The gentle Frog and the literary Scorpion

Using 1700 words, Lee Smith of the Weekly Standard was able to paint his own portrait as that of the quintessential literary scorpion. He wrote “Behind the PEN American Center Brouhaha,” which he published on May 5, 2015 in the Standard. He did in this piece what the scorpion did in the analogy that is circulating widely in the Middle East among all the ethnic groups and all the religions.

The story is that of the scorpion which asked the frog to take it on its back to the other side of the lake. The frog agreed, and when they got to the middle of the lake, the scorpion stung the frog that began to die. He had enough time before expiring, however, to ask the scorpion why it committed an act that will drown them both. And the scorpion replied: I'm a scorpion and this is my nature. I could not help it.

This is what Lee Smith has done to his profession not because he is a writer but because he is who he is. He did it not as a constructive criticism aimed at correcting a bad trajectory he believes the profession has taken; he did it because members of an organization called PEN representing a group of writers did not agree with a decision that was taken by the executive, and they exercised the right to voice their displeasure. That's what angered Smith so much as to sting the profession.

Something similar happened to me when I launched a small newspaper in the town where I live. The thing about a newspaper – and every media outlet, for that matter – is that everyone, including the competitors, knows who your clients are. They are the companies and individuals that advertise with you, and thus keep you afloat. If and when the competitors decide to sink you, they approach your clients and do something with them. But there is here the risk that they may sink with you as well.

As it happened, my local competitors were the subsidiary of a gigantic out-of-town media conglomerate that did not worry about letting the little thing sink with me. The parent company had pockets deep enough to throw the publication a lifeline and re-float it after we both sank. And so, my competitors went to each of my clients and told them they had entered into a conspiracy with me to fleece our clients, knowing full well that newspaper advertising does not generate demand.

They told the local business owners that the Yellow Pages used to be the best bet for advertising a small business. But now there is the internet that will generate all the business they can handle. They said they were now confessing their sin because they felt badly about what they did, having conspired with me to fleece them. Because an act of contrition has gripped them, they feel compelled to stop advertising the small local businesses, and seek only to do business with the big businesses from out-of-town. They counseled them to cease advertising with me because it's like throwing money out the window.

This is what Lee Smith has done in his article: “their [the dissident writers'] gesture is about something much closer to home. It's about politics, ambition, jobs, money, and prestige … the desire to be relevant [because] it takes time to write a book, even a bad one.” He goes on to display the dirty laundry of the profession, having exaggerated and caricatured its shortcomings almost beyond recognition. And he concludes that the letter which the dissidents signed “is a passage in a story about a family that is scared by jealousy and resentment.” What a broken family, that is!

In case the general picture he painted of the profession is not sufficient to convince the readers it is a bad profession, he zooms in on the individuals who practice it, and paints them in a bad light: “For those at the very bottom of the literary food chain, the letter is a resume builder … some are just out of grad schools, apprentices … maybe now they dream. Maybe they've got a shot at that job.” What an insult!

But if this is human nature of the sort that the reader may sympathize with, Smith has something else up his sleeve. He attacks the credentials of the writers: “Many of the people who signed the letter spent their entire adult lives on university campuses. I know one writer on that list who has never had to earn a living … the rank and file of the literary establishment – the majority of the people who signed the letter – consists of people re-circulating the same air.” This guy spares no one, not even the people he knows.

The scorpion of the Middle Eastern analogy stung only one frog. Lee Smith made a frog of all the writers; those he knows and those he doesn't, then stung them all. Will he now leave the profession and do something else?

A Bagful of self-deluded Promises

It is fitting that it took the executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel to write an article like this. He is Noah Pollack who wrote: “A Reset Button for Israel?” a piece that was also given the subtitle: “How the next president can restore friendly relations.”

Published on May 5, 2015 in the Weekly Standard, this is an article that has nothing to do with Israel resetting its own button, and everything to do with the next president (of the United States of America) restoring relations with a wretched entity that is maintained by its leaders in a permanent state of emergency because it is the only way that the Jews can maintain an artificial construct they may call home.

