On March 22, 2010 AIPAC held a meeting in Washington, DC and they invited the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton as well as the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu to speak at the gathering. When you acquaint yourself with the content of the two speeches, you gain an insight as to the absurdity of the relationship that exists between the two countries, an insight that goes beyond what the speechwriters intended to reveal.
This is because every story, be it a short anecdote or a long epic, has a punch line. It is what comes at the end of the story and sums up the essence of the narrative. But what happened on that day was that Hillary Clinton used the wrong punch line at the end of her story. Yes, the last paragraph contains a rising crescendo that gives the impression of a fiery ending but this is a contrived structure telling an artificial story that leaves you cold despite the fake passion expressed at the end. As for the Netanyahu speech, well, it is the same old Talmudic quackery which was given a new twist to suit the occasion.
What seems to have happened was that Hillary Clinton asked the folks at AIPAC or their operatives who swarm the State Department to write the speech they wanted her to give at their gathering. These folks wrote the speech complete with a punch line that must have matched the narrative. But then Clinton called on her American speechwriters to modify a few things so as to convey America’s position to the folks at AIPAC in Washington and to the leaders who rule Israel. These speechwriters did as they were told which modified the storyline of the narrative but they neglected to modify the punch line. Now a hybrid of the two groups of writers, the speech ended up containing a punch line that is demonstrably out of whack with the new storyline.
You can see this clearly when you put back to back two sentences that you will find far apart in the speech. Early on you see this: “…something else I want you to know, more than 1,000 United States troops participated in the Juniper Cobra ballistic missile defense exercises last fall, the largest such drill ever held.” And later on you see this: “…But advances in rocket technology mean that Israeli families are now at risk far from those borders. Despite efforts at containment, rockets with better guidance systems, longer range, and more destructive power are spreading across the region.” Hillary Clinton is here saying this: We want to defend you like you want us to do but we can no longer do it. Moreover, things will get worse for you because time is not on your side.
To reinforce this view she later says this: “And there is, I think, a belief among many that the status quo can be sustained. But the dynamics of demography, ideology, and technology make this impossible.” And also this: “during the 1990s, it was rare that people in places far from the Middle East ever mentioned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now, when I started traveling as Secretary of State and I went to places that were so far from the Middle East, it was the first, second, or third issue that countries raised.” Then she says the same thing but more bluntly this time: “And then finally, we must recognize that the ever-evolving technology of war is making it harder to guarantee Israel's security.”
Having gone this far warning the AIPAC audience and Israel of what lay ahead, Hillary Clinton now wants to be conciliatory. But knowing that when you talk to these people, you can be conciliatory only by insulting the Arabs and blaming them for everything, she did just that. She took up the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli line and gave the same warning in a language they are more familiar with: “…but failure to do so gives the extremist foes a pretext to spread violence, instability, and hatred. In the face of these unforgiving dynamics of demography, ideology, and technology, it becomes impossible to entrust our hopes for Israel's future in today's status quo.”
True to her programming, the points she is repeating here are to the effect that to throw a stone at a tank is an act more violent than when the tank fires at people because it is the Palestinians who throw the stones and the Israelis who drive the tanks. Worse, the Palestinians breed more than the Jews which means they will overwhelm the Jews whose only crime is that they want to keep the place clean of unworthy races. And with a Jewish ideology as superior as this, America must protect it from being contaminated by the fast breeding Arabs who will someday, in addition to all this, master the technologies of war and make the tanks that will stand up to the tanks that America gives to the Jews. What a horror story in the making!
Hillary Clinton then comes up with an explosive thought that should have been her punch line but was not. It is this: “New construction … exposes daylight between Israel and the United States…” What she is saying is that if Israel continues to misbehave, America will distance itself from that country because if America cannot protect Israel, it will not be able to protect itself from the consequences of Israel’s misbehavior. Realizing that this is a blow to the sense of self worth of the audience, she softens the blow by insulting the Arabs and blaming them for what they will do following the appearance of daylight between America and Israel. Thus, she goes on to say this: “…daylight … that others in the region hope to exploit.” The point she is making here is that America would have allowed Israel to misbehave if the others in the region were not so bad as to exploit the consequences of that misbehavior.
By now Clinton realizes that the language these people understand is the language of small children and so she talks to them like children. She tells them that America is being hard on Israel not because America wants to abandon or to hurt Israel but because America wants to do what is good for Israel. Here is how she puts it: “We objected to this announcement [build homes in Jerusalem] because we are committed to Israel and its security.”
And then, out of the blue, comes the ending that does not match the now hybridized narrative. This is what Clinton says: “…the United States and the American people will stand with you. We will share the risks and we will shoulder the burdens…” Thus, after warning that they are on their own because America can no longer defend them, she ends the speech by promising that America will share the risks and will defend them. And it all sounds like a false promise.
In the evening of that same day the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke at the same gathering and he had ideas of his own. He began the speech by saying that the Jews have been savagely attacked in Europe throughout the centuries because they had no means to defend themselves but now that there is an Israel, the Jews have developed those means. Having thus linked the Jews with Israel because it suited his argument, he now wants to have it both ways a la Talmud and argue that no one else can make that linkage. He says this: “In recent decades the hatred of the Jews has reemerged with increasing force, but with an insidious twist. It is not merely directed at the Jewish people but increasingly at the Jewish state.” What he does not realize is that the linkage was made insidiously by those like him who have argued for decades that to criticize Israel is to hate the Jews. But now that the linkage is out in the open and most people have accepted it, it is not an insidious exercise to point it out. Thus, he can complain all he wants but he has only himself and his kind to blame. He should also blame the book that teaches them this faulty logic.
And with this logic, he explains that one of the reasons for that hatred is that people see the Jews who come from around the world to steal Palestinian land as colonialists but he adds this is one of the great lies of modern times. And he reassures the audience that the Jews have the right to do what they do because his name is Benjamin Netanyahu and both of these names are Jewish. Get it? Benjamin is Jewish and Netanyahu is Jewish therefore: “The connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel cannot be denied. The connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem cannot be denied.” Thus, Israel can build homes for Jews in Arab Jerusalem. With logic like this, he fails to see why people have a hard time loving Israel or the Jewish mentality.
And because he firmly believes in his logic, he says that he spoke last year: “…of a vision of peace in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state. Just as the Palestinians expect Israel to recognize a Palestinian state, we expect the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish state.” What he does not say is that the Palestinians never asked for Israel to be demilitarized and never asked Israel to recognize Palestine as an Islamo-Christian state. Yes, some states do proclaim themselves to adhere to one religion or another but they do not require that the others recognize them as such.
The Palestinian Authority has recognized Israel’s right to exist as a political state a while ago amid objections voiced by people who predicted that by giving the Israelis a finger before the entire question of Palestine was resolved, the Palestinians were inviting the Israelis to ask for the whole arm. What happened was that Israel got the political recognition it sought, the result has been that it gave nothing in return and now Netanyahu wants something that no one has anywhere else on this planet; he wants a Palestine that is not yet formed to recognize Israel as a politico-theocratic state.
As for the part which calls for Palestine to be demilitarized, just listen to Netanyahu talk: “In the past year, my government has removed hundreds of roadblocks, barriers and checkpoints in the West Bank. As a result, we have helped spur a fantastic economic boom there. Finally, we announced an unprecedented moratorium on new Israeli construction … This is what my government has done for peace. What has the Palestinian Authority done for peace? Well, they have placed preconditions on peace talks, waged a relentless international campaign to undermine Israel’s legitimacy, and promoted the notorious Goldstone Report that falsely accuses Israel of war crimes … Peace requires reciprocity.”
First he gives Israel credit for the fantastic boom that the Palestinians gave themselves when the Israelis stopped raping their land. He says he removed the hundreds of roadblocks, barriers and checkpoints which the Israelis said for decades were only a handful and were not a problem; and now he wants to be kissed and hugged for removing them. Yes, in the same way that they now have mouthpieces run around to say that the settlements are not a problem, the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli axis had mouthpieces run around in the past to say that the roadblocks, barriers and checkpoints were not a problem. And in the same way that he now wants to be kissed and hugged for removing the roadblocks and the rest, he will want to be hugged and kisses in the future when he will stop building on stolen land -- if he’ll ever do that. Nothing can be more Talmudic than a fantastically twisted logic.
And just look at what Netanyahu says after that. Referring to the 10 months moratorium he announced on new construction in Jerusalem, he says he did so in the name of peace. Of course, someone like him who is well versed in the teachings of the Talmud and virtually nothing else will never realize that this is like saying: I’ll refrain from raping your child for 10 months because I expect you to sign away your wife by the end of the period or I shall resume the rape of the child and you will be held responsible for the horror.
