Aesopian media and the Pollard-Dreyfus Affair

Somebody may think that either my paranoia grows or I am becoming too painfully nostalgic about the Soviet Union. You can decide whether it is either, both, or something else entirely. Here is the preamble to the story.

It's no news that in the Soviet Union a writer would seldom attempt to publish anything openly against the regime in the open media. It would be unreasonable: the media was completely state-controlled. Nothing would be published, but the writer would be ruined. Those who could not take it anymore had three options. The easiest was to write "into the desk", with no hope for that to be published. Another was to try to somehow publish a disloyal piece abroad. That was difficult: one had to have means of transporting the manuscript.  Contacts with a foreigner who could potentially take the manuscript out of the country were risky for both him and the writer. The writer had to be well known indeed for such an attempt to justify the effort and risk, which was exceedingly seldom. Smuggling out and publishing an openly critical piece abroad could end the writer's career in the USSR. Exile abroad would then be the best outcome, but not necessarily so good for the writer whose main audience and perhaps livelihood would be left behind. Samizdat and Tamizdat did help in keeping such a publication from being self-defeating, but not entirely: very few people had access to either. Also, one had to, again, be famous enough to be exiled rather than imprisoned or subjected to "psychiatric" treatment and forgotten, if not simply killed by the KGB. The other possibility, especially for well established authors, was to use the so-called Aesopian language or some such subterfuge that formally was not an overt anti-Soviet offense. Those works would be published in some journal targeting mostly intelligentsia, both because nobody else could understand the complexities of the writer's thinking, metaphors and allusions, and because, to do its job, intelligentsia needed some valve to let out steam that accumulated in any sentient being in a totalitarian state. This would both flatter the said stratum of the socialist society and give it an illusion of freedom and a pleasant feeling of being in opposition, but safe. "Кролики и удавы" (Rabbits and Boa Constrictors) by Fazil Iskander comes to mind, published in the journal "Юность" (Youth), one of such safety-valve journals. It was, however, 1988 already, perestroika, when the moribund trinity of the Party, State, and KGB was hardly trying to maintain what was left of the Communist anti-utopia. It had been published in 1982 in America, probably after sitting for some time in Iskander's desk, but being truly an Aesopian allegory perhaps did not qualify as an openly "anti-Soviet propaganda" to criminally persecute the well-known author.

Why, one might ask, am I rehashing the Soviet experience? Definitely not nostalgically. One reason is that The New York Times published a book review today with a sentence in it exactly like those you could see in one of such journals. A single sentence. The book is about Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus, a French army captain and a Jew, was in 1894 wrongfully accused of treason, dishonored and imprisoned on Devil's Island, a penal colony where most of the prisoners died of diseases and hardship. I have not read the book and do not know whether it discusses one of the outcomes of the Dreyfus Affair - Theodor Herzl's understanding that Jews needed a state of their own to survive. The review does not mention that. What it does mention in that one sentence is that Dreyfus's "prosecutors claimed, as more recent governments have done, that national security forbade them to reveal secret evidence that would have been decisive if known, and he was convicted all over again." This vague "more recent governments" begs the question which ones. And about whom and what - it seems unlikely that it's still about the Dreyfus Affair. And why not respond to these obvious questions right there, in the review. All that seems to be left to anybody's guess.

In the Soviet Union, it would be for intelligentsia to read between the lines, admiring the courage of the writer who managed to get a "seditious" statement through censorship unnoticed and unmolested. Intelligentsia was supposed to critically evaluate the actions of the government - emphasis on "critically". I am not certain if there is a similar, however vaguely defined, wide social group here in the US. People of the so-called intellectual occupations here tend to unquestioningly support the Democratic Party, hence the respective governments, and frequently focus on non-political matters otherwise. The uncritical loyalty to the Party, combined with hatred toward anything perceived to be "the other", is sometimes terrifying. Politically, their general orientation is overwhelmingly to the left, which is alike that for "intellectuals" in the pre-Bolshevik Russia, but rather unlike that in the post-Lenin/Stalin Russia. Those who lived there have already been to where the left direction takes the nations. In fact, the demagoguery that the Party employs is also often reminiscent of the pre-revolutionary Russian left's: Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader (the one who has been satisfied that Obama is "light-skinned" and has "no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one"), freely injects in his speeches the classic Communist class struggle language - "rich and powerful" vs. "the masses".

Being on the left calls for supporting everybody "poor" against the "rich", which includes "Palestinians" against Israel. It does not matter why they are poor, and whether they are even really poor. Inasmuch as Israel is capitalist, rich and powerful, she is the predator and the Arabs are the prey to care about or, rather, to feel good about caring. Israel is at fault regardless of history, facts and logic - unsurprisingly, just like the Jews... I was going to say, "used to be", but not really. It's quite easy to see, without invoking Occam's Razor, that "Israel" is a useful substitute for "Jews" in this modern progressive climate. Not only "Israel" makes antisemitism "legitimate", it allows full participation in Jew-bashing for the self-hating left-leaning Jews without the need to join the Communist Party, as they had to before. To be sure, atheism, particularly anti-Judaism, usually remains de rigeur, as it was with Communists.

Hatred for Israel, the cover for antisemitism, is where the left and the right converge, like Chomsky and Jim "f... the Jews" Baker. You still wonder whom the "more recent governments" treated about as horribly as the French did Dreyfus? I hope it will not be a surprise that the name I read between the lines is Jonathan Pollard. An Israeli spy who stole for Israel secrets from the US Navy Intelligence for which he worked. Neither the author of the review nor I are first to draw this comparison. An article did that in 1991. Yes, there is a difference: Dreyfus was absolutely innocent, but Pollard did indeed engage in espionage. There is, however, another difference: in contrast to Dreyfus, who did have a trial, however unfair, Pollard was never tried. He pleaded guilty in passing information to an ally with no intent to harm the US. The US government horribly violated that plea agreement. Dreyfus had been accused of treason - Pollard never was. Dreyfus had been accused in spying for an enemy - Pollard spied for a friend, after its friend refused to give Israel information it was entitled to. Israel was not being informed of Iraq's poison gas supplies. When Pollard asked why, the response was, "Jews are too sensitive to gas." 

Zola's letter helped to liberate Dreyfus, but no author, including juridical celebrities like Dershowitz, has been able to do anything for Pollard - the US republic seems to be less sensitive to protestations than the French democracy. People of conscience in the whole world, including Russia, commiserated with Dreyfus, but nobody hears about Pollard, forgotten as are other Jews in captivity (Gilad Shalit's name was hardly mentioned when the Gazans' culinary "sufferings" were recently lamented by the world community). No other spy caught at working for an ally in the US has ever got anything close to Pollard's life in prison - many of those who spied for enemies received shorter sentences and more lenient treatment. 

