THE DIOGENES REPORT
The Wit, Wisdom & Wituperation of Emanuel L. Strunin
“a few steps ahead of the curve”
April 2006, VOL. V, #8
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(Items marked with an * were written by Diogenes.)

IS THERE A CONTINUING ARAB CONSPIRACT AT HARVARD?
JUST ASKING.*

The other day a friend called to ask if I saw any connection among a series of events that have recently taken place at Harvard University. He set me to thinking about how seemingly unrelated events might have hidden, sinister connections. Hidden connections are often causal factors without being recognized as such. The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the Caliphate is a causal factor in the rise of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, for example. Dick Cheney’s presidency of Halliburton and company’s being awarded huge no-bid contracts in Iraq could be considered another example.

But to get back to the possible Harvard conspiracy. Stephen Walt, academic dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer published a study on “ The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” under the aegis of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The fundamental claim of the study is that the U.S. has given “unwavering support” to Israel because of pressure from the Jewish community. Any honest study of U.S.-Israeli relations shows that this claim is unfounded.

Why such a dishonest study?

So why would two supposedly objective academics author a study shot through with falsehoods, and why would the study carry the imprimatur of a Harvard school? There could be many explanations: the professors were not interested in objectivity; they were biased against Israel as so many academics are; they were biased against Jews; or, to be kind, they are incompetent researchers, political scientists and historians. Or, perhaps, they were hired guns that were helping Harvard pay off a billion dollar gift from a Saudi prince.

Muhammad knew it

You may recall that last year the prince made a munificent “no strings attached” gift to Harvard. Now if you believe that an Arab makes a “no strings” gift, you also must believe in the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and Santa Claus. Arabs are not known for their generosity. That’s why Muhammad, in the Koran, kept hammering away at the importance of charity. His preaching on that subject did not seem to make a deep impression on his followers. While the Saudi leaders and Gulf State potentates come to the U.S. regularly for medical help, I have yet to see a hospital or even a clinic named for King Fahd or Prince Abdullah or any others of their clan.

While there may not have been “strings attached” there may have been, as they say in Latin “a quid pro quo,” which sounds more elegant, if not exactly kosher. In academia, it’s easy enough to find a professor who is more than willing to do a hatchet job on Israel and if the blood splatters on the American Jewish community, so what. If the prince gave a billion, he may be good for some additional funding. And which academic turns down funding?

Although you don’t see Saudi bucks flowing into medical institutions, you do see a steady stream of Saudi money flowing into educational institution from colleges on down and you can bet your kaffiyeh they are looking for a return on their investments. 

By the way, the former president of Harvard noted that the largest individual contributor to the university was an American Jew whose only “strings” were that Harvard should provide the best education for all of its student body.

Following is a partial list of anti-Israel policies and actions—all of them in the public record-- that the two professors willfully ignored in their drive to prove that the U.S. has given “unwavering support” to the State of Israel:

-the U.S. imposed an arms embargo on Israel in 1948-49 when it was fighting for its survival against six Arab nations;

-in the 1950s the U.S. refused to supply the Israeli Air Force with planes;

-when Israel conquered the Sinai after continuous attacks from Egypt, the Eisenhower administration forced Israel to withdraw and threatened Israel with sanctions; 

-in 1967 when Egypt blockaded the Israeli port of Eilat in violation of international law, President Johnson refused to honor U.S. commitments made in 1957 to ensure free passage to the port;

-during the Six-Day War, the U.S. supported U.N. Security Council resolutions to prevent Israel from achieving a complete victory over Egypt and Syria;

-during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the Nixon administration held back on supplying Israel with the weapons required for its defense and pressured Israel into ending the war and achieving a decisive military victory;

-the Carter administration supported Security Council resolutions calling for Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the launching path of major terrorist attacks; 

-the Carter administration all condemned Israel’s incorporation of all of Jerusalem into the State; and they pressured Israel to give up all of the Sinai

-the Reagan administration condemned Israel’s air strike on Saddam’s nuclear reactor; they sold AWACS that could threaten Israel to Saudi Arabia 

-there are dozens similar unfriendly policies and actions in the administrations of the first President Bush, Bill Clinton and the current President Bush

To move on to another facet of a possible Arab “quid pro quo” conspiracy at Harvard: the resignation of president Larry Summers. Summers, the Jew, came out strongly against the drive by left-wing and anti-Israel (note: I didn’t say anti-Semitic) academics to pressure American companies to “disinvest” in Israel. Summer bottom-lined the disinvestment movement as anti-Semitic in actuality, if not in intent. The Prince could not have been happy with Larry’s comments…sooo.

