The Real Estate Recession – Ouch! August 8, 2006March 4, 2017 ‘I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq would last five days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.’ – Donald Rumsfeld, November 14, 2002 CINNAMON Eric Batson, MD: ‘I did a two-minute search on cinnamon and LDL in the peer-reviewed medical literature. TWO studies exist. The first is the one referred to by Monty Goolsby. It ends with . . . ‘They point out the study is preliminary and is based on findings from a relatively small group of volunteers.’ The second study was published in May, 2006. Its abstract can be found here. This [slightly larger] study had 79 people and found NO effect on LDL. Will cinnamon hurt your gentle readers? Probably not, but we should all concentrate on treatments that are known to work before we spend time and money on unproven remedies. The indirect harm caused by ignoring effective treatments in favor of the unproven and perhaps ineffective can be significant.’ Steve Farthing: ‘According to Dr. Julian Whitaker’s Health and Healing newsletter, June 2006 p.5 – ‘In the past, I suggested sprinkling a little cinnamon on your oatmeal or applesauce. However, recent research has revealed that when cinnamon mixes with saliva, its beneficial components are rendered ineffective. Therefore, I now recommend taking cinnamon in capsule form.’ ‘ THE REAL ESTATE BUST / RECESSION Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. AND THIS JUST IN . . . . . . from the Borowitz Report: Bush Urges Bin Laden to Take August Off Warns Terror Leader of Burnout Having begun his month-long summer vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, President George W. Bush used his weekly radio address on Saturday to urge Osama bin Laden to take the month of August off as well. President Bush said he was taking the “extreme step” of “slipping out of vacation mode for a few seconds” to address the al-Qaeda leader directly. “I strongly recommend that you take August off, because if you don’t, you are greatly increasing your chances of burnout,” Mr. Bush told the al-Qaeda madman. “Even an evildoer like yourself cannot evildo twelve months out of the year.” The president added that if Mr. bin Laden takes his advice, “In September, you will emerge from your vacation feeling rested, refreshed, and eviler than ever.” The president’s extraordinary message to the world’s most wanted man may have come in part as a reaction to a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) received last week entitled “Bin Laden Determined Not to Take a Summer Vacation.” “The president was concerned that Osama bin Laden apparently is planning to work straight through the summer,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said today. “Also, he was very annoyed that he had to take time out of his vacation to read that two-page PDB.” For his part, President Bush said he intends to spend this August much as he did last year, clearing his ranch of brush and antiwar activists. Elsewhere, after ten years of exploring Mars most scientists believe that there is no life there, but NASA proposed spending $400 billion more “just to be sure.” If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have.
Cinnamon Tea and the 72 Vestal Virgins Who Await August 7, 2006March 4, 2017 YOUR CHOLESTEROL Monty Goolsby: ‘I don’t know why this information isn’t being screamed from the roof tops. My LDL bad cholesterol (which was not terrible) was reduced by 55% when I started taking 1/4 of a teaspoon of cinnamon twice a day. You can search on ‘cinnamon + LDL‘ and get lots of other articles. Even my doctor didn’t know this.’ ☞ One more reason to drink Gold Rush Cinnamon Honest Tea (of which I own a tiny sliver). THE LEBANON Michael Axelrod on the Christian Science Monitor piece I posted Friday: ‘I know you want to be balanced, but giving more exposure to that ridiculous bigoted article by Strindberg is perhaps going too far. Has this guy ever read any history? Does he know that after WWII, about the time the modern state of Israel began, the Allies (US, UK and USSR) went on an ethnic cleansing rampage in Europe. Over 16 million ethnic Germans were expelled from their homelands around Europe. The directive is right there in the Potsdam Agreement. About 2 million died. Does he know that over 600,000 Jews were driven out of their respective countries in the Middle East in 1948? Does he realize that if anyone ‘stole’ Palestinian land it was the Ottomans? Once again the revisionist historian Benny Morris is evoked. There are many responses to his revisionism. Moreover you should read what Morris says today!’ UNDERSTANDING SUICIDE BOMBERS One view from a guy who’s been there, coming soon to a theater near you. (Or, at least, one near me.) OHIO, HATE STATE Scary fundamentalism is not only the province of the Middle East. From Salon a couple of years ago: Patrick Johnston, a physician and vice chairman of the Ohio branch of the far-right Constitution Party . . . isn’t officially affiliated with Burress’ group, Citizens for Community Values, but the two men worked together collecting signatures to put Issue 1 on the ballot, and Johnston says they talk often. . . . . . . [According to Johnston], the decision to put gays to death is a matter best left up to the states. “If we ever had a nation sufficiently Christian” to make homosexuality illegal, he says, imposing capital punishment for homosexuality would be a subject for “an in-house debate. There were capital crimes in the Bible, and that would be something debated.” ☞ The initiative Burrress and Johnston sought to put on the ballot would not just have amended the Ohio Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman . . . it would have forbidden the state from ‘creating or recognizing’ a legal status that would ‘approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage.’ Like civil unions. Burress and Johnston did manage to get it on the ’04 ballot, and, as some will recall, the people of Ohio passed it 62% to 38% (but have not yet had the ‘in-house debate’ on whether or not to kill gays).
