Going Where no Man Has Been Before and NASA

 

Yes, we know that is the introduction to Star Trek, but it also defines what NASA was supposed to accomplish. We also note that it has been almost half a century, since December 7, 1972, that NASA was not even capable of sending a man into space beyond Earth orbit. The Space Shuttle was not space exploration and for almost a decade NASA could not even launch Space Shuttles. For the most part, the United States is reliant upon Russia just in order to place Americans onto the Space Station, the ISS. Further, the Space Station did not turn out to look anything like what was envisioned in movies such as “2001,” (see pictures below). We have come upon an unexpected blessing of a new director for NASA being a man of vision and the drive to accomplish. How, you may ask, did we come upon such a man. Well, it was due to the Congress finding that a man of integrity and one who despite being quite conservative and a Republican was willing to work with anybody with a good idea. He desired to work for the betterment of the people who elected him and the entire nation as well. He thought for himself and had an independent spirit. The Republicans attempted to defeat him in consecutive primary elections but the people knew a man of integrity and kept this marvel. They finally found something he would grab ahold of and they could get him out of the Congress, so Jim Bridenstine became the head of NASA. There were his detractors who claimed he had no backing or experience to hold such a post as he was not a bureaucrat and definitely not a paper shuffler who could produce reams of reports while doing nothing.

 

Actual International Space Station
and
The Space Station We All Expected

 

So, let’s see exactly how unqualified is Mr. Bridenstine. He is a graduate of Rice University with majors in Economics, Psychology, and Business, and has an MBA from Cornell University. He is a former executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium and was a Naval Aviator in both the active duty United States Navy and the United States Naval Reserve where he flew the E-2C Hawkeye aircraft (image below) as part of a carrier air wing. While the E-2C Hawkeye is not exactly a spacecraft or one of the more fancy aircraft, being part of a carrier group and taking-off and landing on an aircraft carrier does require quite a bit of skill even with a prop aircraft. Landing at night, the carrier is no more visible or appear any larger no matter what one is flying towards it to land. Further, he has the degrees which make him exceedingly qualified for any management position. He is already making progress and has shaken things up a bit which sometimes is the fastest means of shaking out the cobwebs and injecting a little excitement. Jim Bridenstine has taken ahold of the directive to return to the Moon and do so while remaining with an outpost firmly and stretched it to also include doing the same on Mars. Where in Congress his clear thinking and independent voice was pretty much quashed in the cacophonic din of egoistic partisan bickering, in NASA it is his voice which will determine their direction and the alacrity with which they accomplish their tasks and it will be his voice alone with no distractions.

 

E-2C Hawkeye

 

The White House announced that Bridenstine was President Donald Trump’s preferred pick to head NASA. This choice was quickly criticized by both Republican and Democratic politicians, saying that NASA should be headed by a space professional, not a politician or a Trump ally. The first thing is Jim Bridenstine was not a Trump ally so much as a clear thinking person who was not tied to any rigid political fervency. But as Jim Bridenstine resembled a square peg in a house full of round holes, he was approved if for no other reason than this removed him from Congress. Those who rose against him could not point to any lack in his qualification beyond their distaste for him and that he had never been out in space. Neither had most previous administrators of NASA ever been in space nor finding somebody who would have met that qualification would have limited the field. Having an MBA as well as a bachelors degree in three areas, Economics, Psychology, and Business, would all assist Jim Bridenstine in heading NASA. Knowing economics might assist with cash distribution and minimizing costs; add business to this and these become probabilities which time will be borne out. The final degree in psychology will assist in the most difficult area of management, people skills and knowing how to motivate people to have them reach goals they initially may not have thought possible. Jim Bridenstine is an affable person who has a warmth about him which while assisting him to become a member of Congress, will also assist his efforts to get the most out of the people working in and with NASA. So, the United States may have struck it rich with a man with the credentials who is familiar with flight as a pilot and who works well with others and he is the take-charge kind of person who has great dedication to any task at hand. An aside, before making Aliyah, Jim Bridenstine was our Congressman and had our support in two elections, so we are also a bit partial and believe in the man.

