THE DIOGENES REPORT
The Wit, Wisdom & Wituperation of Emanuel L. Strunin
“a few steps ahead of the curve”
October 2006, VOL. V, #15
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Items marked with an * were written by Diogenes.)

KNOWING THINE ENEMY 
IS ALMOST AS IMPORTANT AS 
KNOWING THYSELF*

In the past few days I have heard comments by public officials and media people that makes me wonder about their IQ levels, as well as their emotional intelligence. One was by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who is always on the verge of spotting the light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq. He predicted that if the Sunnis and the Shias would just compromise a little bit without each side getting all that they want, the religious strife—also known as a civil war-- would come to an end. 

I consider his remarks the height of stupidity. He thinks that he’s describing a labor negotiation in the United States. If he hasn’t learned by this time that he dealing with an Arab/Muslim/religious/political war whose roots go back well over 1,000 years with wounds that were clawed raw during Saddam’s reign, he does not deserve to be the Secretary of Defense. But his ignorance does explain the disastrous policies (if we can call them policies) that we have followed after the invasion of Iraq. This is a perfect example of the problems that arise from not knowing your enemy.

Another example of not knowing your enemy is the tempest in a teapot occasioned by George Bush’s comments that the current increase in violence in Iraq can be equated to the Tet offensive in Viet Nam. His spokespeople immediately jumped in to explain what the President really meant. He merely meant that the current increase in violence in Iraq and the Tet offensive were only similar in that they meant to influence American voters before an election.

Republican pundits on TV also emphasized that the Tet offensive was a major military disaster for the Viet Cong and North Viet Nam. According to these wise men and women, the Viet Cong suffered 50,000 casualties while “only” 4,000 Americans were killed. Let’s recall, that while we knew the American body count, our estimates of the enemy body count was not that accurate. But as far as the VC and North Viet Nam were concerned, their military losses were not a significant factor, a political victory was paramount. And a powerful political victory, it was. It convinced many Americans inside and outside of politics—including President Johnson—that the war was not winnable and would not be supported by the American voters.


Still another example of this type of idiotic thinking can be credited to the Israeli Government and military leaders who claimed to have “won the war” against Hizbullah in Lebanon. They likely killed more Arabs than the casualties the IDF suffered, but Israel lost the war. Everyone in the world recognizes that Israel lost the war except the gang of incompetents in the Israel Government and general staff who were responsible for their defeat. 

Let’s move on to another American misinterpretation of victory—Afghanistan. Our so-called victory there is rapidly disintegrating into obvious defeat. Even if the current status quo holds, we have already lost in the eyes of our enemies and many of our “friends.” Spinning from the Pentagon and the Oval Office cannot change defeat into victory.

Calling the Tet offensive and the Lebanon War and the Afghan War, American and Israeli victories reminds me of the French general who claimed that the French army achieved all of its objectives at Dien Bien Phu. We are able to judge the stupidity of our leaders by their actions, but must they further demonstrate it by their comments?


I believe it was Bismarck who said that war was merely politics under another name. Neither our government, nor Israel’s government, recognize the wisdom of Bismarck’s comment. Our enemies do.



FOR JEW-HATERS MASQUERADING AS ISRAEL-HATERS

The following slightly edited article from Britain’s The Daily Sport Today won’t have any impact on Israel-haters. They never have any compunction about using Jews or stealing from them. 

I understand that you are ticked off at Israel, and in love with the Palestinians. That's fine with me, as long as you have truly weighed all the facts. If you want to boycott Israel, I'll be sorry to miss you, but if you want do it properly, I can help you.

Check all your medications. Make sure that you do not have tablets, drops, lotions, etc., made by Abic or Teva. It may mean that you will suffer from colds and flu this winter but, hey, that's a small price to pay in your campaign against Israel, isn't it? 

While we’re on the subject of your Israeli boycott, and the medical contributions to the world made by Israeli doctors and scientists, how about telling your pals to boycott the following: 

An Israeli company developed the simple blood test that distinguishes between mild and more severe cases of Multiple Sclerosis. So, if you know anyone suffering from MS, tell him or her to ignore the Israeli test that may, more accurately, diagnose their symptoms.

The Israeli-made device that helps restore the use of paralyzed hands. This device electrically stimulates the hand muscles, providing hope to millions of stroke sufferers and victims of spinal injuries. 