Mr. Sabatin’s Dunums August 4, 2006January 15, 2017 AL-BA YOU DINNER IF THIS WORKS Rob: ‘Is it game over on the ALBAW warrants? Time to dump them and buy more Borealis?’ ☞ No. I would hold both – but only as speculations, because both are just that. The ALBA warrants give you the right to purchase a share of ALBA at $5 until February 16, 2009. As I type this, the stock is $5.35 and the warrants are 36 cents (I just bought more). All I know about this – and I mean all I know about this – is that the guys running ALBA are smart guys, and at 36 cents, I just paid a one penny premium for an option that has two and a half years to run. (It’s a penny premium because the right to pay $5 for $5.35 shares right now is worth 35 cents; the extra penny gives you the right to do it any time in the next two and a half years.) I may definitely lose 100% of my bet – the world financial markets may descend into a chasm or the smart guys may not be as smart as I think. But I like the odds. Tails, I lose 36 cents; heads, if they manage to get the stock to $8, say, sometime in the next two and a half years – let alone higher – I win $3 (which would be a lightly-taxed long-term capital gain of $2.64 on my 36-cent cost). I don’t even feel too bad about the warrants I initially bought at 70 cents. Yes, they’ve declined by half if I were to sell them today. But other things being equal, if you figured stocks might go up 5% a year (just to pull a not-crazy number out of a hat, though I think the next two and a half years could be tough), then a $5.35 stock like ALBA, if it did nothing smarter or dumber than average, would be worth $6.04 when these warrants expire – at which time their intrinsic value would be $1.04. The thing to focus on here (because I see you beginning to squint as you contemplate the opportunity) is not whether you wind up paying a penny or a dime or even a twenty-cent premium over this warrant’s intrinsic value – but whether you can afford this toss of the dice at all. If the stock is not above $5 by 2009, you will have lost everything, regardless of what you paid. And if it does rise some from here, then having paid a nickel or a dime premium instead of a penny should not leave you too badly bruised. (But if you do decide to do this, don’t purposely throw money away. Buying 50,000 warrants at Ameritrade nicked me for an $8 commission. There will be another $8 when I sell. The same two trades at my full service broker, instead of $16 in commissions, would have cost $2,000.) LEBANON – TWO MORE VIEWS From Tuesday’s Christian Science Monitor: Hizbullah’s attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon August 1, 2006 By Anders Strindberg NEW YORK – As pundits and policymakers scramble to explain events in Lebanon, their conclusions are virtually unanimous: Hizbullah created this crisis. Israel is defending itself. The underlying problem is Arab extremism. Sadly, this is pure analytical nonsense. Hizbullah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 was a direct result of Israel’s silent but unrelenting aggression against Lebanon, which in turn is part of a six-decades long Arab-Israeli conflict. Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel has violated the United Nations-monitored “blue line” on an almost daily basis, according to UN reports. Hizbullah’s military doctrine, articulated in the early 1990s, states that it will fire Katyusha rockets into Israel only in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians or Hizbullah’s leadership; this indeed has been the pattern. In the process of its violations, Israel has terrorized the general population, destroyed private property, and killed numerous civilians. This past February, for instance, 15-year-old shepherd Yusuf Rahil was killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock in southern Lebanon. Israel has assassinated its enemies in the streets of Lebanese cities and continues to occupy Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms area, while refusing to hand over the maps of mine fields that continue to kill and cripple civilians in southern Lebanon more than six years after the war supposedly ended. What peace did Hizbullah shatter? Hizbullah’s capture of the soldiers took place in the context of this ongoing conflict . . . . . . [I]t is the manner in which Israel was created, and the ideological premises that have sustained it for almost 60 years, that are the core of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict. Once the Arabs had rejected the UN’s right to give away their land and to force them to pay the price for European pogroms and the Holocaust, the creation of Israel in 1948 was made possible only by ethnic cleansing and annexation. This is historical fact and has been documented by Israeli historians, such as Benny Morris. Yet Israel continues to contend that it had nothing to do with the Palestinian exodus, and consequently has no moral duty to offer redress. . . . The Palestinians are the Indians who refuse to live on the reservation; the Negroes who refuse to sit in the back of the bus. By what moral right does anyone tell them to be realistic and get over themselves? . . . The fundamental obstacle to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict is that we have given up on asking what is right and wrong, instead asking what is “practical” and “realistic.” Yet reality is that Israel is a profoundly racist state, the existence of which is buttressed by a seemingly endless succession of punitive measures, assassinations, and wars against its victims and their allies. A realistic understanding of the conflict, therefore, is one that recognizes that the crux is not in this or that incident or policy, but in Israel’s foundational and persistent refusal to recognize the humanity of its Palestinian victims. Neither Hizbullah nor Hamas are driven by a desire to “wipe out Jews,” as is so often claimed, but by a fundamental sense of injustice that they will not allow to be forgotten. . . . If Israel, like its former political ally South Africa, has the capacity to come to terms with principles of democracy and human rights and accept egalitarian multiracial coexistence within a single state for Jews and Arabs, then the foundation for resentment and resistance will have been removed. If Israel cannot bring itself to do so, then it will continue to be the vortex of regional violence. • Anders Strindberg, formerly a visiting professor at Damascus University, Syria, is a consultant on Middle East politics working with European government and law-enforcement agencies. ☞ But what a gamble that would be: turning over majority rule of Israel to non-Jews. After thousands of years of enslavement, persecution, and genocide, you will forgive me if I think it may be asking too much. From yesterday’s San Diego Union Tribune: Losing freedom bit by bit By Gary Fields August 3, 2006 HUSAN, West Bank – Although the war in Lebanon and Gaza now dominates the attention of people here in the West Bank, recently while in the Palestinian village of Husan near Bethlehem, I was witness to another type of territorial conflict that in many ways lies at the foundation of the war gripping the region. I spent the day with Mohammed Abdel Aziz Sabatin, a farmer from one of the largest and oldest families in this small village. The Sabatins have lived in Husan for at least 400 years farming this land, he tells me. Recent history, however, has altered the conditions of farming for the Sabatin family – and for innumerable Palestinian farmers who share a similar fate. In order to access his land, Sabatin not only has to get a permit from the Israeli military authorities who administer the occupied territory of Palestine. He also has to go though the security gate of an Israeli settlement, Betar Illit, to get to his land, which his family has owned and cultivated for 200 years. He is not allowed to drive his car to his land. He must park it in the village, walk across a road for Israeli vehicles only, and then walk into the settlement where he then confronts a security checkpoint that decides whether he can pass. Like virtually all Israeli settlements in the occupied territory of Palestine, Betar Illit is built on land belonging to Palestinian farmers, in this case, farmers from Husan. To build the settlement in 1989, the authorities of Betar Illit confiscated 5,000 dunums of land belonging to Husan village. A dunum equals a quarter of an acre. The process for such confiscations is very simple. The settlement authority petitions the Israeli government to create a settlement in a certain location. Upon favorable review, the government declares the area in question to be Israeli “state land” to be used for the public purpose of housing Israeli citizens, and then cedes the land for development to the settlement. The land is then rezoned by the occupation authorities as residential and thus the former agricultural use by Palestinian farmers is declared “nonconforming.” The political architect of this settlement program was none other than Ariel Sharon. In a celebrated quotation, Sharon described the objective of Israeli settlement policy to be the taking of land in occupied Palestine “dunum by dunum.” What enables Israel to take land for settlements in this fashion? The answer is transparent: force. It is Israel’s military occupation of Palestine – and the backing it receives from the U.S. government – that provides it with the power to engage in this activity. Of the 5,000 dunums taken from Husan by the settlement, 30 dunums belonged to Sabatin. On these 30 dunums now stand apartment blocks housing Israelis. In a way, Sabatin might be considered “lucky.” After all, the settlement did not take all of his land. He still has 50 dunums remaining that now lie in the shadow of the settlement, meters away from the buildings that occupy the land confiscated from him. As we walked through his fields, we could see people from the settlement watching us the entire time. Sabatin is a soft-spoken and gentle man. He told me how the settlers burn and vandalize his remaining