Sandy Garrett Blog - American History

North Korea has tested a low yield nuclear device with 4% of the destructive power of the bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan at the end of World War II.

Some believe that the device was much larger but may have failed for technical reasons.

We don’t know the truth, because the United States has not devoted the resources to know what is really going on. If you are surprised, don’t be. Intelligence collection is a tricky business.

When Richard Nixon was President, you may remember that one of our ships, the USS Pueblo was brazenly attacked and hijacked in international waters in 1968, off the coast of North Korea. The 82 member crew was taken prisoner and tortured over an 11 month period before their release was negotiated.

There is such a thing as institutional memory. The senior members of the military remember the Pueblo incident well, and it still influences our behavior towards North Korea. As an aside, President Nixon gave the order to attack North Korea in retribution for the Pueblo incident. At the time the President believed a show of force was absolutely necessary to dissuade the Koreans from further provocative acts. Nixon’s Secretary of Defense at the time did not carry out the Presidential directive. To the end of his life, Nixon felt the biggest foreign policy error of his administration was the failure to carry out a retaliatory raid against North Korea for the Pueblo capture. The Pueblo incident has emboldened the North Koreans ever since.

Both the Clinton and Bush Administrations were aware of the Pueblo incident and its aftermath, when attempting to configure a new US policy towards North Korea’s nuclear program. We have 37,000 American soldiers stationed in South Korea protecting our alliance and interests with South Korea. There is a phased troop withdrawal from the South Korea Peninsula taking place.

You have to wonder why we are willing to withdraw troops from South Korea during a time when they wish to pursue a nuclear development process. The answer is that this area of the world is loaded with dynamite, and if it blows up, you don’t want to have 37,000 American troops sitting in the middle of it. North Korea has one of the largest stockpiles of artillery weapons of any army in the world. They are capable of striking Seoul, South Korea’s capital from across the border.

It was recently reported that Prince Bandar, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States had a private conversation with President Bush. In the conversation the Prince told the President that the United States should withdraw US troops from South Korea. Bandar felt it was too dangerous to leave our soldiers in the middle of a possible confrontation where our OPTIONS would be limited. As Bandar put it, without troops on the border, if there’s problem, it’s a REGIONAL PROBLEM. With troops, you could have thousands of American lives at risk, and it becomes a major WAR instantly.

So what do we do about the North Koreans announcing the ACTUAL testing of a nuclear weapon? We have to realize that words have power. We have to be careful what we say. President Bush announced the “axis of evil” speech several years ago. He named North Korea and Iraq as two of the three countries. It would seem that he started his anti-terrorism campaign in the wrong end of the world.

Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction (WMD), while North Korea has gone live with them. Now we are in a bind. Our defense policy has been altered whereby we can only fight one war in one country at a time, while fighting a holding action in a second country. Prior to the Bush Administration holding power, we were postured to fight two simultaneous wars on two fronts.

The bad guys know our new policy and will take advantage of us being pinned down in Iraq to expand their own power bases. Since we have a fear of losing pilots or better yet, having a pilot shot down, we are not doing the reconnaissance flights that we would normally do over North Korea.

The best thing to do right now is to realize that if North Korea is a problem for the United States, it is a much bigger problem for Japan, China, Philippines, and South Korea. This is a regional problem in spite of our alliances, and treaty involvements. Its one thing to build and detonate a nuclear weapon, it’s quite another to have a long range missile delivery system. North Korea could fairly easily develop a delivery system capable of hitting the countries in its immediate vicinity.

Hitting the United States from a 9,000 mile plus distance is another story, not so easy really. Since the countries bordering North Korea have the most to lose, they should be the ones bearing the brunt of the responsibility for multi-lateral talks among the powers involved.

The real deal is that North Korea is a dictatorship that routinely starves its own people for the benefit of the small leadership that has basically enslaved the country. This leadership wants to play the cards that it can. What it now has is nuclear weapons. They will use this card to maximize whatever concessions they can from the United States and the immediate surrounding neighbors.

Are we going to cave, and make concessions to the North Koreans? Of course we are, because that’s what superpowers do. It’s not about appeasement, it’s about business, and what makes good business sense. Churchill said that “People have friends, nations have interests”.

It is in our interest to not divert ourselves from the issue of extricating ourselves from a tortuous situation in Iraq. It is costing us treasure, and beginning to eat at the social fabric our country as Viet Nam did a generation ago. We must put a good face on Iraq and get out. The President may not be aware of it, but he is on a short leash in Iraq. The American people are very intolerant of wars without objectives that last too long, and that’s precisely where George Bush finds himself. It is highly questionable that his party will survive the mid-term elections intact. The country will embrace CHANGE, even from a Democratic party that is devoid of ideas.

The scene of this terrible accident — Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. [The third GOP presidential debate -- Tuesday, 5 2007].

