THE WOLF OF DEBT WILL KILL THE PALESTINIAN STATE IN ITS INFANCY

בס''ד

Copyright © R. Kossover, 2011

Running a country is a lot like running a household.  We earn our money and we pay our bills.  If we don’t earn money, and don’t pay our bills, we find ourselves in a heap of trouble.  That trouble usually comes in the form of a wolf, the Wolf of Debt.

Lots of people dance and sing about how “debt is not a problem” or how “debt is meaningless”.  These people are known as “financial leaders” and politicians. Both of these fine groups of people earn their money by spending ours.  When we overspend, or can’t make a living (or both), and the Wolf of Debt comes howling at our doors, the “financial leaders” and the politicians are nowhere to be seen.  They are not there to help us because they have already finished spending our money telling their lies, and don’t care about us.  And we’re broke and in an awful lot of trouble.  Tough luck!  Thems the breaks!

If their lies were that simple, most of us would have wised up to them a long, long time ago.  Most of us are not idiots.  Their lies are not that simple.  In America they come in the form of catchy phrases like “a thousand points of light”, “no child left behind”, and the latest disappointments, “hope and change” and “shovel-ready”.  They also come in the form of government accountants lying through their teeth and distorting numbers so that what applies to the average businessman and taxpayer does not apply to the government. 

But these guys are good.  Give them credit where credit is due.  Not only do they have the majority of the population scared, they have set up a controlled opposition, called “Occupy Wall Street”.  But no matter how much the neo-hippies of “Occupy Wall Street” take hits from the bong pipe, no matter how much they “occupy” and defecate on, no matter how much they waste the media’s time distracting everyone, the Wolf of Debt howls at more and more doors in America.  I know, because I have family who have been evicted from their homes. 

Here in the Middle East, these lies come in the form of mirages: “UN recognition”, “Social Security Resolutions”, all backing up that catchy phrase, “two states for two peoples”.  These all deal with an infant whom the Wolf of Debt will kill in its infancy, the “Palestinian State”, itself a mirage of lies. 

It is when we look at why will this happen that we begin to understand how the Wolf of Debt will kill other economies as well – we’re all interrelated, whether we like it or not.  <

The Background of Blood and Murder

First, a brief word or two about the Palestine Liberation Organization and its origins.

The man who founded it, Yassir Arafat, was trained by his uncle, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini.  El-Husseini was known for his hatred of Jews, and amongst his acts of shame was the massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929, and running off to aid Hitler in 1939, attempting a coup d’état in Iraq, and when this failed, training a division of Muslim Bosnians in Europe to fight the Allies, but most importantly, to kill Jews.  In addition, it was this el-Husseini who persuaded Hitler to turn Auschwitz into a death camp for Jews and not to ship them off to Mandate Palestine to be killed later when the Nazis conquered the country.

His chief assistant, Mahmoud Abbas, was born in Tz’fat (Safed).  Arafat was the older of the two and born in Cairo, Egypt six years earlier, in October, 1929.   In addition to being trained by his uncle in the ways of fighting and killing Jews, Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas were both educated and trained by the then Soviet Union during the Cold War.  Arafat and Abbas started the el-Fatah organization in 1959.  They were essentially proxy KGB agents. Abbas’ supervising professor was KGB officer, Yevgeny Primakov.

Arafat’s uncle was busy helping Hitler kill Jews between 1939 and 1945; Abbas’ thesis for his doctorate was called, The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement 1933 - 1945, completed in 1982.  In 1984 it was published as a book in Arabic called The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism (Arabic: al-Wajh al-Akhar: al-'Alaqat as-Sirriya bayna an-Naziya wa's-Sihyuniya).

In the doctoral thesis and book, Abbas describes the Nazi Holocaust as "the Zionist fantasy, the fantastic lie that six million Jews were killed."  So the murderer of Jews and the denier that the murder even took place worked together, a pair of deadly comedians who dealt out death while the Jew-haters of the world applauded and cheered.