Pollard's imprisonment was the result of an event identical to what had happened during Stalin's purges: Pollard was buried by the fiat of the Politburo, namely Caspar Weinberger, a true criminal, whose secret memorandum was the only grounds for that. Nobody still knows what was in it - for the "reasons of national security", just like with Dreyfus. The promise of freedom for Pollard has served the Clinton government to extort concessions from Israel that were harmful to her - the promise, on which the US again reneged, like it did on other promises to Israel (e.g., understandings between Sharon and Bush that, according to the current openly anti-Israel Obama government, never happened). Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Williams famously wrote his dissent about "a fundamental miscarriage of justice" in Pollard's case. It seems, however, that no justice was carried at all nor is expected to be. The meek Soviet-like hints at the continuing injustice is the only thing the mainstream "intelligentsia" media is apparently capable of. In the Soviet Union, such hints were bravery. In America, they are closer to disgrace.

Geese and the Muslim civilization

An interesting film has made its way into the Uncharted Forest. Titled 1001 Inventions, it features "Oscar-winning actor Sir Ben Kingsley". Copyrighted and bearing a "Not for reproduction" sign, it is reposted many times on YouTube with the titles like "THE BEST THING WEST DO ABOUT ISLAM" (sic). It does indeed come from the West, namely from the UK, from "a global educational initiative that promotes awareness of a thousand years of scientific and cultural achievements from Muslim civilisation from the 7th century onwards, and how those contributions helped build the foundations of our modern world." It is made in collaboration with the British "Jameel Foundation", which can be traced to an apparently Saudi gentleman, Abdul Latif Jameel, about whom "HRH Prince Saud ben Abdul Muhsin" said, "My friend, Engineer Mohammed Jameel, is considered a first-class community servant." The servant may be not that upstanding though, because his business has been monitored by the Saudi authorities "to trace whether they were being used, possibly unwittingly, to siphon money to terrorist groups". An English court in 2002 judged the Wall Street Journal report about that to be a defamation and awarded damages to Mr. Jameel, but that decision was later annulled by a higher court.

The film is made in the traditions of Harry Potter and National Treasure, with magic and ghosts of ancient inventors in turbans, and fairy-tale-like soundtrack. Whiffs of smoke containing drafts of things like airplanes and space shuttles appear in the air, giving an impression that they were thought about by the Muslim Leonardos. It sounds like we owe so much to the "Muslim civilisation".

With all the effects, however, it sounds about as convincing as the Soviet propaganda about how everything was first invented in Russia. But, with all the effects, it is much more pathetic than the Soviet propaganda. First, regardless of whether all the content is factually true, it is uncertain whether you can ascribe all these ancient inventions to the "Muslim civilization", or whether Islam had anything to do with those inventions, like, for instance, Judaism had to do with the "Jewish" discoveries, because of the spirit of intellectual inquiry and the value of education in the Jewish culture. Related to that, not all the famous ibn's and Abu's of that civilization were Muslim, even though they lived in the countries conquered by the Muslims. And not all Muslims associated with a discovery necessarily made it. Another difference is that at least the Soviets made their propaganda themselves for themselves. Here, the film  borrows a Western school setting - imaginary Western at that, a la Harry Potter's Hogwarts school, with a British actor suddenly turning into somebody donning a fairy-tale "Islamic" garb (is he possessed by some incubus - and why does he disappear at the end instead of just turning back into a British librarian?), to reveal the facts known from the Western history books - to what exactly audience? Is this part of the concerted and desperate effort to make Muslims feel good about themselves - the task that is assigned now even to NASA? Is it in hope that, reassured in this manner in their worthiness, Muslims will stop thinking about their more traditional means of reassuring themselves - by jihad, murder, terror and conquest? It was not by gentle persuasion and awe of the Muslim "1001 inventions" that "For a thousand years, Muslim civilisation stretched from southern Spain as far as China", as the website puts it.

The film originates from the exhibition in the British Museum, and "was created by the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation  (FSTC), a British based non-profit, non-religious and academic organization. Working with world’s leading academics, 1001 Inventions engages with the public through educational media and interactive global exhibitions, in order to highlight the shared cultural and technological inheritance of humanity." Not much about humanity in that film - none but the Muslim religion is mentioned, although the website gives a brief nod to "highlight the scientific and technological achievements made by men and women, of different faiths and cultures that lived in Muslim civilization".

The most pathetic thing about this, however, is the very fact that to prove their worth (to whom?), Muslims or their enthusiastic British fans cannot appeal to anything but "their" achievements of many centuries ago. In a fable, geese who did not want to become a meal argued that because their ancestors had saved Rome they were exempt. The argument did not work for the geese, if you are unfamiliar with the fable. The Islamic culture of today has so far brought into the world medieval mentality, mass murder, barbaric executions of innocents, female genital mutilation and enslavement, global blackmail and suppression of free speech, wars, rebirth of genocidal antisemitism and other similar achievements that no feel-good 1001 Inventions film or NASA Muslim outreach can fix - neither to convince Westerners nor to mollify the jihadis. The 1001 Nights was at least fun to read.

An obscure folio, evolution, and Islam

Rabbi Hillel first introduced the Golden Rule - in its negative and feasible form, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow" (Jesus, many years later, reportedly put the rule in its positive form). R. Hillel considered this main rule of social behavior to be as important as to summarize the entirety of the Torah. He also famously said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" (Pirke Avot, 1:14). As befits a true genius, these sayings have universal applicability. That is probably why they also apply to the half-selfish topic of this entry. It concerns a monograph, The Science, Treatment, and Prevention of Antisocial Behaviors (Vol. 2), published six years ago. The monograph is not advertised - there is not even an editorial review on Amazon.com (and it was not originally sold there) - because, as the publisher once explained to me, the book does not target general audience but is intended for policy makers, experts, etc. I am not sure whether this is the best policy even for the alleged target audience. The book ranks 3,163,794 in Amazon.com sales, which likely means that it sells less than one copy a year - and there should definitely be more interested  experts than that.

How do I know? Why should I worry? And how R. Hillel's maxims are relevant? It is obvious that antisociality contradicts the Golden Rule. As for Hillel's triad, I contributed a chapter to that book, and it's about time another couple of people found out about it. Admittedly, it is not popular science, but it is not a trigonometry textbook either, and some information in it may be of interest to an educated reader. 

