Creating Wealth

Income comes from a spectrum of activities. On one end, people work and produce value that the rest of the people need or want. Before they worked, the value didn't exist. After their work has been done, the value is there for others to enjoy in exchange for some retribution. That would be the case of a baker baking bread, or a programmer creating a game.
On the other end, income can be achieved by taking other people’s product, a slice of the cake when it passes between two agents of the economy. No real value is created in the process, either than the artificial facilitation of the transfer. This facilitation usually includes two steps: the impediment of value creation, and the partial elimination of this impediment, in exchange for retribution. That would be the case of an insurance agent, who will facilitate the baker to insure his business after laws have been passed to force bakers to get insurance, and after insurance regulations dictated by insurance companies have become so intricate that insurance became a profession as complicated to learn as medicine.
As the complexity of human activities increases, more and more people get their income closer to the second end of the spectrum, forcing the producers to work longer hours to supply things and services for everybody. This is true everywhere in the world, and it has nothing to do with the political system. In capitalist countries the second hand of the spectrum is owned by the financial sector, while in socialist countries it’s the domain of bureaucrats. What’s surprising, enraging, catastrophic, is that societies glorify the unproductive. Not only they are better paid for “non-impairment” of production, but they are perceived as belonging to a better class. Production is taxed, disrespected, discouraged. I think here lays the key to the big depression that started in 2008 and the western world is struggling to get out from.

Why the Palestinians don't care about Peace

Between the good life and religious fanaticism.

Can you imagine such a cover of Time magazine?

It's unthinkable in 2010. We moved on from the intolerant times of racial and religious segregation, and such a headline would certainly hurt the feelings of Muslims all over, who would demand the respect and tolerance they deserve by burning Time Warner headquarters in NY and killing correspondents around the world.

But on the Jews you can always take. Well, there were those few decades in which it wasn't politically correct, but they came up with a new idea: Israel. You can mob and kick and spit on it as much as you want. Really, it's fine. The pacifists will bring the sticks and pikes, the human right advocates will set up a mock trial, and in the end they will all lynch the Zionist in the name of peace.

This way you can take on the Jews without saying the J word. If they accuse you of antisemitism, you point out that you even have a Jewish friend. Moreover, it's often Jews themselves who write those articles.

And why is that?

I think it's natural.

Imagine you are born a good man, never hurt a fly, mind your own business. Now the whole world jump on you and demand from you an explanation for the barbaric treatment of a people that neither you nor your questioners know. You're left out of social groups, your career is hit, people just don't like you.

But unlike Germany in 1933, there's an easy way out. All you have to say is “I'm Jewish but anti-Zionist”. And all of a sudden everybody loves you. If you're a journalist your columns get published. If you're in the movie business cash rains on you, no matter the quality of your script. And let's be honest: a ripped out doll's head is very photogenic on the rubles of Gaza. Everybody will assume without questioning that sadistic Israeli soldiers killed children and tore their heads apart, being the doll a poetic allegory.

It really pays to be an anti-Zionist Jew.

So what do we do with Time? The things we expect from Al-Jazeera are more painful to hear coming from the American media. From the city were the twin towers fell, the cultural center of Occident.

I, personally, will boycott them. Not a big loss for them, but a good win for me.

We should let these companies make their money in the Arab world, playing by the rules of journalism in Islamic dictatorships.

Wrong and wrong

Gilad Shalit is an Israeli Soldier captured by Palestinian militants on June 25th, 2006. He's been held in Gaza since then and a long negotiation for his release is being carried to this date.

The debate among Israelis about the price to pay for Gilad Shalit’s release is heated and both sides are wrong from my point of view.
Gilad’s family and most of the public opinion demand that the State of Israel pay any price for his release, because it “sent the boy to war and has the duty to bring him back”.
Well, that’s incorrect because of two reasons.
First, he was not a boy when he entered that tank. He was a soldier, trained to kill, armed with an automatic weapon and inside a multi-million tank with enough artillery power to bring down a neighborhood in minutes. Soldiers are captured, killed, or captured and killed since war was invented, and that was really long ago.
Second, what do they mean by “any price” ? Giving up Yaffo? The Golan? The Galil? Jerusalem? Or do they mean that IDF should enter Gaza with all its might, searching house by house in the overcrowded cities, causing on the first instance the death of tens or hundreds of soldiers, tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian boys (on they eyes of the world, all Palestinians are “innocent Palestinian boys”, even if killed with their AK47 in their hands). And then comes the second instance of that operation: At the very best, Gilad’s body will be found, but the price in economic sanctions will be so heavy that our already tumbled economy won’t be able to bare. Also, considered the support that would gain for the Palestinian cause.

