HONEST THINGS

The great container smuggle

2006-10-02T07:10:00.000-07:00

Ralph Schwan sees patterns the rest of us miss looking at the same thing. Think China's commercial success is due to low labor costs? Ralph looks at China's export scheme and discerns a banking op of no mean magnitude. The clues lay stacked behind your local Wal-Mart.

The following piece arrived in my email box just this morning. It's unedited, pure Ralph Schwan. It may explain, for the first time, how China became the world's manufacturer of choice. ~ FTS

There's a lot of talk about what enabled China to become the industrial supplier to the world. Low labor costs are first on that list - but any third world nation will have low labor costs. The thing that really enabled China to fit into that slot was something we miss. It was the really low costs of shipping goods from there to here and Europe. Shipping costs have always been the natural barrier to "world" trade. Were it otherwise, Henry Ford I would have said, "I need to build a plant in Argentina, India or China." George Westinghouse would have said the same. They'd have just shopped the world for the cheapest labor. All cars, motors and TVs would have always been built somewhere else.

Obviously, the shipping costs obviated such a thought from minds back then.

What changed? Really, what has changed since the 1970s?

Best I can tell it's the use of shipping containers, those big steel boxes that'll ride on a boat, a train car or a truck trailer. That's how everything sold at Wal-Mart gets here from China.

It costs about $2000 to ship one from Shanghai to the west coast, Oakland or Seattle. I figure that it costs another $1000, minimum to get it from there to, say Kansas, by train and then truck.

Here's what inspired my thinking about those containers. I was talking to a guy who imports after-market auto parts for pick-up trucks, lots of fancy wheels and other gizmos. They all come from China. He told me that his shipper was having troubles making timely deliveries because their storage yard was packed with the containers. According to him, for every three that come here, only one ever carries anything away. So the shipping yard is packed and stacked full of "empties."

There are only a half dozen shipping companies in the world that own all of these containers. I was stunned to discover that there are 18 million of these boxes! There's enough cubic feet in 18 million 8 by 8 by 20 foot boxes that if one laid the whole human population end to end, then stacked them, we'd all fit! Yup, all 6.5 billion of us! If you lined the containers up, end to end, they'd circle the earth 2.7 times. Packed into one spot, corner to corner, side-by-side, they'd make a square with sides of 10 miles.

If a lot of the containers end up in a storage yard, never being recycled back to China for a new load, it's pretty logical that they'd need that many. But . . .

I build stuff for a living. Most of it's made of steel. I took a look at that big steel box and realized I'd want five figures to build one. In big time production mode, that would drop to $7500. There's that much welding involved. The steel costs alone, FOB a rolling mill in China, are over $2000. Even if I had laborers at 20 cents an hour and a factory 20 miles from the rolling mill, the overhead costs of the shop, 20 mile cartage, electricity, machine tool wear, welding rods, wastage on the steel plate, etc. would force me to a price of $6000. The box weighs 2.5 tons. $6000 ain't a bad number, given what's involved in building one. If I wanted to buy one for storage at my shop and got told, "It'll cost you $6000," I wouldn't even blink at the price.

Tumble the numbers with me. At $6000 each, three cost $18,000. The shipper made 3 x $2000, $6000, to send them to the US, full of Chinese made goods. Only one goes back for re-use. He's instantly down by $12,000, the logical result of a trade imbalance - and that doesn't even account for the fuel costs by the ship to get them here. Nobody is going to ship the empty containers by truck or rail back to a port. That would cost $1000, each. So, the shipper really ought to include the additional costs of $12,000, distributed into every three shipments. Instead of it costing $2000 to get a container full of goods from Shanghai to Seattle, it ought to cost $6000. $2000 + (1/3 x $12,000) = $6000. But even at that number he's just giving the container away at what it cost him - a very bad business practice - so the number has to be greater than $6000.

But if it cost +$6000 to ship it from China, then the Chinese labor discount vanishes from the goods in the box. The product would be the same price, or less (!) if manufactured here!

In trying to figure this out I came on an article,

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,386799,00.html

It says that the cost of the container in China is $2500. That's nuts. The raw steel, alone, is $2000, probably more like $2300 counting a 15% wastage in cutting it to the sizes needed.

If it sells for that price in China, and I've no reason to doubt that it does, then it's a deal, more like a steal. It could only sell that cheap if the government was subsidizing it to the tune of $3500. The manufacturing company makes the necessary $6000, but more than half comes from the government. That's the sole way the shipping company could be paying only $2500.

Now comes a nifty little Ponzi scheme. The shipper goes to a bank, a big international bank. He seeks a loan. The collateral is the shipping containers. He spent $7500 for three of them. But the fair market value is at least $18,000 (what they'd cost if built anywhere). He borrows $17,000. He buys six new containers for $15,000 and pockets $2000. But the fair market value of the new six is $36,000. He borrows another $34,000, using those six as collateral. With that $34,000, he buys 12 more containers and pockets $4000. I could keep doing the iterations, but you can see the game. It's a doubling up with each pass, with a cash profit of about 15% put into the shipping company each time. To keep it simple I started it at low figures. It's probably running at around 1,000,000 containers a year - given that 18 million of them have been built in only 30 years.

The shipping companies can offer very low rates from Shanghai to Seattle - all they want to do is break even, if that. They have a market incentive for that. They do NOT make money on the shipping. They make money by buying containers for shipping! They have to keep the shipping costs very low, as that's what's driving the whole "globalization" concept. If shipping costs were anywhere near their historical norms, then the low labor rates in China would be offset by the shipping costs, and importation would also go back to historical norms. We'd build far more stuff locally! Then the shipper would make very little money - as ocean shipping would drop substantially. But far worse from the shipper's perspective - he'd not need any more new containers. The scheme collapses.

Does the scenario make sense to you? NAFTA and GATT were what enabled it on a "legal" basis. But in a free market, shipping costs should be a significant aspect of a wholesale purchase decision. They always have been. The only way we'd buy stuff from China would be if the costs of getting it from there to here fell way below all historical precedents. And they have.

Shipping via the containers did cut those costs, as it eliminated the old "stevedore" system, which was slow and labor intensive (at both ends). But the container system has a failing. Oh, it's a grand system where countries are trading back and forth at near even rates. But when those rates go into imbalance the containers will stack up in the importing countries, never getting back to the exporting one.

