An Insidious Conflict Of Interest

This is the year 2010. If you look back at the mass media of five or six years ago in the “Western” countries, you will not find the slightest hint that the “Eastern” country of China was the rising economic power it is known to be today. Yet, China did not get to where it is overnight; it got here by registering impressive rates of growth year after year for many years if not many decades. The same can be said about India which has been registering spectacular rates of growth for several years, a reality that was ignored by the Western media until three years ago. This performance is so dismal, it casts a shadow of suspicion and distrust at the professional stance taken by the editors of the Western media if not at their wisdom. And now, something even worse is happening because the same people are not only ignoring another part of the world that is on the move, they are deliberately spinning the realities they encounter there in such a way as to make the accomplishments they see look like shortcomings and the triumphs they know exist look like defeats. The place in question is the Arab Middle East where the editors of most Western publications are shamelessly misrepresenting the truth and flagrantly turning things upside down.

A case in point is an article published on November 3, 2010 in the Financial Times under the title: “Egypt caught in a cotton bind”. It tells a story that happens literally hundreds of times everyday to lucky people and lucky nations on this planet but this time has been the one time -- the only one time in all of history -- that a story like this was described in such negative terms when the reality is that the opposite of how the story was titled is the absolute truth. Here is that story. Because the Egyptian economy has few rivals in the way that it is diversified, it suffers very little when fortunes change and hit one sector of the economy while boosting another sector. For example, having a strong and healthy agricultural sector, the country feeds more than 80 million people and leaves a surplus that is large enough to exchange with foreign countries what it has in excess -- like fruits and vegetables -- for staples that the other countries have in excess such as wheat. This done, Egypt still has enough leftover to give food aid to hungry neighbors such as Israel which also receives energy aid from Egypt and water aid from its northern neighbors going as far away as Turkey. But there is more to the story because agriculture means more than the production of food; it also means the production of industrial commodities such as lumber, flowers and of course the cotton for which Egypt has been famous for decades.

Even though Egypt has a near monopoly on the high quality cotton that the world produces, it also has a massive textile industry that requires large amounts of the short fiber cotton which is of the cheap, low quality variety. The industry uses this type to make apparel such as work clothes, children clothes, denims and other popular items for which long fiber, high quality cotton would be too expensive to use. Thus, every year, the farmers of Egypt look at the price of commodities on the world markets and make a choice from among an embarrassment of riches. Each farmer decides for himself or herself whether to plant, among other things, mainly fruits and vegetables, mainly wheat or mainly cotton. If they choose the latter, they must decide how much of it they should plant then decide how much of that should be in the long fiber variety and how much should be in the short fiber variety. The government of Egypt too has a few decisions to make because, like everywhere else in the world, it subsidizes the farmers one way or another and thus helps to steer their decision in this direction or in that one. And in making its own decisions, the government takes into account the balancing act it must do as it weighs the agricultural needs of the nation against the needs of the various industrial sectors of the economy, most notably the food processing and the textile sectors.

Situations such as these do not point to a country that is in a bind like says the title of the Financial Times article. On the contrary, situations such as these point to a healthy state that is enjoyed by a lucky people who are on the move. A more appropriate title for the article would have gone something like this: “Lucky Egypt lucky again this year”. In fact, if the editors of the Financial Times want to learn how to practice journalism the way professionals do, they should read the Oxford Group which might have chosen such a title for a subject such as this. But this is not the way that the Financial Times does business, and the question to ask is this: Why would someone interminably violate the code of ethics of their profession, cease to do journalism the right way and transform into a machine of hate propaganda that is forever badmouthing Egypt and its people, a country that never did anything to hurt them or their people? In doing what they do rather than be truthful to their people and respectful of them, the editors of the Financial Times as well as the other Western publications miss the opportunity to help their own countrymen catch opportunities overseas where the competition is at work reaping huge benefits and laying the groundwork to reap even more rewards in the future.

In fact, the same China and the same India which the Western business publications ignored only a few years ago are now investing in Egypt. To be truthful, they are not investing at levels that equal the American or British companies as yet but this has to do with the way that history has unfolded not with any decision made by someone recently. It is that the Americans and the Britons have taken advantage of the old ties that their predecessors had forged with the countries of the Middle East to continue betting on the oil and gas industries of the region, including Egypt. Thus, while the Western investments in the country are almost exclusively in the exploration and extraction of oil and gas, the Chinese and the Indian investments are in the more promising manufacturing industries as well as the infrastructure of the country. Yes, these people too are interested in oil and gas but they are doing more than explore and extract them, they are building refineries and factories where value is added to the petroleum based products they process and manufacture.

So then I ask: What is wrong with the editors of the Financial Times, The Economist, Forbes Magazine, CNBC and BNN? And I ask: What is wrong with the editors of the news agencies such as AP, UPI, AFP and Reuters? And I ask: What is wrong with the editors of the media outlets that have a business section but fail to highlight to their readers and their audiences the business opportunities that exist in the Arab Middle East? Why do they all seem to have a debilitating sort of acid-like hatred flowing in their veins instead of the blood that is meant to take oxygen to their braincells and make them think like human beings were designed to do? Well, the short answer is that nobody is born this way but people are altered to become like that. In fact, the editors of the Financial Times had all the information they needed to find a better title for the article but they deliberately chose the worst title that a savagely mutilated mind could ever have chosen.

When you read the article which was written by Heba Saleh -- an Arabic name -- you find it to be on the whole a balanced article, something that contrasts sharply with the title. Ms. Saleh does make the point that while the textile industry is hurting which is understandable, the farmers of Egypt are cheering the high price of cotton which is also understandable. She explains that the high price is a setback for the (world) textile industry which is true but where she makes a small mistake is when she says that this threatens the competitiveness of the (Egyptian) textile industry in a tight international market. The truth is that when the price of a commodity rises, everyone pays the same high price and thus nobody is supposed to gain a competitive advantage over the others or be at a disadvantage compared to the others. As you can see, however, the operative term here is “supposed to” because what is supposed to happen can sometimes differ from what actually happens. So let us see if Ms. Saleh has something to say about that.

She says that textile is so important to Egypt, the government has taken measures to prop up the industry as the price of cotton rises. She quotes the man who heads the chamber of the textile industry, a man that praises the measures taken by the government but voices anxiety about a situation that is common to our time not just to Egypt. He says that low wage countries such as India and Pakistan can present formidable competition to others. However, the man has a solution for this problem, says Ms. Saleh. He wants the government to encourage the cultivation of more short and medium fiber cotton because international taste has shifted towards casual clothes that require this type of cotton. The man also wants the government to provide more subsidies to exporters of local fabrics. Ms. Saleh then mentions another possible problem and quickly provides a possible solution for it. The problem is that when the price of cotton falls, the farmers turn to other crops but the price can then turn around and rise suddenly before the farmers have had the time to plant a new crop. To avoid a situation like this, the textile producers and the cotton exporters have joined the farmers in calling on the government to establish a fund to protect the farmers when the price of cotton falls.

What this says, in effect, is that because Egypt produces cotton at all levels of quality and because it has a healthy textile industry, it has constructed what is called a vertically integrated system. And the result is that the nation can design a solution to any problem that may arise and come out practically unscathed if not a winner however tough the environment may be. Yes, one sector of the economy will suffer a little but so will the same sector everywhere else in the world. The difference is that in Egypt, the suffering can be alleviated because it will be offset by the gains made in another sector, a situation that gives the government the means to lend a helping hand thus even things out. In the end, the whole country will remain on even keel or be slightly ahead despite the circumstances. And the bottom line is that contrary to what the Financial Times says, Egypt is not caught in a cotton bind; it is riding high on the high price of cotton. It is the luckiest of the lot not by accident but by the work of its people and the choices that were made by its leaders.