Then there are the opponents. Mainly, family of victims of suicide bombers, burned alive by the attacks whose masterminds are now in jail and eligible for a prisoner exchange.
They sustain that not only it is not fair, but these people are decided to keep carrying terror attacks against Israel and their release will bring more deaths among us.
About fairness, is it relevant? Fair for who? For Gilad? For the dead ones? For me? While we discuss the theoretical correctness of the exchange, the 23 y.o. guy is rotting his best years in unthinkable conditions.
In a recent poll among Palestinians, the big majority supported suicide bombing against Israeli civilians, and an amazing percentage (20%? 30%?) where willing to commit such an attack should they have the chance. That leaves us with millions of Palestinians willing to kill Israelis, out of Israeli prisons. Add to that about 1 billions people in the world that want the same.
And the real problem to the opponents of the exchange is adding a few hundreds to those numbers. Seriously.
If we’re safe now is because our borders are tight and the millions who want to kill us are on the other side. The released terrorist would be sent to that other side, and any further attempt to hurt us should overcome the same barriers as the rest. After their welcome party they will probably find that they are back in hell and that they are not so special after all.

My opinion?
Send the terrorists back to Gaza, bring Gilad back, and in the future avoid the mistakes that brought us to this situation.

Europa Europa

First, you vandalize and loot the world. Second, you kill every individual and ethnicity that you dislike and loot his goods. Repeat first and second for about two thousand years. Finish with one last big war to round the corners and get rid of the last non-homogenous piece of garment. The result: a beautiful and wealthy continent, an example of progress and respect for human rights where 35 slow hours a week can earn a comfortable living for a single-child family, enjoying the accumulated wealth sacked from others over the centuries.
And then, standing high on top of the mountain of feces, blood, gold and mud, you can preach to the world how to behave. You'll set up international courts to judge the barbarians. And, of course, you'll shut your borders because you don't want ugly different and poor people to taint your jewel, and you'll only make side with them when they attack Jews, because this goes in line with your own ancestral traditions.

So when the mob of others turn your cities up down and stick like leech to your social security system, I can't feel sorry for you. You brought it onto yourselves and it's just going to be worst. As they say, "We are here because you were there".
Those of you that oppose them were actualy burning Jews until just 65 years ago. Those of you who steel predicate tolerance toward them will find your daughters forcibly wrapped in abayas in about 20 years. And I may or may not be, but I'll be free.

Dear Lebanese citizen II

Dear Lebanese citizen,
How are you? Are you enjoying the post-war economic surge? I've never been to Lebanon and little of it is seen on TV, so I'm curious.
But considering the devastating and uncontested triumph of your country over Israel in the 2006 war, and with the Israeli economy spiraling up since then, I assume Lebanon must be a developing whirl, the largest economy in the Middle East, a country of sky scrappers and romantic alleys with busy restaurants, the new region pole of scientific research, the cultural pearl in the area. Or am I missing something?

Two years ago, the crowds were celebrating the defeat of the Zionist enemy. A few weeks after that, a relative from abroad came to visit Israel and she asked if she could see some of the sequels of the war. Well, no that the 4000 missiles did no harm, but I had nothing to show to her. Very soon after the cease fire everything had been fixed or was demolished for a newer, more modern building to replace the damaged one. So I was surprised to see a few month ago that Nasrallah himself was giving the keys of a new apartment to a couple that lost theirs in the war. How can that be? What took so long? If I'd be in Lebanon now, would I still see signs of the conflict? Where are those who incited you to fight this war to the end, that promised to pay for every cost, to rebuild Lebanon bigger, higher and stronger? How can the winning part be still recovering?

I heard some versions that not all Lebanese make side with Hezbollah, but that is very hard to believe. Really, can you imagine millions of citizens seeing the Iranian backed guerrilla putting them through so much trouble without even rise their voice. What kind of weasel of a people would see their leaders killed, their cities bombed, their borders threatened, their liberty strangled, without even a significant protest? No, I don't think so. I'll stick with the idea of the fundamentalist majority.