Coincidence or conspiracy? I’m merely asking.



AN UNFAIR ATTACK*

As you might imagine, the hatchet job on Israel and the American Jewish community has generated a good deal of backlash. In U.S. News & World Report of April 3, an editorial by David Gergen, editor-at-large under the headline of “An Unfair Attack” takes Stephen Walt, his colleague at the Kennedy School to task. In his usual diplomatic way, Gergen noting his service under four presidents—Republican and Democrat—denies that a “Jewish lobby” ever came close to forcing a policy that was opposed to America’s self-interest. He adds, “…anyone who thinks Jews are unusual hasn’t met the Irish, Italians, Greeks and Armenians who lobby just as hard for their brethren.”

Bret Stephens, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board concluded that “the Walt-Mearsheimer effort was anti-Semitic if effect if not in intent.” The Washington Post published an op-ed by Eliot Cohen, the distinguished scholar of military affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies entitled “Yes, It’s Anti-Semitic.”

The Ochs/Sulzberger clan continues its vendetta against Israel

The New York Times, however, remained true to its traditions. They always find a self-hating Israeli in a Tel Aviv bar or drug den to serve as the interviewee that provides the pulse of Israeli public opinion. To comment on the Walt-Mearesheimer study, the Times dredged up an NYU professor, Tony Judt whose previous essays asserted that Israelis were “trapped” in the “story of their own uniqueness;” their “invocation” of the Holocaust was Special pleading;” the term “terrorist” was a “rhetorical device” (comparable to “Communist”); Ariel Sharon had “blackmailed” America; Israel might be described as a “rogue state;” the “fascist” label “fits better than ever;” a Jewish state was an “anachronism” that was “bad for the Jews;” and it “has no place” in the modern world.

A front-page story by Rick Richman in the April 28, Jewish Press notes that: “Not surprisingly, Judt dismissed assertions of anti-Semitism and raised instead a “pressing question” he asserted we “cannot ignore:”

“It will not be self-evident to future generations of Americans why the imperial might and international reputation of the United States are so closely aligned with one small controversial Mediterranean client state. It is already not at all self-evident to Europeans, Latin Americans, Africans or Asians.” 

In an extensive article, Richman demolishes Judt’s rantings. To me, the real question is why would The New York Times give a fanatic like Judt the major part of an op-ed page.
And the real answer can be found in the history of the Times and its management family—the Ochs/Sulzbergers. To this family, an anti-Israel fanatic is not a fanatic.

The sordid record of The New York Times

Let me once again remind my readers that Adolf Ochs, the founding father of the modern New York Times, was a leading light of the anti-Zionist, American Council for Judaism. In the 1930s and ‘40s, the Council made up mostly of wealthy German-Jews and some Reform rabbis fought long and hard against the creation of a Jewish state. Mainly, they were afraid of being accused of “dual loyalty.” (Please note: the Hibernians were not concerned with “dual loyalty;” the Sons of Italy were not concerned with “dual loyalty;” the scores of other ethnic and religious groups in the U.S. were not concerned with “dual loyalty.”) The group most concerned with “dual loyalty” should have been the last to have such concerns, because they retained very little loyalty to their religion and people.

The medium that gave the Council and its anti-Zionist crusaders the most coverage was, of course, The New York Times. The overwhelming number of American Jews, however, strongly supported the creation of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.

And Israel was established. But the owners of the Times and other members and supporters of the Council never gave up their antagonism to the Jewish state. This attitude has been reflected in the editorial, as well as the news pages of the Times since the formation of Israel. That’s why it should come as no surprise that the editors of the Times would dredge up from the academic cesspool a “historian” who believes that the creation of the State of Israel and America’s sometime support for the Jewish state is a mistake. 



