Setting-up a Regime of Taxation

What follows is a discussion paper only on how to go about setting-up a regime of taxation; it is not a complete set-up. The aim is to construct a system that will be equitable and fair for everyone. To do this, we begin with the view of the ship of state being a national institution made of two sectors: The private and the public; the latter being called government some of the time.

The percentage of social and economic activities conducted by each sector depends on the political inclination of the current ruling class. The determining factor here varies from being the extreme conservatives who favor a heavy participation by the private sector, to the extreme liberals who favor a heavy participation by the public sector. And there are moderates on both sides who favor a mix between the two extremes. The nation's business is also conducted simultaneously on three levels. They are: operation, obligation and investment. Each of these happens in the enterprises of the private sector, and happens in the departments of the public sector.

First, the operation part. It comprises the bureaucracies in the private and the public sectors where they help in the running of the institutions and the governance of the nation. In the private sector, they also help in the protection of the company against corruption, sabotage and industrial espionage. These would be the personnel from the CEO down to the floor sweeper. In the public sector, they also help in the protection of the nation against foreign and domestic enemies. These would be the elected and non-elected officials from the heads of state down to the military cadets.

Second, the obligation part. It includes the private and public institutions that produce the bulk of the goods and services making up the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the nation. In the private sector, it also includes the institutions that look after the health and safety of the workers who are employed, and ensures their well being after retirement. In the public sector, it includes the departments that distribute the entitlements to those who have contributed to them, and those who earned them by right of citizenship.

Third, the investment part. These would be the schools and the training centers at all levels that benefit the young and the not so young. They are also the long term civil infrastructures that will benefit them when they have grown. Such institutions and their personnel are to be found both in the private and public sectors. They are the teachers, educators and trainers as well as their assistants and helpers. These investment institutions also comprise the public sector departments that are indirectly associated with those activities.

How to decide what portion of the GDP should be allocated to each of the three parts making up the nation's business? Well, when it comes to operations, it has been established through experience that they run efficiently when 20 percent of the receipts are used to run them. The receipts in this case being the GDP, a fifth of it can go to run the operations in the private and public sectors. The remaining 80 percent should be split 40 percent each to the obligation part and the investment part of the economy. This means the needs of the middle class and the entitlements to seniors should take up 40 percent of the GDP. As to the young, their immediate needs in terms of schooling and training as well as their future needs in terms of infrastructures should take up the remaining 40 percent of the GDP.

The question now is this: How much activities should be done by the government, and how much by the private sector? As mentioned earlier this will depend on the political inclination of the current ruling class. But because a great deal of politics and dogma contribute to the making of these decisions, it would be a good idea to have some kind of reference to go by.

The truth is that there is not a number cast in stone that would constitute an ideal percentage. At any given time in the development of an economy, certain projects will be done better by the government and others done better by the private sector. Look, for example, to the exploration of space. No one in the past half century could have done it but NASA which is a government institution. But now, the baton has been passed to the private sector.

And when it comes to entitlements, there was a time when the Japanese had a demographic bulge of people entering the retirement age similar to the baby boomers that America is facing today. But then, these people died and now Japan has a shrinking population. The same will happen to America sooner or later, and the entitlement programs will register massive surpluses. Things do change.

Lying by Omission and by Confusion

Consider this: “Out of nowhere many soldiers jumped out and ambushed Samir. They shot him in the leg, yet he managed to run towards the village. But how far can an injured child run? Twenty, maybe 30 meters? They could have easily arrested him, especially that he was injured, but instead they shot him in the back with live ammunition … This is premeditated murder.”

This passage is a sliver of the introduction that begins an 87-page report just issued by Amnesty International under the title: “Trigger-Happy, Israel's use of excessive force in the West bank”. The report tells of Jewish savagery in occupied Palestine. That would be savagery committed by the Israeli army itself – the so-called Israel Defense Force (IDF) – and not the settlers. The rest of the report tells of countless incidences which are just as harrowing, and forming a thorough compilation of war crimes that history will never forget.

Now let me give you the opportunity to guess what the editors of the Wall Street Journal would do in the face of this reality. Would they discuss the report and call on the International Criminal Court to arrest the culprits, give them a fair trial and do with them what justice obligates? Of course not. In fact, they would not even keep their mouth shut. Did you say keep their mouth shut? Do you mean they mentioned the report? This in itself is something, isn't it? Hold on, my friend, hold on; they did nothing of the sort.

What? Well then, what did they do? What they did was attack Amnesty International not by mentioning this (unmentionable) report but by mentioning something else; something that not even a fraction of a fraction of the readers know something about. And they stuffed all that in an article they published in their European edition which they reprinted in the North American edition on February 28, 2014. The article came under the title: “Amnesty International's Jihad Problem” and the subtitle: “The rights group's pro-Taliban partner is detained on terror suspicions.”

What they tell is the story of a British citizen named Mr. Begg who was detained in Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) for about three years, proved to be innocent and released. He went back to Britain nine years ago where Amnesty International took him under its wing and used his case to protest the continued existence of Gitmo. A few days ago, the British authorities detained him for questioning without charging him of anything; because they received information to the effect that he may be connected somehow with what is going on in Syria.

The problem that the editors of the Wall Street Journal have with Amnesty International is summed up in what the organization has told them and they report in the article as follows: “everyone has the right to be presumed innocent until they are charged and proven guilty in a fair trial.”

To civilized human beings everywhere, that should be that till there is a trial – if there is going to be one – and the outcome is known. And this means it is time for everybody to shut up and wait for the legal process to take its course. Apparently, however, the editors of the Journal refuse to count themselves among the civilized crowd. And they tell this much to their readers in this fashion: “That's true. Then again, if the suspicions about Mr. Begg are proved in court he would join a list of Gitmo recidivists … It's a reminder of why Gitmo shouldn't be closed.”

Not only do they scoff at the idea of the presumption of innocence as long as guilt has not been proven, they build on the mockery of their own making by suggesting that Gitmo should continue to detain people that have not been proven guilty of anything.

Do they stop here? Of course not. They think they just hit the jackpot, and they got hungry to score a few more points. Here is a big one: “The story is also a reminder of the anti-American intellectual confusion that led Amnesty to team up with Mr. Begg. The world needs morally credible human-rights organizations.”

So here is a bunch of editors saying that Amnesty International is confused and lacking moral credibility because it believes in the principle of innocent till proven guilty. And there is a historical lesson here.

People that lived in Nazi Germany tell of a time when the Jews were accused of contaminating the system of justice, and were sent to the gas chambers to pay for their crimes. If we go by what the editors of the Journal are now saying, we should do likewise, refuse to give the Jews the benefit of the doubt, and send them at once to the gas chambers. Is that what you want, Wall Street Journal?

American Happiness in the Midst of Chaos

Imagine you are sitting on another planet receiving all sorts of communication signals from Earth. You get to know this planet almost like the palm of your hand but something puzzles you about a country called America.

The reason is that surveys conducted worldwide show that when asked if they are happy, the American people rank themselves among the happiest in the world. And yet, America logs more murders and more of the other crimes than anywhere else. It has more people in jail on a per capita basis than any other country, and has a gap between rich and poor that ranks among the widest on Earth. What's going on?

