The Joys Of Electro-Economics

Ideas an American President should mull over on his way to China.

A great deal of the knowledge I have acquired in economics happened because I decided one day to compare the flow of money inside an economic set-up of which I knew very little with the flow of electrons inside an electronic circuit of which I knew quite a bit. Thus began my passion to twin the set-up of one with the circuit of the other and decipher the mysteries of economics by analyzing the equations of electronics. And I must admit I still find the exercise to be pure joy every time I dip into it.

Interestingly enough, the comparison also helps to clarify the misconceptions that arise in both fields. For example, the misconception that students of electronics envisage most frequently before they get into the course concerns the concept of amplification. Likewise, the misconception that laymen envisage most frequently in economics concerns the multiplier effect. And when we compare amplification with the multiplier effect, we see how closely the two concepts parallel each other.

Most students begin the course believing that to amplify means to take a small bundle of energy and make it big. Because this is a false notion that has the potential to create serious trouble later on, the teacher must erase it from the mind of the students early on and thus eliminate the source of a big headache down the road. And the best way to do this is to replace the notion with the correct definition of amplification using a visual example.

Here is how I used to do it. I would ask the students to count the number of light bulbs in the classroom and multiply by the wattage of each bulb so as to find the total consumption of energy. Let us say they find it to be 1,500 watts which is the equivalent of 2 horsepower. I tell them that an athlete pedaling a stationary bicycle attached to an electric generator produces about 100 watts of electricity. This means it would take 15 athletes to generate enough electricity to light up this classroom. I then ask the students to guess how much energy a single finger can generate and they correctly guess 1 watt or less.

I now walk to the light switch and use my finger to flick it up and down a few times so as to flicker the lights on and off. I explain that with 1 watt of finger power, I was able to control 1,500 watts of light. And I underscore that this is a demonstration of the concept of amplification. I further explain that I was able to do this amplification not because my finger generated the energy of 15 people or 2 horses but because the hydroelectric company supplied this energy and that my finger only controlled or modulated the flickering of the light. The lesson to be learned here is that electronic gadgets need an outside source of power such as a battery or a wall socket to feed them and do the work they are expected to do. This supply is separate from the small power that modulates it inside the gadget. The two powers remain separate at all time; and even though we call the outcome of the operation amplification, the small power does not transform into the larger power. In more general terms, it also means that no small bundle of energy can ever be turned into a large bundle – so say the unbreakable laws of Thermodynamics.

This brings us to the Power Law. The power (W) in electricity is measured in watts, and it is made of two parts. There is the current (I) which is measured in amperes, and there is the potential (V) which is measured in volts. The product of the two yields the power as expressed by the equation:

W = I x V

We now draw a parallel between the power law of electricity and the GDP law of economics. We make the Money supply the analogue of the current and call it (M). We make the Velocity of money the analogue of the voltage and call it (V). It turns out that the GDP is the product of the Money supply and the Velocity of money as expressed by the equation:

GDP = M x V

Notice the resemblance between those two equations. The GDP being equal to the quantity of Money multiplied by its Velocity, we see that we can increase the GDP by increasing M or increasing V. However, the Central Bank and the Treasury of a country control the money supply and they are usually reluctant to increase it because the move can lead to inflation. This leaves the velocity of money as the only tool by which to grow the GDP safely. But the trouble here is that for some reason, the people sometimes prefer to maintain their economic activity at a low level or even decrease it. In doing this, they slow down the velocity of money; and there seems to be very little we can do to counter that. Or is there?

To study what motivates people to engage in economic activity at one level or another, we examine Ohm’s law in electricity and see if we can draw a parallel between it and Economics. Ohm’s Law is written like this:

V = I x R
Voltage = Current x Resistance
This is the Resistance of the circuit to conduct electrons.

Its analogue in economics would be this:

V = M x K
Velocity = Money supply x Keenness
This is the Keenness of the people to spend money.

Note that even though Resistance and Keenness are opposites in the vernacular of every day speech, they are interchangeable in mathematics depending on the value that is taken by the variable K. For example, K in this context can be one of three things. It can be (a) greater than 1 thus indicating that the people are keen to spend money or (b) equal to 1 thus indicating that the people are neutral about spending money or (c) less than 1 thus indicating that the people are not keen to spend money. This last part means that the people resist the idea of spending money which is analogous to a circuit that resists conducting electrons. As for the value of K, it can be determined by creating an index that tracks same store sales and other such indicators.

We see from the last equation that the velocity of money (V) can be made to increase by increasing the money supply (M) or increasing the keenness of the people to spend (K). However, having determined previously that increasing the money supply can cause inflation; we try to avoid doing that and we work on K alone. To put things succinctly, Keenness increases the Velocity of money which grows the GDP without increasing the Money supply that tends to create inflation. Neat, isn’t it! But how do we increase the keenness of the people to spend?

To do that, we make use of the amplifier/multiplier effect. In electronics, we use the vacuum tube or the transistor to amplify. These are sophisticated switches that do not need a finger to turn on and off but need a small signal at the input to do that. This signal modulates the large power that is taken from the wall socket or is supplied by a battery. Once modulated, the large power appears at the output as an amplified version of the small input signal. Now, every amplifier has a factor by which it amplifies, and we use the Greek letter Beta to represent this value. In the function of the amplifier, we find that the power at the output (Po) is equal to the power at the input (Pi) multiplied by Beta, and we express all this with the following equation:

Po = Pi x Beta

But where do you find the Beta of economics? Well, I define this Beta in two parts (1) having the ability to motivate people to engage in economic activities and (2) giving the people the financial means to engage in such activities. Indeed, a healthy level of economic activity is generated when the people are presented with a product or a service they want, and when they have the money to buy it with or at least have access to reasonable credit. Usually, the invention of a new product or the creation of a new service starts the ball rolling in this direction. Thus, innovation and the trust that creditors have in their borrowers are responsible for causing the increase in economic activity and they are what gives Beta a high value.

But we must be careful how we interpret what we see here by being aware of the following: The growth in GDP does not happen because we create something out of nothing; it happens when we produce what the buyers want at a price they can afford. The mistake that people make at times is that they rely on past accomplishments to splurge now in the belief that they are not paying a price for what they get. This leads to the formation of bubbles and to economic crises at which point the people realize they were not amplifying something small into something big but were living off the accomplishments of their ancestors and off the future toil of their descendants.

The second mistake that people make is that they neglect to take full advantage of the multiplier effect. They seem to forget that even though they cannot transform something small into something big, they can modulate what is already there and make it work better. To do this, they need to take stock of the material resources and the human capital they have, assess their own potential to innovate and get into the business of adding value to that which is valueless or has a small value. They can do this by gaining confidence in their own abilities and by restoring the trust they used to have in each other. This done, they will start taking risk again and gladly extend credit to each other. The result will be that every dollar anyone of them borrows from the bank will be matched by several dollars worth of credit they will extend to each other. And this is the multiplier effect that will cause the GDP to grow beyond the nominal value of the money borrowed from the bank, thus giving the economy a higher rate of growth without causing inflation.

But what exactly is the potential to innovate? To innovate does not necessarily mean to invent something that no one has seen before. It can be something that your economy never had or maybe had it once then lost to competition. When you bring this thing back to your consumers, you will have innovated because the result to your economy will be the same as inventing something completely new. In fact, what is urgently needed in America today is the availability of American-made goods that people are accustomed to buying at discount stores and the low end types. These would be the durable and non-durable goods that sell at a reasonable price. The American people spend a good part of their disposable income on such goods which are now imported from abroad. And what the people do not do is stay up at night to fantasize about innovations they wish their fellow Americans would produce when they cannot even imagine what these things would look like. What they fantasize about are jobs that the old industries might create to offer them one at a salary that will allow them to buy what they produce.