But why do the editors of the Financial Times and the other Western publications want to hide this reality from their readers and their audiences when they know that sooner or later the truth will come out as it did in the cases of China and India? There too, the same publications had nothing but negative things to say about India for a long time -- democracy or no democracy -- playing up the hatred that had accumulated over the country's system of caste and over its cultural habit of burning the brides that did not take an adequate dowry to their impoverished new husbands. Also, the Western publications had nothing but negative things to say about China, playing up the hatred that had accumulated over the country's practices concerning issues of human rights. This sort of behavior on the part of the media went on and on until they could hide the economic successes of the East no more at which point they separated the politics from the economics. In time, they learned to ignore the politics of the matter as they made a one hundred and eighty degrees turn with regard to the economic issues. They began to describe the rise of the Eastern nations in glowing terms because this was the reality; it was the truth they could no longer paint with the brush of cheap politics and hateful propaganda.

But what were the various individuals doing in private as they lied to their readers and their audiences in public? I do not know the answer to this question with regard to China or India because I never tried to find out at the time. However, I tried to find out what was going on with the more recent phenomenon of badmouthing Egypt by those who call themselves financial analysts. I discovered in some instances that they were secretly investing in the country while saying and writing horrible things about it. They dressed their commentary to make it look like it was political in nature when it was, in reality, designed to discourage the readers and the viewing audiences from investing in Egypt for what you might call a diabolical reason. And what exactly is that? you may ask. And the answer is that they were investing in Egypt because they knew the place was destined to become a gusher sooner or later. Until this happens, they wanted the hordes to stay out of there lest they push the prices high while they and their friends were still doing the buying.

In fact, Egypt was included in each of the groups of countries that someone had called -- at one time or another -- the Next Eleven, the CIVETS and the Promising Frontier Economies. These were the countries that the big investment houses saw as taking their place under the sun and flourishing in the same way that the Asian Tigers and the BRIC nations did before them. ETFs and DRs were setup to invest in Egypt and similar countries which is where the smart money was moving at an accelerated rate. And when something like this happens, the less smart money, which is sometimes called the retail money, lags behind as it is committed only after the prices had risen.

Well, my dear reader, I submit that the editors of the aforementioned publications together with their analyst buddies and their friends are taking advantage of the current political climate with regard to the Middle East to nurture and to play up the hatred that has been whipped up against Egypt. While they do this, they are having a feast investing in the country they say they hate while discouraging everyone else from joining the banquet. These people think of themselves as being intelligent and consider their money to be the smart one. They see their readers and their audiences as being dumb and see their money as being less smart than their own. Thus, they believe that they sit at the top of the food chain and have priority while they see their readers and their audiences as being lower on the pecking order, the reason why they must wait to have their fill.

As I see things now, this is an insidious conflict of interest that has the term financial crime written all over it. As journalists, these people should enforce their own code of ethics, denounce themselves as being corrupt to the core and demand that they be prosecuted and if found guilty – which they will, having admitted to their crime by denouncing themselves – they should be thrown in jail.

And don't ask me to go visit them when they get there because I never will.

An Industrial Policy Of Vertical Integration

Fareed Zakaria writes for Time Magazine; Tom Friedman writes for the New York Times. The first is a relative newcomer at telling America how to survive the difficult coming age; the second has been at it for a while. The last big effort undertaken by either in this regard came in the form of a two pronged attempt made by Zakaria. It was an audio-visual presentation shown on CNN which was twinned with a written essay published in Time Magazine. Near the end of the television show Zakaria presented his solutions for America which he listed together with what he says were Friedman's solutions. Well, my friends, the time has come to shift gears and do something to pull America from the ditch where the amateurs have pushed her in the first place.

Shows based on similar themes were presented on television previously, and works that were written for print were published in magazines and in book form. Some of these works were good because the authors who created them had expertise in at least one aspect of the subject they discussed. The audience could follow the logic of the presentation because the authors had something to say and they said it with clarity. However, like Zakaria and Friedman there were also writers and filmmakers who dealt with subjects in which they had no expertise but unlike them both, the other authors managed to create something of a different caliber. One example is the work of Hedrick Smith who made for PBS a show titled: Is Walmart good for America? This was an excellent presentation that took one aspect of the problem facing America and discussed it in depth.

Smith succeeded brilliantly because, like a true professional, he relied on outside experts to help him put the show together. And like master builders, he and his team cooperated to erect an edifice that was educational by the wealth of its content and appealing by the interest it was able to generate. It had a solid structure that won the confidence of the viewer and yet, it followed a treatment that was smoothly expressed. When authors approach a project in this way, they see no need to line up CEOs who repeat the old and tired refrain about an America that has what it takes to make a comeback and be number one again. This kind of talk is redundant and boring to the audience, and it fails to tell America how to make a pair of shoes that can compete with shoes made in Asia. Yet, this is precisely what America must master if it wants to survive the coming difficult age. And how to do this is what the viewers want to know rather than be forced to watch a host that is keen at showing off as he or she namedrops a list of CEOs who are themselves keen at making a buck for their shareholders anyway they can, be that in America or in Asia.

Whichever way you start to think about what America and the other industrial nations need at this time, you will always end up with the conclusion that they need the opposite of what got them where they are today. And what got America where it is today was bad advice given by amateurs. It so happened that when the emerging nations began to emerge, the advice given to America was to the effect that “We should leave the labor intensive industries to the emerging nations and concentrate on developing a set of industries that are based on knowledge.” The idea was to sell knowledge to the emerging nations in the form of production machines they will use to make the products they send to America to pay for the machines. Well, there are many reasons why this approach does not work. Those who understand the subject have an idea what these reasons are and they do a good job discussing them. On the other hand, there are those who do not know what they talk about and they do a lousy job discussing these matters. And this is why it is imperative for this latter group to team up with people who can help them put a good show together. Otherwise, they clutter the airwaves and the print space with useless performances such as the interviews they conduct with CEOs who have nothing more useful to say than repeat America has what it takes to be number one again. What a waste! What a pity!

The following are two of the many reasons why selling knowledge to emerging nations in exchange for industrial products will not help the industrial nations get out of the rut.

First reason. Say, you buy a plastic machine for a million dollars. Did you ever stop to think how long it will take this machine to pump out products worth a million dollars? Well, depending on the products you make, the time can be one year or much less, yet the machine will last 20 years or much more. But don't get too excited because you will not keep all this money. In fact, if you are in America running a manufacturing business, the following is more or less how you will spend the money you collect from sales. One third of the money will go to pay your employees. One third will go to pay for raw materials, rent, utilities and the like. And one third will go to pay for the loan you took out to buy the machine, for taxes and for profit. Under this regime, which is one that is common to most industrial countries, it usually takes the businesses 10 years to pay off the machines they buy on credit.

Now imagine you are a businessman in China and you buy the same machine from America. You will pay your employees not one third but one tenth of your sales receipts. This alone tells you that you will be in a position to pay off the machine in 3 years or less, not 10 years. Furthermore, almost every other expense you make -- ranging from raw materials to taxes – will stay in China. And guess what the money will be used for. It will be used to educate the children of China who will -- a generation or so from now -- create the knowledge that will help them make the plastic machines of the future. Thus, after a relatively short period of time, these people will no longer need to buy knowledge from America in such quantities as to give the American people the purchasing power to buy the manufactured goods that they need without asking for and obtaining credit from the Chinese. From then on, the Chinese will be producing both the machines that make the products and the products that are made by the machines. This is known as the vertically integrated approach to doing business. And if you are curious, the businesses that have adopted this approach have become the most successful in history. Just look at the integrated oil companies and marvel at their size and their strength.

Second reason. This is an example I actually lived through myself. Sometime in the Nineteen Seventies I received a phone call from a headhunter I dealt with previously. He had work for me that paid more than I was making at the time, and the job description fit my background perfectly well. The company was CBS Records in Don Mills, Ontario where they made vinyl (plastic) records in the 45 and 33 RPM formats. The production machines they had were using IBM relays but these electromagnetic devices were becoming outdated, and the logic systems (something less than a computer) that were built around them were being upgraded to run on solid state (transistor) technology. The Company needed a few people with my background to help do the upgrading; to debug and maintain the systems until such time other people were trained to take over. Thus, while the operators ran the 30 machines in the plant 24 hours a day, we stopped one machine at a time to do the upgrade which took 2 or 3 days to complete. We then handed the machine to an operator to run while we stood nearby and watched it go through several cycles. We moved on to the next machine, leaving it up to the operator and possibly a technician to take meticulous notes of any recurring or intermittent problem that may arise after that. If and when this happened -- which it always did -- we modified the design where necessary to fix the problem, and we tried to do the work while causing the minimum of downtime.

