Have you ever imagined what it would be like if there existed a planet made of normal nations inhabited by normal people living normal philosophies of life with the exception of one abnormal entity in which normal looking people live under the rules of an abnormal philosophy of life? Stop imagining, my friend, because there exists one such situation near to us -- it is Earth itself. The normal nations are those which exist now and those that have come and gone; the abnormal entity is the thing they call Israel whose philosophy of life never seems to vanish despite the incentives for it to do so.
Tribal lands, settlements, city states, nations and empires are the sort of entities that still exist on planet Earth or have existed and have gone away. Some have survived almost intact since the beginning of recorded history, some disappeared for a while then came back under a different form, some were swallowed by other entities and some have amalgamated with other entities to form bigger ones. They all adopted mores and philosophies of life that proved useful for the times during which they existed and the places where they stood. When it became clear that an entity had outlived its time, it modified its conduct willingly, was forced to modify it by others or it disappeared never to be heard from again.
The exception has been Rabbinical Judaism, a philosophy of life whose premise is that if you convert to it and adhere to its decrees, you will become a member of the chosen few who are deemed to be superior to everyone. Regardless of your race or ethnic background, you will enjoy privileges that no one else enjoys. Well, the result has been that such beliefs gave rise to mores that served to turn the converts into pariahs. Normal people throughout the planet and through time have looked askance at all those who called themselves Jews –whether Rabbinical or not -- and have shunned them. As to the people who were compelled for any reason to live near to them or forge a relationship of sort with them; they ended up hating them. Some people even enjoyed picking on them just to humiliate them.
The shame is that very little of these mundane realities filtered down to our time because history was written solely on the basis of what used to happen to the men and women at the top of the food chain such as kings, queens, heads of the army, heads of powerful religious institutions and the like. This view of history did not leave much by way of evidence as to what else was happening below the upper layers of society. For this reason, some people were able to deny the authenticity of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion, and other people were prompted to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. But the truth is that normally intelligent people, even highly civilized ones, felt it necessary to force the Jew to spit on the floor and lick his own spit just to humiliate him. They also felt that it was perfectly acceptable to make products with the skin of a Jew the way you do with the skin of animals. It is that ordinary people had become used to the idea that to pogrom or to holocaust a Jew was the natural thing to do. But this was the Holocaust, and it was as real as the description of the Jewish character was authentic in the Protocol of the Elders of Zion.
Things have changed during the last few decades in the sense that history began to be written not only as it relates to Nefertiti, Napoleon and Nehru but as it relates to the ordinary people who struggle to feed their families; who get angry, seek revenge, strive to live in dignity, aspire to the little joys of life and have lofty dreams. The fact is that history is leaving to future generations not only a paper trail of sanitized events to study in school but also an audio visual trail that is based on electronics, digital technology and God knows what else will be invented to record authentic and spontaneous history as it happens, and preserve it for posterity. But while authenticity is the hallmark of the way we record history now, you will find that some Jews are using modern technology to glorify themselves and put down everyone else in their quest to control the world. This being the premise of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion, you will find that the negative reality detected in the Jewish character today surpasses by far the negative portrayal of the Jews in the Protocol. You may, in fact, consider the Protocol to have been a document sanitizing the image of Rabbinical Jews.
The sheer number of the people who are mobilized to work for the Jewish causes today, the monstrous volume of the work they do in this regard and the magnitude of the pressure they put on other people to do the bidding for them or suffer the consequences, leave you with no doubt that these people -- be they Jewish or gentile -- are driven not by normal human impulses but abnormal demonic urges. And this begins to explain why it happened that people who were intelligent, normal, and considered to be civilized, felt it was necessary to force the Jew to spit on the floor and lick his spit. Why they felt it was acceptable to make products from the skin of Jews. And why they thought it was natural to pogrom and to holocaust the Jew.
Clifford D. May is one of those who will leave to future generations a trail that will show and tell how much he and people like him were able to plague humanity with a philosophy of life so deformed, you are revolted by the extent of mutilation you see when you look at it. Whatever method you use to try to understand their philosophy of life and try to assess it, you find that they seek to impose weird and dangerous values on friends and foes alike. May's latest work is titled: “Diplomacy and Iran” with a subtitle that reads: “Sanctions (and strength) let our enemies know we are prepared for more talk.” It was published in the National Review Online on March 29, 2012.
Actually he wrote that article to respond to someone else but the debate between these two is not what I take up in this work. Rather, it is the mentality that is displayed by Clifford May -- that which tells ordinary human beings there is something seriously faulty and monumentally calamitous about the way that these people live, work and communicate. This should make you conclude that people throughout history must have felt the same way -- the reason why they wished to humiliate the Jew; to pogrom and holocaust him over and over.
May begins the article by quoting a saying which tells of the wisdom that exists in calling a dog 'nice' till you find a rock to throw at it. It is the analogy he uses to describe the rulers of Iran whom, he says, wish to acquire nuclear weapons so as to escalate the war against Israel, America and the West. He does not say how he knows this but he asserts that there is “them” who are bad and wish to harm “us” who are good. The truth, however, is that Israel was supposed to have been created because the Jews were treated badly in the West and not in Iran. What boggles the mind when you see someone treat reality like this is that these people never bother to tell how they judge that the “antisemitism”, the Inquisition, the pogroms and the Holocaust that were inflicted on Jews in the West translate into the West being good and Iran being bad. It is beyond comprehension because it seems to indicate they like the horror and they abhor being treated well. Go figure.
The author then tries to endear himself to the reader by displaying a sympathy which, on close scrutiny, proves to be a false sympathy because, in effect, he turns reality on its head. He asks who may possess the rocks that can be thrown at the dog, and he answers: “The United States does, but President Obama is not eager to utilize them.” And why is that? Because the “Americans are war-weary” says he, which he explains with apparent sympathy that such sentiment is “understandable.” But this is where the thing is turned on its head. You see, the problem is not that Obama refuses to throw rocks at Iran; the problem is that Obama, along with others, are being kind to the charlatans who convert to Judaism for one purpose only; that of using the past suffering of now dead Jews to cash in on money, and to grab power, influence and control. Thus, if there is something to be understood, it is that there exists a misplaced tolerance towards the charlatans, a tolerance that perpetuates the never ending tragedy of the Jews.
The author then takes a few paragraphs to advance the same old talking points. They are: [A] the Jews are good: “The Israelis would like nothing better than to resolve this conflict diplomatically.” Never mind that no one believes this, least of all himself as it is apparent in his article. [B] The Iranian rulers, and everyone else for that matter, are bad because they: “refuse even to talk with the leaders of the tiny Jewish state.” Never mind that the Israelis are not talking to anyone that may have a claim on them, and they counsel the Americans not to talk to such people either. [C] Obama has recognized the “legitimacy of Israel's concerns.” If only Clifford May would reciprocate by showing due respect for his President. [D] He claims that if Iran acquired nuclear weapons on Obama's watch, “history will not judge him kindly.” This guy has no sense of history because he sees things in black and white not in terms of hard alternatives from which a leader must choose. But Clifford May and the Jewish organizations want us to believe that, all this aside, there still exist powerful incentives and a justification for America to throw rocks at Iran – a metaphor to mean bomb that country.
Having advanced the same old talking points, he now advances the same old conclusions which are nothing less than to call for and to incite the unleashing of a biblical style orgy for endless pain and suffering, for blood and gore. And he does this the old fashioned Jewish way. Having complained that the Iranians refuse to talk to the Israelis, he now tries to make you believe that all of America is siding with Israel: “tough measures produced by the U.S. Congress on a bipartisan basis and signed by Obama.” He goes on to say that these measures are sanctions which, in his words, are only means and not ends.
The end he wants to see is this: “For there to be … success, Iran [must] feel vulnerable … that Americans and Israelis have rocks and are prepared to use them.” But he does not get to this point right away. Instead, he takes a number of paragraphs to say that sanctions, even stiff ones, do not work. They exist, he says, only to create a debate, to help in weakening Iran and “should more kinetic measures be used … it will be vital for sanctions to be in place – and remain in place – during whatever diplomatic palaver may follow.” He is trying to have it both ways, you see.
Having said that sanctions do not work, having then counseled to keep them in place anyway, he now attacks those who advocate diplomacy over the use of sanctions. And this, in fact, is the debate he is having with someone else. I shall thus refrain from pursuing this line, but continue to probe the mentality of Clifford May, and all those who think like him. He says this: “If we want [the] Supreme Leader … and the … Guard Corps to stop doing what they are doing … we have to do more than 'nudge' them. We have to offer them something of great value.” This would be the promise to abstain from launching a war on them. You understand what he is saying? He is saying let's threaten to obliterate them but promise not to do so if they will knuckle under. Can you think of something more Jewish than this? You can't; and this is why people have wanted the Jew to spit on the floor and lick his spit. It is fighting humiliation with humiliation. These people always ask for it and they always get it.
Without saying from where he gets his information, he asserts that the Iranians want “dominance of the Middle East in the short run, and 'a world without America' eventually, with the extermination of Israeli men, women, and children somewhere along the way.” This is an outright lie, and he leaves enough clues on the table to show that he is more than a liar; he is dimwitted too. The truth is that the Iranians only said the world will be better off without Zionism; and they said it in response to all the loose talk about war that was generated by the likes of Clifford May. Nothing in what they said mentioned a world without America, and there was nothing in it about exterminating Israeli men, women and children. For May to associate with America what was associated with Zionism is to show he deliberately fabricated a lie that can easily be unmasked. Yes, the man must be dimwitted but he can also fantasize. Look here; if the future extermination of Jews he predicts comes to pass, the pattern has been that he, and all those like him, will try to claim compensation from oil rich, deep-pocketed Iran. Now you know why these people fantasize about a holocaust that never seems to come their way. Pity them those poor things or tell them to buy a lottery ticket.
Before he ends the article, he takes a paragraph – an infamous one -- to deliver a parting shot so as to disparage the Iranians one last time. But having understood what he tried to do all along, you know what he is trying to do now, and you dismiss it off hand. You reckon that he must have looked in the mirror, has seen the ugliness he represents and has attributed all of it to the Iranians. You thus take the infamous paragraph and you rework it to represent reality as it is on the ground, not the illusion that he and all those like him are creating in the clouds.
Here is the infamous paragraph as it ought to have been written: When conducted between reasonable, peace-loving people, the “art and practice of conducting negotiations” can lead to compromise and the resolution of conflicts. But when dealing with Jewish despots, people who respect only power and see even mercy as weakness, there are no talking cures. Israel's rulers see the World as soft, high-minded, weak-willed, and just plain tired of carrying the burden of having to punish Israel for its numerous crimes. They are convinced the Palestinians will accept what they have considered “unacceptable,” because when you come right down to it, those Palestinians see that the world is allowing the world’s worst butchers -- and the number one terrorist state in all of human history -- to arm themselves with the world’s worst weapons, then ask for more as if there was more to be had. It is that these people are always hungry for more, and you can never appease their hunger.
You now judge for yourself whether the Clifford May version or this one is closer to the truth.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
Mad Enough To Cause Own Destruction
A Middle Eastern saying goes this way: Those whom God intends to destroy he first renders them mad. If the news that was apparently leaked a few days ago were true, God must have slated not one but two candidates for destruction. This is because the Israelis are not the only ones to ask for it this time; the Azerbaijanis were reported to have joined their madness and have asked for their own destruction.
The story is to the effect that Azerbaijan -- a country that is neighboring Iran -- may allow Israel to use its territory as a base from where to launch an air attack on Iran's nuclear installations. Well, let me tell you something, my friend, nothing could make the Iranian leaders and their military planners happier than this. The attempt will return Israel to the lines of the 1948 UN Mandate and will hand the oil fields of Azerbaijan to Iran. And all this will happen in less than a month.