El-Fatah, the terrorist organization of Arafat and his sidekick, Abbas, eventually set up an umbrella organization to include other terrorist organizations whose chief business it was to kill Jews.  This was the Palestine Liberation Organization, the infamous PLO.

Now, let’s look at the past 17 years since a “Palestinian Authority” was created by the “Oslo Accords” in 1994.  The native leadership that had arisen during the first intifada (rebellion) against Israel (1988-1992) was swept aside and the two outsiders, Arafat and Abbas were brought in from their exiles in Tunisia, along with a host of thugs and killers from the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization.  Having been massacred in Jordan in 1970 and driven out of Lebanon in 1982, these thugs and killers basked in the sunlight of their newfound freedom – and proceeded to start to antagonize the native leaders.  In the meantime, money came pouring to help the new “Arab” entity, the entity set up by the Oslo Accords, the “Palestinian Authority”, and a host of exiles returned here with the hope of building businesses in a soon-to-be-free country.

That’s not quite what happened.


Arafat taxed the new returnees in every way possible, erected a bureaucracy to make sure his friends from Tunisia would have jobs and easy money and stole every dime he could, no matter where it came from, stashing it away in foreign banks.  The American administration and European governments, sluiced through and through with hatred of “the evil occupiers”, the Israelis, closed a blind eye and did not look – or care.


By the time the murderer, terrorist and paedophile, Arafat, died of AIDS a decade later, his widow, Suha, was sitting on a stash of some $5 billion in Europe, while the Palestinian Authority could barely pay its bills.  Long before any fools from of this bankrupt government came to the UN seeking formal admittance, the Wolf of Debt was already howling at the doors of the “Arabs”.


In 2006, in the first elections since 1994, the “Palestinian Arabs” threw out the PLO and made Hamas the majority party in their Legislative Council, the so-called parliament of the “Palestinian Authority”. 


Before going further, we need to talk a bit about Hamas. 


Who are they?  What are they about?  Where did they come from? 


In the 1970’s and 1980’s, the Israelis, looking for a way to weaken the popularity of the Palestine Liberation Organization, worked with a man named Yassin to build a Muslim political party amongst the Arabs in Gaza and Judea and Samaria.  Israeli intelligence was warned not to follow this policy.  They were warned that they would deeply regret this in 20 or 30 years; but they didn’t want to listen and went ahead anyway.  Hamas set up social service networks for Gazans and residents of Judea and Samaria who were poor. They mixed with the aid constant preaching of the Wahhabi version of the Qur’an, taken from the ikhwan muslimun, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.  So, an entire generation of “Arabs” were raised on the idea of murdering Jews, even as they drank milk as children.


Hamas was seen as honest, when compared to the PLO, which stole money at every opportunity it got, and thus it was that the PLO was removed from power in 2006.


But the PLO was not willing to give up power, and backed by the Israeli politicians who had cut deals with it to make money, and by the United States, which controlled the PLO, “the empire struck back”, and after much bloodshed, the PLO now controls the “Arab” areas of Judea and Samaria, while Hamas runs a de-facto state in Gaza.

The Nasty Secret Behind the Background of Blood and Murder

There is a nasty secret behind all of this.  What makes these things really interesting is when we look at the DNA of the “Palestinian Arabs” and compare it to the DNA of Jews.  It turns out that the two DNA’s are nearly identical, and are very, very close. 


It turns out that when David ben-Gurion and Yitzhaq ben Tzvi, founders of many of the institutions that built Israel, first got here over a century ago, “Arabs” came to them saying they had Jewish blood in them.   Ben Gurion noted this in his diaries, but did not follow up on what he had been told.  But over 90 years later, an Israeli, Tsvi Misinai, who had made a fortune of money in the high tech business, did follow up on what the “Arabs” had told ben-Gurion.