The chapter (Chapter 4) has a vague, or rather too generic, title, Evolution, Genes, and Environment - Neurobiological Outcomes. It does deal, however briefly, with all these areas as pertains to antisocial behavior. What the title does not immediately reflect, however, is one of the sections, which is germane to the general direction of this blog. The section is titled Logic of Suicide, Mass Murder, and Altruism. In addition to the general issues relating evolution to these titular phenomena (it is not straightforward and requires some discourse, for instance, how suicide can be "beneficial" from the evolutionary standpoint), it includes a discussion of Muslim "martyrdom". The discussion addresses the role of the uniquely human function of the human brain, metaphoric thinking, truly amalgamated in the Muslim tradition with reality, in simulating reproductive benefits in the acts of self-destruction. Considering that this amalgamation results in the suspension of the powerful self-preservation instinct in shahids, the murderous "martyrs", it is not surprising that regular human sympathies are suspended as well. That point is highlighted by the scarcely noted in the media but telling story of how schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia were forced to die in fire by the "religious" police: the girls were pushed back into their burning school because they did not have a chance to put on their abayas, black robes worn over dresses. The text explains sex differences in suicidal terrorism and the mechanisms of xenophobic indoctrination. It compares the eusocial behavior of Hymenoptera insects (such as bees) and the boundaries of altruism in humans, relaxed to malignancy by both Islamic metaphors and material gains of the families of suicidal murderers. Some attention is paid to the contribution of the media in poisoning the information space with lethal misinformation that cannot in principle be remedied by truth even if it were to follow, which it seldom does. 

Despite the rather grim picture arising from this discussion, the conclusion is cautiously positive: "the history of cultural evolution leaves some hopes for the future of sociality. In particular, one of the trends that has expressed itself in the religious codes corresponds to the extension of inclusive fitness to the group, tribe, state and alliance levels. Torah in Leviticus (19:18) commands, “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; I am the Lord”—the word “neighbor” covers all humans (Hertz, 1980). The same metaphor that allows inclusive fitness [the summary effect of all factors that promote or hinder reproduction of the individual's genes] to cover non-relatives in aggression and underlies xenophobia, can thus be turned into its [truly] prosocial form. This creates an opportunity for the fulfillment of Darwin's dream of humans' extending their “social instincts and sympathies” to “all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him,” and then to “the men of all nations and races” (The Descent of Man). We may soon find out whether this conclusion is too optimistic and a much darker evolutionary outcome is on the horizon.

Maimonides and the Gazans

A respectable blogger, William Jacobson (Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion), has recently noted that he was right predicting that lifting the Gaza blockade would be detrimental to Hamas because it would take away the need in a source of its business - the tunnel trade. Indeed, now that the blockade is lifted, it is reported that "Hamas panicked". I disagreed, however. Although there may be some revenue difficulties because of a drop (likely temporary) in the tunnel traffic, the key personnel is unlikely to suffer. Although that personnel may be interested in revenue, the main goal of Hamas in its volatile environment is  maintaining its hold on power. It is power that makes Hamas's income possible. That power is always under threat - not only from the "moderate" terrorists of Fatah, but also from the less prominent jihad warriors always yelping on the periphery and waiting for their turn.

It may well be that lifting the blockade slightly diminishes a source of Hamas's income, but in that part of the world it is symbolic victories that matter most. Symbolically, lifting the blockage is Hamas's, Turkish Islamic and leftist victory, ultimately helping Hamas. Besides, I am sure that the US help to Gaza will take care of any fiscal shortfall for Hamas. See, "Obama described the situation in Gaza as 'unsustainable'." Naturally, he promised to sustain the Hamas electorate with an infusion of $400 million. This is because, in the endless wisdom of the White House, the terror-supporting Gazan people "deserve a better life and expanded opportunities". The UK government has also squeezed its pockets to promise "an extra £19m in aid" - not that it has not given anything before. The poor philistines can always count on generous donations. In fact, they receive the greatest amount of international aid of any entity in the world. We should not also underestimate the help from Hamas's brothers in faith, Iran, Syria, and other anti-imperialist donors. Terror and jihad have been a lucrative business ever since Muhammad started it from Medina.

But let's get back to the more reliable source of income for the work-loving Gazan population that prefers destroying hothouses (which used to provide a quarter of produce in Israel and were given to Gazans free) to growing vegetables. Namely, the alms, a.k.a. international aid. Aid is charity, one of the commandments in Judaism. The Hebrew word is tzedakah, translated as righteousness, clearly an important issue for a religious person. Rambam, which is the Hebrew acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, known to Gentiles as Maimonides, the great Jewish lawmaker and Torah commentator, considered eight gradations of tzedakah, called Maimonides' Ladder. The rungs of the ladder are viewed from the perspective of the charity's worth to the giver's righteousness (obviously, it is the giver who is righteous, not the taker) - they are levels of giving, but the scale is the usefulness to the taker. Donations are good, but better if the donor is anonymous, to an unknown recipient, before being asked, particularly via a public fund. The highest rung, however, is a rehabilitating kind of charity, such as an interest-free loan that would allow an individual to stand on his own feet. Clearly, of all forms of charity, this is the best to the recipient. By contrast, the worst must be a charity that deprives the individual of initiative, of incentives to improve, ultimately of the future, and makes him feel humiliated.

This, worst, is the kind of charity that is served to the Arabs of Gaza and of Judea and Samaria. The kind of charity that requires no accountability or work, allowing the Arab leaders to steal as much they wish, and their subjects to enjoy their miserable lives, exercising their "idleness, uncertainty and despair". With the feeling of humiliation whipped up by the leaders to support the crowd's rage they could channel to their benefit. Misled by Hamas's "victory" in lifting the blockade to allow more handouts in. Always blaming Jews for this parasitic existence, while supported in that murderous self-pity by the New York Times and world media, "flotillas" and "human rights" organizations, governments and intelligentsia. Murderous, because that self-imposed and artificial beggar status and humiliation are translated into rockets targeting Jewish kindergartens and suicidal murderers' bombs in Jewish discotheques. 

Parasites lose their organs, as they lose their need in them. Professional beggars, if not lacking extremities, frequently pretend they do - it's easier for them to be disabled than to lose their income. The endless unconditional charity, with no accountability and no need to make something of themselves, exploits "the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen" (John Stuart Mill, "The Principles of Political Economy"). Disabling and killing Arabs softly by charity just to prove that Jews (a.k.a. Israelis) are bad, the world prepares "Palestinians" for another explosion under the guidance of their chosen jihad chieftains - leading them from spiritual death to "work accidents" to Israel's inevitable response to banditry and terror. 

