Origins of Murdochian Pirate Journalism

The more things change the more they remain the same, says the old adage, and nothing is more so than what goes on inside the fast changing universe of communication. The hardware we use to stay in touch with each other is changing at the proverbial speed of light in that sphere but something remains stubbornly the same; it is what we, human beings, do with the hardware. No matter how much we advance technically, we seem to remain psychologically as primitive as the savage beings that used to communicate by physical aggression more than they did by reasoned exchanges. And I have a story to tell in this regard.

Before I get into the heart of the story, let me show you something. On August 10, 2013 the editors of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) which is owned by the Australian Jew, Rupert Murdoch, wrote two pieces that happen to illustrate a point I am trying to make. The first piece is titled: “Mad Bob's 'election.'” The name here refers to Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe. As to the second piece of the Journal, it is titled: “Quote-Unquote, the Law.” It also has a subtitle that says: “Obama explains why he can ignore the letter of his health-care law.” The name here refers to Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America where the Journal is headquartered.

Both pieces discuss presidential powers. In the first case, the editors of the WSJ describe the problem like this: “Mugabe called a snap election, bypassing the MDC-run [opposition] parliament.” In the second case, they describe the problem like this: “He [Obama] blamed his need to act unilaterally on Republicans [opposition] … Which is weird.” As you can see, they did not think Mugabe was weird but they thought their own President was. And it was this contrast in treatment – however insignificant it may seem – that brought to memory the true story I am about to tell you.

There was a time in the decade of the 1950s when setting up a pirate radio station to undermine a regime that someone did not like was in vogue. The first time I became aware of this reality was in 1957 when the family returned to Egypt, having spent much of my childhood away from my birthplace. That was a turbulent time in the country, coming less than a year after the attack on the Suez Canal zone; a senseless attack mounted by the old colonial powers, Britain and France. They did not attack to retake the canal that President Nasser had nationalized but to show the young Egyptian “colonel” what the old powers can still do if and when they decide to do something.

That was their immediate goal; to show Nasser what they can do. A more subtle and long-term goal that came to light 11 years later was the fact that the old colonial powers were training Israel's military, and showing it how to attack Egypt, something Israel did in 1967, thus starting a war that lasted till 1973 when the Egyptian army put an end to the Israeli aggression. I had left Egypt by then to come Canada and live here – which means that I never lived in Egypt when that country was at war. What I mean by that is real hot war, which is not to say I failed to witness another kind of war; one that is fought via the airwaves.

It happened that Nasser – the man the colonial powers hated so much as to risk losing their status of world powers in order to show him what they can do – was hated even more by the Israelis. What these people did in 1967 – mounting a Pearl Harbor style sneak attack on Egypt while pretending to prepare themselves for peace talks – had a prelude that preceded the military attack. What came before that attack was a war of the airwaves conducted not only by Israel's official radio station but also half a dozen or so anti-Nasser, anti-Egypt pirate stations that used to broadcast from ships along the Egyptian coastlines on the Red and Mediterranean Seas.

The attacks on Nasser were a steady stream of hate filled statements whose purpose was to try and convince the people of Egypt they were governed by a man who is so bad for them, they must rise up and protest against his rule till they paralyze the country so effectively, he will have no choice but to go away and let someone else rule the country. Needless to say the ploy did not work, and Nasser remained as popular as ever. Even after the sneak attack of 1967 for which he took full responsibility and resigned, the people still loved him. They went into the streets and the squares – the now famous Tahrir square being one of them – and they told Nasser that his resignation was not accepted. They strongly advised that they wanted him back on the job; they wanted him to stay on and continue to serve the country. He listened to the people, withdrew his resignation and served till he died of a heart attack a few years later.

That was more than half a century ago. Did things change since that time? Yes, some things did change. For example, the hardware we now use has changed in the sense that we have a visual sort of radio called television. We also have the internet, connecting the world in a way that no one could have fathomed then. And we have the ability to print the same newspaper and same magazine on several points around the globe at the same time, even publish them online so that everyone anywhere can have access to them.