Well, it stands to reason that when almost everyone in the country is regularly affected by an event that renders normal people unhappy, those who live in America must be abnormal, or they are unhappy but that the surveys saying they are must be false. Which is it? You try to resolve the question over a long period of time with no luck until one day; lady luck comes knocking at your door.

She comes in the form of an article written by Victor Davis Hanson under the title: “Ukraine and Our Useless Outrage” and the subtitle: “The history of Obama's foreign-policy posturing bodes ill for the future of Ukraine.” You received the article while sitting on your planet out there in deep space because it was published on February 27, 2014 on National Review Online and captured from the internet.

You read the article and see that Hanson begins it by citing four incidences that happened in Europe; incidences that preceded the bloodiest war on Earth known as World War II. He then cites four incidences that happened more recently to America but no war followed. To begin explaining what this is about, he cites a litany of warnings that the American President, Barack Obama, and his representatives – most notably John Kerry – have issued to several actors, including the Iranians with whom America still has an outstanding issue, and the President of Ukraine that has since been deposed by his own people.

The point that Hanson makes by citing those incidences is that the current American President is different from the leaders of Europe who went to war in response to the incidences that happened under their watch. And he uses this conclusion as a trampoline to jump into a state of speculation whereby he predicts with bitter sarcasm that: “Given Kerry's loud global-warming sermonizing and the administration's serial threats, bad actors abroad probably believe that burning too much coal is more likely to anger the U.S. than shooting protesters or gassing enemies.”

Hanson builds on that by further speculating that this President will probably do nothing in the face of what else is going on in the world, and he cites a few names: Syria, Ukraine, Egypt, Libya, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia's Putin, the Baltic States, Eastern Europe, Iran, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines.

He ends the article by saying that the world has become a scarier place. By this he means to say he would feel less scared if America started what will amount to World War III in which perhaps as many as a billion people will die if you take World War II as a measure of what will happen to a planet that is now more heavily populated and more heavily armed than ever before.

And this is when you, sitting on your planet out there in deep space, finally resolve the question as to whether the American people are happy or unhappy; sane or insane. You resolve that they are happy and they are sane because America is not governed by a nut like Victor Davis Hanson.

Yes, many sad things happen in America on a daily basis, and the people there ought to be unhappy. But when they compare what they have now to what they could have been served, they feel lucky.

And that's as it should be.

The Distressing Effect of Thinking Exceptionalism

If you want to know why it is distressing to think of yourself as exceptional, read the latest Daniel Henninger column. It comes under the title: “The Growth Revolutions Erupt” and the subtitle: “Ukrainians want what we've got: The benefits of real economic growth.” It was published in the Wall Street Journal on February 27, 2014.

What is wrong with the way that the author handles this article is that he does something worse than cherry pick the ideas that suit his views to fit them in one article. What he does, in fact, is grab the cherries that drop into his lap randomly, and arranges them inside a piece in such a way as to make himself believe the resulting article is a coherent work that the public will come to appreciate.

Only one motivation seems to have guided the author while making the choices that he made in piecing together the cherries of ideas. It was the desire to make America look like an indispensable nation; one that the world needs to keep it safe and make its varied economies grow. Thus, Henninger did not care whether or not the pieces fit together, and the result has been a collage of ideas that has no recognizable shape, with gaps between pieces whose edges do not fit together.

One of the pieces that the author has tried to fit with another is the idea that for 5 years under President Obama, America has been leading from behind not only diplomatically and militarily but also economically. And this is why there have been upheavals in the world, from the revolutions in Eastern Europe to the Arab Spring to Ukraine to Venezuela, he says. And he tries to make this piece fit together with another in the collage. It is that despite the fact Obama has less than three more years to go in office, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) makes a prediction that Henninger totally embraces. And that is that for the next 10 years, the GDP growth in America will be not only the slowest since 1950 but “much slower.” Who will be in office then? Obama's ghost?

Henninger also laments that now “even China is decelerating,” having neglected to explain how that country dared to accelerate while America was only leading from behind. And while America will remain in the doldrums for the next 10 years according to the prediction of the CBO, he mentions that “the European Union predicted weak growth through 2015 [next year]” which means that growth is expected to return to Europe after that; at least 9 years before it returns to America. How can Europe dare doing such a thing?

Thus, having put together a monstrous reproduction of reality, the author now makes a monstrous prediction: “No one should be so naïve as to think that in a low-growth world, the U.S. won't have to get 'involved'. Weakening economies breed anger as in the 1930s … and there will be U.S. boots on the ground somewhere.” That should scare you even if China and Europe seem to be “decoupling” from the US economy.

But having come this far, Henninger returns to points that should have told him he is proceeding on the wrong track but did not. In fact, he misses the glaring lessons, and he continues to line up pieces of ideas that do not fit together. For example, he says this: “Aligned with the EU, a free Poland has grown, even if Italy and France have frittered away what they had.” This should have alerted him to the fact that economies go in cycles that do not always stay in tune with each other. It happened to America, China and Europe; it happened to the BRICS nations and it will happen all the time at some point to everyone.

But Henninger seems to have missed seeing this reality and so, he goes on: “In fact, the vain and decelerating advanced economies are living off the accumulated inheritance of a century and a half of good growth.” Does that mean he predicts the apocalypse after that for these nations?

He finally relies on what Angus Maddison said about the history of economic growth, and its relation with capitalism to advocate that America return to a growth agenda, thus save the world from an apocalypse that will engulf everyone.

I have an advice for this man: If he leaves behind the idea that America is the exceptionally indispensable nation, he may not get so stressed up during his waking hours, and might sleep better at night.

The Weasel Lost, now the Running Dogs Bark

Imagine going to a flea market and walking between the stands looking for something interesting to buy. One of the vendors calls you and says he has something to sell that will knock your socks off when you get to see it. Full of anticipation, you stand there waiting for him to show you what he has that is appealing to such a high degree. But the guy takes his time – a very long time – giving you a lecture on astrophysics.

Eventually, you get tired of the sound of his voice, and ask him to show you what it is that he is selling. He stops talking, opens a bag, pulls from it a dozen ties and says he'll give you a good deal if you buy them all. You ask what the connection is between the ties and the lecture, and he says there is no connection. It's just that he studied astrophysics in college, and he wanted to impress you before making his pitch. You walk away cursing him for wasting you time.

Believe it or not, my friend, this is what the debate about bombing Iran into the Stone Age has been reduced to in America. And you have two characters to thank for this development. One is Robert P. George who is professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University. The other is Michael Stokes Paulsen who is university chair and professor of law at the University of St. Thomas. Together, they authored an article under the title: Authorize Force Now” and the subtitle: “Congress should deter Iran's nuclear ambitions by authorizing, now, the president to use military action.” It was published on February 26, 2014 in National Review Online.

What you see in the title and the subtitle is what they are selling. It is to start something now that will serve as a first step for a mission-creep that will culminate in embroiling America in yet another war against a Muslim country – which is an old Judeo-Israeli dream. The debate itself was conducted by the weasels of the Jewish lobby for a long time. They lost it so now, they got their running dogs to reopen it and tackle it from another angle; this time the legal angle.