 

What is wonderful to see is the United States finally returning to the original NASA goals and mission, space rather than low-Earth orbit literally Shuttling supplies and people to the ISS. NASA was to be about the Moon, Mars and beyond. NASA has plans to reach the moon and this time to build a permanent manned station on the Moon. The plan then is to reach out to Mars which could very easily be launched from the Moon base. This would make reaching orbital position and then launch outward far easier despite the fact that the modules would need to be taken largely from Earth to the Moon. One could hope that a permanent space station, which is in the same orbital position as the Moon being on the opposite side of the Earth orbiting at the same speed and path as the Moon, will come to pass. This could be equipped with a space dock where interplanetary craft, and hopefully interstellar craft could be assembled. Another station within the Asteroid Belt could be a location where spacecraft could be built using the Asteroids for the raw materials necessary. This would relieve the necessity of lifting materials from Earth. Granted, until specialized production facilities for such items as circuit boards, computers, cameras, lenses and other specialty materials and objects, they would remain Earth bound. These are concepts for the future and once there are bases and orbital stations, then commercial enterprise will kick in and accelerate space conquests.

 

We hear so many people claiming, and quite loudly, that NASA is not necessary and space exploration and exploitation should simply be handed over to private enterprise just as the New World was colonized and opened up by private enterprise. The problem with this presumed analogy is that it is quite inaccurate. Initially, the New World was explored by governments which set up colonial bases with ports, repair facilities and where ships could be refitted and stocked for a return trip. The governments had to initially provide the support facilities before private enterprise took the picture the rest of the way. The Spanish and Portuguese had ports of call in the Caribbean and South America while the French and English had ports in North America. These colonialists also built or took over ports in Asia as did the Dutch. These ports were a necessity along with the protection provided by the presence of national forces, militaries in these cases. In space there will be the need for the same things with nowhere near as much military as long as the nations of the world can find some means of cooperation. Were space exploration and exploitation left to private companies and individuals, then there would be a great deal of waste adding billions, if not trillion or more, of dollars as each enterprise would need to construct their own base. Think of air travel. Does each airport serve merely one airline or do multiple airlines use the international airports. If the airports were built by each carrier, there would be tens of airports around each major city and air traffic around cities would become excessively dangerous as circling airports could have the paths intersect making for very dangerous air space in and around cities. Instead, government builds the airports and they serve everyone equally according to the fee they pay. Private airlines build their own terminals onto major airports when they have a large service area there but the central hub and the lands are all governmental. Exploration of space will be no different. We do not need to have multiple Moon Bases with one built and used by SpaceX and Elon Musk, one built and used by Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos, one built and used by Sierra Nevada Corporation and Faith and Eren Ozmen, one built and used by The Spaceship Company run by Burt Rutan and Richard Branson, one built and used by United Launch Alliance and Tory Bruno as well as those by other nations and soon the Moon and its orbital path would get quite crowded. With one per nation which is going into deeper space, the Moon will appear to get smaller and smaller just as the Earth appears to have become with air travel placing the entire planet reachable in under a single day compared to taking months to simply cross the Atlantic Ocean a mere century ago.

 

One might hope that numerous nations could agree to build such stations for their use instead of each having their own platforms. This would actually simplify future space travel making it safer. Should numerous nations agree, or if even the entire planet could reach a standard docking system, then should one craft have complete failures of systems from propulsion to any other problem, with everyone using the same docking systems, any nation with a craft in the proximity could become a rescue craft and assist or take on as passengers the crew of the stricken craft. Were every nation simply continue, as it now appears will be, each designing their own docking systems with no regard to matching other spacecraft, which will make any rescue either impossible or additionally difficult requiring space walks outside the craft, always far more risky than if docking were possible, major problems will ensue. Cooperation and coordination when it comes to space and efforts by man to leave Earth and explore becomes essential and is completely logical as when one is in space they notice there actually are not lines demarking the borders of nations as we see on maps and globes. We are not fools and realize that the odds are greatly against the United States, China, Russia, the European Union and others including private companies are not going to have a very high level of cooperation initially. With time they will all reach the same conclusion, space ventures initially are going to be expensive and without at the least some universal system applications starting with docking systems, the cost in reputation and human lives will force cooperation. It will be similar to the origins of the phrase, “I’ll be home with my bells on,” which originated with early horse and mule drawn freight wagons. The drivers would decorate their harnesses with bells which would warn on passages, especially narrow mountain passages, that there was another wagon in the area and by the loudness, one could tell if they were approaching or moving away. When one got into an emergency or became stuck and required assistance, the custom was to give the other driver some of your bells. Thus, arriving with your bells on meant a trouble free trip and if you had more than your own bells on you were celebrated for your having provided needful assistance. Needless to point out, bells are not going to work as well in space as they do on Earth, something to do with lack of atmosphere and sound waves not working in a near vacuum.

