'Open-Air Prisons'

Al Khalady Mosque in Gaza

Gaza was never the 'open-air prison' supporters

of Hamas claimed it to be. Billions in charitable

funding received from international donors and 

the United Nations to support Palestinian life in 

the strip, a mostly Jewish enclave in the Medieval era

and long aeons before, used to build a modern civil

infrastructure above ground was also made use of

to build an uncivil subterranean attack mechanism

by the Gaza-ruling Hamas terrorist organization to

stockpile munitions, establish military command posts

and smuggle weaponry and luxury goods for the

commanding Hamas operatives. Claims of an abject

population under the heel of an occupying force

the narrative of choice in the gullible West whose

press, academic institutions and unions steeped

deep in the lore of Israel as aggressor proliferated

the lies. In Syria, on the other hand, an open-air prison

did prevail and in the dungeons of the regime those

incarcerated for the crime of decrying the regime

were tortured, mutilated, murdered in their agonized

masses. Syria's ruler did not hesitate to stifle dissent

to his rule by the majority Sunni Syrians using 

proscribed chemical agents and barrel bombs to

great effect in diminishing a population under fire.

In the Western media, unions and academia not

much interest in defending victims of a bloody 

civil war with millions displaced, a half-million

lives annihilated, the smirking ruler restored to

the fold of the non-judgemental Arab League.

 

How Strange It Is!

As a feature of indecent human nature to

jealously guard what is not theirs in the

arcane belief that claims are nine-tenths

of a just law of ownership it is beyond

strange that the most creatively talented

group on Earth from ancient times to

the present remains hounded, threatened

detested, their heritage and ancestry

mocked and belittled yet the articles

of their faith, their history, their land

and their contributions to the world

that shuns them are valued decoupled

from their source in counterclaims of

authenticity. From brilliance of thought

and reasoning, execution of monumental

discoveries to the ultimate horrors of

deliberate annihilation the world rushes

to claim originality and victimhood as

their very own experiences, denying both

achievement and martyrdom to the tribe

whose very existence profited them all.

 

Life Is So Unfair!

 

My grandmother, she’s this little woman with kind of curly, silver hair and she used to look after me every day from the time I was an infant until I was nine, when my mother was out to work. Well, she sometimes laughs at me. It can be infuriating, really. It’s not laughing, actually, guess it’s more like teasing. Deliberately, of course. I’m not dumb, I know she’s trying to get me to realize what I’m saying before I do it, and then stop saying it. But it’s hard.

And, as I say, infuriating, depending on when she does it. If I’m with friends, and she does it, it makes me feel pretty annoyed. I don’t bother saying anything to her, what’s the point?
I just kind of laugh along with her. Every time I say something like “it’s not fair”, or - and I know this sounds kind of silly, since I’m in my teens now - “it’s not my fault”, she does it.

Not my fault if those phrases just kind of come tripping out of me. See what I mean? I’m so accustomed to saying them, I don’t even think about it. And knowing that, I see what my grandmother means. The minute one of those phrases has come out of my mouth, she turns to me, and in a loud voice, with a kind of whining inflection that is truly awful, copies me.

“Not my fault”, she deliberately, emphatically repeats with a kind of nasal whine. I swear I don’t sound like that, not really. It’s just her way of drawing my attention to what I’ve said. Thanks a whole bunch, grandma. On the other hand, I know very well she doesn’t mean to make me feel bad, just her way of trying to make me more aware of what I’m saying.

I shouldn’t feel so abruptly defensive about anything. And, as she has always (at least lately, now that I’m older, noticing things more, and remarking about them to her) said to me, life isn’t necessarily fair. It’s just life, you take it as it comes and make the best of it. Still, it’s not, in a sense, respectful of me, I think, when she does that. Maybe I will get around to asking her to stop. If I can’t manage, somehow to stop myself belting out that automatic defense-mechanism. Well, I get her point.

Still, it’s true, and I defy anyone, anyone at all, to prove to me that life is fair. Because it most definitely is not. My grandmother says I’m much too sensitive. She tells me that when I was really young, much younger than I am now, say around second grade, my teacher then told my grandmother that she was impressed at my natural sense of justice. Don’t even ask me how a grade two teacher would arrive at that kind of conclusion of a little kid. My grandmother took it to heart, proudly. Insists that, on the evidence before her, I have been imbued (likely through my genetic inheritance, as she always says), with an enhanced, natural sense of justice.

Maybe that’s why I’m so outraged at my grade eight teacher, for not respecting us kids as thinking human beings. She assumes we’re idiots. Claims we are, anyway. And I’ve never before had a teacher who resorted to hysterics, thinking that will make us behave better. It may be true, and I believe it is, that this class is one of the rudest, rowdiest ones in the school. We’re just incidentally the only grade eight in the school, since the entire school enrolment is only 220. Shrinking year by year.