July 19, 2010. - The shockingly "unsustainable"  situation in Gaza has just reached a new level of "uncertainty and despair" with opening a luxury mall. Please urge President Obama not to procrastinate with his life-supporting donation of $400 million, lest "Israeli men's trousers at an attractive price" are not affordable to some Gazan sufferer. 

July 20, 2010. - What a horrible thing - to be right so often. Reena Ninan, the Fox News reporter covering Israel (with dirt), has just reported about that mall (some "news"), and  commented that salaries may be too low to afford everybody  in Gaza to buy everything in this mall.  A young round-faced Gazan man (clear signs of starvation) was on hand to authoritatively confirm the hardships. I couldn't hold my tears. Considering that salaries in Gaza are paid by Hamas, there is no doubt where you and our generous President should urgently send money.

Religion of Peace in its own words

As reported by MEMRI, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi called upon Muslims to sacrifice themselves in order to achieve their rights: "We must revive what the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Al-Bana, called 'the death industry'." That's what I call eloquence - "revive... death"! "Industry", of course, brings to mind the mass enterprise of the 1940's, in which the predecessors of the current philistines, headed by the genocidal Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, took some part - much as they could. The Sheikh suggests that "[Israel] must be eliminated, as it was founded on the basis of thievery..." He calls for jihad at "all levels – military, political, economic, cultural, and religious." Sheikh Yousef wants Allah  to "help him fight the Zionists and cause loss of life among them, and that he be hit by a bullet that will separate his head from his body" (I'd add that the order should be reversed if Allah is listening).

Now, the Sheikh is the head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. See - scholars. He is a scholar. Who am I to believe regarding the proper Muslim thinking - him or George W. "Islam is religion of peace" Bush? I'll take the good Sheikh's opinion on what Islam is every time - over that of Bush or even Barack Hussein himself (although I am not sure how much the latter's opinion on the existence of Israel differs from Yousef's). On one point I agree with the Sheikh wholeheartedly - with his laments on that "there is a group among us still chasing the illusion of peace." Except, of course, he exaggerates in the flowery Oriental fashion the influence of that group among the umma  - there is no such group there (otherwise we would hear about it, wouldn't we). As much as we, on the other hand, want peace, it cannot be bought by concessions and the immoral "land for peace" principle. This principle started World War II. History has proven that it's a folly time after time.

Dershowitz's choice

I have again come across a pre-election piece by Alan Dershowitz, placed by him in Huffington Post, and thought that it is helpful to understand the convoluted rationale of well-intended people who elected Barack Hussein. It shows how wrong assumptions and unidimensional thinking can drive one to wrong decisions, and, at the same time, help explain the problems we suffer from these decisions.

Let's suppose Dershowitz was indeed so credulous as to decide that Obama "strongly supports Israel" based on the information that "[d]uring the debates each candidate has gone out of his and her way to emphasize strong support for Israel as an American ally and a bastion of democracy in a dangerous neighborhood". Considering that pre-election verbiage is well known to be unreliable, mildly put, while Obama's associations with antisemites and Israel-haters had been well known, Dershowitz would have to be daft to buy it, which he is not. He must have known - but disbelieved - that Obama's professed love for Israel is opportunistic and false. It was and is true, however, that, as Dershowitz wrote, "Obama's views on Israel will have greater impact on young people, on Europe, on the media and on others who tend to identify with the liberal perspective." That's exactly what Obama's views, turned into his anti-Israel policy, do now, supporting the rise of antisemitism on campuses and in the world. It is because of his policy that his support in Israel dropped to the unprecedented 4% - not because of his middle name as he put it, slandering Israelis as racists.

The problem with Dershowitz is that the falsity of attributions and predictions that he made was obvious at the time when he wrote his Huff piece to anybody whose critical abilities were not suspended. It is unfortunate that they were suspended in so many, and so many usually smart and well-informed people were and are guided by the left ideology and wishful thinking. Then again, whole nations were blinded by them, leading from one disaster to another.

Peace pardnership

As we find out for the umpteenth time, our "peace pardners" the philistines are really not. They are ready to wage war against Israel once Arab countries get to that. A friend commented that this is another example of taqiyya on the part of Abbas, a lie Muslims are supposed to be free to use when dealing against the kuffar, unbelievers. I think, however, that people have to be intentionally blind to buy this kind of taqiyya, or have concerns that override Israel's (and ultimately, this civilization's) security. Muslims have to be either exceptionally stupid to think it's believable, or simply realistic, knowing that however stupid and improbable their lie is, it is good enough to be either believed by the "international community", or used by the latter as another pretext to punish Jews for what they have never done - from killing Jesus to contemporary blood libels. No need to try hard.

If we, you and I, can get enough information from open public sources to detect damn lies of our "peace partners", shouldn't those having access to intelligence know a bit more? What additional proof is needed that whatever verbal concessions are given by them in English, they translate into their opposite in Arabic or, at best, are abrogated at the first opportunity - just as this is prescribed by Muhammad? Allah himself used to abrogate Koranic suras once they would become inconvenient to the ingenious "prophet" - remember the "Satanic verses", not the Rushdie book, but the actual Koran 53:19-20? Arafat openly called the Oslo accords Hudaybiyyah peace, referring to the 10-year truce that Muhammad signed with the Meccans when he was too weak to fight them, only to violate it in two years when he was ready to attack them. Why the hell wasn't Arafat and his gang immediately kicked out at least after that? The consequences of Oslo had been obvious to so many before Israel reimported sworn enemies and bandits. ZOA, for instance, of which I am a member, was against it, as it was against the abhorrent self-imposed ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Nobody among the decision-makers listened. Nobody does. I am afraid, nobody will. We are governed by people lacking not only morality, but also knowledge and the intellect to use it.

As I write this, I am listening to a Fox News report (courtesy of the ever-smiling Reena Ninan) of the "discrimination" against "Palestinians" buying real estate in Jerusalem. Of course, the "fair and balanced" reporter asks only a complaining Arab - of course, Abu Abdullah, looking so noble, decent and peaceful - how he suffers, with no possibility of finding out what the criminal Zionists think about that. I am not holding my breath for Fox News, bought by the memorable prince al-Waleed (who also helps families of suicidal murderers a little), to decry the discrimination against Jews buying land - not just in any of the 22 Arab states, but from a "Palestinian", who would be executed by the "peace pardners" if he decided to sell any. After all, the Jews got their land as stolen by the Europeans from the "Palestinian" natives, a payment for that dubious Holocaust. Just ask Barack Hussein. We know to whom he thinks Jerusalem belongs.