The new Israeli device called the Child Hood that helps young children with breathing problems to sleep more soundly. This innovation replaces the inhalation mask with an improved drug delivery system that provides relief for child and parent. Please tell all anti-Israel parents that they shouldn't use this device because of your passionate cause.

Boycotts often affect research so you’ll be sure to avoid any benefits coming out of Israeli medical research. A new research center in Israel hopes to throw light on brain disorders such as depression and Alzheimer's disease. The Neuroscience Center at the Tel HaShomer Hospital, aims to bring thousands of scientists and doctors to focus on brain research.

A researcher at Ben Gurion University has succeeded in creating human monoclonal antibodies which can neutralize the highly contagious smallpox virus without inducing the dangerous side effects of the existing vaccine.

Two Israelis received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of one of the human cells most important cyclical processes will lead the way to DNA repair, control of newly produced proteins, and immune defense systems.

The Movement Disorder Surgery program at Israel's Hadassah Medical Center has successfully eliminated the physical manifestations of Parkinson's disease in a select group of patients with a deep brain stimulation technique. 

For women who undergo hysterectomies each year for the treatment of uterine fibroids, the development in Israel of the Ex Ablate 2000 System offers a noninvasive alternative to surgery. 

Israeli scientists also are developing a nose drop for five-year flu vaccine protection.

But don’t get too caught up with the medical advances you’ll have to give up, there are many other personal sacrifices you should be willing to make for the sake of your anti-Israel boycott.

Number one, get rid of your computer. Most of Windows operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel. Computers should have a label saying Israel Inside. 
The Pentium NMX Chip technology was designed at Intel in Israel. Both the Pentium 4
microprocessor and the Centrum processor were entirely designed, developed, and produced in Israel. Further. voice mail technology was developed in Israel. The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 in Israel 
by four young Israeli whiz kids. Not surprisingly, both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R & D. facilities outside the US in Israel.

So, due to your complete boycott of anything Israeli, you now have poor health and no computer. But your bad news does not end there. Get rid of your cellular phone. Cell phone technology was also developed in Israel by Motorola which has its biggest development center in Israel. Most of the latest technology in your mobile phone was developed by Israeli scientists.

Please be warned that since Israel has the highest number of patents filed, except for the United States, you may lose a great many more of the products that are important to your health, safety and life-style when we sort through the Israeli patents. 

So, you can vilify and demonize the State of Israel and you can continue your boycott, if you wish. Israel will do fine without your help. But Diogenes wishes that international law could preclude Jew-haters and Israel-haters from using Israeli-developed products and discoveries on penalty of fines and prison terms.


FLIGHT OF FANCY

My flight was being served by an obviously gay flight attendant, who seemed to put everyone in a good mood as he served us food and drinks.

As the plane prepared to descend, he came swishing down the aisle and told us that "Captain Marvey has asked me to announce that he'll be landing the big scary plane shortly, so lovely people, if you could just put your trays up, that would be super."

On his trip back up the aisle, he noticed this well-dressed and rather Arabic looking woman hadn't moved a muscle.

"Perhaps you didn't hear me over those big brute engines but I asked you to raise your trazy-poo, so the main man can pitty-pat us on the ground."

She calmly turned her head and said, "In my country, I am called a Princess and I take orders from no one."

To which the flight attendant replied, without missing a beat, "Well, sweet-cheeks, in my country I'm called a Queen, so I outrank you. Tray-up, Bitch."



NAMES
Names that fit and names that don’t.

This one is a solid fit: Catherine T. Judge, Suffolk law professor died at 78. (Boston Globe, September 17, 206).



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

Trips That Will Change Your Life (Article headline in Travel & Leisure)
LSD?

Mubarak’s Son Proposes Nuclear Program
1. The Egyptians won’t let the Persians have hegemony over the Middle East.
2. Israel should dust off its plans for taking out the Aswan Dam.

Radical Teachings In Pakistan Schools
Madrassas Back Taliban, bin Laden
Gee, I’m glad Pakistan is on our side.

The French have a passion for engineering and technology, for research and solutions that push back the boundaries. (subhead in an ad)
They have developed the large white flag, the medium sized white flag, the small white flag and triangular white banners of all sizes. 

America’s Population 300 Million
Measured by girth:600 million.