In conclusion, what the government spends to encourage the invention of futuristic products is a waste of public money. Instead, the government should encourage the revival of the old industries that will produce what the people want now. But if the government still wants to dabble in the business of innovation, it should bear in mind that only the loafers who know how to live off government handouts will get their hands on this money. As for the nerds who come up with real and useful innovations, they do not go after government money because they do not need it, and if they did, they would not know how to get it out of a government bureaucracy. Instead, the nerds rely on the venture capitalists who have the wherewithal to look for new ideas and the incentive to separate the worthy from the unworthy.

Given that productive nerds are who they are because they do not waste their time learning how to live off the government handouts or how to protect themselves against the scheming loafers, what they need from the government are rules with teeth that will protect them from the loafers who will get the subsidies from the government then whip up schemes to steal their ideas too. This practice is widespread, it is sickening and it must come to an end.

Do the right thing, America, and you’ll restore your old industrial glory; chase a useless dream and you’ll construct a fool’s paradise. So says Electro-Economics to which I say amen.

She Taught Me The Best Economics

There is talk in America these days about the wisdom of including a public option in a healthcare bill that is being considered for the nation. The concern centers on the impact that such option will have on the capitalist system. Well, the following example may shed some light on the subject and perhaps clarify a few points.

For a reason I cannot explain, I took interest in what is sometimes called the science of economics at an early age. I started formulating theories in my teens which I thought were big secrets that no one knew anything about. Then something happened that hit me in two contradictory ways at the same time. I discovered from reading books that my secrets were no secret at all because other people had discovered them before I was born. This had the effect of elating me and saddening at the same time. I was elated because the discovery told me I was on the right track, but I was saddened because I realized that I was not the first to entertain those ideas. No matter; I continued to think about the subject and to formulate new theories but now, I checked to see if someone had gone there before me. At times I hoped I would find that someone was there thus confirming that I was walking in the footsteps of some historical figure. At other times, however, I hoped to discover that no one had been there thus making me the holder of a great big secret. Like they say: Go figure! But remember, I was only a kid so don’t hold it against me whatever you figure.

All the while, I had an insatiable appetite to learn something new about everything, a habit I maintained throughout my life. Thus, even after I started working, I took formal courses in one subject or another or I learned from books on my own. My life was truly one of continuous learning but with all the passion I had for Economics, this was the one subject in which I never took a formal course. For a long time, I tried not to think about the reason why I stayed away from taking a course in Economics when it was so obvious I liked the subject very much. I then came up with the theory that I was afraid to meet a bad teacher who would make me hate the subject; and there may have been some truth to that. But there could also have been another reason; it could be that deep down, I thought I knew the subject so well I did not need a lesson. After all, I was taking lots of math courses, something that gave me tools to crunch the numbers and manipulate the equations, and I was taking lots of physics courses, something that gave me models of electronic circuitry by which to analogize the flow of money in what I came to visualize as economic circuits. Like they say, all you have to do to see the truth is to follow the money. And the money was flowing like electrons obeying the same sort of laws as Ohm’s Law, the Power Law and the laws of amplification.

Alas, this manifestation of self confidence was shaken one day when a woman taught me a lesson in economics I could not have learned in school, gathered from reading books or deduced by the power of reasoning because experience alone could do what she did. By now you must be guessing this is a long story that requires a flashback to the beginning, and you would be correct. So let me start from when I retired from teaching and launched a small newspaper in a town just outside the Canadian city of Toronto.

For most of its history this town had one newspaper dominating the market and tolerating no competition. Over the years, several people started a rival newspaper but were destroyed by the ruthless behavior of the family that owned the existing newspaper, and I was warned by those who enjoyed reading my column that I shall be forced out sooner or later. To understand this part, you must know that the town newspaper was affiliated with the biggest publishing corporation in the country, a relationship that gave it enormous clout. The family that owned the town newspaper used that clout to bend everyone to its will including the town council and the managers in charge of the local offices of the federal and provincial governments. But more importantly, the family had in its pocket the people who bought advertising space for the big companies whether they were local companies or out of town ones.

Because the money I earned came from selling advertising, I was at the mercy of that other newspaper. At times I managed to get big retailers such as the car dealerships to advertise with me but most of my income came from the small stores that did not bother to advertise anywhere before my coming to town. And the reason why they did not advertise was that they were never approached by a media salesperson. In fact, the owners of the dominant newspaper could not care less about the small stores until I launched my paper at which time they hired salespeople to counter what I was doing. These people traced my steps, going behind me and visiting the stores every time one of them placed an ad in my paper. And they made them deals “they could not refuse” in every mafia sense that this phrase connotes.

First, they offered the stores bigger ads for less money if they dropped me. When this did not work, they resorted to other activities, some of which were downright criminal such as making threats, engaging in blackmail, mounting conspiracies and so on. And all of this was known to the police and to the politicians at the municipal, provincial and federal levels but no one discussed it openly or did anything to put an end to it. In fact, these people who were the government and were responsible for the maintenance of law and order were afraid to even talk at length about the subject. They treated the matter as a reality we must all live with, and they tried to talk me into learning how to get along. They had a weird notion as to what journalism was about and I could not accept it.

Still, not everyone in town was frightened. One store that regularly advertised in my paper was situated in a strip mall and was owned by an attractive young woman. When things were quiet during certain hours of the day, the other store owners in the same mall would go to her store, stand there and have a chat. This was a good time for me to go see her as well because I could, in a single trip, sell her an ad and sell two or three more to the other store owners.

After running her ads, I would invoice her as I did everyone else and would receive her check almost immediately. The other advertisers in the mall would also pay me fairly quickly as opposed to most other clients who took at least a month to pay. One day I was greatly surprised when I received an envelop from her containing more than a check. In fact, the check itself was a surprise in that it was double the amount. And with it came my own invoice with a scribbled note at the bottom of it saying: “Please send another invoice with the right amount.”

My immediate reaction was to pick up the phone to call the woman but I froze before dialing. I thought for a moment what she was trying to say to me but my brain could not generate one sensible idea. I quickly dismissed the possibility that she may have a romantic interest in me because there are better ways to communicate such sentiment. Besides, she had more eligible candidates than me, including a husband that seemed better suited to her age. I put down the phone without dialing and went to see her instead.

When I got there she explained that she knew what was going on in this wretched town. She could see that some of the stores which used to advertise in my paper do so no more. She knew I lost them not because the ads failed to generate sales but because of the pressure that the other paper was putting on them. She got several visits herself from someone representing that other paper as did all the stores in the mall. To make a long story short, she wanted to keep me in business as long as possible because it pays her to do so. And she was going to put her money where her mouth was, hence the big check that she sent to me.

I thanked her for her confidence in my paper but she quickly snapped back that there was more to it than the sales I was generating for her. Surprised, I asked “like what?” She said that as long as she was advertising with me, the other paper will give her bigger and bigger ads at a lower and lower price. She was now getting half a page, four color ads for the price of a business card, two-color ads. Thus, she felt she owed me some of the money she was saving. And because she wanted this thing to go on for as long as possible, she was going to do her part to keep me in business. She could not promise that the other stores in the mall will do the same thing but at least, they will not cut me off despite the savage pressure that was heaped on them. She reflected for a moment then added they just don’t know how to take advantage of the situation like she does. With a smirk on her face, she leaned over the counter and pretended to whisper to me that no one will object if I raised my prices a little. She winked and nodded as if to say I must not tell anyone this was her idea.