Going through the article, the reader quickly realizes that nothing is said about Israel doing something for itself; which it could not do even after seven decades of support from the world, especially America. Instead, what Pollack means by the “president restor[ing] friendly relations” is for the next president of the United States to go through the list of goodies that he, Noah Pollack, has drawn up – and procure them for Israel.

Unable to maintain the Jewish rapist on top of his Palestinian victim much longer, even the super pimp that is America started to come to its senses, finally realizing that the rape of nations is an offense that will be rectified by the punishment of both the rapist and the pimp that's helping him. This is why Pollack is moaning: “Obama may announce his support or non-objection to a resolution defining a Palestinian state.” And so, he sets out to describe a pro-Israel agenda to be adopted by a Jewish lobby that must work to force the next president to implement as if nothing mattered in the world but Israel, always Israel and no one but Israel.

That agenda is a bagful of goodies which begin with the downgrade of the peace process, the recognition that a Palestinian state is unlikely to emerge, and insisting that the Palestinian Authority stop paying benefits to Palestinian families if a member is engaged in resisting the occupation. This done, Pollack wants the next president to strengthen Israel's legitimacy – get this – by reducing the kind of “ambiguities about Israel's borders and territory.” Given that ambiguity is synonymous with Jewish morality, and given that it is the Israelis who refuse to define the borders at which they will stop looting more Palestinian land, Pollack needs to consult with someone higher up on how to revise his thinking on this matter.

He also wants the next president to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, to revive as well as codify the 2004 Bush-Sharon letter that was discarded by the Obama administration, and to recognize the Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

Not only does he want the next American president to prepare this bagful of goodies and to hand it to an Israel that will do nothing to earn it or facilitated its preparation; he wants America to mud-wrestle the world by engaging in battle the very United Nations that created Israel, and is now telling it to tone down the savage Stone Age behavior it has inherited from a biblical past.

Thus, Pollack wants America to pledge in advance to veto and to oppose any and every Security Council and General Assembly resolutions that will not be in favor of Israel. He calls this an expression of American moral clarity and global leadership, ignoring the fact that it is a replica of the Jewish moral clarity that the world has come to consider a runoff from the cesspool of Judeo-demonic morality, and has – as a result – rejected the American leadership it used to covet before the Jewish takeover of that once beloved power.

Having begun the article with a call to downgrade the peace process, this Jew – Noah Pollack – now drops the second shoe representing his Jewishness. He does it by calling on the next president to withdraw America from the UN human Rights Council. What can be more Jewish than to oppose peace and human rights in the same breath! There is nothing more persuasive he could have done to show his full blown Jewishness.

But the world will keep telling America not to knuckle under Jewish pressure while the immoral Jews will redouble their effort to keep pressing till something breaks.

The Jewish leaders have made promises that the rank and file increasingly regards as self-delusions. Thus, the possibility is there it will push back to halt the leaders' march to the breaking point. Let's hope it wins this battle for the sake of the world and the innocent Jews who will bear the brunt of the world's wrath.

Sorry, goofy Wall Street Journal

I do not remember a single instance – before the rabbis started braying: you can't compaaare – when the chattering classes of North America confused between what must remain a package deal, and what must be handled as separate issues. The rabbis then brayed their horrible cry, and the confusion started happening. As a result, much of what should have come as a package deal was broken up, and much of what were separate issues were lumped together in a single package.

As time passed, it became clear that the braying of the rabbis was not something they devised on the spur of the moment. It was a trick they learned about through centuries of experience; a skill they mastered thoroughly, and used as a weapon to deliver achievements they could never have delivered otherwise. To see how potent this weapon has been in the hands of the Jewish leaders that took over from the rabbis, think of the thousands of articles and talk shows in which no subject written about or spoken by a Jew or a gentile sycophant – escaped being packaged together with the idea that Iran is a threat to world peace.

Think also of the beastly pressure that the Jewish lobby in America is putting on the feeble minds of the American Congress to have it torpedo the deal that the Administration is about to conclude with Iran, unless the latter agrees to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. And while you're at it, do not fail to reminisce the time when Netanyahu tried to pull a similar trick on the Palestinians, thus torpedoed the peace deal that the two sides had reached moments before, and was ready for signature.