CNN's condolences to terrorists

HonestReporting.org informs of condolences to Hizballah that CNN's Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs, Octavia Nasr, expressed on her Twitter page: "Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot.." One wonders what the other Hizballah giants she respects, considering that there are so many to choose from. What fatwas of the "giant" Fadlallah does she particularly admire - those to sanction suicide bombings of American and French peacemakers in Lebanon in 1983 or other "martyrdom operations"? Here is his learned opinion on them:

The martyrdom operations have had quite a significant role in our Jihad movement and modern history. We have clarified, from a juristic viewpoint, that these kinds of operations are not heresies in Jihad issues, because Allah did not specify to us the means for Jihad. Any means that aims at strengthening the legitimacy of war without offending a major human value is considered Jihad.

Therefore, we do not need special juristic evidence that legitimizes these kinds of operations to conform with the martyrdom path if the war was legitimate. Yet, we have to know where this Jihad method lies, and what are the major causes that it serves. Or, is it some kind of propaganda that serves narrow and minor causes.

Sounds like the definition of the Communist morality: everything was moral that served the interests of the "proletariat". Such was the "spiritual" advisor to Hizballah. See, an organization of mass murderers usually needs a spiritual advisor or two - probably because humans need to suspend any vestiges of morality to get involved in mass murder en masse, and this requires a moral sanction from a "spiritual" advisor. On occasion, the murder-gang chieftain can perform a dual function of a Fuehrer and a high priest, like it was with Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. By tradition, long-term cults like Islam sometimes require a "Grand" ayatollah for that. Shiites are old-fashioned like that, as opposed to more democratic Sunnis, where somebody like Sheikh Usama can do both killing and preaching. On the other hand, when Shiites get to rule a state, like ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did, they also combine both functions, and he was not even "Grand", I think. A question is, why our own head of state, Barack Hussein, needed a "spiritual guide" who is little different from Fadlallah? 

One thing is clear. Even if Ms. Nasr gets fired from CNN (you know, because of  the all-powerful Zionist lobby and its faithful servants), she will have no difficulty finding a job with another media "source" in the US. Or, worst comes to worst, in Europe, which has stopped pretending that its hate for Jews, albeit cowardly called "Israel" nowadays, was quenched by the genocide of the Shoah. Or, absolute worst (or is it actually best?), in a Muslim country, where such pretending is not only not needed, but may even be punished. I'd suggest Lebanon, Ms. Nasr's, Nasrallah's, Fadlallah's and Hizballah's homeland.

July 8, 2010. - Ah, Zionist lobby, why are you so omnipotent... The poor Ms. Nasr did get fired. Her "experience and deep knowledge of the Middle East" and " 2006 Excellence in Journalism award from the Lebanese-American Chamber of Commerce" and "CNN World Report’s 2003 Achievement Award for her numerous contributions to the program" (read her stellar bio) did not help. Neither did her helpless attempt to "explain" how Fadlallah, who, in her own words, was "spiritual leader" of Hizballah when it "bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 299 American and French peacekeepers", still deserved to be "revered across borders". She says, "I lost family members in that terror attack". Perhaps herein lies the true explanation of her position. Perhaps those family members were not the peacekeepers, but those Lebanese relatives of hers who were "spiritually guided" by this worthy "descendant of the prophet" to blow themselves up to murder the peacekeepers. It is telling that her defenders, commenting on her hardly apologetic "explanation," invariably and passionately hate Israel. Well, they really should not be upset for Ms. Nasr. As mentioned above, she is certain to land a job where her nuanced treatment of spiritual mass murder guides will be appreciated.

Builders of the future

Today's quote of the day from President Obama (town hall meeting in Racine, Wisconsin):
"We can return to what we know did not work, or we build a stronger future. We can go backwards, or we can go forward. And I don’t know about you, but I want to move forward in this country" (I heard it on TV, but copied the text off the site Organizing for America, whatever it means).

For those who have not lived in the unlamented Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, "building a stronger future" may sound either awfully nice or awfully hollow, depending on the part of the political spectrum one fits. For those who have spent any conscious years in the Motherland of the World Proletariat, among the Vanguard of Progressive Humankind,  these words sound as coming from a nightmare. We, who did live in the Soviet Union, have heard the phrase about building a future since we started hearing anything. The self-name of the Soviet people was Builders - of Communism, of the bright future, of the better (best) society - always moving forward. During the Demonstrations of Laborers on the 1st of May holiday - for which mass "spontaneous" expressions of building enthusiasm the masses were "organized" by their employment places,  - the announcer's voice from the megaphones on the lamp posts thundered, "Long live the great Soviet People, the Glorious Builder of Communism". The "glorious builders" joked, "yeah, long live the great Soviet people, the eternal builder of Communism." As for moving "forward", that is, in the direction of "catching up with and overtaking America" (an official slogan of Khrushchev's era), the joke was, "Why is the glorious Soviet people trying to catch up with and overtake America, which uncontrollably rolls to the abyss?"   

Sure I know that the right wingnuts like myself always try to scare Americans with their paranoid fantasies of socialism in the land of the free. Perhaps we indeed are a bit scared - at least those who have the Soviet Union as the reference point for political events and phenomena. Some of us wingnuts, however, may be scared justifiably. Arguably, we are finely attuned to detect anything that may pave the road to the bright socialist future, including the use of familiar cliches and newspeak we are so used to. The 60's Soviet  placard on the left, with the large ДОГНАТЬ и ПЕРЕГНАТЬ at the bottom,  "catch up with and overtake", quotes Lenin: "Either to perish, or to catch up with the leading countries and overtake them economically... Either to perish, or to rush full steam forward." Sounds a little familiar? The Soviet people did go forward. The future was great.

Dashing general

Call me paranoid (probably many of us who come from the Soviet Union are justifiably so anyway), but I doubt General Stanley McChrystal was indeed reckless to say what he said regarding the Supreme Balaboss. No way he did not know the MO¹ and ROE² when dealing with a CO³, especially as hollow as BHO. Surely Stan knew that one is not supposed to malign anybody a notch above you in the Army hierarchy - that's the whole Army thing. No army can function if the lines of authority are not strictly maintained. My uneducated guess is that the general, far from being rash, mindless and a bad example to his subordinates, did it - the only alternative left - on purpose. Say, got tired of the supreme incompetence of the likes of Biden and his golf buddy in the WH (do they often get to play together or the interests of national security keep them playing separate?). Say, decided that whatever comes  - resignation or retirement, - his replacement will be listened to with greater attention and the critical decisions will not take forever. He did apologize, but I am willing to read into that apology non-admission of guilt: he said, "What is reflected in this article falls far short of [his] standard [principles of personal honor and professional integrity]", and the reflections are not necessarily true.  Especially when those reflections are in a leftist musical gossip magazine (a nice picture of The Beatles playing in water though).

