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?
-----------------------------------------------
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.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Liars Inc.
by Frank Scott
The atrocity in Iraq began on the basis of lies, and continues with even bigger lies. We were supposed to have invaded because it had WMDs, or its leader was a threat to the world, or it harbored the 911 attackers, or simply because the only decent thing to do for our friends in Israel was to obliterate their enemies. But the near total destruction of that nation has not satisfied the fanatic lust that motivates our policy, and so newer and bigger lies are being perpetrated about how we need to keep killing people until such time as they are able to control their own state, which we destroyed . As if this assault on collective consciousness was not enough, even more malevolent lies are being spread about another supposed threat.
Along with daily items alleging that Iran is rushing toward nuclear weaponry, none of them having any foundation in the material world, came this recent quote from the Mother Theresa of the Holocaust Industry, speaking about the Iranian president :
"When he says he wants nuclear weapons to destroy the state of Israel, I must believe him... How is it possible for the leader of a nation to say that and not to be isolated by the civilized world?''
Given the outrageous attack on logic and truth in that incredible remark, how is it possible for anyone to believe anything that Elie Weisel has ever said? This writer offers a cash reward to anyone who can find such words ever being uttered by Ahmadinejad. A further award will be made for clearly defining what The Weisel refers to as “the civilized world”. Is that the one which invaded Iraq, or is it the one resisting that invasion? Cash amount will depend on the reliability of sources and consistency of reasoning applied, in conformity with what passes for reliability and reason, in the civilized world.
The Weisel’s gift for selling fiction as fact has made him more famous than Paris Hilton. But though this particularly flagrant lie may seem beyond the usual excess in his pursuit of profit by peddling his endless suffering , it merely serves as an example of everyday product in what passes for news reporting . And when no less a renowned fabricator than Eli Weisel can add his lies to the encyclopedic number going around about Iran, and encounter hardly any criticism for telling them, we may be getting closer to another international disaster .
It isn’t just the blood lusting loonies in our government, or the crackpot Israeli supremacists who must concern us. Our major problem is that we’re being fed this steady diet of indigestible mind food, much of it poisonous, with little scrutiny of the items offered on our news menu, or the sanity and motivation of its preparers. When leaders of the opposition party carefully mince their words on foreign policy so that they will allow the president to obliterate Iran only after he gets their approval, we are looking at a pending disaster. And one that has drawn deafening silence from those who would be expected to oppose such madness.
What passes for the progressive wing of the opposition makes only the most cautious criticism of the Israeli lobby, which has for years been beating the drums for obliterating what it sees as a menace from Iran. The menace is for Israel, not the USA, which was also the case with Iraq . But the consumers of this junk food diet of fiction have been led to believe that it is actually the USA that needs protection. How many more poisonous lies do we have to swallow before we become violently ill ?
Separating truth from lies is not the job of our mass media . It is joined at the hip to our government, which is locked in a passionate embrace with corporate capital, in a perverse menage a trois that threatens to bring forth ever more mentally disabled offspring. What this unholy alliance does to our social and natural environments is matched by its endless attack on our internal system, especially our capacity to think.
The officially sanctioned opposition party uses polls and focus groups to measure the extent of public disgust with present policy in Iraq, then boldly strides forward with promises to change things, slightly, in a little while, like , after the next election. It’s general staff manipulates mass consciousness more than it has already been twisted, so that it will seem as though things will be better with a different set of gangsters directing the crime syndicate.
The only hope is that more of the citizenry is questioning not only our mass murdering regime, but its running dog opposition. Even in its rush to maintain mind control of the masses, our ruling caste encounters more difficulty every day, because there are so many anti establishment channels of information now available . While still a minority, more people are not accepting or even consulting the menu of fantasy and irrationality provided by the forces that feed us so much indigestible nonsense.
The lies will not soon stop, but critical views of the material world are available, and even with access to them still falling to only a minority, the days of getting away with the kind of murderous deceit embodied in the quote from Weisel should be numbered. Given the speed with which we seem to be poisoning our food supply and attacking the rest of our natural environment, coming to grips with the vicious distortions and lies that fill our minds may be a more urgent task than ever. Gaining control of what goes into our heads will be necessary before we can assume any kind of democratic nation, or world.