The first year I came here it was 260. Seems the rural areas of this province are seeing a decline in the elementary school population. That’s why schools are closing all over the place. Even my old school, in the city, where I used to go when we lived close to my grandparents has closed. Well, it wasn’t exactly in the city proper, although it’s considered to be now, through amalgamation. Back then it was considered the suburbs. The suburbs are moving steadily outward.

Anyway (where was I?. I get that kind of thing from my grandmother, going off in a tangent. Too much either on or in my mind, she says). Right, my teacher. She will not listen. She thinks she knows what goes on, and draws erroneous conclusions. Just because I’m the tallest kid in the class, taller even than the guys, she thinks I’m the number-one class troublemaker. Maybe too because I talk a lot, but what can you do when someone is talking to you? I turn around to answer a question or to respond to something someone says beside me or behind me, and whomp! She leaps all over me. When I try to explain she screams.

I should explain, it isn’t only me that gets ripped into, it’s most of the class, with the exception of a few of her favourites. Heaven save us from class favourites, those snivelling little angels who can never do anything wrong. They’re actually the sneakiest, most untrustworthy kids; the snottiest ones too, for that matter. There’s a bunch of us kids, guys I hang around with, that she picks on, mostly. Although she’ll scream at anyone, when she’s irritated. And lately she’s always irritated.

No wonder no one listens to her, why the class just keeps on behaving badly. She’s lost our respect. I’m ready to tell her that to her face. That’s no way to behave, to control a class, to discipline us collectively for something one or two people have done that has outraged her. That we don’t even know anything about. But she won’t listen. She wants respect, but isn’t prepared to extend it to any of us. That’s fair?

Things got so bad that a few weeks back the principal sat in on the class, while our teacher was away on sick leave. No, she wasn’t sick, it was her kid. That’s another thing, she’s there to teach us, right? So why do we have to sit there, bored out of our skulls, listening to her talk about her family situation? Who cares?

Her three-year-old kid seems prone to getting sick. You’d think she’d have someone else she could rely on when the day-care insists they can’t take him back until his fever is gone. She’s got parents, her husband’s parents. She’s tried using them in emergencies, she told us, but she doesn’t trust them. Doesn’t trust her own parents, her husband’s parents to look after their grandchild! What is the matter with the woman? She says they don’t understand her child, don’t know how to look after him properly. Sure.

Maybe I shouldn’t complain about that. After all, when she books off sick, we get fill-ins, replacement teachers. Some of them are okay, mostly they’re pretty clueless. Can’t work with the curriculum. So it’s a wasted day. Wasted with her there, when instead of teaching us, she assigns us really stupid homework, or just stands around talking about her family, about her week-end, about her state of health. She’s only in her late thirties, what happens with people when they get that old-not-old, do their brain cells go suddenly plunk?

Right. Like I was saying, the principal came in one day, and sat with us, to discuss the reputation this class is acquiring, which is how she put it. There’s only 23 kids in the class, not a big one, you’d think our teacher would be capable of putting in the effort she’s getting paid for. My mom says teachers make very good salaries; their union contracts see to it. And she’s been teaching for ten years, has some seniority, so she’s making good bucks. There I go again.

Anyway, the principal kind of prodded us, asking why did we think it was that our teacher was having such problems with the class? Why she kept sending so many of us over to talk with the vice-principal, when she was ‘at the end of her tether’. Why ask us? Well, presumably, she’d already discussed it with our teacher. No one wanted to say much of anything.

She took a different tack; said something general about the situation and asked us to raise our hands if we agreed, sit on them if we didn’t. That told her something, since when she asked if we were comfortable in the class, felt like we were learning, everyone sat on their dumb hands.

Well, said the principal, she was stymied. Didn’t know what to think. Never came across anything like it before. I guess not. She’s new at the school, but our old school records are available to her any time she wants to have a look at them. Mine, for example, will inform her that I’ve been commended many times in the past for my academic achievement, but more, because I’ve been useful to my previous teachers in helping shy students, or misbehaving students feel more included, getting them to thaw out, loosen their attitude, become less hostile.

I even had a thank-you note from some kid’s mother about it, and a certificate that went out in the mail so my mom could see it. Big deal. I actually did nothing extraordinary, nothing at all special, just treated them decently, that’s all.

Which is more, far more, than this teacher has ever done. At the beginning of the year I thought she was pretty cool. Truth is, she did help me in practical ways, like with my math, helped me to see it in a different way, so I was able to understand things better. I don’t know what happened after the first two months, things just disintegrated. And she’s been really horrible ever since.

I don’t enjoy people screaming at me, yelling in my face, accusing me of things I haven’t done. My mom, actually, says it’s partly my fault for judging my teacher. I’ve judged her to be incapable of performing her teacherly duties and as a result I’ve withheld my respect. I’m cool and polite. Evidently she takes umbrage at that. Tough.