All this may be a stretch or wishful thinking, but it does not matter much. Even if the general said it thoughtlessly, and carelessly entertained that kind of disparaging remarks about the administration from his subordinates, it tells at least as much about the administration as it does about McChrystal's army etiquette. To wit, that the administration has not earned as little respect from people who risk their lives every second as for them to at least follow their common rules of conduct. These people see their Supreme Commander on the news declaring that they serve America's vital interests, which, one guesses, will cease to be so in, oh, about a year when the troop withdrawal is scheduled to start, with no victory mentioned. They know that it took months for him to accept McChrystal's request for more troops on which their lives depended, and then deducting a quarter from the number requested. Those who do research using governmental funding are well familiar with the thinking behind deductions like that. This is one of the many ways for bureaucrats to exercise their power and show their creativity - to cut a study's budget by 15, 25 or another round number of percentage points, despite the fact that the budget has been approved by peer review, i.e. by people who know how much is needed to do what's planned. It is not good for research, nor is it for the Army where lives are at stake. This is the type of strategy Leo Tolstoy made a joke of in War and Peace, talking about German generals-bureaucrats with their calculations, "Die erste Kolonne marschiert... die zweite Kolonne marschiert... die dritte Kolonne marschiert." Call me a doubting Thomas, but I am afraid that Gen. Petraeus, who has been exposed to Obama's "strategery" before, does not hold a lot of respect for him either. How long will it take for him to have enough?
_____
¹MO, modus operandi
²ROE, rules of engagement
³CO, commanding officer

Nadson

I did my best to translate a poem by Semyon Nadson (Семён Надсон), a Russian poet. His father was son of a baptized Jew; he died when Semyon was two. Nadson was sincere, talented and immensely popular. His life, as often happens with poets, particularly in Russia, was hard and short: he died of consumption at the age of 25 (1862-1887). The original does rhyme - I did not have much time and had to choose between rhyme and rhythm. The translation is virtually literal. I would not do it if I could find one online - I have not looked for any hard copy ones. I did it at my wife's request. She thought it was still relevant and instructive. I agree. Please point out and forgive any errors - my English is far from perfect.

Я рос тебе чужим, отверженный народ, И не тебе я пел в минуты вдохновенья. Твоих преданий мир, твоей печали гнет Мне чужд, как и твои ученья. И если б ты, как встарь, был счастлив и силен, И если б не был ты унижен целым светом, - Иным стремлением согрет и увлечен, Я б не пришел к тебе с приветом. Но в наши дни, когда под бременем скорбей Ты гнешь чело свое и тщетно ждешь спасенья, В те дни, когда одно название "еврей" В устах толпы звучит как символ отверженья, Когда твои враги, как стая жадных псов, На части рвут тебя, ругаясь над тобою, - Дай скромно стать и мне в ряды твоих бойцов, Народ, обиженный судьбою! 1885

I've been estranged from you, the nations’ outcast. It was not you, to whom I sang my songs, inspired. Your tribulations’ weight, your torments' burden are All alien to me, as are your tales and teachings. And if you, as of yore, were happy and were strong, And weren’t, as you are, debased in every corner, - It wouldn’t be to you, to whom I would belong. I wouldn’t come to you, consumed by some endeavor. But when, aggrieved, in vain, you lower your head, By miseries beset, you’re crying for salvation, And when your very name, derided as is “Jew,” Is on the crowd’s lips a symbol of pariah, When enemies of yours, a pack of greedy dogs, Are tearing you apart, defaming and maligning,- Allow me to stand with you, confronting fate, And let me take my place among your humble fighters!

Israel's aggression

Still ongoing!

So you say there is no God…

by Lina.

Well thank you, a well-meaning atheist, for disabusing me of all these false notions. You really mean that god won’t throw lightning bolts at me as punishment for my sins?! And science totally explains the origin of the species?! Woweeh! All my questions finally answered and addressed. Totally, man. Free at last. I can leave my shtetl, liberated from these religious shackles. Love mankind for its ingenuity in dealing with ethical/moral questions throughout the ages -- ways that I hope are about to get even more creative now that we can just flush the ol’ 10 (or 7) commandments down the drain. And feel the love – from humanity that demonstrates daily its intuitions about compassion and justice.

I am totally stoked about viewing life from the perspective of almost complete determinism in which I am just a tiny rusty nut in the magnificent human race machine, not to mention the rest of the universe. My life mattering in the big picture about as much as a speck of dust on the surface of the moon. Oh, wait. May be I’ll get lucky and in a million years, should life on this planet exist for that long, my well-preserved corpse will be discovered by scientists to be that important link between their highly evolved forms and the schmendricks that came before us. That is bound to give meaning to my existence. Yay! As they pry open my skull while still debating whether such thing as consciousness exists and wondering whether the presence of an opposable thumb on the compost I’ve become could have been its symptom.

“Thanks again for shedding light into the dark swampy hole where I have been all this time, guys/gals or whatever you might now be in a million years. What can I say, it really made a difference.”

Deir Yassin and Other Morbid Arabian Nights

In our time, when remembering any history beyond the historic 2008 elections is not in vogue, many events may appear as new. Although the Arab world and the rest of progressive humanity are acutely aware of Israel's iniquities (hardly a day passes without them), they may still be surprised by another one because they have forgotten how it all started. One of the first events that formed that opinion of Israel was the 1948 "massacre" in Deir Yassin, an Arab village near Jerusalem.

This is a reminder of how anti-Israel Arab propaganda is made:


Then there was the Mohammed Al Dura blood libel (read here). Then Saeb Erekat's "Jenin massacre" (read here).  Now it's the "flotilla" with the innocent blood of peaceful humanitarians (calling for Jews to go to Auschwitz). Times change, but the Big Lie methodology does not. After all, the favorite leader of Pal Arabs is Amin al Husayni, Hitler's pal (here is some more, to place the "Palestinian struggle" into perspective).

Islam: Religious mimicry

This is part of the page titled On the Brink I posted in August 2006, upon returning from Israel after spending vacation with my family in a miklat, shelter (see a little story about that here). Although the whole page is still relevant, this text on history in particular provides the perspective on the July 2006 war with Hizballah as well as current events.

