Who Pays for Poll May Make Difference (Wow!)
by Frank Scott
Recent poll results give conflicting images of the American public, sometimes causing authorities from the world of science and religion considerable confusion. But recent studies sponsored by the Center for the Study of Centers reveal that striking and even shocking differences in polling results seem to be based on who pays for the survey.
Mainstream pollsters have consistently found a liberal tendency among a majority of Americans, and this has been true during all the conservative administrations of the last thirty years. But other polls conflict with these more liberal leanings, and are often in shocking contrast. While one pollster consistently found a majority supporting abortion rights, gun control, social spending and gay marriage, another poll paid for by the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed that 75% of Americans support lynching, 82% wish to exterminate Jews, and 98% support forced prayer in schools. “Our poll was taken among the seven members of the Ku Klux Klan and the three American Nazi party officials, who also happen to be the only members, so it might seem biased “ admitted a spokesperson for the Poverty Center, which has long maintained its funding base by sending out mailers with photos of klansmen, skinheads and nazis scowling at the camera.
And while market research firms study consumers closely to learn what it is they wish to consume - given choices presented by market research firms - they too reveal shockingly unscientific results. Surveys for hair tonic, mouthwash and cat food, for example, always reveal a strong desire to purchase hair tonic, mouthwash and cat food. “This is scientific” said a member of the Council on Consumer Consciousness, “since we all know that Americans want to purchase hair tonic, mouthwash and cat food, especially if they have hair, bad breath and cats.”
When the techniques of pollsters are placed in the service of political campaigns, the results reached are no less unconvincing, to those who do not pay for them, or confusing, to those trying to understand their contradictions. In seeking to learn which candidate would win the primary, recent surveys among Democratic voters found that they support Clinton, Obama and Edwards, in that order, unless they support Obama, Edwards and Clinton in that order, or Edwards, Clinton and Obama, in that order. The other candidates don't seem to register in these polls, and the Center for the Study of Centers found, to its amazement, that this had something to do with the fact that the others did not pay for any polls. “The winner of the poll seemed to be the candidate who paid for the poll. Obama won his, Clinton won hers, and Edwards won his.” The Kucinich campaign said that it would soon have money to pay for a poll, which would reveal voter support for him and certain victory in the primaries.
Experts on scientific polling , horse race handicapping and hour glass sand analysis were puzzled at all these conflicting results in so many different fields. This could lead to a transformation of the entire industry, beginning with the frequency of polling. National, local and state surveys are conducted every fifteen minutes, on average, but that time frame could be expanded to twenty minutes. “We are dealing with a public that has a very short term attention span , but we may be polling them to quickly with calls every fifteen minutes. A twenty minute space between surveys could give them more time to really think about what it is they wish to purchase.”
Members of the Center were pleased at the response of the industry to their critical study. Center CEO, professor Hansel Engrtel said “ Americans depend on poll results to know what it is they are thinking, what they believe, and most importantly, what they should be purchasing. So any changes that can make the industry perform more scientifically will be helpful to maintaining the system without threatening stability and marketing, whether of ordinary products or extraordinary products like politicians.”
Copyright (c) 2007 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
This text may be used and shared in accordance with the
fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be
archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that
the author is notified and no fee is charged for access.
Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on
other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author
frank scott
email: frank@marin.cc.ca.us
Friday, June 29, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Iran, Israel, The Big Lie and The Real Threat
by Frank Scott
If the continuing propaganda barrage succeeds in casting Iran as a global menace, and Ahmadinejad as a global monster, there is no possible
outcome but an even more dreadful global failure than in Iraq .
While many insist that only oil is at stake in the middle east , the zealous core of opposition to the Islamic and Arab world remains Israel and its rabid supporters in the USA. Even as oil’s importance is acknowledged, the enormous power of the Israeli lobby over American policy can continue to be denied only by those dense enough to deny climate change.
The power of the lobby has long gone unquestioned, in fear of its political wrath , but also in guilty silence lest past tragedies befall the
Jewish people again. The horrible experience of world war two has
often distorted any sense of present reality. In deference to memory of
a terrible time for european Jews, we have allowed a much longer period of terror for those who had absolutely nothing to do with that war .