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
The atrocity in Iraq began on the basis of lies, and continues with even bigger lies. We were supposed to have invaded because it had WMDs, or its leader was a threat to the world, or it harbored the 911 attackers, or simply because the only decent thing to do for our friends in Israel was to obliterate their enemies. But the near total destruction of that nation has not satisfied the fanatic lust that motivates our policy, and so newer and bigger lies are being perpetrated about how we need to keep killing people until such time as they are able to control their own state, which we destroyed . As if this assault on collective consciousness was not enough, even more malevolent lies are being spread about another supposed threat.
Along with daily items alleging that Iran is rushing toward nuclear weaponry, none of them having any foundation in the material world, came this recent quote from the Mother Theresa of the Holocaust Industry, speaking about the Iranian president :
"When he says he wants nuclear weapons to destroy the state of Israel, I must believe him... How is it possible for the leader of a nation to say that and not to be isolated by the civilized world?''
Given the outrageous attack on logic and truth in that incredible remark, how is it possible for anyone to believe anything that Elie Weisel has ever said? This writer offers a cash reward to anyone who can find such words ever being uttered by Ahmadinejad. A further award will be made for clearly defining what The Weisel refers to as “the civilized world”. Is that the one which invaded Iraq, or is it the one resisting that invasion? Cash amount will depend on the reliability of sources and consistency of reasoning applied, in conformity with what passes for reliability and reason, in the civilized world.
The Weisel’s gift for selling fiction as fact has made him more famous than Paris Hilton. But though this particularly flagrant lie may seem beyond the usual excess in his pursuit of profit by peddling his endless suffering , it merely serves as an example of everyday product in what passes for news reporting . And when no less a renowned fabricator than Eli Weisel can add his lies to the encyclopedic number going around about Iran, and encounter hardly any criticism for telling them, we may be getting closer to another international disaster .
It isn’t just the blood lusting loonies in our government, or the crackpot Israeli supremacists who must concern us. Our major problem is that we’re being fed this steady diet of indigestible mind food, much of it poisonous, with little scrutiny of the items offered on our news menu, or the sanity and motivation of its preparers. When leaders of the opposition party carefully mince their words on foreign policy so that they will allow the president to obliterate Iran only after he gets their approval, we are looking at a pending disaster. And one that has drawn deafening silence from those who would be expected to oppose such madness.
What passes for the progressive wing of the opposition makes only the most cautious criticism of the Israeli lobby, which has for years been beating the drums for obliterating what it sees as a menace from Iran. The menace is for Israel, not the USA, which was also the case with Iraq . But the consumers of this junk food diet of fiction have been led to believe that it is actually the USA that needs protection. How many more poisonous lies do we have to swallow before we become violently ill ?
Separating truth from lies is not the job of our mass media . It is joined at the hip to our government, which is locked in a passionate embrace with corporate capital, in a perverse menage a trois that threatens to bring forth ever more mentally disabled offspring. What this unholy alliance does to our social and natural environments is matched by its endless attack on our internal system, especially our capacity to think.
The officially sanctioned opposition party uses polls and focus groups to measure the extent of public disgust with present policy in Iraq, then boldly strides forward with promises to change things, slightly, in a little while, like , after the next election. It’s general staff manipulates mass consciousness more than it has already been twisted, so that it will seem as though things will be better with a different set of gangsters directing the crime syndicate.
The only hope is that more of the citizenry is questioning not only our mass murdering regime, but its running dog opposition. Even in its rush to maintain mind control of the masses, our ruling caste encounters more difficulty every day, because there are so many anti establishment channels of information now available . While still a minority, more people are not accepting or even consulting the menu of fantasy and irrationality provided by the forces that feed us so much indigestible nonsense.
The lies will not soon stop, but critical views of the material world are available, and even with access to them still falling to only a minority, the days of getting away with the kind of murderous deceit embodied in the quote from Weisel should be numbered. Given the speed with which we seem to be poisoning our food supply and attacking the rest of our natural environment, coming to grips with the vicious distortions and lies that fill our minds may be a more urgent task than ever. Gaining control of what goes into our heads will be necessary before we can assume any kind of democratic nation, or world.
