Semantics and Semitics

 

‘SOME people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.’

Winston Churchill

 

 

A columnist, Kevin Myers, in the Irish Times has been sacked for ‘anti-semitism’ and the BBC’s Emma Barnett cornered him today on her show[10:40ish] as he claimed that Jews were disproportionately successful due to their admirable drive to be paid what they are worth and that they have a focus on success, an ambition to get on.

It is just a truth that the Jews are remarkably successful for their numbers…Israel blooms in the desert whilst all around are mired in poverty, failure and instability, Christianity and Islam have taken over the world…both ‘perversions’ of the Jewish faith….as Churchill said….

We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together. On that system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilization.

Communism also had a good roll of the dice…again so many of the foremost proponents in the early days were Jews if more ‘internationalists’ than religiously minded ones…so much so that the American Communist Party tried to insist that anti-Communism was in fact the same as anti-Semitism.  No-one can deny that Jews have had an enormous influence on world affairs.  Saying they are good at getting value for money is hardly anti-Semitic…saying Jewish bankers rule the world and leech upon it is…saying there is a Jewish cabal, a secret lobby that runs the world is.  Praising Jews for being successful isn’t…even if you are very clumsy in the way you say it.

Barnett is herself Jewish so you have to question the wisdom of her doing an interview accusing someone of being anti-semitic, all the more so when you consider that she is not the best interviewer, her style being intent on point scoring having already decided a person is ‘guilty’ of the charge she will put against them and shaping the interview to ‘prove’ she’s right.  As Myers himself might say she is not aiming for clarity but moral superiority.  Her style is aggressive, lacks any nuance and understanding of difficult and complex issues and she consistently fails to listen to the answer her guests give her ploughing on as she does determined to prove a non-existent point.  She singularly fails to understand the points made by her guests.  And in this interview, inquisition, kangaroo court, she ably demonstrated all those failings.

The Times of Israel suggests the BBC is wrong to point the finger….

The BBC wilfully misreported what Myers wrote,  saying  ‘Kevin Myers suggested BBC presenters Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz earned high salaries because they were Jewish’. No he did not write that!

Here is what Myers did write (my emboldening):

‘Only one woman is among the top 10 best-paid BBC presenters. Now, why is this? Is it because men are more charismatic performers? Because they work harder? Because they are more driven? Possibly a bit of each. The human resources department — what used to be called “personnel” until people came to be considered as a metabolising, respiring form of mineral ore — will probably tell you that men usually work harder, get sick less frequently and seldom get pregnant.

 But most of all, men tend to be more ambitious: they have that greyback testosterone-powered, hierarchy-climbing id that feminised and egalitarian-obsessed legislatures are increasingly trying to legislate against.  Indeed, only weaponsgrade ambition could have got that deeply irritating jackanapes-on-steroids Jeremy Vine a berserk £700,000-£750,000 (€782,000-€838,000) a year. Plus, he must have one hell of an agent.

So have the BBC’s top women found a revolutionary new kind of negotiator that likes to start high and chisel downwards? Is this amazing unter-agent dedicated to the concept of seeking ever lower salaries for his/her clients, so earning a smaller commission for him/herself? And if such unter-agents actually exist, who is idiotic enough to employ them? The BBC’s female presenters, apparently. I note that two of the best-paid women presenters in the BBC — Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted — are Jewish. Good for them. Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity.’

You might note that Myer’s real ‘crime’ might be sexism…but Barnett didn’t even broach that subject…and no wonder as the BBC has been caught red-handed being outrageously sexist paying women far, far less than the men…it would have been the most blatant hypocrisy to attack him for this.  You may think it is just as much a cheek of the BBC to tackle Myers on the subject of anti-Semitism when it has been the BBC that has done so much to ferment that in the world, not just in its massively anti-Israel reporting but also in its programming…The very high profile ‘The Honourable Woman’ being astonishingly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel and Jeremy Bowen continued to blame the Jews for the problems in the Middle East blaming ‘Zionism’ along with Western foreign policy for every ill….and just how exacting was the BBC investigation of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party?….extremely slow and reluctant to examine that issue.

Some may think Myers is actually being ‘persecuted’ for something else he wrote after the Manchester bombing…being anti-Islamic and anti-EU….

Nazis Hid Their Crimes; Islamists Exult in Theirs

A suicide bomber attacking a concert for little girls is a little earlier in the curve of depravity than I’d expected. But a nurse being cut to pieces as she minded the injured on London Bridge — at this point in the descent into the abyss, perfectly predictable. The Nazis hid their crimes. These people exult in theirs, knowing that the path to a moral nadir is paved with the public glorification of the most revolting violence. It is also paved with passivity, excuses and equivalence from the host communities.

