AMERICA'S NUCLEAR FORCES

Finally, there is the matter of America's overwhelming nuclear superiority - AND MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT, AMERICA STANDS ABSOLUTELY SUPREME IN THIS AREA.

Indeed, the extent to which America dominates the world from a nuclear standpoint was made plain recently in an article that appeared in the March / April 2006 edition of Foreign Affairs (a CFR publication) entitled "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy" by Keir Lieber of the University of Notre Dame and Daryl Press of the University of Pennsylvania. Lieber and Press write that it is now possible for the United States to -

"... destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of [both] Russia and China with a first strike."

Moreover they indicate that the U.S. can now do it without fear that they would suffer a retaliatory strike. They continue:

"For 50 years the Pentagon's war planners have structured the U.S. nuclear arsenal according to the goal of deterring a nuclear attack on the United States and, if necessary ... launching a retaliatory strike that would destroy an enemy. For these purposes, the United States relies on a nuclear triad comprising strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and ballistic-missile-launching submarines (known as SSBNs). The triad reduces the odds that an enemy could destroy all U.S. nuclear forces in a single strike, even in a surprise attack, ensuring that the United States would be able to launch a devastating response. Such retaliation would only have to be able to destroy a large enough portion of the attacker's cities and industry to deter an attack in the first place.

"HOWEVER, THE SAME [U.S.] NUCLEAR TRIAD COULD BE USED IN AN OFFENSIVE ATTACK AGAINST AN ADVERSARY'S NUCLEAR FORCES. Stealth bombers might slip past enemy radar, submarines could fire their missiles from near the enemy's shore and so give the enemy's leaders almost no time to respond, and highly accurate land-based missiles could destroy even hardened silos that have been reinforced against attack and other targets that require a direct hit. THE ABILITY TO DESTROY ALL OF AN ADVERSARY'S NUCLEAR FORCES, ELIMINATING THE POSSIBILITY OF A RETALIATORY STRIKE IS KNOWN AS A FIRST-STRIKE CAPABILITY, OR NUCLEAR PRIMACY."

GAINS IN U.S. NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY

Lieber and Press report that since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the old Soviet Union, the U.S. nuclear arsenal has greatly improved. The United States has replaced the ballistic missiles on its submarines with the substantially more accurate Trident II D-5 missiles, many of which carry new, larger yield warheads.

The U.S. navy has shifted a greater proportion of its SSBNs to the Pacific so that they can patrol near the Chinese coast or in the blind spot of Russia's antiquated early warning radar network.

The U.S. air force has finished equipping its B-52 bombers with nuclear-armed cruise missiles which are invisible to Russian and Chinese air-defense radar. And the airforce has also enhanced the avionics on its B-2 stealth bombers to permit them to fly at extremely low altitudes in order to avoid even the most sophisticated radar.

Finally, although the airforce finished dismantling its highly lethal MX missiles in compliance with arms control agreements, it is significantly improving its remaining ICBMs by installing the MX's high-yield warheads and advanced reentry vehicles on Minutemen ICBMs and it has upgraded the Minuteman's guidance system to match the MX's accuracy.

THE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA'S
NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES

Lieber and Press go on to say:

"Even as the United States' nuclear forces have grown stronger since the end of the Cold War, Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal has sharply deteriorated. Russia has 39 percent fewer long-range bombers [which were never that good in the first place], and 80 percent fewer SSBNs than the old Soviet Union fielded during its last days. The true extent of the Russian arsenal's decay, however, is much greater than even these cuts suggest. What nuclear forces Russia retains are hardly ready for use. Russia's strategic bombers, now located at only two bases and thus vulnerable to a surprise attack, rarely conduct training exercises, and their warheads are stored off-base. Over 80 percent of Russia's silo-based ICBMs have exceeded their original service lives, and plans to replace them with new missiles have been stymied by failed tests and low rates of production. Russia's mobile ICBMs rarely patrol, and although they could fire their missiles from inside their bases if given sufficient warning of an attack, it appears unlikely that they would have the time to do so.

"The third leg of Russia's nuclear triad has weakened the most. Since 2000, Russia's SSBNs have conducted approximately two patrols per year, down from 60 in 1990 ... Most of the time, all nine of Russia's ballistic missile submarines are sitting in port, where they make easy targets. Moreover, submarines require well-trained crews to be effective. Operating a ballistic missile submarine - and silently coordinating its operations with surface ships and attack submarines to evade an enemy's forces - is not simple. Without frequent patrols, the skills of Russian submariners, like the submarines themselves, are decaying."