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
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Stern Gang Wrecks N.B.A. Playoffs
So much for sports taking one's mind off the relentless vulgarity of the political arena. This week saw N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern and the League's corporate executives, obsessed with what they fear is the negative image of their black-dominated sport, ruining the best playoff matchup of the year (between San Antonio and Phoenix) by suspending Phoenix's star center Amare Stoudemire, and his back-up Boris Diaw, for leaving the Phoenix bench and venturing onto the court after Robert Horry of the Spurs body-checked their teammate Steve Nash into the stands in the closing seconds of a playoff game the Spurs narrowly lost. N.B.A. rules require that players stay on the bench during any "altercation" on the court, on penalty of automatic suspension if they fail to do so. Unfortunately, this "zero tolerance" rule operates on the pretext that blacks are thuggish by nature and have to be harshly deterred from indulging their savage instincts. The N.B.A. suspends players retroactively for infractions viewed on game films that were not serious enough to capture the attention of the referees at the time they were committed, has banned Hip-Hop attire off the court, and this season increased its hyper-sensitivity in the application of technical fouls. Black men must be kept in their place.
The net result of the Stoudemire-Diaw suspension was to hand the series, and maybe the championship, to the Spurs, who may have been talented enough to win it without such help, but were far from guaranteed to do so. At the time the Horry incident occurred, the Suns were seconds removed from a stunning come-from-behind victory on San Antonio's home court, where the Spurs have been virtually unbeatable in recent years. With the series tied 2-2, there was every reason to believe it would take a nail-biting seventh game to decide the outcome, which it was in the League's best interest to have happen. But thanks to the N.B.A.'s zero intelligence rule, the Suns' hopes were immediately dashed, leaving them, the Spurs, and the fans with no way of knowing which of these outstanding teams was truly the best. This is how David Stern improves the N.B.A.'s public image?
In a telephone interview with ESPN Stern argued that Stoudemire and Diaw had only themselves to blame for their suspension, when in fact there was nothing preventing him from dumping the idiotic rule there and then. His ridiculous argument from precedent contends that because teams have previously been penalized by this arbitrary rule, therefore the Suns playoff hopes must be tossed into the trash can today. Stupid once, stupid forever. Maybe Stern should run for president.
The purpose of the stay-on-the-bench rule is obviously to prevent brawls on the court, not to to turn players into human barnacles. There is nothing inherently desirable about having players stay on the bench. In fact, some of them are peacemakers and help prevent violence during a flare-up on the court. But this matters not at all to the Stern Gang. As with so many other rules requiring "automatic" penalties, this case punished the innocent and allowed the guilty to determine the outcome of the series with a dirty play. The Suns' brilliant come-from-behind victory got almost no attention, the subsequent game was essentially forfeited to the Spurs, and the final game ended the series before the seventh game most people expected and the Suns very probably earned.
Yes, Stoudemire and Diaw knew the rule in advance and are responsible for getting caught up in the emotion of seeing their teammate manhandled by Horry. But that is exactly the point. Human beings are not machines, but creatures of emotion, and when core emotions are stimulated it is reflex that takes over. There is no more wisdom in requiring players to stay on the bench when a teammate is being physically abused than there is in requiring a parent to stay at work when their child is sick. Decent people will always run to the aid of one of their own, and it is foolish to penalize them for doing so.
The N.B.A.'s "automatic" suspension rule, like "zero tolerance" and "three strikes" in education and crime policy, is a walking advertisement of the stupidity of leaders who lack the wisdom for proper exercise of discretion, which neither can nor should be eliminated. There is not the slightest evidence that Stoudemire or Diaw intended any harm by leaving the bench, nor did they in fact commit any. This would have counted very much in their favor if the Stern Gang hadn't been already convinced justice can best be delivered by machine.
In the classic formulation of the officious bureaucrat who does not care what disastrous consequences follow from applying the rules, so long as they are uniformly enforced, N.B.A. Vice-President Stu Jackson conceded that the decision might not have been just, but was nevertheless "correct," a "no-brainer" in fact, which might even be a fair assessment, since the rule absolves Stern and Jackson of any responsibility to have or use brains. Both argue strictly from precedent: because the rule has ruined playoffs before, it must do so again. So let's bring back the Dred Scott decision in fairness to all the slaves who never had a day of freedom on this earth and were entitled to expect similar treatment for all their brethren down through the generations. Fair is fair.
