mc² for them—when he concocted a fruitless economic ideology based on the exploitation of individuals’ toil, an absolute, autocratic aversion to government intervention to assist those in need, one that vied for the “perfection” of the marketplace, hinted that eventually some kind of concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly intelligent group of people is the best of all economic possibilities available, an economic mafia that did what it could to benefit multinational companies, cultivated a creed which encouraged the use of repression to put into operation the Chicago Boys’ economic policies in at least Chile and Indonesia, and viewed a human being as some sort of homo economicus. He was a mentor to Ronald Reagan and the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. Ironically, he also helped develop a new proximity fuse for anti-aircraft projectiles! A veritable hard-nosed skinflint who set the tone for bankers, financial advisers and stockbrokers to bring the DisUnited States of Northamerica to its knees after an unprecedented spectacle of graft and corruption never recorded in world history previous to nowadays.
All Jews and Israelis must consider the following:
1. Judeo-Christian “Democratic” Capitalism is a lethal fusion of repugnant inanity and unrepentant malfeasance. It has been that now for more than four-hundred years, and will continue to be so until its last gasping breath. Already this more or less spent system of elitism has become the laughingstock of many throughout the world, and it is especially ridiculed by the three billion human beings who live on two dollars a day. A new DUS president, skimming over the top of this reality with a stiff upper lip and repetitive supplications for rectitude, is not going to alter, substantially, the course this economic shipwreck is pursuing. The ship has been brought to a standstill. Still afloat, it is taking on water. It risks sinking into the nethermost depths of the sea. With the loss of the world’s dominant economic power to cover for it, Israel is also treading in an ever more treacherous territory. Contrary to many buoyant prognostications, the DUS will not stay put at the center of the international economy.
2. There are said to be seven hundred DUS military bases scattered throughout the world. While many of these installations seek to cultivate “friendly” rapports within the territories they occupy, the schizoid implication is that, in return, backing for the DUS and its principles is insisted upon. Might is Right! Is it possible that this wide-reaching martial exposure, with military conduits strategically arranged, gives the DUS some tactical gain, or are the DUS’ military forces so spread thin they might be considered by their opponents to be impotent and eventual easy targets? What would happen if Southamerican leaders bonded and again challenged the DisUnited Kingdom over its possession of the Malvinas? Would inebriated Chelsea and Manchester United fans fill up military cruise ships singing “Rule, Britannia!” and sail off towards Southamerica to conquer it? Or, what would happen if hundreds of thousands of Italian left-wingers surrounded Camp Darby in Tuscany, the DUS’s most sizeable deposit of arms outside continental DUS, and chained themselves to railroad tracks to prohibit the delivery of other arms from northern European DUS caches? Would chubby, under the influence “Americans” march off to get the better of Italy again? Or, what would happen if China opted to take back Taiwan? Would pot-smoking “Americans” set off to fight against China’s million plus army? Or, what if all three of these hypothetical incidents occurred at the same time? Or, what about another 9/11? And, will the DUS be able to depend on France, Germany and Italy—hedonistic, arteriosclerotic, marinating in their vulgar hypocrisy, and still shell-shocked from the bloodbaths they participated in during the twentieth century—to rally round the Stars & Stripes’ flagpole? Let’s face it, DUS militarists are mightier bluffers than are DUS capitalists.
To my Jewish and Israeli friends I suggest an exit stratagem. A word to the wise should be sufficient. I implore you all to come to your senses and renounce your lost cause that horrifies each day the global community with blood-letting in Israel and Palestine giving mankind the nightmare that there can be no hope for peace on this planet. Your nation is a focal point of hatred for a billion people, and that detestation has been incubating for at least two-hundred years. In Israel, you are a mere seven million constituting one half of the total worldwide Jewish population. What madness makes you think you can continue to exist with such odds clearly against you? What ethical justification do you possess that justifies your continued confrontation which, in turn, causes so much anguish for individuals who are not even your neighbours? What principled concept entitles you to risk the lives of half your people? If you depart from the “promised land,” (the promise of what?), you will relieve a tremendous tension that threatens the world’s security. Further, this act will cause us to respect you. Your choice to relinquish your homeland for the benefit of humanity will not be regarded as a surrender on your part, but a wise move made considering your own restricted options. Such a feat might just save the Jewish and Israel race in Israel from still another mass butchery this time caused by your recalcitrance and conceit. It is impossible for you to count any longer on the DisUnited Kingdom and the DisUnited States of Northamerica. It is time to cease being their pawn. A posse ad esse.
Authored by Anthony St. John
The Ides of March, MMIX
Calenzano, Italia
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Proposal to Augment Employment Prospects & Earnings of the Posteitaliane Group
A N T H O N Y S T. JOHN
Casella Postale 38
50041 CALENZANO FI
Italia
M E M O R A N D U M
Casella Postale 38
50041 CALENZANO FI
Italia
M E M O R A N D U M
In the interest of: The Honorable Elizabeth Dibble
Deputy Chief of Mission in Charge of
Deputy Chief of Mission in Charge of
Embassy Affairs During Absence of Ambassador to Italy
The United States’ Embassy
119/A Viale Vittorio Veneto
00187 ROMA RM
Italia
Coming from: ASJ
Date: 15 March 2009
Subject: Posteitaliane
The global economic crisis is affecting the Italian economy more and more. With the failure to realize a Ministero dell’Informazione e Turismo, which would have abetted the organization and consequent efficiency of the drastically declining Italian tourist industry, the nation’s most important commercial concern, higher unemployment figures are about to inflict Italy’s economy even further. To help stem the decline in employment, I wish to make a suggestion to the Posteitaliane which might bring thousands, even tens of thousands, of employment opportunities to suffering Italians: The formation, by the Posteitaliane group, of a franchising business that would lease out the website domains of all Italian zip codes (codici di avviamento postale) to private entrepreneurs who would consequently build their sites, under the auspices of the Posteitaliane, in consideration of the localities where they are positioned throughout the country. The websites would be designed by Posteitaliane and would be their sole property. Franchisers would have the options of boosting their profits via the advertising proceeds they would accumulate from their efforts. Franchisers would also be permitted to include ideas and projects which might enhance the tourism business in their areas. Further, artistic, cultural, social and other events could be published on websites not only for neighboring communities, but also for foreign visitors seeking specific knowledge concerning a particular Italian tourist spot. Posteitaliane, assuming this role, would become a leader not only in affording tourist information, it would also serve as a national unifying force bringing Italian customs and mores not only to other parts of Italy and Europe, but to the entire world.
