On June 10, 2008 James Glassman was sworn in as under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in the United States of America. Two weeks later, he wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal under the title: "How to win the war of Ideas" in which he discussed his understanding of the challenges ahead and his plan of action to meet those challenges. The following six paragraphs summarize what the article says.
[First, we need to get the goal straight…The aim must be to ensure that negative sentiments and day-to-day grievances toward the U.S. and its allies do not manifest themselves in violence]
[For starters, we should confront the ideology of violent extremism…The most credible voices here are those of Muslims themselves…who have publicly disavowed al Qaeda's methods…Our public diplomacy efforts should encourage Muslims…to spread the denunciations of violence…far and wide.]
[A second approach to the war of ideas may…be even more effective…The ideology that motivates al Qaeda and similar groups is based on the notion that believers have a duty to carry out the excommunication of unbelievers…This ideology posits a Manichean world, divided into two camps…This is a fantasy…Our vision is a pluralistic world…The task is not to persuade potential recruits to become like Americans…but to divert them from becoming terrorists.]
[We do that by helping to build networks…cultural, social, athletic and more: mothers against violence, video gamers, soccer enthusiasts, young entrepreneurs, Islamic democrats. For example, there is an emerging global network of families of Islamic victims of terrorist attacks…the war of ideas needs to adopt the…goal of diverting impressionable segments of the population from being recruited into violent extremism.]
[Where does Iran fit in? The pool of future suicide bombers and insurgents is sustained by people like the leadership of Iran…the approaches I have outlined…should appeal to a proud and sophisticated Iranian population that is open to pluralistic ideas.]
[What we seek is a world in which the use of violence to achieve political, religious or social objectives is no longer considered acceptable, efforts to radicalize and recruit new members are no longer successful, and the perpetrators of violent extremism are condemned and isolated.]
In reality the appointment of Glassman came amid a debate regarding America’s effort to win the hearts and minds of somebody whom the debaters are having difficulty identifying. Officials of the US government did start a television broadcast called "Al Hurrah" which means freedom in Arabic but it is difficult to tell what sort of freedom they are trying to preach given that the Arabs believe it is America that needs to be free of Jewish influence and Israeli domination.
In any case, before I jump into the debate and discuss Glasman’s article I want to give a historical perspective of the situation as I experienced it in the late Nineteen Fifties when I lived in that part of the World.
I was in my early teens and living outside of Egypt in 1956 when the country was invaded by Britain and France, an adventure embarked upon by the two colonial powers in an effort to retake the Suez Canal which was nationalized by the Egyptians following the refusal of the World Bank to finance the construction of the Aswan dam and power station.
The American President, Dwight Eisenhower who had liberated Europe a few years prior to that time, ordered the invaders to stop the aggression and get out of Egypt, and they did without much argument. The Egyptians were grateful and they regarded America highly despite the role that her Secretary of State had played to influence the ill-advised decision of the World Bank.
A year following that invasion, our family returned to Egypt where we settled after an absence that lasted a dozen years. Everything was new to me but I adapted quickly to the new environment. I also picked up a new hobby, that of listening to short wave radio. I listened to something like fifteen stations on a regular basis, some of which were well known such as the BBC, the Voice of America, Radio Moscow, those of Israel and France et cetera. But the rest of the stations were pirate broadcasts emanating from places they never identified.
These were propaganda stations that incited the people of Egypt to rise up, rebel and overthrow their government. The BBC and radio Israel caught my attention because the first emulated the pirate chorus of inciters to a limited extent while the second joined the pirates as enthusiastically as anyone can be.
Let me give a piece of advice to anyone who plans to incite the Arabs on anything. If you want to make the Arabs love their leaders, start a pirate station and attack the leaders. There is nothing more childish, more cowardly and more disgusting in the estimation of the Arabs than to go into hiding and attack an Arab however bad you may think that person may be.
I listened to those stations not to learn what was wrong about Egypt or bad about President Nasser but to learn what was glorious about the country and noble about her President, my President. Of course, it also helped that the American Central Intelligence Agency tried to bribe President Nasser with 3 million dollars, a sum that was huge at the time.
Incorruptible as the man was, he took the money which was handed to him in a briefcase full of cash, told the World about it and used it to build the Cairo Tower in full view of the Hilton Hotel where the American tourists stayed. Nasser did this to show ordinary Americans how much their country had deteriorated and to tell them what their country can do with her bribes. Come to think of it, the tower has the look of a raised middle finger, so maybe the late President of Egypt was telling America you can take your money and shove it.
Now, dear reader, contrast the action of Nasser with what was going on in Israel at the time, what has been going on ever since and what is going on today in terms of the corruption that is more abundant in that nation than the grains of sand in all of the Middle Eastern deserts. I suppose this is the difference between the nobility of the Arabs and the baseness of the Israelis, a reality that the New York Times is frantically trying to project in reverse. Maybe there is something the New York Times forgot to shove.
The Voice of America caught my attention for a reason different from those of the BBC and radio Israel. That broadcast gave English lessons through a program whose title in Arabic translates into: "Learn English". This may sound tame in English but it sounds harsh in Arabic. Consequently, the announcer would once in a while explain the reason why the title had this imperative tone about it. He or she would say that English is so important a language that everyone must learn it.
I cannot tell how many people were impressed by this claim but I was not, having heard the same claim made by the French whose language I had mastered and the Arabs whose language I was in the process of mastering.
Fast forward to the present time. I never had the opportunity to watch the new television station "Al Hurrah" but nothing from what I learned as I listened to the Voice of America tells me Al Hurrah will impress the Arabs to any degree. Also, I spoke to people who traveled to the Middle East and watched the station there, I read about this American adventure and I watched sample clips of what it is doing. My conclusion is that the effort is likely to be a useless one and will probably lead to nothing worth mentioning.
I was beginning to put my finger on why this may be the outcome when Glassman’s article was published. And this piece served to reinforce the theory I was formulating which is that the mentality that tried to tell the Arabs at gunpoint how to govern themselves is now trying to tell them how to be free. It is doing it by telling them to submit to the slavery from which, in Arab and Muslim eyes, America is suffering as she has become a client state of Israel and the slavish follower of the Jewish lobby.
At first, it may be difficult to accept that a situation like this can be but it gets easier to see the reality of the thing when you consider the following. The one thing that shocks almost everyone on the planet about the Anglo-Saxon culture is that the servant will feel superior to everyone else and will act in a snooty supremacist fashion the more faithfully he submits to the whims of his master however capricious and demeaning those whims may be.
In fact, an Anglo-Saxon servant can psyche himself into believing that to bring someone under the dominance of his master is to liberate that someone. And what most Americans and most Canadians do not realize is that hidden in our culture is this English tendency. Furthermore, no matter what the ethnic background of the newcomers to this Continent, they pick up this trait without realizing it. After a while, we all adopt this shocking mentality and we don’t even know it.
And it is this mentality that is the source of America’s troubles today as America tries to drag the World under the influence and the dominance of America’s master, the World Jewish Congress.
And the discussion continues in part 2 of this series.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
“Amerika with a K” Revisited
On Friday June 20, 2008 the New York Times ran a story about Israel conducting military exercises which the Americans described as a rehearsal for bombing Iran. No one in his right mind believes that this was a journalistic scoop on the part of the New York Times much less a scoop that turned into an international sensation by the merit of its content.
In fact, it is in keeping with the new trend in American journalism for the NY Times to have allowed itself to be used by Israel. This charade has the hallmark of a story that was planted in the publication with the connivance of its editors and publishers, and with the participation of high officials at the State Department of the US government. And this is exactly the sort of atmospherics that the World Jewish Congress is expert at organizing.
Looking closely at the story, one cannot help but remember the decades of the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies. Those who were adolescents then and who rebelled against their elders are middle aged now and they are playing the games that their elders played except that the progenies have added two more elements. Instead of playing the game just on the home ground, they are now playing it on the international stage and they are mixing the games that their elders played with what they played as adolescents.
The games the elders played were described as sexual politics where it was said that nothing happened unless you slept with someone or got screwed by someone. The response of some youngsters at the time was to resort to the language of the gun which itself became a symbol of the phallus. But to understand the transition from the mentality of then to the mentality of today, we must recall a television show that was titled America with a K.
America is spelled with a C but in those days a television show was born and was given the title Amerika with a K where the K was meant to signify that the spelling was Russian. In fact, this was the story of an America that came under Soviet occupation.
What prompted the making of this show was the production of another show done by the same network. That was ROOTS which was based on Alex Haley’s book by the same name. What happened after Roots was hailed for causing a sea change in American attitudes was that some fringe characters in America were infuriated.
These characters considered the show too liberal to go without a challenge and so they asked for the sort of balance that only they were able to conjure up. The network understood their distress and produced America with a K.
Before DNA had made it possible for individuals to trace their roots, Haley could only trace the roots of African Americans as a group, and he did it through the tale of their painful journey into slavery. The tale was fiction but the underlying story was true. Even then, the dramatized form of the story so unsettled the lunatic fringe in the politico-cultural Establishment that the network was forced to restore the psychological balance of those poor souls by giving in to their neurotic impulses and playing out their fear of being enslaved by the Soviets.
And there is a message in the way that these events unfolded. It is that when ROOTS symbolically liberated Black America, some folks felt shackled as if they had come under alien occupation. To these people, their own freedom cannot coexist with the freedom of others because they view the situation as “it is either me or it is you but it is never both of us.” This twisted logic was not an isolated case but was the evolutionary result of a process that was in the making for decades.
In fact, before there was the phobia about the Soviets there was the one about America and the World coming under occupation by aliens from outer space. The irony is that the space aliens were meant to symbolize the Communist infiltration of America as feared by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
But then the Soviet empire collapsed and someone realized that without a new phobia and a bogeyman on which to beat up, the same maladjusted fringe will lapse into a psychotic fit from which they may never recover. Thus Islam and the Arabs were fashioned into a bogeyman on which to beat up and release the tensions of daily living.
Enter stage right the Israel/Jewish propagandist who asserted that he changed his stripes and now sits to the right of Attila the Hun, having abandoned his once comfortable place on the left of Joseph Stalin. “Let me join you in beating up on the Arabs and the Muslims,” said the big mouth “I know these people and you will do well to watch me savage them as I turn them black and blue all over their bodies.”
The novelty was irresistible to those Americans who live and die by novel things. They let the self declared Jew do his number while the stoic Arab stood motionless and took the beating without uttering a sound. Realizing the absurdity of the situation, some Americans asked for time out to reconsider the whole situation. This is where we stand today, and so it is fair to ask: Where will things go from here?
I am obliged to answer by discussing the sexual connotation of the drama at play here. In fact, the most poignant moments in America with a K were those scenes when the commander of the Soviet forces entered an American home, picked the daughter of his choice, took her to the bedroom in front of the family and had sex with her.
Expressing this sort of sexual fears was not new to the Americans. In fact, the daily language of America is full of sexual expressions and vulgar connotations, and no less than President Lyndon Johnson used to say he feared the Communists would “come into your house and rape your wife in your bed.”
This is what prompted a Jewish friend of mine to speak up as he was old enough to remember the McCarthy era when the words Jew and Communist were synonymous. My friend was fearful of the Americans whom he thought were fickle enough to turn on a dime, and was fearful of the Jewish Establishment which he thought was too self-serving to be trusted with the lives of ordinary Jews.
My friend once cried out from the heart: “One day, the Americans will wake up and believe they were screwed in the head, screwed in the heart and screwed in the soul by the Jews who led them by the nose to the ruin of their nation. When this happens, watch those Americans grab their two hundred million guns (all symbols of the penis) and cut down the Jews into little pieces.” In reality, my friend did not mention the penis and he did not use the word screw. Instead, he used the word that begins with the letter f.
I learned from all of this that as long as the New York Times and the other publications will allow themselves to be used by Israel, they will deteriorate. As long as the American government will mortgage America’s prestige and credibility to play the game of Israel’s cohorts in America, the country will suffer. As long as Israel will play a dangerous game in the Middle East, America will pay the price.
Thus, in that charade about bombing Iran, no one in his right mind believes that the 100 planes which Israel could field against Iran from nearly a thousand miles away will scare that country when America which can field up to 4,000 planes from near and from afar did not scare it.
Besides, Israel never won a battle that was not a sneak attack conducted when those at the target sight were asleep. Let the Israelis get into an honest fight with someone half their size and they will be crushed like a bug under the feet of an elephant. They always lost a fight that was not a treachery after which they bellyached their usual cries of being so vulnerable and so much in need of more American aid.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that the reason for staging Israel’s exercise and for dragging into the charade both the NY Times and the State Department was to play the adolescent game of showing off a sexual prowess that neither of the players has. The reality is that in the region where the Arab and Muslim bogeyman resides, America and Israel have come to be regarded not as a case of the blind leading the blind but a case of the emasculated Israeli walking with the castrated American looking for the Studhouse.
If the fears of my Jewish friend come true and the day of reckoning comes knocking at the door, the Arab and Muslim bogeyman may take a beating but he will not vanish from the scene anymore than the Afro-American has vanished from Africa or from America. These people will always be here as they have been from the beginning of time despite all the phobias that came and went over the millennia. But those who will vanish are the myth makers whose sole talent is to exist at the expense of the suckers who listen to them.
Never did these people eradicate someone but were nearly eradicated themselves each time they tried to pull their gruesome stunt on someone. And it happened to them not by the enemies they chose to challenge but the friends they chose to exploit. And this is because in the end, everyone realized that with friends like these they did not need enemies and so they took care of the situation the only way they knew how.
Before this happens again, we the Arabs of Christian and Muslim persuasions must make it clear that we have nothing to do with this unfolding drama or the tragic ending anticipated by my Jewish friend. Do not blame us if and when all this comes to pass. We sounded the alarm but no one listened, least of all the Israel/Jewish Establishment which is the author of the drama and the architect of the tragedy.