Finally, Lieber and Press go on to say that Russia's early warning system is hopelessly antiquated.

And that's not the end of the deterioration of Russia's nuclear capability. Moscow has announced plans to reduce its ICBM force by an additional 35 percent - and outside experts expect the real cuts to approximate 75 percent of the remaining ICBM force.

A REALISTIC SCENARIO OF
AN AMERICAN FIRST-STRIKE

To determine how much the nuclear balance between Russia and the United States has shifted since the end of the Cold War, Lieber and Press ran a computer model of a hypothetical U.S. attack on Russia's nuclear arsenal using the standard formulas that defense analysts have used for decades. They assigned U.S. nuclear warheads to Russian targets on the basis of two criteria: the most accurate weapons were aimed at the hardest targets, and the fastest-arriving weapons at the Russian forces that can react most quickly. Because Russia is essentially blind to submarine attack from the Pacific and would have great difficulty detecting the approach of low-flying stealth nuclear-armed cruise missiles, they targeted each Russian weapon system with at least one submarine-based warhead or cruise missile. An attack organized in this manner would give Russian leaders virtually no warning.

According to the simulation, EVERY SINGLE RUSSIAN BOMBER BASE, SUBMARINE AND ICBM WOULD BE DESTROYED WITH NO CHANCE OF A RUSSIAN COUNTER-STRIKE. Lieber and Press continue:

"This finding is not based on best-case assumptions or an unrealistic scenario in which U.S. missiles perform perfectly and the warheads hit their targets without fail. Rather, we used standard assumptions to estimate the likely inaccuracy and unreliability of U.S. weapons systems. MOREOVER, OUR MODEL INDICATES THAT ALL OF RUSSIA'S STRATEGIC NUCLEAR ARSENAL WOULD STILL BE DESTROYED EVEN IF U.S. WEAPONS WERE 20 PERCENT LESS ACCURATE THAN WE ASSUMED, OR IF U.S. WEAPONS WERE ONLY 70 PERCENT RELIABLE, OR IF RUSSIAN ICBM SILOS WERE 50 PERCENT 'HARDER' (MORE REINFORCED, AND HENCE MORE RESISTANT TO ATTACK) THAN WE EXPECTED."

And what's more astonishing, Lieber and Press suggest that the unclassified estimates they used most likely grossly understated the capabilities of U.S. forces, making a U.S. nuclear attack against Russia even more likely to succeed.

THE CASE OF CHINA

Concerning China, Lieber and Press write:

"China's nuclear arsenal is even more vulnerable to a U.S. attack. A U.S. first-strike could succeed whether it was launched as a surprise first strike or in the midst of a crisis during a Chinese alert. China has a limited strategic nuclear arsenal. The People's Liberation Army currently possesses no modern SSBNs or long-range bombers. Its naval arm used to have two ballistic missile submarines, but one sank, and the other, which had such poor capabilities that it never left Chinese waters, is no longer operational. China's medium-range bomber force is similarly unimpressive: the bombers are obsolete and vulnerable to attack. According to ... U.S. government assessments, China's entire intercontinental nuclear arsenal consists of 18 stationary single-warhead ICBMs. These are not ready to launch on warning: their warheads are kept in storage and the missiles themselves are unfueled. (China's ICBMs use liquid fuel, which corrodes the missiles after 24 hours. Fueling them is estimated to take two hours.) The lack of an advanced early warning system adds to the vulnerability of the ICBMs. It appears that China would have no warning at all of a U.S. submarine-launched missile attack or a strike using hundreds of stealth nuclear-armed cruise missiles."