Friday, February 27, 2009
A Lament for Europe
A Lament for Europe
Land of the Setting Sun
Caldron simmering in hungering desperation
To regain the smacks of the Past.
You seek to lunge ahead
On the energy of Your logic
And hopes not yet lionized.
You call upon Your histories
To lend strength to Your phantasies.
You coil up hard on Your proud self
Wrinkled and weather-beaten.
You struggle to nurture new flowers
On the dry rot of Your haunted memories.
Your youth, sniffed upon by strapped canine squads,
Rape-hate in Your stadiums
Striped with electronic rejoinders
To press softly-pliant, gaily-tinged plastic buttons.
Your elderly curl their ways to bankrupt health ministries
Where physicians fool with forms
And fill in football pools.
Your neighbors to the East—
Brazen, sordid—
Yank towards You
Roughly extracting for exacting theirs craved for.
You, Europe, sit pickled—
Soused in the juices of Your scummy heretofore.
Your dabblers in politics set flags unfurled
And their powers shame—
Shame!—
This Our world.
Anthony St. John
Land of the Setting Sun
Caldron simmering in hungering desperation
To regain the smacks of the Past.
You seek to lunge ahead
On the energy of Your logic
And hopes not yet lionized.
You call upon Your histories
To lend strength to Your phantasies.
You coil up hard on Your proud self
Wrinkled and weather-beaten.
You struggle to nurture new flowers
On the dry rot of Your haunted memories.
Your youth, sniffed upon by strapped canine squads,
Rape-hate in Your stadiums
Striped with electronic rejoinders
To press softly-pliant, gaily-tinged plastic buttons.
Your elderly curl their ways to bankrupt health ministries
Where physicians fool with forms
And fill in football pools.
Your neighbors to the East—
Brazen, sordid—
Yank towards You
Roughly extracting for exacting theirs craved for.
You, Europe, sit pickled—
Soused in the juices of Your scummy heretofore.
Your dabblers in politics set flags unfurled
And their powers shame—
Shame!—
This Our world.
Anthony St. John
Complainte pour L'Europe
Complainte pour L’Europe
Terre du Soleil Couchant
Grande chaudière bouillonnant en désespoir affamé
Pour retrouver les saveurs du Passé.
Tu essaies de Te projeter en avant
Sur l’énergie de Ta logique
Et d’espoirs pas encore idéalisés.
Tu invoques Ton histoire
Pour fortifier Tes fantaisies.
Tu t’accroches serrée à Ton orgueilleux moi
Gercé et corrodé par les intempéries.
Tu t’efforces de faire pousser de nouvelles fleurs
De la putréfaction de Tes mémoires tourmentées.
Tes jeunes, flairés par des équipes de chiens en laisse,
Violent-haïssent dans Tes stades
Trainés avec des allèchements électroniques
A presser de tendres et colorés boutons de plastique.
Tes vieux serpentent avec fatigue vers des ministères de la santé en ruine
Où les médecins s’amusent avec les formulaires
Et remplissent des fiches du loto sportif.
Tes voisins de l’Est—
Arrogants, sordides—
S’agrippent à Toi
En prétendant rudement ce qu’ils convoitent et leur dû.
Toi, Europe, tu es assise embaumée—
Imprégnée des jus de Ton méprisable temps qui fut.
Tes politiciens amateurs déplient des drapeaux
Et leurs pouvoirs font honte—
Font honte !—
A ce monde qui est Nôtre.
Anthony St. John
Terre du Soleil Couchant
Grande chaudière bouillonnant en désespoir affamé
Pour retrouver les saveurs du Passé.
Tu essaies de Te projeter en avant
Sur l’énergie de Ta logique
Et d’espoirs pas encore idéalisés.
Tu invoques Ton histoire
Pour fortifier Tes fantaisies.
Tu t’accroches serrée à Ton orgueilleux moi
Gercé et corrodé par les intempéries.
Tu t’efforces de faire pousser de nouvelles fleurs
De la putréfaction de Tes mémoires tourmentées.
Tes jeunes, flairés par des équipes de chiens en laisse,
Violent-haïssent dans Tes stades
Trainés avec des allèchements électroniques
A presser de tendres et colorés boutons de plastique.
Tes vieux serpentent avec fatigue vers des ministères de la santé en ruine
Où les médecins s’amusent avec les formulaires
Et remplissent des fiches du loto sportif.
Tes voisins de l’Est—
Arrogants, sordides—
S’agrippent à Toi
En prétendant rudement ce qu’ils convoitent et leur dû.
Toi, Europe, tu es assise embaumée—
Imprégnée des jus de Ton méprisable temps qui fut.
Tes politiciens amateurs déplient des drapeaux
Et leurs pouvoirs font honte—
Font honte !—
A ce monde qui est Nôtre.
Anthony St. John
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