But what has not changed is the content of these media outlets – as they are now called. They are used the same way that the pirate radio stations were used more than half a century ago. And no one is more apt at engaging in journalistic piracy than Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the Wall Street Journal and its sister television station, Fox News. The people who run them have behaved scandalously in Europe and were caught red handed on that Continent. They are behaving scandalously in America as well but so far, they have not been caught doing something manifestly illegal. But you never know.

This is how the Journal editors ended the article on Obama: “His comments are revealing about his attitudes on the constraints of the [law] instructing him to [observe] them faithfully, not merely what he thinks is “the essence” of laws. And so I ask: Is Rupert Murdoch wise enough to understand what his editors are saying here?

The Fox News Disease Infesting the WSJ

If you are a casual visitor to the Fox News (FN) channel while randomly surfing the aether-on-cable as I sometimes do, you will have noticed that FN suffers from a seemingly incurable disease. You will have noticed that throughout the day, they do very little on that channel but praise Israel and everything Jewish while openly insulting their own president and his administration. You may wish to call the phenomenon a bad habit, but where the habit proves to be a full blown disease is when you see everyone unload on what they call “the mainstream media” for not being like them. This is truly sick.

To be sure that it was not my bad luck which landed me always on that channel at the very moment that someone was unloading on the mainstream media, I once spent 3 solid hours between 6 o'clock in the morning and 9 o'clock watching a female anchor and her two male colleagues unload non-stop (and I mean absolutely, absolutely non-stop) venom of the most heinous kind against their own president and his administration as well as the mainstream media for not being like them. I felt like I was watching 3 sewer pipes flowing raw sewage for 3 whole hours. The boob tube had transformed from visual wasteland to sewage pipe pouring into a swamp.

This is a disease that has now metastasized – migrating to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the print sister publication of Fox News. The manifestation of this move is an article that came under the title: “Anti-U.S. Hostility Ramps Up in Egypt” and the subtitle: “Media Outlets Blast American Policies, Further Straining Ties.” It was written by Maria Abi-Habib and Adam Entous with a contribution from Jay Solomon and Leila Elmergawi, and was published in the Journal on August 9, 2013.

As suggested in the subtitle, the article takes on the Egyptian mainstream media – what the authors call “state and privately owned media outlets” – attacking them the way that the Fox News anchors of raw sewage attack America's mainstream media. The Journal authors do it to the Egyptian media outlets, accusing them of being “already no strangers to demonizing the U.S.” And they do so even after admitting seeing posters put up by ordinary people in Cairo's Tahrir Square that reflect the sentiments expressed by the media with regard to America's constant attempts to meddle in Egyptian affairs.

They know this is the reality, and they know why it is so. They know because the expert they consulted, Vali Nasr, told them about the depth of public (that's public not just official) distrust of U.S. policies in Egypt. He went on to say that “America has few fans in the country.” And he explained: “We're caught in a situation of having to essentially try to find a balance between our values and our interests.”

What Nasr was not quoted as saying – whether or not he said it – were the reasons why the people of Egypt, along with the rest of the region, distrust America this profoundly. It is that they have known, loved and respected America till the time when its foreign policy was snatched by the sort of people who now run the FN-WSJ complex and the sort of people who appear on it. And even though the American Constitution assigns foreign policy and the powers thereof to the Executive Branch, the world has witnessed the Jewish lobby usurp those powers by threats and blackmail, transferring them to the Legislative Branch where there exist more lapdogs than civil servants serving the people who elected them. It is a disgusting bordello that is no less stinking than the raw sewage pouring out the Fox News channel.

What makes the odor even more unbearable is the filth that they and their so-called progressive nemeses have joined hands and worked together for decades to pour into the aether. It is filth and still more filth by which they explain the reasons why America is resented and disrespected in a place where it used to be loved and respected. Here is an example of that filth: “The latest anti-American hysteria is a throwback to Mr. Mubarak's three decades of rule, when state-owned media fixated on a common enemy such as Israel or the U.S. in what critics called a bid to rally the nation and deflect from government shortcomings.” Nothing here about America's policies and nothing about a Congress of prostitutes operating under constant Jewish threats and blackmail.