Don Mills was not the only plant that CBS Records had; there were something like a dozen of them scattered around the world. Like every new system, ours had its bugs and every time we resolved one bug, we were liable to create a new one or a few more. But we had to keep resolving these bugs until we had a system that worked perfectly well, something that took two years to accomplish. And because there were a dozen other plants around the world doing the same thing, we communicated to them the changes we made so that they may duplicate them. Of course, we also duplicated the changes that were made elsewhere and were communicated to us. And all the traffic in information that we and the others generated was passed through and distributed from the offices of the company that designed and built the solid state logic system. Having a CBS Records plant nearby, they made each modification themselves in that plant to study the effect. When done, they told us if we should maintain the modification or scrap it.

New technologies called the cassette and then the disc were invented after that, and the vinyl record disappeared. However, plastic did not disappear and there will be plastic machines for a long time to come, making one product or another including slippers and shoes that many Americans believe is beneath them to make. Now think about this: a generation from now plastic machines will be made in America and in China. The Chinese will be producing the slippers and the shoes but not the Americans who will only be making and selling the machines to perhaps some African countries. And while the machines will require engineers and technicians to keep upgrading them and keep ironing out the bugs, the Chinese engineers and technicians will have the plants and the machines near them as they do the modifications and assess the results. As for the Americans, they will be sitting in offices behind a desk in America reading an email from Africa about a problem that is bugging the machines out there. And these Americans will try to communicate to someone in Africa a possible modification that may or may not work, or may create a few more bugs to worsen the situation. Either this or the Americans will be sending a team of engineers and technicians to every country where their machines will be sold. And these teams will stay in those countries for as long as two years until the machines are completely debugged. The cost of doing business will rise for the Americans and will be added to the price of the machines. Under these circumstances, my friend, who do you believe will have the greatest economic advantage as a nation, America or China?

What this says is that the successful economies of the future will make the machines and use them to produce the goods in a vertically integrated sort of operation. These economies will have to undertake both activities simultaneously for the reasons cited above. To be sure, a million dollar machine will produce well over 20 million dollars worth of products during its lifetime. If you and your neighbors are willing to live on a million dollars, do so by all means. But your competitors and their neighbors will live on 20 million dollars for every million of yours and this will make their standard of living 20 times as high as yours. Think about that.

The principle is that you cannot design, build and improve on a machine based solely on knowledge you have accumulated in the past without continually doing the necessary research and development or without seeing the effects of your effort on the machine as it works under normal conditions -- operated not by you but by an average run-of-the-mill operator. It is just that lab work alone will not do it; you need to field test the thing.

The lesson to take from this is that if you only want to live on a knowledge economy, the knowledge that will inevitably hit you in the face after a while is that your client -- the manufacturer -- will have accumulated enough money to buy you out lock, stock and barrel, and will have begun to transfer your accumulated knowledge to his country under your nose leaving you with very little or with nothing.

Just ask Hedrick Smith who knows what he is talking about because he has not wasted his time chasing after CEOs to tell him that America has what it takes to make a comeback and be number one again. Smith got to the bottom of the matter and came out with useful knowledge which he shared with the audience.

May those who are in a position to design an industrial policy for the nations of the “West” be smart enough to differentiate between the useless noise of the amateurs and the useful insights of the professionals. If they can do this, the construction of the policy will be a cakewalk because it will dictate itself.

Menace Of The Anglo-Jewish Sorority

Never mind the Protocol of The Elders of Zion about which people have said was an old plan that the Jews intend to activate and utilize to take control of the world. I say, look instead at the menace that the current Anglo-Jewish sorority poses to the world, and judge for yourself if this is not a more dangerous situation. Unlike the Protocol which is supposed to be a secret plan put on paper sometime ago by Jewish elders to achieve certain goals, the current sorority conducts its activities in the open and does it in the Yiddish style which is to say, it does what it does shamelessly, with chutzpah and in-your-face.

To understand the nature and aim of these activities we first need to discuss modern communication, so here is a brief review of this topic. Gathering and purveying the news is an activity that demands close cooperation among the people who engage in it. This is because such people often act as eyes and ears for each other. Thus, the individuals who work in the profession cooperate with one another as if they were a closely knit order and they do so regardless of their backgrounds, allegiances or the distances that separate them. It is therefore not surprising to see that a loose sort of worldwide sorority has formed among all kinds of people in this line of work, bringing together groups and individuals from many nationalities and persuasions who will stand up for each other or at least profess to do so. But in the same way that things have the tendency to evolve in many unintended directions, a setup of this kind was bound to open itself for abuse and to evolve in the wrong direction. And this is what happened in reality.

I became aware of these facts a long time ago when I saw how things were done in some places. My reaction was to discuss the situation the way I saw it but this approach turned my world upside down in that I was blacklisted by the politico-journalistic establishment and was kept outside the sorority’s mainstream. The result was that from that moment on, I could get a sense of what was happening around me only when the events affected me personally. Otherwise, I was unable to gather the sort of facts that could be documented and presented as proof to warn the world that serious things were happening and were crying out for attention.

Years passed before I was able to launch a small publication in a small town where I lived in Ontario, Canada. And this was the time when the sorority’s horror and criminality hit me like a tornado. Again, I responded by doing things the only way I knew how which was to tell it like it was. But in a way I did not anticipate, my activities this time triggered a chain of events that led to the cracking open of the advertising scandal that hit the neighboring French speaking province of Quebec just about a decade ago. And it all happened not because I planned the thing but happened to my surprise and in spite of me.

What happened that got me to tell it like it was that led to the unintended outcome is a story about which I can write a book or two but shall only give a synopsis here. Most of the small town newspapers in Canada are owned by the big city chains. They thrive because they are overpaid millions of dollars to carry unnecessary advertising for the municipal and regional governments which they, in a quid pro quo, support to the hilt with glowing coverage, favorable editorials and the cover-up of criminal activities. When I started to discuss these matters openly, I frightened the politico-journalistic establishment which responded swiftly and savagely. Attack dogs were hired from out of town to come and badmouth both me and my publication but this approach did the establishment little good because most of my advertising clients knew I was better than that. And while the battle was raging, those in the media and the local governments who were deeply involved in criminal activities started to cover their rear ends because they figured I may someday use the internet to tell all. But the lucky ones among these people were those who had the foresight to designate in advance unwilling scapegoats to be pushed and take the fall in their stead, and those who had the foresight to designate willing scapegoats prepared to take the fall and create the noise that would divert attention away from them.

The first unwilling scapegoat to be thrown under the truck and thus distract the public from the activities of the Anglo-Jewish sorority was an Afro-Canadian city councilor in a neighboring town whom they accused of asking for a bribe he never received in return for helping a constituent -- a minor offense by any standard but one that was deemed deserving of the distracting chatter that followed. And before that chatter had ended, the sorority used its influence to get the French journalists from among its members to willingly commit the most unbelievable act of treason you can imagine. Actually, I had seen something like it happen previously but on a smaller scale when I lived in Montreal where French journalists of the sovereignist stripe did the things that hurt the French causes they cherished the most in order to maintain solidarity with their Anglo-Jewish counterparts. What I did not fathom and was surprised by was the fact that the treason happened on the scale that it did in the Quebec advertising scandal.

Here is how the Anglo-Jewish group pulled this feat. They got the Toronto Sun which was then owned by a Quebec publishing company to reveal something that was widespread in Canada and everyone knew existed but nobody talked about because the practice was considered to be the normal thing to do. It was that the Federal Government in Ottawa was handing tons of taxpayer money to the big city newspapers that supported it. The excuse for giving away the money this time was that the publications and the individuals who were at the receiving end were doing advertising aimed at keeping Canada together at a time when the country was close to disintegration. In reality, however, the giveaway in Quebec was no different from what was happening in Ontario; it was business as usual that always happened the way it did whether Canada was disintegrating, integrating or standing still.

