A WEEKLY COMMENTARY
Year Twenty-Seven ... Number Three ... January 18, 1980
GAME-COCKS COME HOME TO ROOST
In 1954, the United States almost went to war against Red China. Communist forces had invaded Vietnam, Dien Bien Phu was about to fall and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles tried to gain allied support for direct entry into the war in behalf of the beleaguered French. Ten years later the U.S. did enter that war as the result of a contrived incident in Tonkin Bay. But in 1954, the Dulles policy which was said to have led us "to the brink of war," came to known as "brinkmanship."
Like the Cold War, Brinkmanship is with us again. This time the adversary is not Red China, but Red Russia. Yet the policy-makers are the same; they are that foreign-policy-making clique commonly called the Eastern Establishment, which is made up of members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers, Rockefeller's newest creation the Trilateral Commission, etc. But, as in 1954, these organizations are seldom mentioned by the controlled media. Instead, the media spotlight is beamed on one individual who represent these organizations or their interests. In 1954 it was Dulles. In 1980 it is Carter. So, if something goes wrong, Carter can be blamed, not the CFR or TLC.
For example, in his appraisal of the importance to the U.S. of the invasion of Afghanistan by the Russians, columnist Ben Stein refers to a much-read book by Victor Lasky, "Jimmy Carter: The Man and the Myth." Lasky makes three points: Jimmy Carter is not smart; Jimmy Carter is not honest; Jimmy Carter is only marginally aware of what is going on around him. Stein agrees and remarks that "all of these characteristics came out in his (Carter's) response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan."
Lasky and Stein are right on one point: Jimmy Carter is not honest. But, they are wrong when they say he is not smart. If he were as much of a fool as he pretends to be, he would never have been selected and trained by the Trilateral Commission and made their official spokesman. Carter assumes the guise of not being smart to fool people even as smart as Ben Stein and Victor Lasky and this allows him to pretend that he had nothing to do with the staging of the drama that has developed in Iran. It allows him to tell Frank Reynolds of the ABC network, with feigned innocence, that "my overall opinion of the Soviet Union has changed drastically" since the Soviet invasion. A man who can take an arranged Iranian crisis and use it to climb from the lowest to the highest spot on the political publicity poll in a matter of a few days, is a shrewd man, not a fool or an ignoramus.
Likewise, it is wrong to say that Carter was not aware of what was going on in both Iran and Afghanistan. He certainly knew that an American general was sent from NATO to Iran to arrange for the fall of the Shah. He certainly was warned that the American embassy in Tehran would probably be stormed and hostages taken and held. As for the invasion of Afghanistan, he was warned, time after time, of the possibility of this action by Malcolm Toon, ambassador to Moscow from 1976 until he was replaced by CFR-Trilateralist Thomas Watson. UPI reported on Jan. 16th that "Malcolm Toon .. said yesterday he has given the State Department plenty of warning that the Soviet Union might invade Afghanistan. 'Without being disrespectful of the president, I was somewhat surprised that he was surprised at what happened in Afghanistan ... When I was ambassador in Moscow we reported almost daily our feeling that ... the Soviets would move into Afghanistan with force in order to protect their power position. This was simply consistent with past Soviet behavior,' Toon said."
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If we wrote this ourselves, many might insist that we were emotionally disturbed and therefore exaggerating. So, we'll simply reprint pertinent parts of an article written by Tom Eastham of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner Washington bureau. The article appeared on page A7, January 15, 1980: IF YOU'RE OVER 15, BE PREPARED TO TELL ALL IN CENSUS |
Washington -- When filling out your census form April 1, you will have to tell the government more about your job, your money and your way of life than ever before ... Every person over 15 in every one of our 80 million households will be asked specific questions designed to define the country's new work, commuting and income patterns as a new decade begins. For example, each of us must tell:
The census bureau also wants to know exactly how many dollars each of us collected from wages, salaries, commissions, tips, businesses of our own, professional practices, farming, interest, dividends, royalties, rents, Social Security, welfare and alimony. And each person living in a household must be identified. If not related, is the person 'roomer, boarder, partner, roommate, paid employee or other unrelated --'?
Some Americans may consider such questions prying, but federal law requires each of us to answer. The Constitution provides for a decennial census as a means of apportioning the vote...
Most census questions will focus - as usual - on housing, and the 1980 count will provide a more geographically complete picture than ever. From tents to thatched huts to mansions, every household will be defined in detail.
Do you own your residence or rent it -- or somehow escape rent? How much is it worth? What rent do you pay? When did you move in? What kind of fuel do you heat and cook with, and how much does it cost you? Do you have a complete kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, air conditioning?
Better be ready to tell how much your taxes are, what your mortgage payments amount to, and how much your insurance bill runs, too .. The mailman should deliver your census questionnaire on March 28. The census is April 1, and that's when you're supposed to mail it back. The postage bill will be about $31 million ... (Unquote)
Our comment regarding the above: The Constitution of the United States reads: "Representatives ... shall be apportioned among the several States .. according to their respective numbers .. The actual enumeration shall be made within .. every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they (the Congress) shall by law direct." (Unquote)
The census is a head count, nothing more, and nothing less. Anything more than that should be considered an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. If the federal government gets away with this, and if the people meekly comply, then we can be assured that Big Brother has arrived and is ruling the Nation.