The two authors are jurists and their legal argument sounds as solid as a lecture on astrophysics delivered by someone that studied the subject. The trouble is that their argument is no more related to the call for going after Iran than the lecture on astrophysics is related to a dozen ties on sale. In fact, the authors go on and on talking about the right of the President versus the right of the Congress as stated by the provisions of the Constitution but in the end, they say no more now than what was said before on the subject matter that is pertinent to the Iranian question.

And what was said before is that Iran must be coerced at the negotiating table, to which the two authors have added nothing that is new. They don't say why this is important, but the reason is apparent to everyone that has been observing the situation for a time now. It is that when a Muslim is coerced, the folks at the Jewish lobby get turned on. And being turned on is something they have not experienced for sometime now, and they worry they may be losing their manhood. They want America to help them regain confidence in themselves.

The pattern has always been that when the Jewish leaders call for something and see it done, they consider it the first step in a long journey for which there is no end because the Jewish way never sets a goal, an exit strategy or a plan B. And getting caught in a never ending war is what most people speculate will happen if America listened to them and complied with their demand. Simply stated, most people don't trust what the Jews are promising, and expect the worst.

The Jewish counter argument, however, is to the effect that the Iranians are the ones not to be trusted. They speculate that Iran is buying time while secretly building the bomb. When this is completed, the Iranians will do more mischief in the region and the world, say the Jews.

Which of the two is more trustworthy? Well, the record speaks for itself: The Iranians have delivered on every promise they made; the Jews have reneged on every promise they made then got running dogs to bark for them.

Another Excuse to Moan and to Control

Here is a perfect example of a self-appointed member of the Jewish lobby pouncing on a flimsy excuse to deal himself another hand by which to confuse America, silence Americans and pocket another win that will come handy when the Jewish lobby will see the need to pressure the Administration or the Congress to do something looney in favor of Israel.

It is that David Firestone who, I understand, is some kind of authoritative honcho at the New York Times, has written an article for his newspaper under the title: “In Ukraine, Both Sides Exploit Jewish History” and has published it on February 26, 2014. For once I do not have to explain how a situation like the one unfolding in Ukraine can be used by someone to gain the upper hand in an ongoing issue. I am spared the trouble this time because I can simply point out that Firestone is doing what he accuses someone else of doing. Here is what he says in the first paragraph: “both sides exploit them [the Jews] to gain an upper hand...”

Firestone accuses the government of Putin of smearing the protesters who brought down the government of Ukraine. He says that the Russians have called the protesters “neo-Nazis” who are conducting a “pogrom” against Ukraine. They also called the protesters extremists who manifested antisemitic tendencies. Well, you want to know: What does it all mean? Are you asking me this question? Have you never heard of the concept of clarity by Jewish ambiguity? Now I have to explain to you the inexplicable.

Let me try. David Firestone says that the government of Putin sounded thoughtful when it made the remark about antisemitism because it is true that statements of this nature were made and were “unquestionably” of deep concern. To prove his point, he tells of the current ultra-nationalist party whose members quote the leaders of the Third Reich, and who honor the founder of a Ukrainian fascist organization.

And what makes this thing even more “unquestionable” is that the words have translated into actions. And he gives examples of that. He writes: “Swastikas have appeared on synagogues, Nazi salutes were seen around Maidan Square, at least two Jews were beaten, and a fearful rabbi urged the city's Jews to leave town or leave the country if possible.

Now comes the Jewish trick out of the hat as the author turns the unquestionable into questionable. Look how he does that: “It's scary, but it's hardly a 'pogrom,' as Mr. Putin described it in December.” Okay, Mr. Firestone, we hear you, but are you going to tell us what the difference is between scary and pogrom? No, he is not going to do that because his message is a lot simpler than that.

Here is his message: There are words such as pogrom, holocaust, Jewish lobby and the like that nobody but Jews are allowed to use. You touch any of them, and it's like touching the third rail. You will derail your life trying it because these are words that “vibrate with bitter urgency” to a Jew even if he were someone that was born gentile, born three generations after the events in Europe; he is one that just converted to Judaism, and someone who wouldn't know a pogrom from a holocaust from a hole in his anatomy.

And that's not the end of his story because there are three more things he must do to make this an authentic Jewish presentation. First, he must deepen the ambiguity by getting back to the business of praising Putin and damning him at the same time. Here is how he does that: “Mr. Putin has not been bad for Russia's Jews, but...”

Second, seeing that there is not enough energy in his case to make a noticeable impact on the readers, he borrows energy from other sources and blends it into his case. Here is how he does that: “...but he [Putin] has little to teach the world about tolerance, as his bigoted statements and legislation demonstrate.”

Third, he must end the presentation with one last moan to make sure that he has added enough into the toolbox with which he and his kind will control people and institutions in the future. He knows he will not control Russia or Ukraine because they will tell him to buzz off. His aim is to control America, mobilize its resources and make them available for use by Israel. Here is how he does that: “The neo-fascists have tried for years to whip up public anger by calling for an end to the 'Muscovite-Jewish mafia,' Mr. Putin and his foreign ministry are doing the same thing from the other direction. Both are misusing the Jews.”

“Oh, how I ache at the belly, America. Compensate me for something and send the check to Israel.”

The Competition between Guns and Butter

A new budget has been proposed for the American military, and the hawkish voices of the country are sounding the alarm as usual. And as always, they are saying there is not enough money in the budget for America to do all that needs to be done. This is a replay of the contest between guns and butter, coming this time at a point where America must make a clear choice between having the guns or the butter because it can no longer have both.

There are many hawkish voices in America, and they tend to congregate in a number of publications where they publish their thoughts, one of these being National Review Online. The editor of that publication is Rich Lowry which makes him the one who chooses who gets published and who gets rejected. Of course, he makes the decision based on his preferences which he does not pretend to be dovish. And so, whatever he writes can be taken as representative of what his hawkish contributors write and appear in the National Review.

As it happens, Lowry himself wrote an article on that subject under the title: “Military-Budget Delusion” and the subtitle: “Democrats oppose defense spending because it's defense; Republicans, because it's spending,” and had it published on February 25, 2014 in National Review Online. In it – going by the title and the subtitle – he is supposed to be telling the readers why a budget that apparently sounds acceptable to both the Democrats and the Republicans is actually delusional. In addition, what this means is that he views the entire political class in America as being delusional; a bunch of hallucinating psychos, that is.

And so, Lowry begins by telling that the budget will “reduce the U.S. Army to pre–World War II levels.” He goes on to say there is a government spin accompanying that, which is to the effect that it will be a 21 st-century kind of smart force. But he laments: “everyone knows” it is something else, and does not tell who those “everyone” are. Moreover, if they do not include the delusional Democrats or Republicans, who else may be knowledgeable and interested enough in such matters to tell him – or maybe whisper in his ear – that they know otherwise. A mystery that does not get resolved by the end of the article.

He then does something that is typically Lowry-like. He plants the seeds at the start of the article – seeds that will clash with something he will write later, and demolish his entire argument. Look at this: “570,000 troops were barely enough to fight the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the budget will take us to 450,000 or even fewer.”