What the sorority managed to accomplish by breaking the story of the Afro-Canadian councilor, however, was to neutralize the possible effects of my writing. It did so by shifting the attention away from the Anglo-Jewish members of the sorority who were taking loads of money in the town I wrote about and they concentrated that attention on the councilor in a neighboring town. In tandem with this, they shifted the attention away from the municipal and regional governments of Ontario that swam in criminal activities and they concentrated that attention on the federal Government in Ottawa. At the end of the day, a Black man in Ontario and a number of Frenchmen in Quebec were punished for their deeds but not a single Jew or a single Anglo were made to pay for worse crimes they committed as a matter of course and matter of everyday practice. But how far can something like this go? And how dangerous can it get?

To answer the first question consider this: Everyone who follows world events knows who Mohamed El Baradei is, having served as head of the International Atomic Energy. To appreciate what follows, the readers who do not speak Arabic should know there is a big difference in the way that the name Baradei is pronounced in Arabic and in English. The people on television who are fluent in both languages have no trouble recognizing the name when written in either language and they quickly adapt the pronunciation to the language they happen to be speaking. What happened one day, however, while I was watching the news in Arabic on the Aljazeera television network at a time when El Baradei was still head of the Atomic Energy, was that the anchor pronounced the name the English way in the middle of an Arabic sentence which made it sound dissonant to say the least. Evidently, that anchor had not read or heard anything in Arabic for years but was getting his news from the English dispatches and other similar publications. He was without a doubt a full fledged member of the Anglo-Jewish sorority and was completely cut off from his Arabic roots even though he was the anchor of an Arabic newscast. The point is that if the Arabs cannot escape the grip of the sorority, no one can.

As to the second question, consider this: When the W was President of the United States of America, the Jewish organizations pressured him to bomb that same Aljazeera network – and get this -- because it was too pro Arab and not enough pro Jewish or pro American. After consulting with his non-Jewish advisers, the W set aside the suggestion despite the fact that Israel was showing him the way by bombing Palestinian radio and television stations as well as newspapers like a mad book-burning Nazi who was now on steroid and in possession of an American-made air force. But who can say that there will not be another W in the White House who will take the Jewish command to heart and bomb Aljazeera or bomb another network for that matter because someone in Israel did not like the way that the news was presented? And this should tell us that the sorority will undoubtedly gather ever more influence to the point where it will secure the blind loyalty of its members the way that the Jewish lobby, for example, has secured the blind loyalty of the American Congress of treasonous prostitutes. Given these circumstances we should ask: How much harm can the sorority inflict on the world? Does it have a hidden agenda? If yes, what is this agenda?

To begin with, we must reiterate what has been known for a long time, mainly that to have information is to have power. Now imagine having exclusive right to the information that is made on a daily basis – to be able to manipulate it, embellish it, edit it or distort it any way you want. Imagine on top of that having the right to invent the information that suits you and your causes, fashion that information anyway you want and maintain it for the length of time that you want it in circulation. Imagine how much power this will give you over the rest of humanity if you were a member of the sorority. Now go beyond this and imagine having all that power at a time when every potential opposition has been blacklisted and muffled to complete silence. This done, remember the old saying: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely -- and you will have an idea how much harm the sorority can inflict on the world.

As to the hidden agenda, it may not be so hidden anymore given that the hardcore members of the Anglo-Jewish sorority in America are the Neo-Conservatives (neocons) who have as their stated objective the implementation of a Pax Americana agenda which is to impose a Judeo-American brand of peace on the world under their hegemony. They do not hide this intention but speak about it in the in-your-face style and with chutzpah which is not surprising given that their movement was born out of the Jewish control of the media. But like every illegitimate movement, they also use ambiguous and tortured language behind which they hide the horror of the things they plan to unleash on the world -- things they will keep secret till they get there and then declare open season on those who will dare to question their legitimacy. But you can imagine the magnitude of that horror by extrapolating from what they asked the W to do to Aljazeera, what they got America to do in Iraq and what Israel is now doing to the unarmed people of Palestine.

When we think about an authoritarian regime, we usually think of a government that is headed by a dictator such as a Stalin or a Hitler who demand that they continually be praised and their enemies continually be damned. We know that these dictators want to be so treated because it is the only way they can maintain a firm grip on their subjects and thus remain in power for as long as they live. What we do not take seriously is the analogous situation whereby a movement repeatedly praises one group of people and damns another. Yet, this is precisely what the sorority is doing when it comes to the presentation of news and commentaries that relate to Israel and the Jewish causes where these two are continually praised and their enemies continually damned. This behavior says that the charlatan members of the Anglo-Jewish sorority – like a Stalin or a Hitler – aim to give the Jewish hand a firm grip on America and the world thus hand the Jews absolute power and effective dictatorial rule over humanity.

Get used to it if you like what you see or fight it if you don't. As for me, I started to believe a long time ago that I stood on the right side of history as I fought that monstrosity. I decided then what I was going to do and have been doing it ever since. And while the civilized world was blacklisting the charlatans of the sorority, the charlatans were blacklisting the likes of Judge Richard Goldstone, President Jimmy Carter and Bishop Desmond Tutu. I believed then that I stood in good company; I know now I was right all along.

When Canalization Closes The Circle

Anti-Muslim sentiments seem to be rising at present in some Western countries and, looking at the phenomenon superficially, a number of reasons can be cited as to why this is happening. But could the phenomenon be a fleeting one? Could it be that it will soon disappear and leave behind a telltale relic as to why it happened in the first place? Or can it go out of control and transform into something more dangerous? In fact, there were signs before this development that the old anti-Semitism was making a comeback in some Western countries, especially the English speaking ones, more specifically North America. I wrote about this at the time but, having no website on which to publish my thoughts, I only circulated my findings among some interested parties. What I saw then was that people who hated the activities of the Jewish organizations but were afraid to confront them, expressed their frustration in the form of antagonism toward the Arabs whom they thought had it within their power to confront the Jews and disarm them but were not doing it. To these people, the Arabs represented the cat they went home to kick and thus shake off the frustration they built up all day long as they had to interact with Jews who dealt directly with the offending Jewish organizations or just followed them. Can it be that the Muslim faith is now taking the place of the Arabs as the cat to kick when frustration builds up?

This is how the phenomenon could have risen. After the events of 9/11 a genuine apprehension about the Arabs and Islam arose in the Western countries. With time the mention of the Arabs began to fade form the discussions as the anti-Muslim expressions were intensifying. And true to form, the Jewish organizations pounced on the opportunity to defame Islam aiming to realize their long held dream of triggering a war between this religion and Christianity, a tactic that the Jews always used to make the gains that have allowed them to live at the expense of others through the centuries. The drawback in the use of this tactic, however, is that it requires a huge amount of energy and firepower to sustain it for any length of time. And so the Jewish organizations fielded all that they had in their arsenals but achieved very little before running out of energy and the ability to deliver a powerful punch. When all was said and done, the effect of the propaganda blitzkrieg they launched with great promise fizzled out slowly but surely. They found themselves overextended and worse, they discovered they were outflanked from every direction. What may still be working in their favor are tired old ideas about a threat posed by a handful of kids calling themselves Muslims who are out to conquer the world and turn it into a Caliphate they dream to rule like Sultans as they live the good life surrounded by a harem of sumptuous women. Needless to say this is a picture that apprehends a few feeble minds in the West but causes the intelligent people to smile and shrug.