The principal’s prodding was going nowhere. I raised my hand and offered my opinion, asked if I could proffer it. She said, go ahead. So I did. I told it like it was. Said we were as entitled to respect as our teacher, and if she couldn’t bother to offer it to us, why expect us to respect her in return? So we’re noisy and don’t pay attention. But, I emphasized, this happens precisely because we’re driven to it by our own exasperation over having to submit to this woman’s tirades, each and every day.

And, I said, this is interfering with our education, diminishing the level of our education, and we’re certainly entitled to more than what we’re experiencing. I wasn’t the least bit scared. I felt I was right, and when you feel that way, you’ve got a responsibility to yourself to proceed.

The principal didn’t scowl, didn’t look condemnatory, just looked at me kind of thoughtfully. That impressed me. She turned to the class and asked who else felt the way I did? Almost everyone lifted their hands. And then there was utter quiet. The principal heaved a huge sigh, got up, said she’d give it some thought, relay what she’d gleaned from us to our teacher. She turned to me before she left and asked if I’d be willing to repeat what I’d said to her, directly to my teacher. Most certainly would, I said.

Since then, nothing. Nothing, nothing at all. No acknowledgement from the office, nor our teacher that anything had taken place out of the ordinary. I felt pretty deflated, I’ll tell you. My mom said to give it a rest, just go with it, and forge ahead. Not to take things so seriously. It’s all right for her, she isn’t assaulted on a daily basis by the accusations of someone who won’t listen to reason.

And then, of course, there’s the little matter of my report card, my latest report card. She gave me marks in the mid- to high-70s. Patently absurd. I’ve earned much better marks than that. This report card punishes me for being outspoken, for being the victim of a personality clash.

Exactly, said my mom, your personality is clashing with that of your teacher. What’s happening in the classroom, she said, is exactly what occurs out in the real world, where people often don’t get along and have to make a concerted effort to do so. She herself, she told me, had to learn the hard way. She thought I would be smart enough to learn quicker than she had.

Obviously, I’m not. And I’m not.

My literature and English marks are absurd; no one reads more than I do, and I’ve got a perfect (well, pretty good) command of the language, and my tests are excellent. How can she interpret that to a slightly-above-average class mark? Ditto for geography, social studies, art and music. My French and math look about where they should be, but the rest is a travesty. She’d give me worse marks, I know, if she could get away with it. But she can’t, because I am a good student. I’m really, really pissed off, big time.

She’s really not very professional at all. My mom’s a professional. She takes pride in the work she does, and she does really complicated, important work. I don’t know all the details, but she can do these really amazing drawings, like architects do. She works on contract for the government. Makes more money that way, she says, than having a permanent job with them, though sometimes she gets really anxious when one contract has expired and she has to go looking for another one.

My teacher should be invited to go look for another job. I know that’s not very nice, but she isn’t very nice, and that’s the absolute truth. My mom says I’m too negative. My grandma says the same thing. What really, truly bugs the hell out of me is that this teacher, who makes everyone miserable around her, has said the same thing to me. She should know, she’s the very epitome of negativity.

And there’s a parent-teacher interview coming up. My mom was supposed to go in to the school on Monday for this interview. Me too, I was supposed to be there. I was looking forward to it, kind of in a twisted way. I know that whatever my teacher says, my mom will support her. Mom thinks I should be more disciplined, less inclined toward criticizing my elders, that I should learn to take advice, and be less judgemental. My grandmother has told me that my mom’s experiences at school paralleled mine; in other words my mom was just as critical of her teachers, as they complain I am with mine.

Listen, I was never exactly in love with any of my teachers. I liked some of them, didn’t care for others, but they weren’t like this person, not at all. I had more respect from my teachers when I attended pre-school, than I get now. And there’s something pretty wrong with that. If someone like my teacher hasn’t the necessary patience and the fortitude to teach a class of 12 and 13-year-olds, she shouldn’t be doing it.

My grandma told me there’s a glut of teachers, most of them can’t find jobs because of declining enrolment, and new graduates are just biding their time, waiting for older teachers to retire, or just making do, taking on temporary fill-in jobs. They’re on a list that the schools use, for emergency calls. And for the most part, when they come in to fill in for a day or two they don’t really do much of anything, other than baby-sit. That’s right, they don’t know where we’re at in the curriculum, and they’re not in a very good mood because they haven’t got permanent employment, and it just seems that they sit there resentful of us, as though we’re the ones who’ve gotten them into that mess.

Anyway, I repeat: life just isn’t fair. Here’s something that really bugs me. Every day after school I’d come home and first thing getting in the door I’d go over to speak with my little pig Henry, stroke his tiny head, and ask how his day was. Fill up his water, just to give him clean water to drink. And a bit of a treat, a piece of celery or apple. I got him at the Humane Society - mom’s big on rescues - when he was only two, they said. I loved him, I really did. He was so cute, made these really sweet little sounds.