His findings were as follows.  The majority of “Arabs” who live within Israel were once Jews. A smaller minority of them had been Samaritans.  Over time, they converted to Islam, largely under pressure from the rulers or under the lash of the jizya, the protection racket Muslims work on dhimmis (non-Muslims who believe in G-d) who live in Muslim domains.  And these so-called Arabs were known as must’arbin, a term for a Jew hiding as an Arab.


Let’s put this just a little differently.  The so-called “Palestinians” who want to deny there was ever a Hebrew state in the Land of Israel – were once Jews themselves!!  What a scam!!  One individual who comes to mind is a big shot in the “Palestinian Authority”, Saeb Erakat. According to his cousins, the Erakat family was once Jewish. Misinai, who runs something called the Engagement Movement, is trying to spread this news and awareness among our “Palestinian” neighbors, as well as among fellow Israelis.


Arabs, especially the sick heretics of the Wahhabi, who truly hate Jews, laugh up their sleeves while the “Jews hiding as Arabs” murder off the Jews who have remained loyal to the Covenant of Abraham.  Now we see why the Palestinian Authority is no more than a tissue of lies that only brings death and tears to the Children of Israel – the ones living in Ramallah and Jericho, as well as the ones who live in Ramat Gan and Jerusalem!

Lookin’ at the Money with Green Eyeshades

But being Jews, the guys who pay attention to the money, let’s see why the Wolf of Debt will kill off the “Palestinian State” in its infancy. 

The answer is not money; rather, it is the lack of money.

So, let’s have a look at some numbers, already.  According to the International Monetary Fund otherwise known as the IMF, we get these. 

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) a combination of all the purchasing, selling and buying in an entity or jurisdiction:

Israel: between $217-219 billion:

Purchasing power: $219 billion.

“Palestinian Authority” (PA) - Gaza and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank in the IMF report) combined: $1.87 billion

Please note that out of this money approximately $1.1 billion has been contributed to the PA in the past from Europe, America and Arab countries.  This means that the real GDP of the PA is, the real combination of purchasing, selling and buying is $1.87 billion MINUS $1.1 billion or – $.77 billion, which is  $770 million dollars!

Purchasing Power (according to the IMF report): $12.79 billion.

We’ll get back to these figures later.

Population:

Gaza and Judea and Samaria (West Bank in the IMF report):…. 4 million

Israel (behind the Green Line)……………………………….. 7.1 million

Labor Force:

Gaza and Judea and Samaria (West Bank in the IMF report):….694,000 - 17.35%

Israel …………………3.1 million - 44.7%

Unemployment:

Judea and Samaria (West Bank in the IMF report):16%   

Gaza: 33%

These figures are from the year 2009.

Israel: 5.87-6.7%

GDP less debt:

According to the latest IMF report obtainable, Israel is now ranked 29^th out of 196 countries.  This has changed to 24^th out of 196 countries.

Currency used:

Israel: New Israeli Shekel

Judea and Samaria (West Bank in the IMF report): New Israeli Shekel, Jordanian Dinar and US Dollar

Gaza: New Israeli Shekel, Egyptian Pound, and US Dollar

Let’s look at these numbers for just a minute: first at the GDP for the PA against its purchasing power.  If you look, you will see that there is a gap of over $11 billion between the GDP and the purchasing power.  What is that gap and why is it there?  That gap is what happens when crooks cook the books, which is what you see in the IMF report – crooks cooking the books so they can lie through their teeth, with Abbas as the chief chef!!  The purchasing power of a country should be its GDP!  The purchasing power of the PA is $770 million!

So, even these numbers from a bunch of big shots like the IMF can’t be relied on.  Their $2,000 suits try to hide nasty truths, like the rosy report they issued on the Islamic Republic of  Iran earlier this year which ignored the rampant prostitution and drug use in the country altogether.