And those containers are pricey by design. They have to be built of steel in order to be stacked atop each other. They're designed to carry almost 50,000 pounds of goods. The box on the bottom has to carry the weight of all the boxes on top of it when they're stacked. So, they're built to the hilt, with reinforcement welded to the corners to carry the load. They ought to last for 100 years, with a new coat of paint every decade or so.

If they recycled in a nearly balanced-trade world, then the acquisition costs would be a triviality over that century. They'd probably make 600 trips, six a year. The $6000 cost would get amortized by the 600 trips, to $10 a trip, easily covered in the costs of shipping. But they're a terrible concept in a world where manufactured goods flow only one direction.

They end up 1000 or 2000 miles away from a port, having been carried inland by trains and trucks. It would cost $1000 to transport them back to port, empty. Those costs aren't built into the shipping price, as again, it would begin to make more sense to build stuff at home. So, the result is that the containers stack up far from a port.

That should cause the shipping costs to rise very rapidly, as the shippers would have expensive assets sitting in storage yards, earning them NOTHING. They'd also have to acquire additional containers, while knowing that two out of three were going to end up also sitting in storage, 2000 miles from a port and 10,000 miles from the factory in China!

So, they had to come up with a Ponzi scheme where the cost of a container didn't matter, or more properly, did matter but in a positive, rather than negative, manner. The bankers don't mind. The shipping companies are paying interest on the principal they've borrowed. Like any Ponzi game, someday it'll crash. The bankers don't mind that either. Then they'll loan money to move manufacturing back here, and charge interest again! It got China industrialized, so companies in China will now borrow from them, too. Oh, and it really masked inflation by getting cheap goods delivered to consumers in America and Europe. So, the banks probably made far, far more that way than what they'll lose when the shippers finally are forced to default on the "container loans." Plus, I'd bet that the shippers don't default, but get a government to bail them out! That's the plan, I'd think.

The assumed subsidy paid by the Chinese government is a triviality in the matter. It probably amounts to $60 Billion, but it's spread out over several decades. It was a ultra-low cost way to get industry booming there! It's insidiously clever when you think about it. If they'd have subsidized industry directly, they'd have had to spend 10,000 times that. If they'd have directly subsidized shipping, the whole world would have screamed "foul!" But they subsidized just a couple of factories that were popping out shipping containers. Then they got some bankers in bed with them, and the world never even realized what's up. They just set up a rather nifty Ponzi scheme that would drive shipping costs way, way below what they'd be in a "free market" - and the world beat a path to China's door!

Yes, the world had to abandon tariffs in order to mask what was going on. But that was really more of a smoke screen than we realize. It got us blaming our governments and "low third world labor rates." We become stuck at that level, never going beyond it, to look at how it can cost so little to ship the stuff made in China all over the world. At first glance, we attribute that low cost to the shipping containers - since they eliminated the old stevedore system. But we never think about how expensive those containers are or how they'd have to be constantly recycled in order to justify that cost. If they don't recycle, then the shipping costs would need to rise greatly in order to cover the expense of getting them back to the producing country or building new ones to replace those lost offshore.

It's really something we don't think about. If I hadn't bumped into a guy who was complaining about shipping delays, I'd have never considered it. Yet, when he told me that only one in three get shipped back, I was a bit surprised that it was that high. Grain doesn't ship in them, so what were we sending back? All I could figure was that the one in three went back carrying scrap metals or used machine tools from a closed factory here, heading for a new factory there. Even then, It took me a week of pondering it from every angle, trying to figure out how the shippers can stay profitable with that much in asset value sitting useless in storage yards. If 2/3rds of the UPS or FedEx truck trailers were just sitting, unused, in storage yards, then they'd be selling them at huge discounts, raising their delivery rates substantially, or verging on bankruptcy - probably all of that!

The only way to explain how that many of the shipping containers can be sitting here is if there's something running outside of an ordinary market situation. This little Ponzi game is my best guess at explaining it. I can't prove it directly. But I'm absolutely certain that $2500 cost for a shipping container can't possibly be right. It's worth lots more than that. It might be what it costs the shipper, but somebody is paying the manufacturer in addition to that. Of that I'm sure.

I'm also sure that if I could buy something worth $6000 to build, for only $2500, I'd do it. If I couldn't really sell it back into the market, but somebody would loan me $5500 against it at 5% interest, I'd jump at that. And then I'd buy two more and double the gain, ad infinitum - well not to infinity. It obviously couldn't go that far. But I'd do it until the bottom fell out! I'd have those collateralized assets stacked up anywhere I could find room, doing nothing. If I could leave them sitting in somebody else's yard, at their expense, all the better. When the bottom did fall out, I'd just tell the lender, "You can have 'em. I have no use for them." If somebody was dumb enough to loan me that against an asset, an essentially illiquid asset, then how could I refuse the offer?

Bottom line: I'd be enticed into doing the same thing that I see others doing. So, I'm not really accusing - just explaining. The good news is that the bottom will drop out, probably pretty soon. You see, if I stacked them into an equilateral pyramid, with a base of mile, the 18 million containers would stand a half mile tall. They're built for stacking, but not that high! The bottom will fail; it has to.

Intellectual genocide

2006-05-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

The DaVinci Code effect

I watch what people take on airplanes to read. Years ago, I bought a copy of Lewis Thomas's Lives of A Cell because I spotted it in the hands of more than a few passengers on several successive flights. A couple of years ago, airborne book-spotting impelled me to read The DaVinci Code. Honestly, this one topped them all. It was as though someone were passing out free copies at the ticket counter.

The Code is about conspiracy, and I've been a conspiracy geek since JFK was shot from in front 42 years ago. I study not only who pulls these monstrous capers off but also the mechanisms that discipline the silence of witnesses and make people comfortable believing lies.

I hoped Code would lead me into exciting new terrain, but the more I got into it, the more alienated from the reading public I became. Alas, Dan Brown's book is all trompe l'oeil: it employs false instruments to discover what appear to be hidden truths. It transforms the believing reader into a wise fool. More tellingly, it leads the believing reader to root for the Roman Catholic Church and to sympathize with worshippers of a pagan goddess. The DaVinci Code mangles the perceptions ~ not exactly what a paying customer expects of a book.

I believe the movie will commit intellectual genocide. I don't plan to see it any more than I plan to suck on a sugar cube soaked in LSD.

