Saturday, August 13, 2016

Immigration and the 2016 Elections: Part 3: Don't Blame the Illegal Immigrants Make Employers Sponsor Them.


'Instead of raising wages to attract workers and possibly hurting their profits and their stock price, American corporations and businesses bent over backwards bringing cheap labor out of Mexico, Central and South America, where they found hard working, intelligent, family oriented, honest people who would work all day for little money.'

Peace everyone. 

Having established the fundamental problem America faces today in parts 1 and 2, we see it is a problem of our own making by allowing the worst people in our society to butcher our education system in order to produce a society of dependent, apathetic egotistic narcissists, who don't understand much of anything outside the latest app.

When I was growing up, I learned in school about the horrifying institution of slavery as it was instituted in the South. I could never understand how anyone could subjugate other human beings to such conditions. I wasn’t taught about slavery in Africa, the peasant system in Europe, or about the serfs that were tied to the land in Russia. As a person studies history, and as I discuss in even more detail in Deceptions of the Ages, slavery has been practiced since the beginning of time. People who were sold in Africa to slave merchants, were often captives of competing tribes. Muslim traders first introduced African people into Western slave institutions when they began trading to plantation owners in the Azores. The market for the cheap labor soon moved west across the Atlantic. Although the Europeans took over the trade in Western Africa, Arabia continued to import people from Africa as slaves until the nineteen seventies (yes, the nineteen seventies). 

Not For Me

We can talk about this issue more when we discuss racism, but for now, let’s agree that there is little if any difference between slavery and the term you hear today: cheap labor. Having lived in the countries of Oman and Saudi Arabia, for many years, I will use them as my example outside of the preverbal American box. If you look at the marvelous, roadways, buildings, and the thousands and thousands of individual businesses on the Arabian peninsula, you would most likely be surprised to find out that the Arabs in general have little to do with the construction or the operation of these businesses. They are instead run by people known as “expatriates” or people who have been invited to work in the country. I, for example, worked for government and private contracts and had all of my needs as far as medical and my governmental requirements provided by my employer. When I no longer had an employer, I was required to leave the country. All of the people working in Arabia work under the same system, but the conditions are much different for people from Asia, Africa and the subcontinent of India.

Immigration and the New Slavery

     As a Westerner, I was entitled to a great salary, great accommodations and a wonderful lifestyle socializing with not only the Arabs, but expats like myself from all over the world. I discuss this issue in much more detail in my books, My Year in Oman, Another Year in Oman and Killing Time in Saudi Arabia. For the uneducated workers that were imported to build Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the cities of Saudi Arabia and Oman, their conditions were somewhat different. Many worked in the blistering sun laying bricks, running equipment or doing manual labor for the equivalent of sixty to eighty US dollars per month. They are housed in prefabricated mass compounds or in small rooms in family homes, often with no access to air conditioning, clean water (tap water is polluted). Except for medical insurance, if a worker was injured on the job, they were quickly deported. Incidents of abuse, neglect, starvation, assault, rape and murder are reported in the Arab News every day or discussed through the expatriate grapevine. Employees who do not do whatever is required of them can be beaten, or their family can be split up. With no rights and very little redress, there is little difference between the slavery that exists today in Arabia and that which was practiced in the American South, and with the same lack of objection from the general public.