These being wars that dragged for a long time, and where America lost according to some people or did very badly according to others. Now look what Lowry does a few paragraphs later: “In 1939, the United States had an army of 185,000 men on the cusp of history's most cataclysmic war.” And that was the war in which America scored its most glorious moments. What is Lowry saying here? Let America go down to 185,000 men? A mystery that does not get resolved by the end of the article.

Staying with the knack of arguing against himself, he now finds a way to argue against everything he has been saying probably ever since he started writing. It is that he always said America has been a force for good, having never done something to be ashamed of. But he has a weakness which is that he places everyone he heard of in one of two columns, one labeled “good guys” and one labeled “bad guys.” He often quotes his good guys not realizing that they are killing arguments he made in the current article or long before that.

Look now who Rich Lowry is quoting. It is Stephen Ambrose who wrote this: “It is odd, that a nation that had come into existence through a victorious war, gained large portions of its territory through war, established its industrial revolution and national unity through a bloody civil war, and won a colonial empire through war, could believe that war profited no one.” That's not exactly a peaceful force for good, is it?

But if America is good for the world despite being the warring nation that it is, what is wrong in considering what Lowry suggests would be unthinkable? Here is his position now: “Unless we outsource patrolling the sea lanes to China and the security of Europe to Russia...” If anything, these two nations can only turn out to be as bad as America but not worse. And that's because nothing can be worse than gaining territory, having a civil war and a colonial empire through war. That's the ultimate in evil behavior. What do you think, Rich?

You never know; maybe Stephen Ambrose would have loved those two. But Ambrose or not, Lowry or not, it looks like Obama and Hagel have chosen to feed the hungry children of America rather than kill the hungry children of somewhere overseas.

The Justification for Progressive Taxation

There is no denying that we live the way we do now because we have managed to build a different kind of society over the tens of thousands of years that separate us from the kind of existence that our forest dwelling ancestors used to lead.

If we accept the argument that everything invented by human beings and every progress made by them become the property of humanity as a whole after the death of their creators, we must also accept the argument that anyone who uses such inventions or relies on the progress to enrich themselves, must pay a royalty to the society in which they operate. And the payment they are asked to make usually comes in the form of taxation.

This argument forms the basis that justifies the principle of taxation. There will be another time to take up the question as to what rate of taxation would be fair. But there is another aspect to this very question that we can take up at this time. It is that regardless of the baseline from which we begin taxing someone, we ask whether or not we can justify progressively increasing the rate of taxation the more that someone earns. This is a principle that stands in opposition to that of the flat tax.

To answer that question we must do two things. First, we must cite the factors that would justify the principle of progressive taxation. Second, we must respond to the criticism that is usually leveled against the possible side effects that would be created by this form of taxation.

Here is why progressive taxation is justified. The accumulation of wealth by an individual will gallop because of two reasons. The production is increased or the price of each unit sold is raised or both. When we say increased production, we say more reliance on the mechanisms that were left behind by the inventors – mechanisms that now belong to the society in charge of taxing the individual. And so, the more efficiently the individual uses that which belongs to society, the more he ought to reimburse society. It is like renting a car to someone not only by the hour he uses it but also by the miles he drives it during each hour.

And here is why it is justified to progressively tax the individual who raises the price of what he produces beyond the profit he is already making. It is that the idea of taxing riches beyond reasonable wealth is instinctively appealing not because of envy but because there is a practical side to the idea. It is that the individual can raise the prices only by charging what the market will bear when there is no competition to force the price down. This is behavior that must be discouraged by taxing what must be viewed as ill-gotten gains.

As to the criticism that is leveled against the principle of progressive taxation, it centers on the idea that it discourages people from working hard. Well, we see how false this criticism is when we consider the fact that progressive taxation does not usually begin to bite till someone has reached the point where he has worked himself so hard, the mind and the body can no longer function properly. For example, I worked in all sorts of jobs, including ones that paid double for overtime. After putting in a certain number of hours, and doing it for two weeks in a row, I refused any more overtime as did my co-workers because we could not function properly after that, and we knew it.

I also ran my own business – several of them, in fact – and whether I was in my thirties, my forties or my fifties, I could only work this much and no more. What this says is that galloping riches cannot come from the galloping ambition that makes you work harder and harder. Galloping riches can only come from galloping greed that makes you want to cheat and do end-runs on the system. Yes, my friend, the body and the mind have their limits but greed has no limit, and progressive taxation erects a barrier that can check that limit.

The conclusion is that progressive taxation is justified on many fronts.

Will Trickle up and down Lift all Boats?

Every time that someone proposed the raising of the minimum wage, a debate followed that more or less took on the air of the debates that preceded it. A new proposal to raise the minimum wage has just been made again, and from the looks of it, the debate that has followed wants to proceed in the same old fashion when the reality we see all around us is that things have changed so much in the world, the requirement is that a new approach in our thinking about such matters is urgently needed.

When two or three decades ago it became clear that the underdeveloped countries were beginning to develop, and that they will have a major impact on the economies of the developed world, it was argued that the emerging nations will turn themselves into factories producing low tech products which they will ship to the developed countries in exchange for the high tech machines with which to produce those low tech products. The young in the advanced countries were told to prepare for the future by getting an education in the high tech industries, and everyone will live happily every after both in the developing world and the developed one.

But things turned out in such a way as to make a mockery of that vision. Yes, the developing economies bought new machines and paid dearly for them, but they also saw entire factories transferred from the developed countries to theirs by none other than the foreign owners of those factories. And while the advanced economies were laying off people, the developing ones were hiring. While the advanced governments were borrowing to plug their deficits and balance their budgets, the developing ones were having the surpluses they could lend to others. While the youngsters in the developing economies turned against education in favor of getting super rich by joining a music band or a sports team, the youngsters of the developing world learned the math and the sciences that led them to the high tech industries and the inventions that leapfrogged them ahead of their counterparts in the advanced world.

And so, raising the minimum wage against this background became a whole new kettle of fish. For example, who in his right mind would hire a 16 year old in America that could not drill a straight hole in a half-inch flange but command a 25 thousand dollar salary when you can hire 12 Asian adults who can run a computer operated milling machine, and work twice as long for that same 25 thousand dollars? If you insist that this be done, the ramifications on the balance of trade, the value of the currencies and immigration will be so huge, the existing order will change, and you will have no control over it.

So then, what to do? Well, we must prepare for the future, but do so more realistically than before. Let us not plan what to do by what we think the others ought to do, and convince ourselves it is what they will do because that's good for us. Instead, let's think of our situation in isolation from the rest of the world, and when we have designed a plan for ourselves, determine how we can hook up with the rest of the world while keeping intact what we put together for ourselves.

To design a plan, we recall the arguments that bring into focus how an economy works. Those who advocate trickle down economics want to give the advantage to the producers because they form the companies that create the jobs that benefit the consuming workforce. Those who advocate the trickle up economics want to give the advantage to the consuming workforce because it creates the demand that the companies need to borrow and expand their businesses. The fact is that one of them will be right and the other wrong depending on where the cycle of the economy stands. For example, if you just had a big invention and the industries need to retool, to give them the advantage would be the right thing to do. On the other hand, if you had a crash that caused massive layoffs, the thing to do is to advantage the consuming workforce.