Lieber and Press say that despite much talk about China's military modernization, the odds that Beijing will acquire a survivable nuclear deterrent in the next several decades are slim. U.S. intelligence reports that China has been working hard on producing a new rocket - the DF-31. But even when they are finally fielded, the DF-31s are unlikely to significantly reduce China's vulnerability vis a vis the United States. The missile's limited range (4,970 miles), greatly restricts the area in which they can be hidden, reducing the difficulty of searching for them. The DF-31s could hit the contiguous United States only if they were deployed in China's far northeastern corner, principally in Heilongjiang Province, near the Russian - North Korean border. But Heilongjiang is mountainous, and so the missiles could be deployed only along a few hundred kilometers of good road or in a small plain in the center of the province. Such restrictions increase the missiles' vulnerability and raise questions about whether they are even intended to target the U.S. homeland or whether they will be aimed at targets in Russia and Asia. Lieber and Press write:

"Given the history of China's slow-motion nuclear modernization, it is doubtful that a Chinese second-strike force will materialize anytime soon. The United States has a first-strike capability against China today and should be able to maintain it for decades to come."

THE QUESTION TO BE ASKED

The question to be asked, according to Lieber and Press, is this: Is the United States INTENTIONALLY pursuing nuclear primacy - or has it just happened? Lieber and Press answer their own question:

"The evidence suggests that Washington is, in fact, deliberately seeking nuclear primacy ... THE CURRENT ... U.S. NUCLEAR FORCE ... SEEMS [SPECIFICALLY] DESIGNED TO CARRY OUT A PREEMPTIVE DISARMING STRIKE AGAINST RUSSSIA AND CHINA."

THE INTENTIONAL PURSUT OF
U.S. NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY

Lieber and Press continue:

"The intentional pursuit of nuclear primacy is, moreover, entirely consistent with the United States' declared policy of expanding its global dominance. The Bush administration's 2002 National Security Strategy explicitly states that the United States aims to establish military primacy: 'Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States'. To this end, the United States is openly seeking primacy in every dimension of modern military technology, both in its conventional arsenal and in its nuclear forces.

"Washington's pursuit of nuclear primacy helps explain its missile-defense strategy, for example. Critics of missile defense argue that a national missile shield [such as the one presently being deployed along the West Coast and in Alaska] would be easily overwhelmed by a cloud of warheads and decoys launched by Russia or China. They are right: even a multilayered system with land-, air-, sea-, and space-based elements is highly unlikely to protect the United States from a major nuclear attack. But they are wrong to conclude that such a missile-defense system is therefore worthless - as are the supporters of missile defense who argue that, for similar reasons, such a system could be of concern only to rogue states and terrorists and not to other major nuclear powers.

"What both of these camps overlook is that the sort of missile defenses that the United States is deploying WOULD BE VALUABLE PRIMARILY IN AN OFFENSIVE CONTEXT, NOT A DEFENSIVE ONE - as an adjunct to a U.S. first-strike capability, not as a standalone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia [or China, or even India, Pakistan, and the European Community (if it came to that)] the targeted country would be left only with a tiny surviving arsenal - if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest ... missile-defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes, because the devastated enemy would have so few warheads and decoys left." [Please see our article, "Reducing Europe to the Status of Greece in the Days of Rome."]

Lieber and Press conclude ominously that in the light of all this -

"Washington's continued refusal to eschew a first-strike and the country's [continued] development of a ... missile-defense capability take on a new, and possibly more menacing look."

WHO IS ABLE TO MAKE WAR WITH THE BEAST?

It is in the light of this reality, that the Apostle John cries out in the Apocalypse:

"Who is like unto this BEAST? who is able to make war with it?" (Rev. 13:4).

Think about the implications of all this: The United States, if it so chose, possesses the power today to conduct a first-strike against the nuclear arsenals of all its enemies [not only Russia and China, but the European Community (France and Great Britain), and all the other remaining nuclear powers of the world] without fear of suffering a retaliatory strike.

That's the truth of the matter - AND ONE MUST REMEMBER HERE, IN THIS WORLD, AS MAO SUGGESTED, "POWER FLOWS OUT OF THE BARREL OF A GUN" - and anyone who thinks otherwise is a FOOL.

TURNING THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD INTO
SLAVES IN THE SERVICE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

Moreover, if the United States so chose, it could limit its first-strike attack ONLY to the targeted countries' nuclear arsenals, sparing the cities, but reducing the populations of these countries to impotence in a single instant, and reducing their populations to SLAVE status in the service of America's New World Order System - the clear implication being that if the populations of these countries refuse to submit to their new status, their cities would be incinerated.

IN THIS CONTEXT, ONE SHOULD BEAR IN MIND THAT EVEN AFTER DESTROYING THE NUCLEAR ARSENALS OF ALL ITS COMPETITORS, THE UNITED STATES WOULD STILL POSSESS THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF ADDITIONAL NUCLEAR-TIPPED MISSILES WHICH COULD BE UTILIZED TO CARRY OUT SUCH A SLAUGHTER.