Now contrast those realities with what the rabbis have managed to pull off decades ago. It used to be that when a Jew or a running dog advocated something that was in the interest of Israel, the neutral interlocutors would mention this fact. The rabbis responded by complaining bitterly; demanding that the issues which pop up during a discussion be analyzed separately and apart from the effects they will have on Israel. This was the genesis of the idea that the Jewish/Israeli gander required a sauce different from that of the goose because when it comes to Jewish matters, you simply cannot compaaare.

Today, we live in the aftermath and the consequences of those Jewish achievements. You can see them at work in the piece that was written by the editors of the Wall Street Journal under the title: “Sorry, Charlie Hebdo” and the subtitle: “Western writers abandon their support for free speech,” published on May 5, 2015 in the Journal.

The editorial is about the members of PEN who expressed their unhappiness with the fact that their organization is honoring Charlie Hebdo for the work it has been doing; work that the editors of the Journal do not necessarily approve of, they say, but would defend because they revere the concept of free speech. To explain all that, they enumerate some of the objections voiced by the PEN members but do not respond to them directly or indirectly. They simply characterize them as being “extraordinary – almost comical.”

And there could be a good reason why they refrained from responding to the objections. Take for example Teju Cole's position: “He lamented that the concern for Charlie Hebdo won't be matched by concern for the young men killed by U.S. drones.” Do you see what's happening here? Teju Cole sees all human life as a package deal. To him, if it is bad to murder someone in Paris, it is bad to murder by drone someone in Pakistan or elsewhere. But this is not what the editors of the Journal believe because the rabbis brayed to them: You can't compaaare.

The irony is that the Jewish lobby used the Teju concept to convinced George W. Bush that “moral clarity” dictated the classification of a Palestinian group as terrorist in view of the decision to attack the Taliban. As it turned out, this was a Jewish moral clarity of dubious validity because the Taliban were harboring someone that attacked the American homeland whereas the Palestinians were resisting the occupation of their homeland.

As if this were not enough confusion already, the editors speculate that the motive of the terrorists has been to attack “the foundations of liberal democracy” because in their view: “you don't get to murder people who insult or offend you.” Well, what the editors should have done was package the notion of the hate campaigns that lead to the destruction of countries like Iraq and potentially Iran – together with the notion of the terror that America has been raining on the Muslim World as dictated by the Jews.

Had the editors been doing the right kind of packaging, they would have written a different editorial. Sorry, Wall Street Journal, but you goofed again.

At long last, a Point of View that is evolving

There was a time when the parents of America's children were the generation of the Second World War; the people that had every reason to be optimistic. They cared deeply about the lives of their children as they looked at a triumphant America that was second to none in every field of endeavor. Also, looking at the technological innovations that were coming on stream, they saw a future for their children that will be brighter than their own, and brighter than anything the world had seen before.

That was also the time when America had a draft; and those children were being sent to fight a war in a far away land called Vietnam. It was a war that the parents did not mind at first because they thought that mighty America will do quick work finishing off the Communist hordes, and come home in no time at all to celebrate yet another victory with a ticker tape parade. Such parades were a habit that came to symbolize the best way to celebrate the superiority of Capitalism over the other forms of governance, especially central planning.

But the work in Vietnam was not quick as the war dragged on; compelling America to do something it never thought it would do: mission creep. That is, more and more troops were sent to fight a war that never seemed to end. And this was the point at which the children of America, their parents and the whole nation were ready to say that enough was enough, end the war and bring the troops home.

That's also what prompted the media to get interested in the war, what nudged the big publications to start telling the true story of places like “hamburger hill” where American soldiers were cut by enemy bullets, and made to look like ground meat. That was the time when the dream of a bright future for the children of America was turning into a nightmare … and so, the calls to get out of Vietnam started to grow louder.

Ever since that time, the most effective argument to dissuade the top brass in America from sending the nation into another war, has been the one pertaining to the possibility that a mission creep will become necessary, and that it will cost American lives. The people thought that such cost would be a high price to pay in return for fictitious gains that could not be realized. But even if they could, the argument went; it would mean nothing to the people of America who have problems of their own crying out for attention.