This is the sort of filth that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, NPR, Fox News and many others got away with as they poured filth into the public domain absent outlets such as this website to push back. But now it is different. Except for moments of desperation such as this one when Habib and Entous were joined by Solomon and Elmergawi, and were asked to write the kind of article they ended up writing. It may be the gift that keeps on giving to people like me who welcome having something to do responding to those people, but to others, it remains the sewer that keeps on stinking.

Luckily, however, a comical relief can sometimes come from a most unexpected direction. This time it came from Senator John McCain who warned that “some representatives in the Congress want to sever America's relationship with Egypt.” This is like telling someone: Stop complaining about what I do or I'll stop pissing on your carpet. And guess what the answer would be. It would be this: Stop pissing on my carpet before I castrate you, and make it so that you'll have nothing to piss with.

Maybe it is time to put this relationship on ice till such time that America finds a way to liberate itself from the yoke that is keeping it subservient to the will of World Jewry.

An F in Lexicology for Krauthammer

I never thought I'd be sitting to write about the perils of getting involved in a “Lexicological War” with someone, especially when the war is not mine. It is Obama's war according to Charles Krauthammer who wrote “Obama's Lexological War” and had the article published on August 9, 2013 in National Review Online under the subtitle: “Behind euphemisms, the administration hides its incoherent policy on the war on terror.”

Krauthammer is old enough to remember the Vietnam War when the term “Pentagonspeak” made its debut and became the sensation of the time for a long time. No one called it a lexicological war at the time but then again, Krauthammer was a diehard Liberal, not the Neocon that he is today. But having turned coat, he believes he can now say anything that will help him make the point he is belaboring. And this is why, contrary to the truth, he writes that this is: “The world's first lexicological war. Parry and thrust with linguistic tricks, deliberate misnomers, and never more transparent euphemisms. Next: armor-piercing onomatopoeias and amphibious synecdoches.”

So you ask: What's his problem now? And the answer is this: “State Department spokeswoman explained that the hasty evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was not an evacuation but 'a reduction in staff.'” Fair enough I thought, because this falls in the realm of perception – one woman's reduction being another man's evacuation. But what jolted me is what Krauthammer went on to say, which is the following: “This proves a problem because the Yemeni government had already announced (and denounced) the 'evacuation' – the word normal folks use for the panicky ordering of people onto planes headed out of country.”

Well, well, well, I thought to myself; that is a mouthful. But is it a mouth full of words or a mouth full of BS? A legitimate question because now, according to Krauthammer, the Yemeni government is full of folks who are normal whereas the American State Department is full of folks who are abnormal. But does that include Jen Psaki, the woman he calls blameless State department spokeswoman?

In any case, having had many close encounters with Jewish translation of texts from a different language to English – especially from the Arabic, I tried to find out what word the Yemeni government could have used to “denounce” the American decision. I did not find the official text but found reference to it, where one of two possible Arabic words must have been used. They were: “khle-ow” or “eigla-e.” Please, find someone who speaks Arabic to pronounce them for you.

I cannot tell you at this moment how I would have translated the Yemeni text if it were assigned to me. Trying to be as accurate as I can, I could have relied on my memory or could have picked up the dictionary to see what options it gives for translating those words into English. Before going any further, I must pause here to tell you what sort of problems translators usually encounter.

Take for example the word “go” in English. If I had it in Arabic and looked it up in the dictionary for options, I would have found many; each of which expressing something very different from the other. Look what goes with the word “go” and imagine who laughable the translation can be if the wrong option is used. Here are some but not all of the possibilities: Go about, go after, go against, go along, go around, go at, go beyond, go by, go down, go for, go in for, go into, go off, go on, go out, go over, go through, go to, go together, go under, go up, go with, have a go at, let go, let oneself go, no go, on the go. Do you get the point now?

Not to bore you to death, I shall now give you only a few of the options that the dictionary gives for the above mentioned Arabic words:

For khle-ow, it gives: to be empty, free, devoid, lack, want, to be vacant, alone, seclude, isolate, withdraw, retire, to deliberate in court, to forsake, to pass by, elapse, to be bygone, abstain, refrain, leave alone, relinquish, forgo.