Israel’s pristine status in American consciousness has meant near
obliteration of the Palestinian people, and most of the Arab and
Islamic world as well . A great mass of humanity has been reduced to
terrorists or religious fanatics , as they are depicted by Jewish organizations and the American political and media establishment .
The major rationale for Israel’s existence is the holocaust, the fanatic
persecution of European Jews by the nazis in world war two. Perpetuation of the memory of this dreadful history has become a powerful movement accorded the status of religious faith, to be unquestioned by any and ritually acknowledged by all. This has led to intellectual pogroms in Europe where those who dare to question any parts of the holocaust story are charged with heresy and imprisoned. Revenge is not only visited on the Palestinians, who had nothing to do with it, but on europeans who
use supposed democratic freedoms in order to question history.
Treating a material event as a sanctified subject open to no investigation but that of true believers is theocratic fanaticism. Where profoundly powerful biblical myths are all subject to intellectual challenge, this historic event is placed beyond the human pale and any questioning of its substance treated as political blasphemy.
If this irrationalism were limited to a few individuals currently in prison, it would be dreadful enough. But when it is moving us toward potential nuclear war , it must be confronted before it leads to even greater human sacrifice than it has already brought about .
Iraq and Saddam Hussein were deemed threats to Israel, and its USA
supporters played a major role in bringing about the destruction of that nation and its leader. This was to protect a state still seen as a haven for a threatened people, even if the threats are neuro-psychiatric and only become material as a result of its pariah behavior in the middle east. But present claims that Iran poses an even deadlier threat to Israel, which induce near unanimous support from the American government, means this irrationalism in the service of one group's neurosis needs to be confronted before it destroys collective sanity, and civilization as well.
Portraying Iran as a nuclear menace to Israel , even though it has no nuclear weapons and Israel has hundreds, is not merely a sign of dementia . It indicates near imbecility in a society which can be repeatedly manipulated into believing such totally crackpot notions that have no foundation in the material world but exist only as murderous psycho fantasy.
While many Jewish groups have been terrifying their members by depicting Ahmadinejad as bent on exterminating them, the Israeli lobby has been doing the same job on our government . This has brought congressional leaders and future presidential candidates to join in support of this preposterous fiction. The purveyors of this notion are delusional, but rather than being sedated and institutionalized, they exercise frightening influence over American consciousness and could once again lead it to act in clinically ignorant support of their murderous hallucinatory fears .
Part of this dementia involves a warped ethnocentric idea; that jewish suffering is and will always be a central aspect of
human history, and must not only be endlessly acknowledged as such,
but also endlessly atoned for as such. No criticism of this idea, especially as it involves the holocaust, can be treated with anything but contemptuous disregard for the rights of any who fail to toe this ethnocentric line. After Ahmadinejad dared to have Tehran host a conference on the holocaust, where critical revisionists who might be imprisoned in Europe were allowed to speak their minds openly in Iran, he and his nation became a greater menace to that ethnocentric folly than Iraq and Saddam ever were.
When a supposedly enlightened civilization is threatening, again,
to attack another nation in great part because of its alleged menace
to the Jewish state , there can be no further denial on the
part of the majority who will pay a terrible price. It is time to
confine biblical and metaphysical belief systems about
the past to the imagination and the church, and face material reality before it is too late. Unless objective, scientifically verifiable conditions are confronted and dealt with, irrational and nearly stark raving lunatic fears could bring about greater suffering for humanity than past ignorance
has already caused. That rational analysis of our world leads to an
unmistakable conclusion:
A European, racial supremacist, anti-democratic state in the middle east, and its extremist supporters in the USA, are a major threat to the global
future. Israel, not Iran is the problem. Face it, and deal with it.
Copyright (c) 2007 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
This text may be used and shared in accordance with the
fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be
archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that
the author is notified and no fee is charged for access.
Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on
other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author
frank scott
email: frank@marin.cc.ca.us
Frank Scott writes political commentary which appears in the Coastal Post, a monthly publication from Marin County, California, on numerous web sites, and on his shared blog at: http://legalienate.blogspot.com
If the continuing propaganda barrage succeeds in casting Iran as a global menace, and Ahmadinejad as a global monster, there is no possible
outcome but an even more dreadful global failure than in Iraq .