There is an alternative to this pack of lies, a book that reveals unseen truths that can actually improve the reader's awareness of how the world operates both theologically and politically. This book is entitled Rulers of Evil. Unfortunately, its author happens to be myself, which means the present article will be self-serving, and you're forgiven for abandoning it without further perusal.

I shouldn't have to hawk my own book. That responsibility once belonged to HarperCollins, who dropped it not long after 9/11. Why? My literary agent believes Rulers of Evil contained information Rupert Murdoch wished to suppress because of his many vital associations with the Vatican. That makes sense to me, and I can't blame Mr. Murdoch for wanting to distance himself from my book. Actually, I was careful not to attack the Church of Rome; I simply presented numerous evidences of its rulership of global political systems, including that of the United States of America.

More than a few readers of my book, who call themselves ROEders, have commented on the similarities between ROE and DVC. Both contain shocking information, but page for page, there's more in ROE than in DVC, and it's infinitely more useful since DVC is fantasy and ROE is fact. "It's the difference," one ROEder wrote me, "between junk food and health food."

Talk about goddess worship. A goddess named "Freedom" stands atop the U. S. Capitol building. That is undeniable fact. Also factual is that she's officially classified as “the only authorized Symbol of American heritage.” What you probably don't know is where she came from. Do you? If not, you'll find out in Chapter 22 of Rulers of Evil. It's an amazing story, and it's not fiction.

Let me tempt you. On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX defined the doctrine of Immaculate Conception, the notion (suggested nowhere in the Bible) that the Virgin Mary, like Jesus, was conceived free of sin. Within days of Pius's encyclical, Congress hastened to pass legislation that assured the construction of a cupola atop the Capitol, to be surmounted by a divine woman. According to the official publication The Dome of the United States Capitol: An Architectural History (1922), "Never before or since has an addition to the Capitol been so eagerly embraced by Congress."

Bear in mind, most members of Congress at the time were protestants traditionally leery of anything that smacked of Catholicism. Yet the goddess was sculpted in Rome, and her installation in December 1863 was layered in hidden Roman Catholic ceremony ~ which Rulers of Evil discloses in context for the first time ever.

How could a goddess answering the definition of the Roman Virgin Mary have been hoisted to a position of sovereignty over the lawmaking body of the United States? Rulers of Evil answers this provocative question as well. Catholicism takes control over non-Catholic legislatures through a military organization of which the CIA is merely a component. This is not fantasy. It is fact supported by hundreds of footnotes pointing you to viable sources.

But that's just for openers. ROE establishes that Rome's influence over American government began long before Freedom was set atop the Capitol. In fact, the evidence will lead you, as it did me, to conclude that the American Revolution was a product of Vatican military strategy in which two protestant nations, England and her American colonies, were pitted against one another in bloody battle ~ the ultimate victor being the invisible instigator. Roman victory over the United States was sealed in the American Constitution's prohibition against religious tests being required of governmental office-holders. Today, the majority of Congressional and Senate committee heads are subjects of the Roman papacy, as is the United States Supreme Court. Fantasy? No way.

These facts are not presented in an argumentative, angry manner. Indeed, no one is more comfortable with them than I. There exists in the Bible scriptural authority for the Papacy to do the things it does, and I commend Rome for the sheer cunning and proficiency of its secular operations.

In the latter chapters I discuss how Roman America handicaps only those who choose to ignore the reality of its existence. To know this reality is the first step in establishing one's personal freedom from it. For although Rome rules its subjects harshly, it peaceably excludes all who demonstrate they are ruled directly by the Authority upon whom Rome relies. This kind of knowledge can be incredibly profitable, and is why Rulers of Evil is subtitled "Useful Knowledge About Governing Bodies."

Well, if you've read this far, maybe you're wanting to own a copy of Rulers of Evil. You can find it on the net at all kinds of inflated prices, starting with Amazon and Ebay. If you don't have any money, you can probably find a copy in your local public library.

My website still sells some collector's first edition autographed copies for $50.00, and the regular HarperCollins edition at $19.95. Go here, and pay with PayPal.

http://tuppersaussy.com/html/store/museum%20bookstore.html

They'll never make a movie of Rulers of Evil because it's already running ~ in, through, and around your own life. You won't see it until you open the covers and start reading.

A Little Conspiracy

2006-04-19T14:20:00.000-07:00

Contributed by our Great Lakes Bureau Chief, Ralph Schwan

Here's a strange little conspiracy for your consideration, Tupper.
E-85. That's coming to a gas pump near you, and soon. It's just corn likker (ethanol) at 85% denatured with 15% gasoline.
It's pretty obvious that the automotive companies have been designing engines toward burning this stuff for near a decade. That's where the conspiracy falls, as it's something not discussed. In order to fire off the stuff an engine needs a rather high compression ratio, something in the 10:1 range. That's gear-head stuff to you, T, but such compression hasn't been seen since the muscle cars of the late '60s. (and we gear-heads all ran Shell premium, back then, because it was 98 octane).
E-85 is inherently "high octane." 105! The nearest equivalent is "Racing Fuel," a very specialized gasoline sold only to gear-heads (and allegedly Tim McVeigh) who have built a custom, high output engine to burn it.
In order to burn either gasoline or E-85 (known as "flex-fuel") the engine control computer shifts around the timing. That's done by analysis of the oxygen coming out the exhaust. It's pretty simple stuff (to a gear-head). But to burn the E-85 the high compression ratio has to be present. So they've been building engines with compression ratios in that 10:1 range, and actually degrading the timing to burn gasoline.
There are about 4,000,000 vehicles currently on the road able to burn E-85. But only 10% of the owners realize that! The salesman never pointed out that this "option" was included. It's a "free" option. Honest. When do you last recall an automobile company offering an option at Zero additional cost? I'm gonna guess, a very low guess, that another 50,000,000+ cars can probably burn a 50-50 mix of it, by the owner pumping half a tank of the lowest grade of "regular" and topping it off with E-85.
Like I said, there's some sort of strange little conspiracy here because it's just not being discussed.
The aspect of it that you'll find intriguing is the years involved. The automotive firms had to have been put on notice to go this route a very long time back because engineering and development don't happen in a year or even three.
And the bottom line is that they were ordered to do that bit of engineering and development that long ago because somebody either knew that oil prices were destined to go stratospheric or that imported oil was going to dry up. Pick one. Pick both!
Just a crazy little conspiracy. Nobody is talking about it. Gotta be a gear-head to even realize that it exists - and we are few and far between.