For Israel to go through with that plan, it will need to transfer between 100 and 150 warplanes to Azerbaijan before the start of the operation. There is no way this can happen without the Iranians detecting it. But even if they did not, they will know the Israelis are there the moment that the first bomb will have hit them. And if they did detect the Israeli buildup in Azerbaijan -- which they will certainly do -- they will not reveal it for a good reason. Let me tell you why by giving a historical example.
When the Egyptians decided to take the Israelis out of the Sinai in 1973, their preoccupation was more Israel's tanks than its air force because only tanks allow an army of occupation to hold territory. Thus, if the Egyptians were going to take the Sinai back, they would have to cross the canal, destroy the Israeli tanks holding it, transfer their own tanks there and make sure that Israel's remaining tank force is destroyed. The problem was that the Israelis had the bulk of their tanks hidden inside fortified bunkers both in the Sinai and in Israel itself. Instead of using their own air force to destroy those bunkers and also engage the Israelis in the air, the Egyptians used a ruse to spare their air force from having to go after the bunkers, and thus be free to fully engage the Israelis in the air.
To do this, they used a double agent to inform the Israelis they were going to attack several hours before they had planned to. The Israelis got their tanks out of their bunkers early; and this gave the Egyptians the opportunity to do a good deal of turkey shoot, which is how they decimated a good part of the Israeli tank force. But wait till you see how they accomplished this exactly.
In the meantime, the Egyptians had managed to shoot down at least one third of Israel's air force which compelled the latter to stop their air attacks. The result has been what history has already recorded. It is that the Israeli commander in chief, Moshe Dayan went berserk while the prime minister, Golda Meyer had readied the poison with which to commit suicide. Lucky for them, the Americans came to the rescue by intervening directly in the war even though President Sadat had said that the Egyptians had no intention to advance to Tel Aviv.
Back to Azerbaijan. There are no fortified bunkers in that country that can house and protect an air force large enough to attack Iran and return to refuel in safety, reequip with bombs and repeat the mission sortie after sortie after sortie. For this reason, the Iranians will let the Israelis transfer all the warplanes they will want to transfer to Azerbaijan then attack to destroy as many of them as possible while they are still on the ground. But if some of the planes will have taken to the air – which they will -- and if the Israelis will have planned to attack Iran both from Azerbaijan and from Israel itself, the Iranians will be ready for them here as well. To see how they will do this, we only need to study what they do now and what they must have learned from history.
What the Iranians do now is rely on their ability to design and manufacture their own weapons. They have learned from the war with Saddam that firepower counts for a great deal; thus, they give the weapons they make massive firepower and they produce them in massive quantities. To be convinced of this, you only need to look at the number of speed boats, rockets and mines they make and deploy on occasions.
The Iranians also learned from the 1973 war that while high tech weapons are better in some situations, low tech weapons can do a better job in other situations. For example, people were saying that neither Egypt's air force nor its giant guns will be able to destroy the Bar Lev line along the Suez Canal because the line was made of reinforced concrete that was flanked by mounds of sand. Because the latter has the property of absorbing and diffusing the energy of exploding bombs and incoming shells, it would be like shooting at the ocean to crack it open. Frankly, the people who said this were correct and the Egyptians knew it too. For this reason, they did not bomb the sand; they used pumps and the water from the Canal to wash it down; it was as simple as that. This done, they blew away the concrete walls as easily as a bulldozer takes down a sand castle. It was bye bye Bar Lev before the sun had risen on that fateful morning.
Another lesson that the Iranians must have learned about the 1973 war is that the Egyptians did not use their tanks initially to engage the Israeli tanks. They wanted to conserve them for use to hold the territory after they had taken back the Sinai. Thus, they parachuted thousands of foot soldiers behind enemy lines carrying the shoulder-fired wire-guided missiles they had produced in massive quantities. The brave young soldiers who went on this mission stood up and intercepted the top-of-the-line Israeli tanks, and they took them out like turkeys.
The question to ask now is this: What could the Iranians have done to prepare themselves for an Israeli or an American air attack on their nuclear installation? Well, how about thousands upon thousands of drones equipped with radar and a television camera piloted by remote control from the ground. This would not be an ordinary drone designed to spy on people or to shoot at them; it would be a rocket propelled, extremely fast drone designed to engage an incoming warplane, spot it with its radar and shoot a rocket in its direction. If it misses, the pilot on the ground will rely on the television camera to try and collide with the incoming plane. If the latter still manages to avoid the drone, the two will engage in a dogfight. Being rocket propelled, the drone will have the advantage of speed and will most likely get the plane before the plane gets it. And if this drone does not do it, there will be another and another and another following behind it.
An operation like this can lap the entire Israeli air force for breakfast. It can also pose a serious challenge to the American warplanes stationed in the Gulf, be they on aircraft carriers or on land. And if this will prove to be insufficient, the Iranians would unveil their next surprise. They would deploy their piloted, rocket propelled suicide planes to go after enemy warplanes at three or four times the speed of sound, go after their warships and go after everything else considered being a valuable asset.
When Israel will be left without an air force, the Syrians will move to destroy the Israeli tanks and take back the Western half of the Golan they did not take the last time around. The Lebanese will occupy Northern Israel to hand it later to the Palestinians. The latter will take back the Negev and join the two parts of their country. And the Jews will be left with the Tel Aviv region as per the UN Mandate of 1948. Justice will have been done like President Ahmadinejad of Iran said he wants to see it done.
As to Azerbaijan, it will become just another Shia province of Iran, a country that will now enjoy having almost as much petroleum reserves as Saudi Arabia and considerably more natural gas.
It will also have nuclear energy; and all this will have transpired because the mad had become delirious and had destroyed themselves by their own stupidity.
The story is to the effect that Azerbaijan -- a country that is neighboring Iran -- may allow Israel to use its territory as a base from where to launch an air attack on Iran's nuclear installations. Well, let me tell you something, my friend, nothing could make the Iranian leaders and their military planners happier than this. The attempt will return Israel to the lines of the 1948 UN Mandate and will hand the oil fields of Azerbaijan to Iran. And all this will happen in less than a month.
For Israel to go through with that plan, it will need to transfer between 100 and 150 warplanes to Azerbaijan before the start of the operation. There is no way this can happen without the Iranians detecting it. But even if they did not, they will know the Israelis are there the moment that the first bomb will have hit them. And if they did detect the Israeli buildup in Azerbaijan -- which they will certainly do -- they will not reveal it for a good reason. Let me tell you why by giving a historical example.
When the Egyptians decided to take the Israelis out of the Sinai in 1973, their preoccupation was more Israel's tanks than its air force because only tanks allow an army of occupation to hold territory. Thus, if the Egyptians were going to take the Sinai back, they would have to cross the canal, destroy the Israeli tanks holding it, transfer their own tanks there and make sure that Israel's remaining tank force is destroyed. The problem was that the Israelis had the bulk of their tanks hidden inside fortified bunkers both in the Sinai and in Israel itself. Instead of using their own air force to destroy those bunkers and also engage the Israelis in the air, the Egyptians used a ruse to spare their air force from having to go after the bunkers, and thus be free to fully engage the Israelis in the air.
To do this, they used a double agent to inform the Israelis they were going to attack several hours before they had planned to. The Israelis got their tanks out of their bunkers early; and this gave the Egyptians the opportunity to do a good deal of turkey shoot, which is how they decimated a good part of the Israeli tank force. But wait till you see how they accomplished this exactly.
In the meantime, the Egyptians had managed to shoot down at least one third of Israel's air force which compelled the latter to stop their air attacks. The result has been what history has already recorded. It is that the Israeli commander in chief, Moshe Dayan went berserk while the prime minister, Golda Meyer had readied the poison with which to commit suicide. Lucky for them, the Americans came to the rescue by intervening directly in the war even though President Sadat had said that the Egyptians had no intention to advance to Tel Aviv.
Back to Azerbaijan. There are no fortified bunkers in that country that can house and protect an air force large enough to attack Iran and return to refuel in safety, reequip with bombs and repeat the mission sortie after sortie after sortie. For this reason, the Iranians will let the Israelis transfer all the warplanes they will want to transfer to Azerbaijan then attack to destroy as many of them as possible while they are still on the ground. But if some of the planes will have taken to the air – which they will -- and if the Israelis will have planned to attack Iran both from Azerbaijan and from Israel itself, the Iranians will be ready for them here as well. To see how they will do this, we only need to study what they do now and what they must have learned from history.
What the Iranians do now is rely on their ability to design and manufacture their own weapons. They have learned from the war with Saddam that firepower counts for a great deal; thus, they give the weapons they make massive firepower and they produce them in massive quantities. To be convinced of this, you only need to look at the number of speed boats, rockets and mines they make and deploy on occasions.
The Iranians also learned from the 1973 war that while high tech weapons are better in some situations, low tech weapons can do a better job in other situations. For example, people were saying that neither Egypt's air force nor its giant guns will be able to destroy the Bar Lev line along the Suez Canal because the line was made of reinforced concrete that was flanked by mounds of sand. Because the latter has the property of absorbing and diffusing the energy of exploding bombs and incoming shells, it would be like shooting at the ocean to crack it open. Frankly, the people who said this were correct and the Egyptians knew it too. For this reason, they did not bomb the sand; they used pumps and the water from the Canal to wash it down; it was as simple as that. This done, they blew away the concrete walls as easily as a bulldozer takes down a sand castle. It was bye bye Bar Lev before the sun had risen on that fateful morning.
Another lesson that the Iranians must have learned about the 1973 war is that the Egyptians did not use their tanks initially to engage the Israeli tanks. They wanted to conserve them for use to hold the territory after they had taken back the Sinai. Thus, they parachuted thousands of foot soldiers behind enemy lines carrying the shoulder-fired wire-guided missiles they had produced in massive quantities. The brave young soldiers who went on this mission stood up and intercepted the top-of-the-line Israeli tanks, and they took them out like turkeys.
The question to ask now is this: What could the Iranians have done to prepare themselves for an Israeli or an American air attack on their nuclear installation? Well, how about thousands upon thousands of drones equipped with radar and a television camera piloted by remote control from the ground. This would not be an ordinary drone designed to spy on people or to shoot at them; it would be a rocket propelled, extremely fast drone designed to engage an incoming warplane, spot it with its radar and shoot a rocket in its direction. If it misses, the pilot on the ground will rely on the television camera to try and collide with the incoming plane. If the latter still manages to avoid the drone, the two will engage in a dogfight. Being rocket propelled, the drone will have the advantage of speed and will most likely get the plane before the plane gets it. And if this drone does not do it, there will be another and another and another following behind it.
An operation like this can lap the entire Israeli air force for breakfast. It can also pose a serious challenge to the American warplanes stationed in the Gulf, be they on aircraft carriers or on land. And if this will prove to be insufficient, the Iranians would unveil their next surprise. They would deploy their piloted, rocket propelled suicide planes to go after enemy warplanes at three or four times the speed of sound, go after their warships and go after everything else considered being a valuable asset.
When Israel will be left without an air force, the Syrians will move to destroy the Israeli tanks and take back the Western half of the Golan they did not take the last time around. The Lebanese will occupy Northern Israel to hand it later to the Palestinians. The latter will take back the Negev and join the two parts of their country. And the Jews will be left with the Tel Aviv region as per the UN Mandate of 1948. Justice will have been done like President Ahmadinejad of Iran said he wants to see it done.
As to Azerbaijan, it will become just another Shia province of Iran, a country that will now enjoy having almost as much petroleum reserves as Saudi Arabia and considerably more natural gas.
