My liberal dentist
Jack Kemp
I went to my Jewish liberal dentist and told him about the Iranian fake doctor at Mt. Sinai Hospital/Research Center and he brushed it, wanting to smile and tell me about the movie "Catch Me If You Can," about an amusing imposter. I can say my jaw dropped, but it was shot full of novacaine and had already dropped.
The dentist then asked me a political question: what do I think of the US drone that the Iranian government captured? Since I'm used to speaking my mind online, I replied that the drone was captured because Obama does not have the best interests of America at heart. I bet he never expected to hear something like that - and he immediately changed the subject. I later gave him an apolitical explanation, that many people in America don't have a sense that anything can harm them while awareness in Israel is much stronger. I then told him of something I wrote about at AT and at the Birdnow website, namely the time a kid was jumping around under the airline terminal at Eilat, Israel and I told a stewardess on my flight about it. This resulted in the flight being delayed as the Israelis looked for a possible terrorist. The stewardess then said that another American would not notice this, that I reacted like an Israeli (I spoke American accented Hebrew to her).
I also told the dentist that the Israelis would have immediately sent a missile to destroy the drone in Iran on the ground. I strongly suspect the dentist has never been to Israel or to a US airshow by the Thunderbirds or the Blue Angels. But a year ago, when I mentioned the statues that Anthony Wiener objected to as sexist, he strongly agreed with Wiener. My dentist is all in favor of women and men being protected from ancient mythology statues - but a foreign "doctor" messing with a major NY hospital's security and experiments in a location one mile from his office, that's nothing worth reacting to.
Yesterday I sent the dentist the following letter:
Dr. X,
We can’t talk much with you working on my mouth, so I want to write a bit about the different levels of security consciousness one finds in the U.S. and in Israel. I’ll be brief here, just going a third of a page beyond this first one.
In America, there is a strong, optimistic desire to say, “What could go wrong?” and let it go at that.
The PBS tv documentary about World War II, Ken Burn’s “The War,” starts with a Nazi submarine that entered Upper New York Bay (near the Verrazano Narrows) on Jan. 13, 1942, three weeks after the U.S. and Germany declared war on each other. To the captain’s amazement, all the lights were on in Manhattan night and there was no anti-submarine steel netting across the harbor. Because of the bright sky, the sub crew easily saw and sank an oil tanker and then left. This was three weeks after the U.S. and Germany declared war on each other and 18 months after WWII started in Europe. Later a blackout of Manhattan was enforced. It should have started on Dec. 10, 1941.
NBC had a made-for-tv movie about the Pan Am 103 bomb explosion over Lockerbie, Scotland. The show began with a dark skinned Sephardic (i.e., Arab-looking) Israeli security consultant, hired by Pan Am, easily bribing a Pan Am ticket agent with $50 to put the consultant’s suitcase (with a fake but realistic looking bomb in it) onto a Pan Am flight at the last few minutes before take off. The security consultant did not buy a ticket to board the plane.
If one goes into a supermarket or indoor mall in Israel, they check your bag for bombs at the door.
About a decade ago, I went to the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut and was stopped from entering the main slot machine room because I had a laptop bag. The casino was concerned, I believe, about people who had made electronic devices that sent out a signal that could make a slot machine pay out a big jackpot. I can’t explain the science, but it has happened elsewhere.
After browsing the stores at the casino, I later easily walked into the slot machine room via a different doorway. I would have gladly checked my bag – but it was summer and the Coat Check Service was actually closed! Meanwhile, roughly 1200 women walked into the slot machine room, many with large shoulder bags, and they were unchallenged by the guards. Apparently the “security experts” thought that no woman either had the electronic skills to make a signal-sending electronic device - nor would they partner with a man who did - to steal a large jackpot. Now THAT’s sexism.
What does all this have to do with the U.S. stealth drone in Iran? A lot. If Americans believe they are not in a real war, and everything is normal, they will often not take extra precautions because “those things don’t happen in America – or to us.”
In my research for the 9/11 documentary I was involved in, I learned that the Twin Towers were built over the objections of then-FDNY Chief of Department John O’Hagan - according to Dennis Smith in his book “Report from Ground Zero.” The open floor construction with few columns created 25 percent more rentable space. O’Hagan “opposed Yamasaki’s (the architect) notion of open-space building construction, preferring instead the method of compartmentalized space between skeletal steel columns to confine any fire to a small space surrounded by walls.”
O’Hagan understood what was involved in fighting a fire in a high rise or any other building. He was a firefighter who personally had gone into roaring fires and had ordered other firefighters into them as well, so he wanted to maximize the Department’s (and the office workers’) chance of survival in a conflagration at the then-proposed World Trade Center. O’Hagan knew who would actually be keeping the promises of building safety that the Port Authority so glibly “guaranteed.” The conceptual similarities to the fatal flaw “grand design” of the Titanic, pointed out by author Dennis Smith, are quite valid.
END OF LETTER
I suspect he never heard any of this before. He seems sane enough for some of it to sink in and he just might lose his "New York is a post modern Utopia" attitude.