The First Chinese-Americans (?)

2006-02-06T01:59:00.000-08:00

Who were the first American Saussys? What brought them here?
Haun Saussy's article explains it all.

Haun is my son. He teaches comparative literature and Asian languages at Yale.

Haun's article ran recently in Ex/Change, a publication of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies at City University of Hong Kong.

http://www.cityu.edu.hk/ccs/Newsletter/newsletter14/Contribution2.htm

10 Easy Questions About Money

2006-01-19T06:37:00.000-08:00

Watch out for a tsumani of inflated Federal Reserve currency starting about springtime.

As the fixed-income crowd shells out more and more paper dollars for the same goods and services, some might actually start looking at what the Constitution says about money. (The quick course is my little book "The Miracle On Main Street," if you can find a copy. It's almost out of print.)

Thinking that in the original edition there had been a section of ten questions to ask any judge, James, a 6th-edition MOMS reader, asked me to reiterate them. Well, there were no ten questions, but I sat down and thought about it, and they just wrote themselves.

I don't envision posing these in a courtroom, but rather in a fireside chat with a friend who happens to be a judge (or maybe practices law). Judges resent surly questions, and can ignore them with impunity. So be careful with these things.

1. Can Congress pass a law that would cause a State to violate the Constitution?

2. Can a State declare anything whatsoever to be a legal tender for all debts public and private?

3. Can Congress declare anything whatsoever to be a legal tender for all debts public and private?

4. Does the Constitution declare anything but gold and silver coin to be a legal tender for all debts public and private?

5. Does Congress have any power not given it by the Constitution?

6. Can a State do something the Constitution denies it power to do?

7. Has Article I Section 10 of the Constitution been amended?

8. Has any Supreme Court decision rendered null and void the provisions of Article I Section 10 of the Constitution?

9. If Congress cannot cause a State to violate the Constitution, and if neither a State nor Congress can make any thing but gold and silver coin a legal tender for the payment of all debts public and private, and if the Constitution does not empower Congress to employ a monetary system other than consists of gold and silver coin, then why does Congress provide, and State and federal courts enforce payment of debts in, a monetary system which the Constitution prohibits?

10. How should a United States citizen exercise the civil right to the monetary system already provided by the Constitution but denied by Congress and the States?

The Christmas Litmus

2006-01-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

I have numerous friends who rant at secular humanists for trying to remove "Merry Christmas" from the American vernacular. They charge that certain Jewish powers would eradicate Christ from our national heritage by doing away with Christmas verbiage and iconography. I think perhaps the charge has substance, but I also think changing "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays" might be a good thing. Before you call me infidel, please hear me out.

The Bible tells us that to deny Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah is to be his enemy. David, under God's inspiration, tells us that God converts Christ's enemies into footstools for him, low seats for resting the feet. In other words, God drafts Christ's enemies into Christ's service. Therefore, we can expect Christ-deniers ~ regardless of whatever personal motives may be driving them ~ to serve the will of God. Remember: it was Christ-deniers that made the crucifixion succeed as the mechanism by which all repentant sinners have been brought into the family of God. God uses the ignorance and hatred of his enemies to carry out his purposes.

Christian historians are now fairly certain that Christ was not born in winter, but indeed in the fall, and that Christmas is nothing more than the delightful pagan Saturnalia repackaged in Christian imagery. If this is so, then the institution of Christmas is the work of lying tongues, which God despises.

Persuaded of this, and also that scripture discourages commemorating birthdays at all (in fact, the only two birthday celebrations reported in the Bible are associated with grisly death), I became convinced a dozen years ago that Christmas-keeping was paying homage to a lie. An enquiry into biblical languages informed me that the very term "Christmas" in Greek signifies "Christ-detester" (Christ-miseo); in Hebrew (Christ-m'ss') gives us "Christ-trial" in the sense of "Christ-testing of men" or "the Christ test." Christmas litmus. The word seems to be telling us that if we buy into the messiah's birth on December 25, we buy into haters of Christ and sing and preach and pray with a lying tongue. By our own demeanor we prove the Christ we adore is the fake one. And this would be a sin to confess and repent of.

So I approve of efforts to expunge Christ from the season of winter solstice. I consider separating Christ from Christmas a work of God preached and administered, like the crucifixion, by his enemies.

And how do I observe the season? Well, I enjoy the Saturnalian tradition of partying, decorating, and gift-giving ~ let one and all take respite from an otherwise dark and dreary time of year. But the baby Jesus stuff I regard with benign disdain, in the spirit of "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

I look very carefully at how people handle the above information. Do they seek validation with a willingness to repent? Or do they crucify the messenger? That's the real Christmas litmus.

Who speaks for Al Qaeda?

2005-07-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

Every government has the resources to create and maintain an enemy. The more nebulous the better. A nebulous enemy that looms large in the public imagination can be a cash cow, especially if it can be portrayed terrifyingly enough. The people will spare nothing defending against it.

Federal planners know this well. The ground rules were expressed in the famous pamphlet published a year prior to September 11, 2001 by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose members are a roster of the present Bush administration.

PNAC declared that in order to create an American presence in the middle east, particularly Iraq, a new Pearl Harbor would be necessary. 9-11 provided the necessary catalyst to put PNAC's global war plan into effect.

On September 12, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld advocated invading Iraq. Congress immediately allocated $40 billion to fight terrorism. The U.S. defense budget for 2002 increased nearly 12 percent over 2001. The budget was increased exponentially in the years following, in line with the PNAC manifesto.

Al Qaeda is the perfect nebulous enemy. The irony is that television programming burgeons with forensic criminal investigation shows, yet the most important theatre requiring forensic investigation ~ terrorist bomb sites ~ waive forensic investigation because everyone believes the government's (and media's) assertions that Al Qaeda is the culprit.

"But Al Qaeda admitted to the London bombings." Okay, and how do we know it was Al Qaeda that admitted? Which impartial magistrate has cross-examined Al Qaeda? How would Al Qaeda go about proving the admissions were made by an impostor? Who speaks for Al Qaeda? How would such spokesman avoid being arrested upon identification and detained indefinitely, detained incommunicado?