For eigla-e, it gives: pull out, move out, go away, depart, leave, quit, evacuate, dispel, remove, dislodge, reveal oneself, to appear, come to light, find expression, the outcome of the matter, to regard, look at.

Feel dizzy by now? I don't blame you. But imagine how much impertinence of the Jewish sort of chutzpah it would take for someone to go beyond brushing all that aside or hide behind it to make a point like this: “Thus continues the administration's penchant for wordplay, the bending of language to fit a political need.”

This said, he now builds on it to moralize. “First, truth is a virtue. Second, if you keep lying, the American people may question whether anything you say is not another lie. Third, leading a country requires not just honesty but clarity.” Ah, there it is. This is what he is leading up to. It is “clarity” that famous Jewish moral clarity of the ambiguous – or is it that famous ambiguity of moral clarity? Who cares anyway? The main thing is that Krauthammer gives you an example of it. Here it goes, speaking of President Obama, he says this: “He cited the threat of 'violent extremism' … the word 'extremism' is meaningless. It has no content. The extreme of what?”

So far, the presentation is logical in the sense that he means to say there is nothing here. You may or may not agree with it but it is logical. Oh yes? Is that what you think? Look what comes right after that: “In this war, an extreme devotion to the supremacy of the radically fundamentalist vision of Islam and its murderous quest for dominion over all others.” This is another example of a Jew who could not resist the temptation of trying to have it both ways. There is nothing here, he says, but at the same time there is a frightening vision of Islam.

Well, let me tell you what is frightening, Charles my friend, it is this Jewish brand of moral clarity and its murderous quest for world conquest riding a confused Pax Americana.

Try to do better next time, Chuck, because this presentation gets an F.

Classicist in a Classic Trap of His Making

The classics are the subjects that you learn in the classroom. The classicists are the people who practice these subjects or more likely teach them. Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist who does both. He practices the classics by writing books and articles, and he teaches the classics at the university level. But there is one more thing that Victor Hanson does which he may not be aware of. It is that from time to time, he makes the classic mistake of setting a trap and falling into it.

              

He did it this time in an article he wrote under the title: “America as Pill Bug” and the subtitle: “Closing our embassies was prudent in the short term. But what message does it send?” It was published on August 8, 2013 in National Review Online. As can be seen from the title, he has set up a metaphor which is very much the natural thing to do. In fact, most people speak and write in metaphors even when they do not mean to. And this is because we are visual beings who like to see things in our mind's eye even if we cannot see them in reality.

But where we set-up a trap for ourselves and fall into it is when we adopt someone else's metaphor, engage in it wholeheartedly and participate in developing it to the extent that it will go, then discover that the metaphor does not apply. But instead of blaming the failure on ourselves who created the mythology around a subject we chattered about without consulting, we blame the failure on the subject itself for not living up to the myth we have created around it.

And this is the classic trap that the classicist Victor Hanson falls into once in a while as he did this time. But be careful now because “America as pill bug” is his own metaphor, and there is nothing wrong with it or with the way he is handling it. This is not the trap in which he fell. The trap is this: “Do we still call that, the Arab Spring?” The truth is that the Arabs did not view their movement as a Spring or any season of the calendar. That metaphor was created by people in America. Many engaged in it wholeheartedly and participated in developing it without asking the Arabs what they thought of it. But when the Americans discovered that the metaphor may not apply, they blamed the failure on the Arabs, or they took the more generous attitude of questioning it as did Hanson.

Well, you may be tempted to say: No harm done so, what the heck! But you would be wrong because much of the decisions that we take depend on the image that was created in our mind by the metaphors we adopt – whether they are ours or they are someone else's. When the image is false, the decision can only be erroneous. In this sense, we are like the adage that was coined at the dawn of the computer age: “garbage in, garbage out.” By the same token, we have here a situation that can be stated as: “garbage metaphor in, garbage decision out.”

