'Jeneral Beetrae Us' Indeed

(This blog is published, first, in phonetic (Fanetik) spelling and only then in standard English. To skip to the traditionally spelled text (albeit with a few simplifications here and there), click here.)
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In reesponding tu tha MuevOn.aurg ad in The Nu Yaurk Tiemz witth tha hedlien "Jeneral Patreayus aur Jeneral Beetrae Us", the Demakraats haav, aaz yuezhuewal, bin uterle kraevan. Tha Reepublikan Riet paurtraez Daevid Patreayus aaz a heero aand paetreeyat. But hiz aakshanz, aur failyerz, haav maed the Yoonietad Staets haetad around tha werld. Kansider tha reepaurt toodae thaat a Y.S. Orme snieper hu diliberatle shot tue unormd Eeroke men aand then plaantad fauls evidans thaat thae wer involvd in tererizam, wuz sentanst tu fiev muntths in prizan but aloud tu reemaen in the Orme. Fiev muntths in prizan faur merdering tue Eeroke men. Tha merderer'z deefens (tha Nueramberg Deefens) wuz thaat he wuz under aurderz tu shuet eneewun hu pikt up "baet" mateereeyalz thaat miet be yuezd in kreeyaeting Impraviezd Eksploesiv Diviesaz. Kood such tthings haav no uther yuesaz? Hwut if sumwun wuz just trieying tu kleer awae traash? Piking up wieyer iz a kaapital afens? If we wer okyoopied bi aan ormy uv Mozlam kongkererz hu ishued aurderz tu shuet Amairikanz hu pikt up wieyer, hou mene Amairikanz wood be shot ded? Wood we tthingk thaat wuz fair, a simpool preeventativ mezher agenst "tererizam"? Wood we eevan reegord aaz "tererizam" reezisting a foran orme uv okyoopaeshan? Aur wood we insted reegord it aaz ouwer paetreeyotik duete?
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Tha Y.S. invaezhan aand kantinyued okyoopaeshan uv Eerok iz aabsaluetle, uneekwivakale raung, raung, raung, and eneewun hu sapaurts it iz eevool and unfit tu be kauld a "heero", "paetreeyat", aur eneetthing liek it. Beekauz aat end tha naashanal perpas uv the Yoonietad Staets iz aulwaez tu du tha riet tthing, not ever tu maek ekskyuesaz faur duewing tha raung tthing.
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Mauroever, Patraeyus wilfoole faulsified faur nuez kaameraz toodae hou "saef" Baagdaad iz nou, bi wauking tthur aan outdaur morkat wairing oenle a haat raather thaan helmat on hiz hed. But the NBK reepaurter swung tha kaamera around tu sho duzanz uv hevile ormd soeljerz gording him in the imeedeeyat visinite. Or thae aulwayz thair, hwen it's oenle Eerokeez in tha morkat aand not Jeneral Patraeyus? I doen't tthingk so.
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Chorle Roez laast niet intervyued tha maan hu ruelz Kator, a Gulf staet (Shaekh Homad bin Kholeefa ol-Tthone). He aaskt the obveeyas kweschan uv hwether Y.S. faursaz in Eeroq miet be reeplaest witth YN peeskeeperz, aaz frum Aarab kuntreez. The shaekh sed thaat Aarab naeshanz doen't wont tu get involvd. Tuf. It's thair port uv the werld. If the Y.S. anounsaz, plainle, "We'r goewing hoem. We freed Eerok frum Sadom. Ouwer job iz dun.", the Aarab werld wil haav tue choisaz: staand asied aand let haapan in Eerok hwutever miet haapan, aur se its oen vietal interests aaz reekwieyering them tu help the Eeroke guvernmant staebiliez tha naeshan, aand dastroi tererizam aand sektaireeyan vieyalans. In eether kaes, we wil haav wosht ouwer haandz uv tha sichuewaeshan, espeshale if we aufer tu help fund peeskeeperz frum Aarab Leeg staets, aaz reparaeshanz faur Y.S. kriemz agenst the Eeroke peepool aand "Aarab naeshan". Miend yu, Aarabz haav tunz uv mune uv thair oen, in plaesaz liek Saude Araebeeya, the Yoonietad Aarab Emirats, aand, yes, Kator. (Kyuereeyasle, aultho we haav bin toeld in reesant yeerz not tu pranouns thaat kuntre's naem tha saem aaz tha staanderd Ingglish werd "kator", but raather liek "kuter" aur eevan "guter", witth stres on the ferst silabool, tha Shaekh himself pranounst it egzaaktle liek "kator". Perhaaps he did so aaz a kertase tu speekerz uv Ingglish but wood pranouns it vere difrantle in Aarabik. He speeks vere good Ingglish.)
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Eeron Iz Riet. Toodae, Eeroneeyan laumaekerz braandad tha Y.S. militere aand the SIA witth tha werd "tererist" thaat tha Y.S. tthroez around reegording Eeron. Eeron iz riet, Amairikan propagaandists raung. Kount tha bodeez uv tha ded frum Eeron's aakshanz aand tha Y.S. Guvernmant's aakshanz.
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Su Che. Wun reezan I aam a speling reefaurmer iz tha kaeyotik 'sistam' uv traanzliteraeshanz frum laanggwajaz ritan in nonroemaanik aalfabets. It's baad eenuf thaat we taek intu Ingglish intaakt naemz aand loenwerdz frum laanggwajaz thaat or ritan in tha roeman aalfabet,but hwen sumtthing iz traanzliteraetad in iraashanal faurm frum nonroeman rietingz, thaat iz intolerabool. Meedeeya sae plaenle thaat the fienal name uv the Burmeez hyueman-riets aaktivist "Aung San Suu Kyi" (I woen't eevan atempt tu riet tha hoel naem fanetikle, beekauz I haavan't herd it aul sed sloele), iz pranounst "Che". Hwi, then, iz it speld "Kyi"? Hwut ideeyat took a werd frum Bermeez skript thaat plaenle soundz liek "Che" aand roet it "Kyi"? On hwut posibool justifikaeshan? This kiend uv linggwistic stuepidite iz evreehwair around us, aaz oeverejookaetad aand undersensibool fuelz berdan us witth nonsensikal spelingz we kaanot posible sound-out beekauz thae bair no reelaeshan tu tha soundz uv the Ingglish verzhan uv tha roeman aalfabet. So, evre yeer, maur and maur ideeyotik, unfanetik and eevan aanteefanetik spelingz kum intu Ingglish, but padaantik fuelz in tha laanggwaj Estaablishmant deefend the endlas wersaning uv Ingglish speling on faachuewas groundz. Thae need tu be beetaen intu submishan. Fizikale, if need be.
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S-CHIP Oeveried. It looks, aat tha moemant, aaz tho tha Boosh Kabol iz goewing tu luez wun, big. Thaat astoundingle profligat bunch uv monsterz, hu haav givan us tha lorjast bujat defisits in tha histare uv tha werld in deefens uv Raadikal Zieyanizam in tue foran waurz, wont tu deeni aan ekspanshan uv heltthkair tu childran insied the Yoonietad Staets. Thair pupat, Dumbya, haaz promist tu veeto tha bil paast bi boetth houzaz uv Konggras. Aultho eevan toodae NBK Nuez sed thaat tha bil'z sapaurterz or 15 voets shaurt uv oeveried in tha Hous uv Repreezentativz, it aulso sed thaat reefyuezal tu oeveried kood kauz eenaurmas problamz faur tha Reepublikan Porte in nekst yeer'z eelekshanz. Thaat seemz tu me liekle tu pradues a chaenj uv 'hort' on tha port uv eenuf Reepublikan Konggrasman tu oeveried aafter aul.
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Reepublikanz or baad peepool, but thae doen't liek tu be understood tu be baad peepool, so hwen Boosh kumz tu shuv aand thae faes reevulshan aat tha poelz, thae mae hied thair vishas faes aand voet faur oeveried. Hwen we'r runing a defisit uv hundradz uv bilyanz uv dolerz a yeer, apoezing mune faur sik Amairikan childran on bujatere groundz iz ekstreemle objekshanabool tu aulmoest aul Amairikanz, eevan tha bulk uv rejisterd Reepublikan voeterz.
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Indeeyan Ttheevz. NBC repaurtad todae thaat ten yeerz ago, Konggras paast lejislaeshan tu permit Amairikan Indeeyan triebz tu oepan gaambling kaseenoez, no maater hwether tha staets around them didan't haav aand didan't wont leegaliezd gaambling. Thaat wuz aan impermisibool abyues uv tha staets then. It iz aan impermisibool abyues uv tha staets nou. Indeeyan kaseenoez or steeling $25 bilyan a yeer frum non-Indeeyan fuelz, port uv an $80 bilyan a yeer haul frum leegaliezd gaambling in tha Naeshan oeveraul.
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Evreewun noez thaat "gaambling" iz moestly tthroewing yaur mune awae. If yu wont tu bie wun lotere tickat faur eech drauqing, yu noe yau'r unliekle tu win, but tha chaans tu faantasiez about hwut yu wood du witth aul thaat mune mae seem a fair ekschaenj faur $1. Thaat iz not hwut we'r tauking about in kaseeno "gaambling" (steeling). We'r tauking about peepool hu luez hundradz, eevan tthouzandz uv dolerz in a singgool weekend, aufan dolerz thae kaanot afaurd, taekan frum puer peepool's reel needz, inklueding helthkair faur thair childran. So on wun haand, Konggras wonts tu pravied mune faur publik helthkair faur childran, aand on the uther, it autthariezd Indeeyan kaseenoes tu steel mune frum faamile helthkair faur childran. Maeks a lot uv sens, doen't it?
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Pramoeting Jender Kanfyuezhan. DrugFree.aurg iz pramoeting boksing aaz a beter wae thaan drugz faur yung wiman (uv kuler) tu koep witth problamz uv self-esteem. Yes, bi aul meenz let us pramoet jender kanfyuezhan aand vieyalans aaz aulternativz tu drug yues. Brilyant. Hwut nekst? Smieling apon merder aaz aan aulternativ tu drug yues?
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Anuther aantee-drug publik-servis anounsmant klaemz thaat a muther'z yues uv the ekspreshan "Riet on!" shoez her tu haav bin port uv tha drug kulcher uv tha Siksteez. Thaat iz astonishing in its ignarans. "Riet on" beekaem port uv tha laanggwaj in tha 1960s, perhaaps, but it wuz not lingkt tu tha drug kulcher eksept sekanderile. It wuz priemerile a BLAAK ekspreshan, aand kaan be herd toodae in, amung uther plaesaz, episoedz uv tha klaasik blaak sitkom Good Tiemz.
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Ingglish Evreehwair. (That's tha naem uv an aurganizaeshan/foundaeshan I wood liek tu kreeyaet, tu pramoet the yues uv Ingglish aul oever tha plaanat. But, eevan aabsant such a foundaeshan, it reelaets tu this nekst topik.) I aufan woch tha nuez in French, witth Ingglish subtietalz, aafter the eevning netwerk nuezkaasts in Ingglish aand Spaanish (hwich I swich baak aad faurtth amung duering kamershalz (eksept that I woen't woch the CBS Sprietle Nuez, witth Perke Kerik). I doen't aulwaez reemember tu tern tu tha French nuez, houwever, in port beekauz tha chaanal on hwich it apeerz, WNYE (tha staeshan uv the Nu Yaurk Site publik skuelz) wuz oenle reesantle aadad tu Kaeboolvizhan Nuewerk aaz chaanal 22, aand faur reezanz I du not understaand, its auferingz or stil not listad in Kaeboolvizhan'z naur eevan AOL's proegraam gied. (Naur iz Terner Klaasik Mueveez, on chaanal 97, listad in Kaeboolvizhan's oen onscreen gied, tho, odle, it iz shoen in AOL'z listingz!)
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In ene kaes, tha subtietalz sumtiemz oeverlaap printad infarmaeshan on the underlieying proegraam, rendering boetth unreedabool. So toodae I sent tha foloewing mesaj, veeya feedbaak faurm, tu Fronns Doo, tha netwerk thaat auferz the eevning nuez oever WNYE. Aafter I klikt tha send butan, I reeseevd no aaknolajmant skreen, so this iz a sekand, indirekt atempt tu reech tha pouwerz thaat be aat French braudkaasting about tha need tu impruev thair outreech veeya Ingglish.