 

But, the good news is NASA is back into the space business and is done with being simply the highest-flying earthbound aircraft, which is all the shuttles actually amounted to, very high-flying gliders. Jim Bridenstine was a good choice for the job of heading up NASA and will pay dividends until some political change ends up removing him from his post which will likely be to the detriment of NASA. It would be really nice if the politicians, as far as NASA is concerned, take up being as nonpartisan as was Jim Bridenstine and like he, simply judge if things are working well and if so, don’t try to fix it. This has been part of the problem with NASA over the years as when the White House changes hands, not even necessarily parties, just a new President, the person heading NASA is all too often used as a political appointment to repay some donor by appointing them or somebody they chose for the President. Whenever a business or operation changes the leadership, there is a disruption which more often than not sets things back six months or more as everyone learns the new rules and expectations coming from the leadership as when the leaders are changed, all too often they reorganize the departments and change many things just for the sake of presumably showing that they are accomplishing things the former leader was not. Unfortunately, just because you are now doing something the former leader was not doing does not necessarily mean that you are actually accomplishing your job, it just means you have altered the focus and did so potentially away from completing the tasks at hand.

 

Jim Bridenstine has talked about working to integrate with other nations on establishing the Moon Base as well as Mars exploration with humans going and returning from the Red Planet. Jim Bridenstine recently was speaking before some NASA employees about the future probably just so it could be posted online, so we thought it might be nice to share with you Jim Bridenstine’s future of NASA. We just hope that his excitement is contagious and that NASA once again will lead the world going forward and farther until we all start to think of the Star Trek lead for the show, “To go where no man has been before.” Of course, that meant no normal man and obviously did not apply to Harcourt Fenton Mudd.

 

 

Needless to add, we are not expecting to find Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons, Andorians, Horta, Gorn or any of the other many races from Star Trek. As for finding other life, that appears to be inevitable. As for intelligent life, well, let us just say that is highly unlikely until we find some means of efficiently within a reasonable time of traveling the great distances. With any amount of luck, there will be an inventor who will accomplish what Zefram Cochrane did for the Earth by inventing the first warp-drive. Be the means a warp-drive, a hyperspace dimensional driver or any of the other various proposed star-drives which would propel and decelerate man across the galaxy and perhaps some day beyond; for now, we think that the Moon and Mars are great steppingstones to the Asteroid Belt and from there the outer planets and their cornucopia of moons and moonletes then to the Kuiper Belt and the Ort Cloud (assuming it exists as theorized as we have yet to detect it beyond it being the theoretical origin of long-term comets). What is out there beyond the new horizon, a horizon which expands by distance cubed, (distance)3? So, the only advice I would give NASA director Jim Bridenstine would be to the stars and do not let anything hold you back.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Republican Party Committing Electoral Suicide

 

It seems there are two Republican Parties today. One is the elite, loyal guard who are what one might call the core of the presumed power structure. The other are the ones who win despite the party mostly ignoring their needs and election campaigns where they receive minimal help but run populist campaigns knocking on doors and speaking at every church, synagogue and every society which will allow. The power structure have campaign chests which if theirs and the Democrats’ were combined, the United States could probably put a good sized dent in the national debt. They are reelected because they have much of their district or state in their pocket and all the media give them good coverage always speaking respectfully of them. These long-time Congressional denizens also make up the core of the “Never Trumpers” who are making life near to impossible for the President. With the party split like this, it is not difficult to see a disaster in the making. And now the Republican “Never Trumpers” have decided that their opposition to the President surpasses the good of the Party. They refused to work with President Trump on repeal of Obamacare and are now rising for a fight over Tax Reform. When President Trump decided to pass the controversy over the repeal of President Obama’s DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) to Congress rather than acting unilaterally, they decided they would refuse to act. Facing such stubborn refusal for cooperation from his own Party, President Trump did what he was all but forced into, he made a deal with the Democrat Party and now you should hear the howling. Those very same “Never Trumpers” are accusing the President of treason against the Party. But that is politics as usual, push somebody away and refuse to work with or even listen to them and then when they decide to work with other politicians who promise to be more receptive, then they are a traitor and are compromising your position and chance for reelection.