So now we begin at last to understand the apostle's lament concerning this "BEAST-NATION:" "Who is like unto this BEAST? who is able to make war with it?" (Rev. 13:4), and we begin to appreciate the prophet Daniel's description of this "BEAST-NATION" as "DREADFUL" and "TERRIBLE," and "STRONG EXCEEDINGLY" with "great iron teeth;" one that will "DEVOUR" and "BRAKE IN PIECES," the rest of the nations of the earth (Daniel 7:7).

INTRODUCTION

Most people today are completely unaware of the real foundations of America's ECONOMIC supremacy - a supremacy that mercilessly wrings out of the nations of the so-called "First World" (e.g., Japan, the E.U., Korea, Australia, Canada, etc., as well as "Second World" nations such as Russia, India and China) billions and billions of dollars each year in TRIBUTE money.

This money is then used to finance America's wars of conquest - wars that open up the economies of the so-called "Third World" to be cruelly and heartlessly raped and pillaged insofar as their "natural" and "human" resources are concerned. It is PRECISELY this pitiless savagery that gives rise to the Bible's description of America as a "BEAST NATION;" a nation that is "... DREADFUL" and "TERRIBLE," and "STRONG EXCEEDINGLY" with "great iron teeth;" one that "DEVOURS" and "BRAKES IN PIECES" (Daniel 7:7), and one that is an "OVERFLOWING SCOURGE." (Is. 28:18)

Moreover, it is exactly this TRIBUTE money - money that is recycled through American banks and then extended as additional credit to American consumers - that allows Americans to continue to live in relative opulence while piling up ever more personal debt - and doing so while much of the rest of the world starves.

THE EXTENT OF MOST PEOPLE'S
IGNORANCE OF AMERICA'S TRIBUTE SYSTEM

The extent of most people's ignorance with regard to this matter is reflected in the perpetual "hue and cry" of naïfs and ninnies regarding the nation's huge trade and budgetary deficits - the very deficits that create the TRIBUTE money that America has come to rely on both corporately (as a nation) and individually - and contributes to the false and even idiotic belief in most Christians that the U.S. will eventually bankrupt itself and sink into "second-class" status.

BUT MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT, WHILE MOST OF THE "PLEBES" AND "COMMON FOLK" IN AMERICA AND ABROAD ARE IGNORANT OF HOW AMERICA'S TRADE DEFICITS ARE "MAGICALLY" TRANSFORMED INTO TRIBUTE MONEY THAT FINANCES AMERICA'S WARS OF CONQUEST AND FEEDS THE INSATIABLE APPETITE OF AMERICAN CONSUMERS FOR MORE AND MORE "THINGS," THE ELITES THAT GOVERN THIS SYSTEM ARE NOT.

BENIGN NEGLECT

The crucial but furtive and underhanded role that these massive deficits play insofar as the American New World Order System is concerned is reflected in the "benign neglect" of the them by the "wise men" that govern the affairs of the nation as these deficits have mounted up to the heavens in the almost thirty-five years since America abandoned the gold standard. As Michael Hudson reports in his masterpiece, Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance:

"The [U.S. trade] deficit that caused a global crisis in 1971 when its $10 billion rate led to a 10 percent dollar devaluation has now risen to hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and is still rising ... Still the government says that it is not worried and that the situation does not call for any action ..."

This kind of thinking drives many people crazy as they try to understand the rationale behind America's "benign neglect" with regard to these deficits. But be assured, there is a rationale behind it all. Hudson explains the REALPOLITIK governing America's policy of "benign neglect:"

"Gold was the monetary medium that CHECKED America's ability to run balance-of-payments deficits without limit. As the dollar ceased 'being as good as gold' leading up to 1971, the U.S. Treasury put pressure on central banks to demonetize the metal and finally drove it out of the world monetary system ... Removing gold convertibility of the dollar - OR FOR THAT MATTER ITS CONVERTIBILITY INTO THE PURCHASE OF U.S. COMPANIES OR OTHER HARD ASSETS - enabled the United States to pursue its lethal economic and military policies with regard to the rest of the world."