Okay, I was kind of scared of him, too. Mom would laugh at me, she is used to handling animals. I should be, I’ve lived among them long enough, but Henry was different. He was so small. Mom would put him in my lap, and I’d brush his hair. And pet him. Sometimes he didn’t want to be handled, and he’d nip my fingers. Hard. I was just kind of leery of picking him up, in case I did something wrong, and hurt him or dropped him or something, even after Mom showed me how. I lacked confidence she said, and I certainly did.

Henry had a little cage when we first got him. But Mom decided he needed stimulation and more room, so she expanded it to two stories, and another area just for him to bounce around. At first he was just still all the time, didn’t move about much. But when he became accustomed to his new expanded cage, he began to explore it all. One level was for sleeping, the other for eating, and the large area on the first level for him to do whatever he wanted. His cage was right next to Mom’s rabbits, so he had plenty of company. They snuffled one another.

Actually he became so bold that Mom would sometimes leave the door to his cage swung wide open and he’d just go out and amble about everywhere. He was good about confining his droppings to a special area in his cage. For the most part, that is. He was a curious little devil, always wanted to know what was going on. The cat just paid him no mind, and Mom’s two dogs got used to him really fast. The smaller one even tried to play with Henry sometimes. I was always worried he’d get hurt, he was so small. He was afraid of nothing.

Along with his regular food, he’d also get a daily salad, fresh fruit and vegetables cut into little pieces. He would actually squeak repeatedly at about the time of day he knew he’d be getting his salad, impatient for his bowl. Made us all laugh. It really was funny seeing him padding around on the kitchen floor, in between the cat and the dogs, everyone politely managing to sidestep the other. Although when the cat started meowing, and the dogs barking, impatient for their meals, with Henry squeaking along, it reminded me of one of those old nursery stories grandma used to read me when I was small, The Musicians of Bremen.

One day I walked into the house, went over to Henry’s cage, and stroked his little head. He slept a lot, always, but that’s normal. I thought he was sleeping. Although I did think, at the time, how strangely his body seemed to be laying there, not the way it usually looked. His body looked stiff, awkward.

I soon realized he wasn’t going to respond to me. I freaked out, I really did. I just ran out of there, and shut myself into my bedroom. Until Mom got home. She sat down with me and we both cried. Then she wrapped him up in a tiny blanket and put him in a freezer bag and into the freezer. It was winter. She planned to bury him in the spring, soon as the ground thawed. He’d only been a year with me, my very own companion pet.

See what I mean?

My grandma says most teens are grumpy and inclined to fuming about things. Hormones, she says. Bullshit, I say. Not to her, of course.

 

 

Perpetuation of the Species

 

From the primary-grade little girls who

cluster and whisper in confidant groups

at recess in the schoolyard warning one

another off the trust of the neighbourhood

man who shuffles along the streets on the

lookout for the naive promising them candy

treats if they're 'nice' to him, to divulging

amongst one another touch-and-go events

their parents would never suspect their little

girls had any notion of, to the 'uncle' who

gives gifts to trusting nieces, girls are early

primed to their victim roles among males of

their acquaintance and how inconvenient it

can be to be trapped in a bathroom with a

familiar of whom no word of revelatory 

tattle could be countenanced, on to the

opportunistic gropes on public transit no

one wants to advertise because it is girls and

women on whom shame falls when they

become victims of male tampering. The hot

passions of males opposed to the curiosity 

and intimacy-seeking emotional females

the battle of the sexes serves nature's scheme

of survival. It becomes a wonder that girls

grown to womanhood retain their emotional 

attachment to dreams of love and an adoring

male, and those whose dreams are fulfilled

have the fortune to discover among them the

presence of males whose visions match theirs.

The Flower Child And The Magus

She an authentic Flower Child and he the great

Northern Magus. Together they bequeathed to a

great country one who would follow in his father's

footprint. Inheriting from both mother and father

a flair for dramatic theatrics and in no small measure

reflecting their narcissistic personalities he learned

early how charm could exploit possibilities and

the giddy power invested in manipulating others

while affecting an aura of empathy and mutuality.

To his mother, this was her Golden Boy for the

sun threw its brilliance over him, never to set and

withdraw. It graced his countenance and followed

wherever he went, enabling him to convince

onlookers that he brought with him everywhere

Sunny Ways, to the extent that the jaded could

overlook his paucity of experience, education and

the simplicity of  his mind geared to entertain, not

govern. A smitten electorate elevated him to guide a

nation and for their trust in the shallowness of his

consideration of the country's heritage, culture and

values saw a dissolution of all that mattered in his

drive to replace those verities of national pride with

his own vision that denigrated the history of the nation

its people, their constitution and economy in a 

never-ending drivel of avowed virtue rotting all it

touched until the people cried in anguish: ENOUGH!