The lesson I learned from this woman was that people will navigate between fear and greed using all the talent and the abilities they possess to take full advantage of a given situation. They will want their business to survive and will try to maximize their profit by playing one competitor against the other. If necessary, they will subsidize one competitor to keep the other honest, and will stop the subsidy when it ceases to deliver. And no book or classroom could have taught me this lesson which I regard as being in the best tradition of the capitalist system.

Applying this lesson to the question of including a public option in a healthcare plan, I expect to see the same sort of scenario play itself out. That is, the public option will stand as the competitor that will keep the insurance companies honest. But the moment the people will determine that holding the feet of the insurance companies to the fire is costing them more than it saves them, they will opt out of it and go with the insurance companies. This will be a decision for them to make and for the insurance companies to earn. And the conclusion I derive from this example is that to include a public option in a healthcare plan is to do things in the best tradition of the capitalist system. Any concern about this point should be seen as baseless.

Now, let me say a word about the attractive woman at the mall. She got pregnant and sold the store because she wanted to be free to raise a family. I am sure that she and her husband are now raising a wonderful family. As for my paper, I lasted in the business longer than anyone had anticipated, and folded when I reached the retirement age I had set for myself. The trek was brutal but was worth it.

The Chosen And The Exceptional

The decade of the Nineteen Sixties was one of war on many fronts for the American people. Parallel to the external war that was Vietnam, the various races were battling it internally as were the genders, the economic classes and the different ideological groups. Now that four decades have passed, we continue to see that the forces which have shaped history then shape it still today. So pivotal were those years, it is not surprising to see thousands of books and articles being written on the subject from a multitude of angles, and natural to think that thousands more will be written in the years to come from angles yet to be fathomed.

The interest I acquired regarding this part of history was shaped by what I had to endure living in Canada next door to the United States. Like everyone else I developed an angle from which I viewed the subject and the point of view through which I now express it. Also, Canada has served as the soft underbelly of the United States where, at times, ideas that were potentially controversial were discussed before being transferred to the American marketplace of ideas. Once there, they were adapted to the American condition, were tackled with energy and debated with vigor. For this reason, Canada was chosen by the Jewish Establishment to be the place where they perfected an art that has a most unique nature about it. Indeed, it was here in Canada that they perfected the art of making a country transform itself into the proverbial suicide bomber. To earn this distinction, a country had to develop the will to ruin itself in one form or another to advance the causes of Israel and the Jews. As strange as this may seem, the Jewish Establishment succeeded in psyching the Americans into a state where such a feat was made possible. It took years of spinning the daily events to make the Americans believe that their causes were those of Israel therefore their military was created to serve Israel. The tendency for jovial self immolation then followed naturally.

Those who missed the genesis of this drive at the dawn of the Nineteen Sixties when John Kennedy first proposed the transfer of warplanes to Israel could not have missed it when his brother, Robert Kennedy advocated the same thing less than a decade later. And this was the time when the force of the Jewish drive to transform America was beginning to make itself felt. The drive intensified in 1967 when Israel launched the 6 year war with a Pearl Harbor style blitz on the Egyptian defense installations. After the dust of this attack settled, it gradually became clearer by the day that Israel had dug a grave for itself in the Sinai and was getting buried deeper into it as the war of attrition was packing fury. Indeed, time was Israel’s enemy and the worldwide Jewish Establishment became convinced that absent a massive help from the outside, Israel will perish with a bang or a whimper or both as the rabbis used to warn it will happen. Six years later, the Egyptian counterpunch of 1973 showed how astute that observation was.

While the war of attrition was taking its toll on the Israelis in the Sinai so was the Vietnam War on the Americans in Asia. And the rabbis had no choice but to advocate the end of the Vietnam War, something they called for not to save American or Vietnamese lives but to free America’s military of the burden and to redeploy the boys and girls to serve the needs of Israel which the rabbis knew will only expand with time.

Fast forward to the current situation where America is embroiled in two wars in the Middle East and where voices are demanding that she be readied to move against Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Lebanon and a few more, all of which loom large in Israel’s fantasy. Here we see the extent to which the rabbis have succeeded in molding a suicidal America, one that is prepared to die a thousand deaths to serve the causes of Israel and to magnify her glory. If Usma Bin Laden could count on his boys as much as the Jewish Establishment can count on the American institutions, he could become king of the Universe in the blink of an eye. The sad fact is that the US Congress would cause America to commit suicide for the sake of Israel and the Jewish causes more readily than a naïve boy would die for a Bin Laden cause. If this is a sample of America’s exceptionalism then the people of America should stop singing God Bless America because even He could not save her now let alone bless her. Instead, the Americans would do themselves a favor to learn anew how to whistle Dixie.

Just think what it would take to make a diabolic scheme as substantial as that succeed. You would have to work on all levels at the same time because you must blur every distinction that may exist between America and Israel. To do this, you fashion the principle that the two entities stand as one but stand apart from the rest of the world. You argue that the resources of each one complement the resources of the other; and when the two get together, they fill the needs of each other so well they attain self sufficiency and need no one else. You speak passionately about them being above everyone and stress the point that they have the moral obligation to mend everyone else’s deficiency. To justify all of that and to explain it in a manner that cannot be challenged, the rabbis have come up with the idea that the Jews were chosen by God and the Americans were an exceptional lot to begin with. Now, given all of this, I ask if it is too far fetched to imagine that someday everyone will be asked to sing: God bless Israel and save America too but only to protect Israel. If and when things get this far, will there be someone left to push back with the refrain: Look Away! Sail Away! But No Way! Canaan Land.

There are literally millions of examples to choose from that would illustrate these notions but the Wall Street Journal has a knack for concentrating a number of them in each edition so I choose the October 18, 2009 edition from where I pick two examples. The first is an article written by John Bolton under the title: “Israel, the U.S. and the Goldstone Report” and the subtitle: “Joining the U.N. Human Rights Council was a mistake Obama should correct.” Now, when it comes to giving someone like me what I look for, John Bolton has no rival because he has a superior ability to lay platinum eggs studded with diamonds like you won’t believe. Look how the following jewel, taken from his article, blurs the distinction between America and Israel and blends their interests as if they were one and the same entity:

“The Goldstone Report has important implications for America. In the U.N., Israel frequently serves as a surrogate target in lieu of the U.S., particularly concerning the use of military force pre-emptively or in self-defense. Accordingly, U.N. decisions on ostensibly Israel-specific issues can lay a predicate for subsequent action against, or efforts to constrain, the U.S. Mr. Goldstone's recommendation to convoke the International Criminal Court is like putting a loaded pistol to Israel's head—or, in the future, to America's … the Goldstone Report will merely be the beginning, next time perhaps with Washington as its unmistakable target.”

Need I say more on this point? I don’t think so but there is more to the article because the subtitle comes next and it carries within it plenty of juice. Here, Bolton tells Obama to correct the mistake that America made when she joined the Human Rights Council. But this is not the first time that Bolton has labored to “correct” a mistake. He did it when the world saw fit to equate zionism with racism so he labored to have the decision reversed. The thing is that he did so because he believed that zionism was not as bad as racism when people of good will everywhere knew that zionism was worse than racism, worse even than Nazi-like racism.

And here is this argument: Zionism being the supremacy of a race called for by God, it is an absolute that cannot be challenged by another race whose claim to supremacy could only be derived from earthly accomplishments which, sooner or later, will be surpassed by the accomplishments of another race. Thus, if racial supremacy is considered to be evil then zionism must be the most absolute of all evils, and to call it racism is to whitewash it. In effect then, while not realizing the consequences of what he was doing, John Bolton was doing the world a favor as he labored to get the decision reversed. John Bolton did something good despite himself because the zionist ideology must be labeled what it is: the wellspring from which gushes every evil inflicted on mankind. It is a continuous crime against humanity that shows no sign of mellowing … and this is a far cry from the simple racism it was thought to be.

