America in Reverse (Feb. 13, 2008)

We Americans have a great passion – curative 20/20 hindsight. We too have an all consuming deficiency – that being courageous preventative vision.

We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars and allotted hundreds of thousands of security and other personnel to find a few Jihadists, unearth a few unsophisticated plots. That’s cost-ineffectiveness at its most extreme, a formula with which al-Qaeda can always out leverage us, out wait us. No matter how wealthy America is, we just cannot afford, indefinitely, to allocate such monetary treasure and such human resources to plug all the holes, secure all the borders and protect all our vulnerable facilities as long as we intend to remain an open, free and democratic society.

We have conversely, apart from our military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, spent very little on preemptive planning and implementation. Whether it be via focused taxes on gasoline (preferably with concomitant reductions in personal taxes) or Flex Fuel Vehicles (at $100 per conversion) to accommodate ethanol and methanol, we continue to blunder ahead, subsidizing terrorist regimes and Jihadist organizations by transferring hundreds of billions of oil dollars every year to the Middle East (not to ignore Chavez and Putin, et al.). We donate our gold to the Islamists and they give us petroleum. They don’t build hospitals, universities and science research institutes. Instead they build Hamas, Hezbollah, bin Laden, Ahmadinejad, intercontinental missiles, WMDs and suicide bombers.

We are clearly missing the obvious points, the elephant in our parlor.

Based on the inevitable cost-ineffectiveness of Homeland Security and on the greatest transfer of wealth the world has ever witnessed, we are engaged in a losing battle, in our demise towards insolvency and “too little too late.”

If we mandate and legislate for Flex Fuel Vehicles, if we thereby open up competition to all sources of energy, if we tax our gasoline habits and strengthen our energy alternatives, then and only then will gasoline usage reduce, then prices at the pump will drop, then the great wealth transfer will slow and the terrorists and Jihadists will finally have a deficit budget instead of Washington.

Then and only then will we be cost-effective, will we outlast and outspend our enemies and their countless madrassas. Then and only then will we be building a solid inheritance for our children.

Our current self-indulgent policies of accommodation, our fantasies of immediate gratification and our appeasement politics might very well result in the nuclear loss of some of our cities or the debasement of our wealth or both. Unless we spend more wisely, more preemptively, more courageously, we risk the future of America, the greatest experiment in freedom and democracy the world has ever known.

"The Quintessential Divide Between Democrats and Republicans" (Jan. 30, 2008)

For current Democrats, it seems, weakness comes from fearing the obligations of being strong. For true Republicans, however, strength alternatively derives from fearing the consequences of weakness far more.

OBAMA! (January 22, 2008)

Born in 1961 in Honolulu of a white American woman from very white Kansas, and a Muslim Kenyan father from that reasonably democratic and independent African country (his middle name coincidentally is Hussein). Obama also lived in Jakarta, Indonesia until age 10. Now how does that make him black? Suntanned looks but not American black. Certainly not more than myself, born in South Africa of modestly light complexion and now American; I am at least as African-American as Obama.

Some Persian or Moroccan Jews, certain Greeks or Italians, are clearly as dark as Obama if not more so – and we haven’t started down the list of Central and South American habitats. Yet to himself and his supporters he is the black candidate – even to Democratic Hillary, inexplicably.

It seems pigmentation is not really the issue – convoluted symbology is: an agenda-driven presumption of identity theft that has the same racist overtones as keeping certain groups out of the USA (think of the refugees from Nazi Germany on the S.S. St. Louis turned back from our shores, back to Europe’s efficient crematoria). It’s the same racist perversion that pretends hair character or skin tone is more important than ideas, than morality. Now that’s not very American at all.

Global Warming? (Jan. 21, 2008)

Minus 3 °F in Chicago. Where is Al Gore now that we need him? The airwaves have been unusually quiet of late.

Linkage Between Gaza & Israel "Stopping the Kassams" (Dec. 21, 2007)

In his New York Sun article, Hillel Halkin talks of five uncertain options of response to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad missile barrages against Israel. But there is a pragmatic and eminently feasible sixth option.

Option 6:

There has been and there desperately needs to be linked consequentiality - a clear response formula - this the Russians understood well and so will Hamas.

The simplest solutions are often ignored in favor of ambiguity and complexity. This need not be the case.

Israel must publish widely that every rocket sent into Israeli civilian areas will be met with an immediate and publicized return of one corresponding strike by Israel - if there are 2 or 20 Kassams in a day, Israel must drop 2 or 20 bombs, aimed at Hamas and Islamic Jihad offices, equipment or any relevant location to weaken their political and military morale, assets and ability. And if an Israeli civilian death results from a Kassam, the response must be a targeted killing meaningfully high up their chain of command.

Only then will the Palestinians and their supporters be fully educated about consequences, and the Gaza citizens and militias will necessarily and immutably grow weary of allowing or causing, with directly visible connectivity, their own demise.

Clarity not ambiguity (as was always the case) is the key. Linkage: publicized, formulaic, transparent and irrevocable is the only and the ultimate solution - the only way to drive a sizable and permanent wedge between the population held hostage (some voluntarily and some unwillingly) and the active Jihadist elements.

http://www.nysun.com/article/68266

Great (American) Expectations - Wall St. Journal Article 1/8/08

Certainly it was the best of times and the worst of times. Bret Stephens' review flawlessly covers the ongoing naïveté of an America that insists all is negotiable and that no one is irredeemably evil. It seems America is destined to decide all using emotionally naïve, black and white, media-driven inputs. Europe decides based on cynicism, cowardice and passivity. America is “change” at all costs – Europe is “no change” at all costs and the Arab world resists all change while demanding the West do all the accommodating.