It will also have nuclear energy; and all this will have transpired because the mad had become delirious and had destroyed themselves by their own stupidity.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
The Obligation To Provide The Necessities Of Life
Can the government of a free society make laws that compel the citizen to buy health insurance? This is the question of the day, one that America is wrestling with at this time. If you were to ask that question to people living under different jurisdictions, they will each give an answer that is compatible with the laws of their jurisdiction, especially the constitutional law. And this is because all laws must be compatible with the constitution. As to the explanation that will accompany and justify the answer, it will consist of showing that the answer does not violate the constitution and that it will not cause too many other laws -- already on the books – from being overthrown.
And there lies the problem. Human laws are imperfect and this is why we amend them every once in a while. By contrast, the laws of nature are perfect but even then -- when we construct something based on these laws -- we allow for the fact that we make errors and that these errors can be cumulative. For this reason, we see the need to step back once in a while and look at the fundamentals lest we pile up the errors and create something that ends up violating a law of nature in a substantial way thus cause a catastrophe. Therefore, it behooves us that in the matter of making human laws, we should also step back from the laws of our jurisdiction and be guided instead by the most fundamental of axioms that should determine our answer to the question.
What is the most fundamental of axioms in this case? The answer to this question begins with the realization that a group of laws is made to respond to necessities, and that another group of laws is made for convenience. The first group is an instrument used by the government to protect people from each other and protect society from itself. The second group makes the system under which we live function efficiently and more equitably. Among the group of necessities is the one that obligates the parents to provide the necessities of life, such as food and other things to a child. The obligation extends to any adult that is in charge of a child or in charge of another adult who is incapacitated.
Thus, we now ask the question: Can a young parent with the means to buy insurance for the family refuse to do so and be thought of as fulfilling his or her obligation to provide the necessities of life for their children? The answer is no because if a child runs a fever, for example, it will take the parents with no insurance a longer time to decide taking the child to a doctor than it would take the parents who have coverage. And the child will suffer needlessly or even die because of the delay.
This alone should convince the jurists that yes, the government can compel people to buy health insurance if they can afford it or accept the free coverage that the government will provide for them if they cannot afford the premium. Beginning with this premise, all sorts of other arguments can be constructed to make the law on health insurance that the jurists envisage compatible with that of their jurisdiction.
And there lies the problem. Human laws are imperfect and this is why we amend them every once in a while. By contrast, the laws of nature are perfect but even then -- when we construct something based on these laws -- we allow for the fact that we make errors and that these errors can be cumulative. For this reason, we see the need to step back once in a while and look at the fundamentals lest we pile up the errors and create something that ends up violating a law of nature in a substantial way thus cause a catastrophe. Therefore, it behooves us that in the matter of making human laws, we should also step back from the laws of our jurisdiction and be guided instead by the most fundamental of axioms that should determine our answer to the question.
What is the most fundamental of axioms in this case? The answer to this question begins with the realization that a group of laws is made to respond to necessities, and that another group of laws is made for convenience. The first group is an instrument used by the government to protect people from each other and protect society from itself. The second group makes the system under which we live function efficiently and more equitably. Among the group of necessities is the one that obligates the parents to provide the necessities of life, such as food and other things to a child. The obligation extends to any adult that is in charge of a child or in charge of another adult who is incapacitated.
Thus, we now ask the question: Can a young parent with the means to buy insurance for the family refuse to do so and be thought of as fulfilling his or her obligation to provide the necessities of life for their children? The answer is no because if a child runs a fever, for example, it will take the parents with no insurance a longer time to decide taking the child to a doctor than it would take the parents who have coverage. And the child will suffer needlessly or even die because of the delay.
This alone should convince the jurists that yes, the government can compel people to buy health insurance if they can afford it or accept the free coverage that the government will provide for them if they cannot afford the premium. Beginning with this premise, all sorts of other arguments can be constructed to make the law on health insurance that the jurists envisage compatible with that of their jurisdiction.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Psycho-Reversing The Eunuch's Handicap
Nice try but it won't work. The trouble with what Reuel Marc Gerecht is trying to do is that he has gotten too complicated trying to do it. He wrote the article: “How Washington Encourages Israel to Bomb Iran”, and you can already see in the title that the author uses reverse psychology to say that Israel is potent enough to bomb Iran and that Washington is too stupid to restrain it -- therefore Washington is forcing Israel to bomb Iran. This line of reasoning gets worse when you read the subtitle of the article which is this: “Israel knows sanctions aren't likely to work and is increasingly aware of the poor quality of U.S. intelligence.” Here Gerecht is asserting that Israel is a brilliant little thing that is outperforming America, a giant that is afflicted with poor intelligence. And in case you want to know, all these marvels and more were published in the March 26, 2012 edition of the Wall Street Journal.
When you read the article you get the feeling that the writer is trying to accomplish several things at the same time even though they are at odds with each other. He is trying to say to the Iranians that Israel can hit them and that it will do so whether or not the Americans agree. He is trying to say to the Americans that Israel knows better than them, therefore, they should shut up and just help Israel bomb Iran. And he is trying to say to the Israelis they should keep the pressure on stupid Washington to provide them with the means to bomb the hell out of Iran because President Obama has publicly committed himself to the security of Israel, a stance from which he cannot back off – or else.
But because you know that all this cannot be accomplished at once and at the same time, you conclude that the real reason behind the writing of this article is to scare the world, scare America and reassure Israel. Gerecht is not trying to accomplish all that by the direct approach this time around because the tactic has shown not to work in the past for reasons that are baffling him and baffling all those like him. Thus, he is using reverse psychology which, when you come right down to it, is a very Jewish thing to do.
The thing is that when you construct an argument, you create a concept which, in the mind of the reader, translates into a visible sculpture. Each reader may see a different sort of sculpture but all the readers will agree that content aside, the piece is either attractive or it is repulsive. Because Gerecht has tried to communicate different messages to several audiences at the same time, he created a sculpture that must look like a deformity to every reader that looks at it. In fact, it is neither fish nor fowl but an artificial construct that is made of parts from the two in addition to parts from a few other species. In short, it is a monster. However, the main goal of the writer being that when this episode of political maneuvering is dealt with and blown over, Israel must not be left in a position where it will look like an impotent eunuch. Instead, it should look like the potent warrior who will charge again and again -- going against every potential rival that will challenge him, and take him out. This is something that Israel should be able to do with relative ease and will do by the sword of Gideon and the stone of David.
Look how the author constructs the three legged animal he eventually rides to his destination. The first leg is this: “In recent speeches, interviews and private meetings, President Obama has been trying hard to dissuade Israel from bombing Iran's nuclear facilities.” The second leg is this: “Public statements define a president's diplomacy, and … Mr. Obama affirmed 'Israel's right to make its own decision … no Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of [Iran]'” The third leg is this: “...the president has forced a spotlight on two things: the efficacy of sanctions and the quality of American intelligence … The Israelis are sure to draw attention to both in the coming months.” You may think of them as being the leg of a horse, that of a giraffe and that of an elephant -- all three attached to a body which is itself put together like a monster that lacks a head to think with.
Now that the author has an animal to ride and he is ready to go, he dismisses the American Congress which is a surprising thing to see him do given that the so-called legislature has served as a private toilet for every Jew that had a dump to get rid of or a load of urine to leak out. Well, maybe nothing of the sort was pressing him this time. In any case, instead of the Congress, Gerecht concentrates his attention on the executive branch of the government for a good reason. It is that the chief executive is the President of the Republic and also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces where the writer's attention is focused at this time.
From this point in the article to the end of it, the bulk of what is left resembles two bookends sandwiching the tedious churning of several subjects. They look like the tossing together of half-baked ideas that the author has not organized in his mind well enough to present coherently. The first bookend is this: “Even the U.S. Air Force might have difficulty demolishing (with conventional explosives) the buried-beneath-a-mountain Fordow nuclear site.” Here, he acknowledges that Israel is impotent, and says that America may be impotent as well, but he hints that the latter may someday wish to use an atom bomb to destroy the Iranian site in question. In fact, this is more than a hint; it is his own wish and fantasy.
As to the other bookend -- which is the last paragraph in the article -- it reads like this: “The Israeli cabinet still hasn't had the debate about launching a strike … But that discussion is coming soon and Barack Obama who … doesn't seem like a man who would choose war … has most likely helped Messrs. Netanyahu and Barak make the case for military action.” Here he says that Israel is potent enough to bomb Iran, an opinion that contradicts the first bookend. We are thus faced with an incoherence that begs the question: How can someone go from one position to its opposite so quickly?
Well, he can do it by rambling his way as he walks from one position to the other. Look how he does this. First, he makes this incomprehensible suggestion: “In Israel, Mr. Netanyahu and Ehud Barak may have waited too long to raid this facility; steady progress there means that the Israelis must strike if they are serious.” Here, Gerecht who lives thousands of miles away in the comfort and safety of America, chides Netanyahu and Barak for having waited too long already to start a war. Second, he tells them that if they are serious, they should still get on with the job of bombing Iran despite the apparent futility in committing this act, and despite the danger that lurks behind it.
But what kind of callous people are they who talk like this? It used to be said that by showing the horrors of war, television will intensify the sentiment of rejection that people have for war. This may be true with some people but to others, it looks like the more blood they see, the more they salivate and the larger the appetite they grow for more of the same, for more horror. These things are more animal than they are human.
To justify the insane advice he is giving, the writer begins an argument in which he tosses everything that comes to mind into a narrative he calls “the sanctions-political-chaos-nuclear-paralysis scenario,” where the sanctions that have been imposed on Iran up to now are supposed to lead to political chaos and the eventual paralysis of the Iranian nuclear project. But he says that this will not work because “Iran made around $ 79 billion dollars last year from the sale of oil.” Also, being a modern authoritarian state, it has “considerable resilience and a high threshold of pain.” He goes on to say that many observers believe sanctions will help exacerbate divisions within the regime but he disputes this premise and he argues against it. In other words, he says that Iran has good reasons to feel safe and to continue with its nuclear program.
And he ends up dismissing the effectiveness of the sanctions with these words: “Sanctions … as a tool to stop nuclear weapons aren't particularly menacing. They may have become a means to stop the Israelis, not the Iranians, from achieving their desired ends.” He goes on to say “that the Israelis know the CIA has no sources inside the Iranian scientific establishment or Khameni's inner circle or the Revolutionary Guards' nuclear brigade.” and he warns that “Iran has improved its cybersecurity since Stuxnet.” Thus, in his opinion, all of that boils down to this: “...when the administration says it has 'no evidence' Mr. Khamenei has decided to build a nuclear weapon, this really means Washington has no solid information.”
In other words, he is saying that Iran cannot be completely defeated once and for all even by the full might of the American military. And it cannot be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons in the long run if this is what it wants. Rather than seek an accommodation with it, Iran should therefore be bombed to delay a nuclear weapons program that may not be there. If this will cause the Iranians to start a program they did not have before, it should be bombed again and again in cycles of two or three years. And this is the age old Jewish dream as reflected in their bible; a book of fantasy about endless wars, gore and horror from cover to cover.
To wish that his dream be realized, Reuel Marc Gerecht concludes with the prediction that Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak will probably bomb Iran very soon. And his advice to the world is to get on with it and be scared because Israel is not a handicapped eunuch but a potent stud.
This man and those like him are very sick and dangerous to the human race. Let them not salivate anymore at the horror they unleash periodically on the world as they have done for several generations already.
There should be an end to Jewish incitement. Every one of us should stand up and say in one voice: Enough is enough.
When you read the article you get the feeling that the writer is trying to accomplish several things at the same time even though they are at odds with each other. He is trying to say to the Iranians that Israel can hit them and that it will do so whether or not the Americans agree. He is trying to say to the Americans that Israel knows better than them, therefore, they should shut up and just help Israel bomb Iran. And he is trying to say to the Israelis they should keep the pressure on stupid Washington to provide them with the means to bomb the hell out of Iran because President Obama has publicly committed himself to the security of Israel, a stance from which he cannot back off – or else.
