Haaretz - Israel News

Danny Rubinstein correctly assesses the Palestinian view of Israel's pre-emptive surrender of Gaza.

...the disengagement is perceived in Gaza and the West Bank as a great victory. The Israeli explanations that it is a 'disengagement' and not a withdrawal, and certainly not a retreat, do not interest the Palestinians. As far as they are concerned, the army is going to quit the entire Gaza Strip and the State of Israel will be uprooting the settlements. Throughout all the years of the peace process, that has never happened. All the complicated negotiations, all the summits and all the diplomatic talks never achieved for the Palestinians what the armed struggle and resistance achieved: a disengagement.

If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits

More from the socialist utopia that is Europe.

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing 'sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners -- who must pay tax and employee health insurance -- were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her 'profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job -- including in the sex industry -- or lose her unemployment benefit.

Why Democracy Is a Necessary But Insufficient Ingredient for a Peaceful Neighbor

The Jerusalem Post reports on the election results in Gaza.

The Islamic group Hamas won an overwhelming victory in local elections in 10 Gaza towns, election officials said Friday, in a setback for the Fatah Party of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

While the results may be a protest against the massive corruption in the Fatah party, it still put in power Hamas. This just heightens my belief that democracy is a necessary but insufficient condition for a peaceful, free country.

Iraqi Scientist Discusses A-Bomb Effort

The AP has an article Iraqi Scientist Discusses A-Bomb Effort

An Iraqi scientist has written a book in which he describes being taken to see Saddam Hussein in 1981, after 18 months in jail, and being instructed by him to build an atomic bomb.

'By the end of 1990, about 8,000 people were involved directly or indirectly in the nuclear program,' said the scientist, Jaffar al-Jaffar, at a news conference on Thursday announcing the publication of his book in Norway, titled 'Oppdraget,' or 'The Assignment.'

He repeated assertions that the program would have succeeded in developing atomic weapons in the early 1990's had Iraq not invaded Kuwait in 1990, prompting an American-led coalition to drive Iraq's forces back.

'We were three years away, give or take a year,' said Mr. Jaffar, who fled Iraq during the American-led invasion in 2003. In the book, Mr. Jaffar said Iraq did not have an atomic weapons program after 1991.

Iran and the bomb 3

Read on about the current projected state of nuclear weapons in Iran.

Mossad chief Meir Dagan warned yesterday that by the end of this year, Iran will have reached the point of no return in its technology for manufacturing nuclear bombs. Three to four years later, he told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the Iranians will be able to build a nuclear bomb.

The Muslims in France

Thomas Friedman has an interesting observation in an otherwise forgettable article.

I spent Friday morning interviewing two 18-year-old French Muslim girls in the Paris immigrant district of St.-Ouen. (It is about a mile from the school where in March 2003 a French Muslim girl, who had refused the veil and rebuffed the advances of a Muslim boy, was thrown into a garbage can by three Muslim teenagers, who then tossed lighted cigarette butts into the can and closed the lid.)

Both girls I interviewed wore veils and one also wore a full Afghan-like head-to-toe covering; one was of Egyptian parents, the other of Tunisian parents, but both were born and raised in France. What did I learn from them? That they got all their news from Al Jazeera TV, because they did not believe French TV, that the person they admired most in the world was Osama bin Laden, because he was defending Islam, that suicide 'martyrdom' was justified because there was no greater glory than dying in defense of Islam, that they saw themselves as Muslims first and French citizens last, and that all their friends felt pretty much the same.

We were not in Kabul. We were standing outside their French public high school - a short ride from the Eiffel Tower.

QOTD: What Communism Is Really All About

QOTD from In Search of the Perfect System by Howard Jonas.

Most of my teachers (many of whom had gone into education to avoid the draft) were left wing politically. Under their guidance I began reading the tracts of the left: Das Kapital, The Manifesto, The Little Red Book. Guess what? It was all nonsense. Kill all the rich guys. Then set up a dictatorship of the proletariat. Now all the little guys slave for you, while you live in the rich guy's house and tell the starving peasants about social justice.

The deadly threat of a nuclear Iran

Excellent update to the nuclear situation in Iran. Although not the point of the article, this quote by Douglas Davis hits a home run.

The fatal mistake that the European negotiators appear to have made is to project their own values on to Iran's leaders, assuming that revolutionary mullahs share the aspirations and impulses of rational decision-makers in the West (would it ever occur to any Western leader to send waves of children running through minefields, as Iranian children did in the Iran-Iraq war, in order to clear the danger?).

Top Ten Arab and Iranian Conspiracy Theories Ending 2004

Top Ten Arab and Iranian Conspiracy Theories Ending 2004 by Steve Salinsky with MEMRI

The following top ten list represents conspiracies which were published in the Arab and Iranian media during the last months of 2004.

10) U.S. and Zionist Control of Al-Jazeera
9) Zionists Spreading Diseases Amongst Arabs
8) Iran Accuses Al-Zarqawi of Working for Jordan
7) Jews Were Behind the September 1st-3rd Chechen Beslan School Attack
6) Israel Stealing Body Parts of Palestinian Children
5) Jews Tamper with The Koran
4) U.S. To Invade Pakistan and Annihilate Muslims
3) U.S./Jews Behind the October 7th Taba Attacks in Egypt
2) Israel Killed Yasser Arafat
1) U.S. Soldiers Stealing Organs from Iraqis

The American Trade Deficit

Arthur Laffer addresses the hype over the trade deficit. You learn something new every day.