(En anglais:) In tha verzhan uv 20 HEURES braudkaast in the Y.S., yu need tu maek shuer thaat tha yelo subtietalz in Ingglish or singgool-spaest aand apeer abuv tha printad infarmaeshan in hwiet aand red, beekauz utherwiez tha tue sets uv tietalz interfeer witth eech uther, aaz kaan render boetth unreedabool. Vyuewerz hu reeli apon tha subtietalz beekauz ouwer French iz puer (aur nonegzistant) or eeritaetad aat luezing infarmaeshan tu a needlas teknikal glich. I doen't noe hwi singgool-spaest (good) aand dubool-spaest (baad) subtietalz aulternaet raandamle, but it's anoiying.
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I aulso se, hwen I vizitad tha websiet, thaat the Internet verzhan DIFERZ frum tha verzhan we se veeya WNYE in Nu Yaurk Site (hwich I se bi kaebool in Nuewerk, NJ). Unles I wuz inatentiv, toodae's proegraam apeerz tu be tha saem up until a segmant about men kooking thaat apeerz, in the Internet verzhan, aafter tha segmant on obsesiv-kampulsiv disaurder. I did not take tha tiem tu woch tha hoel proegraam on the Internet, but nou wunder, Iz 20 HEURES akchuewale aan ouwer laung, aand we se, abraud, oenle a haaf ouwer? If so, I ges I wil haav tu woch (aur lisan tu) the Internet verzhan nou aand then, eksept thaat it duz not haav subtietalz (hwich, I point out, yu kood aad aat aan aulternate Internet siet), aand mi French iz baad. Indeed, I woch/lisan tu Fronns Doo maenle tu impruev mi French.
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IZ thair aan aulternat, Ingglish-subtietald siet on the Internet thaat I just did not fiend? If yu du not prezantle send out aan Ingglish-subtietald verzhan on yaur websiet, yu shood seereeyasle kansider aading wun, sins such a webkaast kood ekspaand yaur audeeyans abraud, eevan outsied Ingglish-speeking kuntreez. Thair or mene peepool huez naetiv laanggwaj iz neether French naur Ingglish hu nunthales or aebool tu reed Ingglish (but not French). Yaur staure toodae on Bermeez refyoojeez in Tielaand shoez a loekal maan speeking Ingglish. I heer Ingglish in tha baakground in mene uv yaur segmants, hwair yaur reepaurterz haav tu yuez Ingglish aaz the oenle koman laanguaj beetween themselvz aand tha peepool thae or intervyuewing in kuntreez aul oever tha werld. Yu thus noe thaat thair or hyuej numberz uv peepool liek thaat Ti maan hu kood not understaand a French braudkaast but kood deriev infarmaeshan frum Fronns Doo veeya aan Ingglish-subtietald Internet braudkaast.
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In ene kaes, Loerhonn Dooloques iz KYUET, aand hiz smieyal brietanz this gae maan'z dae. I woch eevan on the daez he duz not apeer, but I preefer tha daez hwen he duz aangker tha braudkaast. Cheerz.

Reekaalibraeting Kor Alormz. Aaz I riet, a kor alorm iz goewing auf faur no reezan. This haapanz sevral tiemz a dae witthin mi heering, aand sumtiemz kantinyuez faur oever a minit, eevan in tha middol uv tha niet. Kor alormz or tue sensitiv aand regyoolerle go auf hwen thair ia no braek-in. A loud noiz, a heve truk paasing bi, a persan wauking kloes bi, aand hu noez hwut els, kaan set auf a kor alorm aand blaast the entieyer naeberhood until the oener heerz tha noiz aand ternz it auf reemoetly, aur haaz tu go fizikale out tu tha kor tu stop it. Plaenle tha Federal Guvernmant needz tu set staanderdz tu preevant interstaet sailz uv kor alormz thaat go auf faur no reezan beekauz thae or tue sensitiv, aur reeyaakt tu tthingz thaat haav nutthing tu du witth braek-inz. This izan't rokat sieyans.
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Peepool haav lernd tu ignaur kor alormz beekauz thair or so mene fauls alormz. Kor ttheft kantinyuez tu haapan daspiet, aur perhaaps in port beekauz, uv aul theez oeversensitiv kor alormz goewing auf aul around us sevral tiemz a dae. Kor alormz or the eelektronik verzhan uv Tha Boi Hu Kried Woolf. But thae or much louder, disturb us much maur aufan, aand konstituet a seereeyas publik nuesans.thaat reeduesaz kwolite uv lief in mene erban aireeyas. Eether tha Federal Guvernmant aur staets must aakt tu impoez reezanabool staanderdz uv sensitivite, aur staets aand loekaaliteez must enaak noiz-nuesans aurdinansaz tu punish oeners uv kor alorms thaat go auf faur no reezan aand haraas naeberz. Perhaaps aafter a fyu $50 fiens (ferst afens), $100 fienz (2d), or $500 or $1,000 fienz (thairafter), kor oenerz wil diskanekt faulte kor alormz, aand nu-kor bieyerz wil maek shuer thair kor duz NOT haav a kor alorm instauld.
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(Tha kerant Y.S. militere detth toel in Eerok, akaurding tu tha websiet "Eerok Koewalishan Kaazhuewalteez", iz 3,802 — faur Izreeyal.)

'General Betray' Us Indeed.. In responding to the MoveOn.org ad in The New York Times with the headline "General Petraeus or General Betray Us", Democrats have, as usual, been utterly craven. The Republican Right portrays David Petraeus as a hero and patriot. But his actions, or failures, have made the United States hated around the world. Consider the report today that a U.S. Army sniper who deliberately shot two unarmed Iraqi men and then planted false evidence that they were involved in terrorism, was sentenced to five months in prison but allowed to remain in the Army. Five months in prison for murdering two Iraqi men. The murderer's defense (the Nuremberg Defense) was that he was under orders to shoot anyone who picked up "bait" materials that might be used in creating Improvised Explosive Devices. Could such things have no other uses? What if someone was just trying to conquerors who issued orders to shoot Americans who picked up wire, how many Americans would be shot dead? Would we think that was fair, a simple preventative measure against "terrorism"? Would we even regard as "terrorism" resisting a foreign army of occupation? Or would we instead regard it as our patriotic duty?
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The U.S. invasion and continued occupation of Iraq is absolutely, unequivocally wrong, wrong, wrong, and anyone who supports it is evil and unfit to be called a "hero", "patriot", or anything like it. Because at end the national purpose of the United States is always to do the right thing, not ever to make excuses for doing the wrong thing.
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Moreover, Petraeus willfully falsified for news cameras today how "safe" Baghdad is now, by walking thru an outdoor market wearing only a hat rather than helmet on his head. But the NBC reporter swung the camera around to show dozens of heavily armed soldiers guarding him in the immediate vicinity. Are they always there, when it's only Iraqis in the market and not General Petraeus? I don't think so.
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Charlie Rose last nite interviewed the man who rules Qatar, a Gulf state (Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani). He asked the obvious question of whether U.S. forces in Iraq might be replaced with UN peacekeepers, as from Arab countries. The sheikh said that Arab nations don't want to get involved. Tuf. It's their part of the world. If the U.S. announces, plainly, "We're going home. We freed Iraq from Saddam. Our job is done.", the Arab world will have two choices: stand aside and let happen in Iraq whatever might happen, or see its own vital interests as requiring them to help the Iraqi government stabilize the nation, and destroy terrorism and sectarian violence. In either case, we will have washed our hands of the situation, especially if we offer to help fund peacekeepers from Arab League states, as reparations for U.S. crimes against the Iraqi people and "Arab nation". Mind you, Arabs have tons of money of their own, in places like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and, yes, Qatar. (Curiously, altho we have been told in recent years not to pronounce that country's name the same as the standard English word "catarrh", but rather like "cutter" or even "gutter", with stress on the first syllable, the Sheikh himself pronounced it exactly like "catarrh". Perhaps he did so as a courtesy to speakers of English but would pronounce it very differently in Arabic. He speaks very good English.)
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Iran Is Right. Today, Iranian lawmakers branded the U.S. military and the CIA with the word "terrorist" that the U.S. throws around regarding Iran. Iran is right, American propagandists wrong. Count the bodies of the dead from Iran's actions and the U.S. Government's actions.
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Su Chee. One reason I am a spelling reformer is the chaotic 'system' of transliterations from languages written in nonromanic alphabets. It's bad enuf that we take into English intact names and loanwords from languages that are written in the roman alphabet, but when something is transliterated in irrational form from nonroman writings, that is intolerable. Media say plainly that the final name of the Burmese human-rights activist, Aung San Suu Kyi, is pronounced "Chee". Why, then, is it spelled "Kyi"? What idiot took a word from Burmese script that plainly sounds like "Chee" and wrote it "Kyi"? On what possible justification? This kind of linguistic stupidity is everywhere around us, as overeducated and undersensible fools burden us with nonsensical spellings we cannot possibly sound-out because they bear no relation to the sounds of the English version of the roman alphabet. So, every year, more and more idiotic, unphonetic and even antiphonetic spellings come into English, but pedantic fools in the language Establishment defend the endless worsening of English spelling on fatuous grounds. They need to be beaten into submission. Physically, if need be.
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S-CHIP Override. It looks, at the moment, as tho the Bush Cabal is going to lose one, big. That astoundingly profligate bunch of monsters, who have given us the largest budget deficits in the history of the world in defense of Radical Zionism in two foreign wars, want to deny an expansion of healthcare to children inside the United States. Their puppet, Dumbya, has promised to veto the bill passed by both houses of Congress. Altho even today NBC News said that the bill's supporters are 15 votes short of override in the House of Representatives, it also said that refusal to override could cause enormous problems for the Republican Party in next year's elections. That seems to me likely to produce a change of 'heart' on the part of enuf Republican Congressmen to override after all.
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Republicans are bad people, but they don't like to be understood to be bad people, so when Bush comes to shove and they face revulsion at the polls, they may hide their vicious face and vote for override. When we're running a deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars a year, opposing money for sick American children on budgetary grounds is extremely objectionable to almost all Americans, even the bulk of registered Republican voters.
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Indian Thieves. NBC reported today that ten years ago, Congress passed legislation to permit American Indian tribes to open gambling casinos, no matter whether the states around them didn't have and didn't want legalized gambling. That was an impermissible abuse of the states then. It is an impermissible abuse of the states now. Indian casinos are stealing $25 billion a year from non-Indian fools, part of an $80 billion a year haul from legalized gambling in the Nation overall.
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Everyone knows that "gambling" is mostly throwing your money away. If you want to buy one lottery ticket for each drawing, you know you're unlikely to win, but the chance to fantasize about what you would do with all that money may seem a fair exchange for $1. That is not what we're talking about in casino "gambling" (stealing). We're talking about people who lose hundreds, even thousands of dollars in a single weekend, often dollars they cannot afford, taken from poor people's real needs, including healthcare for their children. So on one hand, Congress wants to provide money for public healthcare for children, and on the other, it authorized Indian casinos to steal money from family healthcare for children. Makes a lot of sense, don't it?
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Promoting Gender Confusion. DrugFree.org is promoting boxing as a better way than drugs for young women (of color) to cope with problems of self-esteem. Yes, by all means let us promote gender confusion and violence as alternatives to drug use. Brilliant. What next? Smiling upon murder as an alternative to drug use?
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Another anti-drug public-service announcement claims that a mother's use of the expression "Right on!" shows her to have been part of the drug culture of the Sixties. That is astonishing in its ignorance. "Right on" became part of the language in the 1960s, perhaps, but it was not linked to the drug culture except secondarily. It was primarily a BLACK expression, and can be heard today in, among other places, episodes of the classic black sitcom Good Times.
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English Everywhere. (That's the name of an organization/foundation I would like to create, to promote the use of English all over the planet. But, even absent such a foundation, it relates to this next topic.) I often watch the news in French, with English subtitles, after the evening network newscasts in English and Spanish (which I switch back and forth among during commercials (except that I won't watch CBS Sprightly News, with Perkie Couric). I don't always remember to turn to the French news, however, in part because the channel on which it appears, WNYE (the station of the New York City public schools) was only recently added to Cablevision Newark as channel 22, and for reasons I do not understand, its offerings are still not listed in Cablevision's nor even AOL's program guide. (Nor is Turner Classic Movies, on channel 97, listed in Cablevision's own onscreen guide, tho, oddly, it is shown in AOL's listings!)
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In any case, the subtitles sometimes overlap printed information on the underlying program, rendering both unreadable. So today I sent the following message, via feedback form, to France 2, the network that offers the evening news over WNYE. After I clicked the send button, I received no acknowledgment screen, so this is a second, indirect attempt to reach the powers that be at French broadcasting about the need to improve their outreach via English.