While many insist that only oil is at stake in the middle east , the zealous core of opposition to the Islamic and Arab world remains Israel and its rabid supporters in the USA. Even as oil’s importance is acknowledged, the enormous power of the Israeli lobby over American policy can continue to be denied only by those dense enough to deny climate change.
The power of the lobby has long gone unquestioned, in fear of its political wrath , but also in guilty silence lest past tragedies befall the
Jewish people again. The horrible experience of world war two has
often distorted any sense of present reality. In deference to memory of
a terrible time for european Jews, we have allowed a much longer period of terror for those who had absolutely nothing to do with that war .
Israel’s pristine status in American consciousness has meant near
obliteration of the Palestinian people, and most of the Arab and
Islamic world as well . A great mass of humanity has been reduced to
terrorists or religious fanatics , as they are depicted by Jewish organizations and the American political and media establishment .
The major rationale for Israel’s existence is the holocaust, the fanatic
persecution of European Jews by the nazis in world war two. Perpetuation of the memory of this dreadful history has become a powerful movement accorded the status of religious faith, to be unquestioned by any and ritually acknowledged by all. This has led to intellectual pogroms in Europe where those who dare to question any parts of the holocaust story are charged with heresy and imprisoned. Revenge is not only visited on the Palestinians, who had nothing to do with it, but on europeans who
use supposed democratic freedoms in order to question history.
Treating a material event as a sanctified subject open to no investigation but that of true believers is theocratic fanaticism. Where profoundly powerful biblical myths are all subject to intellectual challenge, this historic event is placed beyond the human pale and any questioning of its substance treated as political blasphemy.
If this irrationalism were limited to a few individuals currently in prison, it would be dreadful enough. But when it is moving us toward potential nuclear war , it must be confronted before it leads to even greater human sacrifice than it has already brought about .
Iraq and Saddam Hussein were deemed threats to Israel, and its USA
supporters played a major role in bringing about the destruction of that nation and its leader. This was to protect a state still seen as a haven for a threatened people, even if the threats are neuro-psychiatric and only become material as a result of its pariah behavior in the middle east. But present claims that Iran poses an even deadlier threat to Israel, which induce near unanimous support from the American government, means this irrationalism in the service of one group's neurosis needs to be confronted before it destroys collective sanity, and civilization as well.
Portraying Iran as a nuclear menace to Israel , even though it has no nuclear weapons and Israel has hundreds, is not merely a sign of dementia . It indicates near imbecility in a society which can be repeatedly manipulated into believing such totally crackpot notions that have no foundation in the material world but exist only as murderous psycho fantasy.
While many Jewish groups have been terrifying their members by depicting Ahmadinejad as bent on exterminating them, the Israeli lobby has been doing the same job on our government . This has brought congressional leaders and future presidential candidates to join in support of this preposterous fiction. The purveyors of this notion are delusional, but rather than being sedated and institutionalized, they exercise frightening influence over American consciousness and could once again lead it to act in clinically ignorant support of their murderous hallucinatory fears .
Part of this dementia involves a warped ethnocentric idea; that jewish suffering is and will always be a central aspect of
human history, and must not only be endlessly acknowledged as such,
but also endlessly atoned for as such. No criticism of this idea, especially as it involves the holocaust, can be treated with anything but contemptuous disregard for the rights of any who fail to toe this ethnocentric line. After Ahmadinejad dared to have Tehran host a conference on the holocaust, where critical revisionists who might be imprisoned in Europe were allowed to speak their minds openly in Iran, he and his nation became a greater menace to that ethnocentric folly than Iraq and Saddam ever were.
When a supposedly enlightened civilization is threatening, again,
to attack another nation in great part because of its alleged menace
to the Jewish state , there can be no further denial on the
part of the majority who will pay a terrible price. It is time to
confine biblical and metaphysical belief systems about
the past to the imagination and the church, and face material reality before it is too late. Unless objective, scientifically verifiable conditions are confronted and dealt with, irrational and nearly stark raving lunatic fears could bring about greater suffering for humanity than past ignorance
has already caused. That rational analysis of our world leads to an
unmistakable conclusion:
A European, racial supremacist, anti-democratic state in the middle east, and its extremist supporters in the USA, are a major threat to the global
future. Israel, not Iran is the problem. Face it, and deal with it.