But because you know that all this cannot be accomplished at once and at the same time, you conclude that the real reason behind the writing of this article is to scare the world, scare America and reassure Israel. Gerecht is not trying to accomplish all that by the direct approach this time around because the tactic has shown not to work in the past for reasons that are baffling him and baffling all those like him. Thus, he is using reverse psychology which, when you come right down to it, is a very Jewish thing to do.
The thing is that when you construct an argument, you create a concept which, in the mind of the reader, translates into a visible sculpture. Each reader may see a different sort of sculpture but all the readers will agree that content aside, the piece is either attractive or it is repulsive. Because Gerecht has tried to communicate different messages to several audiences at the same time, he created a sculpture that must look like a deformity to every reader that looks at it. In fact, it is neither fish nor fowl but an artificial construct that is made of parts from the two in addition to parts from a few other species. In short, it is a monster. However, the main goal of the writer being that when this episode of political maneuvering is dealt with and blown over, Israel must not be left in a position where it will look like an impotent eunuch. Instead, it should look like the potent warrior who will charge again and again -- going against every potential rival that will challenge him, and take him out. This is something that Israel should be able to do with relative ease and will do by the sword of Gideon and the stone of David.
Look how the author constructs the three legged animal he eventually rides to his destination. The first leg is this: “In recent speeches, interviews and private meetings, President Obama has been trying hard to dissuade Israel from bombing Iran's nuclear facilities.” The second leg is this: “Public statements define a president's diplomacy, and … Mr. Obama affirmed 'Israel's right to make its own decision … no Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of [Iran]'” The third leg is this: “...the president has forced a spotlight on two things: the efficacy of sanctions and the quality of American intelligence … The Israelis are sure to draw attention to both in the coming months.” You may think of them as being the leg of a horse, that of a giraffe and that of an elephant -- all three attached to a body which is itself put together like a monster that lacks a head to think with.
Now that the author has an animal to ride and he is ready to go, he dismisses the American Congress which is a surprising thing to see him do given that the so-called legislature has served as a private toilet for every Jew that had a dump to get rid of or a load of urine to leak out. Well, maybe nothing of the sort was pressing him this time. In any case, instead of the Congress, Gerecht concentrates his attention on the executive branch of the government for a good reason. It is that the chief executive is the President of the Republic and also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces where the writer's attention is focused at this time.
From this point in the article to the end of it, the bulk of what is left resembles two bookends sandwiching the tedious churning of several subjects. They look like the tossing together of half-baked ideas that the author has not organized in his mind well enough to present coherently. The first bookend is this: “Even the U.S. Air Force might have difficulty demolishing (with conventional explosives) the buried-beneath-a-mountain Fordow nuclear site.” Here, he acknowledges that Israel is impotent, and says that America may be impotent as well, but he hints that the latter may someday wish to use an atom bomb to destroy the Iranian site in question. In fact, this is more than a hint; it is his own wish and fantasy.
As to the other bookend -- which is the last paragraph in the article -- it reads like this: “The Israeli cabinet still hasn't had the debate about launching a strike … But that discussion is coming soon and Barack Obama who … doesn't seem like a man who would choose war … has most likely helped Messrs. Netanyahu and Barak make the case for military action.” Here he says that Israel is potent enough to bomb Iran, an opinion that contradicts the first bookend. We are thus faced with an incoherence that begs the question: How can someone go from one position to its opposite so quickly?
Well, he can do it by rambling his way as he walks from one position to the other. Look how he does this. First, he makes this incomprehensible suggestion: “In Israel, Mr. Netanyahu and Ehud Barak may have waited too long to raid this facility; steady progress there means that the Israelis must strike if they are serious.” Here, Gerecht who lives thousands of miles away in the comfort and safety of America, chides Netanyahu and Barak for having waited too long already to start a war. Second, he tells them that if they are serious, they should still get on with the job of bombing Iran despite the apparent futility in committing this act, and despite the danger that lurks behind it.
But what kind of callous people are they who talk like this? It used to be said that by showing the horrors of war, television will intensify the sentiment of rejection that people have for war. This may be true with some people but to others, it looks like the more blood they see, the more they salivate and the larger the appetite they grow for more of the same, for more horror. These things are more animal than they are human.
To justify the insane advice he is giving, the writer begins an argument in which he tosses everything that comes to mind into a narrative he calls “the sanctions-political-chaos-nuclear-paralysis scenario,” where the sanctions that have been imposed on Iran up to now are supposed to lead to political chaos and the eventual paralysis of the Iranian nuclear project. But he says that this will not work because “Iran made around $ 79 billion dollars last year from the sale of oil.” Also, being a modern authoritarian state, it has “considerable resilience and a high threshold of pain.” He goes on to say that many observers believe sanctions will help exacerbate divisions within the regime but he disputes this premise and he argues against it. In other words, he says that Iran has good reasons to feel safe and to continue with its nuclear program.
And he ends up dismissing the effectiveness of the sanctions with these words: “Sanctions … as a tool to stop nuclear weapons aren't particularly menacing. They may have become a means to stop the Israelis, not the Iranians, from achieving their desired ends.” He goes on to say “that the Israelis know the CIA has no sources inside the Iranian scientific establishment or Khameni's inner circle or the Revolutionary Guards' nuclear brigade.” and he warns that “Iran has improved its cybersecurity since Stuxnet.” Thus, in his opinion, all of that boils down to this: “...when the administration says it has 'no evidence' Mr. Khamenei has decided to build a nuclear weapon, this really means Washington has no solid information.”
In other words, he is saying that Iran cannot be completely defeated once and for all even by the full might of the American military. And it cannot be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons in the long run if this is what it wants. Rather than seek an accommodation with it, Iran should therefore be bombed to delay a nuclear weapons program that may not be there. If this will cause the Iranians to start a program they did not have before, it should be bombed again and again in cycles of two or three years. And this is the age old Jewish dream as reflected in their bible; a book of fantasy about endless wars, gore and horror from cover to cover.
To wish that his dream be realized, Reuel Marc Gerecht concludes with the prediction that Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak will probably bomb Iran very soon. And his advice to the world is to get on with it and be scared because Israel is not a handicapped eunuch but a potent stud.
This man and those like him are very sick and dangerous to the human race. Let them not salivate anymore at the horror they unleash periodically on the world as they have done for several generations already.
There should be an end to Jewish incitement. Every one of us should stand up and say in one voice: Enough is enough.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
A Hidden Hand For A Hideous Horror
On March 22, 2012 each of Naomi Schaefer Riley and Clifford D. May published separate articles in separate publications discussing, not exactly a common theme, but one aspect of a single theme. They both dealt with the religion of Islam and, of course, the Muslims who adhere to it. Naomi Riley wrote: “Defining the 'All-American Muslim'” which also had the subtitle: “The story of Islam in America today is a story of rapid assimilation and even secularization.” It was published in the Wall Street Journal. As to Clifford May, he wrote: 'Destroy All the Churches' which also had the subtitle: “Is it not news when the leading Saudi religious authority says that to terrorists?” It was published in the National Review Online.
I did not have a blank mind when I started to read these articles. On the contrary, I had a long history behind me of wondering how far the Jewish organizations will go and how much they will succeed in their drive to start a war between Christianity and Islam. I began to get a sense that something like this was going on during the decade of the Seventies as I lived in Toronto, Canada and followed the news in the Middle East as well as the news on this Continent. I then went to live and work in Montreal where I mingled more closely with both the Jews and the Arabs, especially the Egyptian and Lebanese groups, made of Christians and Muslims.
My interest in the subject began when people I knew started to say things totally out of character. I knew some of these people well, and I knew some of them casually. I knew them all to be apolitical men and women who cared much about their families and their work but cared very little or none at all about the rest of the world. They almost never watched the news and yet, here they were, talking politics and religion with the fervor of someone carrying fire in their belly. As if by a demonic kind of magic, the people I used to know were transformed into something I could barely recognize.
For example, there was the time when the American president was frequently meeting with Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel, and I wondered when he will be meeting with the Palestinian Yasser Arafat to get these two leaders to negotiate peace. I waited long for this to happen but it did not, and I had no idea why it was not happening. Then one day, I got the surprise of my life when someone that never talked politics before interrupted a conversation we were having about work, to explode in my face an anti-Arafat diatribe. A few days later, Jubilant Jews were going on television to brag about the American president who was meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister very often but not with Yasser Arafat of Palestine. I realized then that someone was whispering things in the ear of my friend, things that were not even in the news. And I saw this pattern repeated with people I knew to be simple folks but were now talking weird.
But this story pales when you compare it to what happened the day that people I knew well started to badmouth the person they used to worship almost like Jesus himself. This was Pope Shenouda of the Egyptian Coptic church whom they now wanted to replace by another Pope. The reason they gave for the change of heart was that “this Pope” was refusing to call on the Christians of Egypt to go visit the holy places in Jerusalem, a Palestinian city that was under Israeli occupation. I searched all the periodicals I could get my hands on to see if a trace of this sentiment was expressed elsewhere. And sure enough, I found it expressed in a number of small Jewish publications. And I realized that here too, someone was whispering weird things in the ear of people who were never interested in this sort of subjects.
Thus, I started a personal drive to find out how people get to be plucked from a lifelong state of satisfied and joyous apathy to be thrown into the vortex of a cause they can barely define but for which they would light up a hellish fire in the belly. It took me long to find out but I finally did. Along the way, I discovered a few more things that convinced me the Judaism I was seeing on this Continent was not the same Judaism I saw in Egypt during the seven years that I lived there. What I saw there was a religion no different from Christianity or Islam; what I was seeing here was a demonic cult that was more about hate and the quest to control than it was about spirituality or the quest to better oneself.
As if this were not enough, the offensive saga was made worse (and still being made worse) by the fact that the cult never stops infecting its surroundings and all those in it. The more I looked into the matter, the more I discovered that the cult has the ability to extend its influence in every direction like a virus spreads inside a body with no immunity to defend it. The cult, like the virus, spreads by serially infecting someone that infects someone that infects someone, and so it goes for ever and ever – and goes in every direction.
This discovery allowed me to trace the infection of my friends who frequented the Coptic Egyptian church and the Maronite Lebanese church, to the Jewish organizations that never relent when it comes to producing noise, confusion and rumors. This, my friend, is how the hidden hand of evil was (and still is) able to install its hideous horror in the two fine communities where the targets were not just Yasser Arafat and Pope Shenouda but Islam as a religion, and the Muslims as simple folks.
What must be understood here is that Islam is a religion, and the Muslims are people whom the Jewish organizations could not bring under their control. For this reason, they accused them of killing Christians in Lebanon and accused them of pressuring the Pope to prohibit the Copts from visiting Jerusalem as long as it was under Jewish control. And they injected this venom in the ears of the pliant in the hope of creating a disturbance that will allow them to get into the act and take control of the situation. This is a very Jewish thing to do; and it is the very thing that leads to the punishment of all Jews, even the good ones like those I met in Egypt.
While all of this was happening, I began to get reports to the effect that the hidden hand of the Jewish lobby in America was working to transform the military there into an army of crusaders that will someday engage Islam on the battlefield and wipe it from the face of the Earth. In fact, the lobbyists and their running dogs in the media, in the Congress and in the Administration were insidiously inserting the word crusader everywhere they could fit it. They went as far as to force the army to commission the production of a weapon system designed specifically to kill Muslims but otherwise useless; and they christened it The Crusader.