Quite a triangulation that favors the extremists and sidelines the moderates, the majority. Perhaps democracy by the majority will only return after another four educative years of a Democrat Presidency, warts and all, and a resultant evolution of our naïveté into pragmatic conservatism.

WSJ.com - Commentary: Great (American) Expectations*

The World's Most Successful Con Game (Dec. 21, 2007)

The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. That selective claim now underpins world politics. It seems that since the war of 1967, with its stunning victory against all odds, Israel finally lost its “underdog” identity. The guilt-ridden post-Holocaust populations in Europe were now not any more coerced into feeling sorry for their decimated Jews. Anti-Semitism could once again afford to be fashionable. Thereafter Israel’s follow up victory in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, when attacked by overwhelming numbers on all sides, was a remarkable rerun of “David” effectively overcoming “Goliath.” Yet politically, the war finally buried the remnants of the underdog scenario as far as Israel and the Jews were concerned. The burgeoning wealth and unsurpassed success of America’s Jews, from then until now, gave further ammunition to those United Nations, NGOs, co-mingled human rights groups, incestuous leftists and Third World radicals to finally reverse common perception of Israel.

The magical sleight of hand, that perversion of truth, is now complete. Israel has become the fascist, the Nazi, the apartheid oppressing country and conversely Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and their compatriots have transmogrified into the underdogs. The transformation of Mephistopheles is finished – Goliath is now Israel whilst the symbol of David is assumed by all the poor, undernourished, undereducated, disenfranchised Arab refugees and citizens across North Africa, the Middle East and on into South East Asia. Five million Jews are now incontestably victimizing one billion Muslims and Arabs. There are no limits to the nefarious machinations of the conspiratorial Jewish puppeteers of Tel Aviv and Washington. All the world’s injustices and problems, inequalities and inequities are laid out at the foot of this latter day Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

And it will only get worse, as Israelis and Jews everywhere continue to fight adversity and do better, become more successful and refuse to be downtrodden, refuse to apologize for their normality. Their success is breeding their political ostracization, their success proves to the world that they are on the wrong side; it proves they are the oppressor – how else could it be? The logic is indisputable. And the oil rich Arab states understand this only too well – they keep their riches in Dubai and in banks, investing in Citibank, UBS and in Western stock exchanges, whilst keeping their populations and their women disenfranchised – ensuring their underdog image remains in perpetuity.

Their biggest export seems to be endless numbers of Madrassas and terrorists. They continue their century-old con by ensuring the continued existence and expansion of the refugee camps, home to millions of Palestinians, a unique phenomenon in the last 100 years. The partition of India and Pakistan created millions of refugees - all resettled. The creation of Bangladesh, millions more – all resettled. Mao Tse-tung, tens of millions – all resettled. The great east-west exodus after WWII, across the iron curtain – all resettled. Only in the Middle East, with trillions of excess oil dollars to invest in anti-Israel, anti-West, pro-jihadist education and mosques, and in the NASDAQ, in hedge funds – everywhere but into the refugee camps. And these Arab potentates know only too well the propaganda game of choice: exacerbate the indignity and tragedy of the refugee camps and it will keep the world infatuated with the Arab David conflicted with the Israeli Goliath.

Everything becomes upside-down in this Alice of Wonderland. Five million Israelis on 1% of the land in the Middle East with no oil and natural minerals are holding hostage to 300 million Arabs with 75% of the world’s oil reserves and an unbreakable majority in the UN councils.

These Jews must be very powerful, very sinister. But wait – is there not a major Arab investor in Fox News? Is not Arab money a partner in Citibank, the London Stock Exchange and a myriad of other western financial icons? Are not the riches of the West exchanged for Arab oil, going not for the improvement of Arab hospitals, schools and legal institutions, but to purchase the West’s leading companies and properties and to buy influence in Washington, Harvard and even at the Louvre. So whence cometh this secret power of the Jews? Perhaps it’s merely their seemingly magical survival over thousands of years, in spite of Torquemada, Hitler, Stalin and al Qaeda. This has become most irritating, most annoying to those who would like to see the back of the Jews. They defy the numbers, the logic and the will of majority. They insist on success, on not being the underdog. Most perturbing, most bothersome. They were, in times past, ‘untermenchen’, Dhiminis, second-rate non-citizens squeezed into European ghettos, powerless and dependent serfs limited to professions such as money lending. Now Israel has an unrivaled army – outrageous. Its desert is blooming amidst a sea of Middle Eastern deserts – provocative. Its women have equal rights, naked thighs, and become prime ministers – outlandish and obnoxious. Israel is the tiny pin pricking the bloated 18th Century Middle East that is still mired in its Dark Ages, desperate to retain its unchanging ways. And Israel is still only the Little Satan. Everyone knows the Jews also run the Big Satan. Why, Jews must own the New York Times and Washington Post, CBS and CNN, the State Department and the CIA, in spite of all the continual anti-Israel bias – more subterfuge.

And moreover, Bush is clearly controlled by Israel, in spite of his intimate handholding photo-ops with Saudi Arabian princes, and now more with Condi’s overtures to Iran and Syria – further devious camouflage, I imagine.

All in all, these Jews must be very clever, very shrewd: to cause 9/11 and the many suicide bombings and intifadas, to pretend to be under the whip of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas – most ingenious, to play at being the underdog when in fact, to all enlightened Jihadists and liberal Westerners, they are in fact the secret Goliath, the masters of deceit, even to the extent of six-million Holocaust deceits. Clever Jews, those people, clever magicians these Israelis.

Posted on Athos Blog: Chronicles of Atlantis
http://chronatlantis.blogspot.com/2008/07/neighborhood-bully.html