Act on Impulse, Repent at Leisure

For sheer injured ego, there is no vindictiveness

quite so acidly reviling as that of a woman scorned

or relegated to an inferior position, or ignored or

unappreciated, or set aside when once her usefulness

was an unquestioned matter-of-fact reality that

somehow turned around leading to her dismissal.

That old adage did not gain the traction of reliance

in the wisdom of observers whose own experiences

led them to that same conclusion: There is no fury

like that of a woman scorned. Once trust that was

unbreakable shattered beyond recovery the instinct

of social survival commandeers every aspect of a

woman's formidable arsenal of payback, and woe

betide the simpering, apologizing target, including 

one who is himself fully capable of domination of

sycophants held ransom by positions of enviable

power sheepishly relinquished at the demand of

he holding the ultimate reins of control, who just

happened to exercise that control at the wrong time 

with the wrong person whose venomous response

sends him reeling with the implosion of his legacy.

 

Finding Place In Alien Spaces

Migration is what all living species do over 

time and distance. The spread of species from

their singular places of origin has taken place

from time immemorial, when non-native species

navigate their way to geographies unfamiliar

yet holding some mysterious promise of posing

a venue for renewal and prosperity. When their

places of origin are no longer havens the

existential yearning to move on advantageously

to places of promise moves populations to seek

that which eludes them from birth in places of

adverse life conditions. As foreign species finding

place in alien spaces where opportunities abound

they make their place grasping the rewards of

chance while their memory transforms their 

former homes into places of comfort, drawing

them to return in brief spurts of nostalgia to those

places still lacking the graces that propelled their

dispersal. But culture is transportable accompanying

the mind with the fond delusion of superiority

leading to leaning on their numbers to import

customs, values and emotional dystopian urges

of sect and clan irreconcilable with the heritage

culture and values of their adopted homes until a

conflagration of titanic force sees the interlopers

violently asserting their dominion of conquest.

 

 

Whose Will Be Done

No, it is not possible to please

all of the people all of the time

by any government even one --  and

-- all the more so one comprised of 

of the multifarious elements of a

varied and complex society. Invariably

there will be some who take offence

and declare it their democratic right

to oppose the government by flocking

to the streets reprimanding a government

that had been democratically elected

by a wide margin most recently. The

vehement denials of a position well

articulated during the election campaign 

winning over a majority vote at the polls

contested through the medium of 

inciting anger among the electorate

by the very government whose second

term bid failed. This is democracy and

this is also the human propensity to cry

foul when one's preferences are given 

short shrift in the greater interests of

pursuing a goal to benefit the entirety.

The raging mobs of denial in their

numbers are those who rail the loudest.

Opposed to the choice of a silent and

determined majority whose will is done.

 

 

Unquiet on the Eastern Front

 

Unquiet on the Eastern Front, the antagonists 

barricaded opposite the once-sedate village 

bordering on the city the aggressor-invader 

plans to seize. Servicemen on both sides dug into 

their trenches, the regular ill-trained military 

and the hastily trained civilians who  defend their 

nation's sovereign territory. They who have seen 

acclaimed film documentaries of the travesty of war 

brutalizing the fearful psyches of young men 

tasked to battle, to view their opponents as the

enemy. In truth the enemy of greater numbers 

in both men and artillery spurred to action 

the defenders stirred to defence of home 

hearth and family now know intimately 

the hollow shell of emotions as endless rockets 

explode their lines while they wait to die as did 

their companions in battle while others are

felled in deep psychosis, minds wounded

for a lifetime of anguish mourning the end of

family. Dead, all, in strikes aimed unerringly

toward civilian enclaves for their tormentor

sneers at the niceties of civilizational mores

intruding in the province of barbaric invasion.

 

 

Nature's Enduring Formula

 

Such passion has been hard-wired into the

human psyche unmatched by any other drive

the overarching will to survive as a species

driving humanity to perpetuate themselves

dedicating the future to their DNA carried by

the offspring through genetic transference as

nature intended. What biology did not intend

was the mutating corruption of that primitive

will to survive linked to the kind of deliberate

nurture of the young instilling in them another

passion striving to be as powerful as the will to

live when parents, a culture and a society subvert

nature's exquisite blueprint to substitute the most

base of human emotions for that of survival by

inculcating in the impressionable young the glory

to be had by returning existence to the force that

bred it in a sacrificial martyrdom whose purpose

is to place the instruments of death in the hands

of children accepting of the perversion of life to

a cult that celebrates death as a goal both for

their enemies and as a joyful sacrifice of their

compliant offspring accepting the concept of 

the meaning of life sublimated in death. 