In fact, it is in keeping with the new trend in American journalism for the NY Times to have allowed itself to be used by Israel. This charade has the hallmark of a story that was planted in the publication with the connivance of its editors and publishers, and with the participation of high officials at the State Department of the US government. And this is exactly the sort of atmospherics that the World Jewish Congress is expert at organizing.
Looking closely at the story, one cannot help but remember the decades of the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies. Those who were adolescents then and who rebelled against their elders are middle aged now and they are playing the games that their elders played except that the progenies have added two more elements. Instead of playing the game just on the home ground, they are now playing it on the international stage and they are mixing the games that their elders played with what they played as adolescents.
The games the elders played were described as sexual politics where it was said that nothing happened unless you slept with someone or got screwed by someone. The response of some youngsters at the time was to resort to the language of the gun which itself became a symbol of the phallus. But to understand the transition from the mentality of then to the mentality of today, we must recall a television show that was titled America with a K.
America is spelled with a C but in those days a television show was born and was given the title Amerika with a K where the K was meant to signify that the spelling was Russian. In fact, this was the story of an America that came under Soviet occupation.
What prompted the making of this show was the production of another show done by the same network. That was ROOTS which was based on Alex Haley’s book by the same name. What happened after Roots was hailed for causing a sea change in American attitudes was that some fringe characters in America were infuriated.
These characters considered the show too liberal to go without a challenge and so they asked for the sort of balance that only they were able to conjure up. The network understood their distress and produced America with a K.
Before DNA had made it possible for individuals to trace their roots, Haley could only trace the roots of African Americans as a group, and he did it through the tale of their painful journey into slavery. The tale was fiction but the underlying story was true. Even then, the dramatized form of the story so unsettled the lunatic fringe in the politico-cultural Establishment that the network was forced to restore the psychological balance of those poor souls by giving in to their neurotic impulses and playing out their fear of being enslaved by the Soviets.
And there is a message in the way that these events unfolded. It is that when ROOTS symbolically liberated Black America, some folks felt shackled as if they had come under alien occupation. To these people, their own freedom cannot coexist with the freedom of others because they view the situation as “it is either me or it is you but it is never both of us.” This twisted logic was not an isolated case but was the evolutionary result of a process that was in the making for decades.
In fact, before there was the phobia about the Soviets there was the one about America and the World coming under occupation by aliens from outer space. The irony is that the space aliens were meant to symbolize the Communist infiltration of America as feared by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
But then the Soviet empire collapsed and someone realized that without a new phobia and a bogeyman on which to beat up, the same maladjusted fringe will lapse into a psychotic fit from which they may never recover. Thus Islam and the Arabs were fashioned into a bogeyman on which to beat up and release the tensions of daily living.
Enter stage right the Israel/Jewish propagandist who asserted that he changed his stripes and now sits to the right of Attila the Hun, having abandoned his once comfortable place on the left of Joseph Stalin. “Let me join you in beating up on the Arabs and the Muslims,” said the big mouth “I know these people and you will do well to watch me savage them as I turn them black and blue all over their bodies.”
The novelty was irresistible to those Americans who live and die by novel things. They let the self declared Jew do his number while the stoic Arab stood motionless and took the beating without uttering a sound. Realizing the absurdity of the situation, some Americans asked for time out to reconsider the whole situation. This is where we stand today, and so it is fair to ask: Where will things go from here?
I am obliged to answer by discussing the sexual connotation of the drama at play here. In fact, the most poignant moments in America with a K were those scenes when the commander of the Soviet forces entered an American home, picked the daughter of his choice, took her to the bedroom in front of the family and had sex with her.
Expressing this sort of sexual fears was not new to the Americans. In fact, the daily language of America is full of sexual expressions and vulgar connotations, and no less than President Lyndon Johnson used to say he feared the Communists would “come into your house and rape your wife in your bed.”
This is what prompted a Jewish friend of mine to speak up as he was old enough to remember the McCarthy era when the words Jew and Communist were synonymous. My friend was fearful of the Americans whom he thought were fickle enough to turn on a dime, and was fearful of the Jewish Establishment which he thought was too self-serving to be trusted with the lives of ordinary Jews.
My friend once cried out from the heart: “One day, the Americans will wake up and believe they were screwed in the head, screwed in the heart and screwed in the soul by the Jews who led them by the nose to the ruin of their nation. When this happens, watch those Americans grab their two hundred million guns (all symbols of the penis) and cut down the Jews into little pieces.” In reality, my friend did not mention the penis and he did not use the word screw. Instead, he used the word that begins with the letter f.
I learned from all of this that as long as the New York Times and the other publications will allow themselves to be used by Israel, they will deteriorate. As long as the American government will mortgage America’s prestige and credibility to play the game of Israel’s cohorts in America, the country will suffer. As long as Israel will play a dangerous game in the Middle East, America will pay the price.
Thus, in that charade about bombing Iran, no one in his right mind believes that the 100 planes which Israel could field against Iran from nearly a thousand miles away will scare that country when America which can field up to 4,000 planes from near and from afar did not scare it.
Besides, Israel never won a battle that was not a sneak attack conducted when those at the target sight were asleep. Let the Israelis get into an honest fight with someone half their size and they will be crushed like a bug under the feet of an elephant. They always lost a fight that was not a treachery after which they bellyached their usual cries of being so vulnerable and so much in need of more American aid.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that the reason for staging Israel’s exercise and for dragging into the charade both the NY Times and the State Department was to play the adolescent game of showing off a sexual prowess that neither of the players has. The reality is that in the region where the Arab and Muslim bogeyman resides, America and Israel have come to be regarded not as a case of the blind leading the blind but a case of the emasculated Israeli walking with the castrated American looking for the Studhouse.
If the fears of my Jewish friend come true and the day of reckoning comes knocking at the door, the Arab and Muslim bogeyman may take a beating but he will not vanish from the scene anymore than the Afro-American has vanished from Africa or from America. These people will always be here as they have been from the beginning of time despite all the phobias that came and went over the millennia. But those who will vanish are the myth makers whose sole talent is to exist at the expense of the suckers who listen to them.
Never did these people eradicate someone but were nearly eradicated themselves each time they tried to pull their gruesome stunt on someone. And it happened to them not by the enemies they chose to challenge but the friends they chose to exploit. And this is because in the end, everyone realized that with friends like these they did not need enemies and so they took care of the situation the only way they knew how.
Before this happens again, we the Arabs of Christian and Muslim persuasions must make it clear that we have nothing to do with this unfolding drama or the tragic ending anticipated by my Jewish friend. Do not blame us if and when all this comes to pass. We sounded the alarm but no one listened, least of all the Israel/Jewish Establishment which is the author of the drama and the architect of the tragedy.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Steering The Economic Ship Of State (Part 2 of 2)
Caught between the arguments of the supply side economists on one hand and the labor and consumer side economists on the other, the captain of the ship of state must decide how he is going to allocate the tax breaks among all the parties that come knocking at his door and yet keep the economic engine humming at maximum potential.
The supply side economists want the businesses to get most of the breaks but the labor and consumer side economists want the workers and the consumers to get them. Both sides articulate powerful arguments to buttress the merit in their economic philosophy and so, what’s a captain to do?
At first, our captain sets aside the arguments he heard from either side of the divide and paints a mental picture of the situation to help him visualize it. He imagines himself in the role of the farmer who must decide how much of the seeds he will plant (which is the analogy to giving the breaks to business) and how much of the seeds he will store to feed his family as they await the next harvest (which is the analogy to giving the breaks to consumers.)
But then the captain realizes that things are more complicated than this because there are many types of businesses, each standing at a different level of worthiness. And the last thing he wants to do is help them all without distinction or choose between winners and losers. Still, because there is no getting around the capitalist dictate that choices must be made, he struggles to find a way that will let the marketplace make the choices.
After giving it some thought, he realizes that unlike the farmer who has only himself and his family to contend with, he must regard himself as head of a massive ship of state that is navigating difficult waters and where he is responsible for people with all sorts of needs and responsible for a physical plant that is in need of all sorts of attention.
And so, to refine his understanding of this reality and to find a way to better formulate and implement the decisions he will be called upon to make, he goes over the arguments of the economists and paints a more comprehensive picture of the situation, one that he believes takes into consideration all the elements of this complex issue.
He recalls that the supply side economists spoke about the need to encourage new businesses to open and old ones to expand. They also spoke of people who have good ideas that need financing. Well, he knows as much as anyone there is two types of financing: There is equity financing where the financier and the owner of a potential venture enter into partnership. And there is debt financing where the financier lends money to those who have collateral they can pledge against the loans they seek.
However, the people who have ideas and no money of their own find it difficult to borrow because they usually have no collateral that they can pledge. And so they turn to the venture funds with whom they seek to enter into partnership. But before the joining of capital and the idea can take place, the funds sift through all the incoming ideas to asses the merit of each. Only then do the funds decide which idea to partner with and which to discard.
This mechanism by which venture capital operates brings together all the elements that create new wealth. It is the manifestation of capitalism at its best because it enriches those who are involved in the venture and benefits all of society. And yet, no one in this undertaking stands to take advantage of the tax breaks that the government hands out. Clearly then, there is something wrong with this set up, something that will have to be addressed at some point.
Moreover, those who are likely to receive the tax breaks are those who already pay taxes which means they have the money and the wherewithal to raise more of it. If they wish to expand the existing business or start a new one, they can borrow money as easily as they can ask for a loan. Alternatively they can issue new equity on their existing business and they are set to go.
But the stark reality is that even though individuals and businesses in this category would be the first to benefit from a tax break, they do not clamor for one precisely because they have the other alternatives to which they naturally gravitate rather than ask for and be obliged to wait for a handout from the government.
And so, the baffling question to ask is this: Who then clamors the loudest for a tax break? Well, they are the financiers who lend money to businesses and to governments. Unlike the venture capitalists, these people and their investment houses play it safe and thus gravitate toward the bond market where they finance the debt of blue chip corporations and the appetite of all levels of government.
People in this category sustain themselves with the interest they receive lending out their capital reserves. The peculiar thing about them is that when the economy is good and the interest rates are low, they make less profit which depletes their reserves. The consequence is an odd spectacle which can be described like this: When the good times roll and the wealth creating businesses need no infusion of money, these people clamor for a tax break in the name of those businesses not to help the businesses but to replenish their own dwindling reserves.
A good economy being their enemy, these people prefer one in which the inflation and the interest rates are high. This makes them the quintessential loan sharks who have no skills to create wealth and no way to make money even in a good environment. When they ask for a tax break they, in effect, ask the government to borrow from the public and give them the money which they lend back to the government and to corporations thus continue to receive interest.
At this point in his thinking, the captain of the ship of state resolves that the best way to deal with the situation is to give the tax breaks to the consumers who will spend the money where they see fit and thus determine the fate of each business. Doing this will amount to letting the marketplace make the momentous decisions which is how it should be.
Of course there are retired senior citizens and other people who live on income derived from interest. They get hurt when the interest rate drops; therefore they must be helped when they cannot make ends meet. But this is why there is a social safety net and it should be so formulated as to be invoked and made to respond to this sort of challenges.
Also, supply side economics is not to be rejected out of hand because some businesses can use a helping hand and they should be supported. Most notably, these are the venture funds that take major risks only to see the start-ups they back succeed some of the time but not always. These funds are the expression of democracy and meritocracy because they give the little guy the chance to participate in the economy and thus act as the incubators of the gods of innovation who make the economy flourish like no other business or individual can.
And so the captain of the ship of state hits on the idea that good supply side economics is a marketplace that is supplied with easy credit rather than tax breaks. Easy credit gives everyone an equal opportunity at getting into business and developing the ideas to their full potential. But since easy credit can be misused when money is lent for causes that are not always worthy, regulations will be adopted by his government to discourage irresponsible lending practices.
If despite these precautions too much money will find itself in the marketplace and cause an increase in inflation, his government will not shy away from raising the taxes rather than raising the interest rates to sponge the excess money out of the marketplace. Taxes will be increased on corporations, individuals or both depending on what else is happening in the economy at the time. This is something that the executive and the legislature will have to play by ear but the important thing is that money thus collected will be destroyed and not recycled back into the economy.
To this end, the captain gets together with the central bank and the legislature to formulate a whole new way to steer the economic ship of state and safely navigate the new globalized sea. From now on, the economy will be run on a variable but generally easy regime of credit, and a variable regime of taxes that will run the gamut from very low to high.
The supply side economists want the businesses to get most of the breaks but the labor and consumer side economists want the workers and the consumers to get them. Both sides articulate powerful arguments to buttress the merit in their economic philosophy and so, what’s a captain to do?
At first, our captain sets aside the arguments he heard from either side of the divide and paints a mental picture of the situation to help him visualize it. He imagines himself in the role of the farmer who must decide how much of the seeds he will plant (which is the analogy to giving the breaks to business) and how much of the seeds he will store to feed his family as they await the next harvest (which is the analogy to giving the breaks to consumers.)
But then the captain realizes that things are more complicated than this because there are many types of businesses, each standing at a different level of worthiness. And the last thing he wants to do is help them all without distinction or choose between winners and losers. Still, because there is no getting around the capitalist dictate that choices must be made, he struggles to find a way that will let the marketplace make the choices.
After giving it some thought, he realizes that unlike the farmer who has only himself and his family to contend with, he must regard himself as head of a massive ship of state that is navigating difficult waters and where he is responsible for people with all sorts of needs and responsible for a physical plant that is in need of all sorts of attention.
And so, to refine his understanding of this reality and to find a way to better formulate and implement the decisions he will be called upon to make, he goes over the arguments of the economists and paints a more comprehensive picture of the situation, one that he believes takes into consideration all the elements of this complex issue.