Senator Acknowledges Mother’s Jewish Roots
1. It turns out that George Allen is also a macaca.
2. Is the senator going to join Mel Gibson at the Henry Ford Center for Anti-Semitism?

I. M. Pei In China, Revisiting Roots
If he was visiting Boston, you might say he was looking through the windows at his past.

U. S. To Hand Iraq A New Timetable On Security Role
I hope it’s not an AMTRAK timetable or we’ll never get out of there.

Egypt, Under Stress, Sees U.S. As Pain And Remedy
The pain is that the U.S. says it cannot do anything about Egypt’s poverty, corruption and political oppression. The remedy is that Bush offered to take the pyramids off their hands and move them to Six Flags Over Texas.



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

Rush Limbaugh accused Michael J. Fox of not taking his pills. Fox, in response, should have accused Rush of taking everybody’ pills or of not taking his pills.
- Diogenes

Yiddish contains vitamins that other languages don’t have. I’m not sure it is going to be spoken in the future. But I’m sure that people will study Yiddish literature, its press, its folklore. I’m annoyed at the indifference, if not hostility, that native-born Israelis of East European extraction have displayed toward Yiddish. For them, it is the symbol of the Exile. The Exile lasted 2,000 years. If a people want to forget 2,000 years of their existence, you understand how silly this is. It’s like a man of 90 years would say, the first 88 years of my life I want to forget, I only want to remember the last two. Forgetting the Exile would mean going into such an amnesia which would kill the Jewish spirit. So all these people who speak about the Galut, the Exile, as something, which should be forgotten, are really senseless people, complete idiots.
- Isaac Bashevis Singer (1975) 

Everything new must have its roots in what was before.
- Sigmund Freud

Grandparents are a lady and a man who have no little children of their own. They like other people’s.
A grandfather is a man grandmother.
- from papers written by 8-year-olds

I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.
- Albert Einstein

Much of what we think we know about Islam is false. Islam has been on the attack since its birth in the Seventh Century.
- Edward N. Luttwak

I was ordered to fight (non-Muslims) until they say there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his prophet.
- Osama bin Laden 

Most people are concerned about their own bodies and their neighbors’ souls. This is a grievous error. In order to improve our world, we must leave our neighbors’ souls alone. We must instead worry about our neighbors’ bodies and our own souls.
- Israel Salanter 

Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammer’d and roll’d;
Hoarded, barter’d bought and sold,
Stolen, borrow’d, squander’d doled:
Spurn’d by the young, but hugg’d by the old,
To the very verge of the churchyard mould;
Price of many a crime untold:
Gold! Gold! Gold!
- Thomas Hood

Bank robbers go where the money is—predators go where the children are.
- John Reilly

I cannot accept your cannon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong….Power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority….There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
- Lord Acton

We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible to publish work of a lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall ever see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition, and to beg you a thousand times to overlook our short sight and timidity.
- Rejection letter from a Chinese economics journal

The weary traveler sat on the edge of his bed in the hotel room. He reached for the Gideon Bible placed next to the bed and opened it. On the fly-leaf was printed the advice, “If you are lonely and restless, read Psalms 23 and 27, Old Testament.”

Just below this sage suggestion, however, was written, “If you are still lonesome, call Oakwood 2-2881 and ask for Susan.”
- Anonymous

There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness.”
- Dave Barry


We know where Darfur is, but where are Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Maxine Waters?
- Diogenes

I often wonder when reading a wedding announcement that notes “the ceremony included Catholic and Jewish traditions” does it mean that the groom tied the bride to a big wooden cross and set her on fire like an auto-da-fey while the bride screamed the shma?
- Diogenes



READERS’ COMMENTS

Re: How the NY Times would have handled the Holocaust...

I don't know how the right wingers can still be angry at the NY Times after the White House so deftly used Judy Miller as a conduit for their spin and leaking campaigns. 

Speaking of which: the prez, once again, is talking about how he deplores all the "leakers" of this week's classified report. This is the height of hypocrisy; leaking was OK in his white house when he wanted classified stuff leaked about Valerie Plame, to Novak and his cronies.

Diogenes’ Response

Much to the surprise of some and the disappointment of others, the White House is not owned by Jews—but the New York Times is.


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


So says Diogenes. What do you say?  Click here to send in your comments 

Comments welcome. e-mail to: editor@diogenesreport.com
All issues of The Diogenes Report are on the website -- 
www.diogenesreport.com