SENSE AND NONSENSE – SWORD SWALLOWERS AND TEA PARTIERS
From the editor: A Gallup poll of 1,033 adults taken Monday, April 5, claims that 28 percent of those polled support the tea party “movement.” If it is a movement at all, it is a movement that celebrates gullibility.
In my younger days, I attended many carnivals and circuses in the Ft. Worth area. My Dad was a Shriner and an annual volunteer at the Shrine Circus. I loved the atmosphere of clown comedy, daring performances, and visual illusions. One of the lasting images from those days is the “sword swallower.” It must be a trick, I thought. Surely the sword collapses as it enters the throat. Even the “Encyclopedia Britannica” defined sword swallowing as a magic trick. It turns out that “Britannica” and I were both wrong. Sword swallowing is an ancient art that probably originated in India. Sword swallowers learn to relax their upper GI tract including the muscles in the throat, tip their head back, and lubricate the sword with saliva as it moves down the esophagus into the stomach cavity. (Caution: Do not try this at home!)
When I see a “Tea Party” rally, I see a conclave of amateur sword swallowers experiencing a collective gag reflex regurgitating a steady diet of misinformation systematically provided by professional propagandists posing as sword merchants.
The fake sword merchants led by Republican propagandist Frank Luntz claim the Democratic initiative on financial reform is a “bail out bill” when in fact it prohibits bail outs.
These lying merchants claimed the health care legislation was a “government takeover” of health care. Oh, if only it were so.
The swift boaters among them torpedoed John Kerry’s presidential bid.
Republicans now present themselves as “born again” fiscal conservatives. They conveniently ignore the fact that the only annual surpluses in the last three decades have occurred under Democratic leadership. There was no Republican outcry protesting the $10 billion per month being spent on the war in Iraq (expenditures which were kept off budget). The Republican pseudo fiscal conservatives created a financial black hole with disastrous tax cuts for the very rich, and, then, irresponsibly deregulated Wall Street with President Clinton’s able assistance.
The tea party goers are there to swallow these lies with all the enthusiasm of a citizen militia unaware the lies are like nerve impulses from the brain stem that cause the throat muscles to involuntarily contract, forcing the spoon-fed lie to the back out of their mouths and into the waiting public domain.
Tea partiers provide a perfect vessel for propagandists who employ tried and true methods of mind control including the “Big Lie,” an expression coined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 book Mein Kampf. The sheath of propaganda “swords” also includes an appeal to fear, e.g., “Big Government;” an appeal to prejudice, e.g., the Arizona anti-immigration law; ad hominem arguments attacking the person rather than the argument, e.g., personal attacks on Judge Richard Goldstone, author of the 2009 U.N. report on Israel’s invasion of Gaza; and the either/or argument presenting only two alternatives, e.g., George W. Bush saying “Either you are with us or with the terrorists.”
Yes, tea partiers do resurrect my childhood images of sword swallowers. The key difference is that professional sword swallowers could perform the exercise without hurting themselves or innocent people around them.
Maynard Chapman, Editor
The Compass
THE AD HOMINEM ATTACK ON JUDGE GOLDSTONE CONTINUES
From the New York Times: According to an April 16 New York Times article by Barry Bearak, South African Judge Richard Goldstone announced he would not be able to attend his grandson’s bar mitzvah at the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue in a Johannesburg suburb in May because of threatened protests.
In an April 16 email, Judge Goldstone, author of the UN report that found evidence of war crimes by Israel and Hamas during Israel’s 2008-09 invasion of Gaza, said “Because of the threat of protests at my grandson’s bar mitzvah, I agreed in discussion with leaders of the Sandton synagogue that in the interests of my grandson, I would not attend the services at the synagogue.”
Judge Goldstone identified the South African Zionist Federation as the organization that issued warnings of a protest. However, by April 24, Judge Goldstone announced that he would, in fact, be able to attend the bar mitzvah after reaching an agreement with Jewish groups.
On Friday, April 23, the “board of deputies” of the South African Zionist Federation announced after “consultation” that the bar mitzvah would be “returned to the privacy and dignity it deserves.” Warren Goldstein, chief rabbi of South Africa, tried to sound like he was taking “the high road” after he had issued sharp personal criticisms of Judge Goldstone.
Judge Goldstone responded to Rabbi Goldstein’s call for tolerance by pointing out the damage had been done, and the Zionist Federation was figuratively trying to close the barn doors after the cows had long exited.