Is this the end of it? No, it is not. People who appreciate drama know that the making of history is the best drama of all. And why is that? Because at the end of every act, your intuition will tell you this must be the end of the story but your brain will say history never ends, therefore, there is going to be another act. And sure enough, another act begins each and every time. Its direction will surprise you at the start but its unfolding will prove to be totally rational having taken roots in all the previous acts. And yet, the narrative will never reveal where it will go next until it gets there even though it may tease you along the way by removing the veil just a little to give you a glimpse of what you will encounter ahead. But the sad part is that drama can sometimes turn into melodrama. Even if the unfolding of the action is elegant, flawless and superior in a technical sense, the melodrama may portray the horror that lurks behind the dark side of the human character. And what is happening nowadays that may turn into melodrama is the rise of a genuine form of anti-Semitism in the West, having been “canalized” by the activities of the Jewish organizations.

But what is this “canalized” thing? Well, canalization is a complicated process that begins with self deception. We sometimes lie to ourselves because we do not want to confront the truth. We tinker with the truth or change it entirely to make it look like something else and direct our attention to the fake concoction to avoid the consequences of having to deal with the real thing. For example, instead of kicking the Jewish boss at the office, we go home and kick the cat. Instead of cursing the Jews and risk being called anti-Semitic, we curse Islam and feel good about it especially if it is the thing to do in public. And this redirection of our attention is the process that is called canalization. While this human trait is more prevalent among children than it is among adults, it is not completely erased with age. It is also the tool that is used by manipulative individuals and organizations to canalize the sentiments of other people and turn them against each other. Thus, to understand what role canalization plays in the drama that is unfolding in the West at this time with regard to Islam, we need to know a little more about the lie.

People lie all the time. Some people tell small lies; some tell big lies but soon thereafter they all forget about the lie and go on to live their precious little lives as if nothing had happened. Some people lie because they find themselves in a bind which they neutralize with a lie, sometimes successfully, and they too forget about the lie soon thereafter and go on to live their precious little lives. But the treacherous thing about the telling of lies is that some people do it because they develop the habit and worse, they tell a fat lie and hang on to it throughout life. These habitual liars then pass their habit on to the next generation and to generations after that who will never know why they were made to lie in the first place or why they must continue to lie. And this leaves us with a two-pronged question: How do people develop such a habit and why do they hang on to it for generations even after they realize it is detrimental to the causes they try to promote?

To answer the question we take the most egregious example and discuss it. In fact, there is only one example in all of history where a culture has adopted the lie and made it the core of its system of beliefs. This culture has lived long enough to become a religion and has survived from antiquity to this day, moving from one continent to another and from one race to another. The people who started it were so enamored with what they did, they wrote a book about their movement and bragged about the fictitious exploits they fantasized about but then recorded as if they were historical truths. These people then passed the bragging rights to their disciples who have been bragging ever since. The book they wrote is called the Torah, and it is sometimes referred to as the Old Testament. The people whose story the Torah is supposed to be telling were called the Hebrew tribes and no one knows what happened to them because they naturally disappeared as did all the ancient tribes. The modern disciples who follow the old movement call themselves Jews because this was the religion that the early Hebrew tribes were said to have adopted.

Today's Jews who think for themselves consider the stories told in the Torah to be allegories that convey lessons carrying a significance that is meant to stay in the domain of religion. But leaders have emerged among the Jews with a penchant to develop new ideas that suit the moment. These were political and social ideas with implications that reached deep into the secular domain. Seeing an opportunity for synergy in the merger of the two domains, the Jewish leaders married the religious significance contained in the stories of the Torah with the political and social significance contained in the secular dimension of their own ideas. And the marriage has allowed these leaders to gather political power based on the secular side of their arguments while gathering wealth and prestige based on the religious side of the same arguments. Now armed with a double-barreled gun, the Jewish leaders were able to gather around them an army of foot soldiers, stuff them with religious zeal and send them on a secular war of conquest throughout the world.

When life was simple and communication among the people outside a neighborhood was thin, those leaders could tell a lie and let it spread by word of mouth through the neighborhood and through the societies immediately surrounding the neighborhood. However slowly the lie was spreading and however long it took it to permeate the body of the societies it was infecting, the leaders knew that at the end of the day they will have scored another conquest. But things began to change when life became more complicated and communication among the people of the neighborhood -- and between them and the societies that lay beyond the neighborhood – became heavy traffic. In this climate, ordinary people began to develop short attention spans and shorter memories. The result was that the lie of the leaders could no longer impress ordinary people or convince them of anything. This development was so significant that the Jewish leaders were forced to replace the old techniques for spreading the lie with new techniques that were more suited for the times.

After experimenting with a number of new ideas, the Jewish leaders have settled on the method of relentlessly driving into the heads of their audiences not the one big lie that can be laughed at but the series of fragmented insinuations that saturate the landscape and are expected to achieve the result that is aimed for. Since the main idea is to say that Israel and the Jews are good, that their enemy of the day is bad and that everyone else is mediocre, the leaders of the Jewish movement are continually putting together propaganda packages for the media to use and thus drive the main point into the heads of their audiences in a steady and barely perceptible way. The result has been that people in the English speaking world cannot now escape hearing or reading relentless drivel to the effect that Israel is a benevolent democracy, Jews are the saviors of the world, Muslims hate America and the West while the rest of the world is doing precious little to end anti-Semitism.

What the Jewish leaders did not take into account, however, was that repeated drivel bores the audience so badly it causes people to reverse the message in their sub-conscience as a way to get back at the purveyors of the drivel. By the time the leaders became aware of this reality and tried to put together an antidote to deal with their blunder, they discovered they had another problem on their hand. It was that because the message was made of fragmented insinuations in the first place, members of the audience not only reversed the message in their mind; they each reconstructed the message by piecing the fragments together in a different way. And the Jewish leaders realized to their chagrin that what they had concocted has now metastasized into a million new forms of cancer requiring millions of different antidotes to cure them. And all the anti-Muslim hatred they had generated over the decades was now turning into anti-Jewish hatred. And so the Jewish leaders resorted to the old accusation that humanity is genetically designed to be anti-Semitic.

But the world is laughing at them because people realize that once again the Jews have become the architects of their own misfortune. The circle they wrought is closing on them because the lava of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred they generated is being canalized in their direction. And the question to ask is this: Will it be a pogrom this time? A Holocaust? Hitler's Final Solution?

Time will tell.

Rebellion On The Planet Of The Goyim

You know the story of Planet of the Apes; the one that was made into a Hollywood movie. It is the story of the monkeys on Planet Earth who evolved past their current state and have acquired both the power of speech and the power of reasoning. This happened at a time when the human beings on the planet had lost the ability to speak and much of their power of reasoning. It was the aftermath of a nuclear war that destroyed the human civilization and gave the apes the chance to take over the planet and rule over it. The consequence has been that the apes treated the humans like beasts of burden the way that the humans used to treat animals such as donkeys and horses. Well, my friend, this is not such a far fetched idea when you consider the fact that for centuries, the Jews have considered the goys to be beasts of burden put on Earth for one purpose only which is to serve the Jews and, of course, serve Israel if and when an Israel is in existence. And who are the goys, you ask? Well, that's you and me; it is everyone that is not Jewish. When talking to each other behind our backs, the Jews do not call us gentiles the way we like to be called or the way they call us in our faces; this would make us human and equal to them. No. They do not consider us full fledged human beings and so they call us by the derogatory name goy. And to be certain, this is not like calling the Italians, wops or calling the Asians, pakis; it is like calling us sub-human which is their intent.

Why is it important to be aware of this reality at this time, you may ask? The thing is that people became aware of it from time to time throughout history. They became aware of it not because the subject was brought up honestly or because the matter was discussed rationally and everyone given the chance to flesh out what there was to flesh out. No. The people became aware of the reality drip by drip through a process you may call cultural osmosis. After a while some people began to suffer, and because there was no airing of their grievances, a pressure started to build up in their spirit and the spirit of their friends and neighbors. When it was realized that the suffering was caused by the practices of some Jews they were dealing with, anti-Jewish sentiments arose and led to social explosions such as those that happened throughout history. These were the pogroms and, of course, the mother of all pogroms known as the Holocaust. The pressure is now building again and rather than let the thing play itself out which means let it go all the way to an explosive end, we, as a society would do well to discuss the matter openly. We should let the grievances be aired and evaluated on their merit because there is rebellion in the air on the planet of the goyim (plural for goy in Hebrew), and the day of reckoning is approaching one step at a time.