This is what often happens with the popular metaphors that everyone adopts and maintains even after they are proven false. On the other hand, when someone creates his own metaphor, it means that he thought it through. In this case, the chances are that the moment he feels it no longer corresponds to reality; he modifies it or discards it. Where Hanson went wrong and fell into a trap is when he adopted the popular myth that people who are willing to die for their cause can be deterred with threats. Look at this passage: “the terrorists … interpret our magnanimity as weakness. They do not seem to fear U.S. retaliation.” Does he really believe that?

But how can a garbage metaphor lead to a garbage decision? Well, we are lucky there is an example here we can discuss not because it happened but because it did not happen. Hanson asks: “Was it wise that America took a subordinate role in removing Qaddafi – contingent on approval from the UN and the Arab League but not the U.S. Congress?” Well, my dear reader, Hanson would not have asked this question if he were not so blinded by his metaphors that he cannot fathom the other side having formulated metaphors of their own about what goes on in America.

The truth is that America lost the respect of the world not because President Obama decided to project the image of a kinder-gentler superpower but because the people see him as being constantly undermined by a Congress made not of American human beings, but made of obedient dogs licking Jewish and Israeli boots non-stop. The image the world has of America is that of a charismatic American President standing on a pedestal near a platform where hundreds of congressional dogs are biting each other trying to get to the boots of a Netanyahu-like character so as to lick them and be patted on the back.

The world respects Obama and gets disgusted by the Congress. Fix the Congress and the world will go back to respecting America.

Who Is This Conflicted Man?

The question that is the title of this article concerns Daniel Pipes who is writing about Danny Danon. Pipes is not asking who Danon is; he seems to think he knows him well. But after you read the Pipes article, you will probably find yourself asking the question: Who is Daniel Pipes? You see, Danny Danon could be a rising star in Israeli politics, says Pipes in an article titled: “The Right Moment for Israel's Danny Danon?” It was published on August 7, 2013 in National Review Online under the subtitle: “His principles and vision could make him a rising start.”

You will ask the question about the identity of Pipes for two reasons. First, he mentions the word principle at least four times in the article, and that gets you thinking. He does it when he lists “devotion to principle” as one of Danny Danon's qualities. And again when he explains: “Danon has remained true to the core principles of his party and his country.” And again when he expresses the wish: “I hope and expect he [Danon] stays true to his principles.” And once more when he speaks of the “principled Yitzhak Shamir.”

As well, Pipes writes about Danon's “righteous opposition when his party makes mistakes.” You see, righteous is close enough to being a synonym of principled; you can exchange one for the other. In that same vein, Pipes writes about Netanyahu's “immoral concessions to the Palestinian Authority” by which he means to say that Netanyahu has not always been principled. So you want to find out what the word “principle” means to this man, Daniel Pipes.

Second, it perplexes you to read a passage like this: “On a personal note, through the two decades since Shamir, I have constantly looked for someone with the character, energy, skills and vision to lead Israel.” So you think to yourself: I want to know who this man, Daniel Pipes, is – not only by unveiling his identity as an individual but also by discovering what lay behind the public figure whose loyalty is clearly planted in Israel, yet often speaks as an American articulating not America's right but America's obligation toward Israel. He displays this tendency here again as he lauds Danon's book in which the latter argues that: “history shows us Israel is often better off when she acts on her own behalf … even if that means contravening the wishes of the U.S. administrations.”

And so you go over the Pipes article and discover that he, like Danon, is outraged by Netanyahu's decision to hand Palestinian prisoners, he calls killers, to the Palestinian Authority. Well, like they say, one man's killer may be another man's freedom fighter, and no one would agree more with this principle than Yitzhak Shamir, the founding father of the Jewish groups that terrorized the British and the Palestinians, displacing the latter, taking over their lands and properties, then allowing Shamir to make himself the founding father of Israel.

That was Shamir's principle. So you ask yourself: Where did the Palestinian prisoners fall short of living up to that principle – that Shamir principle? Is Pipes scornful of the Palestinians because they have not as yet succeeded in displacing the Jews? Have not as yet replaced them with Palestinians? Have not as yet taken back the lands and properties that were stolen from them? Have not as yet turned Israel back to Palestine? Could this be what goes on inside the head and heart of Daniel Pipes?