A FOLLOW-UP SUGGESTION

I am about to make an unpopular suggestion--(Diogenes, the ancient, as well as the modern never sought popularity)—fire the two dishonest S.O.B.s. When a geneticist or other biologist or drug researcher fakes the data from their experiments, that individual is fired. Nobody throws up the bugaboo of academic freedom. Everyone recognizes that the potential harm to the health and even lives of the public that could take place because of the falsified data warrants harsh treatment of the miscreant.

I already have seen some of the early fallout from their “study.” The Israel-haters and Jew-haters are coming out from under the rocks and venting their hateful opinions under the respected academic cloaks of Walt and Mearsheimer. Purposely twisting data to fill a hateful agenda—particularly anti-Semitism, the euphemism for Jew-hate with its historic implications—is no less harmful than falsifying scientific data. Fanning the flames of Jew-hate in academia is as worthy of punishment as the traditional offense of yelling “fire” in theater for no reason. 



WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE

The above headline is the title of a book edited by Edward Alexander. Its subtitle is: The Jewish Critics of Israel. I am always amazed at how little most Jews, and even more non-Jews, know about and understand the vicious Jewish gangs of so-called academics, journalists and religious leaders of various stripes spew hatred of Israel in the guise of being friends of the Jewish State. They have no qualms about lying and distorting Israel’s history and current situation. These gangs are not confined to Israel but can be found in just about every place where there are Jews. And it is these Israel-hating Jews that are usually interviewed by the media when they want a “genuine” Israeli opinion. The following article is somewhat long but it is essential reading. 

Self-Loathing in Tel-Aviv
(Reprinted from FrontPageMagazine.com | April 20, 2006)
By Steven Plaut

Americans are familiar with campus characters, such as Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky, who misuse their positions in academia to disseminate anti-American hate and propaganda from the university podium, often in the guise of "scholarship". But in many ways Israeli universities are considerably worse. 

Israeli universities are crawling with extremist faculty members, many of whom hate their own country, endorse the enemies of their country, and collaborate with Bash-Israel organizations around the world, sometimes even with open anti-Semites. Over the past year, the "Israel Academia Monitor," a watchdog group that monitors anti-Israel extremists and "Post-Zionists" in Israeli universities, has begun to expose the activities, behavior, and statements of these people. Their effort includes uncovering in-classroom indoctrination, law-breaking, seditious activity, and even violent behavior by Far Leftist faculty members in Israel. 

While it would be hard to point the finger at the very worst campus in Israel when it comes to anti-Israel faculty activism, Tel Aviv University (TAU) is surely a serious contender. And unlike the other campuses, the anti-Zionist radicalism at TAU seems to operate with the blessings and support of the university President, Itamar Rabinovich.

In recent years, TAU has been in the news for turning its campus over to Israel's predominantly-Arab Communist Party to operate a "socioeconomic studies" program. A "legal clinic" is run in the TAU Law School in collaboration with an anti-Semitic organization (the anti-Israel extremist group "Physicians for Human Rights"). A propaganda course entitled "The Psychology of the Occupation" is now being taught by an anti-Zionist professor in the TAU Department of Psychology. Among the leading lights of anti-Zionism and Marxism on the TAU faculty are Yehouda Shenhav, Yoav Peled, Anat Biletzki, Ran HaCohen, Tanya Reinhart (a Noam Chomsky protégé), and many others. There are entire departments at TAU that are near-uniformities of leftwing extremism, but apparently none more so than the TAU Department of History. And that department's chairperson is a leading "Post-Zionist," meaning an anti-Zionist or anti-Israel radical.

Among the leading voices opposing any Israeli action at all aimed at stopping the massive firing by Palestinian terrorists of Qassam and other rockets at Israeli civilians is Aviad Kleinberg, the chairman of the Department of History at Tel Aviv University. How convenient for him that his campus is not (yet) within range of the Palestinian rockets and missiles.

Kleinberg claims to have some expertise in medieval history, as well as philosophy and religion. (His interest in Jewish "religion" seems to end with his pronouncements that the sage Maimonides necessarily implies that one must vote for the Israeli Labor Party's candidate, or Kleinberg's fatwa that all retaliation against terrorists is "not kosher".) Some of his research has been on pop pseudo-medieval novels, like "The Name of the Rose" and the "Da Vinci Code." He also heads the Tel Aviv University Press, a small in-house publishing house at TAU, and writes a regular leftwing column for Yediot Ahronot, Israel's largest-circulation tabloid. 