There are many places around the globe where the explosion is likely to be triggered this time around and it may even be triggered in a few places at the same time given the connectivity that ties the nations of the world and the ease of communication that exists in the modern era. But if there is one place where you do not want to see the explosion triggered, it is in America because if it happens there, the consequences will be so thorough and so violent that Hitler's Final Solution will be realized before anyone has had the chance to ask: What is going on? And this is because no one in history has been taken advantage of, and no one has paid a price as high as the American goys who were made to suffer as much as they did for one reason only; to fulfill the dreams and the aspirations of the Jews whether they were legitimate dreams and aspirations or they were illegitimate fantasies. And there is one more thing to be reminded of; there are hundreds of millions of guns in America with many happy fingers itching to pull on the trigger for a good reason, an acquired one or a completely fabricated one.

The social situation in America and the consequences thereof have developed the way they did because the Jewish reliance on that country came at a crucial time coinciding, in fact, with the establishment of the state of Israel in the Middle East. Being of the mentality that is attributed to them, the Jewish leaders who engineered that exploit did not behave in a manner that made them welcome invaders in the societies of the Middle East where they were regarded as aliens and out of place. The result of the artificial transplant and the reception that the Jews were given made it so that they needed an external power to stand by them and help them force their supremacist and weird ideology on the Middle Eastern public. Because the people there categorically refused to think of the Jews as superior beings, the Jewish leaders called on the Brits to help them force their way into the Middle East, and the Brits agreed to help out for a while. The Jewish leaders then called on the Soviets and the French to help them, and they too agreed to help for a while but then dropped the Israeli project like a dog owner who just realized he had to constantly clean up after the dog he adopted. The Jewish leaders then turned to America and decided to take a new approach so as not to lose that country the way they lost the Brits, the Soviets and the French on those previous occasions.

What the Jewish leaders did was to run the following story on the Americans and to repeat it without end: “It is true that we do not belong in the Middle East because we are not of the goys that ordinarily live there. However, we know we belong in that place because God wants us to live there and He gave us the piece of real estate situated between the Nile and the Euphrates. The Almighty did this because He made us His favorite children which also means He wants us to rule over the world. But fear not that we may rule over you, Americans, because you too are a special breed just like us. We are the chosen people but you are the exceptional ones and this is as good as being chosen. So you see, together, we can rule over the world not in a Pax Judaica sort of setup but in a Pax Americana sort of setup whereby we take on the burden of thinking and you take on the burden of lifting. You may, in fact, consider us the beasts of burden who do the heavy thinking, and consider yourselves the lofty lifters of something; maybe to lift our spirits or whatever.” And so, my dear reader, one by one, the American leaders bought the story until enough of them had bought enough of it that they formed a critical mass heavy enough to openly and shamelessly betray their own America to serve the little fart that is Israel.

But how do the Jewish leaders approach an individual they never dealt with before, persuade him or her to come to their side and commit themselves so strongly to the Jewish causes? Well, after they target someone they determine may be ready to succumb to their machinations, the Jewish operators pull their deed in small steps. The first step is to run by the target something like this: I am chosen and you are exceptional therefore you and me are superior to everyone else. Follow me and I'll show you how superior you are. The second step is to run by them something like this: I have been leading this exercise as you may have noticed; therefore you must recognize that I dominate you. The third step is to run something like this: I am above them as you know, and I dominate you as you have recognized therefore you must accept that I am more special than you and them. The fourth step is to run something like this: compared to where I sit, you and them are so distant that the difference between the two of you is negligible and I consider both of you one and the same. The fifth step is to run something like this: you are all goys and closer to the donkey than you are to me. The sixth step which is yet to come is to run something like this: Pax Americana, my ass. There is only one Pax and it is Pax Judaica. I take over the whole enchilada and you will serve me as will the others. You will serve like the beasts of burden that you are and I shall enjoy being served like a member of the master race. This is the fulfillment of God's wish whose favorite child I am. Go kill someone I hate today and die for me before I hate you for an eternity.

And any teacher that has closely studied how a submissive student ends up being smitten by a dominant student will recognize these machinations as being real and at work in every school as they are in all fields of life. And the teacher will tell you how difficult it is to get the submissive student to snap out of it. The danger is that if and when he or she does snap out, the admiration and affection they had for the dominant student can turn into a hatred equal in intensity. Most of the time, however, this type of student quietly hate themselves for what they have allowed themselves to become and they only avoid the company of the other student. But there are occasions when they try to get even by thinking of ways to humiliate the student that used to dominate them and take advantage of them. But what they try does not always work as planned and it can lead to nefarious outcomes. Now, when it comes to the social analogy that is the Jewish machinations inside the American system of governance, we should be alarmed in view of the historical record that the Europeans have left us because these records tell of consequences that no one sane wants to see repeated.

Yet, all the signs are here again that something seriously wicked is going on and is continuing to build up. In a matter of a few months only, Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez and Juan Williams were pushed out or fired from their jobs because they publicly expressed a feeling or a personal opinion. If the story concerned only the firings, it would have been a major story given that the First Amendment of the American Constitution protects the freedom of speech. Great discussions, perhaps approaching in value the Federalist Papers, would have followed, and the principle of freedom of speech together with the idea of democracy would have been taken up and discussed in relation to an era where new technologies are at play that the founding fathers of the America Federation could not have imagined. But sadly, very sadly, the great debate never happened, America missed out on a valuable opportunity and we must ask: why is that? And there is only one answer: Because of the Jewish factor.

Only a few decades ago we could hear journalists say as a matter of course about a politician or someone ordinary: I may not like what he or she is saying but I shall defend their right to say it. Today, you do not hear a journalist say something that comes close to that even in defense of another journalist that was fired from their job, and not just reprimanded or suspended for a period of time. On the contrary, you see some journalists rejoice at the fact that another journalist has suffered such a horrible fate because of something they said. When Helen Thomas was let go, Howard Kurtz who has pretended to be a media critic for decades did not invite her to come and give her side of the story. On the contrary, he invited the rabbi who entrapped her to come and unload. But unload what? Apparently the poor, sweet, cute, little thing received a few emails from people who did not like what he did to their beloved Helen, and they wrote to tell him that. And so, this man who perhaps expected to be hailed as the Messiah in waiting for what he had done felt so bad and so dejected that he needed a shoulder on which to cry or a platform on which to unload his great, big, massive sorrow at the way that the ungrateful public treated him. You know what? It is getting to me also -- right here at the heart -- and so I shall stop discussing this story before I too will start weeping uncontrollably about the treatment that the Jews in America are receiving at the hands of the goys and before I start bellyaching on their behalf.

After Helen Thomas came Rick Sanchez who was treated like a nobody after his firing; treated by his former colleagues like someone who had no right to freedom of speech because in America today, freedom of speech means one thing and one thing only, the freedom to kiss Jewish asses on the air and off the air no matter how much air is blown in your face as you do the kissing. Since Rick Sanchez seemed to turn away from the smell of the Jewish asses he was supposed to kiss, he made himself unwelcome in the den of the assholes, and so he had to be pushed out and kept out.

Then came Juan Williams whose story is a complicated one. Discussing it properly would have shed much light on the role of the First Amendment in the modern era, an event that the fathers of the American Constitution would have been proud of. But what happened instead? Unlike the first two instances where silence was the order of the day, much noise was made in the Williams case but it was the wrong kind of noise. Having butchered the soul and the essence of the First Amendment by labeling anti-Semitic everyone that disagreed with them, the Jewish organizations had emasculated that amendment so thoroughly, no one knew how to use it to defend Williams or defend the profession itself. What the dimwits and their followers did instead was to talk about the subject in terms of Right vs Left, in terms of Liberal vs Conservative, in terms of Republican vs Democrat and nothing more. It was like looking inside a big hole dug in the ground waiting to see it fill up with something valuable but seeing it fill up with the flushing of toilets which best analogizes the mention of Israel and most Jewish causes in America these days.