My friend Paul Reyes likened them to a “convention of morticians,” in their last debate. Mark Mellman, a pollster says these candidates make the Republican party look like “a front for the Flat Earth Society.” I equate them with a congregation of angry, trembling middle-aged white men.

In fact, Rep. Tom Tancredo, the Congressman from Colorado might have injested a lethal concoction of “Viagra and Cialis” — judging by his shrill, “blood cuddling” and discombobulated allocution.

They threatened nuking Iran with tactical nuclear weapons, kicking out all immigrants. John McCain even insinuated that Bill Clinton started the Kosovo war, comparing it to erroneously Bush’s “illegal” Iraq war.

For the record: The Kosovo War was a conflict between Serbian and Yugoslav security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, an Albanian guerilla group seeking independence. Clinton came into the picture in 1999 — when NATO attacked Yugoslav targets. Clinton and NATO intervened, they did not initiate this war by lying Bush-Cheney style.

With eyes darting uncontrollably, an angry and trembling Tancredo declared — “We will not survive as a nation!” “We are testing our willingness to hold on to something known as the English language, the one thing that holds us glued together,” adding — “this is why I will go after any Republican Senator who supports this bill,” — The comprehensive immigration bill currently being debated in the Senate.

“We are becoming a bilingual country — and that is not good!,” wailed an emotional Tancredo, following this statement with a torrent of distorted attacks at immigrants, ranging from welfare benefits to school congestions, to English, ….!

“Bilingual countries don’t survive!” …., “We need ‘that thing’ to hold us together!” ….yelled Tancredo. Tancredo even suggested that ALL immigration should be stopped …..because America faces “death!”

“It’s simply not fair to say those people get put ahead in the line of all the people who’ve been waiting legally to come to this country,” the Master flip-flopper, Mitt Romney said. Lets enforce the current laws enacted in 1986 — READ: Lets hunt down the immigrants, and suffocate them to submission.

The “communal braying” of the word “Amnesty” without any offer of a workable alternative was nauseating — all they could furnish was a tired chorus: “Enforce the existing laws!” “Enforce the border!” “Build the fence!” ….”They will all self-deport!” …as if 12 million immigrants will depart the United States at the wave of a Republican magical wand!

Shows how out of touch with reality these Republican candidates are.

Meanwhile, Gov. Romney is airing campaign ads in SPANISH, the language of the same group of people he is attacking, so relentlessly — What a hypocrite!

Gov. Tommy Thompson proposed putting George Bush on a “lecture circuit” after his retirement — Bush, a man who cannot pronounce anything right!

Asked how he would use George Bush if he becomes president, Rep. Tancredo recalled that White House aide Karl Rove had once told him to “never darken the door of the White House.” With eyes bulging fiercely, Tancredo said he’d tell Bush the same thing.

Congressman Ron Paul provided the usual theatrics. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani looked like a toothless bull-dog, Duncan Hunter was his usual “anti-immigrant self,” Huckabee emphasized that God created man — but didn’t know how, yet he conveniently refuted Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. As for flip-flopper Romney — why would anyone believe anything said by someone whose “faith” didn’t believe blacks were human until as recently as the the late seventies.

All in all, this was a sorry group of vicious and pandering pretenders. A bunch of middle-aged white-men immersed in “Gunsmoke Freakdom,”…..as my friend Ike, quite correctly states: U.S. Political campaigns become an orgy of prevarication . . . One rich guy tells one set of lies, the other rich guy tells a slightly different set of lies, and you get to base your vote on which set of lies you like the best. “I’ll cut taxes!” . . . “I’ll give you better schools!” . . . “I’ll cut crime!” . . . “I’ll cut welfare!” . . . “I’ll build more jails!” . . . “I’ll create more jobs!” . . . “I’ll cut the deficit!” . . . “I’ll end the war!” . . . “I’ll start the war!” . . . “I’ll put a chicken in every pot!” . . . “I’ll keep those Immigrants in their place!”.

Pure PoliTRICKS!

The other Sunday, the Democrats looked more relaxed, more resourceful and much less angry — compared to this Republican group who offered nothing substantive in terms of policy, other than fear-mongering and the usual empty and predatory rhetoric.

VERDICT: Senator McCain won this debate. Simply put — he seems to be the wiser of this Fear-Mongering bunch — his patriotic speech at the end of the debate, I think, was his strongest moment. But his immigration stance will definitely hurt him with the Republican base, a base that has stopped reasoning totally, when it comes to immigration — “because America faces death,” if 12 to 20 million immigrants are assimilated into the system.

If that’s the case, then America should have died already, because these 20 million are already here, and some have been here for 20+ years.

So, what’s Tancredo’s REAL problem? Your guess is as good as mine.

China’s coming on strong while our leaders chase the terrorists across the globe.