Looking at America at this point in time, we see that it is going through an unusual period. It is not in an either-or situation but in both situations at the same time. In fact, America needs to invent and retool which means it calls for a dose of trickle down economics; but it also needs to shore up a consuming workforce that finds itself with very little savings. And this means that America calls for a dose of trickle up economics.

The thing to do in practical terms is to combine all the called for solutions in one large plan. That is, using the financial muscle of the government, think of a way to encourage the production of low tech and high tech industries while populating the factories with youngsters who will get paid while serving a period of learning and apprenticeship. The smartest of these kids will then be offered to continue their education at a higher level, and perhaps become inventors, engineers or scientists.

And while this is happening on a massive scale throughout the country, the industries that will feed these factories will benefit greatly, and go through a period of renaissance. All of this will reduce America's reliance on foreign countries to supply it with cheap goods and the money to pay for them.

The minimum wage debate will then look puny compared to the size of this project, and the net result will be that all boats will be lifted by the implementation of trickle up and trickle down economics.

What Do They Think Their President Is?

Notice that the title of this article is not “Who” do they think their president is? Rather, it is “What” do they think their president is? And the reason why I ask the question in this manner is that most media types in America think – or if not yet thinking – are beginning to think of their president not as a mere mortal like the rest of us but a supernatural being endowed with powers to change the world with a wave of the hand or with the index finger. And when he fails to do so, they accuse him of all sorts of strange things.

It wasn't always like that for the simple reason that the chattering classes used to be made of adults who knew that their president was a leader and not an all powerful daddy who was second only to God, if not equal to Him. And they knew that everyone around the president, especially the congress, was populated by adults who considered the president to be a leader that showed them the way, not a babysitter that was here to cuddle them. More important, the members of the congress in both houses knew who they were, and did not expect the president to babysit them – which is what is happening today.

And there were think tanks populated with people that could think and form their own opinion, not populated with hacks that acted like the drones of a group think collective, all waiting to be told what to say on an hourly basis so that they may echo the same notes, but echo them with a variation that suited the temperament of each drone – which is what is happening today.

And when you had an America that was populated by a chattering class of elites, and by leaders at the helm of the ship of state who were of such high caliber, you had a view of the world that was different from what the low caliber drones of today are offering. They had a view of a world that was made of jurisdictions, each headed by a group of leaders who were full of ambitions for their countries, and the will to realize those ambitions come hell or high water.

In fact, unlike the drones of today's collective, the chattering classes of America at that time did not think that their president could move those foreign leaders as if they were toy soldiers animated by a remote control in the palm of his hand with an index finger on the joystick. No, they knew very well that those leaders were tough minded individuals who could not be fooled but were ready and able to fool anyone who would make the mistake of taking them for granted.

The trouble for America is that while the world has not changed in substance, America's collective view of it has. And in the same way that you have the mindless think-tankers, the media types and the useless legislators, running around asking the president to babysit them, you have them ask him to also babysit a world that is growing and maturing at a rate that is above their ability to understand what is happening, let alone understand the ramifications of all that.

And so, it should come as no surprise to see shutterbugs of every political stripe voice their dismay at the president for failing to intervene in the places where it is clear that there is nothing which the American president can do to affect the situation except make it worse. This would be North Africa, for example, where America must now stay out lest it repeat the tragedy it has created with the Libyan ill-advised adventure.

And there is more because the worst part is that those same shutterbugs are the ones who also urge the president to ignore the situations where America is currently embroiled or has been embroiled, and has created a mess that is not yet cleaned up.

One such place would be Palestine where America is advised to stay out when, in fact, it must go in and fix a few things not only because it can, but because it has the obligation to do so, having created that mess in the first place and having nurtured it for more than half a century.

No, the American president is not a God that can run the world by the power of his will. However, America has committed a few bad things lately, and has the duty to fix them.

Exposing the Fraudulent Hand of an Imposter

It happens at times that when someone is terminally ill and cannot be cured, the hospital will send them home to die there, without saying so loudly. Think now of an imposter who pretends to be a hospital worker, goes into the hospitals where he looks into the records for patients that might be in that state. When he finds them, he goes to their homes under a fabricated excuse and starts a discussion with members of the family at which time he steers the talk in a direction that leads to the mention of the sickness.

And that is when he tells the family he just met someone who knows how to cure that sickness, having seen the good result himself. They welcome the news, and say they are prepared to pay any price to see the loved one cured. And the imposter sets up an elaborate scheme with cohorts by which he swindles the family bit by bit of everything it has, or till the loved one dies ... whichever comes first. So now I ask you: What would you say about an imposter of this kind?

You would call him a disgusting character, would you not? Now think of someone doing something similar, and taking advantage not of the dying but of the unemployed. Yes, he would be a disgusting character also, you agree. In fact, anyone that takes advantage of the pain that someone else is suffering to enrich themselves or to serve themselves in some other fashion would be a disgusting character by definition. There is no two ways about that.

But then you make the remark that this kind of games are played at such a level of sophistication, it is difficult most of the time to spot a swindler till it is too late. Yes, this is true, and it takes experience before you learn how to spot this kind of characters. In the meantime, the one indication you must look for is the incongruity between what needs to be cured or fixed, and what is proposed as remedy.

And there is a perfect example you can look at in this regard; one that was fashioned by the bumbling swindler himself. It is none other than the one and only Eric Cantor who happens to be the majority leader in the House of Representatives of the US Congress. He just put out what he calls a report to fix the unemployment situation in America. You ask how he proposes to do that, and he answers that he will do it by curtailing the Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama. You see no congruity between the ailment and the cure, and you get suspicious.

So you want to know what the connection is between the two, and he gives a number of fake examples; one of them being that Obama is refusing to break international law, and move the American embassy in Israel to the occupied Palestinian territory of Jerusalem. This is not something new for, all presidents have done the same since the congress of sick dogs prostituted itself to the Jewish lobby and voted on the legislation. But the sickening thing about the Cantor use of the event is that he promises that America will be on its way to full employment if and when the embassy is moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And this is a promise that only a most disgusting character of the most Jewish kind would make.

And while America cries out for the folks in Washington to stop bickering and start governing the country, Cantor wastes his time and that of his staff putting out a 36 page document of lamentations and bellyache. He calls the document: “The Imperial Presidency, Implications for Economic Growth & Jobs.” And get this now, my friend, in line with the promise he made about the Jerusalem thing, not one word in that document is about how to make the economy grow or how to create jobs. On the contrary, he accuses the President of doing something, then asks the American people to side with him, calling on the President to stop governing, and join the paralysis.

And he has a one-page conclusion at the end of the report in which he brings it all together. He says this: “In some instances, President Obama attempted to garner legislative authority, failed then acted unilaterally. In other instances, he ignored Congress. In speeches, he proudly acknowledged he has acted, contending he had no alternative … This is no way to govern,” to which you can hear all of America hail: Go Barack, go.

Cantor is a disgusting imposter with the IQ of a moron. If he went to live in Israel and tried to get a job in the Knesset, they would hire him to sweep the floor on the condition that he pays them. And yet, here he is in America being majority leader.