Netanyahu then wonders: What has the Palestinian Authority done for peace? And he answers his own question: Well, they have placed preconditions on peace talks… But when you look to see what these preconditions may be, you find that he lists none. Instead, he expresses dismay at the fact that the Palestinians are asking for the implementation of the rule of law. There is a report called the Goldstone Report and the Palestinians want it to take its natural course through the international legal system. No, says Netanyahu. And why is that? Because: “Peace requires reciprocity” he says. This guy is so low on the intelligence scale, he does not realize he is asking the world to do to the Jews what the Jews are doing to the Palestinians.
When this happens, don’t come and cry on my shoulder, Bibi.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Faces Of American Moral Bankruptcy
Michael Oren, Ruth Wisse and Steven Plaut had something to say on March 18, 2010. The first wrote an article in the New York Times under the title: “For Israel and America, a Disagreement, Not a Crisis”. The second wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal under the title: “How About an Arab 'Settlement' Freeze?” and the subtitle: “Why are 21 countries with 800 times more land so obsessed with Israel?” The third wrote an article in Frontpage Magazine under the title: “No Compromise Over Jerusalem”.
When you take the sum total of what these three are saying, you realize that it is the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli narrative as it has developed over the decades. These people are narrating a fantastic story about any individual anywhere on the planet who would convert to the Jewish faith and thus obtain the right to go to Palestine whereby the locals who have lived there since the beginning of time must welcome him or her with open arms, hugs and kisses. This done, the locals must vacate the place as if they had been squatters occupying it illegally or guarding it for thousands of years waiting for the newcomers to show up and settle in it as if they were the rightful owners who have come home after a long absence. Short of being this welcoming, the longtime squatters must be regarded as a bad bunch and must be punished accordingly. And when the newcomers inflict such punishment on the locals, they ought to be praised and not rebuked by the rest of the world.
But America did rebuke Israel for continually grabbing ever more Palestinian lands and this is what prompted the government of Israel to respond through its ambassador in Washington. That ambassador is Michael Oren who had the difficult task of doing three things at the same time in his article. They are these: (a) smooth over the harsh words used by both sides (b) deny saying something he said before and (c) minimize the gravity of what Israel is doing in Palestine. How does he accomplish all this in one article? The Talmudic way, of course!
Look at these sentences as they appear in the same paragraph in that article: “Though not uncontested, Israel’s policy on Jerusalem did not preclude the conclusion of peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. Nor did it prevent the Palestinians from negotiating with Israel for more than 15 years … Consistently, Israelis have demonstrated remarkable flexibility as well as generosity…” Believe it or not my dear reader, Michael Oren is here saying that it is the Israelis who should be credited with being flexible and generous because Egypt and Jordan concluded a peace agreement with them despite the reservation that the latter had with regard to Israel’s policy on Jerusalem. Michael Oren is also saying that the Israelis should be credited with being flexible and generous because the Palestinians continued to negotiate despite Israel’s demonstrated rapacity to grab ever more of their land.
Look folks, there is no way I can read something like this and not be reminded of the Jewish man who used to throw his hands up in the air and cry out in horror: “Light up the oven!” This man was old enough to remember the Holocaust, and he understood very well what it is that brought pogroms and holocausts on the Jews. And he feared that the sort of mentality here displayed by Israel’s ambassador will again make someone out there want to light up the ovens and consume all the Jews. Already known as one of the foremost intellectual masturbators in all of Judaism, Michael Oren has gone beyond the pale this time around and there is no way he can redeem himself. He is just too far gone.
And while we have Michael Oren asserting that the Arabs did not raise enough of a fuss with regard to Israel’s policy on Jerusalem however provocative that policy may have been, we have Ruth Wisse asking in her article why the Arabs are so obsessed with that policy. Of course, she knows that the mere asking of the question misrepresents reality and so, she does what Michael Oren does which is to reach into the Talmud and pull out a dishonest trick. She begins the article by invoking a toddler, her two year old grandchild, whom she uses as a prop to defend the indefensible. She says this: “Right now, I would have to confess to her that the hubbub over 1,600 new housing units in Jerusalem defies rational explanation.”
But Ruth Wisse wants to bolster her argument and so she lists the impressive work that the Arabs have done and are doing to accommodate their own growing populations, work that includes the construction of 10 new cities in Egypt alone since 1996. And this, by the way, is why she calls for an Arab freeze on settlements. But then, she turns around and says this: “It is unfortunate that Arabs obsess about building in Israel rather than aiming for the development of their own superabundant lands.” This woman has a PhD, she teaches at Harvard and yet she fails to see that she contradicts herself like an infant caught lying when she lists the massive construction done by the Arabs then denigrates them for not constructing on their lands. No wonder the subject she is discussing defies her power to reason so much so that she cannot explain it at the level of a two year old. And this raises a very serious question: Who the hell signs the paychecks at Harvard to give to this woman?
But fear not this crazy world of the Talmud, my dear reader, because Steven Plaut has come along and has clarified the whole thing in terms so simple that we can all understand. He says this in his article: “To put the Obama Administration’s temper tantrum over Jerusalem into perspective, one has to try to imagine the following reasoning. How dare the Jews construct housing in their own capital? Just because Washington builds housing in the District of Columbia without asking its allies for permission does not mean that the Israelis can build the same way in their capital!” Having reasoned the situation in this way, he concludes that Israel must not compromise over Jerusalem, a thought he sticks into the title of this article.
But what correlation is there between Jerusalem and the District of Columbia? Well, this is where we go back to Ruth Wisse and seek the answer. She says this: “Arab countries benefited disproportionately from the exchange of populations between Jews and Arabs … Since 1948 upward of 800,000 Jews abandoned their homes and forfeited their goods in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Yemen. In addition to assets valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, the property deeds of Jews from Arab lands is estimated at a total area of 100,000 square miles, which is five times the size of the state of Israel, and more than Israel would include even if it were to stretch over all the disputed territories of the West Bank.” Of course, all of this is more than baloney; it is rotting Jewish salami that has been floating around for some time now put out by characters much smarter than her.
To see what is behind all of this, we notice that Steven Plaut and Ruth Wisse are saying in ways that are not so subtle Israel has the right to grow in size to 100,000 square miles which is 5 times its present size because America has the right to build homes in the District of Columbia and so does Israel in Jerusalem, in the West Bank and perhaps beyond that. And these ideas have now gone past being floating trial balloons. In fact, the people making up the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli axis started to scheme for a new source of funding so as to continue their expansionary processes after they began to meet with difficulties monetizing the Holocaust much further. They murmured about Jews having forfeited land, goods and other assets in some Arab countries, and this is what Plaut and Wisse are repeating except that they are doing so at a level that is louder than murmur.
The vision these people have for the first phase of their upcoming operation is to ethnically cleanse the West Bank as much as they can and to annex it to Israel. They will claim they are taking this land in exchange for what the Jews have forfeited in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq and Yemen. As to the idea of compensating the Palestinians for what they were robbed in Israel and what they will be robbed in the West Bank, well, these Palestinians should be paid from the value of the goods and assets that the Jews left behind in those Arab countries.
But what other phases of the project do the schemers envision and what will such phases entail? Look at it this way: Jews are alleging to be forfeiting lands and other assets everywhere on the planet, and if the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli axis can make their current scheme stick against the Arab countries, they will be able to make it stick against all the other countries. When you rub this idea with the ancient superstition which says that Israel must extend from the Nile to the Euphrates, you can see the limitless dimensions of the potential future phases. Just imagine taking more land from the neighboring Arab states and receiving the money to compensate for the resulting ethnic cleansing from the whole world, and you can see how the superstition will be turned into a realistic vision then turned into an inescapable reality. Once there was no Israel; now there is one. Now there is no Israel extending from the Nile to the Euphrates; tomorrow there may be one. You’ll see.
After all, the schemers of the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli axis have learned a great deal from the fiasco that followed the Shamir cry: “Zey know nossing about za damacracy” where they dragged America into a project to conquer all of these Muslim lands for their causes without offering comparable pieces of land in exchange, or a monetary compensation for the people who were affected. But if the Israelis can duplicate the success they are having in Palestine and implement that success on a planetary scale, they reckon they will have a better chance at a victory they can savor as opposed to getting America shafted and left with nothing to show for their effort but a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth.
And so, the schemers now plan to go to the members of the US Congress and to the other politicians in America with a message they know would intrigue any morally bankrupt character. After telling them of Israel’s wish to see the Arabs absorb the Palestinians into their own lands and to compensate them for the robberies that the newcomers have committed in Israel and still plan to commit in the West Bank and beyond, the schemers will instruct the Americans to start biting each other in the back, and to jockey for position as they compete for the AIPAC title of being the most favored hooker and pimp in the service of that lobby group, and laboring hard for the glory of Israel.