While these sordid events were unfolding, the liberal Jewish organizations were fighting for the right of Jews to live the way they want to live, and to wear what they want to wear – such as a skullcap in public, for example – something that used to offend the many in the crowd of the stiff upper lips. Thus, to add strength to their cause, the liberal Jews who were not yet thinking of converting to the neocon causes, reached out to the cause of everyone else and hitched them to their own fight. It happened at the time that the Sikhs wanted to serve in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and still wear their traditional turban. Opposition to the idea was coming from such powerful institutions as the Canadian Legion but that was no match to the power of the Jewish organizations. The latter won the fight for themselves and for the Sikhs but instead of extending the success to the Muslim causes, the Jews did the opposite.
To give an example: Muslims were calling talk shows like the CBC's “Cross Country Checkup” to say that people who come to a Western and Christian country like Canada must adapt and must learn to live according to local customs. At the same time, the Jews were calling to say that Canada's strength resided in the institution of multiculturalism, therefore the Sikhs should be able to wear the RCMP uniform and the turban at the same time. This pretty well reflected what I knew to be true about these two groups. But did the Jews defend the right of Muslims to maintain their traditions? No they did not. In fact, the media here started to make fun of Muslim women thousands of miles away who wore the traditional scarf in their own communities. This made the women here who never wore the scarf before, wear it now as an act of defiance. The result was the start of a cold religious war – just like the Jews had wished it.
Taking advantage of every opportunity that came along to add to the distrust and to the friction between Christianity and Islam, the Jewish organizations have managed to ignite a number of incidents between the two groups in places like Africa and Asia. But in reality, all this pales when compared to the religious wars that erupted in Europe between Christians and Christians, for example. But the Jewish organizations and their mouthpieces are still at it, and this is what you see in the Clifford May article, half of which is devoted to spinning what transpired between two individuals, one from Saudi Arabia and one from Kuwait.
Well, let me reveal something for the first time. In my view, it was the relationship between these two countries that started the chain of events which led to 9/11. Had I not been on the blacklist at the time, I would have written about it, warned the world and perhaps averted the tragedy. Here is what happened: Bush 41 who was called upon by Saudi Arabia to kick Saddam out of Kuwait, was defeated by Clinton. He visited Kuwait before leaving the White House, and nothing out of the ordinary happened. But as soon as Clinton was inaugurated, some people discovered by pure chance that Saddam had attempted to assassinate Bush while he was visiting in Kuwait. And they impressed upon the new president to exact revenge.
The drones were not in vogue at the time but the cruise missiles were. And so, Clinton ordered that a cruise missile be fired in the direction of Iraq. Guess where and when the missile hit. It hit the front yard of a hotel in Baghdad at the exact moment that an Islamic conference was held there. The Americans said it was a mistake and I said: like hell it was. I could see that the act fit exactly into the pattern of the war that the Jews had triggered between the religions. The war was raging, and I guessed there was going to be a response to America's act of treachery. It came less than two years later when a car bomb exploded in a basement at the World Trade Center. But because the damage was minimal, I thought there was going to be another attempt. This one came eight years later on September 11, 2001. Thus, let history show that 9/11 happened as a result of the religious war that was planned and executed by the Jewish organizations worldwide. Now read the Clifford May article in its entirety and guess what else he is trying to trigger.
As to the Riley article, she wrote it in response to the TLC network canceling a show that does not portray the Muslims the way that the critics see them. This, in turn, prompted one of the sponsors to drop their support. Now, given that the people who watch a learning channel want to learn and want to judge for themselves rather than see the critics make a judgment for them, we must conclude that the critics were none other than the Jewish organizations. They were also the people who worked on the sponsor that took their counsel. They were the people who worked on the networks that listened to them. They were the people who served as the running dogs for the Jewish organizations. And they were the people who wished to serve as barking dogs for the Jewish organizations. What sort of a country has America become?
Naomi Riley portrays the Muslims as I have known them to be in Egypt and here in North America. I have known many Jews in Egypt, as well, and they were just like anyone else. I have known Jews here in North America and while some are the same as those I have known in Egypt, the majority is of the type that does not bode well for the future of Jewry on this Continent.
Let it be known that whatever happens to them, they alone will be responsible for it because they are digging their own graves. They are digging them feverishly and digging them relentlessly.
I did not have a blank mind when I started to read these articles. On the contrary, I had a long history behind me of wondering how far the Jewish organizations will go and how much they will succeed in their drive to start a war between Christianity and Islam. I began to get a sense that something like this was going on during the decade of the Seventies as I lived in Toronto, Canada and followed the news in the Middle East as well as the news on this Continent. I then went to live and work in Montreal where I mingled more closely with both the Jews and the Arabs, especially the Egyptian and Lebanese groups, made of Christians and Muslims.
My interest in the subject began when people I knew started to say things totally out of character. I knew some of these people well, and I knew some of them casually. I knew them all to be apolitical men and women who cared much about their families and their work but cared very little or none at all about the rest of the world. They almost never watched the news and yet, here they were, talking politics and religion with the fervor of someone carrying fire in their belly. As if by a demonic kind of magic, the people I used to know were transformed into something I could barely recognize.
For example, there was the time when the American president was frequently meeting with Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel, and I wondered when he will be meeting with the Palestinian Yasser Arafat to get these two leaders to negotiate peace. I waited long for this to happen but it did not, and I had no idea why it was not happening. Then one day, I got the surprise of my life when someone that never talked politics before interrupted a conversation we were having about work, to explode in my face an anti-Arafat diatribe. A few days later, Jubilant Jews were going on television to brag about the American president who was meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister very often but not with Yasser Arafat of Palestine. I realized then that someone was whispering things in the ear of my friend, things that were not even in the news. And I saw this pattern repeated with people I knew to be simple folks but were now talking weird.
But this story pales when you compare it to what happened the day that people I knew well started to badmouth the person they used to worship almost like Jesus himself. This was Pope Shenouda of the Egyptian Coptic church whom they now wanted to replace by another Pope. The reason they gave for the change of heart was that “this Pope” was refusing to call on the Christians of Egypt to go visit the holy places in Jerusalem, a Palestinian city that was under Israeli occupation. I searched all the periodicals I could get my hands on to see if a trace of this sentiment was expressed elsewhere. And sure enough, I found it expressed in a number of small Jewish publications. And I realized that here too, someone was whispering weird things in the ear of people who were never interested in this sort of subjects.
Thus, I started a personal drive to find out how people get to be plucked from a lifelong state of satisfied and joyous apathy to be thrown into the vortex of a cause they can barely define but for which they would light up a hellish fire in the belly. It took me long to find out but I finally did. Along the way, I discovered a few more things that convinced me the Judaism I was seeing on this Continent was not the same Judaism I saw in Egypt during the seven years that I lived there. What I saw there was a religion no different from Christianity or Islam; what I was seeing here was a demonic cult that was more about hate and the quest to control than it was about spirituality or the quest to better oneself.
As if this were not enough, the offensive saga was made worse (and still being made worse) by the fact that the cult never stops infecting its surroundings and all those in it. The more I looked into the matter, the more I discovered that the cult has the ability to extend its influence in every direction like a virus spreads inside a body with no immunity to defend it. The cult, like the virus, spreads by serially infecting someone that infects someone that infects someone, and so it goes for ever and ever – and goes in every direction.
This discovery allowed me to trace the infection of my friends who frequented the Coptic Egyptian church and the Maronite Lebanese church, to the Jewish organizations that never relent when it comes to producing noise, confusion and rumors. This, my friend, is how the hidden hand of evil was (and still is) able to install its hideous horror in the two fine communities where the targets were not just Yasser Arafat and Pope Shenouda but Islam as a religion, and the Muslims as simple folks.
What must be understood here is that Islam is a religion, and the Muslims are people whom the Jewish organizations could not bring under their control. For this reason, they accused them of killing Christians in Lebanon and accused them of pressuring the Pope to prohibit the Copts from visiting Jerusalem as long as it was under Jewish control. And they injected this venom in the ears of the pliant in the hope of creating a disturbance that will allow them to get into the act and take control of the situation. This is a very Jewish thing to do; and it is the very thing that leads to the punishment of all Jews, even the good ones like those I met in Egypt.
While all of this was happening, I began to get reports to the effect that the hidden hand of the Jewish lobby in America was working to transform the military there into an army of crusaders that will someday engage Islam on the battlefield and wipe it from the face of the Earth. In fact, the lobbyists and their running dogs in the media, in the Congress and in the Administration were insidiously inserting the word crusader everywhere they could fit it. They went as far as to force the army to commission the production of a weapon system designed specifically to kill Muslims but otherwise useless; and they christened it The Crusader.
While these sordid events were unfolding, the liberal Jewish organizations were fighting for the right of Jews to live the way they want to live, and to wear what they want to wear – such as a skullcap in public, for example – something that used to offend the many in the crowd of the stiff upper lips. Thus, to add strength to their cause, the liberal Jews who were not yet thinking of converting to the neocon causes, reached out to the cause of everyone else and hitched them to their own fight. It happened at the time that the Sikhs wanted to serve in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and still wear their traditional turban. Opposition to the idea was coming from such powerful institutions as the Canadian Legion but that was no match to the power of the Jewish organizations. The latter won the fight for themselves and for the Sikhs but instead of extending the success to the Muslim causes, the Jews did the opposite.
To give an example: Muslims were calling talk shows like the CBC's “Cross Country Checkup” to say that people who come to a Western and Christian country like Canada must adapt and must learn to live according to local customs. At the same time, the Jews were calling to say that Canada's strength resided in the institution of multiculturalism, therefore the Sikhs should be able to wear the RCMP uniform and the turban at the same time. This pretty well reflected what I knew to be true about these two groups. But did the Jews defend the right of Muslims to maintain their traditions? No they did not. In fact, the media here started to make fun of Muslim women thousands of miles away who wore the traditional scarf in their own communities. This made the women here who never wore the scarf before, wear it now as an act of defiance. The result was the start of a cold religious war – just like the Jews had wished it.
Taking advantage of every opportunity that came along to add to the distrust and to the friction between Christianity and Islam, the Jewish organizations have managed to ignite a number of incidents between the two groups in places like Africa and Asia. But in reality, all this pales when compared to the religious wars that erupted in Europe between Christians and Christians, for example. But the Jewish organizations and their mouthpieces are still at it, and this is what you see in the Clifford May article, half of which is devoted to spinning what transpired between two individuals, one from Saudi Arabia and one from Kuwait.
Well, let me reveal something for the first time. In my view, it was the relationship between these two countries that started the chain of events which led to 9/11. Had I not been on the blacklist at the time, I would have written about it, warned the world and perhaps averted the tragedy. Here is what happened: Bush 41 who was called upon by Saudi Arabia to kick Saddam out of Kuwait, was defeated by Clinton. He visited Kuwait before leaving the White House, and nothing out of the ordinary happened. But as soon as Clinton was inaugurated, some people discovered by pure chance that Saddam had attempted to assassinate Bush while he was visiting in Kuwait. And they impressed upon the new president to exact revenge.
The drones were not in vogue at the time but the cruise missiles were. And so, Clinton ordered that a cruise missile be fired in the direction of Iraq. Guess where and when the missile hit. It hit the front yard of a hotel in Baghdad at the exact moment that an Islamic conference was held there. The Americans said it was a mistake and I said: like hell it was. I could see that the act fit exactly into the pattern of the war that the Jews had triggered between the religions. The war was raging, and I guessed there was going to be a response to America's act of treachery. It came less than two years later when a car bomb exploded in a basement at the World Trade Center. But because the damage was minimal, I thought there was going to be another attempt. This one came eight years later on September 11, 2001. Thus, let history show that 9/11 happened as a result of the religious war that was planned and executed by the Jewish organizations worldwide. Now read the Clifford May article in its entirety and guess what else he is trying to trigger.