Meanwhile, the people are obliged to receive statements of government and media spokesmen as gospel truth. What a moneymaker!

Being jerked around

2005-07-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

Rulers whip their subjects into line by catastrophizing the imagination. To be catastrophized, you have to believe that rulers speak truth. You have to be willing to be jerked around.

When CNN means to tell me about the London bombings or about a reporter imprisoned for guarding her news source, the message I get is that the federal government means to jerk me around. It means, as usual, to deceive me.

Am I paranoid? Let me recite my understanding of the relationship between government, media, the world, and myself.

Government does not control the media; it's quite the other way around. The media actually choose the personalities that run government. What? Media aren't the fourth estate? The watchdog? Exactly the opposite. ABC News, The Associated Press, NBC News, CNN, CBS News, and Fox News own a very secret, very private consortium that nowadays goes by the name of Voter News Service. Expect the name to change soon, if it hasn't already. http://wesavedemocracy.org/election_projections_rigging.html

VNS provides the software, proprietary and unreviewable by Congressional oversight, that determines America's rulers ~ i.e., the winners in presidential, U.S. house and senate, state gubernatorial, and other select races.

Today VNS is in like Flynn. And will be for a very long time. The purpose of the Florida hanging chad operation that barred Al Gore from the White House was to engineer popular consent to VNS. It worked. The people consented. They believed the media and the media chose George W. Bush ~ twice. Can there be any doubt that the media also chose his wars? What can you say after you've said "embedded"? Welcome to cybernetic democracy.

Okay, so who controls the media that own VNS? Well, the internet is loaded with sites eager to expose the media magnates by name. But one can get by on a lot less information, information that's also a lot more permanent. All I really need to know is the spiritual basis of the humanity running the media. Surely it is not Christian ~ by which I mean it (1) does not worship Jesus Christ in spirit and in truth, and (2) does not believe the Bible is the sole infallible authority governing human life.

By this standard, the media can be ~ as it is ~ controlled by a mix of atheists, deists, pantheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and nominal Christians such as Roman Catholics and many of the protestant evangelical sects. At the head of these faiths I put the Papacy, who rules the world apart from the Body of Christ. Christ rules His own; Benedict XVI is in charge of everyone else, and by divine mandate: "Like as ye have forsaken me, and served strange gods in your land, so shall ye serve strangers in a land that is not yours." Jeremiah 5:19

The Papacy defines social communications as "the press, movies, radio, television and the like," and stated the Church's policy thereon in an important decree entitled "Inter Mirifica" (Paul VI, 1964). The Catholic Church possesses an "inherent right... to have at its disposal and to employ any of these media insofar as they are necessary or useful for the instruction of Christians and all its efforts for the welfare of souls." Now, when a Pope says "Christians," he has in mind people whose salvation is dispensed from the Church and its priests, not by the Holy Spirit of Christ Himself. The "welfare of souls," likewise, is dispensed from the Church's global treasury, which includes all economies dependent upon central banks of issue. As the old Spanish proverb goes, "Don Dinero es muy Catolico."

Inter Mirifica mandated Catholics to invest their resources in a social communication that would ensure the Church's role in controlling souls who did not look exclusively to Jesus Christ for their welfare.  Since the Pope's official title "Vicar of Christ" is not disputed by any member of the United Nations, nor has been rendered impotent by any judicial proceeding, the conclusion is inescapable that HIs Holiness does indeed rule affairs of the world as Christ's viceroy. This harmonizes with the declaration, stated in the Bible, that all power in heaven and earth was given to Christ Jesus in the first century. Since the Church of Rome's history cannot support a claim of consistently Christlike behavior, one must decide that either the Bible is nonsense or that Rome serves Christ as disciplinarian of the ungodly. The latter is my deduction from history, Scripture, and current events; you can study it in greater detail in RULERS OF EVIL, www.tuppersaussy.com.

In any event, the Papacy, which includes all earthly secular power, does not rule affairs between Christ and His disciples. In fact, earthly secular power often protects the true Body of Christ from evil in the world ~ just as it was appointed to do thousands of years ago. This is why I heartily approve of the Papacy and its manner of discharging its responsibilities in the Kingdom of God.

The world is terribly wicked and deceitful, so the Christian disciple expects grisly deceptions in all social communication, even human sacrifice disguised as acts of terror committed by a mysterious villainy. Perhaps the most ambitious, and most ineptly performed, of this generation's deceptions was the 9-11 2001 "attack" on New York and the Pentagon. You must studiously ignore mountains of hard evidence to the contrary in order to believe the dogma that a gaggle of inept suicidal Muslim fanatics conquered the impenetrable American aeronautical infrastructure long enough to bring down a number of New York skyscrapers and pierce the indomitable Pentagon.

Truth is, without something like 9-11, it would have been impossible for an American president to ask his people to divest themselves of constitutionally secured rights, along with hundreds of billions in purchasing power to expand his bureaucracy at home and, while he's at it, forcefully restructure governments abroad. 9-11 made the impossible happen. And now, four years into the impossible, we're benefitting from the economic system spawned by the deception. Minds that love fiction more than truth have been shaped by a lie that will not be undone, and in this life the real perps will go unpunished. It's biblical: get used to it.

The London bombings of July 2005, which created the largest crime scene in English history, appear to have been designed by the same team. Consider the facts. One day beforehand, the British were against the war on terror, the Ministry of Defense had announced it was drafting plans to pull British armed forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan, while Tony Blair's government enjoyed a less than 15% approval rating. Eight of the world's leading nations had just gathered in a summit meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland. G-8 had been forecast to be confrontational. In the opening session, Blair was seeking common ground between his American allies and the EU nations. Suddenly word came of the blasts and carnage. Blair was rushed to London where he inaugurated, with Churchillian hero-speak, the UK's determination to prevail over terrorism. The bombings simply checkmated all opposition to the war on terror. To be against the war now is to be against England.

The bombings also changed attitudes at G-8. Murdo MacLeod wrote in The Scotsman that "No one could now appear to be the bad guy... [or] allow themselves to be seen to humiliate Blair in his own country in the wake of such a tragedy." The bombings motivated "the so-called sherpas ~ government fixers who pave the way for agreement when their leaders gather ~ into overdrive," wrote MacLeod, "using the myriad rooms of the Gleneagles Hotel to reconstitute disagreements into compromises... A failure to make some sort of agreement would be seen as a victory for terrorism."