And this is how a host of other brand new arguments aimed at dissuading America's top brass from sending the nation into yet another war began to grow roots and take shape. You can see them being formulated tentatively in the piece that was written by the editors of the New York Times under the title: “Stumbling Into a Wider War,” published on May 3, 2015.

Putting down the backgrounder for the discussion, the editors of the Times warn that “some regional members of the coalition are now pressing the administration to carry the fight to other groups...” And so, they urge the top brass that “it is essential that further expansion of the [military] campaign be debated rigorously and openly by Washington and its coalition partners [who] would make a serious mistake if [they] treated all groups as the same kind of threat.”

And then, instead of the old simplistic view that mighty America will do quick work finishing off the hordes out there, and come home to celebrate the victory with a ticker tape parade, the editors now recognize that “the problem is far more complicated than just going after ISIS and its affiliates … [which] makes finding a coherent and effective strategy – or more likely strategies – much harder.”

At last, what was not clear to America yesterday has now become “manifestly clear” to the editors of the New York Times who see that “the main responsibility for ending ... wars lies with countries in the region.” They are still weary, however, because they don't trust the top brass of the nation. And so they recommend: “the fact that it [the war] is under discussion should interest a public [that has] grown tired of war.”

They go on to say they are heartened by the fact that “Mr. Obama has sought to limit the American role in the fight by ruling out ground troops” but they are dismayed that: “he has increased troop levels in Iraq and expanded air strikes into Syria.” To them, this appears like “an open-ended mandate to wage war.”

And so, they call on “Congress [to] set firm parameters so America does not stumble into another morass.”

'Democratic' Jerks trying to jerk the World

This article is my reaction to Matthew Continetti's “The Appalling Mr. Zarif Javad Zarif,” a piece he published on May 2, 2015 in National Review Online. Before I review it, let me tell you something about my personal experience over the more than half century that I lived on this continent.

The first thirty months or so that I had been here prepared me somewhat for what was coming, but not enough to withstand the ferocity of what came in the Summer of 1967, without being shaken to the last fiber of my being. What happened then was that Israel launched a savage blitzkrieg on the Sinai Peninsula using the most modern weapons that France had supplied it. In concert with that, the Jewish establishment of North America launched a comparable propaganda blitz on this society.

Thirty months had taught me that far from being independent in their thinking, the people who grew up here under the so-called system of democracy were not equipped with enough yearning for freedom of thought or conscience to compete with even a poodle that is yearning to jump off the lap of its master and free-range for a few seconds. And so, when 1967 happened, the audio-visual and print media of this continent fired at the Egyptian nation and its people a never ending barrage of slanderous utterances that came in every form of speech and every color you can imagine.

In fact, if you did not see who was speaking, you could not tell if that was a rabbi whose volcano in the belly had erupted, or a gentile that was imitating the bark of a thousand dogs in the hope of getting a raise or a promotion from his Jewish boss. And when people like me tried to join the conversation with a different point of view, we discovered that the sea in which we tried to swim was made not of free-flowing ideas, but of Jewish and gentile jerks pretending to practice free speech while physically turning off any voice that refused to echo the barks that the Jewish establishment stuffed in the mouths of the people it allowed to speak.

Whether radio talk shows or television talk shows (sometimes called cross-country checkup,) the jerks that ran these programs turned off the microphone on me repeatedly when I refused to answer a direct question by uttering the obligatory insult at my country of birth or my race. In fact, these people were trying to jerk not only Egypt but the whole world. They did so not because they were thinking but because the Jews told them to.

So I started to go visit these people in their studios and their offices. This is when they made it clear to me that even though there are a million voices out there echoing the Jewish and Israeli position, I had no right to try and balance that position with my lone voice. Hell, I did not even have the right to balance myself by presenting both sides of the argument. All I could do, if I wanted to be published, was to attack, attack and attack the race of people from which I came.

And this, my dear reader, is precisely the kind of mentality you see at work in the Continetti article. Here is the most revealing passage: “Zarif refused to accept culpability for spreading disorder in the Middle East, wouldn't say if U.N. inspectors will have access to Iranian military sites, said Iran has no intention of speaking to the Jewish state, and took every opportunity to fling sarcasm and insult and enmity toward Netanyahu, Senator Tom Cotton, and America in general.”