Recently much international press fanfare was generated acknowledging that China had replaced Great Britain as the world’s fourth largest economy.

Nobody argues nowadays that China has the highest growth rate of industrialized economics posting annual growth rates in excess of 8.5 percent according to The International Monetary Fund. The World Bank predicted recently that China’s economy will grow 10.4 percent this year and 9.3 percent in 2007.

In contrast, the United States is in the 2 to 3 percent range.

What’s not been said by our less than candid leaders is that China is already the second largest global economy and has held that spot for sometime and catching the U.S. very quickly. The Chinese economy is already 72 percent the size of the U.S. economy.

One only need reference the 2006 CIA World Factbook. There it is for the whole world to see.

A country’s economic output is measured, and compared to other countries, by a standard known as GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, which is measured in two ways, one by international exchanges rates and by purchase power parity.

Exchange rates are the norm used by most private and public international agencies. But more recently experts have suggested that international exchanges rates distort the true picture.

Value distortions exist between the currencies of the trading nations, in particular, when currencies are something less than free-floating in the open market.

The Chinese Yuan is mostly a fixed-rate currency pegged to the value of the U.S. Dollar. The exchange value is only changed by Chinese government, a little at a time generally to appease the U.S. Congress. Therefore GDP figures between the two nations are distorted.

Countries with free trading currencies can safely use exchange rates as a measure of comparison between their respective GDP’s. In the absence of free trading, purchase power parity is used as the standard of comparison.

Purchasing power parity equalizes the purchasing power of different currencies in their home countries for a given basket of goods. This is often used by global economists, and our CIA, to compare the economic output countries.

The difference in an exchange rate and purchase power parity analysis of the China GDP is nothing less than astonishing and should be downright frightening to American leaders.

For example, on an exchange rate basis, the CIA World Factbook estimates China’s GDP to be $2.225 trillion. On a purchase power parity basis that figure is $8.859 trillion. In comparison the U.S. shows an economy of $12.49 trillion based on exchange rates and $12.36 trillion based on purchase power parity.

Based on exchange rates, China is the 4th largest economy in the world. But based on purchase power parity China is clearly number 2.

And the Factbook acknowledges, Measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, China in 2005 stood as the second-largest economy in the world after the US….

Noted magazine, The Economist reported, By 2020, China will narrowly outstrip the United States in GDP.

China already exceeds the U.S. in production of many strategic minerals and metals. And its industrial base is now larger as well. According to the Factbook China’s industrial output now stands at 4.19 trillion dollars as compared to 2.52 Trillion for the United States. Chinese annual industrial growth is 29.5 percent but only 3.5 percent here in the U.S.

Another significant trend worth noting is leadership in world trade. A recent Wall Street Journal article written by Andrew Batson and Shai Oster reports that Egypt’s trade with the China will exceed that of the United States by the year 2012. And this trend is evolving with many countries, even in our own hemisphere.

America’s eroding industrial base is compromising the nation’s military capabilities. This was recently highlighted in the Pentagon’s 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review when it concluded, Sourcing and production is now global, with considerable implications for the industrial base.

This same Defense Department study raised alarm bells about China when it concluded, the industrial and economic power wielded by China, and how this relates to the country’s political and military aspirations, is seen as a cause for concern.

But our leaders already know this stuff. They just need to level with the American people instead of spoon feeding them statistical manure.

Soon we will be Number Two.

And let’s not forget the echo of Khrushchev’s thundering UN speech 50 years ago declaring the East will overrun the West.

It’s happening before are very eyes.

Democrats will be making a profound mistake if they follow through on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s insistence that the party will refuse to provide any funding for the war in Iraq, absent some benchmarks for withdrawal of our troops at least by September 2008.

To be sure, as everyone knows, the American people quite strongly support the notion of cutting off funding for the war in the absence of achieving benchmarks of success for the war in Iraq. And at this point, given the failure of our efforts in Iraq to either stabilize the situation on the ground or to provide the basis for political reconciliation, this is an entirely understandable reaction&ndashone that I share.But as a matter of policy and politics it is simply the wrong judgment. If as is expected, President Bush vetoes the Democrats’ legislation that sets a timetable, a stalemate will inevitably result. President Bush will argue, as he already has begun to do, that American troops are being put at risk and the military campaign jeopardized. He will argue that the Democrats are undermining the war effort, as well as national security. The failure to negotiate in good faith, he will maintain, proves the Democrats lack a commitment to protecting our troops and doing what is right.

And while in the short term, the president’s arguments can be rebutted, the longer term presents real problems for the Democrats. If the party proves to be intransigent about continuing funding for the war and refuses to even meet the president to discuss the subject, they provide the Republicans with an issue that can be used against them in the run up to election day in 2008.