Sadly, the Spurs' Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan dismissed suggestions that their victory was tainted, although it surely was, a fact implied by Horry himself earlier in the series. Steve Nash was forced to sit out for nearly the entire final minute of a razor close game due to a gash on his nose that would not stop bleeding. After the Spurs won, Horry conceded that Nash's brief absence while the game was being decided was a shame, that in fact it was always a shame when the best players were not on the court to insure that the best team won. But days later, when not chance, but League policy, was handing the Spurs a far less deserved victory, his teammates made no similar declaration, though one was badly needed. Instead, they mouthed platitudes about the suspensions being a "League matter" that affected the team in no essential way. In fact, Manu Ginobili went so far as to say that the Spurs were just as happy with their victory over the depleted Suns team as they would have been had they won with Stoudemire in the game, which is a sad commentary on the Spurs' competitive spirit, unless Ginobili was simply delivering a David Stern sound bite.
Even Stoudemire, who earlier in the series had called the Spurs a "dirty team" for kicking and kneeing their opponents, dismissed the affair as nothing more than a bad break. It is sad to witness people of enormous talent and wealth reduced to mouthing slogans that explain nothing and avoid the need to make an explicit value judgment. Only Steve Nash did so, saying he was "disgusted" with the League's decision and calling the rule "stupid." Exactly right.
Whether in sports or in society at large, non-discretionary enforcement policy is a foolish abdication of responsibility. Bad rules and bad laws should not be mechanically enforced, but overturned in favor of intelligent regulations. Had Stoudemire and Diaw left the bench to belt one of the Spurs players, their suspensions would have been justified. But the suspensions handed down by Stern were about as sensible as curing a headache by decapitation. Sure, it works, but the cure is far worse than the disease.
And in this case the only headache was the rule itself.
The net result of the Stoudemire-Diaw suspension was to hand the series, and maybe the championship, to the Spurs, who may have been talented enough to win it without such help, but were far from guaranteed to do so. At the time the Horry incident occurred, the Suns were seconds removed from a stunning come-from-behind victory on San Antonio's home court, where the Spurs have been virtually unbeatable in recent years. With the series tied 2-2, there was every reason to believe it would take a nail-biting seventh game to decide the outcome, which it was in the League's best interest to have happen. But thanks to the N.B.A.'s zero intelligence rule, the Suns' hopes were immediately dashed, leaving them, the Spurs, and the fans with no way of knowing which of these outstanding teams was truly the best. This is how David Stern improves the N.B.A.'s public image?
In a telephone interview with ESPN Stern argued that Stoudemire and Diaw had only themselves to blame for their suspension, when in fact there was nothing preventing him from dumping the idiotic rule there and then. His ridiculous argument from precedent contends that because teams have previously been penalized by this arbitrary rule, therefore the Suns playoff hopes must be tossed into the trash can today. Stupid once, stupid forever. Maybe Stern should run for president.
The purpose of the stay-on-the-bench rule is obviously to prevent brawls on the court, not to to turn players into human barnacles. There is nothing inherently desirable about having players stay on the bench. In fact, some of them are peacemakers and help prevent violence during a flare-up on the court. But this matters not at all to the Stern Gang. As with so many other rules requiring "automatic" penalties, this case punished the innocent and allowed the guilty to determine the outcome of the series with a dirty play. The Suns' brilliant come-from-behind victory got almost no attention, the subsequent game was essentially forfeited to the Spurs, and the final game ended the series before the seventh game most people expected and the Suns very probably earned.
Yes, Stoudemire and Diaw knew the rule in advance and are responsible for getting caught up in the emotion of seeing their teammate manhandled by Horry. But that is exactly the point. Human beings are not machines, but creatures of emotion, and when core emotions are stimulated it is reflex that takes over. There is no more wisdom in requiring players to stay on the bench when a teammate is being physically abused than there is in requiring a parent to stay at work when their child is sick. Decent people will always run to the aid of one of their own, and it is foolish to penalize them for doing so.
The N.B.A.'s "automatic" suspension rule, like "zero tolerance" and "three strikes" in education and crime policy, is a walking advertisement of the stupidity of leaders who lack the wisdom for proper exercise of discretion, which neither can nor should be eliminated. There is not the slightest evidence that Stoudemire or Diaw intended any harm by leaving the bench, nor did they in fact commit any. This would have counted very much in their favor if the Stern Gang hadn't been already convinced justice can best be delivered by machine.