With a GDP of $770 million, the new “Palestinian State” will not be able to afford to pay its bills.  This simple statement explains why the employees of the PA don’t get paid for some months – can you imagine any government worker in the States working for no pay at all?  I can’t!  This simple statement also explains why the PA is also constantly hustling for aid money from the Americans, the Europeans and any other sucker willing to toss money into the black hole of Ramallah!  As it stands, the PA is way behind on its water and electric bills (much of which is supplied by the “evil genocidal Israelis”), and there are running gun battles between Hamas and the PLO as to who gets the onerous task of paying people with money they don’t have.

This brings us to the second number that we need to pay serious attention to.  Let’s repeat the statement once more, so you can see it clearly. 

GDP less debt:

According to the latest IMF report obtainable, Israel is now ranked 29^th out of 196 countries.  This has changed to 24^th out of 196 countries. 

This number, even with cooked books, is the real number that measures an economy against the others in the world.  It’s the number that reveals whether an economy will fall apart or not under a severe financial crisis.

When I first saw this, I imagined that the United States was the number one economy, followed by China, Germany, etc.  I could not have been more wrong.

Let’s look at the rankings. These are from the IMF, from last year.  Israel is now 24^th on these rankings, but these are accurate enough for our purposes.

China           $     305,400,000,000
  
Germany         $     188,400,000,000
    
Japan           $     166,500,000,000
    
Russia          $      71,130,000,000
    
Switzerland     $      70,360,000,000
   
Saudi Arabia    $      70,100,000,000
    
Netherlands     $      60,090,000,000
    
Norway          $      53,460,000,000
    
Singapore       $      46,270,000,000
    
Kuwait          $      43,140,000,000
    
Taiwan          $      40,620,000,000
    
Korea, South    $      36,350,000,000
    
Malaysia        $      34,140,000,000
    
Sweden          $      28,740,000,000
    
Nigeria         $      21,850,000,000
    
Denmark         $      17,080,000,000
    
Libya           $      16,160,000,000
    
Iran            $      15,420,000,000
    
Azerbaijan      $      15,040,000,000
    
Qatar           $      15,040,000,000
    
Hong Kong       $      14,800,000,000
    
Venezuela       $      14,380,000,000
    
Algeria         $      12,740,000,000
    
Thailand        $      12,290,000,000
    
Austria         $       9,700,000,000
    
Philippines     $       9,510,000,000
    
Finland         $       7,561,000,000
    
Angola          $       7,202,000,000
    
Israel          $       6,699,000,000
  

Those are the top rankings down to Israel.  Note that they are all positive numbers.  This means that the countries that display them, like China or Israel, HAVE MONEY!

Now let’s look at the bottom rankings: 

174. Egypt         $      -4,435,000,000
    
175. Morocco       $      -4,625,000,000
    
176. Lebanon       $      -4,688,000,000
    
177. Mexico        $      -5,626,000,000
    
178. Romania       $      -7,093,000,000
    
179. Czech Rep.    $      -7,188,000,000
    
180. Belarus       $      -8,500,000,000
    
181. Colombia      $      -8,943,000,000
    
182. South Africa  $      -9,987,000,000
    
183. Vietnam       $     -12,220,000,000
    
184. Poland        $     -15,900,000,000
    
185. Greece        $     -19,890,000,000
    
186. Portugal      $     -22,610,000,000
    
187. Australia     $     -30,400,000,000
    
188. Brazil        $     -47,360,000,000
    
189. Turkey        $     -48,420,000,000
    
190. Canada        $     -48,500,000,000
    
191. India         $     -51,780,000,000
    
192. France        $     -54,400,000,000
    
193. United Kgdm.  $     -56,190,000,000
    
194. Spain         $     -63,650,000,000
    
195. Italy         $     -67,940,000,000
    
196. United States $    -470,200,000,000
 

All these negative numbers mean that the countries that display them are in the hole for the money.  These 23 countries, are the least likely to be able to withstand a severe financial crisis.  Unlike the countries listed at the top, THEY DO NOT HAVE MONEY!   They are broke!