The ease with which disaster improved a government's fortunes made me think of Martin Luther King's assassination on April 4, 1968. Weeks earlier, the unpopular and dictatorial Civil Rights Bill of 1968 had lost most of its steam in the House of Representatives. Suddenly, King was shot; six days later the bill swept through the House 249 to 171, and Lyndon Johnson signed it into law on April 11th. The April 19th issue of Time magazine noted, "King's death immediately realigned forces on both sides." Of course, evidence produced over the decades acquits James Earl Ray of the assassination for which he died in prison. This same evidence discloses a plot developed by the rulers of evil, in which Ray was an unaware (and Roman Catholic) pawn.  I knew James Earl Ray, and edited and published his autobiography, "Tennessee Waltz," which you can purchase at http://www.tuppersaussy.com/html/store/museum%20bookstore.html

We're talking about military operations here, and don't forget the U.S. President is a General whose official title is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Generals go to school on Sun-Tzu, the oriental strategist whose writings were first published in a western language by the Papacy's war-makers, the Jesuits, in 1772. Sun-Tzu said that the wise general must deceive his own soldiers, his own people, sometimes even the sovereign he serves, and expose them to dangers and suffering in order to achieve the greater victory for the kingdom.

Sun-Tzu's most highly prized weapon is the ruse, an action intended to deceive. For the deciphering of ruses, the world has been trained to depend upon media journalism ~ investigative reporting. How would American voters have discovered the Nixon administration's policy of deception if not for Bernstein and Woodward? Once they felt secure that eagle-eyed journalists were tracking corruption in all levels of government, Americans let down their guard.

The legend of fearless journalism persists, even though most journalists today seem to be afraid of their own shadow.  Reporters, like the rulers they're believed to be monitoring, must subscribe to the dogma. They must conform to the official line on disasters ~ that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK by firing three shots at him from the back and one from the front. They must pretend satisfaction that the evidence buried in the government's furtive demolition of the Murrah Building would have produced no evidence that the damage was done by state-of-the-art nuclear devices planted strategically throughout the building rather than Tim McVeigh's hokey fertilizer bomb. They must pretend to believe that a Boeing 757 squeezed itself into the Pentagon through a hole smaller than the aircraft's diameter and then vanished ~ engines, aluminum, passengers, crew, hijackers, black box, baggage, everything ~ into thin air.

But let William Rodriguez start talking about his experience on 9-11 and Fearless Journalist is struck blind, deaf, and dumb. If you know Rodriguez' plight, you didn't hear it through VNS. In case you haven't heard, Rodriguez was the WTC janitor on duty in the basement at ground zero the morning of 9-11. Moments before the jetliner crashed into the north tower, Rodriquez heard and felt explosions rock the basement sub-levels. He says walls were cracking around him. Moments before the crash in the sky. Before, get it? Among the many people he rescued was Felipe David, who was severely burned by the basement explosions. Felipe heard and felt the explosions before the upper crash.

Rodriguez was cited for his heroism, but his factual testimony offends government. There cannot have been sub-basement explosions before the jetliner hit the 90th floor. This ruins the government's and fearless journalism's scenario of lone-nut jetliners.

Non-VNS journalist Greg Szymanski wrote, "Rodriguez said immediately after 9/11 some newspapers picked [his story] up but his words were never taken seriously and [were] quickly forgotten." www.arcticbeacon.com

"During the 9-11 hearings," said Rodriguez, "NBC brought a crew out to my house and spent a day taping my story but they never did air a word of it. Since then, some reporters and commentators have subtly warned me to keep quiet, told me my life could be in jeopardy and warned me that I really didn’t understand who I was dealing with."

Note that it was reporters and commentators who warned Rodriguez to keep quiet. So all the more reason for rulers to remind us that fearless journalism is still the American way. Ergo, the jailing of Judith Miller for refusing to reveal her sources, a jerkaround designed to lay to rest any suspicion that journalists may not be risking their lives, liberty, and sacred honor to report the truth undiminished.

Hey, Judith ~ if you don't mind suffering to protect your sources, here's one that guarantees a very big story. Meet my friend William Rodriguez.

Preterism amplified

2005-04-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

Under "Forty years in the making" (see below) peoplenotsheeple commented to rafe on why he believes the preterist view is flawed.

Christ's literal and bodily ascent will be reversed in the second coming, according to peoplenotsheeple. "That means he must return literally and bodily. I am happy to have the Spirit as a 'helper' and as an 'earnest' (downpayment) toward salvation. However, this isn't all there is to the promise of 'thy kingdom come... on earth as it is in heaven,' or the promise that the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the LORD as the sea is full of water.

"Long after the events of A.D. 70, John wrote in Revelation 1:7: 'Look! He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, including those who pierced Him. And all the families of the earth will mourn over Him. This is certain. Amen.'

"As my eye hasn't seen it, I figure it has yet to happen."

issues are brought up here that can be instructive to us all. First, there's evidence that John wrote Revelation well before A.D. 70, and that his prophecy points to that date. A late date for Revelation (upon which futurism is founded) is built on the assumption that John was banished to Patmos by the Emperor Domitian in the A.D. nineties. Preterists agree that John was banished by an emperor named Domitian, but in the A.D. sixties. You see, Nero was known as Nero Domitian.

I'm still a schoolboy on the subject of preterism. So I invited the distinguished preterist historian Kurt Simmons to comment on peoplenotsheeple's comment. Kurt writes:

"Peoplenotsheeple is not understanding the spiritual lessons behind the symbols he mentions (desert
blossoming like the rose, etc). He is looking for these things to occur in the natural, rather than in the spiritual realm. The language about the wilderness blossoming spoke to the desolated cities of Israel from the Assyrians and Babylonians; they sat uninhabited for decades while the Jews were in captivity. The return of the captivity would see the desert come under cultivation again and thus 'blossom as the rose,' the waste places would be rebuilt, and so forth. This became a type of the kingdom of the
Messiah: The spiritual waste places of mankind's fallenness would be restored and regenerated by conversion of men's hearts and cleansing from sin by the blood and gospel of Christ.

"The best single passage showing this is Amos 9:11-15, which is cited in Acts by James, showing its true
fulfillment in Christ. The kingdom is the church; in the church the various nations of people are at peace with one another; they turn their swords into plowshares. In the world, nation still wars with nation, but in the church this is not true.