Demons Among Us

Among we ordinary mortals who inhabit this mortal coil 

there are demons whose thirst for ultimate power makes life 

a hellish place where you wonder how many times do 

world leaders sell their souls to advance their own agendas 

as dictatorial piranhas, a conondrum to reflect in the 

apprehension that many appear to be born sans conscience

sans humanity, sans souls who tether their futures to the slimey 

fortunes of mass murderers whose psychopathy outdistances 

their own, serving as studies to advance from autocrat to tyrant.

Offering aid to serpents who rule captive populations under

the spiked boot that persecutes its own, examples abound\

but that of Vladimir Putin stands out as an inspiration to all

such ruthless megalomaniacs in the industry of war and

domination, selling a soul he never really inherited in a strange

genetic code that is the architect of human monsters. To

advance his geopolitical reach he bombs schools, hospitals

and houses of worship, until those he supports are deposed 

by the emergence of other demons indulging in mass slaughter

in a reign of regional terror with whom he arranges a renewed

agreement as he blandly and with malice aforethought takes

up his most current project, attacking a neighbouring nation

to destroy its national spirit and annex its vast lands and resources

for his very own personal territorial advantage and power.

 

 

Anti-PALESTINIAN Racism?!!!

Here's a head-teaser: What exactly is anti-Palestinian

racism? The repugnance most normal people feel when

confronted with unruly mobs waving Palestinian flags

while belittling, slandering, isolating and threatening

Jews? If so, it is a reaction well earned by ongoing

raucous, demeaning gatherings clogging city streets

interrupting Christmas markets, campaigning in front

of Jewish parochial schools and old age homes to harass

and frighten children and the elderly in sociopathic

eruptions of hate known as antisemitism. Jews you

see, are a race and what Palestinians have brought to

bear is racial discrimination leavened with viral rage.

Palestinians, on the other hand, are not a race. They

are Arabs from the Middle East who converged on

an ancient Judean landscape to claim it as their very

own heritage, adamantly refusing to recognize Israel

or its willingness to share the land in peace with those

who call themselves Palestinians adept at violence

against their hated Jewish neighbours while nursing their

victimhood, exporting it internationally to convince

others tinged with the primal curse of Jew-hate to

join their crusade to obliterate Jewish life both in

the diaspora and in Israel -- and to confront them with

the charge of conscienceless disrupters of the social

weal is to expose oneself to Islamophobia charges. 

 

 

Regions of Peace

The 'religion of peace' recognizes non-Islamic countries

as regions of war, but itself as peaceful, while it

targets those non-Islamic countries for jihad as an

obligation of the faithful to Islam, for it is their duty

to release those warring countries from sin by conversion

and if they resist the invitation there are ample warriors

of Islam wedded to martyrdom through jihad and its

promise of Paradise for guardians of 'peace'. 'Suasion

may be the preferred method through infiltration and

proselytization while terrorism is the final method

as exemplified by the Prophet Mohammad who would

not take 'no' for an answer in Medina. Even so there

is that passion in Muslims that simmers deep within

the oneness of God assaulted by sectarian insults

turning sect against sect, each slaughtering the other

as apostates and infidels. From Shi'ite fundamentalism 

to Sunni puritanical positions of volatile enmities nothing

deters the sons and daughters of Islam from eternal

blood-letting, armies death-marching against one another

to confront the blasphemers all claiming justice

is with them as regions of peace and brotherhood.

 

Your Salient Expression

So, you're gay. Why should that matter to me?

I have never been one to admire tawdry exuberant

exhibitionism. I consider such displays typical

of small oversensitive minds with nothing better

to do with their time other than poking others

in the eye with expressions that run counter to

sensible discourse. This urgent penchant of strutting

vainglorious exceptionalism structured to both

offend and titillate is juvenile beyond measure.

I have no intention of confiding my very private

details of intimate emotional life in public. Why

should you? More to the point, what gives you 

the right to insist that I must support these salient

declarations of a multiplicity of sexualities

in a public forum? Moreover, my disinterest in

your sexual orientations does not obligate me

to march in your parade. Not does it entitle you

to disparage me and arouse the prospect of social

vengeance by reporting my disinterest to those

human rights tribunals which mandate my

acquiescence to vulgar and demanding displays

that offend my sense of time and place, my friend.

In Service To Enslavement

As deadly to the human spirit the despots of

the Middle East are to their subjects in the

timeless spirit of tribe and sectarian faith

where ancient battles and assassinations are

never laid to the past, but simmer with the

hot passion of vengeance in a desert culture

of unceasing war and domination of those

whose ruthless ambition is unconquerable

there yet arise uncompromising challenges

from others clasping close their devotion to

an Islam that differentiates between the fierce

belief in death to unbelievers encompassing

infidels those of the faith their smouldering

passion for jihad identify as infidels from among

their own fold. Their conviction so deep and

committed they live to slaughter all those whose

existence is an affront to Islam. They topple the

despots in a frenzy of violence seizing weakness

in their adversaries to prevail and dominate as

the luckless populations cowering in fear and

uncertainty welcome the usurpers that have

delivered them from servitude to the despots

with the full dismal recognition that their former

conditions of inhumane life restrictions will

seem like Paradise in comparison to this new

regime of fundamental service to enslavement.

