I dream of living in ... a World Without Dictators! I'm a Libertarian Paternalist in Slovakia - Freedom with Responsibility - 10% of income into your own Pension; Tax Loans for education, health, housing; now supporting Employment Maximizing Companies!

blog posts on immigration at The Truth Laid Bear

Two states for Two Peoples

Israel must have the same rights to determine its national characteristics as the Palestinians.
This is obvious.
It might not be the Palestinian position.

Posted by: TomGrey at 11/20/07 01:07 | link | comments
israel palestine

Cantonize Israel

Another blog I quite like is Normblog, who often writes about Israel.  He makes a quick comment about An Israeli rather than a Jewish State.

I immediately think about my long time idea -- Israel should become a set of Swiss like Cantons, some Jewish majority, some Arab majority, all with Israeli guaranteed Human Rights.

He links to Guadi Traub, writing:
On the other hand, applying the formula so as to include the occupied territories, creating a Switzerland on the full territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, would require both peoples, not one, to renounce that right [to nation-state independence/ identity]. Neither the Palestinians, nor the Jews of Israel, are likely to opt freely for such a solution in the foreseeable future. Attempting to impose it on them will, at best, look like the former Yugoslavia, if not Lebanon.This option, then, like the other alternatives, rests on the paradoxical assumption that a democracy (of an abstract non-national type) can be created against the will of practically all its citizens. A political apparatus maintained by force cannot, by definition, be a democracy. Given the fact that the different factions within Palestinian societies are unable to reach any form of agreement without resort to arms, it is hardly very likely that adding a Jewish faction would produce a peaceful liberal democracy.

Well, I certainly agree that trying to force the democratic Israeli Jews into Canonization would be a mistake, but it's not clear to me that they might not accept it -- to allow more explicitly Jewish cantons as well as more explicitly Arab cantons.  And, were a majority of the Jews in Israel to promote it, I can even imagine more Arab-Israelis supporting it, and Palestinian Arabs on the borders thinking that becoming an Arab-Israeli canton wouldn't be a bad thing for them.

Every political apparatus is maintained by force, democratic or not -- his definition of democracy is wrong.

Precisely because the different leaders of Palestinian factions are always using guns, the prospect of a dominant Jewish faction that promotes majority Arab rights in an Arab canton of Israel, and thus stops the Palestinian intra-fights with guns, might be attractive.  It is certainly more likely to be attractive to the peace-desiring non-leaders, the longer the guns keep blazing.

I'm glad he addressed the Canonization option; I don't believe his casual dismissal of it is convincing -- and the longer the current problems continue, the weaker the dismissal becomes.

Posted by: TomGrey at 11/20/07 01:02 | link | comments (1)
israel palestine

The fall of the USD

Please remember that a fall in the $ means higher employment in the USA, as exports expand and imports become more expensive.

The prior excessive imports was based on foreigners investing in the US -- the greater stability in China and India and Eastern Europe (like my Slovakia home) means that the competition for investment location has also gotten tougher.

Look for more falling USD until the exports are growing more than imports.
(via Don Surber, who I'm reading frequently, lately)

Also, if US house prices are NOT going to keep going up, "investing" in US houses is ... not such a good investment.  It might even be the case that there was a foreign investment bubble that was keeping the dollar up as well as creating the economic fundamentals for the sub-prime crash.  Now, with less foreign investment, the dollar can be allowed to fall so that there is better import-export balance.

The big "fear" is that Iran will start pricing its oil in Euros.

They probably should.

Posted by: TomGrey at 11/20/07 00:30 | link | comments
economics

Bush victories in Iraq

Don Surber has a fine post: 33% got it right.  President Bush was right. Deal with it
(kind of a long post, with news story:
<i> "At least in part, the FAR rebellion came in reaction to the brutal punishment the al-Qaida fighters meted out for violations of their strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Militants cut off the thumb and forefingers of people who smoked, Abed and U.S. military officials said, allegedly raped and killed two women for wearing short skirts and slaughtered hairdressers who gave their clients Western-style haircuts."</i>

The Dems "withdraw now" support victory for the terrorists.  But Bush will be winning.

Bush got victory #1 with the statues falling, and #2 with the capture of Saddam.  Then #3 with the three Iraqi votes (to choose Delegates for the Iraqi-written constitution, to ratify that Constitution, and to vote for leaders in accordance with that Constitution).

He's about to get victory #4 -- a "peaceful" Iraq, probably by next summer.
(fewer murders in Iraq than twice the sum of NY, LA, and Wash DC. murders) (my definition of victory).