olive and fruit trees on a daily basis. Just as he was describing this to me, we came upon upon several olive trees apparently burned just that morning. The ashes were still smoldering from this detestable act when we came into his fields. He just stares at the blackened limbs and burnt ground in silence. As we go through his groves, other trees, almond and fig, revealed branches torn off and scattered on the ground, the trees bending and disfigured. “I love these trees,” he tells me. “They are part of my family.” Sabatin then told me a story of his father, apparently a very proud and feisty personality, when they were building the settlement. His father tried to prevent the bulldozers from uprooting the trees on his land confiscated for settlement construction. He stood in the path of the bulldozer, refusing to move, and then the army came to arrest him. They demanded his ID. The father of Sabatin picked up a handful of dirt and screamed at the soldier, “This is my ID!” After wandering for some time through the olive, fig and almond groves, the security man from the main gate at the settlement entrance intercepted us in the field. He had a call from one of the settlers about us. Sabatin told the security person about the fires and vandalism and asked him why nothing was done to prevent settlers from destroying his livelihood. “The settlers are minding the fields,” the security person retorted. “You see, what can I do?” Sabatin asks me in his gentle voice. If these difficulties weren’t enough, now Sabatin has something else to worry about. In another part of Husan, he owns a beautiful piece of land, roughly 20 dunums where he grows vegetables. This land is irrigated with natural aquifers typical of land near the border with Israel but inside Palestinian territory. Israel has always coveted these natural water sources. Recently, the Israeli authorities informed Sabatin, along with others in the village, that this land is in the pathway planned for The Wall. When built, The Wall will confiscate an additional 400 dunums from Husan, including the 20 dunums from Sabatin. It is hardly a coincidence, say Palestinians, that the route of The Wall aims to seize the most valuable Palestinian water sources. Dunum by dunum, more and more Palestinian land is changing hands. Little wonder that so many people here are so angry. We spent close to three hours in Sabatin’s fields during which time he described how desperate he is to keep what he still has. I don’t know how he can go on. I felt such compassion for his resilience. As an American, I was uneasy wondering what he might think of me and the policies of my government. Then, of course, at the end of the tour, he invited me to his home for dinner, a feast in fact, breads just baked from the ovens, the freshest vegetables, olives from his trees. He kept telling me how welcome I was. Fields, author of “Territories of Profit,” is currently in the West Bank interviewing people for his upcoming book on The Wall. He teaches in the Department of Communication at the University of California San Diego. ☞ But then there’s this: Zach: “Hezbollah have clearly stated that their aim is the destruction of Israel. Hezbollah, as its supporters Syria and Iran, characterize the Jewish people as pigs and monkeys. The last time Jews were driven out of a land and characterized as sub-human, millions were slaughtered. We wonder now how Jews and the world at the time waited so long to fight back. Israel is not waiting this time.” ☞ But then there’s this: Tom Roth: “Arabs feel the State of Israel was forced on them. That the Arabs living there were shoved out of the way. I still don’t understand how the post WWII powers could give the land to the Zionists when people already owned it.” ☞ I’m not sure how much ownership there was . . . I think it was mostly nomads, not deeded homes in subdivisions the way we think of it in McLean, Virginia. But, yes: somehow, this land should have been purchased, and some permanent, inviolate, pansectarian international status assured for Jerusalem. It’s clear you don’t have to be a bloodthirsty fanatic – on either side – to feel viscerally aggrieved. So the one thing I’m sure of is that we were unwise to break off our engagement in the Mideast peace process (not to mention our engagement with North Korea) when President Bush’s team took the reins. With enough talking and cajoling and creativity, there has to be a better way to resolve this than, say, lighting a slow fuse to Armageddon. And so one grasps wistfully for the grand solution (think Rodney King, when he asked, with childlike naiveté, “Can’t we all just get along?”). Jonathan Edwards: “It’s interesting that you dare to suggest the Israelis move elsewhere, when Ahmadinejad did so and was roundly criticized. What’s the difference, do you think?” ☞ That he would kill them if they don’t? (And that I was not seriously suggesting we move Israel? But $500 billion to retroactively purchase that land, funded by a global oil tax, could be nice.) Hey – It’s Friday! If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have.
More Good Green News August 3, 2006March 4, 2017 HOWL, HOWL, HOWL, HOWL! I don’t get to read the Daily Howler often, but (thanks, Caro), this one from last week says so much about how ill-informed we are . . . and how badly the media have been informing us – even that likeable Chris Matthews. MORE GOOD GREEN NEWS Monday, I linked to a really encouraging, in-depth story on WalMart. They’ve begun going green. The impact could be large. Here’s another hopeful story; this one (thanks again, Caro), from the Economist a few months back, on a possible breakthrough in wind power. The idea is to harvest 43% to 45% of the wind’s available energy instead of the current 25% to 40% by using a different design – and to be able to operate even when the wind tops 65 miles an hour, not have to shut down at 50 miles an hour, as now. WHO THE HECK IS CARO? She is Carolyn Kay, one tough, committed MBA from the bayou, whose first presidential vote was for Barry Goldwater and whose life story is worth the two-minute read. She devotes much of her breast-cancer-surviving energy to fending off what she sees as encroaching fascism. (‘When fascism comes to America,’ Sinclair Lewis wrote, ‘it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.’)
Don’t Sell Your Borealis August 2, 2006January 15, 2017 But first . . . THE MINIMUM WAGE PLOY Hezbollah nests its rockets in populated areas so the only way to shoot at them is to be seen as heartlessly shooting at civilians. The Republican Party plants its billionheir tax break in a bill to hike the minimum wage, so the only way for Democrats to oppose it is to be seen as heartlessly opposing the minimum wage hike: The New York Times July 31, 2006 “The two bills passed by the House last Friday and Saturday reflect a single Republican electoral strategy. Representatives want to appear to have accomplished something when they face voters during their five-week summer break, which starts today, and at the same time keep campaign donations flowing from special-interest constituents who are well aware that a great deal was left to do. One of the bills was a pension reform measure. The other was a grab bag that contains three main items: an extension of the expired tax credit for corporate research; a $2.10 an hour increase in the minimum wage, to be phased in over three years; and a multibillion-dollar estate-tax cut. That’s the deal House Republicans are really offering – a few more dollars for 6.6 million working Americans; billions more for some 8,000 of the wealthiest families. . . . “…It is cynical in the extreme. Extending the research tax credit is noncontroversial, yet pressing. A minimum wage increase is compelling – morally, politically and financially – but Republicans generally oppose it. And the estate-tax cut has already failed to pass the Senate twice this summer. So House Republicans linked it to the research credit and the minimum wage, hoping to flip a handful of senators from both parties who have voted against estate-tax cuts in the past. Democrats who vote against the estate tax cut, Republicans think, can be painted as voting against a higher minimum wage. . . . “…This is an attempt at extortion. There is no way to justify providing yet another enormous tax shelter to the nation’s wealthiest heirs in the face of huge budget deficits, growing income inequality and looming government obligations for Social Security and Medicare. . . .“ LEBANON – MORE PERSPECTIVES Mary Blonski: ‘I am extremely saddened by your one-sided point of view. There are violent extremists, blinded by religion on both sides. There are good, kind, and peaceful people on both sides as well.’ ☞ There are definitely good, kind, peaceful in both countries. But I don’t think you can equate the recent Israeli actions – pulling out of Gaza and Lebanon – with Hezbollah’s response. As for ‘violent extremists, blinded by religion,’ it sounds even-handed to say they’re on both sides – and who among us does not aspire to be even-handed? But I think equivalence here is a hard case to make. (Perhaps you are thinking of Israeli violinists.) The one thing we all can surely agree on is that it is a terrible tragedy for the Lebanese and Israelis. Jim Leightheiser: ‘The four views [you presented yesterday] all shared a common opinion on whose side is wearing the white hats. If you really do want to see a couple of other perspectives, here and here are two among many.’ ☞ They are worth reading – opposing views almost always are. But I note that the first, a CNN transcript, never mentioned the rockets being fired into Israel, only the two soldiers kidnapped to negotiate a prisoner exchange. And that the second, in making the point that by many definitions Israel and the U.S. have acted as terrorists, never mentioned these differences: Israel drops leaflets warning civilians to flee impending bombing; Hezbollah (and Hamas and Al-Qaeda) target civilians. When Israel kills civilians, they never post videos; they express profound – and I believe sincere – regret. Perhaps most poignant: If the Arabs put down their weapons today there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today there would be no more Israel (an insight, like these others, not original with me). The Lebanese are understandably furious with Israel and the U.S. But in a rational world (it’s hard to be rational when your child has been killed), they would be angrier still at Hezbollah for positioning their forces and weaponry in civilian centers and then firing rockets into Israel. Writes Charles Krauthammer in last Friday’s Washington Post: What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security? What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities – every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians – and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering? To hear the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world – governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats – has completely lost its moral bearings. The word that obviates all thinking and magically inverts victim into aggressor is “disproportionate,” as in the universally decried “disproportionate Israeli response.” When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel “proportionate” attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home islands into rubble and ruin. Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right — legal and moral — to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one’s security again. That’s what it took with Japan. Britain was never invaded by Germany in World War II. Did it respond to the Blitz and V-1 and V-2 rockets with “proportionate” aerial bombardment of Germany? Of course not. Churchill orchestrated the greatest air campaign and land invasion in history, which flattened and utterly destroyed Germany, killing untold innocent German women and children in the process. The perversity of today’s international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides. In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London Blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do. But it is a dual campaign. Israeli innocents must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians. Creating human shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty. On Wednesday CNN cameras showed destruction in Tyre. What does Israel have against Tyre and its inhabitants? Nothing. But the long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do? Leave untouched the launch sites that are deliberately placed in built-up areas? Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead it attacked dual-use infrastructure — bridges, roads, airport runways — and blockaded Lebanon’s ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah. Ten thousand Katyusha rockets are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more. Israel’s response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut? Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed. Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life? Writes Naomi Ragen, mother of an Israeli soldier: . . . Terrorists and their supporters have lost the right to complain about civilian casualties, since all they have done this entire war is target civilians. Every single one of the more than 2,500 rockets launched into Israel is launched into populated towns filled with women and children. Just today, another suicide belt meant to kill civilians in Israel was detonated harmlessly by our forces in Nablus. So, don’t cry to me about civilian casualties. Cry to those using your babies and wives and mothers; cry to those who store weapons in mosques, ambulances, hospitals and private homes. Cry to those launching deadly rockets from the backyards of your kindergartens and schools. Cry to the heartless men who love death, and who, however many of their troops or civilians die, consider themselves victorious as long as they can keep on firing rockets at our women and children. Save your sympathy for the mothers and sisters and girlfriends of our young soldiers who would rather be sitting in study halls learning Torah, but have no choice but to risk their precious lives – full of hope, goodness and endless potential – to wipe out the cancerous terrorist cells that threaten their people and all mankind. Make your choice, and save your tears. That terrorists have been unsuccessful in killing more of our women and children is due to our army, God and our prayers, not to any lack of motivation or intention on their part. If you hide behind your baby to shoot at my baby, you are responsible for getting children killed. You, and you alone. And now . . . DON’T SELL YOUR BOREALIS Ah, the irony. No pun intended. It seems that this one-time Canadian mining stock (which I don’t think actually ever mined anything, but how many Canadian mining stocks ever do?) – which we had hoped by now might have turned the world on its ear with its claimed amazing technological breakthroughs (the plane moved!) – may first actually make its mark as . . . a Canadian mining company. Or so one might conclude from yesterday’s press release, in which it is disclosed that an aeromagnetic survey was flown over the Borealis property (owned by its Roche Bay subsidiary). It now appears as if the company’s monster iron ore deposit (conveniently located near the surface and just three miles from a potential deep water port) may be six times larger than previously thought – enough to deliver 30 million tons of ore annually for 40 years. According to the company, this June, 2006, survey was flown at a height of 80 meters, compared with the last one that was done, in the 1970’s, from a height of 200 meters; and the ‘grid’ this survey mapped – presumably with more accurate instrumentation than three decades ago – was ten times as detailed. Chief Operating Officer, Danie Botes, says, “Now our priority is to commence drilling to establish what it is we are actually sitting on in terms of size, grade and level of impurities. At present we only have the results of very limited drilling that took place in the 1980’s, consisting of 16 drill holes sunk into the Eastern orebodies, with only one hole testing depth down to 315 metres into the C orebody, and still in ore. Metallurgical testwork showed that the ore could be easily upgraded to a 67.3% Fe product (ground to -325 mesh) or to a 71.2% Fe product (ground to -400 mesh), using crushing and magnetic separation only, without the requirement for flotation. But it is essential we confirm this historical data with further drilling and metallurgical testwork to reduce the current level of uncertainty.’ It will be at least four or five years before actual ships are filling up with actual iron ore and providing the company with actual money (though as previously reported, an institutional investor has provided $2.75 million to fund continued development). And who knows whether there will be any market for iron ore by then – we may have bombed each other back to the Stone Age (buy flint!) – or what obstacles the Canadian government might have erected to preserve the eagles or plovers or snails that may nest there. But there is a chance that owning one of the world’s largest, most accessible iron ore deposits is worth something. And as Borealis shareholders, each of our 5 million shares – bought only with money we can truly afford to lose, because we really may! – owns the equivalent of a little more than one RCHBF share. Tuesday, the asking price for RCHBF shares was $10, and for BOREF, $9 – so in effect, buying BOREF, you got $10 of RCHBF for $9, and all the other Borealis subsidiaries ‘free.’) I read the foregoing to Charles, who responded: ‘People are going to start thinking you’re crazy.’ Well, there is that risk. Tomorrow: More Good Green News
Lebanon August 1, 2006March 4, 2017 LEBANON – FOUR PERSPECTIVES I don’t claim they adequately present the Hezbollah/Hamas point of view – just that they struck me as worth reading: First, from the Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times, Ahmed Jarallah, July 16, 2006: PEOPLE of Arab countries, especially the Lebanese and Palestinians, have been held hostage for a long time in the name of “resisting Israel.” Arab governments have been caught between political obligations and public opinion leading to more corruption in politics and economics. Forgetting the interests of their own countries, the Hamas Movement and Hezbollah have gone to the extent of representing the interests of Iran and Syrian in their countries. These organizations have become the representatives of Syria and Iran without worrying about the consequences of their action. [ . . . ] Unfortunately we must admit that in such a war the only way to get rid of “these irregular phenomena” is what Israel is doing. The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community. Second, this perspective from a group called the Lebanese Foundation for Peace: Sunday, July 16, 2006 Thank You Israel By Brigitte Gabriel For the millions of Christian Lebanese, driven out of our homeland, “Thank you Israel,” is the sentiment echoing from around the world. The Lebanese Foundation for Peace, an international group of Lebanese Christians, made the following statement in a press release to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert concerning the latest Israeli attacks against Hezbollah: “We urge you to hit them hard and destroy their terror infrastructure. It is not [only] Israel who is fed up with this situation, but the majority of the silent Lebanese in Lebanon who are fed up with Hezbollah and are powerless to do anything out of fear of terror retaliation.” Their statement continues, “On behalf of thousands of Lebanese, we ask you to open the doors of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport to thousands of volunteers in the Diaspora willing to bear arms and liberate their homeland from [Islamic] fundamentalism. We ask you for support, facilitation and logistics in order to win this struggle and achieve together the same objectives: Peace and Security for Lebanon and Israel