The United States dares not publicly announce that this is its policy vis-à-vis the rest of the world, but it's policy of "benign neglect" regarding its trade policy surely gives the game away because it can hardly be imagined that if these mounting trade deficits really hurt the U.S. (or at least the interests of the U.S. elites), they would be allowed to continue. The U.S. would simply return to its historic isolationism, throw up trade barriers, and go it alone, which it is perfectly capable of doing. The fact is, of all the economies of the world, it's the U.S. economy that would suffer the least under a regime of protectionism.

THE DOLLAR BECOMES THE
WORLD'S MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE

The United States, however, has not pursued a policy of protectionism, and the reason is this: The U.S. has the rest of the world by its testicles (to put it in the vernacular). And how is that? - when the U.S. abandoned the gold standard, IT REPLACED GOLD AS THE WORLD'S MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE WITH ITS OWN CURRENCY, THE DOLLAR; AND IT FORCED THE OTHER NATIONS OF THE WORLD TO DO SO AS WELL - i.e., TO USE DOLLARS RATHER THAN GOLD AS THE "BACKUP" OR SUPPORT FOR THEIR OWN CURRENCIES. Furthermore, it forced the other nations of the world to carry on all their international transactions with dollars. This confronts America's client-states in the First World - the E.U., Japan, Korea, Australia, etc. - with a dilemma; Hudson explains:

"If they let the U.S. payments deficit drag the dollar down, this will give U.S. exporters a price advantage [i.e., they can flood their markets with undervalued American products, causing unemployment and a host of other economic ills]. To protect their own producers [and workers], central banks must support the dollar's exchange rate by recycling their surplus dollars back to the United States. This option obliges them to buy U.S. government securities, as U.S. diplomats have made it clear that to buy control of U.S. companies [as well as to repurchase control of many of their own "national companies which they lost to American shareholders after the Second World War] or even to return to gold would be viewed as an UNFRIENDLY act."

A MAFIA PROTECTION RACKET

This TRIBUTE system is analogous to a MAFIA PROTECTION RACKET where shop keepers and other business people are forced to pay "protection" to the local Mafia Don in order to do business - and God help those who don't pay!

The local Mafia Don would consider that an "UNFRIENDLY ACT" - and, again, who would want to get on the wrong side of Mafia Don.

AN UNFRIENDLY ACT

And what's true with the Mafia is true with regard to the United States! No one wants to get on the wrong side of the United States insofar as its PROTECTION RACKET is concerned. After all, America is the CAPO DI TUTI (the Don of all Dons) - and one has only to view the wreckage of the old Soviet Union, Cuba, Iraq, North Korea, etc. to see what happens to countries that the U.S. views as "unfriendly." The fact that China has not suffered the same fate as the old Soviet Union is because China has now become a compliant member of America's New World Order System - all the rhetoric of political nincompoops to the contrary notwithstanding.

As famed economist Herbert Kahn says of this PROTECTION RACKET, it's "the greatest rip-off the world has ever seen" - and while many in the outside world might realize what's happening, what does one do when confronted by a thief who has a gun pointed at your head? One hands over the cash and keeps his mouth shut!

People know intuitively that in this world, as Mao once remarked, "POWER FLOWS OUT OF THE BARREL OF A GUN," and America has the "biggest and badest" guns in the world. IT'S THIS FACT THAT MAKES AMERICA'S PROTECTION RACKET WORK.

So much then for the possibility that the nations of the earth can break free of America's grip. Hudson writes:

"Foreigners have no say over these policies [i.e., the economic policies that undergird the American New World Order System]. Americans fought a revolution over the principle, 'no taxation without representation' two centuries ago, but Europe, Asia and Third World countries seem politically far from taking a similar step today. Their dollar claims [against the U.S. treasury as a result of America's trade deficit] do not give them the voting rights in U.S. policy formation, yet U.S. government, IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank officials use their dollar claims on debtor economies in Latin America, Africa and Asia to follow the Washington Consensus."

HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS

In simple terms, the system works in this way: The U.S. buys more products than it sells to foreign countries. Like gold used to do, these dollars accumulate in central banks around the world and are used by them to carry on their international trade - to buy oil from OPEC (OPEC trades its oil only in dollars), to buy commodities such as fruit and sugar from Latin America, natural gas from Russia (Russia sells its natural gas only in dollars), copper from Chile, tin from Bolivia, electronic equipment from China, cars from Japan, etc. - again, all of which are traded in dollars.

