Post 197--This Confusing World

The heading of the article I draw to your attention today is CNN.  So, I start with them. I was amazed when I saw the heading of this article and when I read its contents. Here we have CNN praising and defending Israel.  They praise Israel for the many Nobel and other awards its citizens have won, far more than any other nation in proportion to its tiny population, certainly far more than the nations that would like nothing better than to see its people erased from the face of the earth. I am not used to such sounds from CNN. Highly unusual.

I agree with CNN on this one. My response to these facts is that I would love Canada to invite the entire Jewish nation to move over to Canada, live where they themselves please and bless Canada with their amazing talents. I cannot imagine how far they would take Canada into the stratosphere of the arts and sciences. Our country would be transformed totally. And the Jews would finally have peace--no one to molest them anymore.

Not only did CNN praise Israel for their accomplishments, but they also criticized the nations that continually criticize Israel; it criticizes the critics. Now, we all know that Israel is not a perfect nation and deserves critique, but what of the nations that major in this critique within the halls of the UN?  The article asks pointed questions about a number of them. Is Israel really worse than those others?  This is a list of rhetorical questions the answers to which are so obvious, they don't need to be spelled out. Why are those nations not taken to task?  What right do they have to critique Israel? Do they have any sort of higher ground from which to expressed their holier-than-thou hypocrisy? 

What amazes me still more is that  Jake Tapper, the anchor of the above CNN programme, expressed all the above in the context of President Trump's declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Ordinarily, one would expect CNN to castigate the President for this action.  After all, the network specializes in berating Trump. That's about all I hear them do, the reason I am tired of them and no longer listen to them.  For once they were able to restrain themselves with respect to their President. Another highly unusual event.  I can hardly imagine such restraint on their part!  Is this the same CNN I know?  If you do not believe in miracles, perhaps you ought to do a rethink! Can you blame me for being confused?

That said, I now provide you with the opportunity to hear it from the horse's mouth as it comes to us from the Algemeiner of December 22, 2017.  As our own CBC likes to put it, "Have a listen."


Top CNN Host Calls Out Human Rights-Abusing UN Member-States for Hypocrisy on Israel

Jake Tapper. Photo: Screenshot.

CNN news host Jake Tapper on Thursday called out human rights-abusing UN member-states for their hypocritical focus on Israel.

On his “The Lead” program, hours after the UN General Assembly passed— by a 128-9 margin, with 35 abstentions — a resolution calling for the United States to drop its recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Tapper noted, “The United Nations General Assembly, from 2012 to 2015, has adopted 97 resolutions specifically criticizing an individual country, and of those 97, 83 have focused on Israel. That is 86 percent.”

Tapper continued: “Now certainly Israel is not above criticism, but considering the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, the lack of basic human rights in North Korea, the children starving in the streets of Venezuela, the citizens of Syria targeted for murder by their own leader using the most grotesque and painful of weapons, you have to ask is Israel truly deserving of 86 percent of the world’s condemnation? Or possibly is something else afoot at the United Nations, something that allows the representative of the Assad government to lecture the United States for moving its embassy?”

Watch the segment below:

T

Post 119 Election Mudslinging

US Campaigns in the Media

The media, especially TV, have inundated us poor Canadians with election rot. There’s this interminable US presidential campaign that’s been going on for ages--for years it seems, especially if you’re not particularly enamoured with that kind of public engagement. Though we don’t have a voice or any influence whatsoever in this process, even our own TV stations bombard us with talk shows and news talk about that drawn-out procedure, if you can dignify it as such. Of course, our stations are nothing compared to CNN and its competitors. With CNN it seems it’s 24/7. 

Canadian Campaigns

And in the middle of all that, we had a double doze with our own Canadian road show that ended with Harper out and Trudeau Jr. in, this boy who, the Harper wordsmiths continually maintained, was not ready for such elevated office as Prime Minister of the world’s second largest country. In hindsight, there’s a lot of evidence that this claim may well have been right on. As to the rest of their claims and the opponents’ counterclaims, it was at the same sordid sewer level we still suffer daily from down south.   

Campaign Levels 

The language political opponents use to describe each other is really out of control. In any other cultural segment the insults and outright lies would end up in legal suits and in the courts of the land, with our friendly lawyers having a hay day. What’s unacceptable in every other segment seems to be the thing to do or say in the realm of political campaigns. Of course, that should not surprise you, since the segment is laden with lawyers in whose realm half truths and outright untruths appear to be the daily diet. 

You, readers of this blog, have witnessed the Canadian show and continue to witness its prolonged American variety. You probably shake your head occasionally in consternation at the level to which our honourable leaders can sink. Just now, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a US Supreme Court Justice, one burdened with the awesome responsibility of speaking and judging the truth of things told CNN that Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is not consistent and says “whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.”  Of course, Republican leaders disagreed, while some on the other side agreed.  However, even some left-leaning newspapers called the justice on it. As a Supreme Court justice, she is expected to maintain an impartial stance and not sink into the sewers of politics. The Washington Post commented, “There’s a good reason the Code of Conduct for United States Judges flatly states that a ‘judge should not . . . publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office.’ Politicization, real or perceived, undermines public faith in the impartiality of the courts.”  That may be true, but such public comments are an indication of the low level to which participants in the race and their henchpeople sink today. (Sorry for the awkward neologism. “Henchmen” would not do it today and a bare “hench” is not acceptable to the Webster crowd. I’m caught between the linguistic “devil and the deep blue sea.” I am open to suggestions here, please.)

Fathers of the Nation

But if you think this is a recent phenomenon, think again. You may have a surprise coming.  People identified as fathers of the United States used the same kind of language. The Denison Forum shares the following shockers:  

The 1800 election pitted John Adams against Thomas Jefferson. A Jefferson surrogate labeled Adams a "repulsive pedant" and "gross hypocrite" who "behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character." An Adams surrogate warned that electing Jefferson would create a nation where "murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced." Stephen Douglas claimed that Abraham Lincoln was a drunk who could "ruin more liquor than all the boys in town together." (Actually, Douglas was a heavy drinker, while Lincoln abstained from alcohol.) Lyndon B. Johnson ran an ad against Barry Goldwater claiming that the latter would bring about nuclear destruction, killing America's children.

A Questionable Corollation 

So, if these greats did not shun such language and, apart from Johnson, they left us with the legacy of a great nation, I guess we should not worry about the low level of our Canadian politicians. There’s hope for us. Is this a case of the deeper the filth the greater the legacy?  Who knows what greatness lies ahead for us in Canada! Hmmm. This conclusion somehow does not have the ring of truth about it. Can anyone point out the logical fallacy I employ here? 

Exporting Democracy

Apart from the legacy question, one of the problems I recognize here is that the nations who practice this kind of shenanigans are also the nations who export “democracy” to the “primitive” nations of other continents and, by so doing, destroy the unity of ethnic groups. I will try to bring some details of this in the next post.

If you have been with me long enough, you may remember previous posts in which I promised not to make any more promises to you, my readers. You may have noticed that in the previous sentence I have just sunk back into the morass of promises, a place where long ago I promised not to descend. I retract that promise. I just can’t live without making promises. But if that’s true for politicians, perhaps I should loosen up as well and just fly with them. If I can’t live without promises in this blog, then I will just have to break that one promise. Just that one!