What's wrong with you, America? Have you no pride? No sense of self? No ambition?

Vanishing Graffiti Walls of the Exceptional

On February 20, 2014, the New York Daily News published: “Obama is weak, clueless and indecisive on Ukraine” by John Bolton who is more the child of a holocaust memorial than he is a child of the human race. The next day, February 21, 2014, the New York Times published: “Don't let up on Iran” by Michael Kassen and Lee Rosenberg who are big honchos of AIPAC, the bottomless sinkhole in which America keeps sinking with little hope of being rescued. The next day, February 22, 2014, the Wall Street Journal published: “America's Global Retreat” by Niall Ferguson, the naturalized American of British origin who desperately tries to stay out of the box, and always finds himself caught in a sand trap.

These are three articles published in three different newspapers over three days, having more than one thing in common. And the best way to tell what these are is to tell the story as to how they pulled out old memories, and how they helped form the ideas that coalesced into forming the presentation that follows.

When Marshall McLuhan was still alive something big happened and he took to it like the opposite poles of two magnets take to each other. It was discovered that inside the great pyramids of Giza were scratchings on the walls that meant something. They were the graffiti made by the workers who participated in the building of the pyramids nearly five thousand years ago.

I cannot tell with certainty how much McLuhan contributed to the conception of the “Pyramid Power” craze that developed at the same time – or even if there was a direct connection between the discovery of the graffiti and the craze. What I can tell, however, is that McLuhan got immersed in the craze fully and wholeheartedly once it got going. And what came out of the discussions that took place then, was an understanding of a human need which, up to that time was thought to belong only to the pharaohs. It was the fact that everyone, including the simple and ordinary workers, felt the need to participate in a project as massive as the building of the pyramids to secure immortality for themselves. The graffiti they left on the wall allowed them to do just that.

I now invite you, dear reader, to get into the time machine of the imagination, and go to the caves where early human beings left an impression of their hands on the wall, and you will understand that this was an expression of their quest for immortality. Gallop forward in time from era to era, and you will realize that each era had a massive project that secured immortality for its greats, but also provided a wall on which the ordinary people left their graffiti to say to posterity: I was here too, and I participated in the realization of this great project.

It has always been easier for a powerful nation to initiate the massive projects that secured immortality for its greats and the not so great. Thus, after the rise and fall of the many empires that came and went since the Egyptians, you find that Great Britain was producing most of the immortals till about the early decades of the twentieth century when America inherited the mantle. Despite the fact that the natural heir to greatness was Germany, it happened that greatness came to America because of the confluence of circumstances, some of which were random and some were planned.

The most important random event that made America possible was the discovery of its landmass by mariners who were looking for a shorter route to India. Many smaller events followed, making it convenient for the crucial inventions that happened in Europe – such as the internal combustion engine and the wireless – to find a more fertile and more hospitable home in America on which to develop and to grow. This rendered America the force that denied Germany the greatness it was about to secure for itself in the heart Europe. Added to that randomness were the deliberate events that the British fabricated, such as Winston Churchill who pushed America to initiate the Cold War. This allowed Britain to use America as a cash cow and a workhorse to help extend the life of Britain if not as the number one power in the world; at least as a co-occupier of that position.

And while Britain was able to make America do the dirty work for it by influencing it from the outside, a group of people describing themselves as being of the newly invented Jewish ethnicity, were able to infiltrate the American centers of political power and culture from where they blocked any and every criticism to themselves while securing their right to attack and destroy anyone who may be tempted to stand in their way. The result has been that they effectively used American democracy to kill American democracy, a move they made with the aim of using American power to spread throughout the world a brand of Jewish autocracy they mislabeled democracy; a trick they lately admitted was meant to allow them taking control of the world.

The Brits first saw the Jews as rivals and tried to fight them but gave up the open struggle when convinced that they will not defeat their rivals, so they shifted gear to do something else. They adopted the very British thing of pretending to collaborate with the Jews; a ruse that everyone, including the Jews, know is an attempt to identify the Jewish weaknesses. When this is done, they plan to pounce on the Jews and neutralize them – all of which is a plan that the Jews themselves are preparing to unleash on the Brits. And this makes the whole sordid scene look like two scorpions circling each other looking for the right moment to sting the other and finish it off.

In the midst of this soap opera of the human condition, new walls constantly appear and disappear on which the great, the semi-great and the ordinary try to leave their graffiti to say to posterity that they were here participating in this project, and have earned the right to secure immortality for themselves. And while this is going on, you have a group of people trying to upgrade their own position by restoring to America the luster it once had; a luster that kept fading each time that the Jews managed to score a success. And that's because the game they play is a zero-sum game where Jewish gains are balanced by American losses.

To counteract that reality and pull the wool over the eyes of an American public that began to turn anxious, the Jews reached into their magic hat and pulled from it a trick they told the Americans was a surefire winner. They told them that if enough of them ran around saying that America was exceptional, America will become exceptional again, and no one will catch up with it. Well, ordinary Americans did not buy this crap but those who make a living running off the mouth on radio or television bought the crap and made use of it. They are the ones who now run around chanting: America is exceptional and so am I.

And the walls became so tired of that shenanigan; you could not talk to them anymore, let alone write graffiti on them to keep for posterity. And they preferred to fade themselves out of existence than carry something as meaningless as that.

It is not clear what Bolton, Kassen and Rosenberg the Jews; as well as Ferguson the Brit will do now to scratch their names on the vanishing wall of immortality, even if America manages by some miracle to escape being swallowed by the bottomless sinkhole of AIPAC.

Looking at a Unicorn and Seeing a Rhinoceros

If you ask me what the difference is between a rhinoceros and a unicorn, I would say the unicorn is smarter than the rhinoceros. I have no basis for saying this but it sounds good because it helps me make the points I am about to discuss. And these points have something to do with the presentation that the French journalist Delphine Minoui made with regard to the parallel she sees between what is happening in Egypt now and what a departed playwright, Eugene Ionesco saw in Europe a long time ago – a situation he analogized in a play called Rhinoceros.

My main point is that the allegory may or may not have been completely accurate with regard to all of Europe – I let others make that judgment – but it is absolutely false when it comes to the situation in Egypt. Delphine Minoui made her presentation in an article under the title: “Egypt's 'Rhinoceros' Allegory” and had it published in the New York Times on February 19, 2014. In her words, the point she makes is this: “the parallels between the parable about the rise of fascist and Stalinist conformity in Europe and the growing mass hysteria surrounding the rise of el-Sisi are striking.”

She describes in great detail how much the people of Egypt took to Field Marshall Sisi when he responded to their call, seeing them march in the streets by the millions, and asking the army to remove the government they felt was hijacking the revolution they pulled off with such pride only a few months before. Witnessing all that unfold in Egypt, Minoui flashed back to the time when she was in school, and had read the Ionesco play for the first time. She remembers: “My teacher told us it describes … how an ideology … can reshape people's minds.” She goes on: “The play was a vivid allegory of the upsurge in totalitarianism across Europe, and the conformity, fear and collective psychosis that came with it.”