     But what do the conditions of some poor villagers from Indonesia, Nepal or India have to do with the United States? Just like the Arabs, we are also a nation of people who no longer want to turn burgers, lay bricks, build houses, pick fruit etc. Well, that is not exactly true. Because America has developed a culture where we want as much money as we can possibly get, and we will screw over anyone to get it, some unscrupulous people started doing what our fruit and vegetable producers have done for years. They began hiring cheaper illegal immigrant labor. 
     Now, let me make it clear that I want to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. I am not singling out anyone because of their country of origin. My wife, who migrated here with me is a legal immigrant. We paid thousands in fees to the US government in order for her to have a green card. She works at a very good paying job. 
However, if a person comes across the border without going through a country’s immigration, they are considered an illegal entity in any country in the world and they are sent back. Only in the United States have the masters of double speak tried to replace the term illegal immigrant with  the term "migrant."
     If I rob a bank, in spite of the fact that I beat my chest a lot and say that I am not, I am still a bank robber, not an aggressive customer. The law is clear. No matter what kind of verbal tricks or subterfuge are bandied about by lawyers and Quislings, a person who comes across the border illegally is breaking the law.The corporation government media likes to throw the word migrant out, which implies the thousands of people crossing our borders every day are somehow going to return home, so there is no need to be concerned. 
     This is one of the many Jedi mind control tricks that the government easily plays on a population that barely knows the meaning of either word.  Now that we have agreed on at least these terms and definitions, let us continue to the real issues here that have very little to do with illegal or legal, migrant or immigrant, but more to do with sheer economics.
 To use the  produce industry, since it is the industry that enticed many Mexican and Central Americans migrants to move north during the harvest season to pick the fruit, where the American dollars they made were worth much more when they returned home. Greedy, unscrupulous individuals in business and industry in the US decided they had found their much needed source of cheap labor. Instead of raising wages to attract workers and possibly hurting their profits and their stock price, American corporations and businesses bent over backwards bringing cheap labor out of Mexico, Central and South America, where they found hard working, intelligent, family oriented, honest people who would work all day for little money. 
It was a bonanza for the unscrupulous US companies who sold things imported from the slave factories and used cheap illegal immigrant labor (slaves) to do it. And of course, we know who those corporations are, but we can't afford to be conscientious consumers-we're all broke. Sadly, it was also a death knell for those companies who could not compete because they hired Americans and tried to pay their workers a decent wage. 
     Rather than protect its citizens, the corporation run government has inundated every community in the United States except those of the very wealthy, with poor, uneducated individuals who speak little English, have completely different customs and beliefs and their families whose children speak no English. In spite of the fact that their revenues continue to fall in cities throughout the US, corporations who are employing illegal immigrant labor are not only adding additional tax burdens but taking tax money out of the municipality through lost revenue from their own unemployed citizens.
     So, we see, that the immigration question is not what it seems. The blame for our high crime rate, the financial devastation of municipalities across the country and of course, racism and the rise of Donald Trump makes as much sense as the War On Drugs. If American corporations didn't employ people who cross our borders  illegally in search of a country that isn't completely corrupt and overpopulated yet, they wouldn't be here. We need them. They need us. We just need a way that they can come here and work with rights and fair pay, but that they are able to return home when their contract is finished-like every other country in the world.

In Part 4 we will discuss the political implications of the Immigration Issue.

Immigration and the 2016 Elections: Part 2 The Failure of Our Educational System


"The dumbed down American population will also choose a political candidate the way it chooses the pharmaceutical drugs or caffeine beverages to which they are addicted. The population will choose whomever promises to give them the most. Of course, if Americans understood the President cannot spend a dime without Congress, they would bring their fertilizer sacks to the the rallies."

Although my readers and followers around the world keep asking me to air my opinions about the campaign, I am afraid that is the problem. Everyone wants to talk about things but no one wants to be pro active. All of my life, from serving my country as a paratrooper, choosing to be a teacher or flying to the Middle East to show the Arabs that we are not all hateful people after the attacks of September 11, 2001, I have established my record of doing what I believe in and not sitting around talking as if that is somehow going to change things. 
     
    Today, spouting opinions is a cheap way to get a person some kind of weird social credit for having an opinion about a social issue (as long as it is the correct opinion) whether it be in a movie, a TV show or a conversation and whether or not the person knows or cares anything about the issue. Instead, I would like to point out the realities of life in America and the world today as they are, and not as the rich and powerful hope you are stupid enough to believe they are. I will make this first part of the series as brief as possible, and I will add subsequent parts until I have covered the issues enough to let my readers see these issues in the context of my book, Deceptions of the Ages: “Mormons” Freemasons and Extraterrestrials.