It’s probably futile saying this, so powerful is the “anti-racism”, “anti- Islamophobe” mob of prating, Christianity-hating liberals, but I believe that we have no historic choice but to seriously restrict the numbers of Muslims moving to Ireland. Furthermore, facial covering should be rigorously outlawed in all public transport, taxis, schools, colleges, banks and EVERY government building. If the enforcement of such measures means a departure from the EU with its toxic and unreal human rights edicts, so be it.

 

But…is Myers anti-Semitic?  Is he guilty of ‘casual racism’ as Barnett claimed he was as she casually labelled him a racist hate monger.  You might note that after the interview she talked to someone else more on her wavelength…what did he say?  He told us that ‘the British are a very tolerant people’.  I’m sorry what?  Isn’t that just a sweeping generalisation, a stereotype, casual racism?  Well meaning but still propagating a racist myth…as we all know, courtesy of the BBC, that the British are actually nasty racists…#duetobrexit.  Myers can’t give a clumsy compliment to the Jewish population but someone who is ‘onboard’ the PC bandwagon can make similarly sweeping statements about ‘the British’?

How about African runners…an inborn talent of ‘Altitude Natives’ or something else?…

BBC Sport – East African runners: What makes them so dominant?

Put “East African running” into a search engine and you’ll get thousands of results exploring the question of what makes these long distance runners so good.

Everyone is searching for the secret explanation so what does the research evidence point to?

Some people say that since these runners and their forebears live and train at altitude, they’re bound to be good. “Altitude natives”, through long-term exposure combined with endurance training, have increased red blood cells which is one neat explanation of their excellence in endurance events.

Scientists have suggested that it is difficult to break the ongoing East African running stereotype; some runners of other races believe that they cannot compete with the East Africans whilst those from the region believe that they are better runners.

Of these explanations the influence of biology is hotly debated but overall the work ethic needed to succeed at the top level takes place in a social and economic milieu that, for me, is a major influence.

Hmmmm…work ethic is the key…..is that not what Myers says about Jews?  Why is he demonised whilst a BBC columnist isn’t?

Myers told Barnett that what he intended was to point out that Jews make the most of their talents in a way that perhaps others may not, certainly disproportionate to their numbers….an admirable characteristic he said.  Barnett suggested he was slurring Jews by claiming the the Jews had a ‘special power’ to ‘extract money from people’…a trope Hitler used.

This was so far from what Myers actually said…for a start he wasn’t claiming some mythical, God-given ‘special power’ for Jews…just the ability to focus and drive on to achieve what they wanted or needed to do to survive and thrive.

Barnett was insulted by this ‘admiration’ and told us that her pet hate was people who apologise for spreading hatred but then move on to explain it.  Clearly she had no intention of listening to and understanding what Myers said.  She then reeled off a list of things he had apparently said in the interview but misquoted him and misinterpreted, deliberately, what he actually said and meant.

Barnett jumped to conclusions, put words in Myers’ mouth, refused to listen and was intent on crucifying him with the label ‘anti-Semite’ around his neck.

One example is her claim that Myers was a Holocaust denier….and thus, because he apparently denied 6 million Jews were killed by Hitler, he is anti-Semitic…this previous history was proffered as proof of his anti-Semitism…confirmation of what people say about his latest article.

Barnett clearly hadn’t read the article about the Holocaust.  Myers told us he didn’t write the headline…the article was in the Independent and thus must have been their editor’s decision….I managed to find a copy in the Belfast Telegraph, the original article having been scrubbed guiltily from existence on the Independent’s site:

There was no Holocaust: Kevin Myers

Myers is in fact talking about censorship and freedom of speech, the lack of.  How is it that he can say that the Jews were killed in a murderous genocide but if he says this was not technically a ‘Holocaust’ he will be locked up in some countries in Europe?

I’m a holocaust denier; but I also believe that the Nazis planned the extermination of the Jewish people, as far as their evil hands could reach.

What? I admit that there was murder and genocide (or Genocide, as my spell-check wants me to call it) but almost in the same breath, insist that there was no holocaust? How is this possible?  Well, if you turn historical events into current political dogmas, (believed even by my computer) you are thereby creating a sort of secular, godless religion, which becomes mandatory for all who wish to participate in public life. Yet dogmas, by definition, are so simplistic and crude that they are usually not merely wrong, but are also probably so.

This programme [killing Jews] was begun informally by Nazi armies in 1941, and only took organised form after the Wannsee conference in January 1942. Thus was born one of the most satanic operations in world history, in which millions of Jews were murdered. To be sure, you can use the term holocaust to describe these events, but only as a metaphor.

However, to turn that metaphor into a political dogma, a denial of which can result in imprisonment, is to create a religio-penal code of which Torquemada would have approved.