(En anglais:) In the version of 20 HEURES broadcast in the U.S., you need to make sure that the yellow subtitles in English are single-spaced and appear above the printed information in white and red, because otherwise the two sets of titles interfere with each other, as can render both unreadable. Viewers who rely upon the subtitles because our French is poor (or nonexistent) are irritated at losing information to a needless technical glitch. I don't know why single-spaced (good) and double-spaced (bad) subtitles alternate randomly, but it's annoying.
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I also see, when I visited the website, that the Internet version DIFFERS from the version we see via WNYE in New York City (which I see by cable in Newark, NJ). Unless I was inattentive, today's program appears to be the same up until a segment about men cooking that appears, in the Internet version, after the segment on obsessive-compulsive disorder. I did not take the time to watch the whole program on the Internet, but now wonder, Is 20 HEURES actually an hour long, and we see, abroad, only a half hour? If so, I guess I will have to watch (or listen to) the Internet version now and then, except that it does not have subtitles (which, I point out, you could add at an alternate Internet site), and my French is bad. Indeed, I watch/listen to France 2 mainly to improve my French.
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IS there an alternate, English-subtitled site on the Internet that I just did not find? If you do not presently send out an English-subtitled version on your website, you should seriously consider adding one, since such a webcast could expand your audience abroad, even outside English-speaking countries. There are many people whose native language is neither French nor English who nonetheless are able to read English (but not French). Your story today on Burmese refugees in Thailand shows a local man speaking English. I hear English in the background in many of your segments, where your reporters have to use English as the only common language between themselves and the people they are interviewing in countries all over the world. You thus know that there are huge numbers of people like that Thai man who could not understand a French broadcast but could derive information from France 2 via an English-subtitled Internet broadcast.
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In any case, Laurent Delahousse is CUTE, and his smile britens this gay man's day. I watch even on the days he does not appear, but I prefer the days when he does anchor the broadcast. Cheers.

Recalibrating Car Alarms. As I write, a car alarm is going off for no reason. This happens several times a day within my hearing, and sometimes continues for over a minute, even in the middle of the nite. Car alarms are too sensitive and regularly go off when there is no break-in. A loud noise, a heavy truck passing bi, a person walking close by, and who knows what else, can set off a car alarm and blast the entire neighborhood until the owner hears the noise and turns it off remotely, or has to go physically out to the car to stop it. Plainly the Federal Government needs to set standards to prevent interstate sales of car alarms that go off for no reason because they are too sensitive, or react to things that have nothing to do with break-ins. This isn't rocket science.
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People have learned to ignore car alarms because there are so many false alarms. Car theft continues to happen despite, or perhaps in part because, of all these oversensitive car alarms going off all around us several times a day. Car alarms are the electronic version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. But they are much louder, disturb us much more often, and constitute a serious public nuisance that reduces quality of life in many urban areas. Either the Federal Government or states must act to impose reasonable standards of sensitivity, or states and localities must enact noise-nuisance ordinances to punish owners of car alarms that go off for no reason and harass neighbors. Perhaps after a few $50 fines (first offense), $100 fines (2d), or $500 or $1,000 fines (thereafter), car owners will disconnect faulty car alarms, and new-car buyers will make sure their car does NOT have a car alarm installed.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,802 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Hwut Rezoomae?