He recalls that the supply side economists spoke about the need to encourage new businesses to open and old ones to expand. They also spoke of people who have good ideas that need financing. Well, he knows as much as anyone there is two types of financing: There is equity financing where the financier and the owner of a potential venture enter into partnership. And there is debt financing where the financier lends money to those who have collateral they can pledge against the loans they seek.
However, the people who have ideas and no money of their own find it difficult to borrow because they usually have no collateral that they can pledge. And so they turn to the venture funds with whom they seek to enter into partnership. But before the joining of capital and the idea can take place, the funds sift through all the incoming ideas to asses the merit of each. Only then do the funds decide which idea to partner with and which to discard.
This mechanism by which venture capital operates brings together all the elements that create new wealth. It is the manifestation of capitalism at its best because it enriches those who are involved in the venture and benefits all of society. And yet, no one in this undertaking stands to take advantage of the tax breaks that the government hands out. Clearly then, there is something wrong with this set up, something that will have to be addressed at some point.
Moreover, those who are likely to receive the tax breaks are those who already pay taxes which means they have the money and the wherewithal to raise more of it. If they wish to expand the existing business or start a new one, they can borrow money as easily as they can ask for a loan. Alternatively they can issue new equity on their existing business and they are set to go.
But the stark reality is that even though individuals and businesses in this category would be the first to benefit from a tax break, they do not clamor for one precisely because they have the other alternatives to which they naturally gravitate rather than ask for and be obliged to wait for a handout from the government.
And so, the baffling question to ask is this: Who then clamors the loudest for a tax break? Well, they are the financiers who lend money to businesses and to governments. Unlike the venture capitalists, these people and their investment houses play it safe and thus gravitate toward the bond market where they finance the debt of blue chip corporations and the appetite of all levels of government.
People in this category sustain themselves with the interest they receive lending out their capital reserves. The peculiar thing about them is that when the economy is good and the interest rates are low, they make less profit which depletes their reserves. The consequence is an odd spectacle which can be described like this: When the good times roll and the wealth creating businesses need no infusion of money, these people clamor for a tax break in the name of those businesses not to help the businesses but to replenish their own dwindling reserves.
A good economy being their enemy, these people prefer one in which the inflation and the interest rates are high. This makes them the quintessential loan sharks who have no skills to create wealth and no way to make money even in a good environment. When they ask for a tax break they, in effect, ask the government to borrow from the public and give them the money which they lend back to the government and to corporations thus continue to receive interest.
At this point in his thinking, the captain of the ship of state resolves that the best way to deal with the situation is to give the tax breaks to the consumers who will spend the money where they see fit and thus determine the fate of each business. Doing this will amount to letting the marketplace make the momentous decisions which is how it should be.
Of course there are retired senior citizens and other people who live on income derived from interest. They get hurt when the interest rate drops; therefore they must be helped when they cannot make ends meet. But this is why there is a social safety net and it should be so formulated as to be invoked and made to respond to this sort of challenges.
Also, supply side economics is not to be rejected out of hand because some businesses can use a helping hand and they should be supported. Most notably, these are the venture funds that take major risks only to see the start-ups they back succeed some of the time but not always. These funds are the expression of democracy and meritocracy because they give the little guy the chance to participate in the economy and thus act as the incubators of the gods of innovation who make the economy flourish like no other business or individual can.
And so the captain of the ship of state hits on the idea that good supply side economics is a marketplace that is supplied with easy credit rather than tax breaks. Easy credit gives everyone an equal opportunity at getting into business and developing the ideas to their full potential. But since easy credit can be misused when money is lent for causes that are not always worthy, regulations will be adopted by his government to discourage irresponsible lending practices.
If despite these precautions too much money will find itself in the marketplace and cause an increase in inflation, his government will not shy away from raising the taxes rather than raising the interest rates to sponge the excess money out of the marketplace. Taxes will be increased on corporations, individuals or both depending on what else is happening in the economy at the time. This is something that the executive and the legislature will have to play by ear but the important thing is that money thus collected will be destroyed and not recycled back into the economy.
To this end, the captain gets together with the central bank and the legislature to formulate a whole new way to steer the economic ship of state and safely navigate the new globalized sea. From now on, the economy will be run on a variable but generally easy regime of credit, and a variable regime of taxes that will run the gamut from very low to high.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Steering The Economic Ship Of State (Part 1of 2)
The sea upon which the economic ship of state navigates is never calm unless you happen to look at a stagnant economy operating in an ossified culture. But given that the age of globalization is upon us, no culture can remain ossified for long, therefore no economy can remain stagnant and everyone must advance or be forced to regress. So how should the captain of a modern ship of a state navigate the new sea?
To navigate the economic sea of any kind you must have a mental picture of the economy, and the question to ask right off the bat is this: What does it take to have an economy? On the surface, the answer looks simple enough and it goes like this: To have an economy you need someone to supply the goods and services, and someone to consume them.
The first group is made of entrepreneurs and they start the businesses, run them or do both. And the second group is made of consumers who usually work for the entrepreneurs and they form the middle class which happens to be the largest of the consumer groups.
The government is one big institution that is both a consumer of goods and services, and a producer of many services. It has an important role to play in the economy which stems from the fact that many individuals work for it and many more receive money from it under various programs in what is referred to as the redistribution of wealth. The government also has various responsibilities for which it needs to procure goods, the most important being the military hardware which is used to defend the nation.
But while the coming together of the production side and the consumption side of the equation make an economy, they hardly signal the end of the story because things tend to get complicated when the rights and privileges of the various parties come into conflict. This is when the stakes are raised to a high level and all those who are involved start to pull in different directions.
The important thing to remember here is that both the suppliers and the consumers need money to do what they do which is why money is in high demand and why it is at the center of this discussion. The notion to always keep in mind is that to avoid getting the economy into trouble, the amount of money in circulation must match the availability of the goods and services. This is because too much money will create inflation but too little of it can lead to a recession, neither of which is a desirable outcome.
The amount of money in circulation is determined by the central bank which prints it and oversees the financial institutions that handle it. Because this is an important role, the bank provokes a few discussions whenever it changes the interest rate or fails to do so.
The government too plays an important role in the economy. To pay its employees, procure the goods it needs and redistribute the wealth, it collects vast amounts of money in the form of taxes. And all these activities are reflected in a massive document issued every year called the Budget. It is easy to imagine that the discussions generated by this document dwarf anything generated by the central bank.
The bank does not make policy; it only reacts to the marketplace and uses a number of tools at its disposal to try and maintain price stability. It is the job of the captain of the ship of state to set the policy and to influence the actions of both the central bank and the government. To do this, he formulates in his mind a vision of what the economic equation should look like and then tries to balance it equitably by prodding the bank and the legislative side of the government.
But while the captain tries to influence the bank and the government, there are those that try to influence the captain. These are individuals and organizations which divide into two broad groups. One group speaks for the interests of the suppliers and the other speaks for the interests of the consumers. Thus, what we have here is again a split between the supply side of the economy and the consumption side.
Those in the first group have been called proponents of supply side economics. They basically say that businesses should be taxed lightly to encourage new businesses to set up and encourage the existing ones to expand. When this happens businesses hire more workers who also happen to be the consumers of the nation. When hired, these people buy more of the products and services that they and their colleagues produce because they have the money to pay for such things and have a steady paycheque to give them the confidence that their future is secure.
Thus, when the policies of the government help to strengthen the supply side of the equation they also strengthen the consumption side. This happens because the strength that builds up at the supply side inevitably trickles down to the consumption side and renders it equally strong. They call this effect “trickle down economics.” And those economists go on to explain that when both sides of the equation are strong the result will be an economy that hums at maximum potential which is what everybody wants.
And there is no doubt these are compelling arguments.
However, the proponents of the other side respond with equally compelling arguments. They say that if you have a good idea, plenty of people and institutions will come knocking at your door to finance it as this is the never ending story of the perfect mousetrap. Thus, to find financing for your ideas is not a difficult thing if all you want to do is to produce the mousetrap. But what is difficult to do after you have produced the mousetrap is sell it. This becomes a nearly impossible task when the potential buyers have little money to spend and plenty of other priorities to spend it on.
Thus, if the government leaves more money in the hands of the consumers by taxing them less, the latter will have the purchasing power to become the locomotive that pulls the economy. This will make it possible for the businesses that have good ideas to borrow the money, make all the mousetraps they want and sell them. And they will be selling in a seller’s market that is filled with deep pocketed buyers. And the proponents of this argument conclude that this is a better way to strengthen the two sides of the economic equation.
And there is no doubt that these too are compelling arguments.
To sum up, the supply side economists want the businesses to get the tax breaks from where, they say, the benefits will flow to the workers and to the consumers. But the labor and consumption side economists say businesses do not need those breaks because they can secure financing for their ideas when a market is created for their products which is what happens when you give the breaks to the workers and the consumers. And they go on to explain that this should be a better incentive for businesses than handing them the money.
When all is said and done, the captain of the ship of state must wrestle with these ideas and choose between them. Clearly he needs to decide how much tax the government should take from either side of the equation and how the government should allocate that take between all the parties that come knocking at his door.
And the discussion will continue in part 2 of this series.
To navigate the economic sea of any kind you must have a mental picture of the economy, and the question to ask right off the bat is this: What does it take to have an economy? On the surface, the answer looks simple enough and it goes like this: To have an economy you need someone to supply the goods and services, and someone to consume them.
The first group is made of entrepreneurs and they start the businesses, run them or do both. And the second group is made of consumers who usually work for the entrepreneurs and they form the middle class which happens to be the largest of the consumer groups.
The government is one big institution that is both a consumer of goods and services, and a producer of many services. It has an important role to play in the economy which stems from the fact that many individuals work for it and many more receive money from it under various programs in what is referred to as the redistribution of wealth. The government also has various responsibilities for which it needs to procure goods, the most important being the military hardware which is used to defend the nation.
But while the coming together of the production side and the consumption side of the equation make an economy, they hardly signal the end of the story because things tend to get complicated when the rights and privileges of the various parties come into conflict. This is when the stakes are raised to a high level and all those who are involved start to pull in different directions.
The important thing to remember here is that both the suppliers and the consumers need money to do what they do which is why money is in high demand and why it is at the center of this discussion. The notion to always keep in mind is that to avoid getting the economy into trouble, the amount of money in circulation must match the availability of the goods and services. This is because too much money will create inflation but too little of it can lead to a recession, neither of which is a desirable outcome.
The amount of money in circulation is determined by the central bank which prints it and oversees the financial institutions that handle it. Because this is an important role, the bank provokes a few discussions whenever it changes the interest rate or fails to do so.
The government too plays an important role in the economy. To pay its employees, procure the goods it needs and redistribute the wealth, it collects vast amounts of money in the form of taxes. And all these activities are reflected in a massive document issued every year called the Budget. It is easy to imagine that the discussions generated by this document dwarf anything generated by the central bank.
The bank does not make policy; it only reacts to the marketplace and uses a number of tools at its disposal to try and maintain price stability. It is the job of the captain of the ship of state to set the policy and to influence the actions of both the central bank and the government. To do this, he formulates in his mind a vision of what the economic equation should look like and then tries to balance it equitably by prodding the bank and the legislative side of the government.
But while the captain tries to influence the bank and the government, there are those that try to influence the captain. These are individuals and organizations which divide into two broad groups. One group speaks for the interests of the suppliers and the other speaks for the interests of the consumers. Thus, what we have here is again a split between the supply side of the economy and the consumption side.
Those in the first group have been called proponents of supply side economics. They basically say that businesses should be taxed lightly to encourage new businesses to set up and encourage the existing ones to expand. When this happens businesses hire more workers who also happen to be the consumers of the nation. When hired, these people buy more of the products and services that they and their colleagues produce because they have the money to pay for such things and have a steady paycheque to give them the confidence that their future is secure.
Thus, when the policies of the government help to strengthen the supply side of the equation they also strengthen the consumption side. This happens because the strength that builds up at the supply side inevitably trickles down to the consumption side and renders it equally strong. They call this effect “trickle down economics.” And those economists go on to explain that when both sides of the equation are strong the result will be an economy that hums at maximum potential which is what everybody wants.
And there is no doubt these are compelling arguments.
However, the proponents of the other side respond with equally compelling arguments. They say that if you have a good idea, plenty of people and institutions will come knocking at your door to finance it as this is the never ending story of the perfect mousetrap. Thus, to find financing for your ideas is not a difficult thing if all you want to do is to produce the mousetrap. But what is difficult to do after you have produced the mousetrap is sell it. This becomes a nearly impossible task when the potential buyers have little money to spend and plenty of other priorities to spend it on.
Thus, if the government leaves more money in the hands of the consumers by taxing them less, the latter will have the purchasing power to become the locomotive that pulls the economy. This will make it possible for the businesses that have good ideas to borrow the money, make all the mousetraps they want and sell them. And they will be selling in a seller’s market that is filled with deep pocketed buyers. And the proponents of this argument conclude that this is a better way to strengthen the two sides of the economic equation.
And there is no doubt that these too are compelling arguments.
To sum up, the supply side economists want the businesses to get the tax breaks from where, they say, the benefits will flow to the workers and to the consumers. But the labor and consumption side economists say businesses do not need those breaks because they can secure financing for their ideas when a market is created for their products which is what happens when you give the breaks to the workers and the consumers. And they go on to explain that this should be a better incentive for businesses than handing them the money.
When all is said and done, the captain of the ship of state must wrestle with these ideas and choose between them. Clearly he needs to decide how much tax the government should take from either side of the equation and how the government should allocate that take between all the parties that come knocking at his door.