Copyright (c) 2007 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
This text may be used and shared in accordance with the
fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be
archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that
the author is notified and no fee is charged for access.
Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on
other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author
frank scott
email: frank@marin.cc.ca.us
Frank Scott writes political commentary which appears in the Coastal Post, a monthly publication from Marin County, California, on numerous web sites, and on his shared blog at: http://legalienate.blogspot.com
Friday, June 15, 2007
The Climate Change Market
by Frank Scott
The global warming issue has become a bonanza for marketing political products dubbed green, meaning nature, but more realistically, meaning money. While actual dollars are rarely exchanged in electronic financial trading , the markets are thriving on green speak and fear mongering . The problem grows, but the buzz words and commercials offered as solutions make no mention of the economics that must be confronted .
Politicians all repeat mantras about future green horizons, but without any change in the system mainly responsible for the problem. Madly creating products for sale in markets, with little concern for either their actual need or the long range damage that process may cause, is the commercial religion which has ruled the planet for centuries. Its name is rarely spoken in serious criticism , for fear that it bring charges of economic hate speech.
Capitalist denial may be the major curse of the 21st century, differing from past denial only in that its impact has grown more deadly . An ecology under assault since the industrial revolution is threatened with even more damage as the spread of global capital brings more of the world into its malls, parking lots, garbage dumps and killing fields.
Growing affluence for a minority, a critical part of this social system, depends on the impoverishment and indebtedness of a majority , and the slow but steady deterioration of the natural foundation on which humanity survives and builds its social structures.
This environmental degradation has been criticized for generations, but now not only specialists and visionaries but ordinary citizens can sense and consciously experience the impact of fossil fuels and imperial wars on a poisoned planet. Though the suffering billions who live in poverty are well aware of the down side of this system, it has taken longer for it to be revealed to the developed world. And it isn't only climate that is sending the foulness we put into the atmosphere right back at us. If we don't change our ways it may not be long before what we flush down our toilet commodes instantly flows out of our kitchen faucets.
Most green-speakers represent the forces that brought us to a point at which natural systems are overwhelmed by the economics of waste and war. Some environmental groups are demanding more conscious treatment of nature , but it is difficult for average citizens to break through the plastic curtain of propaganda in the USA . Much of the world lives under the western gun and can’t be held responsible for the long term , given that its future is often tragically measured in days or hours. The major source of the problem is where the real debate is needed, not only over how serious it has become, but how to confront its source and begin working to assure future survival.
While new age entrepreneurs suggest green product lines which may slow the pace of deterioration , others are demanding more substantial changes. Local groups calling for efficiency in industry and housing may not yet face the source of the systemic problem, but their proposals will ultimately involve bigger productive shifts than any establishment politician has suggested. That is, once they dig beneath the political surface, and get to the economic substance .
Renewable energy generation, a popular and sensible idea, may make for a revolutionary change , but only if connected to its much more positive use . It makes little sense to switch to windmill or geothermal powered factories that produce weapons , or solar powered sweat shops in the third world, or to use nuclear power to manufacture biodegradable products. Not only the creation, but the use of energy needs to become part of the debate.
There is conflict over whether the climate problem is exaggerated, or even exists at all except in a natural sense. But whether we believe it is man made or ultimately correctable by universe , dualistically speaking, we suffer either way . Until we confront the ever more dangerous system of production and distribution of the earth’s resources, arguing about the origins of a process destroying our future makes as little sense as debating whether death results from mass murders called wars, or mass murders called terrorism . The end result is the same.
Purifying carbon producing industries like coal and aluminum, to name only two, will mean vast social changes that may not be apparent now, but will reveal themselves as we encounter institutional forces that prevent a truly clean mode of production for all life support systems. And there is no way that so called free market capitalism works other than by turning a profit for private investors in the production and sale of incredible amounts of stuff which becomes un-recyclable garbage , and destroying even more incredible amounts of human and natural resources in the process.
Environmental degradation, whether seen as climate change, desertification, pollution or slaughtering innocent people in commercial race wars, is a foremost and primary example of the normal functioning of that process .
We can’t change the future unless we deal with the political economics of the present, and so far the climate change debate has avoided capitalism completely . While democratic power has been futile, especially regarding the horrible slaughter of Iraq, it must assert itself soon if there is to be any long term future for humanity. When we stop the war on the environment, we will end other wars as well, and probably see an improvement in all aspects of nature.