Time now for the second article in the Wall Street Journal. It was written by Emanuele Ottolehghi and titled: “Rename the Streets for Nada”. This was the name of a young woman shot during a demonstration in Iran. The writer is suggesting that the government of Teheran was responsible for her death and that the world should exploit the tragedy to embarrass Iran. And how does he propose to do that? He wants the streets on which there is an Iranian embassy to be renamed Nada.

But there is a problem with this idea because it is a moral hazard that even a child would find too childish to toy with. If implemented by one party, the idea will give everyone the right to use it to their own end, something that will reduce the civility in diplomatic relations. In fact, Israel has an embassy in several countries, among them Arab and Muslim ones that view Israel’s behavior in Palestine as being far worse than anything the Iranian regime has done. What if the people in these countries decided to call the streets on which stands an Israeli embassy by the name of a Palestinian “martyr” murdered by the Israelis? What if every country in the world began to use this game as an instrument of dialogue or use it as a tool with which to exert pressure on other countries? The list of unanswered questions goes on.

Furthermore, this is not an original idea. It was suggested during the years when Anatoli Sharansky was jailed in the former Soviet Union that the street in Washington where stood the Soviet embassy be renamed Sharansky. The man in question lives in Israel now and he is advocating a form of ethnic cleansing which he says will advance the cause of human rights. I do not know if the suggestion to rename the street was implemented in Washington or anywhere else but I know that several places in New York were renamed Sharansky this or Sharansky that. Now I ask what will happen if someone powerful in New York became so riled by Sharansky’s inferior grasp of the concept of Human Rights, he or she decides to reverse the situation and rename those places for Palestinian martyrs? Will the Jewish organizations then bellyache the anti-Semitism refrain and demand a reversal of the reversal?

Of course, no one but a Jew would think up a scheme like the one suggested by Emanuele Ottolehghi and there is a reason why. It is that no one else would come up with such an idea and stop there without reflecting on the possible consequences. And the consequences in this case are that the Golden Rule will be triggered because people will want to respond in kind. Everyone on Planet Earth knows that when you give yourself a right to do something, you give that same right to everyone else. Everyone knows it, that is, except the Jew who believes he has a special relationship with God, one that exempts him from the Golden Rule. And this is where the journey to the next holocaust begins as it has begun again and again and again. Four thousand years of this kind of nonsense and they are still at it. When will they learn to say never again and mean it for once?

The Murky Ruse That Keeps On Tricking

The talk these days centers on the question: Is President Barack Obama tough enough? And the answer is that it all depends what you mean. You can be resolutely tough and your stand may lead to a good outcome or you can fake a tough stand and you’ll probably get nowhere. Being a lawyer, Mr. Obama knows that when you have a good case, you tend to be resolutely tough wherein you’ll have a good chance at getting what is owed to you in a dignified way. But when you have a bad case you tend to bluff your way hoping to intimidate the opponent and perhaps confuse the judge but the gamble may not work. What follows is the tale of a real life situation which illustrates these points.

As per habit Israel has warned that if the world holds her accountable for the acts of terror she inflicts on the unarmed people of Palestine, such move will affect the peace process in the Middle East. Despite the fact that this is blackmail as glaring as blackmail can ever get, America fell for the ruse whose real intent is to prevent peace from happening not to speed up its advent. The occasion for pulling the ruse this time is the UN Report on Gaza which was prepared by Justice Richard Goldstone. The work clearly demonstrates that Israel’s behavior has set humanity back hundreds of years which is what Alan Dershowitz had promised us on a previous occasion.

Indeed, Dershowitz said that Israel reserves the right to commit every crime that anyone has ever committed, and Israel lived up to the promise once again as she has always done. This time Israel did it by killing Palestinian women, children and men indiscriminately then killing the animals on which they fed so as to starve the people she did not kill immediately. In doing this, the Israelis imitated the crimes committed by the early settlers in North America, those who wiped out the buffalo on which the natives fed to starve the ones they did not kill immediately.

And now Israel says that to question her actions by taking the Goldstone Report to the Security Council of the United Nations will make her torpedo the Middle East talks which aim at making peace with the Palestinians. Well, this too is a ruse that observers of the Middle East are familiar with. The fact is that the Israelis do not want a peace treaty with the Palestinians because it will legally and permanently define Israel’s borders. What they want instead is to continue living with the murky state of no-war-no-peace which allows them to nibble at Palestinian territory. They call this nibbling natural growth and they plan to keep on growing like a cancer till they chew up what is left of the Palestinian body. In the meantime, they will pretend to negotiate so as to see what concessions everyone is willing to make then work on the Americans to get them those concessions without giving anything in return. This is the Talmudic way of showing how smart you are; if smart enough to be called a rabbi even if you’re not one.

Incapable of understanding how the murky world of satanic talmudism works, the Americans fail to see that playing Israel’s game has the effect of turning the White House, the State Department, the Treasury and the Pentagon over to Alan Dershowitz and to all those like him. As for the US Congress, no one needs to worry about this one anymore as it has been chewed up by the Dershowitz Doctrine which metastasized in its bosom like a virulent cancer. If the Americans can be made to understand any of this, they may finally do what they ought to do. And to get an idea what that is, I relate an experience I once had to live through.

One Sunday morning long ago I received a phone call at home from a student I had while teaching at a “tough school” where the administration was more backward than the students were hopeless. I had left my job by mutual agreement having gotten ill and deciding it was time to do something less stressful than teach. The student that called me said he was speaking on behalf of the other students in my former two classes because they felt they were drowning without me teaching them, and they wanted me to help. Of all the ideas discussed, the caller suggested that I open a school and take in the 40 students or so in the two classes.

But that was a private school where students who did not make it in the regular system went to learn a trade. Their parents were paying as much as 7,000 dollars – now worth 12,000 -- to give their kids one last chance at making it in life. The amount of money involved was so big I was troubled by what the move will do to the parents who were paying and to the school that will lose the income if I took the students away. Besides, the students had a contract with the school and I was not sure how this will impact me legally. Thus, I needed the advice of a lawyer on that Sunday morning before deciding on anything. I told the student I’ll call him back as soon as I have something further to say on the subject.

I looked for a lawyer in the Yellow Pages and made a number of phone calls but only a handful answered. One who seemed to have what I was looking for in a lawyer took the time to put me at ease and I appreciated that. I went to see him in his office the next day as he was at a ten minutes walk from where I lived. Eventually this man became not only my lawyer but also my friend as he turned out to be a good human being. His name was Ralph Cohen, a well known figure in Montreal and apparently the friend of everyone. When he died, most radio and television stations in town mentioned his passing and many people missed him including me.

When I went to see Ralph the first time, I noticed how easily he could make things happen as he seemed to know everyone in town. He picked up the phone and started to work on the file in my presence. Two days later he had done all that was necessary to protect me and the students, had registered the corporation under which I could operate a private school and had found the space where to open the school. Thanks to him I was in business before the end of the week and everything went well. Things continued to go well for two more years till the time came to renew the covenant for the space I was leasing.

Unlike the first time when the lease was two pages long, this time it was made of something like 60 pages. There were a few things in it I did not like so I negotiated the changes whereby I made a few concessions to obtain a few from the landlord. The back-and-forth took a number of days while I was discussing the renewal of the license for the school with the Ministry of Education which, among other things, mandated a valid lease. The Ministry set a deadline for me to meet and the landlord came to know about it. His behavior began to change and I felt he was now dragging his feet. I got this feeling because every version he presented to me after each round of negotiations contained the concessions that I had made but none of what he made to obtain my concessions. I deduced that he wanted to take the negotiations up to the last minute then force his version of the covenant on me. It was a murky sort of game that rang bells with me.