In a recent Op-Ed, Kleinberg denounced all counterattacks by Israel aimed at stopping the firing of Qassam rockets, insisting that the "War on Qassams (is) not kosher... Even during Pesach (Passover), there are methods that are simply not kosher."

Now Qassam rockets are routinely fired by Palestinian terrorists from the Hamas, the PLO and the Islamic Jihad, shot into civilian areas INSIDE Israel, that is, inside Israel's 1967 border lines. Thousands have already been fired at the Jews by the terrorists. Recently the PLO-Hamas terror army added Katyusha rockets to its Gaza arsenal, the same weapon used by the Soviet Red Army with such effectiveness in terrorizing its enemies in World War II, and at least one has been fired at Jewish civilians.

Kleinberg's central thesis is that Israel is behaving like a barbarian terrorist state when it defends its civilians from these rockets:

"IDF (Israel Defense Forces) attacks almost always strike the innocent. The reason they are being fired is psychological. They are intended to give Israelis a nice feeling for the beginning of Pesach (Passover) – "See, the IDF isn't sitting on its hands." Quite the opposite, the army is using what the media admiringly calls (sic) its "iron fist", and is striking painful blows to the innocent."

In other words, Israel shoots at the terrorists for the heck of it because it is a bloodthirsty irrational country trying to terrorize the poor innocent Palestinians for no reason. Kleinberg insists that Israel should not respond at all to having thousands of Qassam rockets shot into its civilian areas, since such rockets are not an "existential threat" to Israel.

Among his other comments in the same piece, Kleinberg denounces the Israeli media for not opposing Israeli retaliations against the rocket shooters:

"If you listen carefully, you can hear the sounds of spring: Birds chirping, the buzz of mosquitoes, and the incessant sound of IDF artillery, turning the lives of innocent Gazans into a living hell. Springtime's here, alright. The IDF's firing a lot, alright, thousands of shells into "open fields" from where the Qassam Rockets are being fired. Of course, the term "open fields" is given to interpretation….Qassams are primitive rockets… You can find an article, maybe even a picture, in (Israeli daily) Yedioth Ahronoth, of a dog at Kibbutz Zikim that was literally scared to death by the exchange of fire. "The artillery fire killed our dog," screamed the headlines. Who said Jews had no compassion?...And IDF attacks almost always strike the innocent..."

Kleinberg has long denounced Israel for retaliatory and pre-emptive anti-terror strikes. Kleinberg believes Israel should be prevented from conducting any such strikes as long as there is any risk at all that some Palestinian civilian might get hurt. But since the terrorists firing the rockets at the Jews always are based and hiding among Palestinian citizens, Kleinberg's position is equivalent to demanding that Israel refrain altogether from defending its own citizens from Palestinian rocket and mortar terrorism.

Instead, Kleinberg demands that Israel restrict its responses to terrorism to displays of pacifism and turning the other cheek, at least until a danger arises that is "considered an existential necessity." Otherwise, Israel itself is the real terrorist. Kleinberg then concludes: "Arab lives are very cheap in the State of Israel."

All this is the familiar message from Israel's extremist anti-Israel leftist academics: Palestinian atrocities are acts of "self-defense" and "protests against occupation," even when they involve shooting rockets into Jewish civilian homes. Israel's actions to stop the rockets are human rights abuses that must be denounced and obstructed at all costs, all so that the Qassams may be fired with continued impunity. As Kleinberg says:

"But more importantly, the (Israeli counter-) attacks are also intended - pay attention to the sophisticated psychology here – to put pressure on the civilian population, that (sic) will put pressure on PA authorities, that (sic) will put pressure on the Qassam gunmen to stop shooting. It's like that song about the little goat at the end of the Pesach haggadah (holiday prayer reader)."

Kleinberg has been turning out extremist anti-Israel propaganda from his Tel Aviv University office for many years. Israel is not a democracy at all, Kleinberg pontificates, because of the "reversal of Israel('s) integration into the block of democratic nations and the adoption in its place (of) the same pattern of violent and ethnocentric policies we officially condemn." In other words, in order to be a democracy, Israel first needs to adopt those extremist policies which he himself favors and most Israeli voters oppose.