 

These head games and power struggles within the party are toxic, nothing less. The voters watch what is happening and eventually they are sickened and turn away. The Republican Party cannot understand why they can never hold a majority in the Congress for more than a couple of election cycles while the Democrat Party can do so often for decades at a time. One can only wonder if the Republicans ever take a moment from their internal squabbles to watch the Democrats in Congress. When there is a vote on any major legislation where the Democrat voters have shown a preference, the Democrats invoke Party solidarity and almost the entirety will vote as one. The Republican base of support gave a voice of support and preference over the past six years since Obamacare was passed that they wanted it repealed. The Republican base has always supported tax code simplification and lower taxes. They have always supported fewer regulations. President Trump has made a ruling that for every regulation enacted, that department must retire two regulations. President Trump has repealed numerous regulations which were invoked by Presidential edict by President Obama by using the identical power to revoke them. President Trump agreed to permit the Congress to consider three separate means to choose between to repeal Obamacare, and they chose none of them largely because the Republican Party could not enforce Party unity while the Democrats were the epitome of Party unity. Then they threatened an entangling argument over tax reform and rate lowering just because President Trump needed it and they hate President Trump and believe he is a false Republican. President Trump has tried to represent the Republican conservative agenda but apparently, that has not been good enough and that is why they are opposing exactly the things they had promised they would work on to their constituents.

 

Never Trump Republican Core

 

Of course, they are playing the usual games and each taking a turn to vote for everything while in the end voting against them all so when asked they can claim they supported the exact things they defeated. We have explained this game before where they have more than one of the same bill so each can vote for one while voting against the others thus defeating important bills but being able to say on the campaign that they voted for the best version of the legislation and it was not their fault it failed, it was those other Republicans. They make it so they can all have the same excuse and depend on nobody being able to understand the backhanded dealings they use to deceive their constituents. That has become the whole new game, fool the voters into believing that you are doing as they desire while serving to enlarge the government and give more power and wealth to the top five percent, and both parties are playing the same game. The difference is that the Democrats are at least slightly more honest as they purport to serve the ever greater government, the Republicans are supposed to be for limited government. For those old enough, this can be confusing as in our youth the Democrats were for less government and the Republicans were for more government. We guess that is also part of the political cycles. There are all forms of political cycles. There was a time when the Republicans voted as a block much of the time and the Democrats were the party of the loud arguments. That was back when the Democrats wanted smaller government. Apparently, if you desire to make government smaller, then you argue because everybody wants to make government smaller by taking from the other places while keeping all the government which enriches your voters. The problem is to make government smaller, you have to take away from somebody and the best method would be to have everybody volunteer to surrender something such that everybody invests in a smaller government. But it will never work because then there will be arguments that one only lost fifty jobs and my district would lose two-hundred jobs and that is not fair. When you are a politician, you can demand that everything be fair as long as they are more fair for you and yours.

 

The Republicans were given a mandate by those who elected Donald Trump to be President. They stated four or five basic things that they insisted be accomplished. They demanded Obamacare be repealed, taxes be lowered, regulations be repealed, government be shrunk, and that the Republicans work together and accomplish this immediately if not sooner. This has not happened and unless it does before the end of the year, then the voters will be very upset. There is a reason why the Republican Party does not dominate the Congress year after year. It is not because they do not have the voters potentially. The problem is that the Republicans have upset so many voters who have let their registration slip away and never returned to the voter rolls. Their actions have even sent such a distracting and fractured message that some conservatives have simply never registered believing that it really does not matter because no politician ever actually represents true conservatism. The Republicans just have this ability to appear as if they are in a constant state of confusion leading to indecision followed by the inability to accomplish anything of consequence which their voters demand of them. This leads to frustration for their voters and this also leads to them turning away from political news and stop voting. Part of the problem can be represented through the Congressman who represents the first Congressional District in Oklahoma, Jim Bridenstine. He won a populist primary to win his first term by walking much of the district going door-to-door meeting the constituents. When he came up for reelection after winning by a near record vote his first term, the Republican Party should have rushed and supported him but instead they ran a Party functionary against him in the primary elections. Jim Bridenstine defeated this Republican challenge in an embarrassing and overwhelming manner and has served to the current time. Jim Bridenstine now leads President Trump’s list to become the next head of NASA which makes sense, as he is an Air Force veteran and also has a degree in administration. Perhaps this is yet another Republican conspiracy to replace him in Congress. How is that for a wild conspiracy theory. Perhaps it is the Republican secret plan to lose the seat to the Democrats, except this would be next to impossible. On the other side, a Democrat from this district would be more conservative than a Republican from Massachusetts.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Some Misperceptions of the Arab Israeli Conflict