As to the Riley article, she wrote it in response to the TLC network canceling a show that does not portray the Muslims the way that the critics see them. This, in turn, prompted one of the sponsors to drop their support. Now, given that the people who watch a learning channel want to learn and want to judge for themselves rather than see the critics make a judgment for them, we must conclude that the critics were none other than the Jewish organizations. They were also the people who worked on the sponsor that took their counsel. They were the people who worked on the networks that listened to them. They were the people who served as the running dogs for the Jewish organizations. And they were the people who wished to serve as barking dogs for the Jewish organizations. What sort of a country has America become?
Naomi Riley portrays the Muslims as I have known them to be in Egypt and here in North America. I have known many Jews in Egypt, as well, and they were just like anyone else. I have known Jews here in North America and while some are the same as those I have known in Egypt, the majority is of the type that does not bode well for the future of Jewry on this Continent.
Let it be known that whatever happens to them, they alone will be responsible for it because they are digging their own graves. They are digging them feverishly and digging them relentlessly.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Egypt's Economy: Convalescing But Far From Amputated
Matt Bradley of the Wall Street Journal wrote a good article on the Egyptian economy but a few points need to be clarified to make it better. The article has the title: “Egypt's Brewing Crisis: Subsidies” and it has the subtitle: “Cairo Faces Public Wrath if it Reforms Bloated and Corrupt System, but alternative Is a Budget Morass”. It was published on March 23, 2012 in the Journal.
It has been a little more than a year since the start of the revolution in that country, and about this much time that some people have been predicting the meltdown of the economy there. They wrote their predictions using negative superlatives that would give the impression the country was obliterated not by a tsunami but a meteor like the one that almost wiped out life from the face of the earth in the age of the dinosaurs. The reality, however, is that the Egyptian economy was mildly stricken but not amputated, and is now convalescing nicely.
The newly elected parliamentarians in Egypt know this, which is the reason why they are not rushing to accept the deal that the government has worked out with the IMF for a 3.2 billion dollars loan. Of course, this sum in itself is paltry compared to the 120 billion dollars worth of trade that Egypt does with the rest of the world each year. But the idea is that the moment this deal goes through, as much as 30 or 40 billion dollars will pour into the country as a result of the Deauville agreement, and all the pledges that were made immediately after the fall of the old regime.
There is also the matter of foreign investment which almost dried up for a while, and many predicted that it will not return till the IMF loan and the pledges materialize. Well, there may be a few investors waiting for that to happen but the fact is that foreign companies from Asia, Europe and the Americas are returning to Egypt. One example worth noting is that of Apache, the American petroleum company. It made a deal in Australia, an act that triggered massive and jubilant headlines in some publications to the effect that Apache was pulling out of Egypt to go into other places. Before the editors of these so-called business publications had the time to jump into the streets below and dance for joy, Apache had signed a deal of several billions dollars with Egypt to explore for hydrocarbons and develop projects that will last several decades. Other companies ranging from food processing to shipbuilding also opened new manufacturing plants in the country.
Thus, the question to ask is this: What did really happen to the economy of a country that was growing at the rate of 6% and had a revolution? To answer this question intelligently, we must begin with the premise that the Egyptian economy is one of the few in the world which are truly diversified. What this means is that it is made of all the sectors that make-up a modern economy, and that there exists a rough balance between the sectors. How is that? Well, when things were simple as they were in the pre-computer age, the economies were divided into 4 industrial sectors for the purpose of evaluation: agriculture, textiles, chemicals and machinery which also included transport equipment. And when you had an economy that hummed with all these sectors, you also had the services that usually go with them. By the time the computer had become prevalent everywhere, other sectors such as high-tech were added. The transport and equipment sector was subdivided into its two parts, and electronics was added to equipment. As to agriculture, it was combined with food processing to become the agrifood sector. But nothing is sacrosanct because other approaches for classification were invented, and they keep changing with time.
In any case, as far as the Egyptian revolution is concerned, agriculture was not touched. There have been a few demands for a higher wage in the food processing business but nothing happened there that was very disruptive. As to the textiles, there had been trouble on this labor front even before the revolution, and it continued after it but very little that is serious happened there. As to the chemicals, which are mostly the petrochemicals and include the exploitation of mines, minerals and quarries, there was no disruption at all.
This said, the serious disruption that happened in manufacturing came in the transportation sector where some of the auto assembly plants were shut down. Also, because construction suffered in the big urban centers like Cairo, Alexandria and Suez, the building material companies -- such as those in cement, steel, ceramics, doors and windows -- experienced a slowdown. As to the services, there was disruption in tourism, trade, education and in the financial services. What this did to the economy is slow it down to 1 or 2 per cent growth, but it did not send it into negative territory. And this is remarkable considering that there had been a revolution where the normal thing to happen would be a drop in the GDP of as much as 25% – a depression level.
But what is it that went on inside the mind of the idiots who almost danced in the street at Egypt's woes? What happened was that these people were too ignorant to know the difference between economic woes and financial woes. If a tsunami or a meteor had hit Egypt, had wipe out most of its plants and mines and had killed most of its labor force, the economy would have been severely debilitated or even killed, and the idiots would have had a good reason to celebrate. But none of this happened because the economy got sick for a while, and it is getting better now. To extend the analogy, you can perceive the economy as having lost some weight, it may still look sluggish in its movements but it is no worse than that.
Where the would-be street dancers went wrong is in the fact that they fantasized about a country that will soon fall on its knees, thus giving them the opportunity to remote control it financially, politically and even militarily. And all this hinged – in their tiny, little, miniscule brains -- on the foreign reserves that they knew the country had accumulated. There were 36 billion dollars in there of which 10 billion had come as a result of foreigners buying treasury bonds. Thinking that the revolution was going to plunge the country into a depression, these people cashed the bonds and took the money out of the country, which is a perfectly legal and legitimate thing to do.
But seeing the reserves diminish, the companies that usually import raw material from abroad were prompted to buy and hoard foreign currencies. In turn, this prompted the central bank to spend another 10 billion dollars to prop up the local currency. This brought the reserves at the central bank to 16 billion dollars but 10 billion are still in the country, and going nowhere. In addition, the commercial banks have huge sums invested abroad and would repatriate some of that to save the economy that keeps them in business if the need will arise. But there is no sign that something like this will happen. Too bad for those who got dressed up to go dance at the party that was never given.
Coming back to the Matt Bradley article, there are three main points I would like to discuss: the matter of subsidies, the country's trade in hydrocarbons, and its trade in the agrifood business.
First, the subsidies. The countries that experienced the Industrial Revolution two or three centuries ago went from an agricultural feudal economy to an industrial one over several generations. The disparity between the very rich and the poor was maintained because industry was largely controlled by the landowners who added to their wealth. But there was no serious disparity between the rising classes, all of which were peasants moving into the middle class roughly at the same pace. Yes, there were some frictions but these were no worse than what existed before the start of the Industrial Revolution.
By contrast, when an agricultural country begins to industrialize in an age that is already industrialized, the potential exists for the peasants who move from the farm to the cities to become much richer than those who remain behind. They acquire the purchasing power to send prices sky high, and thus further impoverish the already poor. For this reason, the government feels compelled to institute a system of subsidies where the essential staples, especially in food and fuel, can be had by everyone. It also happened that because of wars and other reasons, shortages were created in some industrialized countries where subsidies that range from food stamps to direct welfare payment were instituted. The Egyptian government looked at all these programs and has not yet found the system that would suit Egypt. But things are getting serious as noted in the Bradley article, and a decision will have to be taken sooner rather than later.
Second, the country's trade in hydrocarbons. We must understand that crude oil is rarely used in its crude form. Instead, it is refined where half the volume becomes fuels that range from the high octane gasoline to the heavy fuel oil, passing through the diesel, the jet fuel and so on. As to the other half, it is refined and separated into various chemicals that range from the wax to the asphalt, passing through the plastics, the vinyl and so on. No country in the world that has refineries uses petroleum products in the exact proportions that crude oil breaks into. For example, they sometimes use more gasoline than plastics because they have a healthy auto industry; sometimes they use more plastics than gasoline because they have a healthy construction and furniture industries. Thus, what happens is that these countries sell what they have in surplus, and buy what they are shortage of.
Egypt is no exception. It produces about 700 thousand barrels of crude petroleum a day, refines all of it, uses the products that it needs, which is most of them, and sells what it does not need, such as the high octane gasoline and some chemicals. The country also imports diesel fuel and butane gas. But what Egypt does not do is import crude oil in any physical sense. What does that mean? It means that Egypt has agreements with foreign oil companies that do business in the country and getting paid with a share of the crude. About 60% of the oil that is pumped from the ground belongs to Egypt; the other 40% goes to the foreign partner. But the contracts have a clause that gives Egypt the right of first refusal which means that the country has the right to buy the oil if it is willing to pay the world price for it. And this goes into the financial ledgers as an import even though the oil was produced locally and consumed locally.
When you convert all those numbers into tons per year, it works out that Egypt produces 35 million tons of crude oil of which 21 million belong to the country and 14 million to the foreign companies. However, the latter do not take the oil out of the country but leave it in place and get paid in cash instead. Given that Egypt also produces 54 million tons of natural gas and sells 18 million of them abroad, the country registers a net surplus in hydrocarbons and products of more than 10 billion dollars a year.
Third, the country's trade in the agrifood business. Egypt has 8 million acres of arable land which translates into 15 million acres when you consider that most of the land produces 2 crops a year, even 3 in some instances. This is a small patch when you compare it to what other countries of the same size have, but given the amount of water that is available, this is the best that the country can do. However, the smallness is compensated for by the high yield that the agronomists have been able to achieve in Egypt.
When you add to the export of the processed foods, rice, fruits and vegetables -- the export of non-edible products such as cotton, flowers, spices, herbs and furniture made of wood produced with recycled sewage water -- you find that the total sales of the country roughly balance out the total purchases in staples such as the wheat, sugar and cooking oil that the country imports.
Putting all this together, the picture that you see of the Egyptian economy is not one that should worry you unless you're all dressed up and looking for a reason to dance in the street.
It has been a little more than a year since the start of the revolution in that country, and about this much time that some people have been predicting the meltdown of the economy there. They wrote their predictions using negative superlatives that would give the impression the country was obliterated not by a tsunami but a meteor like the one that almost wiped out life from the face of the earth in the age of the dinosaurs. The reality, however, is that the Egyptian economy was mildly stricken but not amputated, and is now convalescing nicely.
The newly elected parliamentarians in Egypt know this, which is the reason why they are not rushing to accept the deal that the government has worked out with the IMF for a 3.2 billion dollars loan. Of course, this sum in itself is paltry compared to the 120 billion dollars worth of trade that Egypt does with the rest of the world each year. But the idea is that the moment this deal goes through, as much as 30 or 40 billion dollars will pour into the country as a result of the Deauville agreement, and all the pledges that were made immediately after the fall of the old regime.
There is also the matter of foreign investment which almost dried up for a while, and many predicted that it will not return till the IMF loan and the pledges materialize. Well, there may be a few investors waiting for that to happen but the fact is that foreign companies from Asia, Europe and the Americas are returning to Egypt. One example worth noting is that of Apache, the American petroleum company. It made a deal in Australia, an act that triggered massive and jubilant headlines in some publications to the effect that Apache was pulling out of Egypt to go into other places. Before the editors of these so-called business publications had the time to jump into the streets below and dance for joy, Apache had signed a deal of several billions dollars with Egypt to explore for hydrocarbons and develop projects that will last several decades. Other companies ranging from food processing to shipbuilding also opened new manufacturing plants in the country.