To guard against the possibility of being cornered, I looked for another place to which I could move the school at a moment’s notice if worse came to worse. Luckily, a private school where I once taught had moved to another space and the old place was now vacant. I spoke with its landlord and explained that I may have to move at a moment’s notice. He said I could do anything I wanted because his nephew was once in my class when I was teaching in that very space. The boy had graduated, was now working and was making good money when the expectation was that he will lead a life of truancy, drugs and maybe jail. The landlord felt he owed me one and was eager to pay me back.

As I feared, things got steadily worse with the other landlord the more that we approached the Ministry’s deadline. I gathered the students who were a different batch from the one that started me off two years previous, and I told them what was happening. I expected them to protest the disruption but they surprised me by doing something nice. Some of them had parents who owned a business and they assured me they had the trucks and the manpower to move the school to the new place in two hours or less. All I had to do was give the word.

The day came and I had not signed the covenant so the students who were in their twenties and able bodied brought the trucks, their friends, some of their parents’ employees and they started to move the school. The landlord called the police and we had a three person conversation: the officer, the landlord and myself. The landlord wanted the officer to arrest me for moving out illegally. I said I was paid up to the end of the month which was days away, I had no lease to keep me beyond that date, I had a civil dispute with the landlord concerning the new lease and this was not a criminal matter. If something criminal was committed, it was the act of calling the police on a false pretense which is what the landlord did. If someone should be arrested, it will have to be the landlord. The officer gave the man a dirty look and the landlord walked away without saying another word.

A few days after I moved out, I started receiving letters from the old landlord asking me to pay for this or that, something I was inclined to do to put the matter behind me even though I did not owe the money. But knowing the character of the landlord, I decided not to respond right away so as not to get on a slippery slope with him early on and be surprised again and again with new demands. But the landlord precipitated the thing when he sent me a letter threatening legal action if I did not pay within 5 days. This is when I decided to go see my good friend Ralph Cohen.

Now picture this. The landlord was the son of a prominent Jewish businessman in Montreal who started small and built up an empire of stores, real estate and shopping centers. He was of the same age as Ralph Cohen and the two had lived in the same neighborhood while growing up. They went to the same schools, attended the same synagogues and were invited to the same Bar Mitzvahs. The son who was my landlord regarded Ralph as his uncle and Ralph reciprocated the sentiment. This reality alone gave me mixed feelings about the wisdom of taking the case to Ralph but I had no choice but to count on him diffusing the situation so I took the chance.

Walking into his office I wondered how this soft spoken, gentle human being will divide his loyalties and be fair to both sides. I soon got my answer when, upon hearing what happened, Ralph did something I never saw him do before; he expressed genuine anger. He became angry with the landlord especially that the latter called the police instead of asking him to intercede. Then, Ralph Cohen my lawyer instructed me not to pay this man one red cent and further told me to write back to him and say so. Now Ralph let me in on a little secret; he said I should end the letter by advising that if the landlord takes legal action, I shall oppose it vigorously. What this meant in the jargon of legalese, said my friend, is that I shall counter sue. After all, as he carefully explained to me, I sustained damages due to the landlord’s delaying tactics so much so that I was forced to move out just hours before the deadline set by the Ministry of Education. As instructed, I sent that letter to the old landlord and he never bothered me again.

There is a lesson here for the Americans: When you deal with characters like these, the mistake you must avoid making is to believe that you can get on a slippery slope with them, catch their hand in time and pull them up before they reach the level of the gutter. What will happen instead is that they will drag you down to the gutter which, you must understand, is their natural habitat. Thus, what you must do is act decisively against their maneuverings right from the start so as to maintain control of the situation throughout your engagement with them.

To this end, my advice is this: Let the Goldstone Report go to the Security Council and vote for it. Halt all cooperation with Israel until she stops the settlement activities and begins to dismantle some. But if Israel insists on building new settlements, treat her like the rogue state that she is and implement the sort of sanctions that will hurt. If this does not work, start bombing.

This is what it means to be tough the useful way. If and when America takes this stance, the winners will be the people of America, of Palestine and of Israel. And the whole world will be a better place for it.

Gross Domestic Production & Consumption

No two economies are the same because no two sets of circumstances in which an economy operates are identical. It is therefore pointless to measure all economies with the same yardstick without taking into account local peculiarities. To be specific, the index we call Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has proved inadequate when utilized to measure the absolute value of an economy; even less adequate when utilized to judge the different parts of an economy’s balance sheet. And what is unfortunate about the approach we now take when dealing with the subject of public finance is that the method by which we handle the data often leads the captains of the ship of state to make bad decisions.

So the question that comes to mind is this: Would a modification of the way we compile the information and assess the GDP of a jurisdiction help mitigate the consequences of the current approach? The answer is yes but only if we create a smarter system to replace the old one. This can be done by adopting the right perspective and by keeping it in mind as we collect the data. If we can do this, the captains of the ship of state will have the tools to properly assess the significance of things like the size of the deficit and the accumulated debt as compared to the size of the GDP; and the captains will make better decisions as a result.

To create a new system we must collect the data having a better understanding as to why we are collecting it. To this end, we shall have to recognize that despite the large number of factors influencing the shape and value of an economy, we will be classifying all economies in only one of two broad categories: the mostly producing economy or the mostly consuming economy. The reason for doing this is that there is now incongruity between the way we define GDP on the one hand and the way that the economy actually works on the other hand.

The incongruity begins with the definition which says that the GDP is the sum of all activities which take place in an economy but then include in the compilation not only the figures for production but also those for consumption. According to the definition, therefore, the name should be Gross Domestic Production and Consumption (GDP&C) not just Gross Domestic Production (GDP). Thus, if we classify the economies as being mostly one or mostly the other, we acknowledge the fact that an economy is a complex thing made of at least two parts. This acknowledgement alone should ease the confusion and help us diagnose the problems when they occur thus lead to better solutions.

With those two classifications in mind, we see that in some economic jurisdictions the P in GDP reflects the activities generated by the production of goods and services more than they do its consumption though the latter also generates some activities. And we see that in other economic jurisdictions the P in GDP reflects the activities generated by the consumption of goods and services more than they do its production though the latter also generates some activities.

The capital and the infrastructure of the mostly producing jurisdictions consist of installations where the workforce labors to maximize the output of the installations. In these places, the people use a minimum quantity of commodities which they turn into useful products by adding as much transformational value to them as possible. Thus, a small quantity of iron, copper, paint, plastics electricity and so on is transformed into a state-of-the-art refrigerator or some other product. When all such works are done, the sum total of the added values goes into the GDP of the jurisdiction.

By contrast, the capital and the infrastructure of the mostly consuming jurisdictions consist of retail outlets and a workforce that labors to maximize their profit by merchandizing the products and services they procure from the producing jurisdictions. They buy from the producers at a low price, sell to the customers at a higher price and consider the spread between the two prices to be the added value of their process. When all such processes are done, the sum total of the added values goes into the GDP of the jurisdiction.

Now look closely at what happened here: what used to be consumption has become part of the P in GDP which means it is now considered to be production. But really, if you consider both the production and the consumption to be production, it is like drawing up a balance sheet where the assets and the liabilities are called assets and where there are no liabilities. In such a system, the GDP looks big, the deficit and the debt look small by comparison and the approach encourages you to borrow more and more under false pretenses. Then one day it hits you that you are not producing enough of the real goods and services which will pay for what you consume. And you realize that you have been deceiving yourself so then what do you do?

