Tuesday, February 11, 2014

More of what Pulled America into the Mud

Nations boycott each other; they impose economic sanctions on one another; America even organizes what it can of the nations of the world to collectively sanction one country or another. In fact, as far as I can determine, this American habit of organizing the sanctioning of targeted nations was first acquired by the Americans when the Jewish lobby pressured the administration of the day to work on America's allies, and sanction Egypt in an effort to prevent that country from building the Aswan Dam.

In time, the habit was progressively abused, and grew to the point where it has become a self-defeating policy. You can see why this is the case when you read the Bret Stephens column that came under the title: “Secretary ScarJo” and the subtitle: “What the actress could teach John Kerry about courage and clarity.” It was published in the Wall Street Journal on February 11, 2014.

When a country is sanctioned or boycotted, it does what it can to break the affliction, and usually finds ways to mitigate it to one degree or another. Egypt, Iraq, South Africa, North Korea, Cuba and a host of Latin American, Asian and African countries did it. They all survived, even flourished after that. It also happened to Israel but only because it was at war with its neighbors, a condition that imposes a cease trade between the combatants even if a ceasefire is worked out between them.

The difference between boycotting Israel and everyone else is that the Jews see the treatment of Israel not as an economic act they can work around to mitigate as much as possible, but see it as something bigger than that. For this reason, the Jewish lobby that works to impose sanctions on nations like Egypt, Iraq and Iran, also works to use American power to break the boycott of Israel by other nations. In fact, the lobby has managed to get the Congress of idiots to pass a law punishing American companies that go along with the Arab boycott of Israel.

Something like that was repeated in the Canadian Province of Ontario, and I had a personal experience with it. Being a long time investor in Canadian mining companies, I came to know many executives who always look out for new opportunities locally and internationally. Upon hearing that gold was discovered in commercial quantities in Egypt, I approached a number of those executives and asked them if they would be interested to get involved in that country. They told me about the law in Ontario regarding the boycott of Israel.

They explained that the way around that law is to pour tons of money in Israel pretending to look for deposits you know are not there. If you don't do that, you will be accused of antisemitism, dragged in front of the television cameras where you will be expected to show contrition, even shed a few tears and ask for forgiveness. This done, you will still be expected to pour tons of money in Israel. In any case, they said they will think about it and call me back. They never did, but companies from other provinces and other nations went to Egypt where they made big discoveries and are now doing good business.

Well, these were private conversations. No matter what I could have done to express the savagery that the Jewish lobby employs to force people to comply with their demands, I could not have done as good a job as I can now, having the Bret Stephens column to illustrate my points.

He is telling the story of Scarlett Johansson, an actress that was told to choose between being a Global Ambassador for the antipoverty group known as Oxfam, or being a pitchwoman for an Israeli company. What happens in a case like this is that the actors talk to their agents in Hollywood who advise them what will be better for their careers. In this case, the choice between an antipoverty group and staying in the acting business was no contest, and she chose to stay in the business.

So then, what does someone like Stephens do with a story like this? What he does is suggest that the actress can teach John Kerry something about courage and clarity – as seen in the subtitle of the article. But Kerry had nothing to do with this story, why drag him into it? Worse, why suggest that he needs a lesson on courage and clarity so badly that he can learn about them from an actress? You read the article and discover that the world is as normal as it can be but that Israel and the Jews who support it are out of step with the human character – which explains why the Jews continue to be the pariahs of this planet.

In fact, the columnist sees that this incident is related to another one in the sense that both have to do with the boycott of Israel. The central figure in the other incident being John Kerry who warned the Israeli leaders that if the talks with the Palestinians fail, Israel will face the kind of “horribles” it fears the most; like that shown in the Scarlett Johansson example. And so, our author advises that Kerry should have seen the boycott of Israel as an affront and an outrage. This is irrelevant ... but who knows? Kerry may well have felt that sort of outrage. The question however is this: what could he have done?

To answer the question, Stephens does not specify what concrete actions could have been taken, but chides Kerry for appearing to express powerlessness. He then ventures to say a smart Aleck something: “A Secretary of State Johansson would have shown more courage and presence of mind than that.” And this is when you jump off your chair shouting the following: What the bleep is this guy talking about? Did he expect John Kerry to call his agent in Hollywood and ask what to do?

This is the story that Stephens said he was going to tell. As you can see, it leads to a series of questions that he could not answer, so what does he do? He branches out into a number of other subjects, each of which is loaded with inaccuracies that can only be responded to with a full length article. Thus, he confuses the reader and leaves him with a bag full of accusations leveled against the Palestinians. He makes it sound that because John Kerry did not call his agent in Hollywood, he let the Palestinian President as well as the widow of Yasser Arafat and a few others get away with things they should have been roasted for publicly. Is this the duty of an American Secretary of State?

To end this presentation, it remains to be said that what Bret Stephens has done is show the kind of pressure that used to scare the Americans in charge of the nation. Things are slowly changing now, and the hope is that America will survive its Jewish mischief-makers, and get out of the pool of mud into which it was dragged.