In order to affect positive change in the climate , both naturally and politically, a majority democratic force needs to counter the minority antidemocratic force of capitalism . No matter what the weather forecast may be, we will face an extremely stormy future if we don’t face that fact.
The global warming issue has become a bonanza for marketing political products dubbed green, meaning nature, but more realistically, meaning money. While actual dollars are rarely exchanged in electronic financial trading , the markets are thriving on green speak and fear mongering . The problem grows, but the buzz words and commercials offered as solutions make no mention of the economics that must be confronted .
Politicians all repeat mantras about future green horizons, but without any change in the system mainly responsible for the problem. Madly creating products for sale in markets, with little concern for either their actual need or the long range damage that process may cause, is the commercial religion which has ruled the planet for centuries. Its name is rarely spoken in serious criticism , for fear that it bring charges of economic hate speech.
Capitalist denial may be the major curse of the 21st century, differing from past denial only in that its impact has grown more deadly . An ecology under assault since the industrial revolution is threatened with even more damage as the spread of global capital brings more of the world into its malls, parking lots, garbage dumps and killing fields.
Growing affluence for a minority, a critical part of this social system, depends on the impoverishment and indebtedness of a majority , and the slow but steady deterioration of the natural foundation on which humanity survives and builds its social structures.
This environmental degradation has been criticized for generations, but now not only specialists and visionaries but ordinary citizens can sense and consciously experience the impact of fossil fuels and imperial wars on a poisoned planet. Though the suffering billions who live in poverty are well aware of the down side of this system, it has taken longer for it to be revealed to the developed world. And it isn't only climate that is sending the foulness we put into the atmosphere right back at us. If we don't change our ways it may not be long before what we flush down our toilet commodes instantly flows out of our kitchen faucets.
Most green-speakers represent the forces that brought us to a point at which natural systems are overwhelmed by the economics of waste and war. Some environmental groups are demanding more conscious treatment of nature , but it is difficult for average citizens to break through the plastic curtain of propaganda in the USA . Much of the world lives under the western gun and can’t be held responsible for the long term , given that its future is often tragically measured in days or hours. The major source of the problem is where the real debate is needed, not only over how serious it has become, but how to confront its source and begin working to assure future survival.
While new age entrepreneurs suggest green product lines which may slow the pace of deterioration , others are demanding more substantial changes. Local groups calling for efficiency in industry and housing may not yet face the source of the systemic problem, but their proposals will ultimately involve bigger productive shifts than any establishment politician has suggested. That is, once they dig beneath the political surface, and get to the economic substance .
Renewable energy generation, a popular and sensible idea, may make for a revolutionary change , but only if connected to its much more positive use . It makes little sense to switch to windmill or geothermal powered factories that produce weapons , or solar powered sweat shops in the third world, or to use nuclear power to manufacture biodegradable products. Not only the creation, but the use of energy needs to become part of the debate.
There is conflict over whether the climate problem is exaggerated, or even exists at all except in a natural sense. But whether we believe it is man made or ultimately correctable by universe , dualistically speaking, we suffer either way . Until we confront the ever more dangerous system of production and distribution of the earth’s resources, arguing about the origins of a process destroying our future makes as little sense as debating whether death results from mass murders called wars, or mass murders called terrorism . The end result is the same.
Purifying carbon producing industries like coal and aluminum, to name only two, will mean vast social changes that may not be apparent now, but will reveal themselves as we encounter institutional forces that prevent a truly clean mode of production for all life support systems. And there is no way that so called free market capitalism works other than by turning a profit for private investors in the production and sale of incredible amounts of stuff which becomes un-recyclable garbage , and destroying even more incredible amounts of human and natural resources in the process.
Environmental degradation, whether seen as climate change, desertification, pollution or slaughtering innocent people in commercial race wars, is a foremost and primary example of the normal functioning of that process .
We can’t change the future unless we deal with the political economics of the present, and so far the climate change debate has avoided capitalism completely . While democratic power has been futile, especially regarding the horrible slaughter of Iraq, it must assert itself soon if there is to be any long term future for humanity. When we stop the war on the environment, we will end other wars as well, and probably see an improvement in all aspects of nature.