and our future generations to come.” The once dominant Lebanese Christians responsible for giving the world “the Paris of the Middle East” as Lebanon used to be known, have been killed, massacred, driven out of their homes and scattered around the world as radical Islam declared its holy war in the 70s and took hold of the country. They voice an opinion that they and Israel have learned from personal experience, which is now belatedly being discovered by the rest of the world. While the world protected the PLO withdrawing from Lebanon in 1983 with Israel hot on their heels, another more volatile and religiously idealistic organization was being born: Hezbollah, “the Party of God,” founded by Ayatollah Khomeini and financed by Iran. It was Hezbollah who blew up the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in October, 1983 killing 241 Americans and 67 French paratroopers that same day. President Reagan ordered U.S. Multilateral Force units to withdraw and closed the books on the marine massacre and US involvement in Lebanon February 1984. The civilized world, which erroneously vilified the Christians and Israel back then and continues to vilify Israel now, was not paying attention. While America and the rest of the world were concerned about the Israeli / PLO problem, terrorist regimes in Syria and Iran fanned Islamic radicalism in Lebanon and around the world. Hezbollah’s Shiite extremists began multiplying like proverbial rabbits out-producing moderate Sunnis and Christians. Twenty-five years later they have produced enough people to vote themselves into 24 seats in the [128-seat] Lebanese parliament. Since the Israeli pull out in 2000, Lebanon has become a terrorist base completely run and controlled by Syria with its puppet Lebanese President Lahood and the Hezbollah “state within a state.” The Lebanese army has less than 10,000 military troops. Hezbollah has over 4,000 trained militia forces and there are approximately 700 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. So why can’t the army do the job? Because the majority of Lebanese Muslims making up the army will split and unite along religious lines with the Islamic forces just like what happened in 1976 at the start of the Lebanese civil war. It all boils down to a war of Islamic Jihad ideology vs. Judeo Christian Westernism. Muslims who are now the majority of Lebanon’s population support Hezbollah because they are part of the Islamic Ummah-the nation. This is the taboo subject everyone is trying to avoid. The latest attacks on Israel have been orchestrated by Iran and Syria driven by two different interests. Syria considers Lebanon a part of “greater” Syria. Young Syrian President Assad and his Ba’athist military intelligence henchmen in Damascus are using this latest eruption of violence to prove to the Lebanese that they need the Syrian presence to protect them from the Israeli aggression and to stabilize the country. Iran is conveniently using its Lebanese puppet army Hezbollah, to distract the attention of world leaders meeting at the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, from its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Apocalyptic Iranian President Ahmadinejad and the ruling Mullah clerics in Tehran want to assert hegemony in the Islamic world under the banner of Shia Mahdist madness. Ahmadinejad wants to seal his place as top Jihadist for Allah by make good his promise to “wipe Israel off the map. No matter how much the west avoids facing the reality of Islamic extremism of the Middle East, the west cannot hide from the fact that the same Hamas and Hezbollah that Israel is fighting over there, are of the same radical Islamic ideology that has fomented carnage and death through terrorism that America and the world are fighting. This is the same Hezbollah that Iran is threatening to unleash in America with suicide bomb attacks if America tries to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. They have cells in over 10 cities in the United States. Hamas, has the largest terrorist infrastructure on American soil. This is what happens when you turn a blind eye to evil for decades, hoping it will go away. Sheik Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, is an Iranian agent. He is not a free actor in this play. He has been involved in terrorism for over 25 years. Iran with its Islamic vision for a Shia Middle East now has its agents, troops and money in Gaza in the Palestinian territories,Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Behind this is this vision that drives the Iranian President Ahmadinejad who believes he is Allah’s “tool and facilitator” bringing the end of the world as we know it and the ushering in of the era of the Mahdi. He has a blind messianic belief in the Shiite tradition of the 12th or “hidden” Islamic savior who will emerge from a well in the holy city of Qum in Iran after global chaos, catastrophes and mass deaths and establish the era of Islamic Justice and everlasting peace. President Ahmadinejad has refused so far to respond to proposals from the U.S., EU, Russia and China on the UN Security Council to cease Iran’s relentless quest for nuclear enrichment and weapons development program until August 22nd. Why August 22nd? Because August 22nd, coincides with the Islamic date of Rajab 28, the day the great Salah El-Din conquered Jerusalem. Ahmadinejad’s extremists ideology in triggering Armageddon gives great concerns to the intelligence community. At this point the civilized world must unite in fighting the same enemies plaguing Israel and the world with terrorism. We need to stop analyzing the enemies’ differences as Sunni-Hamas or Shiite-Hezbollah, and start understanding that their common bond in their fight against us is radical Islam. ☞ The ‘multiplying like rabbits’ phrase in the ninth paragraph strikes me as unfortunate – and a majority (if indeed Lebanon’s population is now majority Muslim) is no less a majority because it was once a minority. But even so. Third, this from a Larry Miller screed (often misattributed, by me, among others, to Dennis Miller), that has been circling the Internet since April 2002: I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need. Here we go: The Palestinians want their own country. There’s just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It’s a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years Like “Wiccan,” “Palestinian” sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no ‘Palestinians” then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no “Palestinians” then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the ‘Palestinians,” weeping for their deep bond with their lost “land” and “nation.” [ . . . ] Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five Million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, Everyone will be pals. Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding. My friend Kevin Rooney made a gorgeous point the other day: just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting. No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the Worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death. Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations in Iraq and others, it’s in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can’t be much harder than stabilizing a Roomful of supermodels who’ve just had their drugs taken away. However, in any big-picture strategy, there’s always a danger of losing moral weight. We’ve already lost some. After September 11 our president told us and he world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint. If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. Finally, fourth, this heartrending analysis: The First War, All Over Again Daniel Gordis July 21, 2006 This is a different kind of war, and an old kind of war. In the last war, when they blew up buses and restaurants and sidewalks and cafes, Israelis were enraged, apoplectic with anger. This time, it’s different. Rage has given way to sadness. Disbelief has given way to recognition. Because we’ve been here before. Because we’d once believed we wouldn’t be back here again. And because we know why this war is happening. A rocket hit Haifa in the first days of the war, killing no one, but injuring a number of people. It also tore the face off an apartment building, leaving the apartments inside eerily exposed, naked, for all to gaze into. That small block of Haifa, with its shattered shell of a building, rubble all along the street, citizens dazed as they wandered about looking at it all, appeared to be exactly what it was — a war zone. And yet, the people in the street stayed near their homes, going nowhere. The newscaster asked them why they didn’t go somewhere else, where it might be safer. One man answered with statistics. “Why leave now? We’ve already been hit. The chances of us being hit again are one in a million.” To which another man responded almost with outrage. “What do numbers have to do with it?” he asked. And then, he turned to the camera, almost screaming, pointed to the broken building, and said, “This is our home. Mi-po ani lo zaz. From here, I am not budging.” And he repeated his refrain over and over again. “This is my home. And from here, I am not budging.” “Mi-po ani lo zaz.” Israelis understand what this is. This is a war over our homes. Over our homes in the north, for now, but eventually, as the rockets get better and larger, all of our homes. This is not about the territories. This is not about the “occupation.” This is not about creating a Palestinian State. This is about whether there will be a state called Israel. Sixty years after Arab nations greeted the UN resolution on November 29 1947 with a declaration of war, nothing much has changed. They attacked this time for the same reason that they did sixty years ago. At first, it was the Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians. We put a stop to that in 1949, 1956, 1967 and 1973. Then it was the Palestinians, who bamboozled the world (and many of us Israelis) into believing that they