When you take the sum total of what these three are saying, you realize that it is the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli narrative as it has developed over the decades. These people are narrating a fantastic story about any individual anywhere on the planet who would convert to the Jewish faith and thus obtain the right to go to Palestine whereby the locals who have lived there since the beginning of time must welcome him or her with open arms, hugs and kisses. This done, the locals must vacate the place as if they had been squatters occupying it illegally or guarding it for thousands of years waiting for the newcomers to show up and settle in it as if they were the rightful owners who have come home after a long absence. Short of being this welcoming, the longtime squatters must be regarded as a bad bunch and must be punished accordingly. And when the newcomers inflict such punishment on the locals, they ought to be praised and not rebuked by the rest of the world.
But America did rebuke Israel for continually grabbing ever more Palestinian lands and this is what prompted the government of Israel to respond through its ambassador in Washington. That ambassador is Michael Oren who had the difficult task of doing three things at the same time in his article. They are these: (a) smooth over the harsh words used by both sides (b) deny saying something he said before and (c) minimize the gravity of what Israel is doing in Palestine. How does he accomplish all this in one article? The Talmudic way, of course!
Look at these sentences as they appear in the same paragraph in that article: “Though not uncontested, Israel’s policy on Jerusalem did not preclude the conclusion of peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. Nor did it prevent the Palestinians from negotiating with Israel for more than 15 years … Consistently, Israelis have demonstrated remarkable flexibility as well as generosity…” Believe it or not my dear reader, Michael Oren is here saying that it is the Israelis who should be credited with being flexible and generous because Egypt and Jordan concluded a peace agreement with them despite the reservation that the latter had with regard to Israel’s policy on Jerusalem. Michael Oren is also saying that the Israelis should be credited with being flexible and generous because the Palestinians continued to negotiate despite Israel’s demonstrated rapacity to grab ever more of their land.
Look folks, there is no way I can read something like this and not be reminded of the Jewish man who used to throw his hands up in the air and cry out in horror: “Light up the oven!” This man was old enough to remember the Holocaust, and he understood very well what it is that brought pogroms and holocausts on the Jews. And he feared that the sort of mentality here displayed by Israel’s ambassador will again make someone out there want to light up the ovens and consume all the Jews. Already known as one of the foremost intellectual masturbators in all of Judaism, Michael Oren has gone beyond the pale this time around and there is no way he can redeem himself. He is just too far gone.
And while we have Michael Oren asserting that the Arabs did not raise enough of a fuss with regard to Israel’s policy on Jerusalem however provocative that policy may have been, we have Ruth Wisse asking in her article why the Arabs are so obsessed with that policy. Of course, she knows that the mere asking of the question misrepresents reality and so, she does what Michael Oren does which is to reach into the Talmud and pull out a dishonest trick. She begins the article by invoking a toddler, her two year old grandchild, whom she uses as a prop to defend the indefensible. She says this: “Right now, I would have to confess to her that the hubbub over 1,600 new housing units in Jerusalem defies rational explanation.”
But Ruth Wisse wants to bolster her argument and so she lists the impressive work that the Arabs have done and are doing to accommodate their own growing populations, work that includes the construction of 10 new cities in Egypt alone since 1996. And this, by the way, is why she calls for an Arab freeze on settlements. But then, she turns around and says this: “It is unfortunate that Arabs obsess about building in Israel rather than aiming for the development of their own superabundant lands.” This woman has a PhD, she teaches at Harvard and yet she fails to see that she contradicts herself like an infant caught lying when she lists the massive construction done by the Arabs then denigrates them for not constructing on their lands. No wonder the subject she is discussing defies her power to reason so much so that she cannot explain it at the level of a two year old. And this raises a very serious question: Who the hell signs the paychecks at Harvard to give to this woman?
But fear not this crazy world of the Talmud, my dear reader, because Steven Plaut has come along and has clarified the whole thing in terms so simple that we can all understand. He says this in his article: “To put the Obama Administration’s temper tantrum over Jerusalem into perspective, one has to try to imagine the following reasoning. How dare the Jews construct housing in their own capital? Just because Washington builds housing in the District of Columbia without asking its allies for permission does not mean that the Israelis can build the same way in their capital!” Having reasoned the situation in this way, he concludes that Israel must not compromise over Jerusalem, a thought he sticks into the title of this article.
But what correlation is there between Jerusalem and the District of Columbia? Well, this is where we go back to Ruth Wisse and seek the answer. She says this: “Arab countries benefited disproportionately from the exchange of populations between Jews and Arabs … Since 1948 upward of 800,000 Jews abandoned their homes and forfeited their goods in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Yemen. In addition to assets valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, the property deeds of Jews from Arab lands is estimated at a total area of 100,000 square miles, which is five times the size of the state of Israel, and more than Israel would include even if it were to stretch over all the disputed territories of the West Bank.” Of course, all of this is more than baloney; it is rotting Jewish salami that has been floating around for some time now put out by characters much smarter than her.
To see what is behind all of this, we notice that Steven Plaut and Ruth Wisse are saying in ways that are not so subtle Israel has the right to grow in size to 100,000 square miles which is 5 times its present size because America has the right to build homes in the District of Columbia and so does Israel in Jerusalem, in the West Bank and perhaps beyond that. And these ideas have now gone past being floating trial balloons. In fact, the people making up the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli axis started to scheme for a new source of funding so as to continue their expansionary processes after they began to meet with difficulties monetizing the Holocaust much further. They murmured about Jews having forfeited land, goods and other assets in some Arab countries, and this is what Plaut and Wisse are repeating except that they are doing so at a level that is louder than murmur.
The vision these people have for the first phase of their upcoming operation is to ethnically cleanse the West Bank as much as they can and to annex it to Israel. They will claim they are taking this land in exchange for what the Jews have forfeited in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq and Yemen. As to the idea of compensating the Palestinians for what they were robbed in Israel and what they will be robbed in the West Bank, well, these Palestinians should be paid from the value of the goods and assets that the Jews left behind in those Arab countries.
But what other phases of the project do the schemers envision and what will such phases entail? Look at it this way: Jews are alleging to be forfeiting lands and other assets everywhere on the planet, and if the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli axis can make their current scheme stick against the Arab countries, they will be able to make it stick against all the other countries. When you rub this idea with the ancient superstition which says that Israel must extend from the Nile to the Euphrates, you can see the limitless dimensions of the potential future phases. Just imagine taking more land from the neighboring Arab states and receiving the money to compensate for the resulting ethnic cleansing from the whole world, and you can see how the superstition will be turned into a realistic vision then turned into an inescapable reality. Once there was no Israel; now there is one. Now there is no Israel extending from the Nile to the Euphrates; tomorrow there may be one. You’ll see.
After all, the schemers of the Judeo-Zionist-Israeli axis have learned a great deal from the fiasco that followed the Shamir cry: “Zey know nossing about za damacracy” where they dragged America into a project to conquer all of these Muslim lands for their causes without offering comparable pieces of land in exchange, or a monetary compensation for the people who were affected. But if the Israelis can duplicate the success they are having in Palestine and implement that success on a planetary scale, they reckon they will have a better chance at a victory they can savor as opposed to getting America shafted and left with nothing to show for their effort but a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth.
And so, the schemers now plan to go to the members of the US Congress and to the other politicians in America with a message they know would intrigue any morally bankrupt character. After telling them of Israel’s wish to see the Arabs absorb the Palestinians into their own lands and to compensate them for the robberies that the newcomers have committed in Israel and still plan to commit in the West Bank and beyond, the schemers will instruct the Americans to start biting each other in the back, and to jockey for position as they compete for the AIPAC title of being the most favored hooker and pimp in the service of that lobby group, and laboring hard for the glory of Israel.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Education Of Joe Biden
Joe Biden who is Vice President of the United States of America was in Israel recently where he repeated what every American official has been programmed to repeat by AIPAC on occasions like this. Speaking Yenglish which is a language made of English words and Yiddish exaggeration and absolutism, he said the following about the American-Israeli relationship: "The cornerstone of the relationship is our absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel's security. Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security." Well, this stand must change now because it has become an expression of pornography so extravagant that even Yenglish exaggeration and absolutism cannot adequately describe it.