It stinks around here and the goys will not take it anymore, especially the authentic American goys.

Soap Opera Of The String Quartet

There was a time when the military machine of the Communist alliance led by the Soviet Union and trailed by China looked invincible having defeated America, the economic superpower of the day, on the battlefields of a backward land called Vietnam. This prompted the second economic power of the day, Japan Inc, to challenge America's economic dominance of the world. It did so by using the massive foreign reserves it had accumulated over the decades to buy up assets around the world and especially around Asia where it is itself situated and where America is an alien power. The buying of foreign assets being something that America was doing at a much higher rate than anyone else, the American business characters of the Wall Street ilk engineered a bubble to avoid being overtaken by the Japanese newcomers. What they did came to be known as the Savings & Loan scandal whereby they siphoned off nearly half a trillion dollars from the economy of their own country. And they used the money to buy up foreign assets, especially those in Asia which they did in direct competition with Japan Inc. But in doing what they did at home, they also created a gigantic mess, something they left for the government there to clean up and to resolve at the expense of the taxpayers.

The Wall Street bubblites -- as they shall be known from this point forward -- used the half trillion dollars they siphoned from their people to duke it out with the business people of Japan Inc, and they succeeded in reclaiming their title as the biggest investors in the world including Asia, the backyard of Japan so to speak. This challenge, which was fully expected to be honest, prompted the Japanese officials to print as many yens as it took to equal the splurging of the American bubblites, and the rivalry between these two resulted in many countries around the world receiving much needed infusions of cash. Alas, not everyone used the money wisely to develop their own economies along sound principles. But one country that did well and proved to be a wise old country was China which managed to accomplish something truly remarkable. China took the political system it inherited from the communist Soviet Union, combined it with the economic system it was handed by the Anglo-American alliance and created an engine of economic growth the likes of which the world had never seen before. And year after year China ploughed ahead with energy and with vigor in the business of modernizing its economy and distributing the wealth among all its people.

In the meantime, unable to spend abroad all the yens they had printed due to the fact that other countries around the world were running their own presses overtime, the Japanese kept some of the money at home and thus created a local bubble of their own whereby the public was encouraged to invest the extra money they had in real estate assets and in securities. And all the flippers of land and all the churners of stock made it so that the price of a square meter in downtown Tokyo skyrocketed to the million dollar mark, and the index of the Tokyo stock exchange approached the 40,000 level. Then came the inevitable crash to both of them and to everything else; the real estate assets throughout Japan returned to their pre-bubble levels even lower, and the index of the stock market was cut to less than a quarter of its highest high. And of course, the experience was not without consequence because when it came to making any sort of expense after that, the Japanese people went on strike. They refused to open their purses very widely or open them ajar to living expenses that went beyond the absolutely necessary. And they made no investment of any kind no matter how solid the project appeared to be or what sort of return was promised on their capital.

Panicked by the recession and by the falling prices that followed the crash, the government of Japan printed still more money to replace the private money that went on strike and pushed the newly printed money on the economy to keep it moving and thus create the illusion of velocity. But the economy refused to budge because doing quantitative easing, as they called the initiative, was like pushing on a string, they explained. In fact, the money stayed in the vaults of the banks where it was stored because the banks were reluctant to lend it and because very few clients wanted to borrow it in the first place. And all of this reality stood in stark contrast with the Chinese experience because the secret that made the Chinese model work was the fact that no one had to push on a string to move the money through the economy in China. The reality was that the pent up demand for goods and services existed in China and was, in fact, building up for centuries. When the supply came as a result of foreign money pouring into the country, there was no need to push the string at the back end of the economy because the string was naturally pulled up at the front end by the demand that a huge and enthusiastic population was creating. Velocity came to the money supply, and the economic project of China worked like a charm as if it were serenaded by the soothing sound of a billion violins playing a symphony you might call ode to one named Adam Confucius Smith.

And while all of this was happening in Asia, the Soviet Union that straddled both the Asian and the European continents was creating bubbles of its own. But these were not bubbles of the type that are made with good soap or bad economics; they were of the type that are made when something bubbles up to the surface as an old regime dies a quiet death. In fact, the old Soviet Union was dying peacefully and in its place was born a new Russian Federation – no strings attached, not even an umbilical cord. But the strings did surface later on because in order to catch up with the Western economic powers, the Eurasian slouching giant was advised by its friends in America to adopt a system of shocks to the economy. This meant to let loose the characters that became the Russian oligarchs who made the Wall Street bubblites look like infants suckling on bottles of harmless formula. The oligarchs of Russia ended up controlling everything in the Federation including the printing presses of the central bank which they made work without control and made them work faster even than the fall in the value of the Russian ruble which in turn accelerated the running of the presses -- It is a self-feeding vicious cycle, you know. But this was okay with the oligarchs because they were creating quantitative easing of the crazy kind, and crazy economics was the system they were prepared to live with until the rest of the world told them to take that worthless ruble and shove it. The oligarchs read the writing on the wall, saw red with their own eyes and stopped the presses for now. They studied all about how to implement a set of sane fiscal and monetary policies then started the presses again which they ran with a new motor; this time a motor equipped with a mechanism for speed control and a switch that can turn the presses on and off.

As can be seen, the Russian Federation could not have been saved by its own oligarchs, some of whom were sent to spend time in the gulags of Siberia to expiate their sins of unbridled abuse and grotesque exaggeration. Russia was not even saved by the effort of its own government alone but was, in fact, saved with the help of the goulds that live and work in the pits of the Chicago Board of Trade. These characters sent the price of oil up to nearly one hundred and fifty dollars a barrel which made the Russian Federation swim in dollars, in euros and in yens -- being one of the largest producers of oil and natural gas in the world. With this much foreign money coming into the country and with a pent up demand among the public for goods and services that were created and produced mostly by foreigners in foreign lands, the government of Russia did not need to push on a string of any kind to make the burgeoning middle class in the country consume and consume and consume still more. This class and the upper class, all of whom dreamed of living like oligarchs, pulled on the demand side of the economic string and pulled so hard that the string almost broke and the two classes were forced to suppress their hunger for goods and for services, be they foreign made goods or locally produced services which were now available due to the liberalization of the economy. And with this suppression of the demand, Russia embarked on a long journey to acquire the look of a normal consumer society at long last.

And while all of this was happening, a condition was created that almost brought the world economy to a screeching halt but lucky for us, the catastrophe was averted and humanity was able to survive the near meltdown of the economy. A few loose ends still need to be taken care of to give the drama the look and feel of a well polished story, but on the whole, the universe is back again unfolding as it should to paraphrase Desiderata. Let the violins play again.

In the meantime, the quartet of main characters in our soap opera, America, Japan, China and the Russian Federation are back on the stage with a few more characters, all getting ready to play the remaining acts of the piece they call: How to push on a string and get velocity without losing control of the printing presses.

Let them break a leg.

A Friendly Advice To Think Tank Honchos

When people consistently interpret the world in a way that is demonstrably false and detrimental to the causes they profess to serve, you know the time has come to take a fresh look at some of their cherished notions with the view of clarifying the matter for them. The people I have in mind are Arthur Brooks who is president of the American Enterprise Institute, Edwin Feulner who is president of the Heritage Foundation and William Kristol who is director of the Foreign Policy Initiative. Again and again these people have shown to be wrong in the way they interpret the world, and the time has come to prove to them that their activities hurt the causes they say they want to serve. The hope is that they will take a breather during which time they will see the light and reconsider their positions.

The three individuals made it easy to discuss their positions by jointly writing an article that contains the essential wrong premises upon which they have constructed a false model of the world. The article is titled “Peace Doesn't Keep Itself” and was published in the Wall Street Journal on October 4, 2010. It deals with the economics of defense as you can see in the subtitle that was chosen for it: “Defense spending has increased at a much lower rate than domestic spending in recent years and is not the cause of soaring deficits.”

