McFreedom

CNN's noticed that Nothing ever really came of SDMI. I have to confess I figured they'd get something out, just that it'd get ignored. I remember Gene and I went to the kick of meeting. What a snoozer - bunch of record company suits blathering on at each other about how they could change the consumer's mind by fiat. I read the Journal through have of it. Glad we decided to save the $20 grand on membership.

Salon is going to publish an e-book on June 17 that has John Dean's "Deep Throat" guess. Two hundred years from now I bet there'll be theories that William Shakespeare was Deep Throat...

Time explains TIME.com: Why They Hate US. Answer: al-Jazeera

This is one of the big issues I want to discuss on my blog. Katie Allison Granju complains that the Saudis don't treat their women much better than the Taliban did, and yet, they can visit the US without complaint. Can we imagine for even half a second that if, the women in Saudi Arabia were instead men given different treatment because of their race what the global outcry would be? Yet somehow it's OK because it's women. Why are there no activist groups trying to organize boycotts of all the Islamic regimes that are guilty of sexual apartheid? Why is opressing women because of their gender any different that opressing men because of their race?

I've tried to find a charity or organization that is speaking out intelligently on these issues. The best I've been able to come up with is groups like Women Living Under Muslim Laws. Which sounds interesting, until you hit their Calls For Action, in which they apparently give equal weight to Sudan sentancing a women to death by stoning for adultry and the US allegedly failing to crack down on bigamy in Utah. I've heard Utah called a lot of things in my time, but Muslim ain't one of them. Interestingly, when I found their site last October, there was a prominant call for action to protest the US bombing in Afghanistan (!!) because some of the bombs might, you know, accidently hit some women who were living under Muslim laws. They've since pulled it, since it became obvious to even idiots that the Taliban was a greater danger than the US.

What I'm looking for is a charitable organization that issued a press release thanking the US for doing more for women's rights in Afghanistan than any twenty UN blue ribbon commissions or thirty appeasing charities. But that doesn't seem to be forthcoming.

This is admitedly from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but it explains Israel's side of the occupation issue. They claim to be taking "public" land in the territories and making it available under some sort of homesteading process to allow Israelis to gain title to land that is without title or whose title is owned by the Israeli government. Palestinians or others who do not believe that Israel has the legal authority to administer the territories would see this as an illegal action. However, no single person has been wronged; as no one holds title, no single person's property rights are being violated. The property rights of a hypothetical state are being violated, but I do not believe this excuses violence against the individual settlers; they are, in fact, victims of terrorism. Arguably their living in the Occupied Territories is unwise, but we as a civilized society should not allow unwise behavior on the part of a victim to excuse violence on the part of a perpetrator, especially one whose primary motivation for the violence seems to be "they're different from us and we don't want them living near us."

This of course again begs the strategic question of why the state of Israel is encouraging people to settle on land that it ostensibly doesn't want to administer and is planning on turning over to some other (perhaps not-yet-existant) state. This leads me to believe that, in fact, the Israeli goal is to hang on to some of the territory currently occupied after a seperation agreement is realized. I don't think such a goal is imorral, although, again, I have to question its practicality.

This BBC story from January, 2001, shows the farthest the peace process got. While I was aware of it at the time, I was not completely cognizant of the status of the Occupied Territories, so I did not have much of an opinion base to work with. Basically, the last offer on the table was that Israel would get "the Jewish quarter" of Jerusalem (unclear if that's a metaphorical quarter or a literal one). Apparently the Jewish quarter is on the wrong side from Israel, so there would be a corridor back to Israel, also owned by Israel, which would unfortunately chop the Palestinian sections into two "islands" that were not connected. The Palestinians would get the Temple Mount, which is the most significant religious site. Israel would give up 90% of the West Bank and all of the Gaza strip. However, the West Bank would end up in some ridiculous gerrymandered form which would make the administration of a Palestinian state difficult at best (even if it weren't already split into two pieces). Finally, the 3.1 - 3.7 million Palestinian "refugees" would be officially denied any right of return, which was a bitter pill for the Palestinian Authority (and its Arab friends, who don't particularly want the Palestinians, either). Personally speaking, I think a reasonable counter-offer from the PA would have been to suggest an alternative partitioning of Jerusalem in order to unite their halves, and some middle ground the gerrymandering of the West Bank, perhaps giving the Israelis some other contiguous land in the West Bank in return for the random parcels it had, now. Instead, the Palestenians walked away from the negotiating table; they seem to see increased offers as weakness and felt they could get more with terrorism.