Kleinberg insists Israel is "autocratic" and undemocratic because it "relies on its leaders," like Ariel Sharon. "This (system of democracy) is not the case in Israel today. The great weakness of the system is that too much power is concentrated in the hands of the prime minister, sending signs of autocracy (for instance, making his son a secret advisor.)"

Kleinberg considers Ariel Sharon a warmonger devoted to preventing peace, but also regards Ehud Barak from the Labor Party Left in the same way. All they offered the Palestinians, according to Kleinberg, was a "Bantustan," that familiar nonsense term beloved by the Bash-Israel Left. (Google and Yahoo list over 40,000 web pages in which Israel haters have linked the term "Israel" and "Palestinian" with "Bantustan".) Here is Kleinberg's bottom-line assessment of his own country's defense strategy: "So Israel has to make sure the Palestinians give up their dreams, that they reach total despair."

Kleinberg's conception of democracy is best illustrated by the fact that he is a longtime endorser of politically-motivated insurrection and mutiny by Israeli soldiers. Law-breaking is his notion of the highest values of democracy. As a writer featured on many Palestinian propaganda web sites, he has signed calls upon Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in the military. This is his own anti-democratic tactic to coerce the country into implementing the policies endorsed by Israel's anti-Zionist far Left. Then, without pausing even to take a breath, he denounces the Jewish "settlers" for "law breaking": "The settlers pose a danger not only because the 'legal' settlements stand in the way of any lasting agreement between us and the Palestinians, but because a whole generation has grown up with no respect for authority and a view of its representatives as a hindrance." Meanwhile, the Gaza Jewish settlements were all removed, but in response the Palestinians escalated the rocket shootings. So much for the learned history professor's analysis of why there is no peace.

In general, Kleinberg dismisses Israel as a racist society and has denounced Israel as "marching to apartheid." A few years back Israeli universities temporarily abolished college board exams, but then reintroduced them, realizing that without them standards were simply being "dumbed down." Kleinberg attacked the universities for their "anti-Arab racism" in restoring the exams. In any test of academic proficiency, Arabs in Israel do worse than Jews on average, which indicates to Kleinberg that such proficiency must not be tested at all. [Interestingly, he did not denounce Arab universities in Arab countries for their own "anti-Arab racism," even though they also use entrance exams.] Never mind that those very same Israeli universities have implemented affirmative action preferences across the board in favor of Arabs. 

Naturally, Kleinberg is also anti-American. Right after the start of the liberation of Iraq from Saddam, Kleinberg wrote: "The war in Iraq was more than the first _expression of the United States' readiness to go to war as an empire (sic)….The world has a new sheriff who does not hesitate to use his pistol, with or without partners, with or without sanction, with or without justification."

Professor Kleinberg is somewhat knowledgeable about medieval Christianity, which he seems to think entitles him to issue policy pronouncements on everything from the Jewish religion to Israel's water policy. While he has trouble rustling up any sense of indignation at the firing of Qassam missiles into Jewish civilian homes, Kleinberg gets positively livid and uncontrollably outraged at one group of people: religious Jews. He is even more of a zealot of hate when it comes to the Jewish "settlers":

"The settlers are in the grip of a godly zealotry – for years they have been operating outside of the law, motivated by a deep feeling that they are not transgressing the ‘real laws.’ In the name of zealotry, they robbed, lied, and cheated, spilt blood, and all this so that their feeling of complete devotion to God remains undamaged."

A few years back, Kleinberg signed a statement that declared: "In this part of the world there are two borders that are now recognized internationally and regionally: the international border (sic) between us and the Arab states and the border of June 1967 between Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinians accept this border. Not only that, they have shown a readiness to demilitarize the Palestinian state in relation to heavy weapons, to recognize the annexation of the ring of Israeli suburbs built in Jerusalem, and other changes in the 1967 border, on the basis of a mutual agreement and lands swap." 

Now that the Hamas has seized power in the West Bank and Gaza and is rapidly building an Islamofascist terror army, we are waiting for the TAU Professor of History Aviad Kleinberg and his extremist friends from Tel Aviv University to repudiate that statement and issue an academic apology. We will not be holding our breath.



HEADLINES AND COMMENTS*
Headlines from the world’s press. Comments by Diogenes.

Israel Measures Reply To Tel Aviv Bombing
Real meaning: we haven’t got a plan.