Dumb and Dumber
Our Pathetic Schools

     As sad as it is to say, the reason we have a drastic need for immigrants in the first place is because we have been running a third world school system since the end of the nineteen seventies. Every political action group from the far right to the far left, gays, homophobes, all if the 'ists' from capitalists to communists, multiculturalists, federal rulings, lawsuits, zealots on school boards, corruption, television, video games, phones, uninterested parents, genetics, drugs, cops, the military, professional sports organizations, collegiate sports organizations, teacher unions and of course every multinational from car dealers to sellers of soda pop have all moved in to take a cut of our community pork barrels in the name of protecting kids or some such blather. I know. I was there.
     Sadder than that reality is the fact that one of the by products of the societal failure of the public education system (collegiate as well) is a very dumbed down population who are now being classically conditioned through the use of cell phones and other electronic devices that many of the younger generation might not be able to function without. People today are conditioned through the use of buzzwords, and what are called talking points from the media, politicians and anyone else who is trying to sell them something. They hear the same things so often they feel a sense of reward for retaining the information that someone has tried to pass off as useful knowledge, like the ingredients of a famous hamburger. Through this kind of conditioning, mere words are assigned physiological responses and the accompanying images to go along with them. I discuss how the corporation government media use these kinds of tactics in much more detail in Deceptions of the Ages and I would encourage the interested reader to learn more. 
     So, what is the problem? Wouldn’t a more manageable (stupid) society be peaceful and much easier and pleasant to live in? I would hope that it would be easier to get a laugh out of such an audience but, unfortunately, people are not being programmed to blindly obey like you would see in a science fiction movie. Today, people of all races who have no concept of history and who are, for all purposes, educated to the level of the seventh grade, being programmed to hate and to find a victim for why things are not going the way they want them to. I personally blame all of my misfortunes on the people of Saskatchewan Canada, for example, but that is another story. 
     The media today, much like the pharmaceuticals and insurance they are plugging, wants a population of uneducated people who don’t ask questions and who purchase things on impulse (classical conditioning). A look at television shows, commercials, movies and news broadcasts shows us how they are devoted to mindless information and points because the real news is in the advertising. Dividing the poorest and least educated population is the best way to control them.
     The dumbed down American population will also choose a political candidate the way it chooses the pharmaceutical drugs or caffeine beverages it is addicted to. They choose whoever promises to give them the most. Of course, if Americans understood the President cannot spend a dime without Congress, they would bring their fertilizer sacks to the the rallies. 
     With the exception that a person who is actually motivated enough to vote will want to be assured they are not wasting their vote on a loser. To ensure they get their candidate (as if it mattered who won) the media makes sure to post the candidate they want as the projected winner. 
     So, the result of dumb and dumber politically is that this is the system we have had in place since the military coup of John F. Kennedy. Every time the media inflicts a president upon us, Americans think by voting out the last bum, the next one is somehow going to be better. It is this kind of dysfunctional relationship and apathy people have toward our political system that has allowed us to become a running joke to the rest of the world. And then you have the 2016 Elections…

In our next immigration segment, we will talk about slavery then and now: after all, isn't slavery just cheap labor?

Immigration and the 2016 Elections: The Real Issues Part 3: Don't Blame the Illegal Immigrants, Blame the Companies Who Hire Them.

Friday, July 29, 2016

Immigration and the 2016 Elections: Part 1 Why Donald Trump?


"Americans love Donald Trump because he is what is known in the US as a populist candidate. He is an outsider who does what Americans do-he speaks his mind whether he knows what he's talking about or not."