Well, if the mostly producing jurisdiction and the mostly consuming one were part of the same economy like being of the same country, the difficulties that may arise will be overcome because the producers of the jurisdiction are also its consumers, and a rough balance between the two will eventually materialize. That is, the auto worker will shop for clothes; the textile worker that makes the clothes will shop for a vacation; the hospitality executive that provides the vacation will shop for a car which was made by the auto worker who went shopping for clothes in the first place. And each of these citizens, together with everyone else in the country, will keep the country at full employment which is the ultimate goal of a well run economy. Where the difficulties can turn into a serious problem is when the producing jurisdiction and the consuming one belong to different countries. In this case, the complications that start small will tend to grow large and will threaten the arrangement unless something is done to impose a balance.

Several lengthy scenarios can be written to illustrate how a relationship such as that can grow and become a big problem. What may be said in brief, however, is that the consuming country will feed on the products and services of the producing ones at its peril. And in the event that the consumers become so preoccupied with consumption that they neglect to save and lend to each other, the foreign producers will lend to them. If this situation goes on for too long and the producers lose the appetite to extend more credit to the consuming country, a nightmare scenario may develop whereby the producers will cannibalize on the capital, the assets and the resources of the consuming country thus hollow it of its industries.

And because there is no free lunch, future generations will be asked -- even compelled -- to pay the bill drawn up by the generation that took it all and then disappeared. This sort of scenario is not a far fetched one but has a good chance of developing because the likelihood is that the said generation will have neglected to clean up after itself before departing the cushy life it has led at the expense of its descendants.

And so we ask: How does a system look like that can prevent the nightmare scenario from developing? The answer is that in addition to making a clear distinction between the production side and the consumption side of an economy, the system will have to differentiate between three types of consumption. They are (a) the basic consumption (b) the required consumption and (c) the vain consumption. To see how this will help improve our understanding of the situation, we discuss each type in brief.

(a) Whether we are an individual, a business or a nation, basic consumption is what we normally do everyday. And when we say basic we do not exclude the luxurious. For example everybody needs a home to live in and a means of transportation to travel. Here the word basic does not mean that the home or the transport must always be modest. Indeed, living in an upscale house and driving an upscale car are considered basic as long as they are not absurdly or needlessly extravagant.

(b) The required consumption are the things you are forced to do just to lead a normal life, the things that other people do not have to do and you wish you did not have to do either. For example, if you live near the North Pole where the temperature goes down to 65 degrees below zero, you are forced to spend an enormous amount of money to keep warm, the reason for which you are paid a higher salary than usual. But contrary to what it looks like on paper, the size of your salary does not make you any wealthier because you are forced to spend the money in what may be called a “wasteful” manner. Yet, your high consumption goes into the GDP and inflates it thus make the situation look rosier than it really is.

(c) As for the vain consumption, it is what you do to keep up with the Joneses and to impress them. For example, you pay a grotesquely extravagant price to buy an antique car which you seldom drive or never drive at all but leave on display alongside the house to impress your neighbors or to have the tabloids write about you. Some people buy and sell such cars and other items like them, a habit that adds false value to the GDP of the nation and to the per capita income of its citizens. And all this happens as no one gets anything out of this wacky hobby of a nutty individual.

But if we modify the system and compile the data while keeping in mind the notions discussed above, we can create a smart method by which to assess the true value of the GDP and use that in more useful ways. And to always keep the correct perspective in mind, we need a more appropriate definition for GDP so here is one: GDP is the production of goods and services that satisfy both the basic consumption of a nation and the necessary part of the required consumption. The definition deliberately excludes what goes into the generation of the “wasteful” part of the required consumption as well as the entire vain consumption.

Faced with the realities of life but armed with better tools, the captains of the ship of state will have a more realistic view as to what they preside over, and a better understanding as to what they must do to keep the ship of state afloat and help it sail to the desired destination. In this vein, a back of the envelop calculation indicates that the GDP of the United States of America stands somewhere between 6 trillion and 7.5 trillion dollars. Compare this figure to the external debt of the country and someone should feel uneasy.

To Mock A Killer Bird

Mouammar Gaddafi, the President of Libya has done it again; he got people to talk about him. It happened when he gave a speech at the 2009 meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York, a speech in which he said a few things that some people consider to be far fetched and over the top. What Gaddafi did in reality was to mock the way that the big powers treat him and treat countries like Libya. Because he sees these powers as killer birds more than he sees them as singing ones, he did not mock their singing habits to please the rest of us but mocked their violent activities to highlight the absurdity of their behavior. Gaddafi did this because he wanted them to see and to hear the way that he sees and hears them and the way that he believes all of humanity ought to see and hear them.

But who are these big powers and what do they say or do that displeases Gaddafi? To answer this question we must realize that in the same way some people in the West do not differentiate between one and the other of the people they regard as hostile to them, Gaddafi does not differentiate between the people in the media and the people in government whom he regards as hostile to him or to his country. He sees them both as one and the same because they work in tandem to undermine the lesser powers. And so he judges almost everyone in the West by the manner in which he is portrayed in the Western media.

We see, therefore, that Gaddafi has set up in his mind a structure of symmetries between the way that he is treated and the way that he treats other people. This approach can be seen as a modification of the golden rule which would have him treat the others not the way they treat him but the way he wants to be treated. Gaddafi then goes further and lets the other people know what he is doing and why he is doing it; he lets them know he is mocking them to shame them into modifying their attitude and thus force them to treat him and his country better.

Understanding this about Gaddafi’s personality leads us to postulate that he expects the people who fault him for giving trash talk about the big powers to also fault the Western media for giving trash talk about Libya such as they have been doing for decades. And he expects the people who fault him to appreciate that he takes the time to mock the media and the big powers if only because their kind of talk leads to war whereas his kind of talk diffuses the bad situations that they create. Convinced that the media have become the twitter which sounds the insidious calls inciting the big powers to aggression, he considers his own pleas for understanding to be the balancing force which restores civility in human relations. In sum, he does not see himself as imitating the warlike activities of the big powers but sees himself as mocking the big powers to warn about the consequences of their activities and to ask for self restraint.

Let us take an example to see how subtle can be the media calls to aggression. The thing to do when you want to hurt someone is to show that they are different from the rest of us thus imply they are dangerous by the mere fact that they exist at all. Gaddafi seems to believe that the Western media do so every time they talk about him or his country. He feels that the media always accentuate the differences between Libya and the West to pave the way for aggression and to justify its outcome no matter how severe that outcome may turn out to be.

And the irony is that while he uses the art of mocking to advocate the rejection of violence, the people in the West use mocking to justify the violence they commit. To wit, it happened that there was a clash between the United States and Libya in the year 1986 during which America bombed Libya. The aggression resulted in the death of Gaddafi’s young daughter and when the news of the event was beamed to the world, no regret or apology came from Washington. On the contrary, officials in the government and the media mocked Gaddafi as they opined sarcastically he must have adopted the girl after her death to score propaganda points and win the sympathy of the world.

Now, dear reader, imagine someone sarcastically opining that in the year 2001, many of the 9/11 victims were non-American illegal aliens and that deep down, the “real” Americans did not care about their deaths but raised a stink anyway to score propaganda points and win the sympathy of the world. Like it or not, this is how the American reaction to the death of Gaddafi’s daughter sounded to him and to the world, and it was not a nice thing to hear.