 

Back in the earlier and more innocent days of the State of Israel the world had little trouble discerning the main problem the Arab nations and the vast majority of their peoples have with Israel, the fact that it existed. This was made all the more obvious by their near constant threats to destroy Israel and drive the Jews into the sea. This was easy for most people, especially those in the western world, to figure out as numerous Arab spokespeople went out of their way to stress this point at every opportunity, and none more so than Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and PLO leader Yasser Arafat. It was common perception until 1967 at the earliest and by the end of 1973 at the latest for many to realize that the Jews were not going to be overrun by any combination of Arab nations. The near outright victory in the Six Day War in June of 1967 in what many have thought would be the war that destroyed tiny little Israel as the numbers favored the Arab militaries by at least fifty-to-one and many thought even higher odds may have begun the perception of Israeli superiority. After the initial surprise attack having been launched in the Yom Kippur War it was again commonly thought that Israel was being overrun, that too led many to even begin mourning the death of Israel, even if a bit prematurely. Israel again turned the tide of battle once again. These two conflicts changed the perception of Israel as that small little country precariously clinging to life at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea located in the midst of the core of the Arab world and the midst of those who most wished to destroy Israel and her citizens and seemingly had the military might to do so. That misconception was dispelled and was replaced with an equally erroneous expectation of Israel as the hegemonic power of the Middle East.

 

This perception was further enhanced by Israeli actions which themselves purported an enormous amount of pride and self-confidence. And why not walk proud and sound loud when one had vanquished their main and most immediate foes even after a surprise attack which many saw as the final Arab victory when initially the Arab forces had broken the Israeli defensive lines and were advancing towards Israel herself. Had it not been for the distance provided Israel by still holding the Sinai Peninsula having yet to return them upon making peace with Egypt, Israel would have easily been overrun and her Jews likely slaughtered. With the Sinai Peninsula Israel was afforded the time to gather her reserves and turn the tide which then led to immediate demands that the fighting be halted as Israel was now advancing on Cairo, Damascus and Alexandria and to completely routing her Arab foes in Egypt and Syria. During this period the Egyptian armies were under the command from Gamal Abdel Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat. It was the eventual routing of the Egyptian military which cinched the mind of Anwar Sadat to seek a peace with Israel as there appeared no other route, especially militarily, to regain the lost lands of the Sinai Peninsula which Israel hung out in total as an enticement for peace. This peace came about being signed in 1979 and taking effect in January of 1980. This was the reason given for the eventual assassination by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood of Anwar Sadat.

 

There are some, especially military historians, who believed at that time that this was an Israeli blunder as she could have retained at least half of the Sinai Peninsula retaining her mountainous midsection and the mountain passes allowing for greater tactical depth. Such a retention would also have set a precedent for Israel retaining lands gained in 1967 and defended in 1973, something considered normal and actually expected by most of the world. Israel, on the other hand, felt that little sacrifice was to be too excessive to make for peace. Still, it was this sacrifice which has long been used as the main argument that Israel realized that her conquest of the lands from her 1967 Six Day War to be illegal and thus imperative for them to be forfeit. Jordan proved to be the one who insisted Israel retain the lands that she retained after the war of 1948-9 knowing full well that those lands of Judea and Samaria and that Jordan had renamed West Bank to remove the obvious claim which Israel possessed over the lands. Jordanian annexation was refused by the entire world even to include the Arab League and its members with only Britain and Pakistan recognizing the annexation.