If that is the case, it must be that the man has a secret wish, not toward himself but toward Israel. It could be that he is so conflicted inside; he will start admiring the Palestinians if and only if they begin to act as ruthlessly as Shamir, and start succeeding as well as he did. If this happens he, Daniel Pipes, will consider them to be as principled as Yitzhak Shamir. And where Danon was deemed to be “a major stumbling block toward Palestinian statehood,” he will root for the Palestinians when they resolve never again to see a Jewish state established on their stolen land.

But what could be the reason why Daniel Pipes, the lifelong arch-Zionist, has turned sour on Israel, the place he considers his spiritual homeland? The evidence exists that he harbors a secret that makes him see Israel for what it is, a failed experiment that should never have been. This is the image that many people – Jews and non Jews – paint of Israel. And so the question is whether or not Pipes has joined that crowd. Could it be that he has grown tired of being Israeli when he should be American? If someone doubts there may be a hint of validity in this hypothesis, consider the following passage:

“Looked at in historical perspective … Shamir's successors engaged in political betrayal, ethical corruption and delusional egotism. Sharon … his financial shenanigans had him in constant trouble with the law. Olmert had to resign owing to a cloud of corruption charges. Netanyahu … his recent offer of murderers disturbingly contradicts the electoral platform of a half-year ago.”

What if Danny Danon does not live up to the expectation of Daniel Pipes? Will the latter officially declare that he no longer roots for Israel but considers himself American first, if not American only? Stay tuned.

Now He Tells You What His People Want

If genius is measured by the extreme to which someone can take something, it must be recognized that the Jews are an ingenious bunch because they can shamelessly take something to its absurd extreme, and call that moral clarity. And no one is more ingenious in this sense than Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal whose latest column: “The Al Qaeda Obama Forgot” was published in the Journal on August 6, 2013 under the subtitle: “The short distance between the president's rhetoric on terror and its empirical disproof.”

The first shameless act that Stephens commits this time is to mention an utterance made by President Obama, contradicted a few months later by a headline that appeared – guess where – on the front page of the Wall Street Journal where Stephens works as one of the editors. He calls it: “The second shortest distance between an Obama speech and its empirical disproof.” Empiricism, you see, is what brews inside the head of a Jew because his fantasy has always been his empirical reality.

So then, what is it that percolates inside the head of this genius? It is the President's prediction that al Qaeda was on the path to defeat, that the future of terrorism would only involve localized threats which, if dealt with smartly and proportionately, will not rise to the level of the 9/11 attack. What irritates Stephens is that the President called for the repeal of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, an act of Congress he considers to be a “declaration of war on al Qaeda,” and wants to see remain in place.

To elaborate on his points, he gives detail of what he considers to be empirical proof. Upon hearing this, you jump to your feet and scream hysterically: What's that? Another 9/11 incident? Where? Where? New York? Los Angeles? Chicago?  No. No. Relax man, nothing of the sort has happened. Nothing happened, you say? So then, where is the empirical proof? I'll tell you where. It is that the Obama administration picked up some chatter to the effect that something like a suicide bomber may walk into an American embassy somewhere and blow himself up. As a precaution, the Administration ordered the shuttering of embassies and consulates in the places where the probability is high such incident may occur – if it will occur at all.

That's it? That's all the proof this guy is providing? Yup, that's all the proof. Like I said, the genius of these people resides in the fact that they can shamelessly take something to its absurd extreme, and call it moral clarity. Moral clarity? What moral clarity is this guy providing? Good question. Well, he quotes Republican Senator Chambliss who said this was reminiscent of what he saw pre-9/11. Representative King, who is also a Republican, warned that the attack could come in Europe or the US. But the big deal as far as Stephens is concerned is that Senator Durban who is a Democrat – emphasize Democrat – said this was “a big deal.”