"The seed of the gospel has already grown into a great tree (church) that fills the earth and provides habitation for the birds of every nation. The sons of God were manifested at the destruction of
Jerusalem and the plagues that overtook the Roman empire. 30,000 were killed by a plague in Rome in A.D. 65 during the very first full year of persecution of the church; a whirlwind destroyed crops in Campania, causing famine.

"When Nero committed suicide, the empire was thrown into recurring civil wars as different men sought to obtain the throne; hundreds of thousands were killed in these battles (in several instances 40,000 on each
side in one battle alone! - see Tacitus). This demonstrated to the world that Christians were God's sons and they were inviting wrath by persecuting them.

"The resurrection, of course, was into the spirit realm of Heaven, not physical bodies upon earth. So, looking to meet these people while on earth is to be disappointed."

Thanks, rafe, peoplenotsheeple and Kurt. The preterist is continually mindful that Scripture was written FOR us, not TO us. When John speaks of everyone seeing the return of Christ, including those who pierced Him, he is addressing the churches of first-century Asia, not us. Without an awareness of time and addressee, the terrain of prophecy is strewn with quicksand.

Death by technique

2005-04-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

A friend died recently of complications from the treatment of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. I hate to see people check out prematurely.

A nutritionist would treat non-Hodgkins as a symptom rather than a disease. You remedy symptoms by stopping cause. A good way to stop cause would be a fast broken after about 14 days with green vegetable juices, graduating to raw and steamed vegetables and tender meats. Absolutely no sugars. Cost: zilch.

The most hopeless way of eliminating cause would be sugar injections (which MDs give because sugar rushes to the tumors which light up in the PET scan), followed by surgery and chemo. Cost: expensive, but so what? -- everybody has insurance.

It's been my sad experience that the very people who could benefit most from this information usually reject it. I've never understood how good news can disappoint, but with some personalities it just does. Okay, I'm preaching. But if it's ungracious of me to rant like this, well, it's equally ungracious of people I like to die when they don't have to.

Played piano with the Grand Turk locals beside the pool last night, including singer Mitch Rolling and Zeus, who makes interesting sounds with saw and screwdriver. Great guitarist John Darnall came down from Nashville and joined us. Good crowd! Again Sunday night.

Wish you were here.

Airline deja-vu

2005-04-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

PROVIDENCIALES, Turks & Caicos Islands, BWI - Today, the reservations for the 20-minute flight to Grand Turk Island I'd supposedly had for 6 weeks couldn't be found by the local airline known as Sky King, so I got bumped from the 2pm flight to the 3pm.

Loren or somebody from the Osprey Beach Hotel was going to collect me from the 2 o'clock flight. They needed to be updated. But there are no coin-operated phones in the Providenciales airport and I don't know how to use T&C calling cards. So I asked the clerk at Sky King if she could call the hotel and tell them I'll be an hour late.

She said the only line they had was to the Grand Turk airport. Well, could she ask the airport to call the hotel and notify them that Tupper will be coming in at 3 instead of 2. She couldn't, offering this amazing solution: "When they don't see you get off the plane, they'll know you'll be on the next one."

Most people I know would have disintegrated over that. I loved it. The spirit of these islands is cheerful disappointment, and I think it's healthy. It outfits you for life generally.

I did some word processing for an hour, boarded the 3 o'clock plane and arrived Grand Turk at 3:20. Now the plot gets really juicy.

Loren wasn't there. Nobody was there for me. No telephones in the Grand Turk airport. But there's a clerk for a car/dune buggy rental company. I asked her to please call the Osprey Beach hotel -- with some difficulty, because she was Haitian and couldn't quite get straight the numbers I gave her. Eventually she made contact and Loren's wife Jenny arrived within 6 minutes.

Here's what had happened. Loren had been there for the 2 pm flight, and had waited until well after 3 pm. He'd asked at the SKy King desk when the next flight from Providenciales would be landing, and the desk had said 4:30. Loren didn't know the 3 o'clock flight had already landed, with me on board, and was taxiing to the gate. The Sky King agent just presumed Loren knew this. So Loren returned to his office, prepared to return to the airport and pick me up at 4:30.

Such wrinkles in communication happened often in air travel during the 50's and 60's, but rarely today. You have to go to places like remote Caribbean islands to experience them. They're old-fashioned, refreshing, and yes, character-building.

Wish you were here.

My Haircut at Beny's

2005-04-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

Just returned from Beny's, over on Bird Road, in Miami. I've waited 8 weeks to get my second haircut there. I wanted Mario, who cut me last time, but the way it worked out I had to go with the other guy. I could have held out for Mario, but that could have been slightly insulting to the other guy. He did a good job. Next time, I'll go with either.

Nobody speaks English in Beny's, which is good. I can converse in Spanish, but only if I have to. My Spanish is so marginal that if the conversation doesn't involve me, it's so much white noise. There are no magazines in Beny's, either. Well, one. It was a very tame girlie magazine, pre-Playboy, filled with Spanish-looking chicks wearing black negligee and garter belts. Maybe the raciest thing Castro permits? I can't say. This old guy next to me was studying it carefully whilst the boisterous talk filled the air. When his time came to be cut, he left the magazine on the chair next to him. Nobody picked it up.

Very pleasant awaiting my turn, and then getting cut, with no requirement to overhear gossip or laugh at jokes or feel mawkish for not contributing.

Forty minutes I spent in Beny's altogether. Relaxing. Quality meditation time. The tab was 6 bucks plus a tip.

I'm already trying to invent a reason to be in Miami in mid-June, for my third haircut at Beny's.

Forty years in the making

2005-04-11T04:08:00.000-07:00

The "end-time" prophecies of Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Jesus, and John have intrigued and baffled me for most of my life.

For about 9 minutes, back in the mid-1970s, I took leave of my senses and actually imagined I might be caught up bodily with other Christians and sucked into Heaven while the unfortunate left-behinds suffered a holocaust sparked by that smooth-talking Antichrist. Reason and scripture prevailed, thank God, and I left the rapture to Christian science-fiction writers and their adoring fans.

The publication of Rulers of Evil attracted the attention of the historicists, who assert that most biblical prophecy was fulfilled with the death and resurrection of Jesus and the subsequent rise of the Roman papacy as Antichrist who introduced the Tribulation. According to the historicists, about all that remains until the end of the world is the parousia -- the second coming -- of Christ to establish his perfect, everlasting Kingdom here on earth for a thousand years. That could happen at any time, they say.