What this says is that Matthew Continetti does not realize this is the way that free people speak when they find themselves accosted by even a handful of people like himself. These would be people to whom every thought is political, whether it is reached by free thinking minds, or it is the echo of lies and disinformation spewed by the Jewish hate machine. Whatever else Continetti says to describe the Zarif visit to New York, he rendered it meaningless by suggesting, as he does, that the Iranian guest should have spoken not what he thought but what would have pleased Netanyahu.

In fact, Zarif was there to express his point of view and that of his country, not there to warm the lap of Netanyahu or his representative in America. If, as reported, most of the audience was polite and respectful, it is because the occasion dictated that it be so. As for Continetti judging it to be sycophantic, that's because he has not looked at himself in the mirror as he sat like a Chihuahua warming the lap of Netanyahu.

Hell, even Netanyahu would get tired of carrying in his lap a thing that lacks the spirit of independence as badly as Matthew does. It would bore him to tears.

Coming out a culturally induced Delusion

When it comes to culture, an induced delusion is far more dangerous than an induced coma. This is why a sign that someone is coming out their culturally induced delusion is a welcome sign. And this is what seems to be happening to the editors of the Wall Street Journal who wrote: “Corker-Cardin's Good Compromise,” an editorial that also came under the subtitle: “Killing this oversight would only give Obama more Iran running room.” It was published on May 2, 2015 in the Wall Street Journal.

In a habit that remains inexplicable, the editors begin their piece by rendering homage not to the American system as put down by the Founding Fathers, and not to the American President, Barack Obama who pulled off the feat they describe, but to a dead foreigner, Winston Churchill, who said something which the editors believe applies to the situation more than anything else. It looks like these people are not yet completely out of their state of delusion ... but it's a start.

Still, it is not surprising that the editors also signal they accept what must look to them, and taste like bitter medicine, because the alternative can only be worse. So you ask: What is the alternative? And they answer: doing nothing or amending what's on the table … which is what they and people like them had been advocating all along. So now you want to know: Who suggested the elements that went into the Corker-Cardin compromise? And they answer: President Barack Obama. But they hastily add: That's only because democracy is the best system … like says Churchill, not the Founding Fathers or Barack Obama.

They go on to explain why, in their view, the compromise bill is better left as it is, than the attempts spearheaded by a couple of Republican senators to amend it. And guess what; the editors complain that the proposed amendments “would give Democrats the political excuse many of them seek to vote against the bill.” And so you want to know if this is what Churchill had in mind when he spoke of democracy. Or was it the craftsmanship of the Founding Fathers? Or was it the political acumen of the Obama Administration?

Don't wait for answers from the editors of the Wall Street Journal who still suffer from the occasional flashback to the state of delusion that kept them apart from the real world. Here is how that flashback manifests itself: “In a better world – one in which Mr. Obama were not President – we'd be inclined to agree with the critics.” And the reality they see is what would make the Founding Fathers sing in their graves, while making Churchill roll in his. It is this: “the Democrats need only 41 votes to filibuster … and only 34 to sustain a presidential veto.”

And like a child who cries over spilled milk, they whine: “the legislation effectively inverts the Founders' intentions by allowing the President to get his way with one-third of the Senate on his side.” But like the child that cries, unable to explain how or why the milk was spilled, the editors of the Journal fail to explain how it is that the bill inverted the intent of the Founders without triggering the kind of Constitutional crisis that would have landed it in the lap of the Supreme Court justices.

Only now do they say: “we step back to reality.” So you ask: To do what? And they say to look at the reasons why the Administration spent so much effort to defeat the Corker-Cardin bill before it was adopted by the Senate committee with a 19-0 vote. Finally, you think, they are going to do some analysis … some real brain work.

But no; they fail to do that. They disappoint you because what they give instead is the same old steady diet that has been coming out the Jewish propaganda machine for decades. Simply put, they tell you all about the evil intent of everyone (except their friends, of course) and they tell you all about the future, which they want you to believe they have the ability to see.