It is the so called “clean bill” simply providing funding for the war that offers the greatest hope to Democrats going forward. By compromising with the White House&ndasheven if it be largely on the president’s terms&ndashthe Democrats will be able to maintain the high ground with swing voters. At the same time, there is every reason to believe that Democrats can&ndashand indeed should&ndashcontinue to criticize the prosecuting of the war for its failure to promote political reconciliation, end sectarian violence, and develop an equitable distribution of oil revenue. They should give the President the funding he seeks now, as Senator Carl Levin has suggested, so that there can be no claim that Democrats are undermining the war effort.

Sadly, the most likely result is that the war will continue to go badly. And while that is a very bad result for the United States and our troops, it will take away the only potent argument Republicans have against the Democrats: they are too partisan, they are unwilling to compromise, and that they have jeopardized national security.

Rest assured, the appetite of the American people for this conflict is well beyond its limit. And by working to provide funding for the war with no strings attached, the Democrats will avoid allowing the Republicans to distract the American people from the failed policies of the Bush administration. To be sure, if things do not take a turn for the better on the ground, it is only a matter of time before Republicans as well begin defecting from the White House line. And that matter of time is measured in months not years.

So rather than risking confrontation with the Commander in Chief, the Democrats should provide the funding the White House is seeking for the war effort all the while making it clear that they have not in any way abandoned their commitment to a specific timetable to conclude the war effort as well as benchmarks of success that should be reached along the way.

The Pentagon was completed in 16 months. It was built on a swamp and on the area of the old Washington airport. Trucks hauled some 5.5 million cubic yards (4.2 million cubic meters) of junk and soil and dumped it in the marshes. The building’s foundation rests on 41,492 concrete piles.

The purchase of land cost $2.25 million (in 1943 dollars). The building itself cost c. $50 million, or $83 million with outside facilities. The Pentagon stands on 29 acres (=c. 120,000 sq.m.).

The center court alone occupies 5 acres (c. 20,000 sq.m.). The heating and refrigeration plant and the sewage structure sprawl on 1 acre each (c. 4,000 sq.m.). Fifty miles (=80 kilometers) of access highways were especially constructed, replete with 21 overpasses and bridges. The parking space is spread over 67 acres (c. 270,000 sq.m.) and can accommodate up to 8,800 vehicles.

Each wall of the Pentagon is more than 920 feet long (=300 meters). It is almost 78 feet high (or a little short of 25 meters). It should have been higher but the planners wanted to preserve the view of the neighboring Arlington National Cemetery. There are almost 18 miles (c. 29 kilometers) of corridors in the building, 131 stairways, 19 escalators, 13 elevators, 672 fire hose cabinets, 284 rest rooms (toilettes), 691 drinking fountains, 4200 electric clocks with sockets for another 2800, 16,250 light fixtures (250 bulbs are replaced daily), 7,754 windows, and 7 acres of glass - or c. 29,000 sq.m.

More than 23,000 people work in the Pentagon. It contains a heliport, huge restaurant and shopping mall, and bus and taxi terminals. The Pentagon has its own metro (subway) station.

This masterpiece of engineering was designed by George Edwin Bergstrom. Despite its gargantuan size, the distance between every two points in the complex never requires more than a 7 minutes walk. Plans to convert the Pentagon to a hospital after the second world war were abandoned with the outbreak of the Cold War.

The September 11 attack demolished 400,000 sq. feet of space and damaged another 1.6 million. To recover them would cost $700 million. About 1000 tons of limestone in 3700 separate pieces were quarried in Indiana to overhaul the facade. More than a 1000 laborers worked in three shifts for almost nine months until the facade was remade. Restoration will be completed in Spring 2003.

The State Department says that “a condolence book, a Presidential photo, and handmade sympathy cards written by children were included in a bronze box that was sealed into the limestone facade of the newly rebuilt section of the Pentagon. The capsule is not intended to be opened.”

Thomas Jefferson said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of democracy,” but besides preserving our democracy we are also in a never-ending struggle to create and expand our rights. While our founding fathers called for freedom and democracy, our people had to struggle to enfranchise poor whites, to end slavery and to allow former slaves and women the right to vote. Liberties and entitlements that were never considered in the early days of our republic were later enshrined into our laws, including social security retirement and disability, unemployment insurance, the right of workers to join trade unions and minorities to obtain an equal education.

We can consider our nation in constant evolution and struggle between opposing groups. Even before severing our colonial bonds with England, those wanting independence and those wanting to remain a colony fought each other, the French forces aligning themselves with the former and the British leading the latter. With the achievement of Independence, the struggle didn’t end. The nation’s foundation rested on the enslavement of millions while three-fifths of their number were counted for election purposes so that the southern states could have greater control of the government. Some leaders in the former colonies would not agree to joining the United States of America until the Bill of Rights was ratified and added to the Constitution, guaranteeing freedom of speech, assembly, religion, the right to a trial and other crucial rights.