 

There has been a long period of time since the hot warfare erupted almost as if on a time schedule between the Arab world and Israel. This has permitted a sea of changes in the perceptions of the conflict and by that in the expectations for making peace. Forgotten is the peace with Egypt where the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt but that Egypt surrendered the lands she occupied and proved so by never annexing or incorporating them into Egypt, namely the Gaza Strip. After making peace with Egypt the Gaza Strip was returned unto Israeli rule as had been the default condition at the beginning of the war for Jewish genocide against the nascent state of Israel starting officially on May 15, 1948 and ending almost a year and a half later. The next to make peace was Jordan who also returned those lands she had occupied since the end of hostilities in that same war against Israel, returning to the originally drawn border between the two, intended to be the Jordan River. It was subsequent to this peace treaty that Jordan then backed the claim that there existed some state known as Palestine that had rightful claim to those lands of the West Bank and that Jordan had ruled over these lands illegally and that Israel was now obliged to give up the lands for the formation of Palestine. This was an enormous hoax by which the Arab League using Yasser Arafat’s PLO terror group to make a spurious claim of another Arab nation, the twenty-third, and claiming that Israel was occupying that nation’s actual homelands. Check history in 1967 before June and find Palestine on a map existing from any modern time before June of 1967 which has any reference to a nation known as Palestine. Unfortunately, the education system, the media, the European nations, the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League and much of the remainder of the world even including the United States State Department all now support this fiction and the youth who were born after about 1960 have grown up much of their lives and all of their adult lives under this misconception that Israel stole through the 1967 war the lands destroying the nation of Palestine and that the area referred to as the West Bank replacing the names for the lands historically of Judea and Samaria, a substitution made by Jordan when she annexed these lands in 1950 leading to her being the occupying power of Israeli territory and never of anything named Palestine. Palestine is a fabrication meant to take land from Israel, and there is where the deceptions grow deeper still.

 

The deceptions grow deeper the more one connects the dots, dots being obscured by what are some very skilled and practiced deceivers who have funding beyond imaginations. Foremost amongst the deceptions is that all the Palestinians desire is their small homelands returned to them. Do not believe me then perhaps you can believe a member of the PLO executive committee. Zahir Muhsein. You see, way back on March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here’s what he said:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.
For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”

 

Don’t want to believe me? I understand, but would you believe Wikipedia or Daniel Pipes or Wikiquote or simply use the search engine of your choice and query, Zahir Muhsein Dutch newspaper Trouw.

 

Then there is that reputed grassroots effort which goes by the name of BDS and has infected unbelievable campuses of colleges and universities in the West and untold numbers of mainstream media types and politicians around the world, yet probably less than 10% know the actual origins and financial support for the entirety of the BDS movement. The BDS movement originated as the Arab boycott and at some point it was thought that this boycott could be taken to the international audience and that the world was ready to join with this idea. Imagine the shock when the BDS movement did not catch on like wildfire. So it was turned over to be managed out of Ramallah by the PLO’s successor, the Palestinian Authority or PA. The PA would invest hundreds of thousands of dollars and eventually hundreds of millions of dollars and who even knows the full extent of the monies now invested in the BDS movement which is still primarily supported out of the PA budget but hidden under Fatah or the PLO or any number of different entities such that it is never discovered except as being amongst the information propaganda efforts. The monies used by the BDS movement is distributed through a system of channels through which everything flows as cash money, no bank accounts or other such traceable revenue streams, it is an all cash business and as such numerous people have been greatly enriched personally by the BDS cash flow. The BDS is sold in the Western World as a boycott of items from Israel which has some connection to the West Bank and never as a boycott of Israel itself. That is a deception as the BDS movement is designed by the PA and PLO to continue, as stated honestly in the literature, until Israel has been removed from all of their occupied Palestinian lands, code words for that chant you hear so often at rallies for the Palestinian cause, “From the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea; Palestine must be free.” There is no differentiation between inside and outside the Green Line; the BDS movement is designed to destroy all of Israel. The leadership of the BDS movement mostly serves double duty as they also organize the Israel Apartheid Week (or month) on campuses across the Western World once again to vilify all of Israel. Most of these efforts were launched at the first two Durban Conferences which were titled as “The United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,” one of the greatest misnomers in the history of deceptions. The conference broke down into a few separate items with one subject serving as the overriding target covered though there was also mention about reparations for slavery mostly to be paid by the United States and European powers and none to be paid by Middle Eastern and Asian nations. By and large the conference became a bash Israel fest to such a point that Canada joined the United States and Israel in quitting the first conference and not returning for subsequent conferences as they appeared to be simply updates and devising new tactics in the war against Israel.