In the classic formulation of the officious bureaucrat who does not care what disastrous consequences follow from applying the rules, so long as they are uniformly enforced, N.B.A. Vice-President Stu Jackson conceded that the decision might not have been just, but was nevertheless "correct," a "no-brainer" in fact, which might even be a fair assessment, since the rule absolves Stern and Jackson of any responsibility to have or use brains. Both argue strictly from precedent: because the rule has ruined playoffs before, it must do so again. So let's bring back the Dred Scott decision in fairness to all the slaves who never had a day of freedom on this earth and were entitled to expect similar treatment for all their brethren down through the generations. Fair is fair.
Sadly, the Spurs' Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan dismissed suggestions that their victory was tainted, although it surely was, a fact implied by Horry himself earlier in the series. Steve Nash was forced to sit out for nearly the entire final minute of a razor close game due to a gash on his nose that would not stop bleeding. After the Spurs won, Horry conceded that Nash's brief absence while the game was being decided was a shame, that in fact it was always a shame when the best players were not on the court to insure that the best team won. But days later, when not chance, but League policy, was handing the Spurs a far less deserved victory, his teammates made no similar declaration, though one was badly needed. Instead, they mouthed platitudes about the suspensions being a "League matter" that affected the team in no essential way. In fact, Manu Ginobili went so far as to say that the Spurs were just as happy with their victory over the depleted Suns team as they would have been had they won with Stoudemire in the game, which is a sad commentary on the Spurs' competitive spirit, unless Ginobili was simply delivering a David Stern sound bite.
Even Stoudemire, who earlier in the series had called the Spurs a "dirty team" for kicking and kneeing their opponents, dismissed the affair as nothing more than a bad break. It is sad to witness people of enormous talent and wealth reduced to mouthing slogans that explain nothing and avoid the need to make an explicit value judgment. Only Steve Nash did so, saying he was "disgusted" with the League's decision and calling the rule "stupid." Exactly right.
Whether in sports or in society at large, non-discretionary enforcement policy is a foolish abdication of responsibility. Bad rules and bad laws should not be mechanically enforced, but overturned in favor of intelligent regulations. Had Stoudemire and Diaw left the bench to belt one of the Spurs players, their suspensions would have been justified. But the suspensions handed down by Stern were about as sensible as curing a headache by decapitation. Sure, it works, but the cure is far worse than the disease.
And in this case the only headache was the rule itself.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Israel: The Twisted Dream Turns 59
Ordinarily it is not necessary to belabor the point that apartheid leaves much to be desired as a social system, but when the topic is Israel, lunatic assertions are staple fare, so that the ongoing Bantustanization of Palestine is regularly proclaimed to be the product of the Middle East's sole democracy. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
However one evaluates arguments about gas chambers and the Holocaust, the fact remains that Zionist efforts to remove the Palestinian Arabs from their land long predates Hitler's rise as a historical figure. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson's King-Crane Commission reported back from the region that, "No British officer consulted by the Commissioners believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms . . . only a greatly reduced Zionist program should be attempted . . . and then only very gradually initiated." The Commissioners called for a serious modification of existing plans for unlimited Jewish immigration culminating in Jewish statehood. Regarding Britain's 1917 Balfour Declaration, which had promised the Jews a home in Palestine, King and Crane wrote: "A national home is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish state nor can the erection of such a Jewish state be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities." At the time, "existing non-Jewish communities" were Christian and Muslim Arabs constituting 93% of Palestine's population.
During the course of the King-Crane Commission's inquiry, Jewish representatives had not concealed their ultimate hope of dispossessing the Arab inhabitants of Palestine by various forms of purchase, in spite of the fact that ninety percent of the latter were completely against surrendering their land to the Zionist project. "To subject the people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land would be a gross violation" of Wilsonian principle, the Commissioners wrote, "and of the people's rights, though it be kept within the forms of law." Leaving aside the dubious equation of Wilsonian principle with self-determination, it is safe to say that overriding a 93% indigenous majority with whatever forms of pressure can hardly be described as an exercise in democracy.