Ding, Dong, the King is Dead, the Wicked, Evil King is Dead

These are perilous times for demonic Tyrants whose

governments are not of the people or for the people

but vehicles of opportunity whereby the power of

life and death, amassing great fortunes and issuing

threats of territorial expansion have gained them

fearsome reputations as mass murderers whose goals

of achieving utter control of all they survey in an ever

expanding aspiration of total domination brooks no

interference. Indomitably they have misruled and earned

the fearful contempt of those whose lives they contain

in a widespread net of inhumane cruel oppression of

their subjects, left in mass abjection. Until of late a gradual

reckoning looms of volcanic pressure, shaking the very

ground upon which they stand and command obedience.

Suddenly the power wielded by dictators, theocrats and

all those whose actions inspire terror in the minds of those

they rule has been challenged by the grimly determined

newfound resistance of those unwilling to bend to their will

unendingly, with a fierceness of violent cataclysmic rejection

massing themselves for an existential conflict sufficiently

wildly organized to intimidate the military defenders of the

tyrants who soon find themselves emasculated, dethroned

eager to escape a fate they doomed their subjects now ascendant

to, as they flee to preserve their lives, abandoning all.

Bred in the Marrow of Their Bones

Hate that would kill at close range, of such a depth 

of bellicosity the killing would involve a slow

agonizing ritual of torture before death arrives --

at long range is geared to satisfy its raging fury 

through expressions of livid wordplay to deliver 

the searing message of Jew-hate so long entrenched 

it has atrophied any vestige of humanity in the 

holder. Beware the barest hint of reproach in a 

public forum in reaction to the floridly morbid 

rantings of a Hamas-admiring 'protest' mob for its 

guaranteed result in responses that would blanche 

the countenance of an inveterate connoisseur of 

imprecations spat poisonously by any ill-bred 

ignoramuse steeped deep in hate. Curses that can 

make your flesh creep until one becomes so deeply

accustomed to their hurling daggers of verbal ordure 

you respond with a yawn to those ubiquitous

visceral subconscious tics of viral antisemitism.

The Chosen People

They are impassioned with their furious

commitment to the welfare of Palestinians

and perhaps just a little more so attached to

the image of an avenging Hamas engrossed in

 the liberation of 'Palestine' from the oversight

of a neighbour whose concern is maintaining

security for its own population for whom no body

of international attention is skewed toward a

nation that must protect its own from terror

bringing death and destruction. These mobs of

'pro-Palestinians' within the international 

community rail and fulminate, aggressively

and with malice aforethought harass Jews any

place they can be found, fixing their fury on

the ancient enemy with its eternal target status.

After all, Palestinian Arab terrorism groups

mete out torture, dismemberment, rape and death

to a people whose mass character of disrepute

dredges up deeply embedded legends of disquiet 

socioopathy, earning the aversion they deserve

while the erstwhile victims of their national spleen 

suffer horribly through endless conflicts their 

enemies' very existence provokes, a situation 

readily remedied by annihilation, these Chosen.  

Jewish Existence is Muslim Genocide

The rehearsal is in full public display. Its

choreography long planned, now in execution.

A historical malevolence bided its time until

all critical circumstance aligned, coasting

into reality in lock-step with an irresistible

opportunity for the fundamental guidance of

Wahhabist Islam to spread its narrative linking

Jews with the very inhumanities imposed upon

themselves from time everlasting to convince the

world that genocide which failed to completely

annihilate Jewish presence in the world is now

wielded by Jews in a destructive ploy to rid

the world of Muslims, for to defend themselves

from mass murder by  Muslim terrorists Jews

offend Islam's universal purpose of conquest.

In a master stroke of stealth invasion, hordes

of the Islamic faithful echo venomous fatwas

declaring the world's Jews guilty of genocide.

In their zeal and piteous victimhood appealing

to the international community to save them

from the onslaught of a Jewish military in a

response to atrocities the victims were forced

to conduct in a noble effort to free themselves from

enslavement by those claiming Judean heritage

of ancient vintage, depriving Muslims of their

birthright in Islam-conquered land through

the ferociously clinging Jews deserving death.

Figuratively Bereft

Just imagine the folly: in our great wisdom

we have outsourced our cerebral skills in

computation so that now it is not humanity's

genius in experimental thought and curiosity

about the natural world that drives our lives

forward to ever-increasing new avenues of

knowledge along pathways of human circuitry

but that of a mechanical/electrical device of

complex manoeuvres that has made our brains

obsolete and dulled our lives to those of

unthinking automatons gripped with the effete

adoration of figures of celebrities and the

incessant, addictive call of social media where

we have no obligation to civil discourse or

forging human-to-human alliances of personal

value. Values have themselves proven elastic

and compromised with the veneer of envy 

the core of which is dissatisfied boredom in 

a world no longer our own, dominated by the

immorality of judgemental lapses in the virtue

of honouring reality in favour of groupthink.

RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!!!

The reasonable voice of the appeaser

carried no threat, no ultimatum to its target

holding children, women and men hostage

after a malevolent spree of rape and murder

in its message that it would be very much

appreciated if their victimized hostages were

freed from their daily torment in the hands

of those for whom hatred seeped from their

very pores becoming their reason to exist.

That appeal to reason and humanity was lost

in a bleak fog of alienated savagery impervious

to contrition for sadistic mutilation and slaughter.

Extending the civility of mollifying empathy

even to the cynics of civilizational mores 

failed to affect the disaffected. Unlike the more

assertively threatening tone of a pragmatic

leader whose coarse language engaged no

rebuttals, unwilling to cajole or placate a

deadly menace to international law and order

warning non-compliance has its costs and in

this particular case, they would be terrible.

An Original

So, the thing of it is, you take pleasure in cooking

and baking, a familiarity born of 70 years of marriage

and using your kitchen pantry as a laboratory as

would a chemist mixing various chemicals to observe

a predictable outcome and satisfy one's curiosity as

well as one's appetite, while feeding those your

food preparations are meant to please with the novelty

of surprise and the goal of good nutrition. You've

taken to photographing some of your concoctions

and featuring them on your social media account, on

occasion slipping in a simple recipe for uncomplicated

offerings, alternately mentioning just the ingredients

in the hope that seasoned cooks can interpret and modify

and prepare their own versions. What then, when

someone asks for a recipe for a more complex dish

one you've prepared so often that to you it is simple, yet

it is not to the uninitiated and you're left with a conundrum

how to respond. For there is no recipe, only a recitation

of ingredients and preparation. So you plunge into the

explanation with the hope that it will suffice to assuage

the curiosity of those for whom the process may confuse

and produce a recipe a seasoned baker would recognize:

There is no recipe. I've been cooking and baking for so long that I just know the ingredient combinations I want to use, and use my eye and texture to inform me. If you want to make the croissants whose photo I posted, try this:

Melt about 1/4 tsp.sugar in 1/2 c.warm water. Sprinkle a tbsp.yeast over and let it bubble and rise. Then add a spurt of olive oil, and grate about 1/2 to 1 c. Cheddar into the mixture. Add 1 tbsp. honey, along with 1 tbsp. powdered milk and 2 tbsp. sesame seeds.

Into this mixture add about a cup of whole wheat flour. If you want a lighter dough you can substitute half the whole wheat for plain white flour. Keep adding flour until the dough forms, a kind of sticky ball. Ladle out the dough onto a well-floured counter top and begin kneading it with the heels of your hands until it becomes smooth and is no longer sticky. Place the ball back into the bowl, cover it lightly with olive oil and set it aside, covered with a bowl top or saran wrap so it can rest and rise, about an hour.

You can also refrigerate it, covered, for a few days for later use if you like.

When you're prepared to make the rolls, flatten the ball with your hands and place it on a floured surface again, and with a rolling pin create a large circle. Smooth butter or margarine over the surface, sprinkle it with more sesame seed and/or a mixture of savoury herbs. Fold one third toward the middle and do the same with the opposite side. Roll it again, to a large, flat surface and repeat the butter/margarine treatment. Then fold over again. You should end up with a folded-over ball. Let it rest a half-hour. Then roll flat into a circle again. Cut the circle into six triangles. Roll each triangle from the wide end to the narrow, and twist each one in a crescent shape. Allow the crescents to rise again, about a half-hour.

Bake in a 350F oven for about 28 minutes, depending on how crisp you want them.

Sounds complicated perhaps, but if you do them and become accustomed to the method, it's really quite simple.

Hope that helps... 

 

The Jackals of Hamas

Who might have foreseen a floodtide of

face-masked jackals of Hamas emerging 

from their foetid burrows to publicly ventilate

their toxic hatred for the presence of Jews

within civilized society? Who might have

ever imagined that civilized society harboured

the simmering dark clouds of antisemitism

whose presence people of conscience assumed

would never again reappear to bludgeon the

complacency of all those who believed in the

justice of equality and mutually engaged respect?

And all it took to reverse such pleasantries was a

starkly sadistic savage attack by terrorists on Jews

who had the effrontery to believe their human right

to normal lives were ironclad in today's world only

to be reminded in a flash thought before death

that the ancient curse was an inbred pathology

that would never expire. That bleak symbolism of

naive trust in humanity spurred the lurking spawn

of hate to reveal their unexpired loathing in a burst

of exultant violence stunning the recipients while

trusted authorities failed their test and simply looked

away as supine enablers of the hellish fires of hate.