 

The BDS movement lies and hypocrisies are just the tip of the iceberg. The proof has been easy to see if one just opens their eyes. Numerous of the store assaults, something often used against supermarkets or department stores, are not delicate surgical procedures, they are slash and burn procedures. They are riotous assaults where participants storm through the victimized location knocking over displays and showing a general disrespect for property all in the guise of BDS. They storm throughout the store seeking any items which are made by specific companies as well as any items marked as being produced by Israel without the slightest concern for whether they were manufactured or grown within the Green Line or in the disputed territories. There is little if any surgical precision or even the remotest attention to nuanced targeting, they are simply slash and burn of all items Israel and any mistake, well, it was an honest mistake and doesn’t Israel deserve the additional monetary price being paid. The sad item is that it is the store owner paying that price and actually their insurance provider. The truth is that the eventual price tag falls to the consumer as they will pay the increased price eventually.

 

But all that does not matter because the truth is in the message and that message is that Israel is an evil occupation force which stole Palestinian Lands during the war in 1948-9. Wait, I hear many of you calling out, don’t you mean in 1967? I mean 1967 as much as the Arabs and their stooges mean 1967 and I mean starting with the war that went officially hot in 1948 just as they mean 1948 and finally I mean to infer that this war started in 1922 with the first Arab anti-Jew pogrom just as they see this as a continuation of the 1922 riots and do not plan on stopping until the Jew has been entirely erased from all of their lands from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea just as many Arab nations drove the Jews from their soil by the middle of the 1950s possibly keeping a few remnants just as back before the 1960s numerous companies had the ‘company Jew’ which proved they were not guilty of anti-Semitism. The Hamas Charter goes the additional step of demanding that all of Israel be liberated from the Jew and then the world be cleansed of the Jew and only after that does the final conversions begins to take place. Once again we see one group telling the truth that what they plan to start with the Jew will end with all others once the Jew has been eradicated. Then there was the desire stated by Hezballah leader Nasrallah who hoped that all the Jews from every corner of the globe would make their way back to Israel so that his terrorist armies would not be required to search all over the globe to eradicate the last Jews as they would all be gathered in Israel. What is frightening is that Nasrallah might just get his way as far as religiously observant Jews outside of a small number of super-religious Jews who will refuse to leave until the Messiah gives them a hand written gold-leaf embossed personal invitation on perfumed stationary before they will even debate if the Messiah is the real deal. In the meantime I am simply trying to figure out how to get my daughter and grandchildren to make Aliyah.

 

The lies and deceits are deep beyond imagination. There are those who when speaking of Jews and Israel will come out, this has been done by a number of Iranian Imams and leaders as well as other Islamic Holocaust deniers who in a single breath will proclaim that there never was a holocaust and the Jews invented it and Allah willing there will be another Holocaust this time perpetrated by the Arabs or Muslims. Others have denied the Holocaust only to turn and claim they are dedicated to finishing what Adolph Hitler began. Abbas has made a perfectly valid statement knowing full well that the World and especially the political and media worlds will misinterpret what he meant and he can continue in his duplicitous stratagems. His comment is that he simply desires to claim his rightful 22% of the lands and then he will be satisfied, and in that he is speaking the truth. But the Western politicians and media will interpret this as meaning that all he wants are the lands of Judea and Samaria and then some even add in Gaza which places the error on the other end. You see there is only one measurement of lands that comes out almost within a few square meters of being exactly 22% and only one. When one takes Judea and Samaria compared to the entirety one finds that to be just a smidgeon above 21% and if then adding in Gaza the amount climbs to just short of 23%. But if one takes the British Mandate and subtracts the almost exactly 78% of the lands which constitute Jordan that leaves 22.06% of the lands not taken to form Jordan thus making all of Israel including Judea, Samaria (West Bank), Gaza and everything within the Green Line it is basically Abbas’s 22% plain and simple. People argue that I am splitting hairs and if I am it is only because I have seen not only Mahmoud Abbas be accurate to that degree of fault, especially when using a fuzzily and hazily defined set of terms to misdirect a willfully-blind media, but to lead easily doped hypocritical politicians and the rest of the useful idiots out in the world.