Peace everyone. 
The election of 2016 is unique in the fact that for the first time, neither the candidates, the media nor the American public really have any idea what the other is talking about. As a public service, I have taken time out from the writing of my first exciting, funny, action packed work of fiction to clear up a few things about the ideas tossed around like hand grenades to get the ignorant and uneducated riled up and angry during this election season.
     The real problem with the issues of immigration, racism, the economy, the War on Terror and just about anything else that is tossed out of the cesspool we call the corporation government (mainstream) media is that they never ask the right questions, so that the issues are never discussed in an intelligent, reasonable manner. Rather, these things are being shoved down the throat of the American worker-taxpayer by the rich who correctly assume that the American public (soccer moms and Joe six-packs) are too stupid to even notice and too worried about kittens on YouTube to care. 

    It seems that some Americans,  however, like the frog in the pot of water, have decided to start hopping about saying, 


                   "This isn't right. We're all going to croak." 
     
  Some Americans are afraid the deficit is going to ruin their savings, their jobs will be replaced by cheaper, or more educated labor and the rich would have them and their children live out their lives in perpetual debt (see peonage). These people are getting worried what will happen when the owners of the Federal Reserve don't get back the money they are owed on the deficit.They are worried our politicians are trying to ruin America's democracy at the behest of the corporations that sponsor them.   (Deceptions of the Ages, 2010). They are worried at how the Democrats, like the Republicans of old are throwing the ridicule of public opinion on anyone who rejects the policies of the Clintons. People are worried as they see this being done through the manipulation of poorly educated American half-wits that will parrot anything they hear from the media.


Enter Donald Trump. 


Americans who love Donald Trump don't love him because he is a genius. Americans love Donald Trump because he is what is known in the US as a populist. He is an outsider who does what Americans do-he speaks his mind whether he knows what he's talking about or not. Americans love Donald Trump because he asks questions that no one wants to ask because nobody has an answer that doesn't involve making a painful, unpopular decision (The truth hurts syndrome). Most Americans won't remember a another populist politician from Louisiana named Huey Long. Governor Long served during the Depression. He was famously quoted saying:


               'Democrats will skin you slow,



               Republicans will kill you quick.'''



    That said, here are some questions that no politician in the US is ever going to ask for fear of losing their job.


     “What will the quality of life be when there are a billion people in the US in twenty years? Two billion in seventy five?” 

A quick trip to Delhi, Cairo, Mexico or Rio will answer that question.Who will pay to build the infrastructure and where will the food come from? Soylent Green?

     "Are we going to have a balkanized country with different languages and customs?" 


    "Will we have ethnic cleansing like in Bosnia?" 


     We have already heard African American leaders like Ray Nagin, former Mayor of New Orleans describe his dream of New Orleans as a "chocolate city," which really sounds a lot like ethnic cleansing. Ray Nagin is now enjoying a chocolate city more to his liking in a federal penitentiary but we can see in the news every day that there is more and more racial strife as the media capitalizes and profits from the violence and hatred they are stirring up. 

I guess gone are the days of Neapolitan harmony.

 "What about the Muslims who have no other goal in mind than the subjugation of all the world to Islam no matter how much violence is necessary?"

     I spent thirteen years living in the Middle East during the earliest years of the War on Terror. I wrote three books so that people would know how kind, generous and respectful Arabs and Muslims were, according to my own experiences. I consider Arabia my second home. I have a great understanding and appreciation of Islam, having seen it in its purest forms. But I am also objective. I do not agree with the subjugation of women and I never will. I'm not really comfortable at all with that kind of ideology, or any kind of ideology that says someone has to sit in a house for their entire life until they are forced into a marriage just because they lost the genetic lottery. 
     I spent five years living in Saudi Arabia working on military contracts where Western women were beaten for not covering their hair in public (Killing Time In Saudi Arabia, 2013). I know how happy people were (especially Saudis) to be leaving there, yet the people in our government are going to bring it here. Don't we have the right to choose whether we want that future for our posterity?
     If someone wants to kill me for something I say, or destroy my rights or my family because of my religion, or beat my mother,  wife or daughter because their hair isn't covered, I'm sorry but that sends up something of a red flag. How can these women politicians claim to be supporters of a religion that would not even allow them leave their own houses without a male? The blatant hypocrisy is only slightly less amusing than the public's ability to tolerate it because they don't understand it.
    In other words, how can someone who claims to be a champion of women's rights, champion the cause of the same people to live here who would deny women all their rights? Yet women are so apathetic and uninformed they will fall over backwards to support any candidate who is for the introduction into our culture any culture who feels women should be subjugated and subservient! And then they claim they don't get respect.
     I devoted an entire book about the effects of the Iraq War on and sad state of Muslim women and their roles in Arab society (Another Year in Oman: Between Iraq and a Hard Place, 2007).
I lived with it for many years and saw many good women wasted because of their sex. That is not the world I want for half of humanity. But, should I try to save people who don't have enough sense to stick up for themselves? 