Sadly, the gross violation the Commissioners warned against occurred, and Israel was founded, but commentary in the U.S. has almost completely ignored the peculiar history behind the event. To wit: a largely irreligious people reclaimed land after an absence of two thousand years based on fantastical Biblical texts few of them believed in; Jehovah's carvings on a Tablet in the Bronze Age became the basis of Near East politics in the 20th Century; a "Jews-only" state bent on conquest and expansion was hailed as a model of democratic socialism with unique sensitivity to morality and human rights. Displaying amazing chutzpah, Zionist leaders embarked on an "in-gathering" of the Jewish Diaspora and plotted the exodus of Jews from lands they had lived in for centuries while intoning the words Hitler had used in carrying out the Holocaust: "You are not a German, you are a Jew - you are not a Frenchman, you are a Jew - you are not a Belgian, you are a Jew."
Reports that the Nazis lost WWII are greatly exaggerated.
The heart of the problem was and remains a serious and deliberate confusion of nationalism with religion. Organized Jewry, a staunch supporter of separation of Church and State outside the Holy Land, condoned their union in Israel, demanding the loyalty of Jews everywhere, whether or not they identified themselves as such. Diasporan Jews supported Israel out of religious duty, though they may or may not have been aware of what Zionist ideology actually entailed. Jewish identity became the basis of Israeli citizenship, with political debate naturally centering on the vexing question, "What is a Jew?" Since Jews, like most people, have a mixed ancestry, Jewish supremacist mythmakers buttressed weak territorial claims with appeals to historical continuity, blurring distinctions between Hebrew, Israelite, Judean, Jewish, and Judaism, while forestalling recognition that these were different people at different times in history with different ways of life. Neither the Jews nor these varied forebears ever constituted a race or even a distinctive pure ethnic grouping, and since Judaism had been of declining significance for most Jews for some time, it quickly became clear that Jewish identity was to be as arbitrary as it was convenient for Israel to have it. Not surprisingly, only Palestinians can't belong.
Inevitably, Israel's birth was traumatic. In November 1947, a Washington-dominated U.N. passed a resolution awarding over 56% of the land of Palestine to 650,000 Jews, who represented just a third of the population and owned some 6% of the land. Britain, its empire near collapse, began withdrawing from its colonies the following Spring when its mandate over Palestine expired. As the British pulled out, Zionist armies attacked Arab villages, driving out roughly three-quarters of a million Palestinians in the process of forging a Jewish state with a sizable Arab minority, the latter forced to choose between exile and perpetual discrimination.
The fundamental injustice in the new state was rooted in the divorce of citizenship from territoriality. Jews around the world had rights in the Jewish state, but there could be nothing like full human rights for non-Jews and only the most limited progress towards a just society. The Jewish National Fund purchased lands on behalf of the Jewish people, from which non-Jews were necessarily excluded. According to official Israeli figures 92% of the state's surface prior to June, 1967 was restricted to Jewish use - in perpetuity. Palestinians had no claim on the land they had tilled for centuries.
Israel acted to guarantee a permanent Jewish majority while establishing the exclusivist institutions that statist Zionism called for. A huge effort was made to attract the Jewish Diaspora to Israel, while expelling as many Arabs as possible. Jews were ceaselessly reminded of the dangers of anti-Semitism and the hopelessness of assimilation. At the same time, and long before Menachem Begin and the Likud bloc took power, Israel's Labor Party gradually incorporated a supranationalist "Greater Israel" movement into its program, preaching expulsion to the Arabs, fear to Diasporan Jews, and reflexively accusing anti-Zionist Gentiles of anti-Semitism.
The Zionist triumph placed a borderless Jewish island in a sea of angry Arabs. Expansionism and new frontiers were its by-products, and war was quite inevitable.
In the fifty-nine years since Israel came into existence as a Jewish state it has not only taken hold of the land but also the structure of opinion and commentary in the West, in such a way that the Palestinians have been quite literally obliterated as a people with any claim to rights or historical continuity. At the same time, the history of Israel that has produced this appalling result has likewise been obliterated, especially in the United States. It is nearly impossible to find mainstream commentary referring to Israel's assassinating leaders at will, bulldozing homes, closing schools, uprooting orchards, arresting, deporting, and torturing anyone posing a "threat" to "security" (read Jewish supremacy), and locking an entire people in a giant, outdoor cage. On the contrary. Everything is carefully filtered through the lens of "little Israel," victim of eternal anti-Semitism, in which Palestinians are congenital terrorists yearning to kill Jews, especially children. The fact that Israel introduced terrorism against civilians to the region, that it originated in conquest, that it has repeatedly invaded and occupied its neighbors, and was instrumental in instigating the blood-drenched disaster in Iraq, never rises to perceptibility in the U.S. media or in American political discourse. In the official optic Israel bears no responsibility for "Islamic terror," and is, in fact the victim of the peoples it occupies and kills.