 

There has recently begun a very troubling and, though not at all unexpected, disconcerting set of events which has shown a growing tendency for those who are anti-Israel and anti-Zionist to also add a new feather to their bonnet which is an ancient feather which some have claimed is the feather representing the most ancient of hatreds, anti-Semitism. This had been manifest originally by the rampaging hooligans who destroyed anything labeled made in Israel and then blamed Israel for not denoting which merchandise was occupied-lands-free. This has now spread just that one next step to a bigger circle to include Jews as a guilty party by inference of possibly supporting Israel. Before going further into this, please allow us to predict the next and undeniably obvious incrimination to include another select and hated group to the list of guilty of the sin of Israel and that will be Evangelicals followed subsequently by conservatives of almost any stripe which is not anti-Semitic in nature to begin with. The worrying part in all of this has been the indoctrination of the youth, in particular those impressionable students in the colleges and universities and now starting to be brought into the classrooms of the high schools and lower grades as well. The problem with this is that today’s college, and especially high school, students are the leaders and shapers of society tomorrow (tomorrow = one to two decades but this is already well on its way so say five to ten years). The other fronts which are being implemented through intervention have been prison populations and the unions, especially teachers’ unions.

 

The BDS and anti-Israel and anti-Zionist leadership have already largely taken over the steering and defining of one of the United States two major political parties and in many European nations taken a grasp on many if not all political parties. One is guaranteed to find these views supported by the Communists, the Fascists, the Socialists and the leftist human rights guarantors. The conservatives are not completely above these influences but do tend to be the less confused and fooled. If we look around the Western World we find the staunchest supporters of Israel on the right of the political spectrum. Let’s talk first about the conservatives and leftists where they are most easily to differentiate, the two main political parties in the United States. The few Democrats who remain strong supporters of Israel are also the moderates and almost squeezed from the Democrat roles. One of the most conservative of the Republican hopefuls for the ticket for President in 2016 is Ted Cruz who is about as pro-Israel as they come as are many of his supporters. Some other true conservatives who fall heavily on the side of Israel and some even willing to claim that Israel is at the forefront of this culture war and the real leader of the Western World are former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, former Florida United States Congressman and retired U.S. Army Colonel Alan West, and current District One Representative in Oklahoma Jim Bridenstine. The reality struck home to those paying attention, a select few and you know who you are (our readers of course, the informed few), during the 2012 Democrat convention. There was a motion on the floor before the delegates which was to restore to the platform faith in G0d and support for Jerusalem to be the recognized capital of Israel. They called for a voice vote and it failed so the shocked chair restates the motion more deliberately and it is voice vote refused once again, and finally, after a quick consult from a ranking member, call for the vote again not hearing much in the way of a change, simply pronounced the motion adopted and moved on to a somewhat disturbed and perturbed hall. To watch the profound and shocking train of events for yourself see below or click for the YouTube video.

 

 

Other examples exist headed by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and British Prime Minister David Cameron with other notable supporters such as Geert Wilders who is a Minister in the Dutch Parliament. Unfortunately, supporting Israel is beginning to become a difficult position to hold through much of Europe and the rise in anti-Semitism is one of the lagging indicators. A direct relationship can be drawn between the drop in support for Israel and a coming increase in anti-Semitism. The rising anti-Semitism takes a number of different paths and like water it finds the paths of least resistance initially and then builds until it has the powers of tsunami and then comes the horrific and heinous results which if left unchecked anti-Semitism inevitable leads to. The proof of this is written throughout the over three-millennia of Jewish history from the Egyptian enslavement to the Babylonian exile to the eventual dark times under Persia to Greece, Rome, to Muslim and Crusader treachery alike to Muslims across North Africa and in the Middle East to European Kings and Barons to the Inquisition to the pogroms of the Czars and the Caliphs of the Ottomans and their lessor officials to the Nazis and the Communists to the current day Islamists and the coming waves of hatreds which now appear on the verge of cascading across the world from numerous equally volatile sources leading to potentially unprecedented levels with previously uncharted ramifications. Where the current spiral of hatreds will end or even if it will have an end is beyond any mortal perceptive intellect. One might ponder as to where are the prophets when one needs their guidance more than ever as threats and ravenous beasts rage at the gates and the barbarians have already found entrance ahead of the dark and ominous clouds on the horizon. One might hope that the threat of a previously unknown and apocalyptic storm perched on the horizon waiting for the sunrise simply to burst from its moorings and dissolve the sunlight into the pitched darkness of the darkest night and winds howling like the midnight wolves hungering for fresh meat leaving even the sane screaming against the thought of what the next precious hours of history may unfold quaking in fear of the unknown horrors now imagined. Is this our time, is this our destiny, is this the end of ends.

 

Beyond the Cusp