In order to affect positive change in the climate , both naturally and politically, a majority democratic force needs to counter the minority antidemocratic force of capitalism . No matter what the weather forecast may be, we will face an extremely stormy future if we don’t face that fact.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Child Arrested For "Multiplication Denial"
Anti-Defamation League Sees New Form of Jew-Hatred in Numeric Disease
Hebron
A high school student in this West Bank town has been arrested for "multiplication denial," after repeatedly insisting that a negative number multiplied by another negative number yields a negative product. A world-wide consensus of mathematicians determined long ago that two negative numbers multiplied together produces a positive product.
"It's obvious," protested the 14-year-old student, Rihab Hanafi, as she was led away in chains by Uzi-toting guards. "Multiplication magnifies; therefore two negative numbers multiplied together necessarily produces a more negative product."
Hanafi's dogmatic insistence on her own point of view, and her refusal to instantly accept the word of others, gave her away as a died-in-the-wool Denier right off the bat. "This kind of superficially plausible reasoning is characteristic of Holocaust Deniers, to which Mathematics Denial is obviously related," said Abraham Foxman, Director of the Anti-Defamation League. "But the underlying motive is obviously hatred for truth and hatred for Jews, the principal bearers of truth."
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Hanafi's antics are just the latest in a series of anti-math atrocities that are making the world a perilous place for number theorists. Last year, a Belgian neo-Nazi announced he had discovered a new whole number, which he claimed belonged between 3 and 4. He was arrested for trivializing the integers. A short time later a Palestinian detainee claimed that Israel's policy of reserving 92% of the land for the Jewish people made it mathematically impossible to achieve equality with the Palestinians. He is currently serving a life sentence for denying the decimals.
Given the growing threat to objective numerical truth, Rihab Hanafi has been placed in solitary confinement, and her website arguing her case has been removed from the world wide web. ADL officials stated yesterday that thousands of innocent victims around the world have been led astray by her multiplication deviance. The Hanafi family lawyer responded that if Enron could proceed on the basis that a negative plus a negative is a positive then there is no reason his client can't bring "creative accounting" to the multiplication tables. Israeli officials will soon charge him with numerical anti-Semitism.
Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel, reached for comment at an international conference on Peace Through Guilt, said that the negative numbers fiasco highlights the terrifying fragility of quantitative truth. "Numbers are the foundation of civilization. Once we allow them to be questioned, only disaster can ensue. If Mathematics Denial is left unchecked, buildings will fall, bridges collapse, cities grind to a halt. Just think where we would be if Einstein had deliberately miscalculated e=mc2. Hiroshima might never have become famous." Asked for an estimation of how serious the current situation is, he replied: "Today negative numbers, tomorrow the extinction of world Jewry. Never again."
A spokesman for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which has spent years tracking down Nazi war criminals that escaped Allied prosecution at Nuremberg, added his opinion that, "Denying the properties of negative numbers is no different than denying that six million Jews died in the Holocaust. Next thing you know Deniers will argue that Jesus's mother was not a virgin. We can't have that. Skepticism in any form is but a first step towards genocide against Jews."
In a surprise development, Jews are no longer alone in fighting off Denial. Political activists the world over are now finding parallels with their own struggles in the Hanafi case. Randall Berry of "No More Gays," a pro-family group, says that Procreation Deniers are his biggest challenge. "They just don't get it. We tell them over and over that same-sex relations are sterile, but they consciously lie and say that any two people who love each other ought to be left alone. How sick can they get?"
And there are many other examples, including:
Islamofascist Deniers, who argue that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is a crime. "None of them will admit that Muslim evil predates 2003," observes Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens, "and therefore is the cause of the current war."
Merit Deniers in the affirmative action movement. "It's incredible," says UC Regent Ward Connerly, "these people actually think that social conditions have something to do with one's station in life. It's some kind of bizarre mystical doctrine."
Free Market Deniers, who insist people have a right to the resources they need to live a decent life, regardless of whether they can prostitute themselves to the private owners of the economy. "The entitlement mentality is running amok," warned economist Milton Friedman just before his death.
Fetal Holocaust Deniers, who cannot get it through their thick heads that a child conceived in rape is just as precious in the eyes of God as any other. The consequences of their selfish delusions have long since reached genocidal proportions.