This blog is published, first, in phonetic (Fanetik) spelling and only then in standard English spelling. If you wish to skip to the traditionally spelled text (albeit with a few simplifications now and then), click here.
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Hilere Klintan preetendz thaat she iz hyuejle ekspeereeyanst in guvernmant. Oe? On hwut plaanat?
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She haaz servd wun term (siks yeerz) plus a fyu muntths in the Yoonietad Staets Senat. That iz her entieyer rezoomae aaz aan eelektad guvernmant afishal. Wun term in tha Senat. Big deel.
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Jon Edwerdz haaz just about tha saem amount uv guvernmant ekspeereeyans. Barok Oeboma haaz a yeer aur so maur lejislaetiv ekspeereeyans, ferst aat the staet leval, then aat the naashanal leval. And Bil Richerdsan servd 14 yeerz in the Hous uv Repreezentativz, a yeer aur so as Y.S. Aambaasader tu the Yoonietad Naeshanz, then 2½ yeerz as Sekratere uv Enerje in the Klintan Aadministraeshan, then maur thaan 4 yeerz aaz Guverner uv Nu Meksiko, an egzekyootiv pazishan. So hu haaz tha best rezoomae? Hou iz Hilere Klintan tha 'moest ekspeereeyanst' kaandidaet? It's aul hiep aand liez. Liez? Frum a Klintan? Hu'da thungk it?
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Prieyer tu her wun term in tha Senat, the oenle guvernmental tthing Hilere Klintan wuz aaskt tu du, aaz Ferst Laede, wuz tu kum up witth a plaan faur yueniversal heltthkair. It wuz a dizaaster. We haav no iedeeya hwether tha plaan wuz good aur baad, beekauz she abaandand it aat tha ferst sien uv reezistans, aand her huzband soeld her out, reefyuezing tu chaampeeyan thaat proegraam. She let him sel her out. The wief uv ene publik afishal haaz substaanshal meenz tu poosh her oen ajenda witth thaat afishal, yet Bil soeld Hilere out, aand Hilere didan't go balistik in publik.
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Thaat mizerabool perfaurmans shoez thaat, aat leest in 1993, Hilere Klintan wuz unfit tu serv in ene leedership kapaasite uv ene maejer aurganizaeshan, much les Prezidant uv the Yoonietad Staets.
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The oenle rezoomae uv konsakwans in this prezidenshal kontest iz tha rezoomae not uv Hilere Klintan but uv Bil Klintan, a tue-term Prezidant hu left aufis witth tha lorjast bujatere serplus in tha histare uv tha werld. A vere lorj prapaurshan uv tha peepool hu klaem tu wont tu eelekt Hilere Klintan Prezidant reele wont tu eelekt Bil Klintan tu a ttherd term in aufis. Bil deeniez thaat he wood plae eneetthing but a miener roel aaz aadviezer, aur aambaasader-aat-lorj, aur hwutever els Hilere miet aask him tu du, but we noe witth aabsaluet sertitued thaat Bil Klintan iz a shaemlas lieyer: "I did not haav sekshuewal reelaeshanz witth thaat yung wooman."
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Thus ariezaz a vere interesting konstitueshanal kweschan. Or tha Klintanz atempting tu siedstep tha 22nd Amendmant, hwich reestrikts a givan persan tu aat moest tue termz aaz Prezidant, bi pooting tha Hwiet Hous in tha wief's name?
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Laura Bush wuz intervyued on telavizhan this week about Burma/Mieyanmor, in hwich she iz sapoezd tu be deeple interestad. Or tha Reepublikanz seting up thair oen eevaezhan uv tha 22nd Amendmant?
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Sno in Yuerap. Sno haaz aulrede faulan in the Aalps aand Peeraneez, the erleeyast snoefaul in faurte yeerz. This daimd gloebal waurming!
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Speeking uv "gloebal waurming", it iz obveeyas tu eneewun hu tthingks faur maur thaan 2 sekandz, thaat underlieying aul so-kauld "aantthrapoejenik [maan-maed] gloebal waurming" iz tha werld'z ever-groewing popyoolaeshan. Hwi, then, du we heer endlas chaater about kantroeling aand reeduesing "eemishanz" but not wun werd about kantroeling aand reeduesing "popyoolaeshanz"?
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Rusha iz aakchuewale enkerajing Rushanz tu haav maur baebeez, not beekauz Rusha kaanot get imigrants but beekauz it duzan't wont non-Rushanz in Rusha. A Rushan wooman this week haad a rekerd-bustingle big baebe, 17 poundz. It wuz her twelftth chieyald.
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Raesizam aand triebalizam pramoet popyoolaeshan groetth in Paalastien tue, in a waur uf reepradukshan beetween Juez aand Aarabz. The Y.S., bi kontraast, iz boelstering its utherwiez deekliening popyoolaeshan witth hyuej infloez uv peepool frum tha Ttherd Werld. The Ttherd Werld is fluding tha plaanat witth ekses bertths, but noebude seemz tu kair about thaat aat aul. No, we or just sapoezd tu saev tha childran uv ireesponsibool Ttherd Werld paarants frum tha storvaeshan thaat thair paarants set them on kaurs tu di frum. We or endlasle biseejd in tha Ferst Werld bi aurganizaeshanz beging faur chaarite faur childran in tha Ttherd Werld. Hwut about steriliezing Ttherd Werld wiman (permanantle aur faur fiev yeerz aat a tiem witth subkyuetaeneeyas haurmoen implaants) so thae doen't haav childran tu storv? No, that wood be smort. Aand we must never be smort.
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(Tha kerant Y.S. militere detth toel in Eerok, akaurding tu tha websiet "Eerok Koewalishan Kaazhuewalteez", iz 3,800 — faur Izreeyal.)
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What Résumé? Hillary Clinton pretends that she is hugely experienced in government. Oh? On what planet?
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She has served one term (six years) plus a few months in the United States Senate. That is her entire résumé as an elected government official. One term in the Senate. That's it.
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John Edwards has just about the same amount of government experience. Barack Obama has a year or so more legislative experience, first at the state level, then at the national level. And Bill Richardson served 14 years in the House of Representatives, a year or so as U.S. Ambassador to the United Naitons, then 2½ years as Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administrataion, then more than 4 years as Governor of New Mexico, an executive position. So who has the best résumé? How is Hillary Clinton the 'most experienced' candidate? It's all hype and lies. Lies? From a Clinton? Who'da thunk it?
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So why is Hillary Clinton said to be the 'most experienced' candidate? It's all hype and lies.
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Prior to her one term in the Senate, the only governmental thing she was asked to do, as First Lady, was to come up with a plan for universal healthcare. It was a disaster. We have no idea whether the plan was good or bad, because she abandoned it at the first sign of resistance, and her husband sold her out, refusing to champion that program. She let him sell her out. The wife of any public official has substantial means to push her own agenda with that official, yet Bill sold Hillary out, and Hillary didn't go ballistic in public.
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That miserable performance shows that, at least in 1993, Hillary Clinton was unfit to serve in any leadership capacity of any major organization, much less President of the United States.
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The only résumé of consequence in this presidential contest is the résumé not of Hillary Clinton but of Bill Clinton, a two-term President who left office with the largest budgetary surplus in the history of the world. A very large proportion of the people who claim to want to elect Hillary Clinton President really want to elect Bill Clinton to a third term in office. Bill denies that he would play anything but a minor role as advisor, or ambassador-at-large, or whatever else Hillary might ask him to do, but we know with absolute certitude that Bill Clinton is a shameless liar: "I did not have sexual relations with that young woman."
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Thus arises a very interesting constitutional question. Are the Clintons attempting to sidestep the 22nd Amendment, which restricts a given person to at most two terms as President, by putting the White House in the wife's name?
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Laura Bush was interviewed on television this week about Burma/Myanmar, in which she is supposed to be deeply interested. Are the Republicans setting up their own evasion of the 22nd Amendment?
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Snow in Europe. Snow has already fallen in the Alps and Pyrenees, the earliest snowfall in forty years. This damned global warming!
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Speaking of "global warming", it is obvious to anyone who thinks for more than 2 seconds, that underlying all so-called "anthropogenic [man-made] global warming" is the world's ever-growing population. Why, then, do we hear endless chatter about controlling and reducing "emissions" but not one word about controlling and reducing "populations"? Russia is actually encouraging Russians to have more babies, not because Russia cannot get immigrants but because it doesn't want non-Russians in Russia. A Russian woman this week had a record-busting big baby, 17 pounds. It was her twelfth child.
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Racism and tribalism promote population growth in Palestine too, in a war of reproduction between Jews and Arabs. The U.S., by contrast, is bolstering its otherwise declining population with huge inflows of people from the Third World. The Third World is flooding the planet with excess births, but nobody seems to care about that at all. No, we are just supposed to save the children of irresponsible Third World parents from the starvation that their parents set them on course to die from. We are endlessly besieged in the First World by organizations begging for charity for children in the Third World. What about sterilizing Third World women (permanently or for five years at a time with subcutaneous hormone implants) so they don't have children to starve? No, that would be smart. And we must never be smart.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,800 — for Israel.)



- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Nu Direkshan; Naming Pandas; Subtitles; Hypocrisy on Iran; World More Violent Than Ever?; Thieves in the Mailbox. Frequent readers of this blog will have noted that I have in recent months posted much less often than I used to. In part, that is because I am so busy with other things that I just don't have the time or energy to write this. The key thing to bear in mind, however, is that I get greater personal satisfaction from those other things, particularly my Newark fotoblog. It engages my visual creativity more than just my desire to tell people about the interesting things I discover about Newark every day, or experience in living a semi-urban but also semi-suburban lifestyle here.
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This blog, my political blog, enables me to get some political and mass-cultural things off my chest, but nothing else, and I see little impact to my efforts. The bad guys (and gals) are still in power and haven't changed a thing.
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Among my other projects is spelling reform, and I have come to believe that the only way spelling reform is going to get anywhere is if people use reformed spelling in publishing outside of spelling-reform societies and related websites.
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So today I decided to add a dimension to this blog: phonetic respelling in my Fanetik reform. I hope that will be the extra element that makes this project more interesting for me. And maybe for some of you. I may not have time nor energy enuf to do so for every post, but from now on I plan to publish this blog in two versions, phonetic (Fanetik) and standard (Traditional Orthography, "T.O."). Don't worry, tho I plan to put the Fanetik version first, I will also put a link to the T.O. version at the top of each blog entry so anyone who doesn't want to see how I spell — and, thus, how I speak — can always skip to the T.O. text.
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To give you an idea of how difficult or easy it will be to read Fanetik text, I will now rewrite this introduction in Fanetik, and then proceed to the other topics mentioned above, also in Fanetik, but place at that point too a link down to the T.O. text. In general, I will use standard Fanetik, without accents for syllabic stress, tho if a word's pronunciation might not be clear, as in very long words, I might put one or more of the familiar accents from French on the stressed vowel (on the first letter if the vowel sound is shown by two letters): the acute accent for primary stress (anói, deefráud, intáakt); grave for secondary stress (jèeyagráafikal), and circumflex for tertiary stress, on unusually long words (ìnkomprehênsibílite). Fanetik with accents is "Augméntad Fanétik". If you're not interested in the Fanetik text but wish to see the other topics discussed below in T.O., click here.
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Nu Direkshan; Naeming Paandaz; Subtietoolz; Hipokrase on Eeron; Werld Maur Vieyalant thaan Ever?; Ttheevz in tha Mailboks. Freekwant reederz uv this blog wil haav noetad thaat I haav in reesant muntths poestad much les aufan thaan I yuezd tu. In port, thaat iz beekauz I aam so bize witth uther tthingz thaat I just doen't haav the tiem aur enerje tu riet this. Tha ke tthing tu bair in miend, houwever, iz thaat I get graeter persanal saatisfaakshan frum thoez uther tthingz, partikyoolerle mi Nuewerk foetoeblog. It engaejaz mi vizhuewal kreeyaetivite maur thaan just mi dizieyer tu tel peepool about the interesting tthingz I diskuver about Nuewerk evre dae, aur ekspeereeyans in living a semee-erban but aulso semee-saburban liefstieyal heer.
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This blog, mi palitikal blog, enaeboolz me tu get sum palitikal aand maas-kulcheral tthingz auf mi chest, but nuthing els, aand I se litool impaakt tu mi eferts. Tha baad giez (aand gaalz) or stil in pouwer aand haavan't chaenjd a tthing.
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Amung mi uther projekts iz speling reefaurm, aand I haav kum tu bileev thaat the oenle wae speling reefaurm iz goewing tu get eneehwair iz if peepool yuez reefaurmed speling in publishing outsied speling-refaurm sasieyateez aand relaetad websiets.
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So toodae I deesiedad tu aad a dimenshan tu this blog: fanetik reespeling in mi Fanetik reefaurm. I hoep thaat wil be the ekstra elamant thaat maeks this projekt maur interesting faur me. Aand maebe faur sum uv yu. I mae not haav tiem naur enerje eenuf tu du so faur evre poest, but frum nou on I plaan tu publish this blog in tue verzhanz, fanetik (Fanetik) aand staanderd (Tradishanal Autthografy, "T.O."). Doen't were, tho I plaan tu poot tha Fanetik verzhan ferst I wil aulso poot a lingk tu tha T.O. verzhan aat tha top so eneewun hu duzan't wont tu se hou I spel — aand, thus, hou I speek — kaan aulwaez skip tu the T.O. tekst.
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Tu giv yu aan iedeeya uv hou difikult aur eeze it wil be tu reed Fanetik tekst, I wil nou reeriet this intradukshan in Fanetik aand then proeseed tu the uther topiks menshand abuv, aulso in Fanetik, but plaes aat thaat point tue a lingk doun to tha T.O. tekst. In jeneral, I wil yuez standerd Fanetik witthout aaksents faur silaabik stres, tho if a werd's pranunseeyaeshan miet not be kleer, aaz in vere laung werdz, I miet poot wun aur maur uv tha familyer aaksents frum French on tha strest vouwal (on tha ferst leter if tha vouwal sound iz shoen bi tue leters): the akyuet aaksent faur priemere stres (anói, deefráud, intáakt); grov faur sekandere stres (jèeyagráafikal), aand serkamfleks faur tersheeyere stres, on unyuezhuewale laung werdz (ìnkomprehênsibílite). Fanetik witth aaksents iz "Augméntad Fanétik". If yau'r not interestad in tha Fanetik tekst but wish tu se the uther topiks diskust beelo in T.O., clik heer.
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Naeming Paandaz. Zu Aatlanta iz runing a kontest tu naem a baebe paanda baurn thair September 6tth. Haapile, mene uv tha sagjeschanz or faur Amairikan naemz. I aam reele tieyerd uv aul tha Chieneez naemz givan tu paandaz. Thae mae kum frum jeeyagraafik Chiena, but thae or not Chieneez, du not speek Chieneez, aand haav no kulcheral kanekshan tu Chiena. Hou about just kauling a boy Paanda "Aande" aur "Saande", a goorl "Saandee" aur "Kaandee", aand haav dun witth it?
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Hwi No Subtietoolz on Spaanish Nuez? Aaz I riet, I haav mi TV tuend tu Spaanish staeshanz (swiching baak aand faurtth in tha nuez frum Univisión tu Telemundo duering kamershalz), tu akustam mi eer tu tha laanggwaj in tha baakground. I doen't ekspekt tu understaand much; I'd haav tu pae vere kairfool atenchan tu du thaat, aand I'm bize witth this. But I aam stortoold bi tha toetal aabsans uv Ingglish-laanggwaj subtietoolz in theez nuez proegraamz ("noticieros"). Eevan kloezd kaapshaning iz in Spaanish oenle. I doen't seem tu haav a Sekandere Audeeyo Proegraaming (SAP) kaepabilite on this inekspensiv TV, tho I need tu fiend tha maanyoowal tu be shuer. Stil, if Spaanish braudkaasterz wer wiez, thae wood run Ingglish-laanggwaj subtietools tu thair maejer proegraamz tu inkrees thair audeeyansaz, ferst, tu the Ingglish-dominant childran uv Laatin imigrants, aand sekand, tu tha jeneral Amairikan audeeyans.
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Mene Amairikanz or interestad in eevents in Laatin Amairika, a reejan thaat iz maenle ignaurd bi Ingglish-laanggwaj braudkaasterz. But ouwer Spaanish, if ene, izan't good eenuf tu get maur thaan a vaeg ideeya uv hwut aan angker aur reepaurter iz talking about. I haav herd thaat sum Amairikans aulso liek tha telenovela [tèl.ae.noe.vél.a] faurm uv Spaanish soep opera, so wood glaadle woch if thair wer Ingglish subtietoolz. Stuedants uv Spaanish hu or les thaan fluewant wood aulso liek tu woch aul kiendz uv Spaanish TV, aand chek tha subtietoolz faur eneetthing thae doen't understaand.
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This seemz aan eeze aand relativle inekspensiv wae tu buest wun'z audeeyans bi milyanz, eevan tenz uv milyanz (hwich wood permit them tu inkrees aadvertiezing raets). I wunder hwi neether Univisión naur Telemundo haaz dun this.
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(A Jean-Claude Van Damme/Rob Schneider [Zhonn-Kloed Von Doma/Rob Shnieder] mueve, apaarantle Nok Auf, tho kauld "Complot en Hong Kong" in tha Spaanish verzhan, kanfyuezd me hwen it stortad witth Ingglish subtietoolz, sins tha preeseeding film, witth Cantinflas, haad no subtietoolz. It ternz out thaat thair wer apaarantle Ingglish subtietoolz in the Amairikan verzhan, beekauz sum uther laanggwag (Chieneez?) wuz herd onskreen. I wuz ternd auf bi tha miendlas vieyalans uv thaat film, so ternd tu Sabado Gigante [Sób.o.tho Khee.gón.tae].)
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Hipocrise on Eeron. The Y.S. Guvernmant aand meedeeya preetend tu be kansernd about waurliek intenshanz frum Eeron. But tha Prezidant uv Eeron, in Nu Yaurk faur the YN Jeneral Asemble, wontad tu lae a reetth aat Ground Zeero, to ekspres the Ironeeyan peepool'z simpatthe faur tha viktimz uv 9/11. He wuz reefyuezd permishan. So much faur wonting Eeron tu be peesful taurd us. Tha reeyaalite iz thaat the Y.S. Guvernmant aand meedeeya wont waur witth Eeron, not pees. Oenle a hoelhortad kanverzhan tu Raadikal Zieyanizam wil win Eeron saefte frum ataak — aur a reevoelt bi the Amairikan eelektarat agenst the endlas kraap we or fed bi Zieyanists.
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Werld Maur Vieyalant thaan Ever? Ouwer teknoloje haaz outstript ouwer hyuemaanite. Mene peepool, in thair yuetth, ekspekt thaat aaz tha werld beekumz maur teknalojikale aadvaanst, it wil aaz wel beekum maur siviliezd. A "kiender, jentler" werld haaz, alaas, eevaedad us, aand evre teknolaje seemz tu haav its vieyalant yuesaz, frum niet-vizhan gogoolz yuezd bi snieperz tu selfoen detanaeterz faur korbomz. Tha "hyueman" raes reele iz just hoeplas, monstras, vieyalant sliem. It duzan't maater hwut kuntre yu tauk about. I woch nuez in Ingglish, Spaanish, aand French. Evreehwair around tha gloeb, a signifikant paurshan uv "hyeman" beeyingz or robing, raeping, beeting, aand slautering eech uther. If gunz or taekan awae, thae staab eech uther witth knives aur speerz, smaash eech uther with klubz, paur poizan intu eech uther'z dringks aur fued, aand utherwiez seek tu kil aur maem. Eevan "tha best aand tha brietast" lend themselvz tu maeking biger aand beter bomz, maur aakyarat siets faur snieperz aand bomberdeerz, aur giedans sistamz faur misoolz. Hwut ever haapand tu the iedeeya uv sivilizaeshan?
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Ttheevz in tha Mailboks. Evre dae, Amairikanz or ataakt bi unkountabool tthouzandz uv ttheevz frum aul oever tha werld, tthik aaz swaurmz uv naats. No guvernmant seez ene need tu du eneetthing about it. I haav herd not wun singgool kaandidaet for Prezidant, frum eether maajer porte, sae so much aaz wun singgool werd about kantroeling Internet kriem, aaz tthru kanvoeking a speshal meeting uv the Yoonietad Naeshanz tu kreeyaet a werldwied rejiman uv aantee-fraud eferts maandataure apon aul member staets. Miend yu, I haav not wocht tha deebaets werd-faur-werd but reelied apon nuez reepaurts. No nuez reepaurt I haav seen sez eneetthing about Internet fraud beeying diskust bi ene Prezidenshal kaandidaet. Hwi not? This, aaz so much els, shoez thaat aul kaandidaets uv boetth maejer porteez or kampleetle out uv tuch witth tha tthingz thaat reele kansern tha peepool. Nun uv them haaz tha fogeeyast iedeeya hwut it iz tu liv aaz aan aurdinere hyueman beeying in tha 21st Senchere. Nun uv them iz fit tu leed us; moest kaan't eevan folo us, beekauz thae woen't lisan tu us, beekauz thae doen't kair about us. Thae or runing faur reezanz uv eego, pyuer aand simpool. Aand thaat's not good eenuf.
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Thae wont tu be Prezidant beekauz thae wont tu be Prezidant, not beekauz thae haav ene reel reezan tu be Prezidant, palitikale aur etthikale. Thae haav no proegraam, no kruesaed, no moral deevoeshan tu persu. Thae just won tu be Prezidant beekauz thae or siekalojicale neede peepool hu need pramiskyuewas atenchan. Eevan negativ atenchan feedz thair eegoez. Uv kaurs, the adauring kroudz, the aplauz, tha cheerz feed thair needz, but it wil never be eenuf. Beekauz insikyuer peepool kaan never beekum sikyuer frum outsied atenchan. Sikyuerite iz insied tha persan, not outsied.
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Peenis-enlorjmant skaamz or nou beeying shoen on Spaanish-laanggwaj TV in the Yoonietad Staets, not just Ingglish. Guvernmant seez nutthing. Se no fraud, heer no fraud, speek uv no fraud. Tha politishanz uv the Yoonietad Staets or wilfoole ignarant. Thae doen't wont tu heer about fraud, beekauz then thae'd haav tu du sumtthing about it. Thair sekratereez saurt tthru thair mail aand eemail, eeliminaeting obveeyas skaamz. Yu doen't haav a sekratere aur uther aed tu pratekt yu frum fraud, aand eevan frum tha need tu spend sevral minits a dae saurting tthru eemailz tu deeleet skaamz? Thaat's tuf. It's yaur fault thaat yu oran't rich; yaur fault thaat yu or pouwerlas. Yu dizerv tu be deefraudad. If yu or so stuepid aaz tu faul faur peenis-enlorjmant promisaz aur tu tthingk yu won a lotere yu didan't enter, yu dizerv tu be skaamd. Thaat's thair staand.
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Maur, if yu or so disonast aaz tu dair plaes yaurself in tha pazishan uv tha nekst uv kin uv a ded milyanair, yu dizerv tu be deefraudad. Aaz tha kon ortists sae, self-servingle, "Yu kaan't skaam aan onast maan." Uv kaurs, thaat's not tru. Onast peepool or deefraudad evre dae. Sumtiemz thae or misled bi sob staureez — tha puer, dieying reesant konvert tu Kristeeyaanite hu haaz isofajeeyal kaanser aand wonts tu giv awae hiz aur her faurchan tthru a persan huez deesanse aand chaarite s/he herd about frum tthouzandz uv mieyalz awae, yaur repyootaeshan iz thaat sterling. Yu kaan be tha servant uv God in direkting tha konvert's il-gotan gaen tu tha dizerving, aand if deevoeting a lorj paurshan uv yaur tiem tu this efert shood kauz yu tu luez inkum, yu kaan kompensaet yaurself a reezanabool amount frum tha proeseedz. Thaat's oenle riet.
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Tha ttheevz hu send out skaurz uv bilyanz uv skaam eemailz evre yeer shood be treetad liek tha naats aur maskeetoez thae or, aand kild. Round them up, tishue-tiep them, then slies thair eevool hedz auf aand chop them up faur ports faur deesant peepool.
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Yu woen't heer ene kaandidaet faur Prezidant frum tha maejer porteez tauk about thaat. No, thae or aul moderats. Toleraeting maas fraud iz moderaeshan. Ending it iz ekstreemizam. I aam proud tu be aan ekstreemist.
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(Tha kerant Y.S. militere detth toel in Eerok, akaurding tu tha websiet "Eerok Koewalishan Kaazhuewalteez", iz 3,797 — faur Izreeyal.)
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Naming Pandas. Zoo Atlanta is running a contest to name a baby panda born there September 6th. Happily, many of the suggestions are for American names. I am really tired of all the Chinese names given to pandas. They may come from geographic China, but they are not Chinese, do not speak Chinese, and have no cultural connection to China. How about just calling a boy Panda "Andy" or "Sandy", a girl "Sandi" or "Candy", and have done with it?
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Why No Subtitles on Spanish News? As I write, I have my TV tuned to Spanish stations (switching back and forth in the news from Univisión to Telemundo during commercials), to accustom my ear to the language in the background. I don't expect to understand much; I'd have to pay very careful attention to do that, and I'm busy with this. But I am startled by the total absence of English-language subtitles in these news programs ("noticieros"). Even closed captioning is in Spanish only. I don't seem to have a Secondary Audio Programming (SAP) capability on this inexpensive TV, tho I need to find the manual to be sure. Still, if Spanish broadcasters were wise, they would run English-language subtitles to their major programs to increase their audiences, first, to the English-dominant children of Latin immigrants, and second, to the general American audience.
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Many Americans are interested in events in Latin America, a region that is mainly ignored by English-language broadcasters. But our Spanish, if any, isn't good enuf to get more than a vague idea of what an anchor or reporter is talking about. I have heard that some Americans also like the telenovela form of Spanish soap opera, so would gladly watch if there were English subtitles. Students of Spanish who are less than fluent would also like to watch all kinds of Spanish TV, and check the subtitles for anything they don't understand.
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This seems an easy and relatively inexpensive way to boost one's audience by millions, even tens of millions (which would permit them to increase advertising rates). I wonder why neither Univisión nor Telemundo has done this.
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(A Jean-Claude Van Damme/Rob Schneider movie, apparently Knock Off, tho called "Complot en Hong Kong" in the Spanish version, confused me when it started with English subtitles, since the preceding film, with Cantinflas, had no subtitles. It turns out that there were apparently English subtitles in the American version, because some other language (Chinese?) was heard onscreen. I was turned off by the mindless violence of that film, so turned to Sabado Gigante.)
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Hypocrisy on Iran. The U.S. Government and media pretend to be concerned about warlike intentions from Iran. But the President of Iran, in New York for the UN General Assembly, wanted to lay a wreath at Ground Zero, to express the Iranian people's sympathy for the victims of 9/11. He was refused permission. So much for wanting Iran to be peaceful toward us. The reality is that the U.S. Government and media want war with Iran, not peace. Only a wholehearted conversion to Radical Zionism will win Iran safety from attack — or a revolt by the American electorate against the endless crap we are fed by Zionists.
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World More Violent than Ever? Our technology has outstripped our humanity. Many people, in their youth, expect that as the world becomes more technologically advanced, it will as well become more civilized. A "kinder, gentler" world has, alas, evaded us, and every technology seems to have its violent uses, from nite-vision goggles used by snipers to cellphone detonators for carbombs. The "human" race really is just hopeless, monstrous, violent slime. It doesn't matter what country you talk about. I watch news in English, Spanish, and French. Everywhere around the globe, a significant portion of "human" beings are robbing, raping, beating, and slautering each other. If guns are taken away, they stab each other with knives or spears, smash each other with clubs, pour poison into each other's drinks or food, and otherwise seek to kill or maim. Even "the best and the britest" lend themselves to making bigger and better bombs, more accurate sights for snipers and bombardiers, or guidance systems for missiles. What ever happened to the idea of civilization?
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Thieves in the Mailbox. As an example of how technological advance has merely empowered evil people to do evil more efficiently and over greater distance, Americans are attacked every day by uncountable thousands of thieves from all over the world, thick as swarms of gnats. No government sees any need to do anything about it. I have heard not one single candidate for President, from either major party, say so much as one single word about controlling Internet crime, as thru convoking a special meeting of the United Nations to create a worldwide regimen of anti-fraud efforts mandatory upon all member states. Mind you, I have not watched the debates word-for-word but relied upon news reports. No news report I have seen says anything about Internet fraud being discussed by any Presidential candidate. Why not? This, as so much else, shows that all candidates of both major parties are completely out of touch with the things that really concern the people. None of them has the foggiest idea what it is to live as an ordinary human being in the 21st Century. None of them is fit to lead us; most can't even follow us, because they won't listen to us, because they don't care about us. They are running for reasons of ego, pure and simple. And that's not good enuf.
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They want to be President because they want to be President, not because they have any real reason to be President, politically or ethically. They have no program, no crusade, no moral devotion to pursue. They just want to be President because they are psychologically needy people who need promiscuous attention. Even negative attention feeds their egos. Of course, the adoring crowds, the applause, the cheers feed their needs, but it will never be enuf. Because insecure people can never become secure from outside attention. Security is inside the person, not outside.
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Penis-enlargement scams are now being shown on Spanish-language TV in the United States, not just English. Government sees nothing. See no fraud, hear no fraud, speak of no fraud. The politicians of the United States are willfully ignorant. They don't want to hear about fraud, because then they'd have to do something about it. Their secretaries sort thru their mail and email, eliminating obvious scams. You don't have a secretary or other aide to protect you from fraud, and even from the need to spend several minutes a day sorting thru emails to delete scams? That's tuf. It's your fault that you aren't rich; your fault that you are powerless. You deserve to be defrauded. If you are so stupid as to fall for penis-enlargement promises or to think you won a lottery you didn't enter, you deserve to be scammed. That's their stand.
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More, if you are so dishonest as to dare place yourself in the position of the next of kin of a dead millionaire, you deserve to be defrauded. As the con artists say, self-servingly, "You can't scam an honest man." Of course, that's not true. Honest people are defrauded every day. Sometimes they are misled by sob stories — the poor, dying recent convert to Christianity who has esophageal cancer and wants to give away his or her fortune thru a person whose decency and charity s/he heard about from thousands of miles away, your reputation is that sterling. You can be the servant of God in directing the convert's ill-gotten gain to the deserving, and if devoting a large portion of your time this effort should cause you to lose income, you can compensate yourself a reasonable amount from the proceeds. That's only right.
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The thieves who send out scores of billions of scam emails every year should be treated like the gnats or mosquitos they are, and killed. Round them up, tissue-type them, then slice their evil heads off and chop them up for parts for decent people.
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You won't hear any candidate for President from the major parties talk about that. No, they are all moderates. Tolerating mass fraud is moderation. Ending it is extremism. I am proud to be an extremist.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,797 — for Israel.)



- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:09 PM

 
"Please Impeach Me." Dumbya is taking a courageous stand against extending healthcare benefits to more children because it would cost $4 billion, and the Federal Budget is only $1.3 TRILLION, so we can't afford it. His budget priorities are those of the Republican Party: There is always enuf money to kill people; never enuf money to save them. So he will spend $600 billion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (so far) but not $4 billion to keep American children alive and their parents from losing their house. If the 'Democrat Party' passes an appropriation for kids, Dumbya will veto it! And his party will sustain that veto. What a lovely man, and wonderful party.
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He has also reverted to calling the Democrats the "Democrat Party", which he said some months ago he would try not to do. Another breach with honor. How surprising.
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Meanwhile, Bush will not discuss a recent air attack by Israel on Syria. The reason (excuse) given by the Israelis is that North Korea just delivered materials to Syria that might be used to develop nuclear weapons. So Israel sent warplanes bought and paid for by the American taxpayer to attack a country with which the U.S. is not at war, despite the best efforts of neocons and other Radical Zionists to move us to wage war against it.
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Syria, you see, must not have any weapons Israel does not approve of, and Israel's slave, the U.S. Government, will sit idly by and do nothing while Israel attacks all its neighbors, as of right. If things were reversed, and Syria launched attacks upon Israel, would Bush stand aside and say nothing? I hardly think so.
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Israel can have all the weapons in the world, and attack anyone it wants, and the U.S. will smile upon all such attacks. But Syria and North Korea are dangers to the world. Mind you, Syria hasn't attacked anyone (save perhaps thru a few assassinations in Lebanon, which was historically part of Syria for centuries) since 1973, and North Korea hasn't attacked any other country (save for occasional assassinations of South Koreans here and there) since 1953. Israel attacks other countries all the time, and assassinates every perceived enemy it can reach, everywhere around it, but Israel is a peaceloving country filled with wonderful, decent people whom we must back in everything they do, even if that should mean we must wage war against Syria, war against Iran, war against the entire Moslem world. Because Israel is the be-all and end-all of the universe. Moslems don't count. Americans don't count. And if hundreds of millions of Moslems and Americans must die so Israel can be safe, that is a price George Bush will gladly pay. As long as he's not one of the fallen, of course. I'm so proud. He'll keep us safe from those damned sick American children so we can spend all the money we need to bring war and death to the entire Islamic world. My hero.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,792 — for Israel.)



- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
"I Don't Know." Robert Gates, the U.S. Secretary of Defense who took over from Donald Rumsfeld, was asked by New York Times reporter David Brooks if he believed that invading Iraq was the right thing to do. Gates said, if he knew then what he knows now, his answer would (still) have to be "I don't know." How could anyone not know that it was the WRONG thing to do?
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Knowing what we know now — and I knew by simple observation and reasoning, before the U.S. attack — that there were no WMDs and no nuclear-weapons program, I would have no trouble saying plainly that we should not have invaded Iraq, nor even bombed it, at all. What we should have done is to try to co-opt Saddam, tell him we know how difficult a place Iraq is to govern, and influence him to change his ways, with our help. We might well have been able to bring him along, as consistent, decades-long pressure and persuasion eventually converted the bulk of Latin America from dictatorship to democracy.
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Saddam was a modernizer and secularist. There was no sectarian violence worth talking about, no international terrorism, no car bombs and beheadings and snipers killing civilians under Saddam. He played no role in the 9/11 attacks and had no aspirations to attack the United States. His support for "terrorism" was mainly rhetorical, for attacks upon Israel, not the United States. Actually, I should say "counterattacks" against Israel. If Saddam's Iraq supplied materiel and training to Arabs in their war against Zionists, that is exactly comparable, if in reverse, to U.S. support of the Israeli government in its endless state terrorism against Arabs.
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Saddam openly advocated unity among Arabs, and a united front against Israel. He stated that (counter-)violence against the violent Jews of Occupied Palestine was morally defensible and plainly necessary to oust an international conspiracy from the land that Zionist Jews stole by force, with U.S. support. Zionists here won't let people think about that, but endlessly tell us that Israel is virtuous and pure, nearly angelic, but the Arabs are evil, subhuman monsters, practically Satan's own army; all justice is on the side of the poor, oppressed Jews, and any violence they commit against Arabs is "self-defense". All lies, of course, lies that Saddam and 310 million other Arabs understood but some 250 million of this Nation's 300 million people seem to accept.
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Is it possible to wean dictators away from dictatorship? tyrants away from brutality? Depends on the despot. History is replete with violent people who turned more moderate after the goals they pursued thru violence were achieved, be it by that violence or some other way. Let's consider three such figures: Menachem Begin, Nelson Mandela, and George Washington. Tho I hesitate to put Begin in any group with George Washington, for this purpose I will put aside, for the moment, my distaste for everything Begin stood for.
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Menachem Begin (italicized here to distinguish from the ordinary English word "begin") was born in Eastern Europe, so was one of those foreign invaders the Palestinians have so hideously suffered from. Begin headed Irgun, a Jewish organization active in guerrilla warfare and urban terrorism for Zionism in Palestine in the 1940s. On July 22, 1946, Irgun terrorists, DRESSED AS ARABS, bombed the King David Hotel, headquarters for some operations of their erstwhile benefactors, the British, in an attack of promiscuous brutality that slautered 91 people: "28 British, 41 Arab, 17 Jewish, and 5 other". Nice, huh? Mind you, the British had started the ball rolling on Zionism, which until the British Empire's Balfour Declaration of 1917 was just a nutso, off-the-wall, pie-in-the-sky fantasy of a few, delusional East European Jews. (There's a lesson here for Americans: Israel is not our friend, and if ever we turn away from Zionism, there will be people at the highest levels of the Israeli Government willing to launch attacks upon the United States. Israel has both nuclear weapons and a space program — that is, missiles capable of carrying a warhead into space, then down onto the United States. So of course we are worried about Iran.)
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The British eventually withdrew from their Palestine Mandate, saving their own ass at the tiny, inconsequential cost (to them) of leaving the Arabs to the Jews' nonexistent mercy. Begin then entered mainstream Israeli politics, which of course welcomed 'former' terrorists, because Israel is a terrorist state. But when, after decades of effort, he finally became Prime Minister of Israel, Begin made peace with Egypt's Anwar Sadat at Camp David. For that, he and Sadat were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978, 32 years after Begin's murderous attack on the King David Hotel.
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In 1961, Nelson Mandela co-founded "Spear of the Nation", the military wing of South Africa's African National Congress, which carried out sabotage and started planning for a guerrilla war. He was arrested in 1962, before those plans got very far, but they proceeded without him. He spent 27 years in prison, but on his release astonished the world with his changed demeanor. Instead of wreaking vengeance on his former jailers, he launched the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which brought out atrocities on both sides of South Africa's low-grade civil war and thus ended the threat of full-scale race war that could have had very serious repercussions outside South Africa more than just within. For leading his people to multi-party democratic government and working to heal South Africa's national wounds, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
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George Washington was a military man who came out of his military retirement as a planter in tidewater Virginia to lead the Continental Army in its rebellion against Britain during the American Revolution. He was ultimately responsible for overall strategy and keeping the military together during what was at the time a very grave war, with, as in South Africa, atrocities on both sides (but mostly from the British side, it really must be said; we won't go into British atrocities in detail, but suffice it to say that British prison ships were the 18th Century equivalent of Andersonville in the 19th Century).
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At the end of the war, Washington laid down his sword and returned to his plantation, only to return to national life later as the indispensable, first President of the United States. He set the Nation upon a nonmilitarist, noninterventionist course of avoiding foreign entanglements and seeking evenhanded and amicable relations with all nations. There was no Nobel Peace Prize in Washington's time, but it is reasonable to believe that had there been, Washington would have been awarded one.
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Would Saddam Hussein have moderated his behavior if the United States had helped in developing Iraq and promoting intercommunal tolerance and cooperation? Would Iraq have become a democracy, at least as far as offices lower than President were concerned? Stranger things have happened.
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Tho Saddam's moving from tyrant to Nobel Peace Prize recipient may seem preposterous to people poisoned against him by ceaseless propaganda, one thing is clear: Saddam did a far better job of maintaining internal peace and good order than the United States and its creation, the Al-Maliki Government, has been able to do. It's not even close. He also did an amazing job of rebuilding Iraq after the (first) Gulf War, without foreign aid, unlike the Al-Maliki government, which has been unable even to restore electricity to Baghdad despite an infusion of billions and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
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The bulk of Iraqis may not have wanted the old Saddam back, but all Iraqis except his most bitter enemies concede that life in Iraq was vastly better under Saddam than under U.S. occupation. Indeed, it may well be that Saddam had to be killed rather than given life imprisonment expressly to prevent a popular groundswell demanding he be restored to power within the confines of a democratic constitution. In like fashion, the entire family of Czar Nicholas II of Russia was slautered to preempt any popular revolt to oust the Bolsheviks and restore the monarchy.
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Can any tyrant yield arbitrary powers yet remain in control? King John of England signed Magna Carta, yet remained on his throne until death.
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If the object of American foreign policy were really to bring democracy to Iraq and then outward across the Middle East, winning Saddam to the cause of gradual reform would surely have been far the wiser course. That that course was not chosen is yet another proof that the object of the war was not to save Iraq and promote democracy but to protect Israel by destroying its only credible enemy at that time. Now Israel has another credible enemy, Iran. And again the neocons and Radical Zionists are working hard to make the United States do Israel's dirty work and invade another Moslem country, produce catastrophic destruction there, kill hundreds of thousands, and save Israel again — until the NEXT threat pops up, at which time the United States will be expected to destroy that threat too. It's like the penny arcade game (which has an electronic version) in which a player stands in front of a bunch of holes in a floor, from any of which a 'gopher' may pop up at any time, and the player has to whack it before it disappears back down its hole. All the countries of the Middle East are gopher holes. Any uppity Moslem is a gopher, and it is our job, assigned by Israel, to smash it over the head before it can attack Israel. I don't like this game. Neither do Moslems. But Israelis love it. To death.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,791 — for Israel.)



- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
"Carbon Footprint". A new feature on some British food labels is a "carbon imprint" count, so that people who believe in man-made "global warming" can comparison shop and alter their consumption patterns to produce less carbon dioxide, on the premise that by doing so they can contribute to solving the problem of climate change. The carbon count is calculated from questionable approximations of how much fossil fuel is burned to grow the crops, transport the foodstocks, process them, package them, transport them to the store, and dispose of the packaging. Consumers would then have to add some amount for how much fuel they personally used to get to and from the store.
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The ultimate object of this educational endeavor, however, is not to allow people better to choose whether to buy potato chips or a mango drink (two sample products discussed in a report on ABC News today), but to bludgeon them into consuming less, period. In short, in order to live in a future of "global warming", we must not live well.
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If consuming mangos requires that we spend money on transporting mangos thousands of miles, we should just not consume mangos. What, pray, would that do to mango growers in the Third World?
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If to grow mangos in Britain, farmers would have to heat greenhouses, and they can't do that from hydro, solar, wind, wave, tidal, or other clean energy sources, they would have to burn fossil fuels. So I guess Brits will just have to give up mangos altogether and forever. Because to consume mangos is EVIL. None of us has the right to 'damage the planet' for our own needless preference for carbon-expensive foods or goods.
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What about all those manufactured goods shipped thousands of miles from China? Maybe they are dollar-cheap. But what if they are carbon-expensive?
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Who is going to do this calculus? Is voluntary reduction of the "carbon footprint" today to become compulsory tomorrow? If it can't be grown locally — in one's actual backyard, preferably, with the lowest of low-tech (hand tools and, for fertilizer, manure, perhaps human) — will we just have to give it up, forever? Are we to have envirotyranny, enforced by Carbon Police? Are we to do away with our TV's and microwaves and cars and computers and CD-players and MP3 players and every other device that generates 'needless' CO₂? Forget about vacationing in Europe, touring China, seeing the Taj Mahal. Stay home, you selfish bastards! You're killing the planet!
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No, actually, it is not the First World that is killing the planet, if anyone is. The reality is that the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a function of emissions and absorptions. If one goes up but not the other, the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere changes. The obvious solution to the 'problem' of "man-made global warming" is to increase absorption to offset any increase in emissions. How would we do that? Plant trees, water lilies, water hyacinths, and other greenery, outdoors and in. Use algae to scrub generation-station and other industrial emissions. Reduce toxins and silt outflows that kill phytoplankton in the oceans, rivers, and lakes.
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The First World is already doing some of that but should do much more of it, not (just) to reduce carbon dioxide levels. For one thing, plants absorb more than just carbon dioxide. To combat "heat islands", such as parking lots, for instance, we can plant trees in multiple shade islands in the blacktop, which would also shade cars and keep them from achieving meat-roasting temperatures while we're at work or in the store. We might lose some parking spaces per acre, but parking lots would be far more pleasant, cars would be cooler, the whole area would be cooler, and you might even be able to find your car more easily by remembering what the tree near it looked like. Interestingly, deciduous trees would automatically allow more sunlite thru in colder months, when we might want heat islands.
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There are good reasons not to pollute, but carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a natural, biodegradable substance that plants need to create biomass, and biomass removes CO₂ long-term, as much as a thousand years if tied up in the wood of a Giant Sequoia, or for millions of years if formed into a clamshell, snail shell, the exoskeleton of tiny zooplankton, and coral reefs. If chemical poisons kill the phytoplankton on which zooplankton, corals, and everything higher in the oceans' food chain depend, we can indeed suffer rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, as we can if the world's coral reefs are killed by pesticide runoff and silt from hillsides exposed to the rain by slash-and-burn agriculture in the Third World.
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So if we can't reduce emissions, we can certainly curb environmental toxins, silt, slash-and-burn agriculture, and, most fundamentally, fueling all the world's problems, population. Absent putting the brakes on population growth, nothing else matters.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,780 — for Israel.)



- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:55 AM

 
"Jew York". In NBC News's coverage of 9/11 today, a report by Richard Engel (who is probably Jewish) said that New York City remains a high priority target for Al-Qaeda. Reasons given include that it is the media and financial capital of the world. (Some people in Europe, in London in particular, might want to challenge that.) Not one word is mentioned about the massive presence and influence of Jews in New York City, a fact reflected by the nickname that heads this piece. Wikipedia says:

New York's Jewish population in 2001 was approximately 1.97 million, 1.4 million more than in Jerusalem but 600,000 less than in Gush Dan, Israel's largest metropolitan area; however, Tel Aviv proper (non-metro/within municipal limits) has [a] smaller population than the Jewish population of New York City proper, making New York the largest Jewish community in the world.

But the fact that New York is the largest Jewish city in the world plays absolutely no role in its being specially targeted by Al-Qaeda, right? Wrong.
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The Mayor of New York is Jewish. The media of New York are shot-thru with Jews, the great preponderance of whom are Zionist or Radical Zionist. The New York Post, tho owned by the Catholic Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, could not be more rabidly Zionist if it were published in one of the renegade "settlements" in the West Bank. New York-based media constantly select Jewish 'Middle East experts' to interpret events for the rest of us. Can we trust Jewish commentators to be neutral and truthful, even if the truth hurts Israel? I can't.
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Reverse the premise: if the great preponderance of 'Middle East experts' invited onto media discussions of Middle Eastern affairs were Moslems, would we trust the neutrality of their evaluation of Israeli behavior? Yet we see almost nothing BUT Jewish "experts" on the Middle East on American media. These media have sent Jewish reporters into Iraq and other predominantly Moslem countries. Can we really trust those reporters' or those media's view of all things Arab? I can't.
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Politically, New York's Congressional delegation is heavily Jewish, headed by Charles Schumer of Brooklyn in the U.S. Senate. Are New York's Jewish Members of Congress pro-Israel, anti-Israel, pro-Arab, anti-Arab, neutral, silent? I suggest they are for the most part outspokenly pro-Israel. Does that produce special animus for New York on the part of Islamists? Yes, it surely does.
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New York is not, of course, the only part of the country that sends Jews to Congress.