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What is especially consistent with past Soviet behavior is the murder of innocents, of people who allegedly stand in their way. How many Afghans have, or will, die as a result of this invasion by 100,000 Russian troops, thousands of tanks and personnel carriers, more than 150 supersonic attack aircraft, and thousands of pieces of heavy artillery, will never be known, but it is known that these barbaric invaders murdered their own puppet president and his wife and children, took more than 10,000 political prisoners and reportedly were executing up to 350 every night while solidifying their occupation of Kabul and other cities.
Consistent and typical is such wanton murder. The Foreign Affairs Research Institute of London has published a document entitled "The Current Death Toll of International Communism." The document concludes: "Allowing for overlap in several earlier figures, it seems established that the premature deaths -- from execution, man-made famine, imprisonment, deportation, slave labor, civil and international warfare -- could not be lower than 70 million, and must number at some point up to twice that conservative minimum ... Several publications have endorsed a French study which .. reaches a fairly comprehensive 139,917,700 ... The disappearance of millions may seem like a mere statistic, but for every individual concerned it was a tragedy. Whatever the precise totals, the lives of real people with families and futures were extinguished. In surveying the most appalling bloodletting of modern history, we might reflect on the words of Lenin at its outset: 'When we are reproached with cruelty, we wonder how people can forget the most elementary Marxism'."
Now the International Communists are at it again on a wholesale scale. And, our Jimmy and his Triteralist State Department are "shocked." Yet they ignored the advice of the U.S. Ambassador in Tehran and listened instead to the oily words of the Soviet Ambassador in Washington. Anatoly Dobrynin told our leaders that all Russia desired was peace and a SALT II treaty to insure the peace. They might have listened to speakers at the founding conference of the World Peace Council, held in Philadelphia last Nov. 10-11. Romesh Chandra, its president, told the assembled peace-lovers: "People ask me: 'You are a peace movement, why do you support the armed struggles in Nicaragua, Palestine, Vietnam?' And I reply, 'The armed struggle in these countries is the peace movement'." So, to the Communists, the armed invasion of Afghanistan is a peace movement. This is the kind of peace the Communists want for all of the world, especially the United States.
The Countess of Quintilla and Romanoes -- born Alice Griffith in upstate New York but now a Spanish Countess -- was once a spy for the U.S. government. Now politically active in Spain and a staunch anti-Communist, she is speaking to selected audiences in the United States, pointing out that "Russian strategy is to control all the strategic points of the world. And their real target is the United States. She refers to the record: In 1959 it was Cuba. In 1975 it was Vietnam. Last year it was Nicaragua. This year it is Afghanistan ... One by one," says the Countess, "the dominoes of the world are falling -- straight into Russia's hands .. Unless Americans face up to reality, this nation may be next." She believes that a silent World War Three has already begun, that the Russians are training leftists in world terrorism and using them as pawns to ferment revolutions worldwide. "Once the leftists take over they will be controlled by Moscow..."
The horrible irony in all this is the fact that the United States government and people calling themselves American citizens have assisted the Communists in almost every way possible in their drive to communize the world. One glaring example is Kama, the world's largest and most modern motorized vehicle plant where trucks and personnel carriers used in Afghanistan were built. This plant was built entirely with Western technology. Last year a contract to build an entire $144 million factory in the Soviet Union to make oil-drilling bits was approved by the U.S. Commerce Department. Dresser Industries is building the plant. This is important to the Soviets because their existing oil wells are being depleted and those bits are going to be needed as the Soviets sink new wells in new territory that they are "freeing" with fire and bloodletting.
Even more treasonous -- if that be possible -- is the way in which our government pays for the rope with which the Communists intend to hang us (as Lenin predicted). Taxpayers are robbed by their own government so it can lend the Communists money at low interest rates. That money, plus the Western Technology that accompanies it, is used to maintain and strengthen the Communist countries, and to build up their war machines. Then the American taxpayers are told that high taxes and even inflation is necessary in order to maintain a large defense force. This has become necessary because the Communists use those American loans and American technology to build armies, navies and air forces and we must match them. Aside from the military, this American aid in the form of gifts and low interest loans is what has kept the USSR going for a half a century or more. Left to itself, the Soviet government would have ceased to exist long ago, and their pitiable subjects would now be free men instead of underpaid assassins in an army of occupation in Afghanistan.
But speaking of pitiable subjects, we might think of ourselves. Not only has out government assisted Communist governments in arms buildup and in crissi creation, it has also arranged that we can do little or nothing about it. If we had the finest ships, airplanes, armament in all the world, it would be worthless if there were no men capable of sailing the ships and manning the guns. A few days ago the Nation's top admiral warned the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the lack of skilled sailors to run navy ships is "approaching a crisis." Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, chief of naval operations, sent a memo to the Pentagon stating that ever since Vietnam the fleet has been losing its ability to fight for want of skilled petty officers to run the ships of the line. He thinks a pay raise might attract better sailors. Seems that noone ever thinks of the need for pride and morale and plain old patriotism! These qualities are bound to be lost when Charles Duncan, former Coca Cola head, now Energy Secretary, addresses graduating West Point Cadets and lectures them in the importance of interdependence as opposed to independence!
If our leaders really believe that money is the answer, then they should consider the advice given by Rep. Ron Paul: "The most significant act that we can make .. is to stop the subsidy of the Socialist countries and to allow them to self-destruct. The savings in human lives and in human wealth would be incalculable. To continue our present course .. is to commit suicide." But when a president tells longshoremen to continue to lade ships bound for Russia when he should be ordering a total boycott, the Kremlin will say Lenin was right.
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