And the discussion will continue in part 2 of this series.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
The New York Times Got It Wrong
Up until the moment I discovered otherwise, I was considering Thomas Friedman who is a columnist for the New York Times to be just a humor journalist who is adept at internalizing the Israeli fantasies and turning them into comical situations to entertain the American public and confuse those who work inside the beltway. But then something happened that said to me this guy can be dangerous besides being funny.
It happened one day when Friedman was on the Jim Lehrer News Hour or maybe on the Charlie Rose show and related the following story. He said he was standing with diplomats from various Arab countries at the airport of some Arab Gulf State where they had just held a municipal election. A diplomat whose country never held such election turned to Friedman and asked: Can this happen in my country too?
I yelled c’mon kid, only someone too far gone would believe that an Arab diplomat would consider a foreigner, let alone an American Jew to be such an expert on his country as to ask him a question like this in front of other diplomats. And from that day on, I have regarded Thomas Friedman to be not only a humoristic journalist but a dangerous character as well. Dangerous to America, that is.
Friedman has done it again but not as daringly this time. In a column published by the New York Times on June 11, 2008 titled:”Obama on the Nile” he said he was sitting in Cairo with a number of Egyptians at which time the question was asked on behalf of someone’s child in a general sort of way if a Christian had a chance at being elected in Egypt the same way that Obama, a man of Color, may be elected in America.
Friedman then went on to ramble something about a Shiite becoming the leader of Saudi Arabia? A Bahai president of Iran? It is not clear from the writing who was supposed to have asked these additional questions. Were they the people sitting with Friedman, the son of one of them or Friedman himself? No one cares anyway because it matters no longer what this man concocts on the spur of the moment to sound interesting or funny. He robbed someone of the expression the World is flat, was forced to admit his thievery and the World now knows of his pathology; and no one gives a hoot except maybe Charlie Rose who is still infatuated with him.
Had Friedman said in his column he was the one to ask those questions and had he honestly reported what the responses were - if indeed that conversation took place at all - he would have done the American public and those in the beltway a great service. I can imagine what the responses were - if there were any - but I cannot imagine under any circumstance that an Egyptian would ask this sort of questions especially in the presence of a foreigner, an American Jew at that.
Still, there is an attempt at injecting comical relief in the Friedman column in that he begins it by assuring the reader he cannot tell a lie. All comedians say this before uttering something outrageous, don’t they? Further down the column, he relates a story told to him by Michael Slackman who has been reporting from Cairo for the past little while. In fact, Slackman has his own piece published on the same day under the title: “Don’t Leave Home Without a Cultural Compass”
In that piece, Slackman says this: “The United States’ relations with Egypt are strained. From the man on the street to the president, rightly or wrongly, Egyptians are feeling disrespected by Washington.” Well, Slackman must have left home without his cultural compass on that day because he did not realize that the Egyptians do not give a hoot as to who respects them or disrespects them. These people are so adapted at returning disrespect for disrespect; they do it on the basis not of an ounce for an ounce but on the basis of a ton of dripping contempt for an ounce of disrespect. Don’t leave home without this piece of knowledge, Mike.
Taking after Rodney Dangerfield’s: “I don’t get no respect,” it seems that every time Jewish journalists write in a print publication or speak through the electronic media, they relate that Russia feels disrespected by Washington, China feels disrespected by Washington, Egypt feels disrespected by Washington, and God knows who else feels disrespected by Washington.
This is getting too repetitive, too sick, too transparent, too much of a Yiddish flavored fantasy and it is getting too tiresome. Please fellows, enough of this nonsense; stop telling us who else feels they don’t get no respect from Washington. Rodney is dead; get over it and honor his memory in some other fashion.
And this is not the only repetitively sickening habit I detect which bears the signature and fingerprint of a Talmudic upbringing. There is also the viewing of international relations through the prism of the angst you normally find in a high school yard. This is because all international relations are boiled down to the questions of who loves America, who hates America and by how much they love or hate America.
Take it from me, New York Times, the people of Iran love the politics of your country no more than their leaders do. Try to bomb them and they will no more pelt you with flowers or shower you with kisses than the Iraqis did. Stop perpetuating this sick fantasy right now if you don’t want to slide into the abyss and get mired in another disastrous war. You cannot print this sort of trash, incite your idiotic leaders to start a war then oppose it when it goes bad. Ending this insane cycle is in your hand because you are the ones that start it.
And if you ask why it is that guys like Friedman and Slackman are dangerous, you get the answer from the following 3 paragraphs which are a passage from the Slackman piece:
[In Egypt, the recently departed United States ambassador, Francis Ricciardone, was well regarded by Egyptians on the street and in high office because he spoke the way they did — with effusive praise for his hosts. But this got him in trouble at home.]
[In February 2007, the ambassador was interviewed on Egyptian television and displayed his characteristic guest-in-the-house behavior. “Egypt today is very different from Egypt during the 1980s, both economically and politically,” he said at a time when it was clear that the government was backpedaling on political reforms. “There is more freedom and there are more intense, aggressive discussions.”]
[He was then blasted back in the United States for sounding like an apologist for the government. His term ended abruptly at the three-year mark. He left Egypt last month.]
If the insinuation here is to the effect that the ambassador’s term was ended because someone in Washington felt he should have insulted his hosts rather than treat them with “respect,” you begin to understand why the whole World, not only the Arabs, have come to believe that Washington does not speak English anymore but speaks in the most insulting of all the languages: that demonic concoction called the Yiddish.
They speak it in the Congress, the White House, the State Department, Guantanamo and they spoke it at Abu Ghraib. America is no longer America; it is becoming more Yiddish by the day. Be advised ye who follow history that America has become the setting, and Uncle Sam has become the alter ego of every riff raff speech writer, advisor, journalist and pundit who is writing the Judaic horror fantasy by which a once great nation is being turned into a sick joke that is losing its comical edge.
And since no one in the World is shy about responding to disrespect with an equal or greater amount of disrespect, you will understand why there are so many who delight in rubbing America’s nose in the mud. When this happens, don’t blame it on bad behavior, blame it on those who have created the climate which prompts the beltway dwellers to behave like jackasses and beg to be treated like jackasses.
Maybe what America needs now to save it from the pool of mud in which it is swimming is a new crop of non-Jewish journalists and pundits who will project a better picture of the country to the World and project a more mature picture of the World to the American people, especially those in the beltway who have no better method to make decisions than to base them on the accounts of the media.
And the New York Times would be a good place to start the clean-up.
It happened one day when Friedman was on the Jim Lehrer News Hour or maybe on the Charlie Rose show and related the following story. He said he was standing with diplomats from various Arab countries at the airport of some Arab Gulf State where they had just held a municipal election. A diplomat whose country never held such election turned to Friedman and asked: Can this happen in my country too?
I yelled c’mon kid, only someone too far gone would believe that an Arab diplomat would consider a foreigner, let alone an American Jew to be such an expert on his country as to ask him a question like this in front of other diplomats. And from that day on, I have regarded Thomas Friedman to be not only a humoristic journalist but a dangerous character as well. Dangerous to America, that is.
Friedman has done it again but not as daringly this time. In a column published by the New York Times on June 11, 2008 titled:”Obama on the Nile” he said he was sitting in Cairo with a number of Egyptians at which time the question was asked on behalf of someone’s child in a general sort of way if a Christian had a chance at being elected in Egypt the same way that Obama, a man of Color, may be elected in America.
Friedman then went on to ramble something about a Shiite becoming the leader of Saudi Arabia? A Bahai president of Iran? It is not clear from the writing who was supposed to have asked these additional questions. Were they the people sitting with Friedman, the son of one of them or Friedman himself? No one cares anyway because it matters no longer what this man concocts on the spur of the moment to sound interesting or funny. He robbed someone of the expression the World is flat, was forced to admit his thievery and the World now knows of his pathology; and no one gives a hoot except maybe Charlie Rose who is still infatuated with him.
Had Friedman said in his column he was the one to ask those questions and had he honestly reported what the responses were - if indeed that conversation took place at all - he would have done the American public and those in the beltway a great service. I can imagine what the responses were - if there were any - but I cannot imagine under any circumstance that an Egyptian would ask this sort of questions especially in the presence of a foreigner, an American Jew at that.
Still, there is an attempt at injecting comical relief in the Friedman column in that he begins it by assuring the reader he cannot tell a lie. All comedians say this before uttering something outrageous, don’t they? Further down the column, he relates a story told to him by Michael Slackman who has been reporting from Cairo for the past little while. In fact, Slackman has his own piece published on the same day under the title: “Don’t Leave Home Without a Cultural Compass”
In that piece, Slackman says this: “The United States’ relations with Egypt are strained. From the man on the street to the president, rightly or wrongly, Egyptians are feeling disrespected by Washington.” Well, Slackman must have left home without his cultural compass on that day because he did not realize that the Egyptians do not give a hoot as to who respects them or disrespects them. These people are so adapted at returning disrespect for disrespect; they do it on the basis not of an ounce for an ounce but on the basis of a ton of dripping contempt for an ounce of disrespect. Don’t leave home without this piece of knowledge, Mike.
Taking after Rodney Dangerfield’s: “I don’t get no respect,” it seems that every time Jewish journalists write in a print publication or speak through the electronic media, they relate that Russia feels disrespected by Washington, China feels disrespected by Washington, Egypt feels disrespected by Washington, and God knows who else feels disrespected by Washington.
This is getting too repetitive, too sick, too transparent, too much of a Yiddish flavored fantasy and it is getting too tiresome. Please fellows, enough of this nonsense; stop telling us who else feels they don’t get no respect from Washington. Rodney is dead; get over it and honor his memory in some other fashion.
And this is not the only repetitively sickening habit I detect which bears the signature and fingerprint of a Talmudic upbringing. There is also the viewing of international relations through the prism of the angst you normally find in a high school yard. This is because all international relations are boiled down to the questions of who loves America, who hates America and by how much they love or hate America.
Take it from me, New York Times, the people of Iran love the politics of your country no more than their leaders do. Try to bomb them and they will no more pelt you with flowers or shower you with kisses than the Iraqis did. Stop perpetuating this sick fantasy right now if you don’t want to slide into the abyss and get mired in another disastrous war. You cannot print this sort of trash, incite your idiotic leaders to start a war then oppose it when it goes bad. Ending this insane cycle is in your hand because you are the ones that start it.
And if you ask why it is that guys like Friedman and Slackman are dangerous, you get the answer from the following 3 paragraphs which are a passage from the Slackman piece:
[In Egypt, the recently departed United States ambassador, Francis Ricciardone, was well regarded by Egyptians on the street and in high office because he spoke the way they did — with effusive praise for his hosts. But this got him in trouble at home.]
[In February 2007, the ambassador was interviewed on Egyptian television and displayed his characteristic guest-in-the-house behavior. “Egypt today is very different from Egypt during the 1980s, both economically and politically,” he said at a time when it was clear that the government was backpedaling on political reforms. “There is more freedom and there are more intense, aggressive discussions.”]
[He was then blasted back in the United States for sounding like an apologist for the government. His term ended abruptly at the three-year mark. He left Egypt last month.]
If the insinuation here is to the effect that the ambassador’s term was ended because someone in Washington felt he should have insulted his hosts rather than treat them with “respect,” you begin to understand why the whole World, not only the Arabs, have come to believe that Washington does not speak English anymore but speaks in the most insulting of all the languages: that demonic concoction called the Yiddish.
They speak it in the Congress, the White House, the State Department, Guantanamo and they spoke it at Abu Ghraib. America is no longer America; it is becoming more Yiddish by the day. Be advised ye who follow history that America has become the setting, and Uncle Sam has become the alter ego of every riff raff speech writer, advisor, journalist and pundit who is writing the Judaic horror fantasy by which a once great nation is being turned into a sick joke that is losing its comical edge.
And since no one in the World is shy about responding to disrespect with an equal or greater amount of disrespect, you will understand why there are so many who delight in rubbing America’s nose in the mud. When this happens, don’t blame it on bad behavior, blame it on those who have created the climate which prompts the beltway dwellers to behave like jackasses and beg to be treated like jackasses.
Maybe what America needs now to save it from the pool of mud in which it is swimming is a new crop of non-Jewish journalists and pundits who will project a better picture of the country to the World and project a more mature picture of the World to the American people, especially those in the beltway who have no better method to make decisions than to base them on the accounts of the media.
And the New York Times would be a good place to start the clean-up.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
What’s All The Talk About Taxes?
It is said that two things are certain: Death and taxes. But this leaves out one more certainty and it is the incessant preoccupation with taxes. Today is no different from any other day in that taxation is on the mind of most people, and the talk about it is everywhere. But because much has been covered already in this field, the only thing left to probe is the notion of progressive taxation. More specifically, the question we need to answer is whether or not progressive taxation should be maintained or should be replaced with a flat tax.
To be clear, a flat tax is the payment of a fixed percentage of one’s income regardless of the bracket in which the earner falls. For example, if the rate is set at 10% it would entail someone earning a hundred thousand dollars to pay ten thousand, and someone earning a hundred million dollars to pay ten million.
By contrast, progressive taxation would entail that the one earning a hundred million dollars pay 10% on the first portion of ten million, then pay 20% on the second portion of ten million and progressively so until the last portion where the rate reaches the 90% level. You add up all this and it comes to forty five million dollars paid in taxes versus the ten million that would be paid under the flat tax regime.
Now, in order to come to grips with the original question let alone answer it, we must clarify the philosophical differences between the two forms of taxation. And to do this, we must define the concept of leverage which is as follows. In the same way that someone may use little money of their own to gain control of a big asset, the social contract creates the condition by which someone may make a small effort and amass huge amounts of capital. This is what is meant by leverage and you find it everywhere in the business world especially in the leveraged buyouts where people put down little money of their own and borrow a whole lot to buy something big like, for example, a multi-national conglomerate.