While we describe our nation as a Democracy, with the majority ruling, the 2,000 election saw the candidate with fewer votes becoming president because of our Electoral College. In the contested Florida recount, the Supreme Court, overrode the Florida State Court in a 5 to 4 decision regarding the recount of contested ballots. Is it a mere coincidence that the highest court in our land had a majority of its members appointed by Republicans? The Electoral College is not a college but rather the means by which states, rather than all voters, determine the states’ choice for a presidential candidate. That vestige of an earlier struggle, when politicians were distrustful of our citizen voters, has become enshrined in our twenty-first presidential election process.

Yet another factor influencing elections is the enormous amount of money that candidates must raise in order to run for office. These funds come disproportionately from corporations and the wealthy. During the last several elections, oil, pharmaceutical, health care and other major companies have been major contributors to candidates. Is it no wonder that our tax and other policies favor these interests? There are about 65 lobbyists for every member of Congress (to get the total, multiply by 100 Senators and 453 Representatives); is anyone naive enough to believe that elected officials of both parties are not influenced by the funds they depend upon to be elected rather than the voices of many of their constituents?

Another threat to democracy is more direct. In one documented situation in 1933, in the crisis of the Economic Depression (in which one out of four workers were unemployed), J.P. Morgan, Firestone Company and other corporate executives approached General Smedley Butler, a renown general, and offered him money to overthrow the legally elected President Roosevelt. The honorable general was not tempted to become an American dictator and potential Hitler; rather he revealed the plot to the President and testified against those threatening to undermine our government. Yet no one was indicted. One does not have to be a conspiracy believer to wonder whether there were other such unsuccessful attempts that were never exposed or if they are being hatched today.

Our nation’s founders established three separate branches of government–Executive, Legislative and Judicial–as a system of checks and balances to preserve our democratic rights. A recently introduced threat to this separation is presidential “signing statements.” Started under President Reagon, they were used infrequently by subsequent presidents until the current President Bush. When he signs a bill, such as the one outlawing torture–overwhelmingly approved in the Senate–he states that he has the right not to honor the law if he believes otherwise. He has made over 800 such statements in which he can overrule the independence of Congress’ lawmaking ability at his whim.

Besides being a student of American history, I have also written a psychological thriller, “Hobgoblins,” which describes how a group of greedy financiers secretly support a presidential candidate who plans to double-cross them and become a modern-day Hitler. While fiction, it has an historical basis and cannot be discounted as sheer fantasy. Opposing the business moguls and presidential candidate are a psychologist who once treated the candidate, a muckraking journalist and a third person who is the source of the hobgoblin nightmares that pursue both the presidential candidate and the psychologist.

“American nuclear forces on global alert” is what CBS dished out as this author awoke on that chilly October morning in 1973 while attending Madison College in Virginia.

This was Nixon’s response to Brezhnev’s announcing the potential deployment of Soviet airborne troops into the midst of the Yom Kippur War in an effort to stop Israel’s advance toward Cairo.

It was both amazing and amusing watching the Soviet’s quickly back tract in the face of stern American resolve.

To put things in a more contemporary setting is to beg the question — should the United States consider the use of nuclear weapons to deter potential attacks by Muslim extremists.

This politically incorrect notion must be given weight in light of the worldwide jihad that has been declared against the U.S. by Muslim terrorists and the nation-states that support and hide them. It is nothing short of the 4th Crusade and it is taking on religious overtones in the form of a global holy war financed by these terrorist nations.

It is fair to say that national dogma promulgated by an Islamic theocracy is more rigid and less flexible than what is accepted within a pluralist democracy.

This is not to suggest that all Muslims are extremists and practice Islam by the strictest rules of the Koran. Many are fine citizens of democratic nations who enjoy the fruits and prosperity of hard work within western cultures while practicing Islam.

And some would argue that Muslim extremists are no more radical than the extreme Christian Right in this country.

One thing is for sure — Islamic culture in general is more inflexible that Western culture by a county mile.

This was demonstrated recently when the Muslim world refused to accept the Pope’s repeated apologies concerning his medieval reference to Allah being an evil force.

And several years ago when Islamic factions took over town councils in two Italian villages through the electoral process — they called for the immediate shutdown of all Christian churches within those municipalities even though the local Christian community tolerated Islamic worship and Mosques for many years.

This should give pause to all Americans about the enemy we face. Extreme elements within Islam have declared a “holy war” against America bent on its absolute destruction.

Little attention was given to French President Jacques Chirac when he publicly announced last year that France would use nukes if attacked by Muslim extremists.

Since terrorists raid in small numbers and their cells are dispersed within a country, Chirac wasn’t talking about using nukes on his own soil. Neither was he going to detonate one of those big firecrackers in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. His intention was very clear — and “aimed” by way of the Middle East.