Across Europe, there are countless Islamic madrasahs, in which imams regularly preach hatred for Jews, and where the holocaust is routinely denied. Which member-state of the EU will pursue such conveyors of hate, or seek the extradition of an imam who says that the holocaust was a Zionist hoax? None of them. We know this. For the EU has tolerated the creation of an informal historiographical apartheid. So, on the one hand, a single, eccentric (and possibly deranged) Christian bishop may be hounded for his demented historical beliefs: but on the other, there is a deafening silence over the widespread and virulent distortion of the ‘holocaust’ by Islamic preachers.

If Bishop Williamson has an agenda, it is so bonkers as to rank alongside that of The Lunar Cheese Society.

Yet he, and other Christian cranks like him, could even be imprisoned for their stated beliefs, as other ‘men of God’, working to an infinitely more sinister and far more politically inspired agenda, are simultaneously ignored.

This disparity is now effectively an EU policy.

You can reasonably call such double-standards many things, but the words ‘rational’, ‘wise’ or ‘consistent’ are not among them. ‘Suicidal’ and ‘insane’, however, certainly are.

Interesting how Myers alone is in the dock…why not the editors of the Times or the Independent that ran these articles?

And you may remember how the BBC has so frequently told us we need immigrants because the British workers are so lazy and feckless…we need the hard working East Europeans to save us….what difference is that to what Myers said?…..

Migrant farm workers needed to replace ‘lazy’ Britons

 

Finally one might consider what the Irish Jewish Representative Council said:

Branding Kevin Myers as either an anti-Semite or a Holocaust denier is an absolute distortion of the facts. More than any other Irish journalist he has written columns about details of the Holocaust over the last three decades that would otherwise not have been known by a substantial Irish audience. The knee-jerk responses from those outside Ireland appear to care little for facts and pass on (along with some media outlets) falsehoods about his previous writings without verification. This has been exacerbated by a thoroughly misleading headline being sent around the world that is wholly unrepresentative of the article to which it refers.

An abysmal interview by Barnett that was badly researched, highly partisan having already decided Myers was guilty and overall badly conducted as is the way with so many of Barnett’s interviews intent as they are not on providing clarity but moral superiority and point scoring.

 

Myers also wrote, in the Independent originally [again erased from the record], about the pointless and dangerous role aid plays in Africa…for which he was pilloried…

Self-serving generosity has been one of the curses of Africa. It has sustained political systems which would otherwise have collapsed.
It prolonged the Eritrean-Ethiopian war by nearly a decade. It is inspiring Bill Gates’ programme to rid the continent of malaria, when, in the almost complete absence of personal self-discipline, that disease is one of the most efficacious forms of population-control now operating.
If his programme is successful, tens of millions of children who would otherwise have died in infancy will survive to adulthood, he boasts. Oh good: then what?I know. Let them all come here. Yes, that’s an idea.

Was he wrong?  So many ‘respectable’ people think along the same lines……such as the BBC?…

Aid ‘is not solution’ for Africa

The aid business is an industry with its own dynamic.

Much of it is spent in the donor countries in the form of consultancies and goods.

For the recipient it creates dependency, undermines self-reliance and ultimately breeds resentment.

There is no short cut to development. Only Africans themselves can bring change to Africa.

States have to raise taxes and spend them productively in order for their countries to develop.

The Guardian….

Aid helps the rich at the expense of the poor

What we should be talking about is Africa and humanitarian development aid. Africa has been a target, and a victim, of foreign aid in a way China, India and south-east Asia never were. Aid to Africa has not worked over the last 50 years.

Almost everyone I have spoken to recently in Africa feels aid has failed because it enriches the big men at the cost of ordinary people. Foreign aid atrophies, and weakens, the state in Africa, and the only people who grow stronger are the donors: governments and NGOs. It damages the prospects for ordinary people to better their lives, and turns ordinary Africans into victims.

Africans are hard-working people who like to have an enterprise culture. They are natural capitalists and do not need to be patronised by NGOs, who often have left-wing agendas. They need a hand up, not a handout.

From the Africans themselves…

Africa: We don’t want aid. Please keep it for your local poor!

International AID is currently doing more harm to Africa than good. It became the main tool used by foreign governments and organizations to corrupt the African elite, and get them to behave so irrationally toward their own populations and the basic interest of their countries.

Aside corruption and the criminality, International Aid is the root of the 5 Stars colonization disease that cripple the African elite which dislikes the responsibility and the self sacrifice that comes with being in control of a nation destiny. As far as they enjoyed the status offered by their positions, they never liked the responsibilities demanded by the jobs, therefore they use international aid programs as substitute to their responsibilities.