What this means is that the leverage which is inherent to the social contract under which we live allows someone like Bill Gates to create the business that he did. Certainly, the man did not amass a million times more wealth than the average citizen because he is a million times better but because he lives within the confines of a social contract that allows him to amplify his talent. Put this man in a setting that is governed by a different social contract or put him in a place that is governed by the law of the jungle and Bill Gates may prove to be at best twice as good as the average person or he may not have the necessary wits to gather his daily bread.
Consequently, the conclusion we drawn from this is that wealthy people become wealthy in a given system not only because of their innate talent, which no one wants to take away, but also because of what the system offers them in terms of the support that amplifies their talent and their work. And this support is something that most wealthy people acknowledge receiving when they engage in philanthropic activities, their way of saying thank you to society.
But the wealthy do more than thank society because philanthropy is also their way to give back to society some of what it has given them. And they do so despite all the taxes they are paying which suggests they feel they are not paying enough and wish to pay more.
In fact, when the very wealthy pay taxes, they pay for two things. First, they pay for services rendered by the various levels of government, and these are the services which every citizen receives and pays for. Second, they pay for the maintenance of a system that guarantees to them the leverage by which to amplify their work, and this is a luxury that the average citizen does not use or enjoy.
The amplification of one’s talent and work is not restricted to the world of enterprise. It is everywhere, most notably in sports and in the arts where those who achieve stardom earn thousands of times more than they did before they reached that level and more than their nearest competitor. And this could not have happened without the literal amplification of their talent by the electronic and the print media that turn them into a sensation overnight and in every household.
But the one area that is of interest to this discussion is what happens in the world of politics. This is where some people with seemingly limited abilities may, by the confluence of circumstances, be given the opportunity to amplify their talent and show what a great leader they can be. Many have traveled this road, Winston Churchill being one of them. But what happens to some of these people as time passes is what should happen to some business leaders but does not for one reason or another.
What happens to politicians is that they get tired after being at the helm for a few years, they run out of ideas and their output is reduced. Those who try to linger on are disliked by the public and tossed out of office at the first opportunity. In a similar fashion those who come into business with a great promise tend to wilt with time except that their weaknesses are not readily detected because they do not come under the same scrutiny as the politicians; and no one is in a position to toss them out because no one has elected them in the first place.
These people linger on at the helm but their business continues to prosper because the social contract guarantees it. And the bigger the enterprise, the more the social contract is willing to shore it up because it represents jobs that the public wants, it makes products that the nation needs and it represents a link in a chain that does not tolerate having a weak link along its line. Thus, the social contract which allowed the business to expand and hire more people now becomes the insurance policy that maintains its survival because it sits like an indispensable icon.
You ask: What did these people do to merit all this? You read their biographies and learn that some inherited the money and went on from there but others were lucky enough to be standing in the right place at the right time when it all began to happen to them. And this leads to two more questions.
First, does someone who inherits the money and may not have the talent of the parent merit receiving the benefits of the social contract? Second, does the recipient of fortuitous circumstances deserve to be rewarded still more as we consider how much taxes they should pay on the profit they make?
People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet do not want their progenies to inherit all the money they have amassed. They say they will give the kids some money to start them off in life but the kids will have to work, to use their own talent and to amass their own fortunes. Thus, it seems that the parents themselves do not believe dynastic rule is good in business anymore than it is in politics, and they want their kids to make it on their own merit.
Which brings us to the original question: Should progressive taxation be maintained or should it be replaced with a flat tax? I cannot escape the conclusion that progressive taxation must be maintained. Not only that, but the case has also been made for maintaining the inheritance tax.
To be clear, a flat tax is the payment of a fixed percentage of one’s income regardless of the bracket in which the earner falls. For example, if the rate is set at 10% it would entail someone earning a hundred thousand dollars to pay ten thousand, and someone earning a hundred million dollars to pay ten million.
By contrast, progressive taxation would entail that the one earning a hundred million dollars pay 10% on the first portion of ten million, then pay 20% on the second portion of ten million and progressively so until the last portion where the rate reaches the 90% level. You add up all this and it comes to forty five million dollars paid in taxes versus the ten million that would be paid under the flat tax regime.
Now, in order to come to grips with the original question let alone answer it, we must clarify the philosophical differences between the two forms of taxation. And to do this, we must define the concept of leverage which is as follows. In the same way that someone may use little money of their own to gain control of a big asset, the social contract creates the condition by which someone may make a small effort and amass huge amounts of capital. This is what is meant by leverage and you find it everywhere in the business world especially in the leveraged buyouts where people put down little money of their own and borrow a whole lot to buy something big like, for example, a multi-national conglomerate.
What this means is that the leverage which is inherent to the social contract under which we live allows someone like Bill Gates to create the business that he did. Certainly, the man did not amass a million times more wealth than the average citizen because he is a million times better but because he lives within the confines of a social contract that allows him to amplify his talent. Put this man in a setting that is governed by a different social contract or put him in a place that is governed by the law of the jungle and Bill Gates may prove to be at best twice as good as the average person or he may not have the necessary wits to gather his daily bread.
Consequently, the conclusion we drawn from this is that wealthy people become wealthy in a given system not only because of their innate talent, which no one wants to take away, but also because of what the system offers them in terms of the support that amplifies their talent and their work. And this support is something that most wealthy people acknowledge receiving when they engage in philanthropic activities, their way of saying thank you to society.
But the wealthy do more than thank society because philanthropy is also their way to give back to society some of what it has given them. And they do so despite all the taxes they are paying which suggests they feel they are not paying enough and wish to pay more.
In fact, when the very wealthy pay taxes, they pay for two things. First, they pay for services rendered by the various levels of government, and these are the services which every citizen receives and pays for. Second, they pay for the maintenance of a system that guarantees to them the leverage by which to amplify their work, and this is a luxury that the average citizen does not use or enjoy.
The amplification of one’s talent and work is not restricted to the world of enterprise. It is everywhere, most notably in sports and in the arts where those who achieve stardom earn thousands of times more than they did before they reached that level and more than their nearest competitor. And this could not have happened without the literal amplification of their talent by the electronic and the print media that turn them into a sensation overnight and in every household.
But the one area that is of interest to this discussion is what happens in the world of politics. This is where some people with seemingly limited abilities may, by the confluence of circumstances, be given the opportunity to amplify their talent and show what a great leader they can be. Many have traveled this road, Winston Churchill being one of them. But what happens to some of these people as time passes is what should happen to some business leaders but does not for one reason or another.
What happens to politicians is that they get tired after being at the helm for a few years, they run out of ideas and their output is reduced. Those who try to linger on are disliked by the public and tossed out of office at the first opportunity. In a similar fashion those who come into business with a great promise tend to wilt with time except that their weaknesses are not readily detected because they do not come under the same scrutiny as the politicians; and no one is in a position to toss them out because no one has elected them in the first place.
These people linger on at the helm but their business continues to prosper because the social contract guarantees it. And the bigger the enterprise, the more the social contract is willing to shore it up because it represents jobs that the public wants, it makes products that the nation needs and it represents a link in a chain that does not tolerate having a weak link along its line. Thus, the social contract which allowed the business to expand and hire more people now becomes the insurance policy that maintains its survival because it sits like an indispensable icon.
You ask: What did these people do to merit all this? You read their biographies and learn that some inherited the money and went on from there but others were lucky enough to be standing in the right place at the right time when it all began to happen to them. And this leads to two more questions.
First, does someone who inherits the money and may not have the talent of the parent merit receiving the benefits of the social contract? Second, does the recipient of fortuitous circumstances deserve to be rewarded still more as we consider how much taxes they should pay on the profit they make?
People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet do not want their progenies to inherit all the money they have amassed. They say they will give the kids some money to start them off in life but the kids will have to work, to use their own talent and to amass their own fortunes. Thus, it seems that the parents themselves do not believe dynastic rule is good in business anymore than it is in politics, and they want their kids to make it on their own merit.
Which brings us to the original question: Should progressive taxation be maintained or should it be replaced with a flat tax? I cannot escape the conclusion that progressive taxation must be maintained. Not only that, but the case has also been made for maintaining the inheritance tax.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Charity Begins At Home Not Israel
The Tweedle brothers may have started as fictional characters but they seem to have materialized as a couple of real ones in North America today. These may only be actors playing the role of Tweeddledee and Tweeddledum but to stay safe, we better remind ourselves of the saying: “Charity begins at home” before the two of them do more than give away the store.
Look at them act and you realize they are preparing to throw the entire estate comprising Canada and the United States into the ruinous black hole that is Israel. To explain how all of this came about let me begin by relating the following true story.
Something happened during the Fall season around the middle to late Nineteen Nineties. It was a good time to be invested in the Canadian resource industries and I was invested as I had been on and off for more than three decades. Also, the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto was hosting an exhibit of the Canadian miners’ association and a pavilion of Egypt among the many other exhibits.
Furthermore, the Government of Egypt had opened an office in Montreal a few months before to house a trade mission whose mandate was to seek and to promote trade and investment between Canada and Egypt. Aware of all these coincidences and of the fact that Egypt was interested in developing its own mining industry, I decided to get involved and perhaps make a buck in the process.
I knew a number of mining executives as I talked to them on the telephone or met them at the gathering of shareholders for many years. I mentioned to a few the fact that in ancient times, Egypt had rich gold mines where it is now believed gold can still be extracted cheaply using modern technology.
I was enthusiastic about rumors that swirled around a place in the eastern desert near the Red Sea where newly discovered maps pointed to gold mining sites that were exploited thousands of years ago then abandoned. But the executives with whom I shared this information did not share my enthusiasm and they asked me to remind them of the facts later on. The excuse they gave for not wishing to go now was that they had their hands full and would not embark on a new venture at this time. But I was not convinced of any of that.
Because I sensed there was something else and because the coincidences were too compelling to let go of the idea, I pressed the executives for an answer. I insisted that they give me a positive answer or give me an explanation as to their stand on the issue. My insistence paid off when the executives started to talk honestly. One of them said he would be interested to map out concessions with aerial surveillance and seismic testing if and when the climate became propitious. I asked him to explain further and he said that his company was based in Ontario where a new law was enacted making it difficult to do business with the Arab countries.
Questioned further, he went on to say that the government of Ontario had emulated the Americans and passed legislation to prohibit Ontario businesses from complying with the Arab boycott of Israel. This meant that every time a company did business with an Arab country, the executives could be dragged to court and forced under the threat of financial ruin and the prospect of time in jail to explain why they are not doing business with Israel as well.
The executives and their companies would be considered guilty of anti-Semitism before the first question was even asked and the onus would be on them to prove that they have only good feelings towards the Jews and towards Israel. They would have to show they are doing business with an Arab country and not with Israel because it would not be profitable to do business with Israel at this time. And they would have to promise that they will do business with Israel as soon as an opportunity opens up.
They would have to apologize profusely in public and show profound remorse if not shed a few tears for not being creative enough to have found a way to do business with Israel at this time. And they would be placed on the watch list of every professional and every amateur trouble maker who will incessantly point out to them where the opportunity for a venture in Israel does exist. And they will be expected to jump on the occasion and pour money into that country whether or not the proposed venture made sense.
In the meantime, every document in the filing cabinet of the company pertaining to their business practices and to their employees could be subpoenaed and examined by the Jewish organizations, their lawyers and anyone who would pin the Star of David on his lapel and call himself a Jew. And every aspect of the business could be questioned to ascertain that no one involved with the business harbors at this time or has ever harbored ill feelings towards Israel or the Jews.
This would be the sort of nightmare that the media, the political class and academia are being subjected to nowadays and no business could survive this kind of harassment. This is why everyone in the mining industry, whether based in Ontario or based elsewhere but having to deal with Ontario shied away from doing business with the Arabs.
And all the executives I questioned intimated they understood that cutting off ties with the Arab World was the original intent of the legislation. It was as if the Jewish organizations were saying if the Arabs own the Arab countries and they give themselves the right to do as they please within their borders, the Jews must give themselves the right to own Canada and America and do as they please within these borders.
And while all of this was going on in North America, the Australians made contact with Egypt. They established a company to explore the designated areas in the eastern desert, they discovered more than ten million ounces of gold already, they began to build the mine and they expect to smelt and refine the first bar of gold before the end of this year. And they were given permission just lately to explore deeper in the same claim where they expect to discover still more of the yellow stuff. And the irony is that they listed their shares on the Toronto stock exchange along with the Australian exchange and the AIM in London.
The infamous Ontario law was passed by the government of Bob Rae when he was still a socialist and was wedded to the ideology of the Canadian Jewish Congress. The law still stands in Ontario as much as its counterpart still stands in the United States. Of course, neither the current Premier of Ontario nor the Prime Minister of Canada or indeed the President of the United States had anything to do with these laws but when the Jewish organizations concoct something, they plan for it with a long range view of things, and that is where the responsibility of the Tweedle brothers comes into play.
What we are witnessing in Canada and the United States at this time are the effects of that long range planning. President George Bush and Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not happen spontaneously nor did they come out of nowhere; they were invented and were meticulously planned for by the Jewish organizations long ago.
Look what we have in these two countries. We have a Prime Minister in Ottawa that encourages Israel to murder Canadian soldiers sent by their government to keep the peace in the Middle East. And we have a President in America that is sacrificing thousands of American lives and squandering trillions of dollars to please another couple of Tweedles that happen to dwell in Israel.
But to please them about what? Well, it must be understood that the Old Testament is all about being macho boys, and the leaders of Israel made it their religion to become the macho boys of the Middle East. To accomplish this, they got Bush to castrate himself and got him to start the process of emasculating America so as to make Olmert and Netanyahu look like the two studs who win by the power of the sword and not the art of negotiating honestly. They want to be recognized as the undisputed Tweedlemacho and Tweedlestud which is in keeping with the mentality of what perennial losers always seek to accomplish.