​Some more questions we should be allowed to ask:

     Is our democracy going to end up as a South American dictatorship where beasts and thugs use violence and terror against political opponents at the behest of corporations, drug lords and the CIA? 


     We have already seen violence inflicted upon attendees of Trump rallies. Whether a person cares for Mr. Trump or not, the day we begin to exercise violence to inhibit the right of people to exercise democracy, whether they are black supremacists, Nazis, or Girl Scouts is the day we no longer deserve a democracy. 


In our next blog, we will discuss the fundamental root of America's problems.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Hey Dude Where's My Documentary Part 3? The Hydrogen Fuel Cell Saga

    This is the third in a series called Pump and Dump On The Hydrogen Fuel Cell Saga. This series is meant to highlight one of the biggest stock market frauds that took billions from not only greedy and the usual unsuspecting investors but also thousands of young first time, environmentally conscious investors as well. The fact that the fraud was ignored by the media that created the stock's frenzy and and then stuck in the pin that burst the highly inflated hydrogen fuel-cell stock bubble in 2013 and 2014, was certainly interesting in its own right. But, the more important question remains, was it a possible portent of the future of the stock market? What makes this even more amazing, sad, important, or whatever adjective you could tag on it, is the fact that it happened at exactly the same time the oil industry was beginning to feel threatened by upcoming alternative energy technologies. Just that fact alone should make the plight of the hydrogen fuel cell industry one worth definitely investigating. But as we can see, there are forces at work here that make no one want to talk about it at all.
     Before we can continue with the third part of the series, we must at least have a basic understanding of what a stock is and what forces affect both individual stocks and the stock market itself. In order to do that, it is important that we have at least a basic understanding of what is commonly known as economics. Fortunately for us, the economics that we're concerned with are quite simple and not completely boring, as they are concerned with what you and I would know as common sense. They are known as supply-side economics. According to supply-side economics, if an item can be had in relative abundance, its price is generally low because that is what people are willing to pay for the item. However, if the item is rare and has the added bonus of being a necessity or a perceived necessity, then according to supply side economics, those who produce the item can charge whatever the market will pay. Hopefully, that will be a price that will make it profitable for the producer to continue to supply the item to the market.
     When it comes to the the stock market, the same forces are going to apply. If a stock is something that a lot of people want, especially if it becomes a stock for which there is a perceived need, then the price of the stock will increase. Conversely, if the stock is not something that is desired, then obviously its price will decrease. Therefore, this fundamental rule in the stock market is based on the fact that stocks that are more valuable are so because people perceive they are going to increase in value. And again, if it needs be said, if the stock is not perceived as being financially prolific in the future, the stock will most likely lose its appeal and barring any help from outside forces, will decrease in value.
    So, with those fundamental rules in hand, it appears the stock market is a very black and white operation where obviously good ideas and industrious far thinking industry leaders and entrepreneurs are able to attract the capital they need to make their dreams come true, while those industries that cannot keep up with modern tastes or the realities of the changing world, will of course die off in the true spirit of the free market economy. Of course immediately, we must address the fact that the idea of a true free market economy in terms of the stock market is much less true than the practitioners of the stock craft would have you believe. Of course, those who make their living from the stock market and publicly traded companies will sing the song of the free enterprise system right up until their own investment failures, sometimes planned, sometimes not, force them to come begging for bailouts from the federal government. Any other time, however it certainly doesn't hurt to have the federal government's backing when it comes to an industry that needs large federal government contracts to jumpstart its private sector market.