The purpose of speaking in Yenglish is to convey the notion that as far as America is concerned not a single condition will ever be attached to anything that Israel asks for whatever provocation this country will commit. When the Israeli or AIPAC officials say that something is good for Israel, America will automatically and robotically wear the suicide belt and detonate itself along with the interests of its own people to accommodate the wishes of those Israeli and AIPAC officials. And the reason they all give for speaking in terms which are this exaggerated and this absolute is that without such a stand on the part of America, someone out there may be tempted to test that country’s resolve to defend Israel and may attack the poor little thing thus drag America into a conflict it wants to avoid. And so, when America speaks Yenglish and everyone knows there is no space between it and Israel, America buys the insurance policy that protects it from the folly of those who may have unresolved issues with Israel. The intent here is to let everyone know that to take on Israel will also mean to take on a superpower that is wearing a suicidal belt and willing to detonate it.
Why is this stand so pornographic? To understand the argument relating to this question we need to be aware of a saying used by young American men when they want to belittle someone. They say that he still needs his mom to hold his penis for him when he urinates. Well, America has been holding Israel’s penis well past the time that it takes to toilet-train a child. But Israel is not a child anymore and what comes out of that penis may not always be urine. In fact, Israel has wrapped all matters relating to its security in the cloak of potent manhood not that of helpless childhood, and when Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton or the US Congress stroke the Israeli habit of taking America for granted, they stimulate more than urine out of that penis. And this is the pornographic spectacle that the rest of us are made to watch and be disgusted by.
What must happen, instead, is for Israel to grow up emotionally, culturally and intellectually. And the best way to do this is to mix with the other nations on an equal basis so as to learn from experience that life does not mean having to make a choice between controlling the world and dying in a gas chamber. There is a position called live and let live, one that the Arabs have lived by for hundreds of years. It is the reason why there has never been a holocaust or a pogrom during their fourteen hundred year rule, and the reason why Christians and Jews were able to live in peace and security like no one ever lived under another rule. And when Israel was formed and the Jews in the Arab countries bought the fantasy that they can lead a better life going there, they left the Arab countries on their own accord, taking with them all that they cared to take without being hassled by anyone. Unlike what happened in the old Soviet Union where the Jews were asked to pay the back taxes they owed to the state, pay for the free education they received and pay for the training and the skills they acquired at the expense of the state, the Arabs asked for nothing from the Jews, and they let them go without throwing a single condition at them. The result has been that no Jew stood in front of an Arab embassy in a foreign country to chant: “Let my people go” as the Jews and their supporters did with regard to the former Soviet Union. In sum, the Jews lived with the Arabs in dignity and they left in dignity; no one can ask for more than that.
And this begs the question: What is this Arab maxim which says live and let live? Simply put, it is a philosophy that says you take out of life as much as you put into it and learn to be satisfied with that. You also let the others live in accordance with their contribution to life without interfering with their right to enjoy what life is giving them. For this to work, you put down rules that every member of the society lives by and where the violators are stopped cold before they go too far. To understand the significance of this philosophy, we need to contrast it with those that sprung up in many parts of Europe. The philosophies in these places have generally been to the effect that you observe your neighbor and see if (a) there is something you can grab from him when he is not watching (b) something you can exploit him for when he is not aware what you’re doing to him or (c) something for which you may team up with him and go against a third party. In short, the philosophy of the Arabs tends to limit the excesses of the individual early on so as to prevent them from becoming accepted precedents while the philosophies of the Europeans employ a permissive attitude that encourages the individual to experiment with the view of joining him if he succeeds or feeding on the wreckage if he gets all smashed up.
When we grasp the principles underlying these two philosophies we see why the Jews did not give in to excess while living among the Arabs and thus lived in peace and security with them. We also see why things developed so badly in Europe that the people in there concluded each and every time that a good Jew was a dead Jew thus launched a pogrom or a holocaust to get rid of all the Jews. The important thing to remember here is that the Arab societies as a whole did not collude with the Jews or anyone else to cheat, exploit or subjugate a third party. Yes, a handful of Arab individuals tried to conduct themselves in this manner but they were “eliminated” in no time at all whether or not an elder issued a fatwa against them. By contrast, the Europeans colluded with the Jews both as individuals and as a society to go against a third party only to discover that they were outwitted by the Jews each and every time which is why the Europeans turned against the Jews over and over again.
In more modern times, the relationship between America and Israel has been a curious mix of exploitation and make believe. Under this regime, Israel was plugged into the bloodstream of American economic life where it is now leading a nationwide life of Cadillac welfarism while the American people -- forty million of whom live on donated food and no health coverage -- are asked to believe that this situation enhances their security. To nurture the charade and keep it going, the frontline states that came to the aid of the Palestinian victims when the Jewish hordes butchered them with savage delight were designated potent enemies of America and demonized. And the designators were none other than Israel and her AIPAC allies in America. But with time, the credibility of this designation began to wear thin and the circle of enemies was widened to encompass the Arab core. This brought into the circle of enemies the oil rich Arab states that proved to be easier to demagogue. But this too wore thin with time and the circle of enemies had to be widened once more to include all the Muslim nations whether they were of Arab or non-Arab origin. And this is when the American people began to realize that they have been outwitted by the Jews upon which the inevitable happened; the people began to ask if the time had not come to reconsider their stand with regard to this escalating outrage.
The charade collapsed and the animosity toward the Arabs and the Muslims abated as the American people understood the role that Israel is playing in the Middle East. They now see Israel’s actions as being no different from what the Nazis did in their heyday. In the same way that the Nazis saw progress in matters concerning Europe’s security by grabbing more and more land, Israel and AIPAC had programmed Joe Biden to define progress as being something related to security. This done, they pushed the envelope further by demonstrating with words and with deeds that security means the grabbing of more and more land. And what dismays the people of America most, as shown by their responses and their blogs, is that they see these actions as becoming increasingly more intertwined with their country’s interests.
Just look again at the words uttered by Joe Biden: "Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security." But what happened after these words were spoken? You guessed it; Israel announced another project to grab more Palestinian land. Biden reacted to the outrage by pretending to be shocked but he did not insist that the project be cancelled. And neither did the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she had the opportunity to do so in a later conversation with the Israeli officials. On the contrary, she reiterated that the ties between America and Israel were durable and strong.
Still, while more Americans are having a better understanding of what is happening in the Middle East, they realize that they continue to be saddled with a Congress made of male hookers and pimping madams in the business of gridlocking America’s pressing needs and fastracking Israel’s capricious demands. This disgusting situation more than anything is turning the saga of the Jews in America into an episode that will most certainly end up in the way that previous episodes have ended elsewhere. It will be a tragedy that will hurt the innocent Jews who do not realize what is being done in their name, destroy America itself and shake the rest of the world as the latter will fail once again to prevent the events from running their full and horrifying course.
To avoid this kind of ending, we must accept the reality that Joe Biden has not yet learned all that he needs to learn about the people he is dealing with, and that his education must continue. If truth be told, Joe Biden must continue to learn not at the hands of the Israeli or the AIPAC crowds that have programmed him in the past but learn by exercising his own logic and applying it where it needs to be applied. Given that no progress has occurred in the Middle East despite his hypothesis even though everyone knew there was never a space between the United States and Israel as he has asserted, the existing arrangement between these two countries must now be replaced by another. And Joe Biden will have shown that he exercised his logic and that he learned enough of what needs to be learned when he will publicly declare that America will no longer support Israel anymore than it supports any other country because Israel must fashion its own security by getting along with its neighbors and thus prove to the world that it has been toilet trained at long last.
The purpose of speaking in Yenglish is to convey the notion that as far as America is concerned not a single condition will ever be attached to anything that Israel asks for whatever provocation this country will commit. When the Israeli or AIPAC officials say that something is good for Israel, America will automatically and robotically wear the suicide belt and detonate itself along with the interests of its own people to accommodate the wishes of those Israeli and AIPAC officials. And the reason they all give for speaking in terms which are this exaggerated and this absolute is that without such a stand on the part of America, someone out there may be tempted to test that country’s resolve to defend Israel and may attack the poor little thing thus drag America into a conflict it wants to avoid. And so, when America speaks Yenglish and everyone knows there is no space between it and Israel, America buys the insurance policy that protects it from the folly of those who may have unresolved issues with Israel. The intent here is to let everyone know that to take on Israel will also mean to take on a superpower that is wearing a suicidal belt and willing to detonate it.
Why is this stand so pornographic? To understand the argument relating to this question we need to be aware of a saying used by young American men when they want to belittle someone. They say that he still needs his mom to hold his penis for him when he urinates. Well, America has been holding Israel’s penis well past the time that it takes to toilet-train a child. But Israel is not a child anymore and what comes out of that penis may not always be urine. In fact, Israel has wrapped all matters relating to its security in the cloak of potent manhood not that of helpless childhood, and when Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton or the US Congress stroke the Israeli habit of taking America for granted, they stimulate more than urine out of that penis. And this is the pornographic spectacle that the rest of us are made to watch and be disgusted by.