I went to my Jewish liberal dentist and told him about the Iranian fake doctor at Mt. Sinai Hospital/Research Center and he brushed it, wanting to smile and tell me about the movie "Catch Me If You Can," about an amusing imposter. I can say my jaw dropped, but it was shot full of novacaine and had already dropped.
The dentist then asked me a political question: what do I think of the US drone that the Iranian government captured? Since I'm used to speaking my mind online, I replied that the drone was captured because Obama does not have the best interests of America at heart. I bet he never expected to hear something like that - and he immediately changed the subject. I later gave him an apolitical explanation, that many people in America don't have a sense that anything can harm them while awareness in Israel is much stronger. I then told him of something I wrote about at AT and at the Birdnow website, namely the time a kid was jumping around under the airline terminal at Eilat, Israel and I told a stewardess on my flight about it. This resulted in the flight being delayed as the Israelis looked for a possible terrorist. The stewardess then said that another American would not notice this, that I reacted like an Israeli (I spoke American accented Hebrew to her).
I also told the dentist that the Israelis would have immediately sent a missile to destroy the drone in Iran on the ground. I strongly suspect the dentist has never been to Israel or to a US airshow by the Thunderbirds or the Blue Angels. But a year ago, when I mentioned the statues that Anthony Wiener objected to as sexist, he strongly agreed with Wiener. My dentist is all in favor of women and men being protected from ancient mythology statues - but a foreign "doctor" messing with a major NY hospital's security and experiments in a location one mile from his office, that's nothing worth reacting to.
Yesterday I sent the dentist the following letter:
Dr. X,
We can’t talk much with you working on my mouth, so I want to write a bit about the different levels of security consciousness one finds in the U.S. and in Israel. I’ll be brief here, just going a third of a page beyond this first one.
In America, there is a strong, optimistic desire to say, “What could go wrong?” and let it go at that.
The PBS tv documentary about World War II, Ken Burn’s “The War,” starts with a Nazi submarine that entered Upper New York Bay (near the Verrazano Narrows) on Jan. 13, 1942, three weeks after the U.S. and Germany declared war on each other. To the captain’s amazement, all the lights were on in Manhattan night and there was no anti-submarine steel netting across the harbor. Because of the bright sky, the sub crew easily saw and sank an oil tanker and then left. This was three weeks after the U.S. and Germany declared war on each other and 18 months after WWII started in Europe. Later a blackout of Manhattan was enforced. It should have started on Dec. 10, 1941.
NBC had a made-for-tv movie about the Pan Am 103 bomb explosion over Lockerbie, Scotland. The show began with a dark skinned Sephardic (i.e., Arab-looking) Israeli security consultant, hired by Pan Am, easily bribing a Pan Am ticket agent with $50 to put the consultant’s suitcase (with a fake but realistic looking bomb in it) onto a Pan Am flight at the last few minutes before take off. The security consultant did not buy a ticket to board the plane.
If one goes into a supermarket or indoor mall in Israel, they check your bag for bombs at the door.
About a decade ago, I went to the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut and was stopped from entering the main slot machine room because I had a laptop bag. The casino was concerned, I believe, about people who had made electronic devices that sent out a signal that could make a slot machine pay out a big jackpot. I can’t explain the science, but it has happened elsewhere.
After browsing the stores at the casino, I later easily walked into the slot machine room via a different doorway. I would have gladly checked my bag – but it was summer and the Coat Check Service was actually closed! Meanwhile, roughly 1200 women walked into the slot machine room, many with large shoulder bags, and they were unchallenged by the guards. Apparently the “security experts” thought that no woman either had the electronic skills to make a signal-sending electronic device - nor would they partner with a man who did - to steal a large jackpot. Now THAT’s sexism.
What does all this have to do with the U.S. stealth drone in Iran? A lot. If Americans believe they are not in a real war, and everything is normal, they will often not take extra precautions because “those things don’t happen in America – or to us.”
In my research for the 9/11 documentary I was involved in, I learned that the Twin Towers were built over the objections of then-FDNY Chief of Department John O’Hagan - according to Dennis Smith in his book “Report from Ground Zero.” The open floor construction with few columns created 25 percent more rentable space. O’Hagan “opposed Yamasaki’s (the architect) notion of open-space building construction, preferring instead the method of compartmentalized space between skeletal steel columns to confine any fire to a small space surrounded by walls.”
O’Hagan understood what was involved in fighting a fire in a high rise or any other building. He was a firefighter who personally had gone into roaring fires and had ordered other firefighters into them as well, so he wanted to maximize the Department’s (and the office workers’) chance of survival in a conflagration at the then-proposed World Trade Center. O’Hagan knew who would actually be keeping the promises of building safety that the Port Authority so glibly “guaranteed.” The conceptual similarities to the fatal flaw “grand design” of the Titanic, pointed out by author Dennis Smith, are quite valid.
END OF LETTER
I suspect he never heard any of this before. He seems sane enough for some of it to sink in and he just might lose his "New York is a post modern Utopia" attitude.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 5:34 AM
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