Thus, the question to ask is this: What did really happen to the economy of a country that was growing at the rate of 6% and had a revolution? To answer this question intelligently, we must begin with the premise that the Egyptian economy is one of the few in the world which are truly diversified. What this means is that it is made of all the sectors that make-up a modern economy, and that there exists a rough balance between the sectors. How is that? Well, when things were simple as they were in the pre-computer age, the economies were divided into 4 industrial sectors for the purpose of evaluation: agriculture, textiles, chemicals and machinery which also included transport equipment. And when you had an economy that hummed with all these sectors, you also had the services that usually go with them. By the time the computer had become prevalent everywhere, other sectors such as high-tech were added. The transport and equipment sector was subdivided into its two parts, and electronics was added to equipment. As to agriculture, it was combined with food processing to become the agrifood sector. But nothing is sacrosanct because other approaches for classification were invented, and they keep changing with time.
In any case, as far as the Egyptian revolution is concerned, agriculture was not touched. There have been a few demands for a higher wage in the food processing business but nothing happened there that was very disruptive. As to the textiles, there had been trouble on this labor front even before the revolution, and it continued after it but very little that is serious happened there. As to the chemicals, which are mostly the petrochemicals and include the exploitation of mines, minerals and quarries, there was no disruption at all.
This said, the serious disruption that happened in manufacturing came in the transportation sector where some of the auto assembly plants were shut down. Also, because construction suffered in the big urban centers like Cairo, Alexandria and Suez, the building material companies -- such as those in cement, steel, ceramics, doors and windows -- experienced a slowdown. As to the services, there was disruption in tourism, trade, education and in the financial services. What this did to the economy is slow it down to 1 or 2 per cent growth, but it did not send it into negative territory. And this is remarkable considering that there had been a revolution where the normal thing to happen would be a drop in the GDP of as much as 25% – a depression level.
But what is it that went on inside the mind of the idiots who almost danced in the street at Egypt's woes? What happened was that these people were too ignorant to know the difference between economic woes and financial woes. If a tsunami or a meteor had hit Egypt, had wipe out most of its plants and mines and had killed most of its labor force, the economy would have been severely debilitated or even killed, and the idiots would have had a good reason to celebrate. But none of this happened because the economy got sick for a while, and it is getting better now. To extend the analogy, you can perceive the economy as having lost some weight, it may still look sluggish in its movements but it is no worse than that.
Where the would-be street dancers went wrong is in the fact that they fantasized about a country that will soon fall on its knees, thus giving them the opportunity to remote control it financially, politically and even militarily. And all this hinged – in their tiny, little, miniscule brains -- on the foreign reserves that they knew the country had accumulated. There were 36 billion dollars in there of which 10 billion had come as a result of foreigners buying treasury bonds. Thinking that the revolution was going to plunge the country into a depression, these people cashed the bonds and took the money out of the country, which is a perfectly legal and legitimate thing to do.
But seeing the reserves diminish, the companies that usually import raw material from abroad were prompted to buy and hoard foreign currencies. In turn, this prompted the central bank to spend another 10 billion dollars to prop up the local currency. This brought the reserves at the central bank to 16 billion dollars but 10 billion are still in the country, and going nowhere. In addition, the commercial banks have huge sums invested abroad and would repatriate some of that to save the economy that keeps them in business if the need will arise. But there is no sign that something like this will happen. Too bad for those who got dressed up to go dance at the party that was never given.
Coming back to the Matt Bradley article, there are three main points I would like to discuss: the matter of subsidies, the country's trade in hydrocarbons, and its trade in the agrifood business.
First, the subsidies. The countries that experienced the Industrial Revolution two or three centuries ago went from an agricultural feudal economy to an industrial one over several generations. The disparity between the very rich and the poor was maintained because industry was largely controlled by the landowners who added to their wealth. But there was no serious disparity between the rising classes, all of which were peasants moving into the middle class roughly at the same pace. Yes, there were some frictions but these were no worse than what existed before the start of the Industrial Revolution.
By contrast, when an agricultural country begins to industrialize in an age that is already industrialized, the potential exists for the peasants who move from the farm to the cities to become much richer than those who remain behind. They acquire the purchasing power to send prices sky high, and thus further impoverish the already poor. For this reason, the government feels compelled to institute a system of subsidies where the essential staples, especially in food and fuel, can be had by everyone. It also happened that because of wars and other reasons, shortages were created in some industrialized countries where subsidies that range from food stamps to direct welfare payment were instituted. The Egyptian government looked at all these programs and has not yet found the system that would suit Egypt. But things are getting serious as noted in the Bradley article, and a decision will have to be taken sooner rather than later.
Second, the country's trade in hydrocarbons. We must understand that crude oil is rarely used in its crude form. Instead, it is refined where half the volume becomes fuels that range from the high octane gasoline to the heavy fuel oil, passing through the diesel, the jet fuel and so on. As to the other half, it is refined and separated into various chemicals that range from the wax to the asphalt, passing through the plastics, the vinyl and so on. No country in the world that has refineries uses petroleum products in the exact proportions that crude oil breaks into. For example, they sometimes use more gasoline than plastics because they have a healthy auto industry; sometimes they use more plastics than gasoline because they have a healthy construction and furniture industries. Thus, what happens is that these countries sell what they have in surplus, and buy what they are shortage of.
Egypt is no exception. It produces about 700 thousand barrels of crude petroleum a day, refines all of it, uses the products that it needs, which is most of them, and sells what it does not need, such as the high octane gasoline and some chemicals. The country also imports diesel fuel and butane gas. But what Egypt does not do is import crude oil in any physical sense. What does that mean? It means that Egypt has agreements with foreign oil companies that do business in the country and getting paid with a share of the crude. About 60% of the oil that is pumped from the ground belongs to Egypt; the other 40% goes to the foreign partner. But the contracts have a clause that gives Egypt the right of first refusal which means that the country has the right to buy the oil if it is willing to pay the world price for it. And this goes into the financial ledgers as an import even though the oil was produced locally and consumed locally.
When you convert all those numbers into tons per year, it works out that Egypt produces 35 million tons of crude oil of which 21 million belong to the country and 14 million to the foreign companies. However, the latter do not take the oil out of the country but leave it in place and get paid in cash instead. Given that Egypt also produces 54 million tons of natural gas and sells 18 million of them abroad, the country registers a net surplus in hydrocarbons and products of more than 10 billion dollars a year.
Third, the country's trade in the agrifood business. Egypt has 8 million acres of arable land which translates into 15 million acres when you consider that most of the land produces 2 crops a year, even 3 in some instances. This is a small patch when you compare it to what other countries of the same size have, but given the amount of water that is available, this is the best that the country can do. However, the smallness is compensated for by the high yield that the agronomists have been able to achieve in Egypt.
When you add to the export of the processed foods, rice, fruits and vegetables -- the export of non-edible products such as cotton, flowers, spices, herbs and furniture made of wood produced with recycled sewage water -- you find that the total sales of the country roughly balance out the total purchases in staples such as the wheat, sugar and cooking oil that the country imports.
Putting all this together, the picture that you see of the Egyptian economy is not one that should worry you unless you're all dressed up and looking for a reason to dance in the street.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
The Pattern And The Connecting Dots
It is difficult most of the time to understand why bad things happen in this world. The reasons are many, one of them being that a pattern connecting a number of the happenings cannot always be discerned. But sometimes, a few happenings shine bright at the same time, and they come to look like dots that beg to be connected to each other. When this is done, the connection shows an unmistakable pattern, and this makes the whole thing easier to understand.
Two such dots shone this week. When connected together, they show a pattern that helps to explain not only what is happening nowadays but also much of what happened in times past. The first dot is an article published in the New York Post on March 21, 2012. It came under the title: “P.T. Barnum & the nuke talks”, and was written by John Bolton. The second dot is an article published in the Wall Street Journal on March 22, 2012. It came under the title: “Tolerating Hamas Invites a Mideast War” and the subtitle: “The United Nations ignores 12,000 rockets launched into southern Israel,” and was written by Ron Prosor.
What the two articles have in common is that they were written by Jewish ambassadors to the United Nations. Ron Prosor is a current ambassador representing Israel in that world body, while John Bolton was an ambassador there too who unashamedly represented both Jewish America and Israel but no one else and nothing else. The two articles also end up talking about Iran, an issue that preoccupies Israel and Jews everywhere, having started the discussion with an entirely different subject.
First, we look at the Prosor article. He starts it by quoting a saying uttered by a historian decades ago. He calls the saying a principle then chides the world because: “...this principle continues to fall on deaf ears in the international community.” Who was the historian, you ask? It was Barbara Tuchman. And what was the quote? It was this: “War is the unfolding of miscalculations.” But what the hell is this all about, you ask? To understand what the ambassador is trying to do here, we need a simple analogy. Suppose you have a neighbor who confronts you every day with something like this: Did you know that the kid across the hall was wearing brown shoes yesterday even though it was a Wednesday?
The first time that this happens, you come to think that the neighbor knows something you don't, and you feel intimidated. But then you discover that wearing brown shoes on a Wednesday is so irrelevant to the scheme of things, you cease to feel intimidated when the idiot next door confronts you day in and day out with something you didn't know before. In fact, you don't want to know what he knows because you have better things to do with your life. And this is such a Jewish thing to do, you see them do it even at the United Nations which explains why the Tuchman principle falls on deaf ears in the international community. It is that the World has had it up to here with Jewish ambassadors telling them things that contain as much wisdom as there is in the bark of a dog.
But why did he write these words to be published in an American newspaper? Because sooner or later, the Israelis will ask America for money. It used to be easy for them to do so in the old days because they had only to say gimme, and the Congress gave. But like leeches, they have bankrupted their host who must now borrow from the Asians and the Arabs to give to them. And while America is going bankrupt, and while its people are going on food stamps, less and less of them have the stomach to respond to the cries of the rabbi who appeals to their Christian generosity to help feed the hungry Jews in Israel.
These people are beginning to look like the skin on bones you used to see in the famine stricken regions of Africa, and no matter how much their leaders try to explain that this is the look of a self-inflicted anorexia, the world knows that this is the look of a famine created by leaders who spend the little money they have to kill Palestinians and loot their properties rather than use the money to buy food and feed their own people. Because of this, the ruling crowd in Israel has come to be seen the world over as less than worthy to carry the suitcase for the leaders of North Korea. Like them, they are pathetic, disgusting and criminal but in a more exaggerated way.
So then, what does a criminal do when faced with a predicament he cannot get out of? He commits more crimes, what else? And this is exactly what the Israelis have done. They sent American-made planes loaded with American-made smart bombs, and they killed a number of unarmed Palestinians in the knowledge that the latter will respond by sending a few home-made flares to remind the world that they are still being victimized by American weapons placed in the hands of a demonic culture that never relented being demonic during the centuries that it tried to impose itself on humanity but was shunned by it everywhere and every time.
And when the Palestinians sent up the flares, the Israelis yelled: Rockets, rockets -- rockets from Gaza. Oh my belly, oh look how I ache at the belly. Help me world, help me. And while they were thus moaning, they sent their American-made planes to bomb Palestinian families in their homes killing something like two dozen of them which would represent, in terms of proportion, 480 dead Syrians or 5,800 dead Americans in a single day. And all this happened at a time when not one Israeli had suffered as much as a scratch.
And why all this? Because the Palestinians sat quietly in their homes minding their own business, and the Israelis decided it was time to accuse them of something, then create an incident that will bring money they can no longer have for the asking. They looked at themselves in the mirror and saw that they aim to commit a terrorist act so as to maximize civilian deaths, and so they said to themselves that the time had come to accuse the Palestinians of planning a terrorist act. Thus, speaking of someone never heard of before, the ambassador said the following in his article: “He aimed to launch another mass murder of innocent Israelis...” and he also said this: “As these terrorists sought to maximize civilian deaths...” Like Jews always do, the ambassador accused the other of what he saw in himself and his people. This is their culture; it is their religion. This is why they are hated and have been for thousands of years. They are paying a price not because of their genetic make up -- which happens to be the same as that of everyone else -- but because they have cultivated the wrong culture, and have adopted a screwy kind of religion.