You get a sense of the prism through which they see the world from the introduction they articulate in the first paragraph where they criticize a speech by President Obama given on August 31 in which he declared his preference to invest in the American people rather than squander America's wealth in military efforts. And they add this: “As Bob Woodward's new book 'Obama's Wars' makes plain, a similar mentality pervaded the president's Afghanistan strategy.” After that, they take several paragraphs to give a critique of the president's preference, and reinforce their point of view at the end of the article by criticizing the people they say do think like the president: “There are some who think the era of U.S. global leadership is over, and that decline is what the future inevitably holds for us … But this is an error. A weaker, cheaper military will not solve our financial woes. It will, however, make the world a more dangerous place, and it will impoverish our future.” Put in a nutshell, this would be their grand conclusion.

Between the introduction and the conclusion, our three authors discuss the notion of balance between the social needs of the nation and its military needs without showing the slightest sign of having wrestled mentally with the subject. They do this while tilting in favor of what they believe are the requirements of the military. And they make their points (a) by stating that expenditure on the military does not hurt the finances of the nation, (b) by arguing that in percentage terms, the country spends less on the military now than during previous times, (c) by opining that too much money is now spent on social programs and (d) by hiding behind the men and women in uniform. All of which are thin arguments as will be seen in the discussion that follows.

The most important argument they make is the economic one, and so let us discuss that. They state: “Global prosperity requires commerce and trade, and this requires peace.” The implication here is that the world needs a policeman, that America should appoint itself to that post, that America can fulfill the role and that it will not be challenged when it begins to enforce its vision of law and order. The authors assure us that if America takes on the role of world policeman, the world will be made safe, commerce and trade will flourish and global prosperity will result which will be good for the world including America and the barbarians at the gate themselves who would hurt the world in the absence of America's watchful eyes and interventions. And the question to ask is this: Can any of this be true or is the whole thing a fantasy of adolescents flourishing in the body of grown-ups who are playacting a worldwide game of cops and robbers?

Let's see if we can answer this question. Without challenging their numbers, let us look at them to see if they contain holes that point to a flaw in their argument. First, the three authors say this: “Even with the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, this year the Department of Defense will spend some $720 billion – about 4.9% of our gross domestic product, significantly below the average of 6.5% since World War II.” Then they say this: “Yet we face those challenges [Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly Iran and China] with a baseline defense budget ... that is 3.6% of GDP, significantly less than the Reagan-era peak of 6.2%.” Well, you do not need a PhD in mathematics to figure that if the average of the defense budgets during the indicated period was 6.5%, that if during the Reagan-Bush-41 era of that period the peak was 6.2% and that if during the Bush-43 era the percentage was 3.6%, it follows that the military budgets of America were significantly higher than the average during the remaining eras of that same period. As it happens, however, most of these remaining eras were Democratic eras. Well then, are the authors of the article -- the very conservative Arthur Brooks, Edwin Feulner and William Kristol of the illustrious right wing think tanks of America -- giving this much credit to Democratic presidents? If yes, will they please elaborate? Because if they don't, we shall have to consider them a trio of adolescents occupying the body of grown-ups and playacting a worldwide game of cops and robbers. And this is something that other more sober conservatives may find embarrassing to associate with.

Furthermore, if President Reagan was able to defeat the superpower that was the “Soviet Evil Empire” by bankrupting their civilian economy and without firing a shot, why is there a need to increase the military budget now? President Reagan was able to accomplish what he did by starting an arms race with the Soviet superpower that was super militarily but inferior economically. And this prompts the question: “Do the three authors of the article believe that the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the other non-state actors as well as Iran and China can be bankrupted by getting them involved in an arms race with America? Indeed, are the three authors calling on the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, on the axis of evil and on China to arm themselves to exhaustion then declare bankruptcy as did the old Soviet Union? Please elaborate ye illustrious honchos of the American think tanks. We hunger for clarity.

Another bewildering approach taken by the three authors is that they talk about America's finances as if America were isolated from the rest of the world but then apply their conclusions – if and when they reach them -- to the whole world as if America were a full partner in it even presiding over it. This is typical of people who respond to dogmas they were fed while growing up but remain frozen in time, incapable of thinking for themselves or evolving a smidgen. More about this later but for now let us discuss America's financing of its military machine in relation to the world economy that the three authors say they want America to protect by appointing itself policeman over it.

Right after World War II, the American GDP amounted to nearly two thirds the GDP of the world, and its manufacturing industries represented about a quarter of its own GDP. This means that American industries stood at somewhere between 15% and 20% of the world GDP. Today, America's GDP amounts to a fifth the GDP of the world, and its industries represent about 10% of its own GDP. This means that American manufacturing industries currently stand at about 2% of the world GDP and getting smaller in relative terms due to the rapid industrialization of the developing countries. The consequence of this is that if America got into an arms race with Usama Bin Laden (UBL), America will be bankrupted long before UBL or his sidekicks. And this is not to mention what other actors will do such as the insurgents of Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran and the other non-state entities, and of course China which will be the source called upon to supply most of the parts procured by the American military-industrial complex. The reality is that America is no longer the industrial giant that it was. And this is not because: “There are some who think the era of U.S. global leadership is over, and that decline is what the future inevitably holds...” but because this is the way that history has unfolded which is the way that history always unfolds for empires whose time comes and goes.

Let us now look at the habit of responding to dogmas. The authors have this paragraph in their article: “Furthermore, military spending is not a net drain on our economy. It is unrealistic to imagine a return to long-term prosperity if we face instability around the globe because of a hollowed-out U.S. military lacking the size and strength to defend American interests around the world.” There are two sentences here whose sequencing has been transposed. Each sentence represents a dogma that can survive as a stand alone statement but when the two sentences are put together and allowed to give voice to their internal logic, they negate each other. We can see this effect when we write the two sentences in the proper sequence and add the logical connection between them as shown here in square brackets: “It is unrealistic to imagine a return to long-term prosperity if we face instability around the globe because of a hollowed-out U.S. military lacking the size and strength to defend American interests around the world, [besides] military spending is not a drain on our economy.”

The difference between having two separate sentences out of sequence, and having them in sequence as one sentence is that in the second formulation you see the connection between the ideas, you rub them together and you analyze the whole proposition. When you do this, you immediately reject the principle that military spending is not a drain on an economy because you know how president Reagan caused the Soviet Union to go bankrupt. But then after doing some hard thinking, you say to yourself it could be that the authors meant to say only the American economy is not drained by military spending, not every economy. And so you ask yourself if America has the muscle to produce the proverbial guns and butter to live in prosperity and protect the world at the same time. And this has the potential to open a discussion that can branch in many directions, something you try to avoid.

However, the one direction you find most poignant is that taken by the authors where they admit -- if only in a subtle way -- that a choice between guns and butter will have to be made thereby admit that even America cannot have it both ways. As to the choice they make, they choose the guns, and guess whose butter they say they want to cut completely or reduce somewhat. Here is their response as stated in their own words: “Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, lesser entitlements such as food stamps and cash assistance ... These expenditures continue automatically, year after year...” It is not clear what they mean by lesser entitlements but you can safely assume that they include the school lunch program for the American children who go to school hungry because their parents cannot afford to feed them a decent breakfast or any breakfast at all.

But how can three honchos of America's illustrious conservative think tanks justify a situation like this? Here is how: “We should be vigilant against waste in every corner of the budget. But anyone seeking to restore our fiscal health should look at entitlements first, not across-the-board cuts aimed at our men and women in uniform.” Oh yes, that's how. They say it's okay to starve millions of American children to feed the military. Well, guess who else starves their children to feed their military. You guessed it; they are the North Koreans. It is no wonder, therefore, that the conservative think tanks of North America look and smell like the septic tanks of North Korea. But is this what makes the presidents and the directors of those tanks believe they ought to be respected? I guess the fantasy and self-delusion that animate these people are now completely out of control.

I'm telling you guys, get off this train and reconsider your positions. You're not doing your country or yourselves any good by maintaining the course you're on. The best thing for you to do now is protect America from yourselves and those like you. America did much good in her heydays and she deserves better.