Just because the United States has its largest trade deficit ever doesn't mean that we're living beyond our means. Far from it. In fact, the characterization of the U.S. as a land of chronic overspenders, hellbent on selling themselves into global servitude doesn't make sense at all. And once the over-consumption model is put into question every policy remedy based on the presumption of squander looks pretty weak.

In an era of floating exchange rates the trade deficit (or more appropriately, the current account deficit) is one and the same as the capital surplus. The only way the U.S. can have a trade deficit amounting to 5.6% of GDP is if foreigners invest that amount of their capital in the U.S. It's a matter of simple accounting. But once you realize that the trade deficit is, in fact, the capital surplus you would clearly rather have capital lined up on our borders trying to get into our country than trying to get out. Growth countries, like growth companies, borrow money, and the U.S. is the only growth country of all the developed countries. As a result, we're a capital magnet.

Take a look around. Germany hasn't had a growth spurt since the 1960s when Ludwig Erhard was Bundeskanzler. France still has a mandated maximum workweek of 35 hours, a maximum income tax rate of 58%, a 1.8% annual wealth tax and government spending as a share of GDP greater than 50%. Finland, for goodness sakes, fines speeders a percentage of the speeder's income. Sweden, Denmark and Germany also fine speeders a percentage of their income, only with caps. Japan has had a stock market down by over 70% from its high in 1989 and both company and government unfunded liabilities in Japan are out of sight. Canada's economic policies are kooky and investments in Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, Southeast Asia and Africa are about as safe as running drunk blindfolded across the "I-5" freeway at rush hour.

So what's not to like about the U.S.? Whether you're an American or a foreigner the U.S. is the choice destination for capital. That's why we have such a large trade deficit.

The only way foreigners can guarantee a dollar cash flow to invest in the U.S. is if they sell more goods to the U.S. and buy less goods from the U.S. Our trade deficit is not a sign of a structural flaw in the fabric of the U.S. economy but is instead a stark reminder of our privileged status as the most pro-growth, free market, rule of law economy the world has ever known. Why on earth any American would want to change our policies to emulate foreign policies is beyond me.

Minority Rule in the Middle East and Democratization

Martin Kramer has an interesting take on the prevalence of minority rule and the social changes wrought by democratization.

The usual Western assumption is that 'minority rule' is illegitimate and an inversion of natural order. This is, however, a very modern and European idea. Minority rule has a long tradition in the Middle East, where it has never had the same stigma that the modern West attaches to it.

In the most dynamic Islamic empires in history, Muslim minorities ruled over non-Muslim majorities. The early Arab empires ruled over largely non-Muslim populations, as did the Ottoman Empire, for as long as it held the Balkans. The tradition of this region was imperial rule by elites who spoke different languages and sometimes professed different religions than the people they ruled. The sovereignty and legitimacy of the government was not based on popular consent; it had its source in Islamic law.

The Middle East, even after its gradual conversion over the centuries to Islamic majority, allowed for the continued existence of autonomous minorities that enjoyed social and religious autonomy. The result is the social mosaic seen today -- a consequence of a centuries-long social contract.

...The message of democratization is that minority rule is a vestige of the past, one that should be replaced by full-blown democracy. This is precisely why democracy promotion is so feared in the Middle East. Americans see democratization as a process that will loosen the grip of tyrannical rule. Middle Easterners see it as a lever to shift power among different ethnic and sectarian groups, overturning social hierarchies established by a thousand years of internal struggles. Majority rule has frightening implications for conservative societies that fear chaos.

In particular, the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime has brought the Shiites to the fore of Arab politics. The democratizing messages of the United States would reverse a long-established sectarian social order in Iraq, and perhaps elsewhere. It is, however, by no means certain that empowered Shiites would prove to be tolerant of the pluralistic values that democracy celebrates. Were the principle of one man, one vote to spread, it could enhance the power of Shiites in Lebanon, Palestinians in Jordan, and Sunnis in Syria. It is not a foregone conclusion that eroding the positions of minorities in these countries would make for more open and tolerant regimes; it might have the opposite effect.

Judeo-Christian Values

Dennis Prager has begun writing a series explaining Judeo-Christian values.

Now, it is time to make the case for Judeo-Christian, specifically biblical, values. I believe they are the finest set of values to guide the lives of both individuals and societies. Unfortunately, they are rarely rationally explained--even among Jewish and Christian believers, let alone to nonbelievers and members of other faiths.

It should be interesting to read the series as it develops.

Gay Marriage and the Law

Very interesting observation by Thomas Sowell on gay marriage and the law.

Of all the phony arguments for gay marriage, the phoniest is the argument that it is a matter of equal rights. Marriage is not a right extended to individuals by the government. It is a restriction on the rights they already have.

People who are simply living together can make whatever arrangements they want, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual. They can divide up their worldly belongings 50-50 or 90-10 or whatever other way they want. They can make their union temporary or permanent or subject to cancellation at any time.

Marriage is a restriction. If my wife buys an automobile with her own money, under California marriage laws I automatically own half of it, whether or not my name is on the title. Whether that law is good, bad, or indifferent, it is a limitation of our freedom to arrange such things as we ourselves might choose. This is just one of many decisions that marriage laws take out of our hands.