Well, what Minoui needed at that time was another teacher because he or she did not tell the class the true story behind the writing of that play. The truth is that Ionesco was harassed by the Jewish organizations that came close to accusing him of antisemitic tendencies, if only because he belonged to a church that they said was instrumental in bringing an openly antisemitic group into the Romanian government – and not all of Europe as claimed by Minoui.

To respond to the charges, Ionesco wrote Rhinoceros in which he created the character Berenger to represent him. That character lived in a French town representing Romania at the time that the Ionesco family lived there. Eventually the entire population of the town goes crazy and turns into beasts the way that Romania turned fascist and antisemitic. The exception is Berenger who remains sane to the end, and pledges never to capitulate. And this was Ionesco's way of saying all of Romania may have gone crazy but not me.

What is curious about the way that Minoui has handled this piece is that the style she is using does not suit the situation she says she is describing. Ionesco wrote the play not because he was accusing someone but because someone was accusing him. He took the accusations in stride then made a joke about the situation by writing the play. In contrast, Minoui is accusing the entire Egyptian population of having gone bananas, and also pointed the finger directly at individuals she knew personally or by name, accusing them of things not because she wanted to remain friends with them but to express a deep seated hatred for them.

And while doing this, she dredges the small details in Egyptian history as well as the current situation to try and match them with the small details and the lesser characters in the play. For example, she writes that “Today's Egyptian liberals and leftists remind me of Botard. After resisting the military, many like Botard succumbed to its will.” She also mentions another character called Dudard who “summarizes the situation perfectly: His desire is to join the universal family.”

And when you want to openly express hate for something, what can be more expressive than this: “the newly turned rhinoceroses of Egypt are the same ones who used to accuse the Muslim brotherhood's supporters of being sheep”? And how about this: “For many, putting on an awkward rhinoceros horn is more comfortable than risking losing everything in the name of freedom”?

No, there is more to this piece than a parody to a lighthearted Ionesco play. What Minoui sees in Egypt are unicorns but someone is whispering in her ears: “These are rhinoceroses.” Who could that someone be?

Writing the First Draft of History Reconsidered

Journalism being the first draft of history, most journalists today do not realize that they shape their own legacy with every article they write. This is because future students of history will consult their work to write history in hindsight. And if they discover that a journalist habitually distorted the truth to advance a point of view, they will avoid his or her work. Eventually such journalists will acquire a reputation so bad that they will end up on a blacklist, and will be known to all teachers and all students of history that they are not worth consulting.

                

Future historians will also consult the opinion makers of today to see how they interpreted the events of their time to their readers. And here too, the historians will be guided by the quality of the author's work. In this case, they will gauge the amount of insight that the author yielded, the depth they gave to their work, and more importantly, the historians will want to be assured that even if the author had a definite point of view, he or she was genuine in their search for the truth, and not merely trying to advance a point of view by spinning the truth to make it conform to their biases.

Needless to say that in today's charged atmosphere where everything that is said or that is done is imbued with partisan politics, it will be difficult for future historians to find material that will give them an accurate description of our times except for the fact that they were rancorous times. There are, however, some welcome indications that things may be changing because out of two opinion pieces that appear in the February 21, 2014 issue of the Wall Street Journal, one article remains as biased as ever but the other shows signs that the author may be trying to change for the better.

There is Fouad Ajami's piece that came under the title: “Obama's Syria Debacle Laid Bare” and the subtitle: “When the president leaves office, it will be said that he kept us out of that war. But at what price?” And there is Walter Russell Mead's piece that came under the title: “Putin knows History Hasn't Ended” and the subtitle: “Obama might like to pretend that geopolitics don't matter, but the slaughter in Kiev shows how mistaken he is.”

The irony here is that most of the time the editors of the publication and not the authors choose the title and subtitle for an article. And while the Ajami article sounds like it may be moderate judging by the title and subtitle, it is in fact as biased as ever. And while the Russell Mead article sounds like it may be biased judging by the title and the subtitle, it is in fact moderate compared to how this author used to present his arguments.

And so, looking at the Ajami article, we see that he begins it by quoting Senator John McCain whose views on the Syrian civil war are uncompromisingly hawkish, and would not rest till Bashar Assad is removed from power. And right there, in the first paragraph, Ajami leaps to a reflective stance to do one highly deceptive thing: to associate the Syrian subject with words that belong to the documented horrors of the Balkan conflict two decades previous. The words are: evidence of torture, starvation, systemic rape and slaughter, all of which were proven to have happened in the Balkans but not in Syria, and certainly not by the Assad forces.

The author goes on to lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of President Obama whom he has continually blamed for everything under the sun. He now speaks of “130,000 dead and millions displaced” to pin those numbers on Obama's chest for failing to remove Assad from power. Future historians will notice all that, and will most certainly want to trash the article before reading it to the end. If, however, someone continues to read it – perhaps out of curiosity – they will come to a point in the middle of it where they will make a discovery. They will see this: “The jihadists … more than 20,000 of them, from lands as far away as Russia's North Caucasus, have made their way to Syria.”

And this is where the future historians will scratch their heads and ask what these jihadists were after. They will want to consult another author to find the answer but in the meantime, they will take the following from the Ajami article: “For these holy warriors, the war is not so much about Syria as it is about the acquisition of a territorial base for their operations.” And the historians will ask how many jihadists died fighting against the Assad forces, how many died fighting each other, and how many civilians did they kill? How many of the 130,000 deaths that Ajami has quoted were they responsible for?

Instead of discovering the answer to these questions in the Ajami article, they will find this: “The jihadists come bearing the message that the world powers took no interest in the fate of the population, and the diplomacy of the past three years lent credence to their worldview.” What is he insinuating here? Is he trying to say that the jihadists would have been scared, and would have stayed home if Obama had only barked at them? Now is the time to trash this article even if there are other nuggets buried in them.

As to the Walter Mead article, it is about the turmoil in Ukraine of which the author says the following in the first paragraph: “The turmoil is forcing the EU and the U.S. to re-examine some deep assumptions...” And right there you can tell that Mead himself is doing some soul searching of his own, not merely trying to crucify President Obama which has heretofore been his penchant. Instead, he goes on to explain how the conflict started and how it evolved, always stressing its European roots which is what allowed him to avoid mentioning America or pinning the blame on its President.

He then does something that is truly the work of a scholar; the kind of work he is paid to do as a professor. He tells how and why – as seen from his vantage point – the world has come to where it is today. He says this: “Both Obama ... and the decision-making apparatus of the EU believe that the end of the Cold War meant an end to geopolitics … This helps explain why American diplomacy these days is about order and norms.” He expands on that point of view which is something that future historians will enjoy reading.

May this trend continue so that American scholars fully and positively participate in the debate that is unfolding on a worldwide basis.

Watch for the Cogs that Were Set in Motion

When Netanyahu told his people not to worry because he and his group know how to deal with the Americans, he was not kidding because the truth be told, the group he was talking about has a strategy that was put together a long time ago, and is passed on from generation to generation at which time it is modified to better handle the circumstances that keep evolving.