Despite France’s failed historic reliance on “appeasement diplomacy”, their one great show of strength on this issue has thus far saved them from intimidation and attack.

Some say that using such powerful and destructive weapons in retaliation of a Muslim extremist attack is unfair and inhumane because the American government can’t seem to exactly link the attacks to any particular nation.

That leaves America exposed to even further molestations.

Political correctness should not hold back the United States from projecting and potentially using its nuclear arsenal to protect its citizens and global interests from the very terrorist nations that seek our downfall by whatever means they can employ.

Surfacing a Trident submarine in the Persian Gulf with hatches open may send a clear message to our foes, that unlike the prior Crusades, we intend to win this one.

As Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan proved to our enemies at the time, “power achieved is power perceived.”

Their peace, tranquility, and respective modes of concentration were broken by the excited entry of a royal messenger. You could be excused for thinking that he had arrived over 200 years early for an audition for “Robin Hood &ndash Men In Tights”.

The tight clad messenger hesitated before the King, seemingly unsure of whether to bow or curtsy. It was not clear whether this was caused by uncertainty over his own sexuality, or that he had been out of the country so long he had forgotten the refinements of British court life. He bowed.“Your Highness”, he said, breathlessly. “I have grievous news from the Americas.”

The King looked puzzled for a moment, but Prince George ignored his Game Boy and started to pay attention. Finally, the King said:

“The Americas? Is that one of my domains?”

“Yes, your Highness, it is the 13 American colonies.”

“Aah,” said the King, “since I past the 100 mark I’ve had trouble remembering them all.”

“The news is not good,” the messenger resumed. “It seems that some strange illness, a virus, has hit the whole population. It has had a terrible effect, your Highness. It has affected their vocal chords. All the population is affected.”

“Why is that so grievous? Do they not have a doctor over there?” the King asked in unworldly innocence.

“Your Highness. They can no longer speak the King’s English. They’ve all started speaking in a strange accent, and all the words of the King’s English are being distorted. They sound like they’re of another world. The virus is so virulent, your Highness, nobody can speak the King’s English any more.”

“This virus, could it have been planted by the French? They’re so jealous of all my colonies; they’d stop at nothing,” the King responded. “This accent they all now speak in, this foreign tongue, does it sound French?”

“Thankfully not, your Highness. But how would the French smuggle this virus in?” asked the messenger.

“You remember Troy? The Trojan horse? That’s how they’d do it, the sneaky French. Trust them to use a Trojan horse to get a virus into my domain,” the King conjectured.

The messenger looked anxiously and expectantly at the King, who went on:

“There’s only one thing for it. I cannot have subjects from my own land not speaking the King’s English.”

He waved his arm dismissively. “Get rid of them”, he said. “Leave them to fend for themselves. I know they’ll never survive on their own, let alone progress, but we cannot have my Kindom corrupted by those virus ridden settlers.”

“But your Highness, don’t you think you should visit the territory to assess the problems for yourself?” the messenger suggested.

The King shook his head knowingly.

“We have no cure for this mysterious virus. What would be the point of my going?”

Prince George looked across pleadingly:

“Oh, please, go Daddy. I want those domains.”

“No son, those colonies are no longer part of my realm, and will not be part of yours to inherit,” the King replied.

With the wave of a hand, the King dismissed his American colonies. But it was not the end of the story by far.

The messenger was sent on his way to tell the King’s officials to prepare papers that would lead the way to American Independence; and just as an afterthought, he also sent a message to Parliament, to inform them of his declaration of American Independence.

Matters of state moved quite slowly those days, but by January of 1776 the British officials had prepared a paper entitled: The British Route To American Independence. Armed with this historic document, the King’s messenger set off for what the King now regarded as his former American colonies.

This was no Instant Messenger. The British and French had not yet been on friendly enough terms for the Concorde to have been born, so it was down to a long and arduous journey by ship. The messenger arrived on American soil several weeks later, carrying The British Route to American Independence.

Local British representatives were briefed on the King’s instructions. There was no such thing as a photocopier in those days, so there were just two handwritten copies of this historic document. One was to be retained by the King’s messenger, the other to be given to the leader of the colonists.

The most common means of communication then was still word of mouth, and that was to lead to a turn of events that has irrevocably altered non-history. Not only was communication verbal, but it was slow.

The virus that had afflicted the vocal chords of colonists had already affected the pronunciation of route. What was “root” in the King’s English, had become “rout” (as in out) in those affected by this mystery virus. So, as news of the King’s declaration began to leak, the initial chatter in American quarters became about the British “rout” to American Independence.

A British official in Boston heard of all this chatter about American Independence and the British rout. Now, in the King’s English, he thought that the British had been routed, which meant they had been hammered, beaten to a pulp. In a game of football it would have been a like one side scoring 13 goals against 0. The British, all of a sudden, had been routed by the American colonists.