just wanted a State, and that their terror was simply a way of forcing us to make one possible. We fought the terror in 1982 (Lebanon), 1987 (Intifada) and even after Camp David and Oslo, once again in 2000-2005 (the Terror War). And then, we actually tried to make the State happen. We got out of Lebanon to put an end to that conflict. And even more momentous, we got out of Gaza, hoping that they’d start to build something. And now, it’s Hezbollah. Or more accurately, Syria. Or to be more precise, Iran. What’s Iran’s beef with Israel? Territory it lost? It didn’t lose any. And does anyone really believe that Iran cares one whit about the Palestinians and their state? That’s not the reason. We know it, and so do they. Now, the bitter reality of which Israel’s right wing had warned about all along is beginning to settle in. It is not lost on virtually any Israelis that the two primary fronts on which this war is being conducted are precisely the two fronts from which we withdrew to internationally recognized borders. We withdrew from Gaza, despite all the internal objections, hoping to move Palestinian statehood — and peace — one step closer. But all we got in return was the election of Hamas, and a barrage of more than 800 Qassams that they refused to end. And then they stole Gilad Shalit. Not from Gaza. Not from some contested no man’s land. From inside the internationally recognized borders of Israel. As if to make sure that we got the point — “There is no place that you’re safe. There is no place to which we won’t take this war. You can’t stay here.” Because as much as we have wanted to believe otherwise, they have no interest in building their homeland. They only care about destroying ours. Six years ago we pulled out of Lebanon. Same story. In defiance of the UN’s resolution 1559, Hizbollah armed itself to the teeth, and as we watched and did nothing, accumulated more than 10,000 rockets. And dug itself into the mountains. And established itself in Beirut, effectively using the entire Lebanese population as human shields. And, assuming that there was little that we could or would do, it attacked on June 12, killing eight soldiers, and stealing Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Not from Southern Lebanon. Not from Har Dov, a tiny hilltop that’s still contested. But from inside Israel. Inside a line that no one contests. Unless, of course, they contest the idea of the whole enterprise. Which they do. And which is precisely the point. And which is why this incredibly divided and divisive society has rallied so monolithically around a Prime Minister who until last week wasn’t terribly popular, and around a war that may or may not accomplish all its military objectives. It explains why, even as the air raid sirens go off across the country, and may eventually start their wail in Tel Aviv, too, as people dash across streets, panicked, trying to find the nearest bomb shelter, no one complains about the government. No one’s complaining about the amount of time it’s taking the air force to put a stop to this. It explains why all over this city, advertisements on bus stops have been replaced with a photo of an Israeli flag and the phrase Chazak Ve-ematz — “be strong and resolute” (Moses’ words to Joshua in Deut. 31:7). [I’ve posted it at www.danielgordis.org/Site/Site_Photos.asp if you want to see what it looks like.] Even the people who’ve lost family members, who are interviewed while still overwrought with grief, have no complaints about the government or the army. “Finish this job,” they effectively say. “We’ll stick it out.” But behind the defiance lies sadness, a tired and experienced renewed loss of optimism, a wondering if it will ever, ever end. Because we know what they want. It’s not the Golan Heights. It’s not the West Bank. And it’s not a State. We know what they want, and we know why they want it. On TV the other night, one of the news shows started off with a brief comedic episode. It showed two guys, looking and acting Israeli to the hilt. One of them was speaking in a heavy caricatured Sephardic North African accident, spitting toothpicks as he carried on, telling his friend, over and over and over, “mi-po ani lo zaz. This is the only place where Jews can be safe, he insisted. This is the place we must stay. From here, I’m not moving.” And then the camera panned back, until gradually, you realized that the background you were staring at was the London Bridge, and the Tower of London. It would have been funny, if it weren’t so sad. It’s sad, because deep down, people are starting to wonder. Would going there be the only way to get beyond their hate? We got out of Lebanon. We left Gaza. Olmert was elected after he openly declared his intention to give back the majority of the West Bank. But without intending to, we called their bluff. And now we know: the issue isn’t their statehood. It’s ours. The sadness comes from the clarity. We can sign peace treaties, and withdraw, and arm ourselves. But nothing’s enough. You sign a treaty with Egypt, but then Syria takes over Lebanon and uses Hezbollah as its proxy. You get peace with Jordan, but Iran joins the fray. You learn to defend your border, so they attack you from well within their countries. It feels relentless, because it is. It feels like it never ends, because it doesn’t. It doesn’t feel like the seventh war. It feels like a continuation of the first. Could it be that we’re right back where we started? Maybe that’s why nobody I know actually laughed at the Tower of London skit. Is this like the first war, because we could win it and still not have security? What if, as even the army says is likely, Hezbollah is left wounded but still intact at the end? What, we just wait until they decide to lob more missiles at Haifa, or Safed, or even Tel Aviv? Bomb shelters will once again be part of the reality of Israeli kids? Have we returned to the late 40’s and 1950’s, when border towns had to live with the ongoing dread that Fedayeen would sneak across the border and kill people? Except that now, in an era of missiles, most of the country is a border town. This is like the first war because Israeli citizens, in the middle of the country, are getting killed by a foreign “army.” In 1956, 1967 and even in 1973, we mostly took the war to the border. And then to their territory. Israel’s civilian population centers, even in those horrible conflagrations, were left more or less intact. But not in 1948, and not this time. Haifa is the front. Safed is the front. Nazarath is the front. And they’re all burying people. Adults, and children. Jews, and Israeli Arabs. And Tel Aviv, if you believe Nasrallah, may well be next. And it’s like the old wars because all our hopes to the contrary notwithstanding, the casualties are mounting. Just days after the Israeli pundits were discussing whether or not a limited ground incursion might be necessary, whether or not the air force could do this on its own, there are troops on the ground in Lebanon. Thousands of soldiers, the papers say this morning. And in the few days since they’ve gone in, kids have been coming back in body bags. These are elite units, and though we’re told that they’re having some successes in finding and destroying the bunkers built into the mountain, they’re encountering heavy resistance. And not all of them are making it home. We’ve been here before, too. We’d thought we were done with that. For the first few days of this new war, Israelis were relieved to see the footage of a hundred Israeli planes over Lebanon at any one point. We’d show them that they’d miscalculated. We’d put a stop to this. We’d get our stolen boys back. A decisive victory, like in days of old. With fewer casualties on our side. But well into the second week of the war, we don’t have our boys back. And soldiers are dying, and coming home without legs. And the victory hasn’t been decisive. And Israeli cities are still being shelled, and traumatized Israeli kids by the thousands are still sleeping in bomb shelters. Just like in the first war. And it’s like the first war because the news is broadcasting photos of lines of Arab refugees fleeing the fighting in Beirut, heading north, or to Syria. Israeli TV is showing footage of a former city that looks much more like Dresden than Beirut. There are probably some Israelis who couldn’t care less, but the ones that I talk to, work with and share a neighborhood with, do care. They understand that we probably have no choice, for Hezbollah has decided to use Beirut as its human shield, and for years and years, Lebanon did nothing to stop them. Or even to try. And we have no choice but to survive. But the Israelis I talk to all day long are still saddened by the miles-long lines of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Lebanese refugees, fleeing their homes and rubble filled neighborhoods with white flags hovering outside their cars even as Israeli war planes roar overhead. Simply on a human level, we know that the suffering is incalculable. That, too, looks like that old black and white footage from the War of Independence. And as a problem for Israel, we know, Arab refugees don’t disappear. They attack, we respond, they flee. And then the problem becomes ours. And even though Jerusalem is, so far, beyond the reach of the rockets, even here, the air has started to take on a war-like feel. A colleague of mine, in her 40’s, cancelled a meeting yesterday because her real-estate agent husband was just called up and sent to the Egyptian border. A friend I met later in the afternoon cut a meeting short because his son was getting a few hours off. The kid hasn’t even finished basic training, but was sent out to Samaria to guard an outpost so that more experienced kids could get sent to the front. And we were going to try to get together with other friends this morning, but they can’t. Their twenty year old son got called up from his yeshiva, and sent to south of Hebron, and they’re going to try to get out there to bring him some food for Shabbat. And our daughter won’t be home for Shabbat — she’s got guard