BLOG POSTS

Coming from another country, as I did in 2002, it’s easy to discern certain factors that most Americans never stop to consider. They’re just too close to them – can’t see the wood for the trees, you might say.

I’ve had occasion to visit the local hospital recently. Nothing serious, you understand. My wife needed a minor procedure, and as one matures, general servicing has to become a little more frequent to keep everything running normally.

I was struck by the large number of elderly ladies acting as volunteers in the hospital. At first, it wasn’t something I questioned. The British NHS uses voluntary labor to assist with patient management. It helps keep the costs down.

Then it struck me. This is not an NHS hospital, it’s a private company. Admittedly, it designates itself a ‘not-for-profit’ concern, but according to figures gleaned from the internet (the only ones I could find), this particular company:

…..budgeted a total net profit of $7.4 million [in 2004], and expects to build its cash position beginning in fiscal 2005.”

Now that’s not bad for a private enterprise desperately attempting to make no profit.

The hospital has expanded enormously since 2004, opening ‘branches’ throughout the town and surrounding areas. No doubt, they would point this out as resulting from the $7.4 million, but it’s unlikely these branch clinics lose them money. Few companies in healthcare go bust from expansion.

So, while the army of elderly volunteers marching around the hospital corridors with bemused patients in tow, or registering family members waiting for news of their sick relatives welfare, are keeping themselves busy and possibly preventing the onset of senile dementia, they’re also responsible for swelling the queues of unemployed citizens waiting for benefits, or hanging round street corners all day with nothing to do.

Perhaps, these elderly volunteers should accept retirement gracefully, spend their time knitting socks for the grandkids, or assisting local charities, and force the hospital authorities to pay working people to fill those jobs that, to date, they’ve been getting done for nothing?

Filed under: No-cost labor

It must have taken a lot of beer to compose and record this song.

Filed under: Greatest hits

There’s a problem in Israel right now. It’s been getting worse for some time. The Israeli government is desperate to do something about it.

The problem: not enough Jews and too many Gentiles.

The influx of Jewish immigrants into Israel has been declining year on year. Non-Jewish foreign workers have increased, particularly since the last Intifada, following which Palestinians were less welcome on Israeli streets, and in their factories.

Compounding the decline of Jewish immigration, has been an upsurge in the practice of non-Israeli Jews marrying Gentiles – upwards of 50%, according to some sources. ‘Mixed’ marriages are not welcomed in Israel.

Last year, the Israeli government launched an ad campaign to coerce Israelis with Jewish friends and relatives overseas to inform on them, if they were in danger of marrying outside their religion.

According to one Israeli journalist:

The advertising campaign is directed particularly at Jews in the United States and Canada, whose combined 5.7 million Jews constitute the world’s largest Jewish population. Most belong to the liberal Reform stream of Judaism that, unlike Orthodoxy, does not oppose intermarriage.

One-third of Jews in the diaspora are believed to have relatives in Israel.

According to the campaign’s organisers, more than 200 Israelis rang a hotline to report names of Jews living abroad after the first TV advertisement was run on Wednesday. Callers left details of email addresses and Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The 30-second clip featured a series of missing-person posters on street corners, in subways and on telephone boxes showing images of Jewish youths above the word “Lost” in different languages. A voiceover asks anyone who “knows a young Jew living abroad” to call the hotline. “Together, we will strengthen their connection to Israel, so that we don’t lose them.”^[1]

So keen is the Israeli government to persuade new Jewish blood into the country, it funds a Jewish charity, ‘Birthright Israel’, to promote free, ten-day, visits for young Jews – principally from North America – in the hope some will settle permanently.

No expense is spared to persuade these kids. Birthright Israel has flooded YouTube with videos designed to attract young Jews to the country.^[2]

And, you may ask, what’s wrong with that? Let the kids have a good time, and if some decide to make Israel their home in the future, so what?

The reason Israel is so keen to attract more Jews to the country is because the government is scared stiff the Arab populace will increase faster than the Jewish population.

It already is; in 2008, Arabs accounted for 20% of the Israeli population. It’s estimated that by 2030 that figure will have risen to 24%. The median age of the Jewish population is 31; that of Arabs, 20.^[3]

But there’s another, more sinister, aspect of this impending population crisis.

These are four little Israeli girls. They are all about eight years old and they were all born in Israel. They think, speak, and dream in Hebrew. After the intifada, foreign workers poured into Israel from Thailand, the Philippines, and north-east Africa. No-one tried to stop them; Israel needed foreign workers desperately.

Now, the government of Netanyahu intends to deport all illegal immigrants by 2013, and drastically cut the number of legal, non-Jewish, foreign workers in the country. It’s another way of ensuring Israel remains Jewish.

These four little girls and their parents face deportation at the end of the 2010 school year, along with over 1,000 other children, all born in Israel.^[4]

According to Israel’s Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Eli Yishai, these foreign workers………

…..threaten the Zionist project of the State of Israel.”

Isn’t it all mildly reminiscent of Germany in the 1930’s? Only there, it was the glorious Aryan race that was promoted.

There were no gas chambers, then, either.

^{[1] “Israeli Ads Warn Against Marrying Non-Jews” Countercurrents.org, September 8th 2009}

^{[2] “The Arab Population in Israel 2008”}

^{[3] “Birthright Israel”}

^{[4] “Israel’s immigrant children fight deportation” BBC, February 22nd 2010}

Filed under: The face of tyranny