Every media comment about Hamas or Hizbollah or Iran invokes a cartoon-like fantasy of total despotism, infantile rage, and savage violence, all targeted at "us," the good people who save Jews from gas chambers and otherwise pursue our charmingly harmless lives in a world devoid of illegitimate authority and oppression. Never is there the slightest hint that "militant Islam" caused us absolutely no harm until Washington backed Jewish supremacy over Arab lands, overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran (1953), planted permanent military bases near the holiest sites of Islam, and murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children with economic sanctions. And all this was before the neo-cons engineered the invasion and dismemberment of Iraq.
Fifty-nine years on it is more than time to recognize that "little Israel" is a permanent disaster fully capable of ringing down the curtain on the entire human race. Racist, nuclear armed, violently delusional, it seeks in the name of "security" to destroy any and all resistance to Jewish domination. Though success on these terms is impossible, the attempt to succeed will surely yield unprecedented horrors.
If we let it.
However one evaluates arguments about gas chambers and the Holocaust, the fact remains that Zionist efforts to remove the Palestinian Arabs from their land long predates Hitler's rise as a historical figure. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson's King-Crane Commission reported back from the region that, "No British officer consulted by the Commissioners believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms . . . only a greatly reduced Zionist program should be attempted . . . and then only very gradually initiated." The Commissioners called for a serious modification of existing plans for unlimited Jewish immigration culminating in Jewish statehood. Regarding Britain's 1917 Balfour Declaration, which had promised the Jews a home in Palestine, King and Crane wrote: "A national home is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish state nor can the erection of such a Jewish state be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities." At the time, "existing non-Jewish communities" were Christian and Muslim Arabs constituting 93% of Palestine's population.
During the course of the King-Crane Commission's inquiry, Jewish representatives had not concealed their ultimate hope of dispossessing the Arab inhabitants of Palestine by various forms of purchase, in spite of the fact that ninety percent of the latter were completely against surrendering their land to the Zionist project. "To subject the people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land would be a gross violation" of Wilsonian principle, the Commissioners wrote, "and of the people's rights, though it be kept within the forms of law." Leaving aside the dubious equation of Wilsonian principle with self-determination, it is safe to say that overriding a 93% indigenous majority with whatever forms of pressure can hardly be described as an exercise in democracy.
Sadly, the gross violation the Commissioners warned against occurred, and Israel was founded, but commentary in the U.S. has almost completely ignored the peculiar history behind the event. To wit: a largely irreligious people reclaimed land after an absence of two thousand years based on fantastical Biblical texts few of them believed in; Jehovah's carvings on a Tablet in the Bronze Age became the basis of Near East politics in the 20th Century; a "Jews-only" state bent on conquest and expansion was hailed as a model of democratic socialism with unique sensitivity to morality and human rights. Displaying amazing chutzpah, Zionist leaders embarked on an "in-gathering" of the Jewish Diaspora and plotted the exodus of Jews from lands they had lived in for centuries while intoning the words Hitler had used in carrying out the Holocaust: "You are not a German, you are a Jew - you are not a Frenchman, you are a Jew - you are not a Belgian, you are a Jew."
Reports that the Nazis lost WWII are greatly exaggerated.
The heart of the problem was and remains a serious and deliberate confusion of nationalism with religion. Organized Jewry, a staunch supporter of separation of Church and State outside the Holy Land, condoned their union in Israel, demanding the loyalty of Jews everywhere, whether or not they identified themselves as such. Diasporan Jews supported Israel out of religious duty, though they may or may not have been aware of what Zionist ideology actually entailed. Jewish identity became the basis of Israeli citizenship, with political debate naturally centering on the vexing question, "What is a Jew?" Since Jews, like most people, have a mixed ancestry, Jewish supremacist mythmakers buttressed weak territorial claims with appeals to historical continuity, blurring distinctions between Hebrew, Israelite, Judean, Jewish, and Judaism, while forestalling recognition that these were different people at different times in history with different ways of life. Neither the Jews nor these varied forebears ever constituted a race or even a distinctive pure ethnic grouping, and since Judaism had been of declining significance for most Jews for some time, it quickly became clear that Jewish identity was to be as arbitrary as it was convenient for Israel to have it. Not surprisingly, only Palestinians can't belong.