And when you are that stupid, you're stupid enough to reveal the rot that resides inside your innermost bosom not knowing what you just did. The idea the ambassador had was to accomplish two contradictory goals at the same time. He wanted to say to America: look how bad these Palestinians are, so give us the money to defend ourselves. He also wanted to say: look how magnificent we, the Jews are, for inventing an Iron Dome that is working magnificently well, so give us the money to defend ourselves. This alone is a contradiction that kills his argument but being also a mathematical illiterate, he made another big mistake.
Here is what he wrote: “In the 5 days that followed … 60 rockets per day [were launched] … Israel's new 'Iron Dome' antimissile system intercepted … 50 rockets … [representing] 90% effectiveness.” Well, my dear ambassador, 5 times 60 is 300 rockets. Having intercepted 50 of them, you have intercepted 16.7% and not 90% as you claim. And when someone spews bullshit as glaring as this, you can be certain that all the numbers he quoted were imaginary. Also, the known truth is that no antimissile system is working in Israel or anywhere in the world except the American Patriot system which, after three decades, still cannot be fully relied on.
But having speculated that one nondescript Palestinian had “aimed” and that other Palestinians had “sought”, the Israelis determined that they needed to defend themselves. “It's a simple equation” and “you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that” says the Jew. And if the world does not come to the aid of his people “Israel will be forced to respond in a completely different manner,” he threatens.
He then does something that is as Jewish as Matzoh bread; he plays the card known as the Brown shoes on a Wednesday syndrome. To do this, he looks around and points to everything that is happening around him, and he suggests that they are happening to prove he was right in everything he said. Here is how he puts it: “With the Middle East locked in a struggle ... Gaza would tip the scales … From Marrakech to Manama … the Arab world would … drop its focus … on the Assad regime...” And there is also this: “Iran understands this well … The Iranian Revolutionary Guards are funneling weapons to Hamas … a conflict in Gaza would distract the world as they take their final steps toward nuclear capability.”
We now look at the John Bolton article. He starts with North Korea, a nation that has announced it will launch a satellite into space, and do so at a time when a number of countries will be meeting in South Korea to discuss nuclear issues. Bolton does not like it because he speculates (for himself and for humanity) that the North Koreans have bad motives. This is how he expresses that sentiment: “no one doubts that the launch's real purpose is to advance North Korea's capacity to target and deliver nuclear weapons anywhere on earth.” Thus he calls these people: “profoundly unserious” and he chides the world for giving them aid instead of heeding the P.T. Barnum insight which says that “there's a sucker born every minute.”
This being one leg of his argument, and the other leg being – not surprisingly Iran – Bolton uses another saying to make the jump from one country to the other. He says this: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me dozens of times, shame on me.” The idea he propounds here is that like North Korea, Iran too has been fooling the world. Upon this, he unloads the usual accusations against Iran to come to the point where -- like his Israeli counterpart -- he speculates as to what North Korea might do now, and what Iran will likely do when it will have acquired the bomb. The things he enumerates are horrifying indeed but he does not say that even without a nuclear device, the Israelis are inflicting that same level of horror on the unarmed people of Palestine using conventional American weapons.
Someday these people will have learned the golden rule which speaks of treating others the way you wish to be treated. Only then will humanity shed real tears when Jews get hurt instead of pretending to do so while walking them to the gas chamber and the incinerator.
John Bolton should understand this simple equation by now because he has lived in the Holocaust Memorial long enough to pontificate on this simple truth which, like says his Israeli counterpart, it does not take a rocket scientist to grasp.
Two such dots shone this week. When connected together, they show a pattern that helps to explain not only what is happening nowadays but also much of what happened in times past. The first dot is an article published in the New York Post on March 21, 2012. It came under the title: “P.T. Barnum & the nuke talks”, and was written by John Bolton. The second dot is an article published in the Wall Street Journal on March 22, 2012. It came under the title: “Tolerating Hamas Invites a Mideast War” and the subtitle: “The United Nations ignores 12,000 rockets launched into southern Israel,” and was written by Ron Prosor.
What the two articles have in common is that they were written by Jewish ambassadors to the United Nations. Ron Prosor is a current ambassador representing Israel in that world body, while John Bolton was an ambassador there too who unashamedly represented both Jewish America and Israel but no one else and nothing else. The two articles also end up talking about Iran, an issue that preoccupies Israel and Jews everywhere, having started the discussion with an entirely different subject.
First, we look at the Prosor article. He starts it by quoting a saying uttered by a historian decades ago. He calls the saying a principle then chides the world because: “...this principle continues to fall on deaf ears in the international community.” Who was the historian, you ask? It was Barbara Tuchman. And what was the quote? It was this: “War is the unfolding of miscalculations.” But what the hell is this all about, you ask? To understand what the ambassador is trying to do here, we need a simple analogy. Suppose you have a neighbor who confronts you every day with something like this: Did you know that the kid across the hall was wearing brown shoes yesterday even though it was a Wednesday?
The first time that this happens, you come to think that the neighbor knows something you don't, and you feel intimidated. But then you discover that wearing brown shoes on a Wednesday is so irrelevant to the scheme of things, you cease to feel intimidated when the idiot next door confronts you day in and day out with something you didn't know before. In fact, you don't want to know what he knows because you have better things to do with your life. And this is such a Jewish thing to do, you see them do it even at the United Nations which explains why the Tuchman principle falls on deaf ears in the international community. It is that the World has had it up to here with Jewish ambassadors telling them things that contain as much wisdom as there is in the bark of a dog.
But why did he write these words to be published in an American newspaper? Because sooner or later, the Israelis will ask America for money. It used to be easy for them to do so in the old days because they had only to say gimme, and the Congress gave. But like leeches, they have bankrupted their host who must now borrow from the Asians and the Arabs to give to them. And while America is going bankrupt, and while its people are going on food stamps, less and less of them have the stomach to respond to the cries of the rabbi who appeals to their Christian generosity to help feed the hungry Jews in Israel.
These people are beginning to look like the skin on bones you used to see in the famine stricken regions of Africa, and no matter how much their leaders try to explain that this is the look of a self-inflicted anorexia, the world knows that this is the look of a famine created by leaders who spend the little money they have to kill Palestinians and loot their properties rather than use the money to buy food and feed their own people. Because of this, the ruling crowd in Israel has come to be seen the world over as less than worthy to carry the suitcase for the leaders of North Korea. Like them, they are pathetic, disgusting and criminal but in a more exaggerated way.
So then, what does a criminal do when faced with a predicament he cannot get out of? He commits more crimes, what else? And this is exactly what the Israelis have done. They sent American-made planes loaded with American-made smart bombs, and they killed a number of unarmed Palestinians in the knowledge that the latter will respond by sending a few home-made flares to remind the world that they are still being victimized by American weapons placed in the hands of a demonic culture that never relented being demonic during the centuries that it tried to impose itself on humanity but was shunned by it everywhere and every time.
And when the Palestinians sent up the flares, the Israelis yelled: Rockets, rockets -- rockets from Gaza. Oh my belly, oh look how I ache at the belly. Help me world, help me. And while they were thus moaning, they sent their American-made planes to bomb Palestinian families in their homes killing something like two dozen of them which would represent, in terms of proportion, 480 dead Syrians or 5,800 dead Americans in a single day. And all this happened at a time when not one Israeli had suffered as much as a scratch.
And why all this? Because the Palestinians sat quietly in their homes minding their own business, and the Israelis decided it was time to accuse them of something, then create an incident that will bring money they can no longer have for the asking. They looked at themselves in the mirror and saw that they aim to commit a terrorist act so as to maximize civilian deaths, and so they said to themselves that the time had come to accuse the Palestinians of planning a terrorist act. Thus, speaking of someone never heard of before, the ambassador said the following in his article: “He aimed to launch another mass murder of innocent Israelis...” and he also said this: “As these terrorists sought to maximize civilian deaths...” Like Jews always do, the ambassador accused the other of what he saw in himself and his people. This is their culture; it is their religion. This is why they are hated and have been for thousands of years. They are paying a price not because of their genetic make up -- which happens to be the same as that of everyone else -- but because they have cultivated the wrong culture, and have adopted a screwy kind of religion.
And when you are that stupid, you're stupid enough to reveal the rot that resides inside your innermost bosom not knowing what you just did. The idea the ambassador had was to accomplish two contradictory goals at the same time. He wanted to say to America: look how bad these Palestinians are, so give us the money to defend ourselves. He also wanted to say: look how magnificent we, the Jews are, for inventing an Iron Dome that is working magnificently well, so give us the money to defend ourselves. This alone is a contradiction that kills his argument but being also a mathematical illiterate, he made another big mistake.
Here is what he wrote: “In the 5 days that followed … 60 rockets per day [were launched] … Israel's new 'Iron Dome' antimissile system intercepted … 50 rockets … [representing] 90% effectiveness.” Well, my dear ambassador, 5 times 60 is 300 rockets. Having intercepted 50 of them, you have intercepted 16.7% and not 90% as you claim. And when someone spews bullshit as glaring as this, you can be certain that all the numbers he quoted were imaginary. Also, the known truth is that no antimissile system is working in Israel or anywhere in the world except the American Patriot system which, after three decades, still cannot be fully relied on.
But having speculated that one nondescript Palestinian had “aimed” and that other Palestinians had “sought”, the Israelis determined that they needed to defend themselves. “It's a simple equation” and “you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that” says the Jew. And if the world does not come to the aid of his people “Israel will be forced to respond in a completely different manner,” he threatens.
He then does something that is as Jewish as Matzoh bread; he plays the card known as the Brown shoes on a Wednesday syndrome. To do this, he looks around and points to everything that is happening around him, and he suggests that they are happening to prove he was right in everything he said. Here is how he puts it: “With the Middle East locked in a struggle ... Gaza would tip the scales … From Marrakech to Manama … the Arab world would … drop its focus … on the Assad regime...” And there is also this: “Iran understands this well … The Iranian Revolutionary Guards are funneling weapons to Hamas … a conflict in Gaza would distract the world as they take their final steps toward nuclear capability.”
We now look at the John Bolton article. He starts with North Korea, a nation that has announced it will launch a satellite into space, and do so at a time when a number of countries will be meeting in South Korea to discuss nuclear issues. Bolton does not like it because he speculates (for himself and for humanity) that the North Koreans have bad motives. This is how he expresses that sentiment: “no one doubts that the launch's real purpose is to advance North Korea's capacity to target and deliver nuclear weapons anywhere on earth.” Thus he calls these people: “profoundly unserious” and he chides the world for giving them aid instead of heeding the P.T. Barnum insight which says that “there's a sucker born every minute.”
This being one leg of his argument, and the other leg being – not surprisingly Iran – Bolton uses another saying to make the jump from one country to the other. He says this: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me dozens of times, shame on me.” The idea he propounds here is that like North Korea, Iran too has been fooling the world. Upon this, he unloads the usual accusations against Iran to come to the point where -- like his Israeli counterpart -- he speculates as to what North Korea might do now, and what Iran will likely do when it will have acquired the bomb. The things he enumerates are horrifying indeed but he does not say that even without a nuclear device, the Israelis are inflicting that same level of horror on the unarmed people of Palestine using conventional American weapons.
Someday these people will have learned the golden rule which speaks of treating others the way you wish to be treated. Only then will humanity shed real tears when Jews get hurt instead of pretending to do so while walking them to the gas chamber and the incinerator.
John Bolton should understand this simple equation by now because he has lived in the Holocaust Memorial long enough to pontificate on this simple truth which, like says his Israeli counterpart, it does not take a rocket scientist to grasp.
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