       And so, there you have the first of the artificial forces that affect the price of the stock, government interest or government intervention. Of course, all of the artificial forces that affect the price of stock cannot exclusively include the government but more often than not they do include the anticipated infusion of contracts and therefore money, etc. which causes the price of the stock to increase with its desirability. It is not only the actual act of the signing of a government contract or a big business deal that will influence the price of the stock, what tends to be even more valuable and more necessary for getting in on the stock cheap, is to get access to the information before the events actually happen. With this basic understanding of the forces that govern the stock market and the price of stocks, we shall adjourn the discussion for now.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Some Comments from the Author of Killing Time in Saudi Arabia about his Book

     Killing Time in Saudia Arabia: An American Experience 

by Matthew D. Heines



      More than any of the other books of the American Experiences in Arabia During the War On Terror series, Killing Time in Saudi Arabia was both the easiest and the most difficult to write. It was easy to describe the wonderful people and the incredibly inspiring, yet sometimes intimidating desert locations. It was difficult after the time I spent there to ever come to grips with the imminent danger that it was necessary to shrug off, or else spend my days extremely miserable and lonely in a desolate foreign environment. Saudi Arabia, however, seemed to offer a lot in the way of cultural, social and definitely memorable opportunities. Luckily, there were a number of people with whom I lived and worked, or encountered socially, that had many of the same feelings I possessed about how to keep a semblance of sanity in so foreign an environment, so far away from the love of friends and family.
     I was also extremely fortunate to find that so much was possible socially, recreationally and even in a way financially, due to the general tolerance and support of the Saudis themselves. There would have been very little to write about, if I were physically able to write Killing Time in Saudi Arabia, if all that was said about the Saudis in the media were true. Unfortunately, there were very small pockets of people who felt compelled to use violent action because of the recent invasion of Iraq and the events at Abu Gharib. The insurrection, with a few exceptions, was ignored in the Western media as headlines from the Iraq Invasion dominated the headlines. The fact was however, the Saudis, as is more than apparent in Killing Time in Saudi Arabia, went to extreme measures both officially as well as socially and personally to ensure the protection of Westerners.
     That is the story that I think should be told along with any other about the Saudis, because unlike many of the stories that are passed around outside of a culture that hasn’t changed for fifteen hundred years, Killing Time in Saudi Arabia is a real testimonial to their character, their respect and their kindness. It will only take a few minutes reading to imagine that you too are in the middle of Riyadh on the high Arabian Plateau in January and you are working for a homeless military contractor, they having been blown up a few months before. It is then your very life depends on the majority of the population not sharing the sentiments of the previous pyroclastic perpetrators. The fact will always remain, due to my unquenchable desire to learn, discover and explore, that were the Saudis any less protective, supportive, friendly and hospitable during those extremely dangerous times, there would have been no story to tell, and most likely, I would not have survived long enough to tell it.
But this is not my story at all...
It is our story.

 Matthew D. Heines

Some Comments from the Author of Another Year in Oman about his Book

Another Year in Oman: Between Iraq and a Hard Place

by Matthew D. Heines



     I think most will agree that there are few things that can get your mind off of your own mental anguish and heartache like a good war, and that was the original premise for Another Year in Oman: Between Iraq and a Hard Place. Although at its face, it does look suspicious as a very obvious attempt to cash in on the success of My Year in Oman, but I can assure the skeptical reader that the book is not a sequel and from its inception, was meant to be part of a series, of which there are three books.

     By my second year in Oman, I had found things were going to be much different than the first year. That was a hard pill to swallow when the first year had been so good. But, I said to myself that I was in a beautiful country with lots of beautiful women, and I bet I can find another one pretty easily. This is the story of how that worked out.

Matthew D. Heines