The way the strategy stands at this point in time is specifically tailored to deal with America given that this is the place from where Israel gets what is necessary to live on. It is also the place from where Israel gets what else it needs to maintain the belligerent attitude toward its neighbors, a trait that culture and religion obligate every Jew and Jewish group to live by. Thus, the way to deal with America comes out of Tel Aviv in the form of directives on a daily basis, and sent to all the cogs in the vast Jewish propaganda machine that spans the globe, but having a heavier than usual presence in America.

One important cog in the Jewish propaganda machine is Thomas L. Friedman whose cover is to write a column for the New York Times. This job is convenient for him because, unlike the cogs of a lower grade, he has access to the public whenever he wants to, and not only when someone is good enough to invite him on their show. You can tell what the latest directive from Tel Aviv has been from the response that Friedman is displaying, which happens to be the same response that other cogs have been displaying lately.

Believing that the way to deal with America is to be like a tree that bends with the wind, Netanyahu's group ordered all the cogs out there to be flexible when called upon to display the tendency. Sensing that Washington is serious about working out a deal that will end the Jewish occupation of Palestine, the Netanyahu group has told the cogs to be conciliatory toward its neighbors at this time. And this is what you see Tom Friedman do in his latest column: “Breakfast Before the MOOC” that was published in the New York Times on February 19, 2014.

Under the guise of telling a personal story about Prof. Hossam Haick – what he calls an Israeli Arab – which means a non-Jewish Palestinian living under occupation and forced to take up Israeli citizenship, Tom Friedman complies with the directive of being conciliatory toward the neighbors of Israel by amplifying the two main ingredients of the new propaganda trends. They come down to the following: Show the Arabs to be hungry for the goods things that Israel has which they don't have such as knowledge, and show Israel as willing to give the Arabs what they want but are not willing to take from the hand of a Jew.

The trouble for Friedman was that by the time he came close to the end of the article, he realized this was not going to fly. It used to be easy in the old days to say Israel was heavenly, the Arab countries were hellish, and if the Arabs behaved well, the Israelis may throw a few things in their direction that will make them happy. And Friedman would know that enough Americans will buy this crap. But this is not the case anymore because enough truth has filtered through the demonic censoring apparatus that was erected around America by the same people who run the Jewish propaganda machine. And now that enough people question what the likes of Friedman is telling them, he found it necessary to acknowledge this reality.

This is how he put it: “I know what some readers are thinking: nice bit of Israeli propaganda...” But that does not mean he can forget about his mission which is to go on saying this: “Israel is a country [that also] has its highs, like providing a tool for those in the Arabic-speaking world eager to grasp the new technologies reshaping the global economy.” What Friedman and those like him fail to grasp is that the readers are telling them to cut on the propaganda they do for Israel because they know what is going on in the Arab world. This is a world that is full of great universities teaching all sorts of courses including nanotechnology. They don't need Israel for that because Israel does not have a fraction of what they have.

Their students participate in worldwide competitions for best design or best built one thing or another, and they often win first or second prize. And you know something, my friend, whether held in America, Europe, South America or Asia, not once in all the time that I have followed these competitions did I see the name of an Israeli mentioned. Such names only appear in the Thomas L. Friedman columns on the pages of the New York Times.

What a shame that such heavenly minds should stay home when the time comes to compare themselves against those they want the American public to believe are inferior to them.

All the Things Which Are Fit to Print

The editors of the Wall Street Journal saw fit to print an article by that French Jew who calls himself philosopher of France if not philosopher of Europe; or maybe it is philosopher of the world, extending that to the galaxy if not the entire universe and beyond. But let it be known that if there is anything universal about this guy, Bernard-Henri Levy, it is that he has been a universal calamity for the human race.

He is the one that convinced France which then convinced NATO to intervene in the Libyan civil war, an act that turned out to be a bone-headed move that backfired as predicted, with the consequences that it unleashed a series of calamities in North Africa, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and still metastasizing. Instead of hiding his head in shame by covering it with a thick layer of oblivion, this same guy is now addressing Europe and others to tell them they ought to “Pull Out of Sochi to Protest the Kiev Massacre.” This happens to be the title of the article he wrote; the one that the Journal saw fit to print. It also came under the subtitle: “It is absurd, if not obscene, to pretend that there are two Putins” and was published on February 20, 2014.

Levy begins the article with what he undoubtedly believes is the greatest philosophical observation ever made by someone since the beginning of time: “Two images from Wednesday compete for space in people's minds.” He goes on to say he saw the “immaculate snow of Sochi” and “the bloodied snow around the barricades of Maidan, Kiev's Independence Square.” Which makes you wonder: Did they not have television in France for the past half century? That's all we have been seeing on this planet: One channel showing festivities and the other showing conflict. One channel showing serenity and the other showing war. One channel showing a placid landscape and the other showing blood flowing out the dead and dying bodies of civilians.

And then Levy does something that is so Levy-like, it turns your stomach. He writes this: “special units of the Ukrainian government, with Vladimir Putin's seal of approval, attacked the protesters there.” I don't know how they respond to this kind of assertions in France or in Europe, but I can see even small kids here in North America raising their hands to ask: How does he know that? Does he have any proof? Is there an email that went from Putin to Ukraine's special units? Did he intercept such email?

He then goes on to talk about all the bad things that Putin is supposed to have done in Syria and Chechnya, and without warning to the reader that he is shifting gear, talks about Spain in the 1930s, Central Europe in the 1940s and Poland in the 1980s which makes you ask the question: When was Putin born? But no, he says, he wasn't talking about Putin just now; he was talking about “democracy never defend[ing] its values.” And you ask yourself: What kind of a jumbled, disorganized mind is this? What kind of a philosopher is he?

He goes on to talk about this being an insult to the intelligence, and a breakage of the heart to which you say amen. It is certainly an insult to the intelligence to have elevated this thing to the level of a philosopher; and it breaks your heart to know that apparently this the best mind that modern France, the home of Descartes, is able to produce at this time. What happened to you, France?

Levy now asks the leaders of the European Union if their place is not “there in Kiev, in the flaming Maidan.” And he offers a suggestion to presidents Holland and Obama, telling them to urgently convene the UN Security Council to discuss the situation in Ukraine, and to present a formal notice to the regime there as well as to what he calls its Kremlin patron. And so you want to know: What kind of notice is that? And what do you think Putin will do with a notice of this nature, whatever the content will be?

And he makes a final plea to the Olympic committees of the nations in Sochi where he says the flame of the Olympic ideal was stolen by a thug and where the winning athletes bite medals that have the metallic taste of blood. You know something, my friend? The first thing I ever wrote creatively – which I did when I was a very small child – was French poetry. I loved abstractions but this stuff by Levy, if it means anything at all, it is way over my head.

Maybe that's what he meant to do because right after that he asks: “Do you not see the absurdity?” Had he stopped here, it would all have made sense; he is recreating the old “Theater of the Absurd.” But no, he does not stop here. He goes on to tell about two Putins, one with a valet and one without but with a 2 billion dollar check. That's it; I give up on this guy. I don't understand him anymore.

And finally, he says that for the sake of democracy, people should boycott the closing ceremony of the games which he calls the “Games that were the shame and defeat of Europe.”

It's getting worse; I better get out of here. As to you, France, I'm sorry that's all the philosophical prowess you can display to the world.