What must happen, instead, is for Israel to grow up emotionally, culturally and intellectually. And the best way to do this is to mix with the other nations on an equal basis so as to learn from experience that life does not mean having to make a choice between controlling the world and dying in a gas chamber. There is a position called live and let live, one that the Arabs have lived by for hundreds of years. It is the reason why there has never been a holocaust or a pogrom during their fourteen hundred year rule, and the reason why Christians and Jews were able to live in peace and security like no one ever lived under another rule. And when Israel was formed and the Jews in the Arab countries bought the fantasy that they can lead a better life going there, they left the Arab countries on their own accord, taking with them all that they cared to take without being hassled by anyone. Unlike what happened in the old Soviet Union where the Jews were asked to pay the back taxes they owed to the state, pay for the free education they received and pay for the training and the skills they acquired at the expense of the state, the Arabs asked for nothing from the Jews, and they let them go without throwing a single condition at them. The result has been that no Jew stood in front of an Arab embassy in a foreign country to chant: “Let my people go” as the Jews and their supporters did with regard to the former Soviet Union. In sum, the Jews lived with the Arabs in dignity and they left in dignity; no one can ask for more than that.
And this begs the question: What is this Arab maxim which says live and let live? Simply put, it is a philosophy that says you take out of life as much as you put into it and learn to be satisfied with that. You also let the others live in accordance with their contribution to life without interfering with their right to enjoy what life is giving them. For this to work, you put down rules that every member of the society lives by and where the violators are stopped cold before they go too far. To understand the significance of this philosophy, we need to contrast it with those that sprung up in many parts of Europe. The philosophies in these places have generally been to the effect that you observe your neighbor and see if (a) there is something you can grab from him when he is not watching (b) something you can exploit him for when he is not aware what you’re doing to him or (c) something for which you may team up with him and go against a third party. In short, the philosophy of the Arabs tends to limit the excesses of the individual early on so as to prevent them from becoming accepted precedents while the philosophies of the Europeans employ a permissive attitude that encourages the individual to experiment with the view of joining him if he succeeds or feeding on the wreckage if he gets all smashed up.
When we grasp the principles underlying these two philosophies we see why the Jews did not give in to excess while living among the Arabs and thus lived in peace and security with them. We also see why things developed so badly in Europe that the people in there concluded each and every time that a good Jew was a dead Jew thus launched a pogrom or a holocaust to get rid of all the Jews. The important thing to remember here is that the Arab societies as a whole did not collude with the Jews or anyone else to cheat, exploit or subjugate a third party. Yes, a handful of Arab individuals tried to conduct themselves in this manner but they were “eliminated” in no time at all whether or not an elder issued a fatwa against them. By contrast, the Europeans colluded with the Jews both as individuals and as a society to go against a third party only to discover that they were outwitted by the Jews each and every time which is why the Europeans turned against the Jews over and over again.
In more modern times, the relationship between America and Israel has been a curious mix of exploitation and make believe. Under this regime, Israel was plugged into the bloodstream of American economic life where it is now leading a nationwide life of Cadillac welfarism while the American people -- forty million of whom live on donated food and no health coverage -- are asked to believe that this situation enhances their security. To nurture the charade and keep it going, the frontline states that came to the aid of the Palestinian victims when the Jewish hordes butchered them with savage delight were designated potent enemies of America and demonized. And the designators were none other than Israel and her AIPAC allies in America. But with time, the credibility of this designation began to wear thin and the circle of enemies was widened to encompass the Arab core. This brought into the circle of enemies the oil rich Arab states that proved to be easier to demagogue. But this too wore thin with time and the circle of enemies had to be widened once more to include all the Muslim nations whether they were of Arab or non-Arab origin. And this is when the American people began to realize that they have been outwitted by the Jews upon which the inevitable happened; the people began to ask if the time had not come to reconsider their stand with regard to this escalating outrage.
The charade collapsed and the animosity toward the Arabs and the Muslims abated as the American people understood the role that Israel is playing in the Middle East. They now see Israel’s actions as being no different from what the Nazis did in their heyday. In the same way that the Nazis saw progress in matters concerning Europe’s security by grabbing more and more land, Israel and AIPAC had programmed Joe Biden to define progress as being something related to security. This done, they pushed the envelope further by demonstrating with words and with deeds that security means the grabbing of more and more land. And what dismays the people of America most, as shown by their responses and their blogs, is that they see these actions as becoming increasingly more intertwined with their country’s interests.
Just look again at the words uttered by Joe Biden: "Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security." But what happened after these words were spoken? You guessed it; Israel announced another project to grab more Palestinian land. Biden reacted to the outrage by pretending to be shocked but he did not insist that the project be cancelled. And neither did the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she had the opportunity to do so in a later conversation with the Israeli officials. On the contrary, she reiterated that the ties between America and Israel were durable and strong.
Still, while more Americans are having a better understanding of what is happening in the Middle East, they realize that they continue to be saddled with a Congress made of male hookers and pimping madams in the business of gridlocking America’s pressing needs and fastracking Israel’s capricious demands. This disgusting situation more than anything is turning the saga of the Jews in America into an episode that will most certainly end up in the way that previous episodes have ended elsewhere. It will be a tragedy that will hurt the innocent Jews who do not realize what is being done in their name, destroy America itself and shake the rest of the world as the latter will fail once again to prevent the events from running their full and horrifying course.
To avoid this kind of ending, we must accept the reality that Joe Biden has not yet learned all that he needs to learn about the people he is dealing with, and that his education must continue. If truth be told, Joe Biden must continue to learn not at the hands of the Israeli or the AIPAC crowds that have programmed him in the past but learn by exercising his own logic and applying it where it needs to be applied. Given that no progress has occurred in the Middle East despite his hypothesis even though everyone knew there was never a space between the United States and Israel as he has asserted, the existing arrangement between these two countries must now be replaced by another. And Joe Biden will have shown that he exercised his logic and that he learned enough of what needs to be learned when he will publicly declare that America will no longer support Israel anymore than it supports any other country because Israel must fashion its own security by getting along with its neighbors and thus prove to the world that it has been toilet trained at long last.
Monday, March 8, 2010
To Answer A Fifty Year Old Question
Is there a need to enact a reporter’s Bill of Rights to accompany the First Amendment in the American Constitution and every such provision in the other constitutions? Or is it that the right of an editor is so absolute he or she can order a reporter to say anything they want them to say or dismiss them if they refuse to say it? To answer these questions I must reach back fifty years to a lesson I started to learn then and have continued to learn until recently.
Nine or ten years ago I found myself sitting with a number of grumpy men, some older than me and some younger. We were watching the Sunday morning talking heads on television when, out of the blue, came the answer to a question I had brooded over forty years earlier as I sat quietly and listened to men and women discuss a subject that was way over my head at the time. I was then in my teen years hoping to land a permanent job at the television network that had just started in Egypt and so I volunteered to work with anyone who could use what talent I had. And the people I was sitting with on that day long ago were professionals with radio and film experience who normally wrestled with questions of adaptation from one medium to another but were discussing something else on that unforgettable day.
They were discussing a remark that was made by an American journalist on behalf of his publication which, I believe, was the New York Times or something of this caliber. The remark was to the effect that after many years of giving Egypt bad publicity, the publication had finally carried an article so favorable to President Nasser he would have had to spend a million dollars on advertising to get as good a coverage. And the point that the professionals were dancing around boiled down to these questions: Who or what should a publication serve or hurt? Is it the audience by giving it the truth no matter what the truth looks like? Or is it the subject matter that the publication is covering by hiding its warts or highlighting its qualities or what?
I do not remember how the discussion ended fifty years ago but I know I never got an answer to any of those questions until the men I sat with on a Sunday morning a decade ago rekindled my curiosity about the subject and provided me with possible answers. What happened ten years ago was that an older man shouted a profanity at the television set at which point a younger man told him he was not supposed to talk like that in this age of political correctness. The rebuke did not sit well with the first man who snapped back: “F… political correctness, this guy is a fruitcake.” He actually used another word but I am using fruitcake instead. The man went on to explain that the talking head on television was advocating the rape of a child by holding him in America because to return him to his father in Cuba would make Fidel Castro look good. And this is when I realized I may have been given answers to the questions I carried in my head all these years. The apparent answers were to the effect that the media are supposed to serve their audiences but most of the time they serve themselves and would go as far as rape a child or the audience or both to do the self-serving.
As the discussion progressed among the now very grumpy men, one of them remarked that the media were screwing (f…ing) the audience in the head so as to keep the public happy and quiet all the time. Another man agreed and said that the media are the modern opium of the masses, and he ventured to paint the world we live in like this: Some people believe they have a computer chip planted in their buttock and that they are being watched by the government which sees them everywhere they go and hears everything they say. But this is not possible or necessary, said he tongue in cheek, because the truth is that we all have a dick transplanted inside our skulls which keeps us f…ed up permanently and quiet all the time.