American Dream Deniers, who would substitute the perverse ideal of bio-diversity for the opportunity to consume without limit. What can they be thinking of?
Hebron
A high school student in this West Bank town has been arrested for "multiplication denial," after repeatedly insisting that a negative number multiplied by another negative number yields a negative product. A world-wide consensus of mathematicians determined long ago that two negative numbers multiplied together produces a positive product.
"It's obvious," protested the 14-year-old student, Rihab Hanafi, as she was led away in chains by Uzi-toting guards. "Multiplication magnifies; therefore two negative numbers multiplied together necessarily produces a more negative product."
Hanafi's dogmatic insistence on her own point of view, and her refusal to instantly accept the word of others, gave her away as a died-in-the-wool Denier right off the bat. "This kind of superficially plausible reasoning is characteristic of Holocaust Deniers, to which Mathematics Denial is obviously related," said Abraham Foxman, Director of the Anti-Defamation League. "But the underlying motive is obviously hatred for truth and hatred for Jews, the principal bearers of truth."
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Hanafi's antics are just the latest in a series of anti-math atrocities that are making the world a perilous place for number theorists. Last year, a Belgian neo-Nazi announced he had discovered a new whole number, which he claimed belonged between 3 and 4. He was arrested for trivializing the integers. A short time later a Palestinian detainee claimed that Israel's policy of reserving 92% of the land for the Jewish people made it mathematically impossible to achieve equality with the Palestinians. He is currently serving a life sentence for denying the decimals.
Given the growing threat to objective numerical truth, Rihab Hanafi has been placed in solitary confinement, and her website arguing her case has been removed from the world wide web. ADL officials stated yesterday that thousands of innocent victims around the world have been led astray by her multiplication deviance. The Hanafi family lawyer responded that if Enron could proceed on the basis that a negative plus a negative is a positive then there is no reason his client can't bring "creative accounting" to the multiplication tables. Israeli officials will soon charge him with numerical anti-Semitism.
Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel, reached for comment at an international conference on Peace Through Guilt, said that the negative numbers fiasco highlights the terrifying fragility of quantitative truth. "Numbers are the foundation of civilization. Once we allow them to be questioned, only disaster can ensue. If Mathematics Denial is left unchecked, buildings will fall, bridges collapse, cities grind to a halt. Just think where we would be if Einstein had deliberately miscalculated e=mc2. Hiroshima might never have become famous." Asked for an estimation of how serious the current situation is, he replied: "Today negative numbers, tomorrow the extinction of world Jewry. Never again."
A spokesman for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which has spent years tracking down Nazi war criminals that escaped Allied prosecution at Nuremberg, added his opinion that, "Denying the properties of negative numbers is no different than denying that six million Jews died in the Holocaust. Next thing you know Deniers will argue that Jesus's mother was not a virgin. We can't have that. Skepticism in any form is but a first step towards genocide against Jews."
In a surprise development, Jews are no longer alone in fighting off Denial. Political activists the world over are now finding parallels with their own struggles in the Hanafi case. Randall Berry of "No More Gays," a pro-family group, says that Procreation Deniers are his biggest challenge. "They just don't get it. We tell them over and over that same-sex relations are sterile, but they consciously lie and say that any two people who love each other ought to be left alone. How sick can they get?"
And there are many other examples, including:
Islamofascist Deniers, who argue that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is a crime. "None of them will admit that Muslim evil predates 2003," observes Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens, "and therefore is the cause of the current war."
Merit Deniers in the affirmative action movement. "It's incredible," says UC Regent Ward Connerly, "these people actually think that social conditions have something to do with one's station in life. It's some kind of bizarre mystical doctrine."
Free Market Deniers, who insist people have a right to the resources they need to live a decent life, regardless of whether they can prostitute themselves to the private owners of the economy. "The entitlement mentality is running amok," warned economist Milton Friedman just before his death.
Fetal Holocaust Deniers, who cannot get it through their thick heads that a child conceived in rape is just as precious in the eyes of God as any other. The consequences of their selfish delusions have long since reached genocidal proportions.
American Dream Deniers, who would substitute the perverse ideal of bio-diversity for the opportunity to consume without limit. What can they be thinking of?
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Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire," and the satire, "The Madness of King George" (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), both with Common Courage Press.
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