Islam was founded by Muhammad in the first half of the VII century. Muslims are taught that Islam and its holy book, the Koran, had existed as long as had the Universe, and all Jewish and Christian prophets had been Muslims. The truth, however, is that nobody had heard about Islam until Muhammad, an illiterate, poor and mentally unstable husband of a rich and much older wife, decided to turn his dreams or hallucinations into a message to humankind under her insistence. Perhaps her plan was to solve her family problems. In the patriarchal Arab society, Muhammad’s dependent status might have been considered not quite kosher. That could have contributed to his frequenting caves and sitting there, depressed and prone to scary visions under sensory and alimentary deprivation – these were the conditions under which he received his first revelation. The divine character of that was far from clear to the future Messenger of Allah, who was scared to death by his vision and needed his wife’s reassurance.

Reassured, however, he realized the benefits of his newly acquired Messenger status, and proceeded in his career from a pathetic charlatan, laughed at by the people who knew him the best, to a highway robber chieftain, to a genocidal mass murderer and totalitarian ruler, removing any opposition, real or imaginary, literally by sword. That removal was really an equal opportunity treatment, as he murdered regardless of the sex, age, and ethnic origin of the opponent. This included his extermination of all men of the entire peaceful Jewish tribe of Banu Quraiza and enslavement of children and women. This was the first recorded application of the Nazis’ Babiy Yar method, long before Hitler. Jews were brought in groups and murdered on the brink of a ravine that was to be their mass grave. By Muhammad’s desire, expressed on his deathbed, Jews cannot settle in Arabia, which had been their home for centuries. The same rule, incidentally, was introduced by the British for Jewish immigration to the part of the Land of Israel they decided to call Trans-Jordan (later shortened to Jordan), assisting Hitler in murdering Jews. This has since been the rule enacted by Jordanian rulers, who consider themselves Muhammad’s direct descendants. No wonder, as Muslims are bound to follow the Sunnah (the example) of the Prophet, as they have followed it in their barbaric conquests.

Muhammad’s revelations would come to him conveniently when he had to justify another crime of his, perversion, political expediency and, eventually, the social order he created to facilitate his autocracy. That divine order (the Islamic state is supposed to be perfect) collapsed immediately upon his death into the war between the followers of Muhammad’s daughter and her husband, Muhammad’s nephew Ali, and the supporters of Muhammad’s favorite wife Aisha and her father the strongman Abu Bakr. The conflict was of the same type as the one between Anna Nicole Smith and her late husband’s children. Except that Aisha probably had a better claim to the spoils, as Muhammad “married” her when she was six and consummated that marriage when she was nine (the paragon for all humanity himself was over 50). The stakes also were much higher, and the two groups, respectively Shia and Sunni, have been killing each other since – just observe the endless slaughter in Iraq. Imagine how easy it is then for both to kill infidels.

By sword has been the way Islam has spread from the Arabian peninsula, brought under the Islamic yoke by Muhammad by the time he died in 632, to North Africa, to a large part of Asia, and – for a long time – some parts of Europe. Nowadays, helped by the boundless tolerance of Western democracies to everything they perceive as underdog, the Islamic violent takeover, still in full force with a weaker adversary as in Sudan, is supplemented by unstoppable Islamic immigration and the ensuing demographic and political changes in the world of the infidels – Crusaders and Jews. This perceived underdog position of the 1.3 billion-strong umma sitting on the oil treasure of the world has served the dual function of lulling the Western societies into deafness to Islam’s inhuman teachings while raising Muslims’ anger at their “humiliation,” which the true believers perceive as any state in which Islam is not über alles, superior. Naturally, Islamic immigration has no intention of assimilation – quite the opposite, its leaders have overt plans of (gradual) government change.

Muslims have no right to befriend Christians or Jews (Koran 5:51), let alone non-monotheists. They believe Jews are cursed by Allah (Koran 5:64) – because of the Jewish beliefs that are nowhere to be found except in Islamic teachings. They believe that Christians and Jews are to either convert to Islam, or keep their faith but assume a subhuman dhimmi position in the society under what is called “protected status” (of the kind of mafia protection), or die if they violate these conditions. Non-monotheists have no choice but to convert or die. Whether to offer a choice or not is under Muslims’ discretion. There is no choice as to who will eventually rule the world, currently divided into Dar al-Islam, the realm of Islam, and Dar al-Harb, the realm of war. Democracy, with its freedoms and human-made laws, is incompatible with Islam. Adding free elections to Islamic ideology as an attempt to introduce democracy is less meaningful than holding free elections in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Freedom does not necessarily create good neighbors – not when a neighbor is a criminal.

Whereas Islam is thus first and foremost a political doctrine and movement, the “religious” facet of Islam adds to the picture not merely the neutralization of the instinct of self-preservation but indeed its reversal. The brain-washed Muslim suicidal murderers perceive their certain demise not as death but as the virtually only way to ensure their staying alive (and well in Paradise). They are also convinced that they do a great favor to those Muslims who unintentionally get killed in a terror act because those are supposed to attain similar benefits. Most importantly, this eternal life is contrasted not with death, but with the almost certain alternative of their ending up in Hell, which is described in great detail in the Koran and the Sunnah, leaving little to imagination. Hell is virtually unavoidable for a believing Muslim, unless he is committed to jihad. Therefore, both negative and positive reinforcements are employed in the Islamic indoctrination, which has shown a great efficiency with a large number of people – not only when they receive it from their childhood, but – tellingly – with new converts as well. The usual straw-man counter-argument that only a small proportion of Muslims are in this altered state of consciousness is clearly invalid because there is no need for more than a minute proportion of 1.3 billion Muslims, properly educated and armed, to achieve a catastrophic effect. It is true, as human rights defenders in the US declare, that it is bad in general to discriminate in accordance with faith. It is not true, however, when the faith includes the current and actively enacted mainstream notions of human sacrifice and the subjugation or extermination of the other faiths. However highly developed the Aztec civilization was, had it survived till now, its bloody rituals would be forbidden, and if they were an inseparable part of the Aztec religion, it would be categorized into cult and banned. Islam, the ideology whose followers, led by Muhammad’s example, rape, enslave, behead unarmed civilians, execute “blasphemers,” and commit mass murder of children, thrives. The concept of Islam as a monotheistic religion serves this political ideology to protect it from the eradication that would certainly be in the cards for it due to its fascist and violent character. This religious mimicry, first used by Muhammad for ennobling, nay, sacralizing his morbid desires and immunizing himself from human critique, is still employed for the same purpose and perfected by Muslim spokespeople.