Anyway, there is something that worries me more. The unprecedented success on beating the Jews up and the visceral joy it caused in the Lebanese masses, would that be an incentive for a second onslaught of courage? I'd really hate that, because although we where unharmed and our jobs were undisturbed, I must admit that our month long refugee status pushed us to a restaurant rampage whose consequences can still be noticed in my bank account. And although Beirut was barely, unnoticeably hit by the past conflict, be sure that in an hypothetical second round Israel's patience will be much thinner and IDF will mean business.

So, my dear and troublesome neighbor, I hope one day I can have a cup of coffee and baklava in Beirut, and I'll see Lebanese tourists in my beaches. Until then, let's keep the fence in one piece and watch out for the moles destroying our gardens.

Yours,
David from Haifa.

Freedom of Speech

I'm against the Freedom of Speech.
As unpopular as my stance might be, I have serious and good willed reasons backing it.
I'm a tenacious supporter of truth though, which is almost always absolute. When there are two opposing points of view it is because at least one of the sides lacks information or it decides to ignore it.
Take for example those who compare Israel with the Nazi regime. In order to find similarities between both, you need to ignore what happens in Israel today, what happened in Europe in the 30s and 40s, or know both very well but distort hard facts in order to accommodate your private hates.
Never the Jews challenged the existence of Europe nor embarked in a rampage of vicious killing against random civilians. Never did the Israeli army targeted Palestinian civilians nor executed a systematic mass murder of them. In decades of confrontation, the overwhelming Israeli army has killed only a few hundreds of civilians, and only while targeting armed militias who vow to kill – and too often do- Israelis. Israel has lost many of its men by trying to minimize civilian casualties among the Palestinians. At the same time Palestinians have purposely killed thousands of innocent Israelis and celebrated it throwing candy and firing AK-47s to the air.
So, when someone equates Israel with the Nazis, or denies the occurrence of holocaust when the few survivors still carry their numbers and agony in the sunset of their lives, they are disgracing the use of language, rendering it unusable.
When it is allowed to say anything, no matter if it is truth or lie, then speech has no significance. And when words are not an option, the only things remaining are bullets.
Freedom of Speech can kill, and supporting it for the sake of political correctness is a crime of hypocrisy, as Chomsky would burn me alive for writing these lines.

Jimmy, Jimmy...

Dear Jimmy,
I heard you said Israel keeps an "apartheid" regime, or as you rephrased, its policies and practices in the West Bank and Gaza are apartheid like.
As often people do the same mistake, even those who are not senile, I decided to correct you on this, might someone else read.
I've been in the old South Africa, and I live in Israel now, so I can compare.
South Africa kept people of two different races apart. To simplify, the blonds were in the government and driving Jaguars, the blacks on the mud and deep in the mines.
Israeli citizenship (with full rights for all citizens, how do you like that in the middle east?) is held by blacks and whites, Muslims, Christians and Jews, Israeli natives and immigrants from all over the world. The parliament looks like a Benetton add, and there are Muslims and Druze on the cabinet and in the highest ranks in the army. Look at the staff of Haifa municipality (www.haifa.gov.il), about half of them are Muslims, though they don't account for half of the population.
In South Africa, there were different buses for blacks and whites.
Well, there is some discrimination here. Though Muslims and Jews share their commuting, it's only Muslims who explode the buses.
The "find the diff's" list could go on, but I'm eager to ask you some questions. Did you know that your "personal friend (sic)" Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan al-Nahyan is an activist of holocaust denial?
Do you think premarital sex deserves the capital punishment? Torture? Your personal friend enthusiastically enforces that in the "almost completely open and free society (sic)" of his Emirate.
You are not an integrist Jimmy, and that's the worst part. For the sake of notoriety you not only support the atrocities of fundamentalist regimes, but you are dooming the thin hope of this region.
Palestinian children are tought that exterminating Zionism is worth dying. Not out of desperation, but with joy it is that they wrap themselves with explosives and run to the checkpoint. Then the story starts once again: bullets, innocents die, curfew, international condemnation, threats, more bullets, prisoners exchange, a new peace plans, speaches everywhere, lots of media coverage, and the wheel spins again.
While you keep fueling this roulette of hate, while you keep making them believe that sweeping away a country like Israel (massacring 6 millions again, by the way) is actually ok, that is understandable, that there is more hope in that than in taking responsibility and start building a country, we'll still be doomed. The Palestinians more than us, but we get hurt too.
Jimmy, you will die soon, and nobody is going to remember you in 100 years from now. If you can't help, stay sit.