The British official panicked, and with others in Boston, planned their escape by sea. Their troops had been routed, or so they thought, so they had no choice but to escape on the first ship out of Boston Harbour. That was in May 1776.

As the ship left the bay, the people of Boston started to get wind of what had happened. The British troops had been soundly beaten by the colonist forces. They were jubilant, and quickly organized a giant celebration in an open plaza by the sea. The local t-shirt manufacturer quickly designed an American flag, and ran off thousands of t-shirts with the flag printed on front and back.

Local Irish bar owners unlocked their secret vaults of stockpiles of Guinness, and carted the crates out to the plaza for the impromptu celebration. Bostonians were each given their own t-shirt, which they were proud to put on instantly, and a half share of a crate of Guinness. They drank long into the night, and as each crate of Guinness was emptied, it was tossed into Boston Harbour, or as they now called it, Boston Harbor.

This great event became known as the Boston T-shirt Party (later to be revised to Boston Tea party and moved back to 1773.)

Over a period of a few months to the end of June 1776, similar scenes were repeated across the colonies. The news of the British rout had reached the British troops in the field, one battalion at a time, and they laid down their arms, believing that their army had been defeated. All of the stories circulating were of the British being badly beaten, and soon of mass surrenders.

Forlorn British officials who made it back to London were full of stories of army defeats and other humiliation. The troops themselves were too ashamed to return and face the wrath of their King.

King George III toyed with the idea of making a speech on the balcony of Buckingham Palace about his granting of independence to the American colonies. However, the court historian pointed out that monarchs didn’t yet do such things. A speech in the House of Lords was ruled out, as it was too high a place to discuss settlers, albeit in a former domain.

And so it was, that on July 4th 1776, the Foreign Secretary stood up in the House of Commons and formally granted independence to the 13 American colonies.

Back in the former colonies, things had moved on apace. Stories of victories over the British abounded, but as they had not actually happened, they tended to be vague. There must be some great stories in the war, everyone thought, and in the many victorious battles which had led to the rout of the British troops. But where was the detail?

Colony leaders began to despair. How can they record these proud moments of their history with a single sentence “The British Have Been Routed.” Exactly when? Where?

In Washington, a special secret meeting of the Continental Congress was held. It just happened that one of the members was a keen theatre patron, and had been talking to a thesbian group who had been on tour and performing locally. They had their own scriptwriters, led by a young lady called Holly Wood.

An excited Congress, prompted by the forceful Holly, started to piece together the events that led up to what they would announce as The American Declaration of Independence. They decided to start in 1773, and put the historic “facts” together from there. One of them had heard about the Boston T-shirt Party; another was a disgruntled tea importer. They came up with the Boston Tea Party story as a kick off for the anti British movement that would lead, via a war and many great battles, to American independence.

For the last few days of June and the first 2 days of July, the team of scriptwriters, or non-historians, worked day and night to put together a solid and impressive history for the American Wars of Independence. When another secret Congress gathered to hear the revised history, the representatives lapped it up.

“That’s it,” they declared unanimously. “But how do we put all this out to the American public.”

The group of scriptwriters was again put to work, so that by the morning of July 4th, everything was in place. The history, and the publicity, was all ready to present to the awaiting American public.

Thus, two great institutions were born in July 1776. No, not the Senate and the House of Representatives; they came later. No, it was two institutions more far reaching:

Political Spin, and Hollywood.

The second amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees every American the right to bear arms. Has any law ever been so ambiguous? What are arms? What does it mean to bear them? At least with the first amendment we know exactly where we stand: Freedom of speech. It couldn’t be any clearer. But, the right to bear arms leaves the second amendment open to different interpretations. We need gun permits to carry a concealed weapon. Do we need knife permits? No. Yet both can, and often do, cause death. We can own a gun, or a rifle, or a sub-machine gun, or a machete, and dozens of other tools to kill, even our own bare hands. So, gun control is a debate in our country that makes no sense unless you broaden the ban or acceptance to include all instruments of death.

According to Population Stats, .xist.com, America has the highest crime rate in the world. Everyday 30 people in the United States are murdered by a gunshot. That means 11,000 people. However, there are more than 25,000 murders each year in the United States. In other industrialized countries, Germany has 381 each year, France 255, Great Britain 68, Australia 65, and Japan 39. Based on population to make it a fair assessment, it turns out to be guns in America murder 1 out of 25,916 people every year. Compared to Canada where the amount is 1 out of 190,387, and 1 out of 864,546 in Great Britain, and only 1 out of 3,254,508 in Japan, America is the killing field of the world.

Gun expert Robert J. Spitzer, political science professor at SUNY Cortland and author of the book The Politics of Gun Control points to America’s ‘mixed ethnicity.’ “Our diverse cultural background, composed of many different ethnic, religious, social, and other groups leads to inter-group rivalries, suspicion, hatred, fear, and sometimes violence,’ Professor Spitzer said. “Most other Western nations, by comparison, are more homogeneous than the U.S.”