... 87% of the Senate is Christian (compared with 79.8% of the population) and
13% of the Senate is Jewish (compared with 1.4% of the population). According to
the data, no Senator falls under the category "No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic" — a
category embodied by 15.0% of the U.S. population according to the 2001 Census.

In the last Congress (for some reason the website that gives that breakdown has no such data for the present Congress), 37 members of the House were Jewish, representing 6.9% of the total, nearly five times (493%) the proportion of the general population that is Jewish. That proportion is based on a figure of 1.4% of the U.S. population being "Jewish", which may mean "practicing" or "religious Jews". The most liberal use of the term "Jewish" yields at most a count of 2.2% of the U.S. population being Jewish. That would mean that 6.9% of Congress represents over 3X (313%) the number of seats that Jews could be expected to hold by random distribution. By comparison, Catholics are 'over-represented' in Congress by a scant 4.3% (total proportion 104.3% of their ratio in the general population).
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How, exactly, these terms are defined makes some difference religiously but not necessarily politically. The Catholic Church counts as "Catholic" only people who are enrolled in a parish or who attend church regularly. Self-identified "Catholics", like me, may not be the slitest religious (like me), and there is no Catholic equivalent to Zionism. Catholicism aspires to universalism. It is not tribal, claims no "sacred ground" for Catholics alone, and does not demand war to defend that "sacred ground" against "enemies". By contrast, heavy pressure is put upon even nonreligious "Jews" to identify as Jews and do everything in their power to protect Israel and advance Zionism. The very least required of "Jews" is that they not favor, by word or deed, the termination of the Zionist experiment by abolishing the State of Israel and merging it into a multi-ethnic and multi-religious, united Palestine.
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Thus even liberal Jews in media and Congress toe the Zionist line. They may criticize the war in Iraq, and even 'excessive' measures taken by Israel — such as crushing (to death) an American peace protestor under a bulldozer going forward, then rolling over her again in reverse — but they must never so much as breathe the barest suggestion that the whole idea of Zionism was insanely wrongheaded from the start, and has proved a catastrophe, so must now be not merely rethought but undone — with apologies and reparations.
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Quite the contrary, American Jews, religious and nonreligious alike, are a constant and essentially united pressure group that demands the United States take whatever measures may be necessary to preserve Israel, even if that should involve wars against Syria, Iran, even Saudi Arabia, in addition to the war against Iraq. Even the criticisms of Iraq policy do not condemn neutralizing Iraq as a threat to Israel, but essentially say only that the instability created by the Iraq invasion has made the Middle East more dangerous, not less — meaning, more dangerous for Israel. If Iraq were destroyed as a threat to Israel, thru the successful installation of a pro-Zionist Iraqi government, all the death and destruction visited by the United States upon Iraq would be just fine with the bulk of American Jews.
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Ask yourself: If New York City were merely the largest city of the United States, headquarters of the United Nations and of many media and financial operations, would it still be Al-Qaeda's No. 1 target? I don't think so. But Americans in general are never to think that. And, most especially, Americans are never to think, for even a microsecond, that New York would never have been attacked at all, except for U.S. support of Israel.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,774 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:23 PM

 
As American as Impotence. Something grotesque has happened to the United States. We are assailed by endless commercials for Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra, as tho American men cannot function sexually anymore. One medication for E.D. ("erectile dysfunction") has a group of men singing happily together, "Viva Viagra", to the tune of Elvis Presley's 1964 hit song, from the movie of the same name, "Viva Las Vegas". Are American men now proud of being impotent? Disgraceful.
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How common is impotence in this country nowadays? Various sources say as many as 30 million American men or as few as 10 million may suffer erectile dysfunction, mainly older men. Statistics are not broken out by any narrower a category than ages 40-69, and in that wide group, "20-46% of men aged 40-69 self-reported some erectile dysfunction in the US 2000-2002 (Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2000-2002, NIDDK)". "Some" is not defined, but a distinction is made between "prevalence" and "incidence":

The term 'prevalence' of Impotence usually refers to the estimated population of people who are managing Impotence at any given time. The term 'incidence' of Impotence refers to the annual diagnosis rate, or the number of new cases of Impotence diagnosed each year. Hence, these two statistics types can differ: a short-lived disease like flu can have high annual incidence but low prevalence, but a life-long disease like diabetes has a low annual incidence but high prevalence.

And the problem is ...? Altho the suggestion is that this is a physical problem, one must wonder. Of what importance is it if a man 68 years old isn't interested in sex? Losing interest in sex is a natural part of aging. Granted that a high rate of impotence in relatively young men, the 40-end of the 40-69 age range, might be regarded as a problem, note that statistics are not even gathered for men 70 and over, because sexual activity is not expected of men after "threescore and ten" years, the typical lifespan of a healthy man for at least the past 3,000 years. An impotence rate of 46% in 40-year-olds would be appalling; of 69-year-olds? Not so much.
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I suspect that there is very little impotence among gay men, but rather doubt that separate statistics are kept. If heterosexuals lose physical interest in sex after they are no longer of appropriate breeding age, where is the harm in letting that part of life pass? Straights keep telling us that sex is about creating children. If straight people are no longer creating children, they "shouldn't" be having sex, so where's the harm if in fact they aren't having sex? Why do 50-year-olds feel diminished for not having the sex drive of a 20-year-old? Isn't pursuing sex when you're not really interested and your body tells you not to bother, a form of compulsive behavior, especially if it requires chemical assistance?
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I seriously doubt there are masses of men incapable of functioning, ever, without a pill. If men are taking Viagra and the like for recreational sex, maybe they should get another hobby. There is blatant immaturity at work in this. If men don't feel guilty or diminished as men because they don't want to, or can't, win the 100 yard dash against college kids, why should they expect to be able to rut like rabbits in middle age?
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For my part, I am disgusted by all these ads about impotence, and vaginal yeast infections, "feminine itch and odor", tampons, maxi-pads — with wings! — and the panoply of sexual dysfunctions and disgusting conditions inflicted upon viewers of SITCOMS, even on Nick@Nite and TV Land. Let ads about ED and prostate problems run in men's magazines; douche, tampons, sanitary pads, vaginal yeast infection medications and such run in women's magazines. Instead, Andy and Opie's innocent father-son conversations, or Wally and the Beav's exchanges about 'frogs and junk' are interspersed with commercials for vaginal this and ED that. These things do not belong on TV, any more than do ads for sex toys. If the guys in these ads are impotent — tho I imagine all the actors who play these parts assure their friends that they are only playing a role — that's their problem. I don't want to hear about it.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,774 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:05 AM

 
Corporate Thieves: Fraud by Stealth. AOL today hilites, under the heading "The $15 Ringtone", an article from SmartMoney.com about profoundly dishonest practices in corporate America that our various governments are doing nothing to stop. Three practices are specifically discussed: (1) pre-checked boxes for products or services you did not go to that webpage to order; Cure: uncheck everything but what you actually want; (2) free trial periods for services you don't want, which can be extremely expensive after the free period, and the cost of which will be billed at a later date, when you're not expecting anything, and may even be billed not to your credit card, where you might check for it, but to, for instance, your cellphone if you inadvertently sign up via a cellphone offer; Cure: apparently there isn't really any safe way to deal with this except NEVER to accept any further offer that pops up after you complete a transaction with a company that already has your credit-card information; and (3) text messages that sign you up for pricey services in order for you to get, for instance, a "free ringtone". The claim is that these things are shown in fine print in the television commercial where these ringtones and such are advertised, but there is no auditory nor text warning before you complete the action that you are signing up for an expensive service you do not want. The vendors aren't even required to send you a bill in the mail, with a notation on the outside of what might otherwise be discarded without opening as junk mail: "Your bill is enclosed."
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All these practices constitute fraud, and our governments co-conspire in such fraud by not forbidding "piggybacking" and not crushing fraudulent piggybacking thru huge fines to the corporations and long prison sentences for the executives responsible.
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Anti-piggybacking legislation would head off the problem without having to punish anyone, except for those who piggyback in defiance of the law. Anti-piggyback legislation would (a) in the case of an order by text message, forbid, for instance, a company from offering a free ringtone and then treating the text message that orders the ringtone as an order for a second product or service; (b) in the case of an order by webpage, would forbid checkboxes for additional products or services to appear on the same webpage as an order is placed for whatever the consumer wanted in the first place; such other offers could be made only on a separate webpage, where one would separately fill out credit-card information (and the first offer could not be made conditional on acceptance of the second; and (c) in the case of free-trial offers, would similarly require one to go to a separate website, or make a separate toll-free fone call, and fill out credit-card information separately. Only people genuinely interested in such offers would sign up, and corporations would incur no ill will nor criminal liability for fraud.
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Even absent anti-piggybacking legislation, however, there is of course a very quick fix to problems such as those hilited on AOL, as there is to every crime of profit (not passion): not just restitution, to the tune of treble damages (actual loss plus twice that in payment-as-apology), but draconian punishment, up to and including death for serious offenders. If a practice approved by the management of a company willfully defrauds anyone, there should be an automatic one-year prison sentence (with no parole) for EVERY member of the executive committee and EVERY member of the board of directors of that company, for EACH person defrauded. And the costs of that imprisonment are to be paid by the person imprisoned, or by the corporation if the individual cannot pay the full cost. (That should run anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 per year per individual imprisoned, depending upon locale.)
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Any member of an executive committee or board of directors who votes against fraudulent schemes will still be punishable if s/he does not "blow the whistle" by reporting the illegal behavior to the authorities. Only resignation from the executive committee/board of directors AND reporting the illegal scheme (and possibly "wearing a wire" to gather evidence of further wrongdoing before resigning) would immunize members from imprisonment. How many criminally-inclined businesses would have executive committees or boards of directors of size if criminal wrongdoing of that business subjected each member of those groups to imprisonment?
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If more than 100 people are defrauded, as would produce a term of imprisonment of 100 years or more, then the death penalty should be substituted for every person so sentenced, because we cannot really expect any adult to live 100 years or more from the date of conviction, so they would die in prison anyway. There can be no justification for keeping such a person alive for fifty or more years. Even if the projected economic costs of such imprisonment were paid by the prisoner him/herself or by the offending corporation, there will almost certainly be some corporations that are destroyed by such costs and thus unable to pay; projected costs are not actual costs, which may run higher; and there are other factors to be considered, such as prison overcrowding, which inclines some judges to order early release of dangerous criminals, or requires society to build more prisons. Unless the law is drafted to include the cost of any new prisons that the incarceration of such corporate criminals would require, those costs would be borne by society, which is unfair to taxpayers — another victimization of the innocent by criminals. Moreover, some might escape prison at some point in that long sentence, as would require significant outlays of money and police effort in recapture. Etc.
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If we kill these criminals early, we can harvest their organs for decent people. If we let them die in prison of old age, we can't.
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How many schemes involving fraud-by-stealth do you imagine there would be if the penalty to corporate criminals were DEATH?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,762 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:43 PM