Thus, they say that the Administration fears a public debate that will reveal the truth about “money being fungible,” the reason why the evil Iranians will be able to take advantage of the sanctions relief and “immediately use [it to] fund missiles for [the evil] Hezbollah, rockets for [the evil] Hamas, and barrel bombs for [the evil] Bashar Assad.”

What they fail to mention is that whether these predictions come to pass or not, the “saintly” Israelis will run to the American Congress and ask for warplanes, helicopters and smart bombs, as well as money, money, money. These editors would have been better off going from delusion to coma. Too bad they have one leg in reality while the other remains in delusion.

Civic Education to confuse the Children

What has so far appeared to be a problem may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. It is said that America's children are not given enough civic education, and that they grow up deficient in these areas.

If, in this case, deficient means less harmful than confused, then America's parents should be thankful that their children are not told about the “foreign emoluments clause” that so concerned the framers of the Constitution. For, to be told about such concern, would most certainly confuse an American child who is taught in the same breath that it is okay for a Mitt Romney to go to a foreign country, while running for president, and take a quid pro quo bribe on foreign soil in return for adopting a specific stance on a specific issue ... but it is not okay for the Clintons to accept a general sort of gift from a foreign government that asks for nothing in return.

In this regard, it is instructive to read the Adam J. White article which came under the title: “Beware of Russians Bearing Gifts” and the subtitle: “and presidential candidates who would accept them,” published on May 1, 2015 in the Weekly Standard. It is about Hillary Clinton who may or may not have received gifts that could or could not influence her decisions should she get elected President of the United States. But there is not a word in the article about Mitt Romney having fulfilled the condition of denigrating a race of people before receiving a million dollar bribe for being such a public lout on foreign soil.

Try now to imagine an American pre-teen or a teenager raising their hand to ask the teacher what could be the difference between the two cases. Imagine the other children getting interested in the conversation and asking if it is okay to have a so-called “Sheldon Primary” at which time the Republican hopefuls go genuflect before the same gambling mogul who dragged Romney into his act of infamy, and whose publicly stated interest is to look after the interests of a foreign country called Israel.

This is the same Sheldon Adelson who vowed to allocate any amount in payment for the conscience and honor of any and every American politician who would prostitute the self, and promise to promote the glory of Israel by mobilizing and delivering the resources of America, no matter how much it will cost the people of that country in terms of morality, ethics, financial commitment and ultimately the military involvements that will continue to cost American lives … those that will be lost to the grave and those to endless physical pain and mental anguish.

Imagine American pupils in a classroom being told something like what comes in the Adam White article: “Two centuries [after the Constitution] the American public remains rightly wary of the dangers of foreign influence in domestic governance and politics, even when the emoluments clause's specific prohibition has not been violated.” Now imagine a child asking what kind of harm would be inflicted on America as a result of a Saudi Arabian gift where the rights of women are suppressed. Imagine another child asking if this would be worse than American lives being lost to the grave or to endless physical pain and mental anguish.

Go further and imagine the content of another passage in the Adam White article being repeated to the kids: “It is that U.S. officials must not put themselves in such compromised positions to begin with, regardless of whether they succeed in resisting the temptations to which they have exposed themselves.” Imagine a kid asking if a check that comes quietly from Morocco to a Clinton foundation is more compromising than Republican hopefuls doing a mea culpa on their knees before a gambling mogul for having said the wrong thing about Israel in the past – while that mogul is treating them like hungry dogs here to beg him for a bone, and treating America like the garbage dump of his backyard where even a dog would not go sniffing.

Now imagine another child asking if the “appearance of corruption” is more pronounced when someone accepts a campaign contribution from say, the housing industry that builds houses in America than from the gambling mogul who builds houses in the occupied Palestinian territories – an act that America and the world view as illegal; one that may even amount to a war crime.

Now think of yourself as a civics teacher standing in an American classroom and facing kids who are struggling to understand why there is a deafening uproar about one situation, and a deafening silence about another situation that is worse in both appearance and substance.

You're lucky you're not. And America is lucky to have children raised ignorant of American civic practices.