Notice anything interesting?  First of all, there are the four of the five “PIIGS” at the bottom.  What do the PIIGS refer to?  No, they don’t refer to the snuffling barnyard animals that bacon and hams come from.  They are countries.  Which countries?  Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain.  Of the 23 nations listed above, only Ireland is absent – Erin go bragh!  The other four, which now can be abbreviated to PIGS, are pretty much on the table of the Wolf of Debt, all ready for slaughter.  Which one gets turned into pork chops first is more a matter of the throw of the dice than anything else, but most folks think the Greeks are first on the list.  They seem to have the most money problems, and most often.  But no matter.  The Wolf of Debt is smiling at all of them, with his jaws dripping, convinced he has a real nice meal ahead of him.  And do notice, that even when the Wolf of Debt is finished consuming all the PIGS on his cutting board, there is still the United States of America to feast on – a much much bigger meal than a measly souvlaki, or bowl of pasta è fagiole. 

The Bottom Line

But we’ve strayed just a bit from the real subject, haven’t we?  Let’s get back to the “poor ‘Palestinians’”.

The countries highlighted in bold, both at the top and at the bottom of this list, are the ones most likely to be tapped for contributions by our friends in the PA, who need money very badly just to survive.

With the American dollar cracking at the seams, and the euro in big trouble as the southern nations in the Eurozone slide towards default, how are the dollar or euro going to mean anything in terms of value?

The Wolf of Debt killing the United States economy and plaguing the European Union will gobble up the Palestinian Authority in no time, like a 10:00 snack!

The bottom line is that even with statehood status, the Palestinian Authority will be broke in no time, and the countries likely to contribute money to it will be broke from the collapse of their own currencies in the near future.  Nota bene, I have not even mentioned clan infighting, the real reason that prevents the PA from effectively functioning.  So, as we look, bit by bit, it comes clear that “two states for two peoples” is not a workable solution.  It is a mere mirage.  Then there is the fact that people who were once Jews are being manipulated into killing people who have remained Jews!  If it weren’t for all the blood that is being shed – and all the blood that is liable to be shed - this would be the slickest fraud in history! 

I wonder how many must die before this becomes clear to everyone?  How many must die before it becomes clear that one people – the Jewish people – have been artificially divided into warring factions against each other when they should be living in peace as one people? 

Peace can come to the region once the lies and the bullshit – and there is no other word for it – ceases.  But there must be truth and honesty – so that the pain, of which there is a great deal of, can be worked out, and a people can forgive each other the sins they have committed against each other.

Let's look again, at the imbalanced numbers between the State of Israel and the fake Palestinian Authority.  Is there any reason that so many people should be so poor in a land that has produced vaccines against cancer, a land that has one of the most advanced technological bases on the planet, a land that brings light to darkness?

I don’t think so.

And to be blunt, I think that one united Israel, a nation destined to be reckoned apart from Mankind, can put an end to the Wolf of Debt in the Middle East.  We can be a head, and the rest of the world, a tail, as we are meant to be in Torah.

Let’s seize our destiny and make this a land flowing with milk and honey, where each man sits under his own fig tree, unafraid, and where Justice flows like a mighty river!  Let freedom be proclaimed throughout the Land, and to all the inhabitants therein!

Credit and thanks goes to my friend and colleague, Paris David Blumenthal, for compiling the data on Yassir Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the economic data upon which I have so heavily relied.

