Friday, May 6, 2016

The Animals are talking, the Animals are talking

There is an old saying that goes like this: When dog bites man, that's not news. When man bites dog; that's news. By the same token when humans stage a show in which they imitate animals; that's not news. When animals stage an editorial sitting in which they imitate humans; that's news.

So how do you know that an animal is an animal imitating a human being? The answer is that you design an experiment. You get a dog and train it to bark at a certain human individual. You let that individual do a few things, such as try to trespass your property, and the dog will bark at him. You take the dog on a walk, having arranged to cross the human, and the dog will bark at him on sight. In a final test, you tell a child to pretend drowning in the swimming pool. The human appears on the scene and tries to rescue the child. Even then, the dog will bark to chase the human away. That's when you know that the dog is an animal.

And that, my friend, is how the Jews have trained the editors of the New York Times to write editorials. Their latest came under the title: “Egypt's Guidelines for Repression,” a piece that was published on May 6, 2016. They were trained to bark at the country's President, and they do so every time they get a glimpse of him.

This time they admit at the end of the editorial that “it is not clear whether Mr. Sisi has full control over the political repression, abduction, torture and other human-rights violations ascribed to the security services.” So you would think they must have started the piece the way that a human being would. But no, that's not how they started the editorial. Here is how they barked at the first sight of the man they were programmed to hate: “President el-Sisi of Egypt appears to be running an incompetent regime”.

Whoa! How bad is that? What happened that would prompt a large newspaper half a world away to thunder such a powerful bark? You really want to know what it was? Okay, I'll tell you what it was. It was this: “On Tuesday, the Interior Ministry accidentally released confidential guidelines...” Wow! Can you believe there has been a leak – an accidental one at that – out of a department? Where else in the world but “incompetent” Egypt would something as serious and grave and dangerous as that happen? Never heard of it till now. Well, like they say, there is a first for everything, and Egypt had to be the first.

But wait. That's not even the full story. Look how the sentence continues “...to stop critical reporting by the news media, including instructions not to admit mistakes and a proposed rule to stop all coverage related to the murder of a student.” That's it, man. That tells you this government is more than incompetent. I mean, if you're going to be a repressive regime, you don't instruct your people not to admit mistakes; you tell them to lie and lie as would a pathological liar running to be President of the United States. That's how to be a respected liar.

But seriously, how can the editorial dogs at the New York Times make such a big fuss out of so little, and then end their piece with a plea that's as consequential as this: “It's time for President Obama to make clear to Egypt's rulers that the United States will not continue pumping military aid into a regime at war with its own people”? Surely, even a dog would realize that the gap between telling someone not to admit mistakes, and a regime being at war with one's own people, is so wide – the reaction that the dogs propose is not warranted by the action that was committed by a human being, however imperfect he may have been.

And that's where the rest of the piece tells you what goes on inside the editorial doghouse of the New York Times. You don't even need to see a leaked memo to realize what “hidden” forces are active in that sorry place. Look at this: “The leak offered evidence of the government's brutal and destructive approach to the wave of discontent sweeping Egypt.” So you want to know what wave of discontent, that is. And they tell you this:

“The trigger for the current protests was the transfer of two uninhabited islands to Saudi Arabia … the transfer provoked a furious reaction from Egyptians who believed the government was peddling Egyptian land for Saudi dollars. The demonstrations led to arrests and confrontation with journalists who rallied in Cairo demanding the dismissal of the interior minister”.

That's it? That's all there is to it? People demonstrate against an action of the government. The police try to contain the demonstrators, a scuffle ensues, and people are arrested, among them a journalist or two. The journalists demand the resignation of the minister in charge. And what happens? The New York dogs turn on their megaphones and bark. The problem is not in Egypt; it is in New York.