But how is that a big deal? Here is the Stephens answer: “it's a big deal that the executive branch of government has been operating on a contrary set of assumptions.” What assumptions? The assumption that “the war on terror was won – or won well-enough – to go home.” So now, you want to know why he believes the war on terror has not been won. And he tells you why. He says that the killing of Osama bin Ladden was only a symbolic victory. That ending the war in Iraq showcased America's lack of staying power. That substituting the Bush approach to detainees with an approach heavy on drones failed to renew goodwill on the Arab street. Is that all? That's the big deal?

Well, there is a little bit more. Being the Jew that he is, Stephens does something that blows up in his face, demolishing the thesis he is trying to construct. This is what he writes: “In fact, there was no goodwill to renew in the first place, and the U.S. is more unpopular in Pakistan and Egypt today than it was six years ago.” He has thus shown he is aware that the animosity toward America in the Arab street was not caused by the Obama Administration but that Mr. Obama was not successful at containing it – no worse than that.

And so, Stephens moves on with his litany to say that staying out of Syria has generated a new branch of al Qaeda in the Nusra Front which helped regenerate the Iraqi branch which attracted jihadist recruits from Europe. And all this, to his mind, is proof that al Qaeda was designed not as an organization like General Motors but like Burger King, a model of multiple branches. Who designed it that way? Was it bin Ladden? He doesn't say. But who cares? It suits him to say so now, so he says it and that's that.

In any case. The fact that we now have the big deal we discussed earlier, proves that to win the war on terror, Mr. Obama must reverse all his policies and embrace the policy that was adopted by Congress under the Bush Administration. It is to renew the war on terror, even intensify it. And this means to have American soldiers fight everywhere al-Qaeda may go. But do you realize where this would be according to Stephens? It is everywhere in the Arab and Muslim lands; in Africa, Europe, Latin America, Asia – hell, it's the whole wide world.

But wait a minute. Did he not blow up this theory in his face when he said there was no goodwill toward America in the Arab street now or during the Bush Administration? Yes, that's exactly the point. And what this means is that because chatter was picked up to the effect that a kid may wear an explosive belt and try to blow himself up near an America building or inside it somewhere in the world, Stephens and those of his mentality want America to openly declare it is at war against the Arabs and the Muslims, and will fight till death. Either all the Arabs and all the Muslims are killed or all Americans are killed. This world is too small to accommodate both camps.

And this, my friend, is what Bret Stephens says he and his people want for America and for the world.

Who are his people? You find them at the Wall Street Journal and Fox News.

If this Is Aid, America's Goose Is Cooked

Let me try this on you: America may have dodged a bullet a while back when a handful of Asian and Arab Gulf states bought treasury securities to aid in propping up the country's flagging economy, which has been battling deflation while running dangerously high on borrowed foreign funds.

Well, you think I would be crazy if I wrote like this. Right? And yes, I agree that if I wrote like that, I would deserve being called crazy. This is because borrowed money is not considered aid. It is a loan, and you are expected to pay it back, most of the time with interest – though at times you might receive an amount with a grace period before you start paying back. At other times, you may even have a portion of the loan designated at zero interest.

And so, if it is true that what is good for the goose is good for the gander, it means that America's goose is cooked already according to Adeel Malik and Ty McCormick who wrote: “Egypt's Economy of Dependence,” an article that was published in the New York Times on August 6, 2013. They started it this way: “Egypt may have dodged a bullet last month when a handful of Gulf states pledged $ 12 billion in emergency aid to prop up the country's flagging economy, which has been battling inflation while running dangerously low on foreign currency reserves.”

If this sounds familiar, it's because that's what I paraphrased at the start of my article. If it does not sound right for America, it should not sound right for Egypt either. This would be true unless you consider that America's goose has been cooked already ... a long time ago. Do you know why this would be the case? Because Egypt's foreign debt amounts to 14 percent of its GDP while America's debt has surpassed the 100 percent level. But do not be discouraged, my friend, because there is worse elsewhere. If you look at the other G -7 nations, only Japan and Canada are below the 100 percent level. The other countries rank as follows: Italy at 108 percent, Germany at 142 percent, France at 182 percent, and the UK at a whopping 390 percent.