My Father's Warnings Against the Leviathan, the Dragon of the East

בס''ד


Published originally in Blogcritics Magazine, 26 June, 2009
Copyright © R. Kossover, 2009, 2011

My father*, may he rest in peace, was born in Russia-Poland in 1908. Many of the adults he knew, the Jews in the village of Yenzhiveh where he lived, were veterans of the disastrous Russo-Japanese War that had occurred only a few years before he had been born. Some of these veterans came home famous, like Joseph Trumpeldor, a man who didn’t live in Yenzhiveh. He lost an arm in battle, and emigrated to the Land of Israel to help found Jewish villages there. He died fighting Arabs in 1920 at Tel Hai. His name is memorialized in the Zionist youth organization, Beitar - בית''ר -, which is the mnemonic for - brit hano’ár ha’ivrí ‘al shém yósef trumpeldór – “Covenant of Hebrew Youth Founded upon Joseph Trumpeldor’s name”. Most of the veterans of the Russo-Japanese War, however, resumed their daily lives and did not rise to such fame.

But my father heard from these war veterans nevertheless. They would talk about the battles they fought, the country they fought in, and the wondrous and terrible sights they saw there. One needs to understand some history to realize that the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 was not fought in either Russia or Japan. It was fought in China, over Chinese territory. At the time, the Chinese Empire was so weak it could not keep out foreigners from fighting over its land. During this humiliating period in Chinese history, Jewish Russian soldiers saw China, its millions of inhabitants crowding Manchuria, and saw, amongst other things, that the symbol of this country was a dragon.

Only one dragon was known to Jews – the Leviathan.

In stories my father related, he told me to beware the Chinese – that they were a sleeping giant who would one day awake. He told me that the Chinese were like the Leviathan – which he called livi-yússen, the Yiddish pronunciation of the Hebrew word líviatán.

His description was as follows:

“The livi-yússen is a giant whale, and the world rests on this giant whale. One day the livi-yússen will overturn, and when it does, the world will overturn.” 

I would listen to this fantastic yarn and say, “Yes, Dad.” But my father had a nasty habit of being right, even when it appeared that it was impossible that he should be so at the time.

A more detailed description of the livi-yússen is found at the site “Judeo-Christian Demons”:

Leviathan was a large whale-like sea creature, who may have had 7 heads according to some legends. A lengthy description of him comes from the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Job:

His strong scales are his pride,
Shut up as with a tight seal.
One is so near to another
That no air can come between them.
They are joined one to another;
They clasp each other and cannot be separated.
His sneezes flash forth light,
And his eyes are like
The eyelids of the morning.
Out of his mouth go burning torches;
Sparks of fire leap forth.
Out of his nostrils smoke goes forth
As from a boiling pot and burning rushes.
His breath kindles coals,
And a flame goes forth from his mouth.
In his neck lodges strength,
And dismay leaps before him.
The folds of his flesh are joined together,
Firm on him and immovable. His heart is as hard as a stone,
Even as hard as a lower millstone.
When he raises himself up, the mighty fear;
Because of the crashing they are bewildered.
The sword that reaches him cannot avail,
Nor the spear, the dart or the javelin.
He regards iron as straw, Bronze as rotten wood.
The arrow cannot make him flee;
Sling-stones are turned into stubble for him.
Clubs are regarded as stubble;
He laughs at the rattling of the javelin.
His under-parts are like sharp potsherds;
He spreads out like a threshing sledge on the mire.
He makes the depths boil like a pot;
He makes the sea like a jar of ointment.
Behind him he makes a wake to shine;
One would think the deep to be gray-haired.
Nothing on earth is like him,
One made without fear.
He looks on everything that is high;
He is king over all the sons of pride.[Job 42:15-32]

Also, according to Isaiah 27:1, on the Day of Judgment the Lord will slay Leviathan:

'In that day the Lord will punish,
With His great, cruel, mighty sword
Leviathan the Elusive Serpent —
Leviathan the Twisting Serpent;
He will slay the Dragon of the sea.'

[Isaiah 27:1 (bold print mine)]

The site also quotes passages from the apocryphal Book of Enoch [1 Enoch 60:7-8], Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra (75a) and the Bible, Psalms 74:26, but the main descriptions are reproduced above.