In a letter-to-the-editor, Judge Goldstone said he was “dismayed that the chief rabbi would so brazenly politicize the occasion of my 13-year-old grandson’s bar mitzvah to engage in further personal attacks on me.” He added that Rabbi Goldstein’s rhetoric about tolerance “simply does not coincide with how my family and I have been treated.”
The Federation was not the only source of vicious personal attacks. The Judge was also widely accused of being a “traitor” to his people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointedly attacked Judge Goldstone personally after the UN report was issued last September saying, “We face three major strategic challenges: the Iranian nuclear program, rockets aimed at our civilians and Goldstone.” By equating Judge Goldstone with nuclear threats and rockets aimed at civilians, Netanyahu ironically threatened Goldstone’s personal security.
Now 71 years of age, Judge Goldstone was a member of South Africa’s highest court until 2003 and served as chief prosecutor for the UN war crimes tribunal on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
The following excerpts from an interview with Bill Moyers on Oct. 23, 2009, provide important facts and context about the 574-page UN report critical of actions by Israel and Hamas during Israel’s invasion of Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. The invasion was code-named “Operation Cast Lead,” and it proved to be as deadly to innocent civilians as the mineral by the same name.
(Note: The December, 2009 (vol. vi, no. 12), issue of The Compass includes a more complete account of the interview.)
Moyers: “The report accused both Israel Defense Forces and Hamas of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. While condemning Palestinian rocket attacks, the report’s harshest language was reserved for Israel’s treatment of civilians in Gaza.”
Goldstone: “These attacks amounted to reprisals and collective punishment, and constitute war crimes. The government of Israel obviously has a duty to protect its own citizens. That in no way justifies a policy of collective punishment of a people under effective occupation, destroying their means to live a dignified life, and the trauma caused by the kind of military intervention the Israeli government called Operation Cast Lead.”
Moyers: “The ‘Financial Times’ says it is your reputation, Judge Richard Goldstone’s reputation, the Israeli government fears and not your methods. What do they have to be afraid of?”
Goldstone: “The only thing they can be afraid of is the truth. And I think that is why they’re attacking the messenger and not the message.”
UNDERSTANDING THE FINANCIAL REFORM DEBATE
From the editor: The word “derivative” puts more readers and listeners to sleep than the drug Benadryl. Ironically, understanding the word “derivative” is as important to the economic health of this country as preventing global warming or reversing President Obama’s decision to allow drilling for oil beneath the ocean.
The Derivatives Consulting Group (DCG) defines derivative as “A financial instrument that transfers risk from one party to the other. It derives its value from the price or rate of some other underlying assets such as bonds, loans, equities, currencies, commodities, indices, published rates or combinations of those assets.”
To understand this definition, it is only necessary to focus upon two key words in the definition -- “risk” and “value.”
The current financial crisis persists because: 1) President Clinton signed the Republican-backed Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 into law repealing the Banking Act of 1933 known as “Glass-Steagall;” and 2) derivatives currently transfer most of the risk from the risk takers to taxpayers.
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 allows banks to abandon their traditional role of providing loans to individual and small business borrowers who could produce collateral that would be forfeited if the loan could not be paid back. It allows banks to be both lenders and speculators in high-risk derivatives.
The near collapse of what is still a financial “house-of-cards” occurred because the risk takers, e.g., AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, etc., could not or did not determine the value of the assets they were insuring. Amazingly, AIGs sole “reason for being” was to be able to accurately determine value. However, they were too busy making billions from the premiums they were charging clients to determine value of the underlying package of assets, which were to a large degree worthless sub-prime mortgages sure to default.
The two most unregulated types of derivatives are Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO). They are financial instruments invented by Wall Street and are essentially traded on a black market – a market that is purposely opaque. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association estimated the notional value of derivatives across all types of assets was $531.2 trillion (not billion) in 2008.
The problem is this: the sale and speculation in derivatives and the enormous fees derived from there have created much larger and more lucrative profit centers for large banks. Consequently, they are fighting any attempt to re-regulate those profit centers. Senator Dodd’s attempt at financial reform will fall dismally short of curtailing the gambling mentality that pervades the financial industry.
The solution is to reinstate checks-and-balances against the current culture of risk taking. Such checks-and-balances were present in the Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall), which limited risk taking by banks, and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, which kept traditional commercial banking separate from highly speculative investments.
The 21st century consumer understands that we are getting ripped off. Most of us simply do not understand why. To understand “why,” the consumer simply needs to understand the words “risk” and “value.”
Copyright © 2010, The Compass Society