Which brings us back to the thesis that America does not need a gun control law; it needs a crime control law.

The number one concern in America today is safety: Safety from terrorists, safety from drugs and violent drug dealers, safety from gangs, and safety from those whose evil ways affect our lives and our children’s lives everyday. However, we have no safety of which to speak. Our police departments are as overwhelmed by the size of the enemy as are our troops in Iraq. Without safety, we are prisoners of our own society. Safety and security are more important than any other issue, for, without it, we cease to live. We merely exist. We must first feel safe, and be safe, before we can think about curing our other ills. With 14,000 of the homicides each year being committed without guns (11,000 with), we must look at the bigger picture.

We must build more maximum-security prisons. Enough so that everyone convicted of first-degree homicide, or of a felony three times, is sent there for the rest of their life, without any chance of parole. (There is no reason to spend millions of dollars on each death row prisoner’s appeals that last ten years or longer when it has been proven not to be a deterrent and when housing them is substantially much less expensive.)

Within a federal partnership with select American manufacturing companies, these companies for the work they would be required to do would pay these prisoners minimum wage. The product they create would then be infused into mainstream American commerce. In return for these jobs, the prisoners would pay the government for their room and board, and any security, medical, and utility fees. If the prisoner has any dependents, their paycheck would reflect that deduction. Cut off from society, these prisons would be a society of their own. Away from us forever.

Crime control, rather than a gun control, is a stricter and more effective deterrent than the failed alternatives. It would not just deter murder with guns, it would deter murder with any type of weapon, as well as rape, aggravated assault - ALL felonies. It would reduce crime and get these criminals off America’s streets once and for all, saving the American taxpayer substantially in law enforcement: Money that will instead be used to build and staff these new prisons. Our safety is what we have to take care of - what we must take care of - before we do anything else. We owe it to our children.

We teach our children to have pride in America. We teach our children safety first. We teach our children about good and evil, right versus wrong. What must our children be thinking when they see murder after murder on the news, and walking the streets with the fear of a drive by shooting, or of being abducted? We are raising a society born of fear and mistrust. This is why we need a stricter crime bill. This is why we must - we have no other choice - take back our country from these criminals.

Yes, Americans should be able to have handguns in their home for protection, as long as it is responsibly locked up and away from children. Yes, Americans should be able to have rifles to hunt for food. However, these are still weapons of destruction and they must be registered with personal background checks. There is absolutely no need or reason for any person, other than law enforcement and the military to have assault weapons that are aimed to violently kill masses of people. We must compromise through common sense. We must understand and follow the true intent of our forefathers when they penned the second amendment to the Constitution.

All it takes is the determination, the moral strength of our elected representatives, to enact tougher laws, so we can finally take back our country and make it a safe haven once again for every American man, woman, and child.

With the decisive Battle of Yorktown in Virginia in 1781, America freed itself from the shackles of tyranny. Now, Virginia-the first, permanent English-speaking colony in the New World-is celebrating the 225th anniversary of the historic battle.

The National Park Service’s Yorktown Battlefield and Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s Yorktown Victory Center, together with the town of Yorktown, are hosting stirring events and exhibits to bring clarity to America’s most important military victory-George Washington’s triumph of allied forces over the British at Yorktown in October 1781.

This year in Yorktown-along the sandy shores of the tidal York River near the Chesapeake Bay-will be special, beginning with timeless attractions, such as:

• The Victory Center, where visitors can “meet” Revolutionary soldiers, try on their uniforms and view artifacts from the sunken British ship “Betsy,” one of many British ships resting on the bottom of the York River; and

• The Yorktown Battlefield, where you can walk the fields and fortifications where General Washington forced the surrender of more than 8,000 British soldiers, effectively ending the American Revolution.

Then amid a backdrop of spectacular autumn foliage, Yorktown will host a four-day commemoration of the decisive battle beginning Thursday, Oct. 19. A small-town parade, traditional military Pass in Review ceremony, tactical field demonstrations and a live-action orchestral and choral event called “We Salute You-An American Symphony” will honor American military service.

Fireworks over the York River, an assembly of fife and drum corps from across the U.S., military bands and a naturalization ceremony will remind spectators and participants of the basic freedoms achieved 225 years ago in Virginia. Culminating with a ceremonial surrender of the British army at Yorktown’s Colonial National Historical Park, more than 2,000 reenactors will mobilize in a brilliant show of British redcoats marching to the actual field of surrender.

In addition, a new exhibit at the Victory Center depicts how different cultures helped shape American society. And the new Riverwalk Landing in Yorktown-a retail center with unique shopping and dining options-is another reason to return to Virginia for “Jamestown 2007: America’s 400th Anniversary” next year.