True, your current actions are having stupendous impact on the the planet. By heroically sacrificing your own lives while blowing up civilians, you have been causing trillions of dollars of economic damage and depriving humanity of a sense of security. I can imagine you feel giddy with power, seeing how you can actually terrify and change the entire world.

However, you may have noticed that you are not succeeding in your goals. Hundreds of "martyrs" have gotten you no closer to realizing your dreams. The very people whose rights you are fighting for are the ones who are paying the highest price for you actions. The mighty capitalistic countries of the world cannot calmly sit back while their existence is threatened. They fight back hard and are willing to pay any price in the attempt to preserve the lives of their citizens. Can you expect them to reward you when you so eagerly blow up their women and children? They see you as monsters. They are terrified of you.

Even those who may sympathize with you and admire your courage hate living in fear of you. When you kill innocent civilians, their sympathy goes down the drain. You even bomb your own people. Is it any surprise that people wonder whether you are truly freedom fighters or merely psychopaths reveling in an orgy of death.

Unfortunately, all of us, both the ones you hate and the ones you love, may be destroyed for your cause.

To save us all, I am providing you with the simple formula for success:

1. Choose a public plaza and rope off a large area. Invite the media to attend an important event at a specified date and time.

2. Have one suicide bomber stand in the middle of the plaza and make sure there is a safe distance between himself and the onlookers.

3. Inform the world of your demands.

4. Have the suicide bomber blow himself up while the cameras are rolling.

5. Repeat this at regular intervals, perhaps once a week, until your demands are met.

No one in the world will be able to question the purity of your motives. Your suicide bombers will earn the unqualified admiration of all the world. Even the citizens of the nations that oppress you will not tolerate the continued oppression and will lobby their own governments to grant you your requests. With every subsequent bombing, the humiliation of your oppressors will grow. It will only be a matter of time before they give you what you want.

With this plan, you will have demonstrated to your oppressors that you are not their enemies and that they have no reason to fear you. There will be no reprisals because there is no enemy to fight. Furthermore, they will be comfortable making peace with you because you have proven that you are a supremely moral, peace-loving people who do not endanger anyone. You will find that in a short period, you will have accomplished your goals not by sacrificing hundreds of suicide bombers but a mere handful.

For the sake of your causes and for the survival of humanity, I hope you read this letter and take my advice.

	The War Against Humor
At my seminars, I give a mini-lecture on humor. I explain that the modern world is in the process of outlawing humor, and we don't even realize it because our experts in human behavior never learned the first thing about it (humor). They don't realize that humor involves putting people (oneself or others) down. Compliments are not funny; insults are funny. Humor by nature is not politically correct. Political correctness forbids anyone from saying anything that can hurt someone else's feelings. Humor, by nature, has the potential of offending people. An article in the Sunday New York Times (10.17.04) proves my point. Humor is now on trial in the California State Supreme Court thanks to "hostile environment" laws, which hold employers responsible for anything in the workplace that has the potential of hurting anyone's feelings. Amaani Lyle, a former writer's assistant for "Friends," is suing NBC and a staff of comedy writers. The Times article explains how sitcoms are written. Teams of writers spend hours thinking up jokes and free-associating among each other in the hope of finding usable material. As those of you who have attended my seminars are aware, humor is nasty, and the nastier it is, the funnier it is. Ms. Lyle could not tolerate the jokes the writers were bouncing around. Though she was never the target of these jokes, she found them offensive. She was fired in 1999 for reasons not specified in the Times article, but it is obvious that she did not enjoy her job, was not emotionally suited for it, and probably was making the work environment intolerable for the writers she was being paid to assist. After being fired, Ms. Lyle filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against NBC and lost. Now she is suing based on "hostile environment" laws. Let's hope she loses this lawsuit, too, or we will soon find ourselves living in a national monastery. I have nothing against monasteries. But when we live in them by force rather than choice, they are more accurately called "jails." Best wishes, Izzy Kalman Click here to read previous newsletters. »

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