From the discussion of that day I developed the notion that the people in the media show their self serving habits when they promote their own interest as individuals or the interest of the publication to which they are linked. They are seen to do so when they take up the point of view of a third party or attack that of their opponent. And what this means at the end of the day is that the truth which the media people are supposed to purvey with honesty becomes irrelevant except in the sense that the telling of the truth becomes a commodity in their hand which they shape and reshape, and then sell to the highest bidder along with their soul.
And the flimsy reason that the talking head gave ten years ago to deprive a child of the love and care that only a father can give in the absence of a mother that died in a drowning accident, is given again and again as flimsy as ever in the same form or a slightly different one to keep the truth from the audience. Some people call this behavior the telling of a small lie to serve the interest of a greater truth. But in the interest of fairness, it must be said that not all those who engage in such activities do it on their own accord. In fact, most of the time such lies are told because the editor, the publisher or the producer forces the reporter to lie about the facts or to voice an opinion that he or she does not support. I was provided with streams of information to this effect after I sued a prestigious publication for trying to force me to do just that. I received a great deal of gossip and of revelations regarding what was going on inside a number of prestigious print and audio-visual publications. Some of the stories painted a situation of near mutiny where reporters or anchors were ordered to tell the opposite of what everyone knew was the truth or pack up and go. Voices were raised, desks were pounded and compromises were reached which probably meant to marry half a truth with half a lie and call that a balanced view.
An incident I heard about from several sources was that of a veteran Canadian reporter and anchor who later died of cancer. He was threatened with death before he knew he had cancer, and his murder was supposed to have happened at the hands of Israeli operatives if he did not read an item on the air glorifying Israel and condemning the Arabs by reversing the facts of a story that were known to everyone. I do not know how this confrontation ended but I was told it was a violent confrontation. Whether it was this reporter or someone else who called for the enactment of a Bill of Rights to protect the reporters is not clear to me but it was then that such a call was first made. And this brings us to the story of the murder that took place in Dubai not long ago.
All available information is to the effect that the murdered Palestinian man had killed two Israeli soldiers of occupation. This is what an army of resistance does whereby the killing is recognized as legitimate, and those who do the killing are called freedom fighters. And when a state sends killers to murder someone beyond its borders, such a state is recognized as being a terrorist state and it is treated as such. This is what Israel did, therefore it must be called the terrorist state that it is and it must be treated accordingly. Anyone that says otherwise is in the business of aiding and abating terrorism.
Parallel to this story was the fact that Israel used forged passports replicating those of actual citizens from one Continental European country and a number of English speaking ones. Still, the media in those countries were not harsh enough in their condemnation of Israel by any stretch of the imagination but they, at least, refrained from justifying that country’s action which is a good start but no more than that. By contrast, what happened in the North American English media -- countries whose passports were not forged this time around – is that the press gave a platform to the Israeli propaganda machine allowing it to spew the kind of justification for a murder that will most certainly boomerang and hit us in the face one of these days. The net result has been that the Israeli mouthpieces used the platform they were given to label the murdered Palestinian a terrorist, yet not once did they label Israel a terrorist state or even hinted at that. And they spoke in this fashion even though they knew that Israel has been nothing but a terrorist entity before it was recognized as a state and has been a terrorist state ever since.
As I red the stories relating to the murder in Dubai and watched them on North American television, it was obvious to me as it would have been to any observer, that on a number of occasions the writers or interviewers appeared to be uncomfortable doing what they were asked to do. They reminded me of the stories that triggered the calls to enact a reporter’s Bill of Rights. Had a law to this effect been passed ten years ago, those uncomfortable writers and interviewers would have said no to the editor, the publisher or the producer that gave them the insane task of helping to justify a murder which Israel was bragging about yet “ambiguously” denied it and did not deny it both in the same breath.
And it is precisely this manner of communicating that is recognized both as being vintage Talmudic and being the quintessential method by which to screw an audience in the head. It is done in America and done for the glory of Israel supposedly to hurt the Arabs who, most certainly, do not know what the hell is being done to the American people, and could not care less if they did. No wonder, say the people who examine this sort of phenomena that the superpower which America used to be is now on the verge of being declared a failed state. If AIPAC can do this with the media while everyone is watching, imagine what AIPAC can do with a congress of legislators when no one is watching.
A law to protect the reporters was never enacted, and we must recognize that such a move is now overdue. Having this law on the books will restore the credibility of the media in the English speaking countries, something we desperately need to do because the way things stand now, our media could not make it as breakfast for dogs.
We deserve better than that and it is in our hand to give us this gift. Let’s do it.
Nine or ten years ago I found myself sitting with a number of grumpy men, some older than me and some younger. We were watching the Sunday morning talking heads on television when, out of the blue, came the answer to a question I had brooded over forty years earlier as I sat quietly and listened to men and women discuss a subject that was way over my head at the time. I was then in my teen years hoping to land a permanent job at the television network that had just started in Egypt and so I volunteered to work with anyone who could use what talent I had. And the people I was sitting with on that day long ago were professionals with radio and film experience who normally wrestled with questions of adaptation from one medium to another but were discussing something else on that unforgettable day.
They were discussing a remark that was made by an American journalist on behalf of his publication which, I believe, was the New York Times or something of this caliber. The remark was to the effect that after many years of giving Egypt bad publicity, the publication had finally carried an article so favorable to President Nasser he would have had to spend a million dollars on advertising to get as good a coverage. And the point that the professionals were dancing around boiled down to these questions: Who or what should a publication serve or hurt? Is it the audience by giving it the truth no matter what the truth looks like? Or is it the subject matter that the publication is covering by hiding its warts or highlighting its qualities or what?
I do not remember how the discussion ended fifty years ago but I know I never got an answer to any of those questions until the men I sat with on a Sunday morning a decade ago rekindled my curiosity about the subject and provided me with possible answers. What happened ten years ago was that an older man shouted a profanity at the television set at which point a younger man told him he was not supposed to talk like that in this age of political correctness. The rebuke did not sit well with the first man who snapped back: “F… political correctness, this guy is a fruitcake.” He actually used another word but I am using fruitcake instead. The man went on to explain that the talking head on television was advocating the rape of a child by holding him in America because to return him to his father in Cuba would make Fidel Castro look good. And this is when I realized I may have been given answers to the questions I carried in my head all these years. The apparent answers were to the effect that the media are supposed to serve their audiences but most of the time they serve themselves and would go as far as rape a child or the audience or both to do the self-serving.
As the discussion progressed among the now very grumpy men, one of them remarked that the media were screwing (f…ing) the audience in the head so as to keep the public happy and quiet all the time. Another man agreed and said that the media are the modern opium of the masses, and he ventured to paint the world we live in like this: Some people believe they have a computer chip planted in their buttock and that they are being watched by the government which sees them everywhere they go and hears everything they say. But this is not possible or necessary, said he tongue in cheek, because the truth is that we all have a dick transplanted inside our skulls which keeps us f…ed up permanently and quiet all the time.
From the discussion of that day I developed the notion that the people in the media show their self serving habits when they promote their own interest as individuals or the interest of the publication to which they are linked. They are seen to do so when they take up the point of view of a third party or attack that of their opponent. And what this means at the end of the day is that the truth which the media people are supposed to purvey with honesty becomes irrelevant except in the sense that the telling of the truth becomes a commodity in their hand which they shape and reshape, and then sell to the highest bidder along with their soul.
And the flimsy reason that the talking head gave ten years ago to deprive a child of the love and care that only a father can give in the absence of a mother that died in a drowning accident, is given again and again as flimsy as ever in the same form or a slightly different one to keep the truth from the audience. Some people call this behavior the telling of a small lie to serve the interest of a greater truth. But in the interest of fairness, it must be said that not all those who engage in such activities do it on their own accord. In fact, most of the time such lies are told because the editor, the publisher or the producer forces the reporter to lie about the facts or to voice an opinion that he or she does not support. I was provided with streams of information to this effect after I sued a prestigious publication for trying to force me to do just that. I received a great deal of gossip and of revelations regarding what was going on inside a number of prestigious print and audio-visual publications. Some of the stories painted a situation of near mutiny where reporters or anchors were ordered to tell the opposite of what everyone knew was the truth or pack up and go. Voices were raised, desks were pounded and compromises were reached which probably meant to marry half a truth with half a lie and call that a balanced view.