If an observer may claim they do not read history and thus legitimately deny the Holocaust, no one may deny the content of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion. This is because once history is done, it is gone for ever and can only be recovered by reading history but the activities of a recidivist are a recurring phenomenon. And no one can be so naïve as to fail seeing the Protocol of the Elders of Zion being written anew before their very eyes by the recidivists who never seem to vanish. In fact, the Protocol is a lot more real to a lot of people than the Holocaust can ever be real to anyone under the age of 70. If something must be criminalized, it is not the denial of the Holocaust it is the denial of the Protocol.
Consequently, I ask: What can Bush or Harper do to reverse the situation and save North America from the damage they have inflicted on the Continent? The answer is that they can work to throw out the two notorious laws in their respective countries. This done, they should appoint a panel of jurists, each in his country, to look for and to expunge from he law books every law of shame and every non-binding resolution that the Jewish organizations have managed to sneak into them in the middle of the night.
The end game should be that Israel must make the effort to become a good neighbor and win the goodwill of her neighbors not seek a couple of foreign Tweedles who would ruin their own countries for the glory of the losers she has been spawning since the beginning of recorded history.
Let Bush and Harper fail to do this and you will continue to see the local businessmen and women take their businesses elsewhere because no one wants to do business in a so-called democracy where Democracy has been so bastardized by the phony studs of the Twentieth Century, its founding fathers are turning in their graves wondering what has happened to their cherished progeny.
Look at them act and you realize they are preparing to throw the entire estate comprising Canada and the United States into the ruinous black hole that is Israel. To explain how all of this came about let me begin by relating the following true story.
Something happened during the Fall season around the middle to late Nineteen Nineties. It was a good time to be invested in the Canadian resource industries and I was invested as I had been on and off for more than three decades. Also, the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto was hosting an exhibit of the Canadian miners’ association and a pavilion of Egypt among the many other exhibits.
Furthermore, the Government of Egypt had opened an office in Montreal a few months before to house a trade mission whose mandate was to seek and to promote trade and investment between Canada and Egypt. Aware of all these coincidences and of the fact that Egypt was interested in developing its own mining industry, I decided to get involved and perhaps make a buck in the process.
I knew a number of mining executives as I talked to them on the telephone or met them at the gathering of shareholders for many years. I mentioned to a few the fact that in ancient times, Egypt had rich gold mines where it is now believed gold can still be extracted cheaply using modern technology.
I was enthusiastic about rumors that swirled around a place in the eastern desert near the Red Sea where newly discovered maps pointed to gold mining sites that were exploited thousands of years ago then abandoned. But the executives with whom I shared this information did not share my enthusiasm and they asked me to remind them of the facts later on. The excuse they gave for not wishing to go now was that they had their hands full and would not embark on a new venture at this time. But I was not convinced of any of that.
Because I sensed there was something else and because the coincidences were too compelling to let go of the idea, I pressed the executives for an answer. I insisted that they give me a positive answer or give me an explanation as to their stand on the issue. My insistence paid off when the executives started to talk honestly. One of them said he would be interested to map out concessions with aerial surveillance and seismic testing if and when the climate became propitious. I asked him to explain further and he said that his company was based in Ontario where a new law was enacted making it difficult to do business with the Arab countries.
Questioned further, he went on to say that the government of Ontario had emulated the Americans and passed legislation to prohibit Ontario businesses from complying with the Arab boycott of Israel. This meant that every time a company did business with an Arab country, the executives could be dragged to court and forced under the threat of financial ruin and the prospect of time in jail to explain why they are not doing business with Israel as well.
The executives and their companies would be considered guilty of anti-Semitism before the first question was even asked and the onus would be on them to prove that they have only good feelings towards the Jews and towards Israel. They would have to show they are doing business with an Arab country and not with Israel because it would not be profitable to do business with Israel at this time. And they would have to promise that they will do business with Israel as soon as an opportunity opens up.
They would have to apologize profusely in public and show profound remorse if not shed a few tears for not being creative enough to have found a way to do business with Israel at this time. And they would be placed on the watch list of every professional and every amateur trouble maker who will incessantly point out to them where the opportunity for a venture in Israel does exist. And they will be expected to jump on the occasion and pour money into that country whether or not the proposed venture made sense.
In the meantime, every document in the filing cabinet of the company pertaining to their business practices and to their employees could be subpoenaed and examined by the Jewish organizations, their lawyers and anyone who would pin the Star of David on his lapel and call himself a Jew. And every aspect of the business could be questioned to ascertain that no one involved with the business harbors at this time or has ever harbored ill feelings towards Israel or the Jews.
This would be the sort of nightmare that the media, the political class and academia are being subjected to nowadays and no business could survive this kind of harassment. This is why everyone in the mining industry, whether based in Ontario or based elsewhere but having to deal with Ontario shied away from doing business with the Arabs.
And all the executives I questioned intimated they understood that cutting off ties with the Arab World was the original intent of the legislation. It was as if the Jewish organizations were saying if the Arabs own the Arab countries and they give themselves the right to do as they please within their borders, the Jews must give themselves the right to own Canada and America and do as they please within these borders.
And while all of this was going on in North America, the Australians made contact with Egypt. They established a company to explore the designated areas in the eastern desert, they discovered more than ten million ounces of gold already, they began to build the mine and they expect to smelt and refine the first bar of gold before the end of this year. And they were given permission just lately to explore deeper in the same claim where they expect to discover still more of the yellow stuff. And the irony is that they listed their shares on the Toronto stock exchange along with the Australian exchange and the AIM in London.
The infamous Ontario law was passed by the government of Bob Rae when he was still a socialist and was wedded to the ideology of the Canadian Jewish Congress. The law still stands in Ontario as much as its counterpart still stands in the United States. Of course, neither the current Premier of Ontario nor the Prime Minister of Canada or indeed the President of the United States had anything to do with these laws but when the Jewish organizations concoct something, they plan for it with a long range view of things, and that is where the responsibility of the Tweedle brothers comes into play.
What we are witnessing in Canada and the United States at this time are the effects of that long range planning. President George Bush and Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not happen spontaneously nor did they come out of nowhere; they were invented and were meticulously planned for by the Jewish organizations long ago.
Look what we have in these two countries. We have a Prime Minister in Ottawa that encourages Israel to murder Canadian soldiers sent by their government to keep the peace in the Middle East. And we have a President in America that is sacrificing thousands of American lives and squandering trillions of dollars to please another couple of Tweedles that happen to dwell in Israel.
But to please them about what? Well, it must be understood that the Old Testament is all about being macho boys, and the leaders of Israel made it their religion to become the macho boys of the Middle East. To accomplish this, they got Bush to castrate himself and got him to start the process of emasculating America so as to make Olmert and Netanyahu look like the two studs who win by the power of the sword and not the art of negotiating honestly. They want to be recognized as the undisputed Tweedlemacho and Tweedlestud which is in keeping with the mentality of what perennial losers always seek to accomplish.
If an observer may claim they do not read history and thus legitimately deny the Holocaust, no one may deny the content of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion. This is because once history is done, it is gone for ever and can only be recovered by reading history but the activities of a recidivist are a recurring phenomenon. And no one can be so naïve as to fail seeing the Protocol of the Elders of Zion being written anew before their very eyes by the recidivists who never seem to vanish. In fact, the Protocol is a lot more real to a lot of people than the Holocaust can ever be real to anyone under the age of 70. If something must be criminalized, it is not the denial of the Holocaust it is the denial of the Protocol.
Consequently, I ask: What can Bush or Harper do to reverse the situation and save North America from the damage they have inflicted on the Continent? The answer is that they can work to throw out the two notorious laws in their respective countries. This done, they should appoint a panel of jurists, each in his country, to look for and to expunge from he law books every law of shame and every non-binding resolution that the Jewish organizations have managed to sneak into them in the middle of the night.
The end game should be that Israel must make the effort to become a good neighbor and win the goodwill of her neighbors not seek a couple of foreign Tweedles who would ruin their own countries for the glory of the losers she has been spawning since the beginning of recorded history.
Let Bush and Harper fail to do this and you will continue to see the local businessmen and women take their businesses elsewhere because no one wants to do business in a so-called democracy where Democracy has been so bastardized by the phony studs of the Twentieth Century, its founding fathers are turning in their graves wondering what has happened to their cherished progeny.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
How Compulsion Creates Magic
When Islam spread into backward places long ago, it prohibited the consumption of pork on religious and health grounds. Unable to carry on without eating pork in some places, the locals gave the pig another name and continued to eat its meat. We see here that when people come under compulsion, even the primitives among them find a way to get around the difficulty and make their problem go away as if by magic.
In this case, by the simple trick of renaming the pig, the people turned the animal into something they could put back on the menu. As for the animal that existed before the name change, well that one became a mythical creature that no longer exists. And because it is not here anymore, it cannot stand between the need of the people to eat a nutritious meal and the need to comply with their religious obligations. To quote Shakespeare, all is well that ends well.
Morphing something to change reality is an art form that is not lost on modern societies. In fact, it may be said that the form has become the currency for interaction between people of all backgrounds. And the difference between the ancient practices and the modern ones is that the modern expression of the art has been given a vast array for disguises.
For example, we use different words or expressions to describe the same thing depending on who the thing is attributed to. A notorious example in this category is that of the word retaliate which we use when we do the deed ourselves or when our friends do it. But when someone we dislike does the same deed, we say they are taking revenge.
Not only do we use different words to mean the same thing, we use different mindsets to speak of the same thing. A good example to give in this category is that of Stephen Harper, Canada’s Prime Minister who turned upside down Canada’s tradition of being a peacekeeper to the World, a tradition that started before he was born and was adhered to until he took office.
The Prime Minister agreed to change Canada’s role in Afghanistan from being a mission of peacekeeping to one of combat. This may or may not turn out to be a good idea in the long run; only time will tell. But this is not the bewildering part concerning Mr. Harper’s doing; this part will come in a minute and will seem like something right out of the Twilight Zone.
Harper lauded the combat role that Canada has taken in Afghanistan, describing it in terms of the courage, honor and duty which are words usually engendered by militaristic speeches. The trouble is that Harper did this at the same time as he decreed that the soldiers who served with courage and died with honor fulfilling their duty must not be shown to the public when they come home on their final journey to their resting place.
But this is not the bewildering part in Mr. Harper’s thinking either because here too, it may still be possible for someone to strain credulity and make an argument that would explain the contradictions in the Harper mindset. But where the rope breaks and the argument shatters is when we look at the following aspect of the Harper mindset.
This one came to light when United Nation peacekeepers that included Canadian soldiers in Southern Lebanon were deliberately murdered by Israel. Harper’s reaction was to scold the dead soldiers by asking derisively: “What were they doing there anyway, didn’t they know there was a war going on?” This is so unreal it is out of the Twilight Zone.
It seems that Harper has at least two views of the Canadian soldiers. One view paints them as valiant young men and women who fight the bad guys out there to save us good guys down here. And the other view is that the soldiers are disposable things who sometimes go astray and do bad things. And what would be the bad things? They would be the fulfillment of the duties to which the soldiers were assigned by Canada such as keeping the peace where Israel does not want to see peace. Therefore, according to the Harper mindset, Israel can murder Canadian soldiers and count on his blessings, his cheers and his encouragement.
Under ordinary circumstances such a deficiency in personal, political or professional morality would be viewed as a case of split personality or a mental affliction. However, there are times when there is more to the story than this as there may be a long history behind the apparent deficiency and/or affliction.
In fact, Stephen Harper does not seem to have been born deficient or afflicted with any known illness. It is more likely he was damaged by the circumstances through which he was forced to live on his way to getting where he is now. Someday it may be shown that Harper was a victim of such circumstances as much as the souls he is victimizing on account of his intellectual and moral cowardice in addition to his feeble connection with reality.
Stephen Harper now heads the Conservative Party of Canada but things did not start out this way. They started when he was just another member of a regional party that was known for its racist and “anti-Semitic” stand. When the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada lost badly to the Liberals in one election, all conservative movements in Canada joined forces and merged to stand in opposition to the Liberals. For the move to succeed and for the merged party to win a national standing, Harper’s regional group had to change its racist philosophy.
During the numerous steps of that metamorphosis, Harper had risen in the ranks until he eventually became head of the Conservative Party of Canada and was elected Prime Minister. But awful things must have happened during that rise which made Harper lose his humanity if not the control over his mental faculties. Exactly what those awful things were will be difficult to assess at this stage as they are the sort of moments and events that only history can shed light on. Thus, we must wait decades before the real story will be told.
But we can get an idea as to what may have happened to Harper when we study another historical event. This one involves the Canadian province of Quebec where a priest and educator called Lionel Groulx lived and died in the year 1967 at the ripe old age of 89. Anyone that knows something about this man or has read some of the things he wrote concedes that he was a chauvinist who disliked several races and religions, including the Jewish.
Despite his shortcomings, Lionel Groulx did good things for Quebec, and his people honor his memory all the time. But of all the groups that were offended by his writings, only the Jewish organizations milked the situation for all its worth. It is not that the organizations were offended by the man’s writings; they are never offended by such things. In fact, they call the discovery of this sort of writings a treasure trove and they celebrate every time they find one because it means that money, power and control will start to flow in their direction. These writings are like manna from the sky to the Jewish organizations who never abstain from milking them.
The thing, however, is that the French people in Quebec acknowledged the shortcomings of Lionel Groulx, gave in a little to the demands of the Jewish organizations then said enough is enough. But standing firm after you pay your dues is something that never happens in the English speaking world. And this is what enabled the Jewish organizations to get around the French character and exploit the Lionel Groulx saga. They got this opportunity when an Anglophone was appointed Minister of Education in Quebec at which time they did their shtick and got themselves a whale of a deal.
