Sweden is beautiful – home to beautiful blonde, blue-eyed Nordic types who spare no effort to stress just how beautiful they are. Claiming a superior streamlined aesthetic, the beautiful people export beautiful designs – as in IKEA and H&M brands. Likewise resplendent in smug moral self-satisfaction, they idolize their own idealized virtue and spare no effort to convert the rest of the world to their more august standards and unadulterated perceptions of goodness. Continue reading →

Two traumas shocked this country’s Jews at the tail end of sizzling August. Both were defining watersheds but they occurred 76 years apart. The time lapse alone appears to rule out any correlation between the two. Yet, as is almost invariably the case here, the past is never irrelevant to the present and seemingly distant history is ever interconnected with what took place just a chronological microsecond ago. Continue reading →

Anyone familiar with the Arabian Nights tales knows they depict a reality comprised of layer upon shadowy layer, one concealed behind another. Cloaked schemers abound, each exploiting another schemer, each duping someone for secret ends. Life is an interminable complex of nefarious conspiracies in which it’s best not to trust anyone but suspect everyone. Continue reading →

If anyone can lay claim to consummate mastery of the thriving art of history-forging, it’s the Jordanians. Their entire state, nationhood and very identity are counterfeit. Had the international community not been sympathetically predisposed to lap up the lie, Jordan obviously couldn’t pull it off. Its wholesale fabrication hinges on a world that contentedly collaborates in hoodwinking itself. Continue reading →