An incident I heard about from several sources was that of a veteran Canadian reporter and anchor who later died of cancer. He was threatened with death before he knew he had cancer, and his murder was supposed to have happened at the hands of Israeli operatives if he did not read an item on the air glorifying Israel and condemning the Arabs by reversing the facts of a story that were known to everyone. I do not know how this confrontation ended but I was told it was a violent confrontation. Whether it was this reporter or someone else who called for the enactment of a Bill of Rights to protect the reporters is not clear to me but it was then that such a call was first made. And this brings us to the story of the murder that took place in Dubai not long ago.
All available information is to the effect that the murdered Palestinian man had killed two Israeli soldiers of occupation. This is what an army of resistance does whereby the killing is recognized as legitimate, and those who do the killing are called freedom fighters. And when a state sends killers to murder someone beyond its borders, such a state is recognized as being a terrorist state and it is treated as such. This is what Israel did, therefore it must be called the terrorist state that it is and it must be treated accordingly. Anyone that says otherwise is in the business of aiding and abating terrorism.
Parallel to this story was the fact that Israel used forged passports replicating those of actual citizens from one Continental European country and a number of English speaking ones. Still, the media in those countries were not harsh enough in their condemnation of Israel by any stretch of the imagination but they, at least, refrained from justifying that country’s action which is a good start but no more than that. By contrast, what happened in the North American English media -- countries whose passports were not forged this time around – is that the press gave a platform to the Israeli propaganda machine allowing it to spew the kind of justification for a murder that will most certainly boomerang and hit us in the face one of these days. The net result has been that the Israeli mouthpieces used the platform they were given to label the murdered Palestinian a terrorist, yet not once did they label Israel a terrorist state or even hinted at that. And they spoke in this fashion even though they knew that Israel has been nothing but a terrorist entity before it was recognized as a state and has been a terrorist state ever since.
As I red the stories relating to the murder in Dubai and watched them on North American television, it was obvious to me as it would have been to any observer, that on a number of occasions the writers or interviewers appeared to be uncomfortable doing what they were asked to do. They reminded me of the stories that triggered the calls to enact a reporter’s Bill of Rights. Had a law to this effect been passed ten years ago, those uncomfortable writers and interviewers would have said no to the editor, the publisher or the producer that gave them the insane task of helping to justify a murder which Israel was bragging about yet “ambiguously” denied it and did not deny it both in the same breath.
And it is precisely this manner of communicating that is recognized both as being vintage Talmudic and being the quintessential method by which to screw an audience in the head. It is done in America and done for the glory of Israel supposedly to hurt the Arabs who, most certainly, do not know what the hell is being done to the American people, and could not care less if they did. No wonder, say the people who examine this sort of phenomena that the superpower which America used to be is now on the verge of being declared a failed state. If AIPAC can do this with the media while everyone is watching, imagine what AIPAC can do with a congress of legislators when no one is watching.
A law to protect the reporters was never enacted, and we must recognize that such a move is now overdue. Having this law on the books will restore the credibility of the media in the English speaking countries, something we desperately need to do because the way things stand now, our media could not make it as breakfast for dogs.
We deserve better than that and it is in our hand to give us this gift. Let’s do it.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Highway Robbery On Their Mind
The other day Israel announced and Egypt denied that the two countries were planning to launch a joint project in the business of solar powered energy. Apparently what started the uproar was that some Israelis had traveled to Egypt to discuss political matters unrelated to energy with their Egyptian counterparts when the Israelis unexpectedly proposed the idea of a joint project. The Egyptians said they will think about it and stopped there which is the polite way to say no in the language of international diplomacy.
Because the Israelis had a larger plan in mind, they were eager to see the Egyptians reconsider the matter. To pressure them, they asserted as soon as they got home, that the Egyptians had said yes to the project; and this is when the latter flatly denied the assertion. It is not exactly clear which audience or audiences the Israelis had in mind when they mounted this piece of theatre but what is unmistakable about the episode is that the Israelis were both its author and the intended beneficiaries as evidenced by the fact that the theatrics contained two of their best recognized signatures.
The first signature is to the effect that the apparent intent of the plan is to rob the Egyptians and their European partners of the knowledge they have accumulated on the science and technology of solar energy which the Israelis desperately need at this time. And the second signature is to the effect that the Israelis are trying to portray the robbery as being a gift they will give to the Egyptians because they are the magnanimous Jews who are also the scientifically and technologically advanced party.
The reality being the exact opposite of that, we need to be reminded of the elements of the true story. Mindful of the fact that the oil and natural gas they now have in abundance will someday be depleted the Arab countries from Morocco to the Gulf States have been quietly developing the hard and soft infrastructures pertaining to the generation of renewable energy. For several decades now they have been setting up centers of research and development both on their own and in cooperation with their European partners. They have done basic research, have explored the applications, have built the prototypes and have erected the units that currently produce electricity on a commercial scale. In short, the Arabs have made great strides in the domain of generating electricity by converting solar and wind power to electrical power. In fact, some of these countries have already added a substantial amount of renewable kilowatts to their power grid which places them ahead of most other countries in this field.
In addition to that, at least one country, Egypt, has made impressive advances in cooperation with a Canadian partner in the field of biofuel production. Teams from both countries worked together on building a commercial plant in Egypt that now produces various fuels for the local market and for export. The jointly owned company is doing so well that its shares have almost tripled on the Toronto Stock Exchange in a matter of weeks despite the slump that the other stocks have experienced during that same period of time. Furthermore, an Egyptian conglomerate in the business of making cables and the business of generating electricity operating in several countries has bought some of the solar businesses that were about to shut down in Spain when that country’s economy tanked due to the economic crisis that hit the world in 2008 and 2009.
All of these developments, quietly taking place in the background, made it inevitable for the next shoe to drop. Realizing that all the necessary ingredients were in place in North Africa for launching a massive solar project to generate electricity in the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert, a private German firm organized a European consortium and proposed the erection of a trillion dollar project to feed North Africa and Europe with electricity. The consortium presented the idea to all the interested parties in Europe, in North Africa and everywhere a potential investor may be found, and no one said no to the project. As of now it remains on track for realization.
And this is what attracted the attention of the Israelis who never generated a single kilowatt-hour of solar powered electricity on a commercial scale. This is what made them say they will contribute know-how in an area where they have exactly zero expertise. But having nothing to contribute and seeing much that they want to steal, they have shown once again that the only know-how they have in abundance is a verbal diarrhea that stinks so badly, people can smell it with their ears as well as their noses. These guys just don’t know when or where to stop; and the only thing they are able to accomplish is invite a rejection of what they stand for, at which time they turn around and call such response a manifestation of anti-Semitism.
But do the Israelis really understand how the rest of the world regards them when they behave in that manner? Of course they do but when it comes to robbing someone and making it look like they did the victim a favor by robbing them, they remain a shameless people full of hubris and whatever else. The reality is that the technology for generating renewable energy has been developing outside of North America and the Western countries where the Israelis used to steal technology and pretend to have developed it themselves. They did this for decades with all sorts of discoveries and inventions, and nobody did as much as slap them on the wrist. But now that the science and technology they need is being developed where they cannot steal it, the Israelis are becoming desperate. They do not know how to give and take in a civilized manner with people who do not tolerate their antics and so they find themselves in the awkward position of seeing but not touching.
To better understand why the Israelis behave the way they do when it comes to these matters, you may want to get a hold of a discussion paper written by Dr. Amit Mor under the title: “Israel’s Energy Challenges”. When you read this paper you get the sense that the man who is Israeli got his facts correct but that a good part of his conclusion is muddied because he began with a frame of mind that was clouded at the outset. The figures that he quotes are substantiated by checking various other sources, and the conclusion he reaches to the effect that the energy situation in Israel is dire can be verified but what is muddied about his discussion is that he shows little or no understanding about Israel’s economy even though he works for the power authority which is owned by the government of Israel.
Right at the start Mor makes it clear that he wishes to speak of the Israeli economy in terms of the European standard of industrial development having no idea that to compare the two is like comparing a ping pong ball with a golf ball. The first is an empty shell of consumption with little production behind it while the second is a solid mass of a diversified economy -- and the twain shall never meet to quote Rudyard Kipling. But after lamenting that very little research in the field of renewable energy and no commercial development is done in Israel, Amit Mor makes this observation: “Much of the research and training in renewable energy is funded by universities. Most of the remaining research and development has been self-financed for firms that have been successful abroad or partially financed through small ventures.”