Two Duke Students Charged With Rape
Since it’s Duking, it must have been the Final Four of rapes.

China’s President Arriving For Summit Praises U.S. Ties
Especially those wide, long ones with rainbow colors.

U.S. Faulted On Efforts To Rebuild Nations
Healthcare Called A Low Priority
You mean that it’s a lower priority than in the U.S.?

Rumsfeld Gets More Backing Over Iraq
Yep, Zarkawi likes the job Rummy is doing.

Dung Power
Energy From Microbe Breakdown Of Farmers’ Animal Waste
A different approach calls for shooting the dung at energy-generating wind mills.
Haven’t you noticed how quick people are energized when the shit hits the fan.

Fingerprint Database Stalled By Infighting
If the FBI and the police would stop giving each other the finger, stop picking their noses and pull their fingers out of their assholes, the country might get a fingerprint database.

Lawyers Bankrolling Candidates
As soon as the candidates get elected they will bankroll the lawyers.

Pope Asserts View Of Judas As Betrayer
I don’t want to get in the middle of a family fight between the Catholics and the Copts, but the Catholic point of view is completely illogical. However, that’s been their party line for almost 2,000 years and they can’t let it go and lose face.

Christian Science Church Sets Deep Cuts
They checked with Mary Baker Eddy and she said the cuts wouldn’t hurt.

People Don’t Drop Dead From Hearing Loss
Unless they don’t hear the car honking as they’re crossing the street.

An Important Message From Bausch & Lomb (ad headline)
If you can’t read this, you’re using our product.

Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Russia And Qatar Seek To Fund Hamas
Don’t I see the names of our allies on this list, as well as the country in which we are investing billions of dollars?

Jury Convicts California Man Charged With Attending Al-Qaeda Camp
Was it an overnight camp?

F.D.A. Dismisses Medical Benefit From Marijuana
But they approved Thalidomide and Vioxx.

Al-Qaida Leaders Losing Control, U.S. Says
Sure they’re losing control while running insurgencies that the U.S. can’t handle. Maybe the U.S. leaders are losing control.



QUOTES I LIKE
Diogenes considers them clever and/or informative, 
Not that he necessarily agrees with them. Not even his own.

Anti-Semitism is a disease, and politics stands by the sickbed like a stupid, vicious doctor who wants to prolong the illness.
- I. L. Peretz

(Re: Abba Eban) He doesn’t live in reality. He never gives the right solution, only the right speech.
- Levi Eshkol

The basic requirements for an uninterrupted 200-mile-drive: a full tank and an empty bladder.
- Rosalie Goldman

From their own experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.
- Aldous Huxley

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and the end of human nature.
- Henry Adams

During the Iraq-Iran War the battle-cry of the Iraqi Arabs was “kill the Persians.” Since I am impartial, I suggest that the battle-cry for the current turmoil in the Middle East should be “kill the Persians and kill the Arabs.” 
- Diogenes

Every young sports writer starts out writing about the black athletes in the ghetto. They come back saying how articulate the black athlete is. What does that mean? That they can speak words?
- Dick Young

The play was a great success, but the audience was a total failure.
- Oscar Wilde

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
- Thomas Paine

Remember when the best that Jefferson and Hamilton could do was write the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and serve in the top echelons of our government. Now they have reached the pinnacle of achievement…both Jefferson and Hamilton are stars in the NBA.
- Diogenes

The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.
- Edward Gibbon

What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot.
- Lewis Mumford


READER’S COMMENTS 

Re: Are We More Than A User Society? Vol. VI, #7

In response to your lamentation, may I say that the fault of our loss in world manufacturing leadership lies primarily in the $500 billion per year we are pissing away on unneeded weapons 

systems, some of which we sell or give to other nations who make wars that we become involved in, pissing away another $200 billion, thus producing a massive drain on scientific person power wasted on "dead end" (multiple meanings of "dead") projects. Other countries not masquerading as "super powers" use these funds to make superior products that we buy. 

Secondly we are changing our culture from one that produces to one that leeches on to the production of others, by breeding multitudes of salespersons, martini buyers, stockbrokers, and lawyers, all driving monster SUV's to project their "image". 

Tariffs and laws will do nothing until we change this culture.

Visit my new blog, DIOGENES # XXI at http://diogenesxxi.blogspot.com/


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