Let’s now take an example which demonstrates the intensity of the violence that people in the West are prepared to inflict on someone and laugh about it. The first Gulf war was unleashed against Iraq in the early Nineteen Nineties and it was said to be the first time that a war was shown live on television. The Pentagon which is America’s equivalent of the Ministry of Defense gave daily briefings on a large screen to explain the conduct of the war with images and video clips that resembled those of video games. During the briefings, footage taken by the attacking aircrafts was shown to journalists who sat in a room the size of a television studio. You would expect that because these moments depicted the horrors of war the journalists would treat them with the solemnity they deserve but no, this is not what happened. What happened was that the moments of horror were received with joy and jubilation.

Like an audience enjoying the taping of a situation comedy for a television show, the journalists continually laughed to express satisfaction at the way they were being entertained. One distressing moment came when a trucker was seen crossing a bridge then suddenly accelerate to get off the bridge as fast as possible. The briefing official explained that the trucker heard the incoming plane and realized the bridge was going to be blown up so “he ran for his dear life.” Upon hearing this sentence the journalists laughed so heartily you could swear they were having a sado-masochistic orgasm.

If you can imagine how ugly this sort of behavior is you will understand why it is impossible for the world to look at the Western media and be satisfied humanity is in good hands. You will also understand the context in which Gaddafi delivered his speech at the United Nations and will concentrate on what he said rather than stay mired in the notion he said something different from what you wished he had said.

All this aside, does Gaddafi really believe that Shakespeare was an Arab as he once asserted? Probably not but this statement could have been a deliberate provocation on his part designed to illustrate the absurdity of the assertions that people in the West constantly make about his country and a few other countries. For example, an American television network once showed a close-up image of an empty shelf at a supermarket it said was in Libya. The reporter then declared with absolute certainty that the people there were fed up with the Gaddafi regime and were ready to start a revolution which the reporter asserted they will do in a matter of weeks. Well, this story was told the first time some 30 years ago, and a version of it was repeated several more times after that but no revolution has started in Libya as yet.

And there is an example which is even more startling than this. Ten years or so before that time, I felt like I was clobbered on the head with a baseball bat as I watched an American network assert without hesitation that a revolution was imminent in Cuba. And why was that? Well, the visual portion of the clip was showing a number of mothers and their children waiting in line to buy ice cream. The reporter opined that when in America no one waits in line to buy ice cream but they do in Cuba, you can be certain that the Cuban people will soon revolt and overthrow Fidel Castro. My God, what a bunch of idiots passing as journalists!

And so we must ask ourselves as Gaddafi probably does if this is journalism or it is the wishful thinking of a bunch of lunatics. To answer the question you must shift the attention from the trivial things to the more serious ones; to where economics play an important role. Water and electricity are important to a modern economy and this is where you can find examples that reveal what the media do to shape the relationship between the big powers and the lesser ones.

Whether it was the Aswan dam in Egypt which the Western media relentlessly vilified for several generations, whether it was the man-made lake in Libya which the media insisted on calling the madman lake (meaning Gaddafi’s lake) or whether it was the Toshka project in Egypt which the Western media openly wished would fail, they all behaved abominably. But why would the media do this? They did it because the Western powers were not given a piece of the action. But those powers were offered a piece of the action and they refused to participate in the projects hoping that this would kill them and retard the development of the developing nations. Oh well, logic was never the forte of the Western press. But mention this and ask for a response and you will wait for ever because no response will ever come either from the press or from the big powers. And this will prompt you to throw your hands up in the air and exclaim: What a bunch of psychopathic schizophrenics not just lunatics!

In any case, this is old history now and there is enough competition in the world today to keep the Western powers in check. However, like discrimination which, even though officially banned, still lingers in the hearts of some people causing grief to many, so it is with the shabby treatment of the lesser powers by the big ones. But unlike the plot in Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mocking Bird”, Gaddafi does not need a lawyer to speak on his behalf; he will express himself in his own good natured way even if the exercise makes him look a bit silly at times. His message will nevertheless remain the same throughout his life and will, in effect, paraphrase that of Harper Lee: The Arabs are like mockingbirds who sing their hearts out to please humanity; it is a sin to kill or to harm them whether they are in Libya, in Palestine, in Iraq or anywhere else.

Finally, the clash between America and Libya began when Gaddafi called Reagan a minor actor in forgettable movies. Had Reagan responded by calling Gaddafi a mere Colonel in a small army instead of bombing Libya, the misery that resulted from the armed confrontation would have been avoided. And the lesson to be learned here is that if the Americans want to spare lives in the future, and if they want to avoid being mocked or parodied in front of the world, they should do more jaw jaw like said Winston Churchill and less bomb bomb like say those who hate the Arabs more than they love America.

Israel To Unleash Biblical Horrors On Africa

Israel has embarked on a charm offensive in Africa these days using American power and prestige to lend credibility to her undertaking. If you look closely at the agenda that is pursued and the motives that are involved you will realize how demonic the scheme is and how far the operation is designed to go. There is no doubt that the African nations will be hurt initially by what is about to unfold but there is a chance they will wake up in time to smell the rotten aroma of the Talmudic brew and reject it. What is not certain, however, is that America will realize what hit her even after the worst has come and gone.

When all is said and done, America’s standing in Africa and the world will have been diminished not because of something she did but because of something she failed to do. She will have failed to forbid Israel from dragging her into a scheme where no great nation should ever go. On the one hand, there are reasons enticing Israel to do what she does and she is stubbornly forging ahead with the game. On the other hand there are powerful reasons to compel America to stay out of the game yet this may not happen. To get a sense of the horror that is lurking around the corner waiting for the world to slump into a state of complacency before delivering the killer blow, we need only examine what the scheme is about to realize the force with which Africa and all of humanity will be clobbered.

Let us unearth the root of the problem. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Israeli economy is an Enron-like operation presided over by a Madoff-like gang. To borrow an image made famous by a respected American investor we can describe what happened in the decade of the Nineteen Eighties this way: The tide ebbed and Israel stood before the world looking like an Enron concoction without even a bikini to hide her economic nakedness. This reality prompted the US Congress to cover Israel with a massive donation of funds, and the experience convinced Israel’s Jewish backers everywhere that the country can never have a real economy. They ditched the old Shekel and coined a new one as they realized that Israel can only exist like a parasitic entity attached to a host on whose blood she must feed or die.

To this end, Israel and her backers whipped up a scheme whereby a growing number of Jewish businesses in America and Europe began to work as tax collectors for Israel. They siphoned money from the public on the two continents and transferred it to Israel on a regular basis. The scheme had the effect of connecting the Israeli construct masquerading as economy to the American and European engines of wealth creation, a connection that allowed Israel to feed like a voracious parasite on the blood of its hosts. Israel’s backers then took the scheme to an even higher level of efficiency by linking their operation with tax exempt charitable organizations in their home countries and in Israel. This move gave them extra cover behind which to hide and allowed them to do a few more things without having to account to anyone.

To get a sense as to how much is being transferred from the hosts to the parasite, we need to understand that the real civilian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Israel is no higher than that of Lebanon which has a smaller population. As for Israel’s food production, it amounts to a fraction that of Lebanon or Uganda or even Liberia when measured on a per capita basis. Let America and the world stop paying to feed Israel and the people there will starve as if in a concentration camp. Yet most Israelis live better than many American families, those same families to whom it is shamelessly asserted that they are poor because there is something wrong with them while the Israelis are the apple of God’s eye.

But how can a scheme like that which sustains Israel be made to work? Simply put, the numbers that are supposed to reflect the economic activity in Israel known as GDP actually reflect something else. They reflect the commerce that is done by American and European Jewish businesses all over the world and not the activities that take place inside Israel. In other words, the construct known as Israel’s economy treats America and parts of Europe as if they were colonies of Israel; as if they were the “New Israel”.