But historicism left too many things hanging. Probably its most disturbing flaw is what C.S. Lewis considered "the most embarrassing verse in the Bible." This is Jesus' promise that He would return to judge and world and establish His Kingdom within the lifetime of some of His disciples. "And he was wrong," Lewis wrote. "He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else." (The World's Last Night, 1960).

There is one study of prophecy that credits Jesus with perfect knowledge of the end of the world. They call themselves preterists, from Matthew 24:34 in Latin: "this generation will not pass away (non praeteribit) - till all these things be fulfilled." The preterists say, and can demonstrate with scripture and history, that the second coming occurred in A.D. 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman synarchy. The devil and his antichrists and their fans were thrown into the lake of fire and the new Israel, the new Jerusalem, a spiritual kingdom ruled by Jesus, descended to earth. It's still here and will stay everlastingly. Wow. Suddenly prophecy makes sense, and to be a Christian becomes a lot more empowering.

Preterism challenges centuries of what may be deluded thinking among people who call themselves Christian. The Bible is clear on how deluded thinkers respond to such challenges: they scourge, plot against, defame, stone, even crucify. Check out the anti-preterist rhetoric on the web, and see for yourself if it doesn't smack more of persecution than reason, truth, clarity. (I expect to be attacked for saying this.)

I think so highly of the preterist view that I'm going to attend a conference they're holding in Sparta, North Carolina the weekend of May 12, 13, 14. The leading scholars in that discipline will be on the program, and I want to hear everything they have to say, and hopefully become acquainted with them personally. I'm strictly a paying guest, and I would encourage you -- if you're a little undecided on biblical prophecy -- to attend as well. Here's the site:
http://www.lighthouseproductionsllc.com/

And if the book of Revelation has always mystified you, by all means read Kurt Simmons' magnificent new book "The Consummation of the Ages." Kurt will address the Sparta conference as well.
http://www.preteristcentral.com/

Time to climb into the car and head for Miami.

Charles & Camilla

2005-04-09T07:46:00.000-07:00

What a contrast. In a single day, we turn from death in Rome to life in England!

The music said it all. The obbligato of the pope's funeral was dismal, hopeless, straggling; of the royal wedding joyfully complex, stirring, heavenly, composed by Papa Bach and his spiritual peers in the protestant spirit of obedience to Scripture and new life in Christ.

It was amazing to see these two major celebrities, the prince and princess, confessing their faults and praying to their Lord Jesus Christ for resolve to remain faithful to one another. It would have been even more amazing had these items flowed from their own hearts and minds, rather than from a page written by the Church of England. But that's the problem with religion: an orthodoxy too easily becomes a recitable dogma giving the appearance of piety quite apart from the real thing. This is why Scripture cautions us always to look to the fruits to know anyone's heart.

I'm now turning the television off for a good while.

Whereabouts

2005-04-09T06:39:00.000-07:00

I happen to be in south Georgia at the moment. And now I've got to prepare watercolour paper for my journey to Grand Turk Island. I've been so busy on other projects (writing, learning Final Cut Pro for a documentary film on nutrition) that I haven't done any painting since November 2004. It'll be good to wet the brushes again.

Loren Carnahan called the other day to say Jenny, his wife and owner of my beloved Osprey Beach Hotel, needed copy for an ad to run in a European travel magazine. "Send me points," I said. He emailed me something I wouldn't dare re-write:

"THE AUTHENTIC CARIBBEAN EXPERIENCE

"In Grand Turk, we value friendliness, gentleness, and calm. If you're in a hurry or need everything to run on a Swiss train schedule, you will miss the point of being here. Remember,... the song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" was written by our neighbor in Jamaica. The quality of your enjoyment here will be directly related to how much you are able to leave at home. Come and linger over our fresh foods and famously oversized drinks that always take longer to prepare and serve than they should. Leave your shoes, daytimer, watch, and cell phone at home. Yes, you can still surf the net or check stock quotes and emails if you must, but remember our strong suit...Friendliness, Gentleness, Calm."

Ricochet Gourmet

2005-04-09T06:37:00.000-07:00

Had this for lunch yesterday. Lightly flour some chicken tenderloins and sautee them in butter. When golden, set them on a mound of your favorite slaw. Deglaze the pan with a little white wine, a tablespoon of orange juice and slices of the rind.

When reduced by about half, add a tablespoon of butter and stir in one teaspoon of mint jelly. Pour the sauce over the chicken.

Death of a Salesman

2005-04-09T06:32:00.000-07:00

Never in history has a funeral been reported in such emotional detail to so large an audience. You got the feeling that ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and NBC had each not only lost its chief benefactor, but also was preparing the world to receive and adore his successor. Many people found this irritating. I found it appropriate and instructive.

If you've read Rulers of Evil, you know where I come from: what we consider the secular world lives, moves, and has its being in the Roman Catholic Church. This notion was dramatically corroborated last week by the appearance at Rome of virtually every world leader, pious and grieving. That the United States is a Roman Catholic country was likewise proved by the presence of the gaggle of American presidents paying their respects to the Holy Father's corpse. None of them said "Rome rules" but, hey, actions speak louder than words.

The media devoted billions of dollars worth of airtime teaching the inner operations of the Catholic Church, involving this and future generations in the Vatican's most urgent concerns. The anchors even showed us unbelievers, Jews, Muslims, and protestant evangelicals devouring the bait and receiving the hook. Surely this was the most elaborate example of well-planned, well-organized holy salesmanship since the marketing of Augustus Caesar to a strife-torn world a generation before Mary delivered Jesus.

Rome rules the world by divine appointment, and with the temporal might of the United States. Over that small assembly of souls who have been called to follow Scripture rather than Church traditions, Rome has no authority whatsoever, except to terrorize, condemn, capture, and punish those who stray off into error.

The future of freedom looks sanctimoniously phony on television. Truth is rarer in American communication than Bible-reading in a public school or in a devoutly Catholic family.

Thank God for the gift of Scripture, where freedom is real and Truth abounds. Without it I couldn't figure anything out. With it, nothing in the world baffles me, and all my decisions are risk-free. Scripture empowers us with understanding which we are obligated to share, "providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men."