But that's how our two authors, Malik and McCormick, started their article, and when you start on that note you are bound to end up writing the sort of article they wrote – a pathetic piece. Reading it, however, you get the sense they are trying to participate in a useful debate to provide the government of Egypt with insight that can help it achieve a better economic result. But then you trip on a sentence like the one that follows, and you are turned off: “As long as the country can count on foreign revenue streams, its leaders will continue to put off much-needed economic reforms – a dangerous dynamic that sets Egypt on the path to financial ruin.”

Either the two authors are not following the current internal debate that the talking heads, the columnists and the bloggers are having inside Egypt, or they are ignoring that debate to write the sensational article they wrote; perhaps seeking to please some sort of nutty crowd that may be hiding inside the NY Times pool of readers. They may even be ignoring the debate that is raised in America these days which points to the brinkmanship that is practiced over there by two parties at loggerhead and a nation in gridlock

And yet, Adeel and McCormick seem to be well versed in the false stereotypes that have been peddled about the Egyptian economy since time immemorial. These stereotypes were designed and circulated by people whose interest has been to attack the Egyptian economy and its military. These people have pretended to offer advice they said should improve the performance of the economy when in fact, the advice would have accomplished the opposite.

One of those stereotypes pertains to the role that the Egyptian military plays in the economy. They begin this portion of the discussion on a negative note, talking about an “equally destructive revenue stream: $1.3 billion dollars in annual military assistance from the United States – hardware with little strategic value, but important to the military's prestige.” So you expect to see them explain how diminishing the prestige of the military could help improve the economy but they fail to give any such explanation.

What they do instead is rattle off another false stereotype that has been discredited many times before. Not only that, but what seemed to be a mystery to those not familiar with the Egyptian economy, has been explained. Here is the false stereotype: “the military's economic empire estimated to be as high as 40 percent of the GDP.) And here is the explanation: Yes, it is true that as much as 40 percent of the Egyptian economy is unaccounted for, judging by the money supply and the velocity of money, but the phenomenon has little to do with the military.

It has everything to do with the informal economy; what is sometimes referred to as the underground economy. In fact, a huge effort is ongoing at this time to bring that economy into the mainstream, and get the operators to pay their share of taxes. As to the truth about the role of the Egyptian military in the economy, it is alluded to in the Malik and McCormick article. But before we get to that, we need to understand an important point. When there is a big project to be undertaken in a developed nation, the private sector has the finances and the know-how to pull it off. Such is not the case in the developing countries, however. What happens there is that the government would build a power plant, an oil refinery, a steel mill or an aluminum complex upon which the private sector depends to run small businesses producing plastics or kitchen utensils or aluminum doors.

Eventually, the private sector accumulates enough finances and enough know-how to undertake bigger and bigger projects, thus relieve the government from having to do so. And you know what? The same thing happens where technology is involved. Normally, a civilian authority would be established to manage the transfer of technology from the developed world to the developing one. What happened in Egypt, however, was the fact that it had an enemy next door that was constantly being supplied by the United States with advanced weapons. To respond to the threat, the Egyptian military found itself in charge of the technology transfer.

Anyone familiar with how an industrial plant works, would know that when you have a maintenance department and laboratories which are staffed with technicians, engineers and scientists, new ideas and new products start to develop. And given that the military is made of recruits who do not spend all their time exercising when they are not at war, someone got the bright idea of expanding the Core of Engineers, taking into it recruits that want to learn a new trade. They got them to learn by helping to produce home appliances, electronics and yes, even “commercial construction vehicles that are sold on the domestic market.” This is what Malik and McCormick seem to complain about, but the truth is that Egypt benefits from the practice, and the young recruits are better off when the time comes to be discharged.

The two authors began their article on a pathetic note, and they ended on an equally pathetic note: “Ironically, the Egyptian economy has been picking up … But Egypt's leaders should not mistake these developments for indicators of long term economic health.”

And so I lament: When will they grow up in North America and write an article – just one article. Yes, just one – about the Egyptian economy that will be positive without the ugly – the very ugly BUT inserted in it. Just one article to show the world that you are capable of being professional when you want to. Just one.