This is what should have told Dr. Mor why Israel is lagging behind in renewable energy and this is what tells us why the Israeli officials behave like thieves wearing the white coat of a scientist and the halo of a saint. The fact is that Israel has had a bitter experience in this field once before, and like they say: once bitten twice shy. What happened was that rooftop solar water heaters were developed in a few places around the world and were imported lock, stock, barrel and stolen technology into Israel to be produced at a cost that exceeded their benefit. The Israeli politicians who are in charge of the economy understood the cost/benefit analysis of the thing, and they refused to throw good money after bad so they shied away from encouraging anymore work in the field of renewable energy given the thin state of Israel’s technological and industrial base. These people have learned the hard way that because Israel cannot yet make the nuts and bolts that hold a water heater together at a reasonable cost, they can only import the parts from abroad, assemble them locally and pretend to have conceived and produced the whole thing in Israel -- which is how they behave with regard to everything they boast they can do better than anyone else.
Having an economy with a shell as thin as a ping pong ball yet wishing to live like Europeans who have economies as solid as a golf ball, the Israelis found themselves dancing on the balls of a dilemma. What to do now? The answer they came up with was to be themselves once again. It is how they lived for thousands of years and it is how they shall live as far as the eye can see. To this end, they initiated the first step which was to prepare a plan that will rob the Egyptians of the science and technology the latter have developed. And the next step would have been to make it look like it was Israeli science and technology transferred to Egypt in the first place. And to avoid the mistake they made with the water heaters where they lost their shirt trying to bathe in a water they could not afford to warm up with stolen technology and imported parts, the Israelis fantasized about the Egyptians doing the work on Egyptian soil and doing it right as they basked in the false pretense of having done it by themselves.
And as always, the fantasy became reality in their heads which is what caused the uproar about an agreement that never was. So far the Egyptians are maintaining their no response but who knows; the Israelis might grow up someday and learn to talk like civilized human beings at which time the Egyptians may allow them to join a project with the potential to do them some good. We’ll see; 4000 years of stupidity is a very long time and maybe -- just maybe – these guys have learned to say to themselves enough is enough.
Because the Israelis had a larger plan in mind, they were eager to see the Egyptians reconsider the matter. To pressure them, they asserted as soon as they got home, that the Egyptians had said yes to the project; and this is when the latter flatly denied the assertion. It is not exactly clear which audience or audiences the Israelis had in mind when they mounted this piece of theatre but what is unmistakable about the episode is that the Israelis were both its author and the intended beneficiaries as evidenced by the fact that the theatrics contained two of their best recognized signatures.
The first signature is to the effect that the apparent intent of the plan is to rob the Egyptians and their European partners of the knowledge they have accumulated on the science and technology of solar energy which the Israelis desperately need at this time. And the second signature is to the effect that the Israelis are trying to portray the robbery as being a gift they will give to the Egyptians because they are the magnanimous Jews who are also the scientifically and technologically advanced party.
The reality being the exact opposite of that, we need to be reminded of the elements of the true story. Mindful of the fact that the oil and natural gas they now have in abundance will someday be depleted the Arab countries from Morocco to the Gulf States have been quietly developing the hard and soft infrastructures pertaining to the generation of renewable energy. For several decades now they have been setting up centers of research and development both on their own and in cooperation with their European partners. They have done basic research, have explored the applications, have built the prototypes and have erected the units that currently produce electricity on a commercial scale. In short, the Arabs have made great strides in the domain of generating electricity by converting solar and wind power to electrical power. In fact, some of these countries have already added a substantial amount of renewable kilowatts to their power grid which places them ahead of most other countries in this field.
In addition to that, at least one country, Egypt, has made impressive advances in cooperation with a Canadian partner in the field of biofuel production. Teams from both countries worked together on building a commercial plant in Egypt that now produces various fuels for the local market and for export. The jointly owned company is doing so well that its shares have almost tripled on the Toronto Stock Exchange in a matter of weeks despite the slump that the other stocks have experienced during that same period of time. Furthermore, an Egyptian conglomerate in the business of making cables and the business of generating electricity operating in several countries has bought some of the solar businesses that were about to shut down in Spain when that country’s economy tanked due to the economic crisis that hit the world in 2008 and 2009.
All of these developments, quietly taking place in the background, made it inevitable for the next shoe to drop. Realizing that all the necessary ingredients were in place in North Africa for launching a massive solar project to generate electricity in the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert, a private German firm organized a European consortium and proposed the erection of a trillion dollar project to feed North Africa and Europe with electricity. The consortium presented the idea to all the interested parties in Europe, in North Africa and everywhere a potential investor may be found, and no one said no to the project. As of now it remains on track for realization.
And this is what attracted the attention of the Israelis who never generated a single kilowatt-hour of solar powered electricity on a commercial scale. This is what made them say they will contribute know-how in an area where they have exactly zero expertise. But having nothing to contribute and seeing much that they want to steal, they have shown once again that the only know-how they have in abundance is a verbal diarrhea that stinks so badly, people can smell it with their ears as well as their noses. These guys just don’t know when or where to stop; and the only thing they are able to accomplish is invite a rejection of what they stand for, at which time they turn around and call such response a manifestation of anti-Semitism.
But do the Israelis really understand how the rest of the world regards them when they behave in that manner? Of course they do but when it comes to robbing someone and making it look like they did the victim a favor by robbing them, they remain a shameless people full of hubris and whatever else. The reality is that the technology for generating renewable energy has been developing outside of North America and the Western countries where the Israelis used to steal technology and pretend to have developed it themselves. They did this for decades with all sorts of discoveries and inventions, and nobody did as much as slap them on the wrist. But now that the science and technology they need is being developed where they cannot steal it, the Israelis are becoming desperate. They do not know how to give and take in a civilized manner with people who do not tolerate their antics and so they find themselves in the awkward position of seeing but not touching.
To better understand why the Israelis behave the way they do when it comes to these matters, you may want to get a hold of a discussion paper written by Dr. Amit Mor under the title: “Israel’s Energy Challenges”. When you read this paper you get the sense that the man who is Israeli got his facts correct but that a good part of his conclusion is muddied because he began with a frame of mind that was clouded at the outset. The figures that he quotes are substantiated by checking various other sources, and the conclusion he reaches to the effect that the energy situation in Israel is dire can be verified but what is muddied about his discussion is that he shows little or no understanding about Israel’s economy even though he works for the power authority which is owned by the government of Israel.
Right at the start Mor makes it clear that he wishes to speak of the Israeli economy in terms of the European standard of industrial development having no idea that to compare the two is like comparing a ping pong ball with a golf ball. The first is an empty shell of consumption with little production behind it while the second is a solid mass of a diversified economy -- and the twain shall never meet to quote Rudyard Kipling. But after lamenting that very little research in the field of renewable energy and no commercial development is done in Israel, Amit Mor makes this observation: “Much of the research and training in renewable energy is funded by universities. Most of the remaining research and development has been self-financed for firms that have been successful abroad or partially financed through small ventures.”
This is what should have told Dr. Mor why Israel is lagging behind in renewable energy and this is what tells us why the Israeli officials behave like thieves wearing the white coat of a scientist and the halo of a saint. The fact is that Israel has had a bitter experience in this field once before, and like they say: once bitten twice shy. What happened was that rooftop solar water heaters were developed in a few places around the world and were imported lock, stock, barrel and stolen technology into Israel to be produced at a cost that exceeded their benefit. The Israeli politicians who are in charge of the economy understood the cost/benefit analysis of the thing, and they refused to throw good money after bad so they shied away from encouraging anymore work in the field of renewable energy given the thin state of Israel’s technological and industrial base. These people have learned the hard way that because Israel cannot yet make the nuts and bolts that hold a water heater together at a reasonable cost, they can only import the parts from abroad, assemble them locally and pretend to have conceived and produced the whole thing in Israel -- which is how they behave with regard to everything they boast they can do better than anyone else.
Having an economy with a shell as thin as a ping pong ball yet wishing to live like Europeans who have economies as solid as a golf ball, the Israelis found themselves dancing on the balls of a dilemma. What to do now? The answer they came up with was to be themselves once again. It is how they lived for thousands of years and it is how they shall live as far as the eye can see. To this end, they initiated the first step which was to prepare a plan that will rob the Egyptians of the science and technology the latter have developed. And the next step would have been to make it look like it was Israeli science and technology transferred to Egypt in the first place. And to avoid the mistake they made with the water heaters where they lost their shirt trying to bathe in a water they could not afford to warm up with stolen technology and imported parts, the Israelis fantasized about the Egyptians doing the work on Egyptian soil and doing it right as they basked in the false pretense of having done it by themselves.
And as always, the fantasy became reality in their heads which is what caused the uproar about an agreement that never was. So far the Egyptians are maintaining their no response but who knows; the Israelis might grow up someday and learn to talk like civilized human beings at which time the Egyptians may allow them to join a project with the potential to do them some good. We’ll see; 4000 years of stupidity is a very long time and maybe -- just maybe – these guys have learned to say to themselves enough is enough.
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