Inevitably, Israel's birth was traumatic. In November 1947, a Washington-dominated U.N. passed a resolution awarding over 56% of the land of Palestine to 650,000 Jews, who represented just a third of the population and owned some 6% of the land. Britain, its empire near collapse, began withdrawing from its colonies the following Spring when its mandate over Palestine expired. As the British pulled out, Zionist armies attacked Arab villages, driving out roughly three-quarters of a million Palestinians in the process of forging a Jewish state with a sizable Arab minority, the latter forced to choose between exile and perpetual discrimination.
The fundamental injustice in the new state was rooted in the divorce of citizenship from territoriality. Jews around the world had rights in the Jewish state, but there could be nothing like full human rights for non-Jews and only the most limited progress towards a just society. The Jewish National Fund purchased lands on behalf of the Jewish people, from which non-Jews were necessarily excluded. According to official Israeli figures 92% of the state's surface prior to June, 1967 was restricted to Jewish use - in perpetuity. Palestinians had no claim on the land they had tilled for centuries.
Israel acted to guarantee a permanent Jewish majority while establishing the exclusivist institutions that statist Zionism called for. A huge effort was made to attract the Jewish Diaspora to Israel, while expelling as many Arabs as possible. Jews were ceaselessly reminded of the dangers of anti-Semitism and the hopelessness of assimilation. At the same time, and long before Menachem Begin and the Likud bloc took power, Israel's Labor Party gradually incorporated a supranationalist "Greater Israel" movement into its program, preaching expulsion to the Arabs, fear to Diasporan Jews, and reflexively accusing anti-Zionist Gentiles of anti-Semitism.
The Zionist triumph placed a borderless Jewish island in a sea of angry Arabs. Expansionism and new frontiers were its by-products, and war was quite inevitable.
In the fifty-nine years since Israel came into existence as a Jewish state it has not only taken hold of the land but also the structure of opinion and commentary in the West, in such a way that the Palestinians have been quite literally obliterated as a people with any claim to rights or historical continuity. At the same time, the history of Israel that has produced this appalling result has likewise been obliterated, especially in the United States. It is nearly impossible to find mainstream commentary referring to Israel's assassinating leaders at will, bulldozing homes, closing schools, uprooting orchards, arresting, deporting, and torturing anyone posing a "threat" to "security" (read Jewish supremacy), and locking an entire people in a giant, outdoor cage. On the contrary. Everything is carefully filtered through the lens of "little Israel," victim of eternal anti-Semitism, in which Palestinians are congenital terrorists yearning to kill Jews, especially children. The fact that Israel introduced terrorism against civilians to the region, that it originated in conquest, that it has repeatedly invaded and occupied its neighbors, and was instrumental in instigating the blood-drenched disaster in Iraq, never rises to perceptibility in the U.S. media or in American political discourse. In the official optic Israel bears no responsibility for "Islamic terror," and is, in fact the victim of the peoples it occupies and kills.
Every media comment about Hamas or Hizbollah or Iran invokes a cartoon-like fantasy of total despotism, infantile rage, and savage violence, all targeted at "us," the good people who save Jews from gas chambers and otherwise pursue our charmingly harmless lives in a world devoid of illegitimate authority and oppression. Never is there the slightest hint that "militant Islam" caused us absolutely no harm until Washington backed Jewish supremacy over Arab lands, overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran (1953), planted permanent military bases near the holiest sites of Islam, and murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children with economic sanctions. And all this was before the neo-cons engineered the invasion and dismemberment of Iraq.
Fifty-nine years on it is more than time to recognize that "little Israel" is a permanent disaster fully capable of ringing down the curtain on the entire human race. Racist, nuclear armed, violently delusional, it seeks in the name of "security" to destroy any and all resistance to Jewish domination. Though success on these terms is impossible, the attempt to succeed will surely yield unprecedented horrors.
If we let it.
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