I wrote about this incident in the book whose publication was blocked by those infamous Jewish organizations, and the following two paragraphs are a reprint of the pertinent passages:
“But the Jewish leaders had something up their sleeve for Quebec too. At a time when the Provincial Government was cutting on education and the student loan programs, the Jewish leaders worked secretly with the English speaking Minister of Education and managed to get cheques totaling millions of dollars for their religious schools despite the existence of a law that forbids it. And all this happened even as the Jewish leaders preached the principle of separating church and state which they wanted to see enforced on all religions except theirs. When this reality came to light, the students in Quebec rose up and threatened to shut down the Province. The money to Jews was cut off, grants and loans to students were increased and the Minister of Education was fired.”
“Still, a phony explanation was given for what happened but it made matters worse which is what the leaders were aiming for to begin with. They said the money was given to promote understanding between the two communities. We already understand, replied the students, we understand that you will push the envelop further still until something drastic happens then bellyache your songs of anti-Semitism and ask for new money to combat it. And the Jewish leaders wrung their hands with glee, congratulating themselves and each other for a job well done. Anti-Semitism was given new oxygen to breathe and to revive in Quebec. All that is needed now is an incident or two and they will be back in the money again.”
The bet is that in the same way the Jewish organizations made use of a historical situation in Quebec to milk the Province of all they could, they are now making use of the “anti-Semitism” that existed in the regional party to which Stephen Harper belonged in order to milk Canada of all that they can.
In the case of the Quebec Minister of Education all was not well and nothing ended well for him. As for what Harper is doing to Canada, history will have reason to express disgust because if you can rename the pig and make a problem go away as if by magic, you cannot explain a pigheaded mindset and make it look like a reasonable stand.
In this case, by the simple trick of renaming the pig, the people turned the animal into something they could put back on the menu. As for the animal that existed before the name change, well that one became a mythical creature that no longer exists. And because it is not here anymore, it cannot stand between the need of the people to eat a nutritious meal and the need to comply with their religious obligations. To quote Shakespeare, all is well that ends well.
Morphing something to change reality is an art form that is not lost on modern societies. In fact, it may be said that the form has become the currency for interaction between people of all backgrounds. And the difference between the ancient practices and the modern ones is that the modern expression of the art has been given a vast array for disguises.
For example, we use different words or expressions to describe the same thing depending on who the thing is attributed to. A notorious example in this category is that of the word retaliate which we use when we do the deed ourselves or when our friends do it. But when someone we dislike does the same deed, we say they are taking revenge.
Not only do we use different words to mean the same thing, we use different mindsets to speak of the same thing. A good example to give in this category is that of Stephen Harper, Canada’s Prime Minister who turned upside down Canada’s tradition of being a peacekeeper to the World, a tradition that started before he was born and was adhered to until he took office.
The Prime Minister agreed to change Canada’s role in Afghanistan from being a mission of peacekeeping to one of combat. This may or may not turn out to be a good idea in the long run; only time will tell. But this is not the bewildering part concerning Mr. Harper’s doing; this part will come in a minute and will seem like something right out of the Twilight Zone.
Harper lauded the combat role that Canada has taken in Afghanistan, describing it in terms of the courage, honor and duty which are words usually engendered by militaristic speeches. The trouble is that Harper did this at the same time as he decreed that the soldiers who served with courage and died with honor fulfilling their duty must not be shown to the public when they come home on their final journey to their resting place.
But this is not the bewildering part in Mr. Harper’s thinking either because here too, it may still be possible for someone to strain credulity and make an argument that would explain the contradictions in the Harper mindset. But where the rope breaks and the argument shatters is when we look at the following aspect of the Harper mindset.
This one came to light when United Nation peacekeepers that included Canadian soldiers in Southern Lebanon were deliberately murdered by Israel. Harper’s reaction was to scold the dead soldiers by asking derisively: “What were they doing there anyway, didn’t they know there was a war going on?” This is so unreal it is out of the Twilight Zone.
It seems that Harper has at least two views of the Canadian soldiers. One view paints them as valiant young men and women who fight the bad guys out there to save us good guys down here. And the other view is that the soldiers are disposable things who sometimes go astray and do bad things. And what would be the bad things? They would be the fulfillment of the duties to which the soldiers were assigned by Canada such as keeping the peace where Israel does not want to see peace. Therefore, according to the Harper mindset, Israel can murder Canadian soldiers and count on his blessings, his cheers and his encouragement.
Under ordinary circumstances such a deficiency in personal, political or professional morality would be viewed as a case of split personality or a mental affliction. However, there are times when there is more to the story than this as there may be a long history behind the apparent deficiency and/or affliction.
In fact, Stephen Harper does not seem to have been born deficient or afflicted with any known illness. It is more likely he was damaged by the circumstances through which he was forced to live on his way to getting where he is now. Someday it may be shown that Harper was a victim of such circumstances as much as the souls he is victimizing on account of his intellectual and moral cowardice in addition to his feeble connection with reality.
Stephen Harper now heads the Conservative Party of Canada but things did not start out this way. They started when he was just another member of a regional party that was known for its racist and “anti-Semitic” stand. When the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada lost badly to the Liberals in one election, all conservative movements in Canada joined forces and merged to stand in opposition to the Liberals. For the move to succeed and for the merged party to win a national standing, Harper’s regional group had to change its racist philosophy.
During the numerous steps of that metamorphosis, Harper had risen in the ranks until he eventually became head of the Conservative Party of Canada and was elected Prime Minister. But awful things must have happened during that rise which made Harper lose his humanity if not the control over his mental faculties. Exactly what those awful things were will be difficult to assess at this stage as they are the sort of moments and events that only history can shed light on. Thus, we must wait decades before the real story will be told.
But we can get an idea as to what may have happened to Harper when we study another historical event. This one involves the Canadian province of Quebec where a priest and educator called Lionel Groulx lived and died in the year 1967 at the ripe old age of 89. Anyone that knows something about this man or has read some of the things he wrote concedes that he was a chauvinist who disliked several races and religions, including the Jewish.
Despite his shortcomings, Lionel Groulx did good things for Quebec, and his people honor his memory all the time. But of all the groups that were offended by his writings, only the Jewish organizations milked the situation for all its worth. It is not that the organizations were offended by the man’s writings; they are never offended by such things. In fact, they call the discovery of this sort of writings a treasure trove and they celebrate every time they find one because it means that money, power and control will start to flow in their direction. These writings are like manna from the sky to the Jewish organizations who never abstain from milking them.
The thing, however, is that the French people in Quebec acknowledged the shortcomings of Lionel Groulx, gave in a little to the demands of the Jewish organizations then said enough is enough. But standing firm after you pay your dues is something that never happens in the English speaking world. And this is what enabled the Jewish organizations to get around the French character and exploit the Lionel Groulx saga. They got this opportunity when an Anglophone was appointed Minister of Education in Quebec at which time they did their shtick and got themselves a whale of a deal.
I wrote about this incident in the book whose publication was blocked by those infamous Jewish organizations, and the following two paragraphs are a reprint of the pertinent passages:
“But the Jewish leaders had something up their sleeve for Quebec too. At a time when the Provincial Government was cutting on education and the student loan programs, the Jewish leaders worked secretly with the English speaking Minister of Education and managed to get cheques totaling millions of dollars for their religious schools despite the existence of a law that forbids it. And all this happened even as the Jewish leaders preached the principle of separating church and state which they wanted to see enforced on all religions except theirs. When this reality came to light, the students in Quebec rose up and threatened to shut down the Province. The money to Jews was cut off, grants and loans to students were increased and the Minister of Education was fired.”
“Still, a phony explanation was given for what happened but it made matters worse which is what the leaders were aiming for to begin with. They said the money was given to promote understanding between the two communities. We already understand, replied the students, we understand that you will push the envelop further still until something drastic happens then bellyache your songs of anti-Semitism and ask for new money to combat it. And the Jewish leaders wrung their hands with glee, congratulating themselves and each other for a job well done. Anti-Semitism was given new oxygen to breathe and to revive in Quebec. All that is needed now is an incident or two and they will be back in the money again.”
The bet is that in the same way the Jewish organizations made use of a historical situation in Quebec to milk the Province of all they could, they are now making use of the “anti-Semitism” that existed in the regional party to which Stephen Harper belonged in order to milk Canada of all that they can.
In the case of the Quebec Minister of Education all was not well and nothing ended well for him. As for what Harper is doing to Canada, history will have reason to express disgust because if you can rename the pig and make a problem go away as if by magic, you cannot explain a pigheaded mindset and make it look like a reasonable stand.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
When Bad Company Leads To Tragedy
The American President George Bush went to the Middle East not long ago and stood at the Davos World Economic Forum in Egypt to extol the virtues of democracy and to criticize the countries that have not yet looked at his brand of democratic light. This is a tragedy and you will know why when you try to answer two simple questions: What does George Bush know about democracy? What does America know about democracy?
Nothing happens in the American Administration, the Congress, the Military or the Treasury without the approval of the media, and the policy of the latter has been to ignore the Middle East. Except for a few instances, the media are under order from the World Jewish Congress and the North American affiliates to maintain a kind of “radio silence” about the region. The silence can be broken only to praise Israel or to say something tragic, demeaning or insulting about everyone else, especially Egypt.
For example, during Bush’s stay in the Middle East he attended the Economic Forum, and the New York Times was forced to mention the visit in one of its editorial. But the paper never saw fit to say in this editorial or in any other that the President was in the region, among other things, to attend the Economic Forum in Egypt because to say so would have meant to associate the two words Egypt and economics. And this would be a sacrilege the paper was not prepared to commit and risk the wrath of the World Jewish Congress. What kind of a democracy is this?
At about that same time, a Canadian company that wants to build a chemical plant near a fishing and tourist town in Egypt was met with protest from the local residents. The people did not want the plant in their backyard and the stock of the company was going up and down on the stock exchange in tandem with the rumors about the situation. The Canadian media reported the news but, to comply with the orders of the World Jewish Congress, they did not mention the word Egypt even once. What kind of a democracy is this?
And to show that this is not something new, four paragraphs follow which are reprints from a book I wrote and whose publication was blocked by that same notorious World Jewish Congress. Read, gasp and exclaim: What kind of a democracy is this?
“This being the year 2004, my friend asked if I was going to watch the Olympics in a few weeks time. I said he should know I am not much of the sports type and he cut me off with: But it’s on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). So I asked: what’s the big deal?”
“He said that he learned from an insider and he was able to verify that during the live broadcast of the opening ceremonies during at least the past two Olympics, the Jewish masters at the CBC organized for the network to cut to a commercial at one or two seconds before the entry into the stadium of every Arab team, and to return to the broadcast after the team had gone out of view. He said that when you watch the ceremonies you never realize there are twenty two Arab countries on the planet, not even one Arab country. As far as the CBC is concerned, the Arab countries do not exist. He added that on orders from Netanyahu of Israel, they were planning to do it again during the 2004 Olympics. I said I’ll see what I can do to watch it this year.”
“Then came the day of the ceremonies and I watched. Lo and behold, the thing unfolded exactly as my friend said it would. There were no Arab countries on this planet according to the CBC.”
“I thought to myself that long before anyone had wiped Israel off the map, the CBC had wiped 22 Arab countries off the Globe, and had been doing it for at least 3 Olympics. Wow! How can an organization of this stature which stands as the beacon of Canada’s independence and one that considers itself the flagship carrying Canada’s freedom of thought be so slavishly led by the nose to perform degrading acts of servitude on command from a foreign entity located thousands of miles away? How can this be?”
To answer these questions, we need to go way back to the beginning.
A phenomenon that parents and teachers find most dreadful is the sight of a good kid getting involved with bad company. Most of the time the good kid would have been swept off his or her feet by someone they consider an idol but is in reality a devil in disguise. The good kid falls under the influence of the bad one and seems incapable of snapping out of it.
If that is a level one tragedy, it gets worse when the relationship moves to the next level. This would be level two which is especially difficult to watch because you see the good kid steadily go deeper under the control of the bad one. You feel powerless to do anything about it because the more you try, the more you antagonize the kid you want to save and the more distance you put between the two of you.
Worse than that is level three of the tragedy which is reached when the bad kid succeeds in turning the good kid against the parent or teacher that is trying to help. This happens when the bad kid convinces the good one that parents and teachers are the enemy. The more devilish of the bad kids are so sophisticated at this, they have developed a way to demonstrate their theory to the kids they dominate. What these devils do is predict that a parent or teacher will react in a certain way to an event, and advise the good kid that such reaction, if and when it comes, will be proof that the parent or the teacher is a bad person. Then they provoke the event.
To give an example, the two kids go to a teacher at the suggestion of the bad kid and ask that they be allowed to write the exam later on because they will both be working on the day that the teacher has designated as exam day. When the teacher says no, as predicted by the bad kid, the good kid takes this as proof that the teacher is a bad person.
This tragedy does not happen to kids only. It happens to adults too, as for example, at the office where someone naive may become anxious about something and seek advice from a bad colleague. A self-serving devilish soul would take advantage of the situation and push the anxious person to do something idiotic or something that serves the interest of the colleague.
It can also happen to a country that becomes too dependent on another country for its well being or survival. A case in point was Cuba when it fell under the influence of the old Soviet Union and went so far as to become a surrogate for the latter. As such, Cuba sent soldiers to fight in Africa to help spread the communist ideology there. Cuba had by then hit level three of the tragedy.
Now, for the sake of argument imagine turning the table and making Cuba use the Soviet Union as surrogate. Imagine the Cubans achieving control over the Kremlin, the Soviet military, the treasury and the media. Imagine the Russians fighting a disastrous war in South America to spread the Che Guevara ideology there and pave the way for Cuba to go in and take over the whole Continent.