It is uncanny how the ongoing events resemble the pre-WWII layout. Russia, jealous of what it perceives to be the imperial position of the US, is playing, again thinking that it will gain dominance through pitting today’s Nazis against the West. France, true to its colors, stubs its allies in the back and is trying to appease the enemy. The rest of Europe keeps silence, thinking that if it keeps its head low, it will keep it – with profit. Antisemitism, reinforced by anti-Israelism, is as rampant around the world as in 1930’s, if not more. The left intelligentsia, ignorant in the matter as usual, but omniscient regardless by default, supports a totalitarian ideology – as long as that claims to fight for the “insulted and humiliated.”

Despite all experience with Nazism, the world has yet to grasp that violent ideology can only be fought as an infectious disease: by correctly identifying the agent, and by stopping its propagation by eliminating it and/or raising immunity against it - not by trying to appease it. Translated into the situation with Islam, that would mean first and foremost neutralizing those who spread the violent ideology - imams, mullahs and sheikhs, whose almost uniform obesity and penchant for hoarding female resources suggest that they themselves are not in a hurry to see the huris. This gives a strong hope that they can be persuaded to relay to their flock that jihad is about learning the multiplication table, brushing teeth and doing good deeds rather then cutting infidel throats, as the believers are used to erroneously think. Ataturk knew that well enough to deal with mullahs and employ healthy anti-Islam safeguards that have survived and protected Turkey till now as a relatively modern and open country, despite all its mosques and muezzins [again, this was written in 2006]. This is what should have been done in Iraq, instead of allowing its post-Saddam constitution to be based on the Koran - which is a bit like if Germany were allowed to use Mein Kampf for the same purpose after WWII.

“War on terror” may be a convenient shorthand. It is politically correct, but is as senseless as would be a war on guns or tanks, because terror is only a tool of war. The war that has been conducted by Islam, with variable intensity, against Dar al-Harb. Now is the first time, however, when the means of waging a truly decisive jihad have become available. Unless the complacent Western world learns from past lessons, it will be taught new apocalyptic ones, already under preparation by true believers in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and wherever there is a mosque with a properly thinking imam. One who knows that

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews. (Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6985; also Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6981-6984; and Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 176-179, 56: 791).

If you are a good Muslim, you must follow the Sunnah. I doubt there are so many Gharqad trees around.

Abbas's problem

"Abbas to Obama: I'm against lifting the Gaza naval blockade"
Oops, somebody has just soiled his pants. I guess, our Abu does not want to get knee-capped by his "brothers" or try his flying skills when dropped from a roof. Where is the UN and the "world community" to comfort him?

Sweet memories

My dear wife Galina, remembering good times in the Soviet Union, composed this lovely song, a remake of the one we sang as children in kindergartens:
"The winter's gone, and here's summer. - 
Oh, thank you, President Obama!"

We can't wait for children to start singing it. Sort of like

Sorry, you have to know Russian to fully enjoy it. The video at the bottom of this post, however, is just as good.

The picture says, "Thanks to Dear Stalin for the happy childhood!" (can't really translate it literally, because it's not "dear" but rather a word indicating relatedness as if with a family member - there is nothing similar in English).

Yahoo divided Jerusalem

As brought up by HonestReporting, Yahoo has engaged in the political SimCity game and created two virtual cities, "East Jerusalem" and "West Jerusalem". The weather data for them are grabbed from the real Jerusalem, Israel,  weather station, and duplicated under the two respective headers. The city of Jerusalem, the holiest Jewish city (some people say it even means something to Christians and Muslims), known as such for 3,000 years, and the capital of Israel, has ceased to be - in the Yahoo universe. To be sure, the data for the virtual cities are identical, underscoring that the city is one. Perhaps the next step for Yahoo will be providing that weather report in Hebrew for the "West" one, and in Palestinian... oops, there is no such language or nation, for that matter - in Arabic for the "East J".

Or Arabic will be used for both: in Yahoo's opinion, according to its directory, the City of Jerusalem is under the "Places in Palestinian Authority". Thank G-d, it is still listed among Israeli cities as well - for how long will it remain so?

PS. June 16, 2010. - Sometimes truth prevails!

Lion Daniel in hyenas' den

Gazans' spices crisis

Reena Ninan, reporting from Israel for fair and balanced Fox News, is another member of the glorious journalistic profession. Her main interest has always seemed to be in unmasking Israel's horrific behavior violating the inalienable rights of brave terrorists and those who elect them to rule. Nevertheless, telling about cruel Israelis who just boarded another "aid ship" (whose organizer, Greta Berlin, had informed everybody who could hear that it's not for any aid but for breaking the blockade), Ninan somehow could not understand why Israel does not allow deliveries of  cardamom and coriander (cilantro, as she made sure to clarify) to Gaza. Doesn't she know that  Gazans starve (see the facts here), after they righteously destroyed the revolting Jewish hothouses, and spices induce appetite and make you even hungrier? What hypocrisy, to pretend she cares, while inviting torture of Gazans! (Or perhaps, worse even, she wanted to insinuate that she could not find any food shortage, except for spices, while the goal of the heroic flotilla is to stop starvation, as Berlin said?) Even Israelis, in all their cruelty, could not devise such a dastardly brutal plan.

And cruel they are. As Greta Berlin let another honest source of information, The New York Times, know, Israeli commandos "opened fire on sleeping civilians at four in the morning”. Now that everybody has seen the videos,

it is certain: these civilians were tight asleep, albeit sleepwalking with their kitchen knives (to cook their breakfast) and metal rods (for supporting themselves).  Suddenly woken up by Israeli paint balls, they could not help their reflex response, and hit those Israeli pirates with whatever they had in their hands.

Unfortunately, even the Rachel Corrie, another ship just intercepted by Israelis, did not carry cardamom, coriander and curry, which may be Greta Berlin's oversight or perhaps they knew that Israelis again would not allow those spices. And that is because Israelis know that cardamom is a necessary ingredient of Arabic coffee. And coffee is needed to keep vigilance while working on a bomb or a suicide jacket, to prevent "work accidents". Although it's OK when the bomb-maker dies in the explosion, immediately getting to Paradise and the 72 virgins, many a bomb-maker are maimed and lose their extremities. At least the Rachel Corrie is bringing wheel-chairs to take care of them.

PS. Uh-oh, Hamas does not allow the wheel-chairs in! No cardamom, no wheel-chairs - where are human rights organizations when an honest bomb-maker needs them?

PPS. June 21, 2010. I shouldn't have worried: not only spices but other materials too will now be allowed into Gaza, relieving terrorists' sufferings and providing them with much needed means to keep construction of bombs going. I wonder how much coriander Gilad Shalit gets.