But even after foreign countries have used their dollar surpluses to buy what they want from other countries, they still have a surplus of dollars. Hudson writes:

"In fact, the larger the U.S. balance of payments (i.e., its trade deficit) grows, the more dollars mount up in the hands of ... [central banks] to be recycled to finance the U.S. budget deficit."

What can they do with their surplus dollars since the U.S. will not allow the holders of these dollars to buy up U.S. assets? The only thing that they can do with them is buy U.S. Treasury bonds. Hudson explains:

"These dollar holdings - in the form of Treasury bonds - have become a seignorage tax levied by America on the world's central banks." [A seignorage tax redistributes money from the lender to the borrower; it's an upside-down situation where the borrower rather than the lender ultimately benefits.]

This so-called seignorage tax the U.S. levies on the rest of the world is used by the U.S. to cover its huge budgetary deficits - BUDGETARY DEFICITS THAT ALLOW THE U.S. TO BUILD AND MAINTAIN ITS HUGE MILITARY MACHINE AND CARRY ON ITS INCESSANT WARS OF CONQUEST WITHOUT HAVING TO RAISE TAXES ON AMERICAN CONSUMERS. It's the people in America's system of client-states that finance America's military machine and pay for America's wars of conquest. That's precisely what the Ancients used to call "TRIBUTE." BUT IT'S A SUPER-SOPHISTICATED SYSTEM OF TRIBUTE THAT - WHILE WELL-KNOWN TO THE ELITES IN THE U.S. AND AMONG AMERICA'S "TOADY ELITES" ABROAD - REMAINS HIDDEN FROM THE MASSES OF THE PEOPLE BOTH IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN ITS CLIENT-STATES.

GETTING BACK TO OUR ANALOGY
OF A MAFIA PROTECTION RACKET

Getting back to our analogy of a Mafia PROTECTION RACKET - no one, not the Mafia nor the small shop keeper that is paying the Mafia for "protection" wants to admit OPENLY what's occurring. So the Mafia carries the money it extracts from the shop keeper on its books as a "loan" from the shop keeper to itself; and the shop keeper carries the money paid as "protection" to the Mafia as a loan it has made to the Mafia.

Of course, both know that the so-called "loan" is never going to be repaid - BUT IT BALANCES THE BOOKS INSOFAR AS BOTH PARTIES ARE CONCERNED. This is important because when it comes time for the shop keeper to explain to his family why they don't have quite as much money to spend as they thought they had (based on the shop's gross sale's receipts), the shop keeper tells his family that he has "invested" the money. Contrawise, it allows the family of the Mafia Don (who want to plead ignorance as to why they have so much more money to spend than they should have) to think that the money is a "loan" from some obscure "great uncle" who doesn't really want the money back.

Of course, the presence of so many armed "retainers" coming and going at the estate they live at in the Hamptons, the stories one hears wafting through closed doors about "hits," about "numbers being "run," the presence of so many "beautiful people" at the pool outside on the carefully manicured lawns, etc., leads one to wonder a little about what daddy is really up to and where all the money comes from. But a trip to the shopping mall quickly sweeps such "impure" thoughts away. And, then, each Sunday when the family attends Mass and the priest makes so much to do about Daddy, any thought that dear old dad could be up to "no good" is quickly banished from the mind.

AND ISN'T THIS THE CASE WITH
THE AMERICAN CONSUMER

And isn't this the case with the American consumer; isn't this the way that Americans react to the manner in which America is squeezing TRIBUTE money out of the rest of the world. Indeed, it's this more than anything else that reveals the impure and avaricious nature of America's citizenry (Christians and secularists alike), and exposes their deep participation in this immoral system. After all, how many Americans would stop buying their clothes at Wal-Mart, Macys, Target, Old Navy, etc. if they knew that these clothes were made in Third World sweat shops; OR how many Americans would stop buying their electronic gadgets at Circuit City, Sears, Best Buy, etc. if they knew they were being made by political prisoners in China; OR how many American women would stop buying diamonds if they knew how much blood and misery are associated with them? Not many I imagine.

Plainly, then, it's not just the American elites that are participants in this system of organized pillage, but the American people as well - and all their long prayers for the poor in Africa, Asia and Latin America will not wash away their guilt.