Indeed, if America and parts of Europe were legal colonies of Israel, the economic activities done by the Jewish businesses within those borders would form part of Israel’s Gross National Product (GNP) and not her Gross Domestic Product (GDP). And guess what, GNP is what some Israeli officials prefer to call those activities. Thus, the rulers of Israel have annexed America and parts of Europe in their minds the way that they have annexed the Golan Heights of Syria and most of Palestine in reality.

Let us take an example to see how the scheme works in practical terms. A moderate amount of chemicals is known to be produced in Israel but the figures they publish show that the country does billions of dollars worth of commerce in this sector. Where does that come from? Well, this is how things are made to work: When a jobber in America buys a chemical compound used in industry, he orders from a shell company in Israel which then orders the compound from say, France. The compound is shipped directly from France to America but the paperwork is done in Israel. It is done in such a way as to make the operation look very differently from what actually happened. The paperwork makes it look like the raw ingredients went from France to Israel where they were processed and turned into the compound then shipped to America as a finished product. The result is that very little if any of the profits are made in France or in America but are made in Israel where the taxes are also paid. The profits and the taxes become part of Israel’s GNP and this is how the people there manage live high on someone else’s hog. And this should be recognized for what it is, organized crime by another name.

This scheme has worked well for Israel from the mid Nineteen Eighties to the year 2008 when the tide ebbed again. This time the tide ebbed not only for Israel but for the whole world, and this is when America was seen to stand naked alongside Israel. The sight was too much even for the US Congress to try and cover Israel; it was too much because America had lost the wherewithal to cover herself. Thus, given that no rescue plan will be coming from America, Israel’s backers decided to do something drastic to save the Israeli parasite and to nurture it further.

Together, Israel and her backers looked for the next host on whose blood to feed. They came up with the idea of pulling a Madoff scheme on the African nations as the latter were enjoying a high rate of growth while the rest of the world was mired in a recession. Because Madoff’s greatest asset was his ability to appear knowledgeable and saintly at the same time, the Israelis began their charm offensive by promoting themselves as knowledgeable and saintly at the same time. To reinforce this image, they dragged along an American ambassador or some such personality everywhere they went in Africa.

Even though the Israelis produce only a third of what they need to feed themselves, they were able to convince some African nations that they are the colossal food producers of the planet. They did this by using the hocus pocus of the GNP cum GDP trick. Furthermore, they made the fantastic claim that they have developed a cow which produces milk 6 times – get this, six times -- as much as the greatest milk producing cow in the world. They may also have claimed that the cow breeds 6 times as fast as the fastest breeding cow but no one believed this absurdity in Africa or anywhere else. However, the Israelis did convince some African nations that with their super cow and with everything else up their sleeve they can transform Africa into a colossal food producing continent and be just like Israel. More about this in a minute.

Let us now turn to technology. The Israelis promised to transform the African nations that would follow them into the technological wonderlands of the future. And how will they do that? The Israelis did not say but we can put two and two together and peer inside their heads. There was a time in the decade of the Nineteen Seventies when the Western nations became conscious of the polluting effect of some technologies. One very dirty technology was and still is the making of computer chips and printed circuit boards because the process uses harmful acids in large quantities. And so the Western nations began to transfer the production of these products to Third World countries such as the Philippines and a number of South American nations, among them Peru and Ecuador, which were among the earliest of victims.

At one time, Egypt had approved the construction of a chip factory but then rescinded the decision after learning how polluting the factory would be. The country then allowed the construction of a research facility in the high tech field to employ the people that were recruited and trained to work in the factory. Other nations too began to shy away from constructing such factories but not Israel where the choice came down to either build the factories or disappear as an economy. Thus, it stands to reason that what the Israelis want to do now is to have their Jewish backers build these factories in Africa and divert to Israel the profits they will be making there. In other words they plan to annex Africa and make it their next colony.

There is another reality regarding Israel and technology we must not overlook. The Israelis have an indigenous industry making small arms, and they assemble some of the more sophisticated American weapons. They used to make money selling American secrets to emerging nations but these nations have emerged so fast and they now stand so tall that the Americans are beginning to fear them. Consequently, the Americans ordered the Israelis to stop selling secrets to those nations or to any third party for that matter. They stopped. The Israelis also used to sell their own small arms to both sides in a number of local conflicts such as the one that went on for years in Sri Lanka. When the pornography inherent to such practices became too much for the world to stomach, those markets dried up. The Israelis then turned to the former Soviet satellites and sold the arms to them but the Russians told the Israelis to stop or else. And there too, the Israelis stopped.

Forced to cease being the merchants of death everywhere they go, the Israelis now have little that they can rely on to maintain the semblance of an economy, a situation that prompted them to mount a scheme which will inflame the old rivalries in Africa. This will allow them to set the continent on fire, sell weapons to all sides in every conflict they trigger and get back into the business of feeding on someone’s blood, this time African blood. The Israelis began to implement this scheme on the west coast of Africa and, counting on American support, they are now working their way to the east coast and to the Horn of Africa where the situation is already like a powder keg ready to explode.

We now get back to the subject of agriculture and the Israeli super cow. The Israelis say that using the technique of selective breeding they produced a cow which no one can produce because they have a secret that no one can duplicate. They want the Africans to benefit from their secret without divulging the secret and so, instead of selling the semen to cattle breeders in Africa at a reasonable price, they want to sell them partially formed embryos in a frozen state at a much higher price. But what this will mean is that the young of these cows will have no immunity to protect them from local diseases. They are expected to get sick, develop highly contagious viruses -- perhaps something in the order of the Mad Cow Disease – and wipe out the local African herds. Famine, pestilence and biblical horrors will ensue.

This scheme is so demonic you must wonder before passing any judgment if the Israelis have attempted something similar on previous occasions. Actually they have and it was something just as virulent in its implication but not as massive. What the Israelis did in the mid to late Nineteen Nineties was that they collected research papers written by petroleum scientists in Canada and the United States. They took these papers to Israel and pretended to do research of their own. After a while, they approached the Jordanians and the Moroccans who happen to have deposits of shale oil and tar sands on their territory. The Israelis promised the two countries riches beyond their wildest dreams if they will entrust their deposits to them.

Luckily, the Canadian and American scientists who authored the original papers got wind of the Israeli scheme and were not amused. They engaged someone to call the Jordanians and the Moroccans to alert them as to the con game that was being pulled on them. The latter promptly cancelled the agreements they had with Israel and positioned themselves to work with the real scientists in Canada and the US. It so happened that Benjamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister of Israel at the time and he took the rebuke personally. He became so incensed that he responded by giving fake Canadian passports to his secret agents who went into Jordan and poisoned an innocent man.

Netanyahu did what he did to show Canada and the world that he was still a he-man despite the setback he just suffered. Jean Chretien who was Prime Minister of Canada at the time may have been impressed but not the late King Hussein of Jordan who demanded that Netanyahu give him the antidote to the poison, a move that saved the life of the innocent man. And the lesson to be learned from this is that the same Israel is still there, it is as desperate as ever and it is operated by the same thugs who are hungry no less. They poisoned the innocent in Jordan without showing a hint of mercy and they will poison all of Africa without showing mercy anymore than they did then. And who can say there will be an African King Hussein who will order an antidote and save the Continent from a round of biblical plagues!

If you can ignore what the media want you to believe about the saintly qualities of the Israelis and all Jews, and if you can imagine the extent of the calamities that Israel is preparing to unleash on Africa you will see that what is about to happen is a series of man-made disasters surpassing in their destructive power anything you may read of biblical horrors. And if you are an American, you will not want to be a part of this scheme no matter how much you feel like worshiping Israel and everything Jewish. To you and your country I can only say this: Get off this track, America, before it is too late; you have no idea what you’re being sucked into.