So, now that we have a fuller description of the Leviathan at hand, let’s look again at my father’s fantastic yarn. In the 1950s it indeed sounded like nothing more than that. The world was divided between two giant powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and everyone worried that these two powers would go to war one day and leave the planet nothing but a radioactive cinder, and that the inheritors of the planet would be... cockroaches. Indeed, Albert Einstein had said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

In this world, China did not count too greatly, in spite of its many millions of people, but the Chinese Red Army had fought the United States Armed Forces (and their allies, the Turks, Australians, and New Zealanders) to a draw in Korea. At the time, the United States was the manufacturing giant of the planet. One could buy everything in the States from soup to nuts, and see on the label, “Made in America”. This label did not mean that all the parts were imported from foreign countries and assembled in America – the lame meaning it holds today. This label meant that everything except the most raw materials unobtainable in the United States came from America.

In this world, the dollar had real meaning – from the ring of the silver in the silver dollars my dad would toss me every now and again – to the fact that an ounce of gold was worth $35, that this price was the benchmark of the international financial system, that everybody owed money to the United States of America, that oil was bought and sold in dollars, that air and hotel fares were quoted in dollars, and that English, the binding language of the United States, was the language used by all pilots in the sky.

Oh, how the world has changed in the last 50 years!

The Samsung 753s computer screen that shows me what I’m typing now was probably made in Korea. The cannibalized CRT that powers the computer displaying this image was made in China or Korea. In fact, the only things that I can safely say were ‘made in America’ in my rental home in Israel is the desk my father bought me in 1960, the chair he obtained from Brooklyn College that I’m sitting on right now, the Southwestern Bell Trimline Freedom Phone on my desk to my left (which I’ve had forever), four bookcases made from hard wood in the States in the 1960s, me, my wife, and my kids.

Let’s not talk about the dollar. It has no ring to it. Not anymore. The Pocahantas tokens I have in my drawer that say “one dollar” on them have barely any intrinsic value at all. The same goes for all the other tokens that say “half dollar”, “quarter dollar” “one dime” and “five cents”.

Let’s not talk about what is manufactured in the United States. A year ago, I might have said cars and boats, but today, “Made in China” is far more likely to be seen on manufactured goods here and everywhere else in the world. Let’s not talk about who owns all those bonds the United States Treasury has been hustling in the last few years. “Owned in China” is stamped upon them as well.

Some folks talk about the United States being the “last superpower”.

Really?

To be terribly blunt, about the only wealth-creating nation on the planet today is China. Today, 50 years after my father told me about the livi-yússen, the giant whale the world sits upon, China is the giant manufacturing power the world relies upon for a whole host of goods. Australian kids learn Mandarin – not because they are interested, but because they understand who the real power in their neck of the woods is. The power that China wields is indirect – but palpable. A China-friendly regime rules in Nepal. The nations in Southeast Asia are careful not to challenge the “elder brother” in Peking directly. When the United States needs money, there is usually a trip to Peking for some hard negotiating (a.k.a. begging) involved. Chinese influence can be seen throughout Latin America.

But there is more. Twice in recent years, Chinese military officials have threatened to use nuclear weapons to counter the United States. The Chinese are a careful lot, not given to empty threats, bluff or bluster. While these threats to attack the United States with nuclear weapons are not extant today, they have been made, and the American ruling elites have taken note. And it does not take a lot to see that a nuclear exchange between the Americans and the Chinese would be a lot like that livi-yússen overturning, what my father described 50 years ago.

When we look at what the livi-yússen really is – a dragon, the symbol of China - we see what may well be truth in my father’s warnings. Today, at least 1½ billion people inhabit the People’s Republic of China. And if this livi-yússen overturns, the world will indeed overturn with it.

Dad, do you always have to be right?

* Dedicated to Louis Kossover, זיסקן לייב בן צבי-הערש, may his memory be for a blessing for his family and for all the People of Israel, who died on 26 June 1976.