<i>"I would have thought that after all that we’ve seen and lived through since the start of this war, there would be some caution on the part of those who support this endeaver before claiming victories not yet won and accomplishments that are far from clear. Apparently not."</i>

Well, when the Bush-hating Dems are claiming the war is already lost -- lying to support the terrorists who want to murder Americans (and Iraqis) -- it's pretty understandable to be louder than the MSM mumbles about what looks like the beginning of victory.


Harry Potter had to kill Voldemort 'on his own' with help -- the Iraqi people have to build a democratic Iraq, on their own, with US help.  Pres. Bush's biggest mistake has been a failure about assigning responsibility.  The Iraqi people are responsible for the Iraqi terrorists that they are allowing.  And only since the Anbar Awakening started last year (before the Surge), have they decided to fight and kill and die for Iraqi freedom.  It's too bad the Arabs have taken so long while the Kurds, admittedly with 10 years of autonomy, decided on peace immediately and mostly got it.  All of Iraq could have been like Kurdish Iraq, had the Iraqi people rejected terrorism immediately.

But the pro-Saddam killers had NOT surrendered, and still haven't, quite.  Those that switch to support for the locally elected leaders are, in effect, surrendering.


Of course, such victory DOES mean ... vote Ron Paul! for smaller gov't -- it's OK if the US starts leaving in 2009, especially if it's also leaving Europe.

Posted by: TomGrey at 11/11/07 01:05 | link | comments (3)
iraq

Was gay Dumbledore celibate? Like a Priest?

I'm a little bit done with Harry, the series being finished, so I hadn't heard so much.

But JKR says Dumbledore is gay.

It's a bit sad for me, because Dumbledore's full of so many other good characteristics.  His extreme tolerance for other magical creatures, as long as they are also good.  There will be an implication that such benign views are because he is gay.  There seems no sexual innuendo in any of Dumbledore's talks with Harry, or anybody else.

I'm really glad there is no gay push in the stories themselves.

I've read all 13 HP books (7 in English, 6 is Slovak) and am looking forward to the 14th.

As a father of 4 kids, I think it's important for civilization to have, as its ideal, the man-woman marriage for life nuclear family.  Meaning bachelors, married or not, are all less ideal (than me??? than my ideal me, anyway).

Good vs. evil is not just for kids.  Promiscuous sex is seldom "good", even if it's pleasurable, but it's not evil.  Killing an unwanted human fetus IS evil, in a way that drunk driving killing somebody else isn't -- adoption is an alternative.

Wumingsden, I liked your comment disliking people claiming something's bad when they've never actually experienced it. 
Then I started to wonder if you meant disliking gay sex without trying it.
Now I remember some early, negative homosexual experiences I had as a teenager, and I wonder how many other men had similar negative experiences, but are too embarrassed to talk about it.

Finally, I recall the recent Catholic Church problems of gay clergy, and sex with boys, and wonder if JKR would answer the question: How many underage boys did gay Dumbledore have sex with?

There have been a large number of Catholic priests who have died of AIDS.

As I understand it, among priests it had been OK to be a non-practicing gay -- attracted to same sex but being celibate.  This seems to be the character model JKR uses.

The celibacy of priests is also relevant in Burma among the monks: being killed for your beliefs when you are a father and a husband is not as noble as when you are not responsible for others.

Posted by: TomGrey at 11/10/07 01:46 | link | comments
harry potter

Social work or cash

I'd love to work in a way that helps people directly, rather than in a corp. that creates wealth (and therefore helps people indirectly).

I did work to get UN directed social funds for a health clinic in Kenya.  But such work is quite uncertain, and a wife and 4 kids deserve more security. 

So I will apply to Habitat for Humanity, but am aware that they might not pay enough to leave my high-tech industry job (in Bratislava).

via Rand Simberg

Colin, here's what Hanley says about investment banker peers: "They were making more when they were 22. I don't think I'll ever make that. They seem more grown-up. But they seem miserable. Wait -- they seem fine. I would be miserable if I were them."

They are kids, wanting the easy do-good label of "moral superiority", but not wanting to fall behind the money-grubbers in houses and cars and clothes and iPods.


To fight poverty: offer a poor person a job.  If you don't have a job to offer to a poor person, you should be looking to start a company.

It's not technological revolution that is so important to wealth creation, it is in organizing people to peacefully work together to create wealth.  Capitalistic corporations organize effort more effectively than any other known systems.

Posted by: TomGrey at 11/06/07 02:28 | link | comments
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