duty on base. With the other two kids away for the summer, we’re home by ourselves. The house feels empty, hollow. Like the towns in the north. And so it goes. Another all out war, when it could have been different. If they’d wanted something else. But they don’t. Not the Iranians, not the civilians in Syria interviewed on CNN who spoke with admiration of Nasrallah, not the Palestinians on the West Bank who’ve posted his picture everywhere, and not even the Israeli Arabs in Nazareth who, from the depths of their mourning, blame Israel and not Nasrallah for the loss of their children. So it’s the seventh war (Or the eighth, if you count the War of Attrition. Or the ninth, if you count the first Intifada). And the first war. It’s all the wars. They’re all the same, in the end, because we can’t afford to lose. We can’t afford to lose, so we won’t. More decisively or less, with more destruction of Lebanon or less, sooner or later, we’ll win it. We have to. The whole enterprise is at stake. It’s the seventh war, or the eighth. And the first. When the 1973 Yom Kippur War was at its height, Yehoram Gaon went to the front and sang the now famous lyrics, Ani mavti’ach lach — “I promise you, my little girl, that this will be the last war.” They never play that song anymore. Because no one believes it. There will be no last war. It’s the eighth war, or the ninth. But it isn’t the last war. It’s the first war, all over again. We’ve got this war for the same reason that we had all the others. We have this war for the same reason that people in Haifa are still saying “mi-po ani lo zaz.” We got this war for the same reason that we got the first, and the second. We know why they attacked then. And we know why they’re still attacking. And we’re determined to hold on for the same reason that they’re so determined never to stop. There’s one reason, and one reason only: The Jewish People have nowhere else to go. ☞ One longs for a grand solution – the Saudis buy all the homes American real estate speculators are now stuck trying to flip and give them to the Israelis, who move their talents and science and culture here, where, God bless America, they are appreciated. The residential real estate collapse is averted and world peace is snatched from the jaws of World War III. I tried this decades ago, suggesting that Mexico sell the largely uninhabited southern Baja peninsula to the Saudis – I worked out a price and everything – to solve what was then the Mexican debt crisis, with the Saudis then turning around and donating that land for a Palestinian (or was it a Jewish?) state to solve the Middle East mess. Turns out, there are some sensibilities involved that make this unrealistic. (Mexico, for one, was not thrilled.) The proposal was meant to be funny – which it could be at the time, because the Mideast was between wars. It’s impossible to be funny now. The suffering of innocent Lebanese and innocent Israelis is too sad for words; the future, too scary.
Walmart Goes Green July 31, 2006January 15, 2017 But first . . . THE OTHER SIDE Osborne Lytle: ‘I agree with you about Global warming, but I expect better from our side (liberals). When you say that you will give ‘the other side’ and quote Peter Doran as agreeing with you it sounds false and rather Republican.’ ☞ Well, yes, but that was sort of the point: there really is no credible other side – and the folks who are cited as representing it, like Peter Doran, are being misrepresented. If it seems extreme to suggest ‘there really is no credible other side,’ you may find this interesting. One man’s impressive effort to find out. The whole thing is worth reading, but here are a few key paragraphs: . . . What I expected to find was a brou-ha-ha. I thought that Hansen, employed by NASA, would tell me in the nicest terms how those folks at NOAA had it wrong. Or vice versa. What I found is that the scientific fight over global warming turns out to be a gross mismatch. While I don’t know the exact proportions, to say that there are one thousand scientists on one side for every one on the other would appear a close approximation. The side on which “our” five scientists fall says that Global Warming is real, is mostly man-made, is accelerating, and is the cause for climate changes already observable. This consensus also holds that, in the main, Al Gore’s movie has it about right. Associated Press science reporter Seth Borenstein made the front page in newspapers all over the country this week in covering that point in Scientists OK Gore’s Movie for Accuracy. . . . I note that the U.S. Surgeon General released an assessment this week concluding there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke. I also note that some of the websites and scientists upholding the minority view on global warming also held the view that secondhand smoke is not an environmental health problem. It becomes clearer to me that a blending of science and industrial advocacy dominates one side of these debates. But this does not stop those who’ve already made up their minds on global warming to continue to believe as they have. In response to our Lavender Room exercise one of our forum regulars had the courage to write, “I have made up my mind that global warming is bullshit regardless of what data is presented to me.” Alarming to me is that this posture appears to extend to high offices of government. . . . If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have. SHINE SUNLIGHT ON SUNSET There is a move afoot to create a Sunset Commission, by which federal programs and regulations – but not corporate tax breaks! – could be terminated by a Presidentially-appointed panel unless Congress took specific action to continue them. Last year, Rolling Stone reported on three sentences buried in the President’s 2,000-page budget requesting this. Now come bills in the House and Senate designed to enact it. Consider this analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . . . (‘Successful commissions traditionally are formed to operate in a bipartisan fashion. The pending sunset-commission proposals, in contrast, would make it possible for program terminations and cuts to be implemented on a strictly partisan basis, even if they do not have enough support to be enacted under normal procedures.’) . . . and click here if you are concerned it may be a bad idea. And now . . . SOME GOOD NEWS FOR A CHANGE: WALMART GOES GREEN An engrossing and highly encouraging business story. As both a passenger of Spaceship Earth and a shareholder of WMT, I’m encouraged! Gee, if the Walmarts of the world put their minds to it . . . Tomorrow (which you can click today): Lebanon
The Other Side of the Debate July 28, 2006March 4, 2017 AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH One of the scientists widely cited as being on the other side of the global warming issue is Peter Doran, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. See? The jury’s still out. (And why would the administration listen to the scientific community anyway? Scientists fail to see the importance of teaching creationism in science class. Scientists murder microscopic embryos in their quest to cure Parkinson’s and paralysis. Scientists are Democrats.) (See, tellingly: ‘SCIENCE FRICTION: The growing – and dangerous – divide between scientists and the GOP.’) So in the interest of presenting both sides of the ‘debate,’ let’s give a little space to Professor Doran, who writes in yesterday’s New York Times: Our results have been misused as ‘evidence’ against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear and by Ann Coulter in her latest book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Search my name on the Web, and you will find pages of links to everything from climate discussion groups to Senate policy committee documents – all citing my 2002 study as reason to doubt that the earth is warming. One recent Web column even put words in my mouth. I have never said that ‘the unexpected colder climate in Antarctica may possibly be signaling a lessening of the current global warming cycle.’ I have never thought such a thing either. . . . I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming. ☞ It took an extra 30 or so years for the tobacco-industry-manufactured scientific ‘debate’ over smoking to be resolved. Millions died prematurely who might have chosen not to smoke if the debate had not been intentionally muddied for so long. The problem is, we may not have 30 years to start doing something about global climate change. People – even our President, who says ‘probably not’ when asked whether he’ll see the movie – ought to allow for the possibility that this global emergency is real. If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have. ANOTHER SCARY REAL ESTATE FACTOID According to Steven Krystofiak, President of the fledgling Mortgage Broker Association for Responsible Lending, a recent sample of 100 ‘stated income’ loans which were compared to IRS records (which is allowed when the lender has a signed IRS form 4506, but hardly ever done) found that in 90% of the cases, income had been exaggerated by 5% or more – and that in nearly 60% of the cases, it had been exaggerated by more than 50%. ‘These results,’ concludes Krystofiak’s source (page 15), ‘suggest that the ‘stated income’ loan deserves the nickname used by many in the industry, the ‘liar’s loan.’ ‘ Krystofiak’s organization is quite small – well, just three members so far, including him – because let’s face it: mortgage brokers are in business to broker mortgages, not discourage them. (Similarly small groups include On-Line Viagra Marketers United Against Spam and Garage Owners for Taking Full Responsibility When Your Car Is Looted or Damaged While In Our Care.) But the practice he is trying to highlight does seem to merit concern. One more reason residential housing may more and more become ‘a buyer’s market’ in the months ahead. LEBANON It is all so tragic and ominous, one barely knows where to begin. Monday, I’ll post some of the heart-felt and thought-provoking analyses I’ve received, for your comment.
