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June 27, 2005 I take it for granted that 95% of the American public can just barely get through the four basic arithmetical operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication and division—and, then, only provided that the numbers aren’t too big. Unfortunately, a great many Americans cannot do such basic operations as interconverting fractions, decimals and percentages, even with a calculator. Very few can make conversions from the American system of weights and measures to the metric system. One should be able to make rough calculations of the kind in his head, and dependable ones on a calculator, but even given a formula to look at, many an American will stare at it blankly without any conception of how to go about applying it. Many Americans have no idea of what the words ‘million’, ‘billion’ and ‘trillion’ mean. They don’t know the first thing about scientific notation. They get panicky when it comes time to file income tax returns. They often don’t know the population of the US in round figures, and therefore cannot calculate the per-capita amount of, say, foreign aid, even if they understood what the answer would tell them. Some people even think that studying science or mathematics is a matter of reading the biographies of famous scholars, or memorizing the names of inventors and authors. You don’t study physics; you read about the life and loves of Isaac Newton. Yet these are the people who will get defensive about the economy or talk with trumpery authority on Iraq, as if their wild conjectures, which they got from hearsay or television, had any validity. At some service stations in California, gas is approaching $4 per gallon, and is over $3 universally in that state. With the cost of the war in Iraq now nearing $300,000,000,000 ($300 billion), and the population of the US approaching 300,000,000 (300 million), the per-capita assessment has been $1000, and promises to ascend still higher. So a family of four has contributed $4000 to the war effort. But people will repeatedly argue that the war in Iraq is about oil. Does it make sense to spend $4000 to make the gas prices rise $1.50 a gallon? Wouldn’t it have been better to save the $4000 and let gas prices remain at $2 or $2.50 a gallon? If the war in Iraq is about oil, it surely was the fiasco of the millennium. People like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who were part of the team that engineered the invasion, invented the war-for-oil dodge to divert attention from the fact that the war was really about Israel. Another outrageous fallacy that goes right over the heads of the majority of Americans is the idea that the invasion of Iraq was all about spreading democracy, with the US acting as a leader and benefactor. This stupidity is mouthed even by officials in the White House, including the president himself. The average person in the US has no idea of how much money the US has spent on foreign aid historically. He thinks the US gives billions and billions to just about everybody, and they provide “meals on wheels”, as one UK contributor (McCrae) put it. But it was only in 2005 that total foreign aid, including military aid, passed the $20,000,000,000 ($20 billion) mark for a single year. This is about $67 per capita. Now suddenly, we are expected to believe, a nation of taxpayers who, with a GDP of $40,000 per capita, could come up with on $67 worth of aid per year for all the countries of the world together, has been willing to lavish $333 a year, for the 3 years of the war, upon a single country. Whence came all this sudden magnanimity? Doesn’t anyone run the figures to see how foolish all this talk is? The people who defend these two ideas do not provide figures and probably could not mount an argument based on statistical arguments if they wanted to. They praise and vilify certain politicians and political commentators, shout partisan slogans and engage in all sorts of personal vituperation. But I’m noit interested in knowing who has the biggest mouth or the most vicious tongue. All I want to do is perceive the facts. I think that the facts that I have presented, and I can provide sources for them all, rule out the possibility that the war was about either oil or democracy. We all know that the WMD were a hoax and that the ‘war on terrorism’ is a mere slogan. I don’t even have to go over all the evidence to prove that. I have done it several times in my articles, and can provide the chronology of deceptions again if need be. The true mainspring of the invasion was Jewish Zionist influence, which is effectuated by Jewish domination of the news media. I have lots and lots of statistics to prove it too, so before you challenge me, review my evidence, which I will be delighted to e-mail to anyone requesting it. You do not have any countervailing evidence, I assure you. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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