You will be forgiven to think this is so absurd nothing like it can ever happen. But what if you discover that something similar is happening right now in the relationship between Israel and America? What if you learn that the Israelis who depend on America for their food, fuel, development and defense are in total control of both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Pentagon and the US treasury? As absurd as this may sound, it is the reality, and the World is flabbergasted by the unseemly spectacle.
The reality is that Israel has managed to get America involved in a level three tragedy by pushing the mindless giant to fight a surrogate war in the Middle East where the original aim was to cut up the region into bite-size pieces and make them available for Israel to devour one by one at her leisure.
Furthermore, when the Israelis felt they had scored a spectacular success subjugating America, they upgraded an ancient dream of theirs. They turned the dream of grabbing the land that extends from the Nile to the Euphrates into a dream where they would grab the entire Middle East and control it tightly.
Then they upgraded this dream too and fantasized about going to a place where no dreamer has gone before. This would be a place where the locals will hail the Jews and their American surrogates as liberators and will shower them with flowers and kisses. Did someone ever say that the power of self-delusion has no limit?
The burning question now is this: How did Israel manage to bring the American giant to its knees? And the answer is: It started with the promise that if America guarantees the survival of the state of Israel, the latter will be so grateful that Israelis and Jews everywhere will work to guarantee a Middle East free of Soviet influence.
But as time went on, it looked like the promise was bogus because no scenario could be imagined where Israel or the Jews will be called upon to play such a role in the Middle East. The promise was then altered to claim that Israel can guarantee the Americans a cheap supply of oil if the latter would guarantee to help Israel maintain a supremacist status in the Middle East.
Supremacy is a theme that is lifted from the Old Testament, a document that is itself the compilation of all the metaphors, half truths, legends and fantasies of a people who never had a land of their own. To compensate for this insufficiency and to justify the evil they were committing, they created stories about a land that was promised to them by the Almighty.
But why would the Almighty do that? Well, He chose them to be His favorite children, you see. While this answered the question why, it also made the Jews superior to everyone else. And as they waited for God to fulfill His promise, the Jews wandered the deserts, raided all those they encountered and stole their foods and possessions not because they were thieves and vagabonds but because they were superior. Get it now?
These people bragged about the gore they inflicted on the others as they looted them, and they bragged about the destruction they wreaked on anything they failed to grab and run with. And they recorded all these horrors in the Old Testament to put humanity on notice as to what they stand for. And to this day, no writer has been able to write horror stories more horrifying than the existence that these people have lived over the millennia.
Those who call themselves Zionists have inherited that despicable mantle and they are today carrying on with the same pattern of looting, destroying and bragging as if it were a matter of religious duty. But to go with the times, they have formulated a new discourse which they run parallel with their activities. They are now saying they want peace and security because they have been pogrommed and holocausted enough already. To achieve their goal, they asked the Americans to help them maintain peace through strength.
The Americans responded by giving Israel all she asked for which was complete support that ranges from the verbal encouragement to butcher Palestinian children asleep in their beds to giving Israel the helicopters and the bombs with which to carry out those deeds. But no one in the region knuckled under this kind of primitive savagery, not even tiny Palestine.
And this was the thing that the Jewish organizations had predicted might happen and whispered about it in the ear of the Americans. Like the evil kids who play the game to dominate other kids, the Jewish organizations had suggested that to resist knuckling under when Uncle Sam roars is proof that the Arabs are a bad people and that they are a threat to America. And so America roared, the Arabs failed to knuckle under and America felt threatened. See how it works when the devil incarnate whispers in the ear of the gullible?
In a situation like this, the rule is that you get the unintended consequences more often than you get what you wished for. Yes, everyone in the region suffered their share because of what was inflicted on them, but the Americans suffered the most because only they chose the company in which they found themselves.
As it turned out, no one in the region was intimidated enough to give the Israelis reason to feel superior. But something entirely different happened in the relationship between Israel and America. Having served the interests of Israel to the detriment of their own interests, which is what the domestics of old were supposed to do, the Americans felt inferior to the Jews while the Jews felt superior to the Americans. This mind-boggling situation reached a point where most religious leaders in America started telling their flock to go out, find a Jew and worship him as your God. Literally.
So I ask again: What does George Bush know about democracy? What does America know about democracy? And the answer to both questions is absolutely nothing. In fact, when America lectures to the World on democracy, it is like a witch doctor lecturing to neurosurgeons on brain surgery. It is a sick joke. A very sick joke.
Nothing happens in the American Administration, the Congress, the Military or the Treasury without the approval of the media, and the policy of the latter has been to ignore the Middle East. Except for a few instances, the media are under order from the World Jewish Congress and the North American affiliates to maintain a kind of “radio silence” about the region. The silence can be broken only to praise Israel or to say something tragic, demeaning or insulting about everyone else, especially Egypt.
For example, during Bush’s stay in the Middle East he attended the Economic Forum, and the New York Times was forced to mention the visit in one of its editorial. But the paper never saw fit to say in this editorial or in any other that the President was in the region, among other things, to attend the Economic Forum in Egypt because to say so would have meant to associate the two words Egypt and economics. And this would be a sacrilege the paper was not prepared to commit and risk the wrath of the World Jewish Congress. What kind of a democracy is this?
At about that same time, a Canadian company that wants to build a chemical plant near a fishing and tourist town in Egypt was met with protest from the local residents. The people did not want the plant in their backyard and the stock of the company was going up and down on the stock exchange in tandem with the rumors about the situation. The Canadian media reported the news but, to comply with the orders of the World Jewish Congress, they did not mention the word Egypt even once. What kind of a democracy is this?
And to show that this is not something new, four paragraphs follow which are reprints from a book I wrote and whose publication was blocked by that same notorious World Jewish Congress. Read, gasp and exclaim: What kind of a democracy is this?
“This being the year 2004, my friend asked if I was going to watch the Olympics in a few weeks time. I said he should know I am not much of the sports type and he cut me off with: But it’s on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). So I asked: what’s the big deal?”
“He said that he learned from an insider and he was able to verify that during the live broadcast of the opening ceremonies during at least the past two Olympics, the Jewish masters at the CBC organized for the network to cut to a commercial at one or two seconds before the entry into the stadium of every Arab team, and to return to the broadcast after the team had gone out of view. He said that when you watch the ceremonies you never realize there are twenty two Arab countries on the planet, not even one Arab country. As far as the CBC is concerned, the Arab countries do not exist. He added that on orders from Netanyahu of Israel, they were planning to do it again during the 2004 Olympics. I said I’ll see what I can do to watch it this year.”
“Then came the day of the ceremonies and I watched. Lo and behold, the thing unfolded exactly as my friend said it would. There were no Arab countries on this planet according to the CBC.”
“I thought to myself that long before anyone had wiped Israel off the map, the CBC had wiped 22 Arab countries off the Globe, and had been doing it for at least 3 Olympics. Wow! How can an organization of this stature which stands as the beacon of Canada’s independence and one that considers itself the flagship carrying Canada’s freedom of thought be so slavishly led by the nose to perform degrading acts of servitude on command from a foreign entity located thousands of miles away? How can this be?”
To answer these questions, we need to go way back to the beginning.
A phenomenon that parents and teachers find most dreadful is the sight of a good kid getting involved with bad company. Most of the time the good kid would have been swept off his or her feet by someone they consider an idol but is in reality a devil in disguise. The good kid falls under the influence of the bad one and seems incapable of snapping out of it.
If that is a level one tragedy, it gets worse when the relationship moves to the next level. This would be level two which is especially difficult to watch because you see the good kid steadily go deeper under the control of the bad one. You feel powerless to do anything about it because the more you try, the more you antagonize the kid you want to save and the more distance you put between the two of you.
Worse than that is level three of the tragedy which is reached when the bad kid succeeds in turning the good kid against the parent or teacher that is trying to help. This happens when the bad kid convinces the good one that parents and teachers are the enemy. The more devilish of the bad kids are so sophisticated at this, they have developed a way to demonstrate their theory to the kids they dominate. What these devils do is predict that a parent or teacher will react in a certain way to an event, and advise the good kid that such reaction, if and when it comes, will be proof that the parent or the teacher is a bad person. Then they provoke the event.
To give an example, the two kids go to a teacher at the suggestion of the bad kid and ask that they be allowed to write the exam later on because they will both be working on the day that the teacher has designated as exam day. When the teacher says no, as predicted by the bad kid, the good kid takes this as proof that the teacher is a bad person.
This tragedy does not happen to kids only. It happens to adults too, as for example, at the office where someone naive may become anxious about something and seek advice from a bad colleague. A self-serving devilish soul would take advantage of the situation and push the anxious person to do something idiotic or something that serves the interest of the colleague.
It can also happen to a country that becomes too dependent on another country for its well being or survival. A case in point was Cuba when it fell under the influence of the old Soviet Union and went so far as to become a surrogate for the latter. As such, Cuba sent soldiers to fight in Africa to help spread the communist ideology there. Cuba had by then hit level three of the tragedy.
Now, for the sake of argument imagine turning the table and making Cuba use the Soviet Union as surrogate. Imagine the Cubans achieving control over the Kremlin, the Soviet military, the treasury and the media. Imagine the Russians fighting a disastrous war in South America to spread the Che Guevara ideology there and pave the way for Cuba to go in and take over the whole Continent.
You will be forgiven to think this is so absurd nothing like it can ever happen. But what if you discover that something similar is happening right now in the relationship between Israel and America? What if you learn that the Israelis who depend on America for their food, fuel, development and defense are in total control of both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Pentagon and the US treasury? As absurd as this may sound, it is the reality, and the World is flabbergasted by the unseemly spectacle.
The reality is that Israel has managed to get America involved in a level three tragedy by pushing the mindless giant to fight a surrogate war in the Middle East where the original aim was to cut up the region into bite-size pieces and make them available for Israel to devour one by one at her leisure.
Furthermore, when the Israelis felt they had scored a spectacular success subjugating America, they upgraded an ancient dream of theirs. They turned the dream of grabbing the land that extends from the Nile to the Euphrates into a dream where they would grab the entire Middle East and control it tightly.
Then they upgraded this dream too and fantasized about going to a place where no dreamer has gone before. This would be a place where the locals will hail the Jews and their American surrogates as liberators and will shower them with flowers and kisses. Did someone ever say that the power of self-delusion has no limit?
The burning question now is this: How did Israel manage to bring the American giant to its knees? And the answer is: It started with the promise that if America guarantees the survival of the state of Israel, the latter will be so grateful that Israelis and Jews everywhere will work to guarantee a Middle East free of Soviet influence.
But as time went on, it looked like the promise was bogus because no scenario could be imagined where Israel or the Jews will be called upon to play such a role in the Middle East. The promise was then altered to claim that Israel can guarantee the Americans a cheap supply of oil if the latter would guarantee to help Israel maintain a supremacist status in the Middle East.
Supremacy is a theme that is lifted from the Old Testament, a document that is itself the compilation of all the metaphors, half truths, legends and fantasies of a people who never had a land of their own. To compensate for this insufficiency and to justify the evil they were committing, they created stories about a land that was promised to them by the Almighty.
But why would the Almighty do that? Well, He chose them to be His favorite children, you see. While this answered the question why, it also made the Jews superior to everyone else. And as they waited for God to fulfill His promise, the Jews wandered the deserts, raided all those they encountered and stole their foods and possessions not because they were thieves and vagabonds but because they were superior. Get it now?
These people bragged about the gore they inflicted on the others as they looted them, and they bragged about the destruction they wreaked on anything they failed to grab and run with. And they recorded all these horrors in the Old Testament to put humanity on notice as to what they stand for. And to this day, no writer has been able to write horror stories more horrifying than the existence that these people have lived over the millennia.
Those who call themselves Zionists have inherited that despicable mantle and they are today carrying on with the same pattern of looting, destroying and bragging as if it were a matter of religious duty. But to go with the times, they have formulated a new discourse which they run parallel with their activities. They are now saying they want peace and security because they have been pogrommed and holocausted enough already. To achieve their goal, they asked the Americans to help them maintain peace through strength.
The Americans responded by giving Israel all she asked for which was complete support that ranges from the verbal encouragement to butcher Palestinian children asleep in their beds to giving Israel the helicopters and the bombs with which to carry out those deeds. But no one in the region knuckled under this kind of primitive savagery, not even tiny Palestine.
And this was the thing that the Jewish organizations had predicted might happen and whispered about it in the ear of the Americans. Like the evil kids who play the game to dominate other kids, the Jewish organizations had suggested that to resist knuckling under when Uncle Sam roars is proof that the Arabs are a bad people and that they are a threat to America. And so America roared, the Arabs failed to knuckle under and America felt threatened. See how it works when the devil incarnate whispers in the ear of the gullible?
In a situation like this, the rule is that you get the unintended consequences more often than you get what you wished for. Yes, everyone in the region suffered their share because of what was inflicted on them, but the Americans suffered the most because only they chose the company in which they found themselves.
As it turned out, no one in the region was intimidated enough to give the Israelis reason to feel superior. But something entirely different happened in the relationship between Israel and America. Having served the interests of Israel to the detriment of their own interests, which is what the domestics of old were supposed to do, the Americans felt inferior to the Jews while the Jews felt superior to the Americans. This mind-boggling situation reached a point where most religious leaders in America started telling their flock to go out, find a Jew and worship him as your God. Literally.
So I ask again: What does George Bush know about democracy? What does America know about democracy? And the answer to both questions is absolutely nothing. In fact, when America lectures to the World on democracy, it is like a witch doctor lecturing to neurosurgeons on brain surgery. It is a sick joke. A very sick joke.
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