Hot and Bothered July 27, 2006March 4, 2017 A GRAND TIME “The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans,’ reports the New York Times – ‘specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others. …[S]ix I.R.S. estate tax lawyers whose jobs are likely to be eliminated said in interviews that the cuts were just the latest moves behind the scenes at the I.R.S. to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits. …” BUT WARM From the blog of sports columnist Peter King at SI.com: Wherever you are, have you noticed the weird weather patterns in the last few months? Unending, intense rain. High winds. It was in the midst of a 12th day of measurable rain in a 14-day period that I saw An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore movie about global warming. This is the most apolitical piece of advice I could ever give you, because I realize Al Gore is not popular with all of you. And I really don’t care very much about Gore weaving details of his personal life into the global-warming lecture. But you should see this movie and judge the facts for yourself. What’s happening out here is no isolated occurrence. It’s going to keep happening and it’s going to get worse. Facts are facts. And we all need to do something about this phenomenon of the Earth heating up and the polar ice caps melting. This is not exactly the venue to warn the world about global warming, but all you football junkies readying for your fantasy drafts should do one real-world thing in the next couple of weeks: take two hours to see this movie. I’m not saying you’ll be glad you did, because it’s going to slap you around mentally a bit. But it’s something you need to see. You don’t want to wake up in 15 years with the Earth permanently damaged and huge portions of the Earth’s surface under water, forever. If they made a movie about YOUR HOUSE, would you go see it? Well, they have. LEVERAGE WORKS BOTH WAYS Andrew Long: “You’ve understated the pain that flippers feel because you haven’t taken the leverage into account. Your hypothetical flipper (15.7% loss) is actually facing a 62.8% loss (assuming a 75% mortgage) Leverage is great when assets appreciate but sucks when their value declines.” ☞ Quite true. If housing prices drop 20%, many speculators will be caught losing 100%, not 20%, of their investments.
The Dog That Moos July 26, 2006March 4, 2017 THE DOG THAT MOOS This site – and the five moo-ing canine TV commercials it leads to – is worth a few minutes of your morning . . . whether because you need to be enlightened (which I highly doubt) or because you know someone who does (possible) or because it’s interesting to consider whether this ad campaign, running in Colorado Springs, will be effective. (Or simply because it’s fun to hear a dog moo.) After the animated clip, you’ll find a small ‘Norman on TV’ link at the bottom of the screen that takes you to the five clickable TV commercials. BEING STUPID IS APPARENTLY A CHOICE ALSO From Sunday’s Columbus Dispatch: I think homosexuality is a lifestyle, it’s a choice, and that lifestyle can be changed. I think it is a transgression against God’s law, God’s will. – Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, running for Governor ☞ In other words, if God had meant for men to fly, He would have given them wings; and if he had meant for them to be gay, He would have wired them to be attracted to people of the same sex. Oh, wait. He did. (He also wired some people – perhaps Ken Blackwell – to fall close enough to the middle of the sexual orientation spectrum that, for them, it really can be a choice how to lead their lives. They deserve respect and equal rights, too. But in my experience, at least, most of us are wired to be essentially or entirely straight or gay.) 34 DEMOCRATS For those of us who believe dogs that moo should have rights to pursue happiness equal to the rights of any other dogs (if they pay their taxes and don’t pee on the sidewalk), there was good news last week. Not the defeat of Ralph Reed (although that, certainly, too) – the defeat of yet another attempt to write discrimination into the United States Constitution, this time in the House of Representatives. Voting against the Republicans to defeat the Federal Anti-Marriage Amendment were 159 Democrats. Voting to pass it were 34 Democrats. Those 34 Democrats fall into two groups: Those who actually believe granting Charles and me equal Social Security benefits, inheritance rights, and such, will somehow threaten their own marriages. Those who know it won’t – who know that encouraging stable relationships discourages promiscuity and strengthens the social fabric – but who feel they have to vote this way because their constituents would fire them if they didn’t. With Group #1, we simply need to have continued respectful conversations. With time, attitudes are changing. I’m not saying that to know us is to love us – Charles can be demanding and I drive people crazy asking them for money – but in general, when you get to know gay couples, especially gay couples who have been caring for each other for ten or twenty or thirty years – sometimes longer and more faithfully than even you and your own spouse may have done – you come to see this as harmless or even good. And as Americans, you are proud our country allows people to pursue happiness in almost any way they choose, so long as it does not impinge on the rights of others. With Group #2, we need to recognize that pragmatism is part of getting things done. Especially because those 34 were not needed to defeat the Amendment, should we really be too upset by their votes? Isn’t it more important to take back the House of Representatives than to defeat the Amendment by an even wider margin (much as I would have liked to see that)? The whole point of the House vote, after all – since the Amendment was already dead, having gone down in the Senate – was nothing more than Republican political gain. The reasons the Republicans scheduled it were three, I think, and only three: Stoke the Republican base, who agree with Ken Blackwell (who would have been quoting Ephesians – ‘Slaves, obey thy masters’ – in an earlier day). Defeat incumbent Democrats by turning their ‘pro-gay marriage’ votes into attack ads in October. Deflect attention from the soon-to-be $10 trillion National Debt ($8 trillion of it racked up under Reagan, Bush and Bush) and stem cell research and Katrina and global warming and corruption and torture and our having weakened our Armed Forces and turned most of the world against us – and on and on and on and on. THIS SATURDAY If your attention has not been deflected, click here to find or host an event Saturday.