My opinion on Jerusalem is that it really doesn't matter one way or the other; to me, it's just another piece of land. I realize neither side agrees with me, but I can't help but get angry at both sides if a single innocent on either side is killed over such a stupid thing.

Finally, on the Palestinian "refugee" problem, I think it is very important to realize where this problem came from. In 1948, when Israel declared independence, it was along UN-mandated lines, much like what Israel is currently suggesting happen in the West Bank. The two states were split along demographic lines, so that largey Jewish areas, even if they were surrounded by Arabic ones, became part of Israel. Immediately after declaring independence, Israel was invaded by all of its Arab neighbors (and underwent rebellion by the Arabs who lived inside Israel). Israel was almost wiped out in this, but it fought back and pushed out to basically the current borders of Israel, minus the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In that defensive war, something like 750,000 Arabs were displaced; refugees. Their original homes were in Israel, but, because they either did not wish to live under an Israeli state, or because they were fleeing the fighting, they left. According to the Palestinian Refugee Research Net, about 1/3 of these went to Gaza, about 1/3 went to the West Bank, and the rest went to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon or someplace else entirely.

Subsequently, in the 1967 war, when Israel took the West Bank and Gaza, about 120,000 of those original West Bank and Gaza refugees fled again, followed by another 180,000 new refugees, to Jordan, Syria, Egypt and other countries.

As of 1995, there were about a million refugees in camps in Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. These camps are administered by the UN. Outside the camps there were just over two million others in those same places.

I do not believe that these refugees (the vast majority of whom were born outside of Israel) have any moral or legal right of return, any more than the Jews displaced from Europe just a decade earlier have a right of return (much less their children and grandchildren). From what I can tell, most of these refugees fled of their own accord, planning on returning once Israel was crushed. Frankly, I question whether most of them would want to live in an Israel whose population was mostly Jewish.

I think an equitable solution would be to, once a Palestinian state is established, end these camps and have some resettlement program within Palestine, funded either by the Israel or the international community (or some combination of both).

Glenn Reynolds made a remark about the New York Times story, U.S. Blueprint to Topple Hussein Envisions Big Invasion Next Year, and about how our war plans shouldn't be in the Times. But, realistically, the information provided herein is ridiculously vague: 70,000 - 250,000 troops, from Turkey but then again maybe not and from Kuwait but then again maybe not there, either. This doesn't have the sort of specific tactical information that is needed for our enemies to utilize this information; the answers to these questions (when, where and how) will need to be clarified over the next six months, and will be painfully obvious to the whole world as we begin to jockey for military and diplomatic position. When we finally have the troops massed on the border and are ready to go, it will no more be a surprise than Operation Desert Storm was. The exact hour, yes. But basically when and basically where, no. And stories this early and vague aren't going to let the Iraqis prepare in any meaningful way.

One thing that I still remain without a firm opinion on in the Middle East is the question of Jewish Settlements. I think there is no question in my mind that they are misguided; that, without them, peace in the region would be much more attainable. But the wisdom of a policy is a seperate question from the morality of a policy.

The New York Times article, Despite Violence, Settlers Survive and Spread, interviews some settlers and talks about why they want to settle there. But to me it doesn't address the biggest question: How is the land for settlers deeded? I can think of three basic possibilities:

1) It is deeded in private transactions; private Israeli groups, individuals, or the Israeli government pays or trades in some fashion to acquire the land. In which case, in my mind, the settlements are clearly moral, if ill-advised. In which case, Palestenians attacking settlers at home are simply people worried that "there goes the neighborhood, more Jews are moving in," and they are clearly in the wrong.

2) The land is not deeded in any way. No one currently owns the land. Either because no one ever settled it (it is, after all, a desert, so that's possible) or because whomever did own the deed fled during the conflicts or died without an heir during the conflict. Again, that is possible; there has to be some orderly reclamation of title on abandoned property. If not, a lot of Europe would currently not be owned by anyone after World War II, for example. In this case, again, the settlers are arguably acting morally - they are homesteaders following an approved policy to settle land and generate a title by improving it and occupying it for some time. De Soto's The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else has an excellent overview of the history of this process; it's not unprescedented. If this is the case, again, the settlers in the Occupied Territories are in the right in my world-view, but may not be in others. I believe that, when Israel captures the Occupied Territories in the '67 war, it gained some right to annex those territories. Those who believe that Israel did not gain that right would see Israeli-administered homesteading as a continued illegal occupation. Regardless, if Israel does not intend to officially annex the Occupied Territories, homesteading is not in its best interest.

3) Finally, it could be because the Israeli government is actively or passively sanctioning the taking of lands that are owned and occupied by Palestenians. In this case, the Israelis are clearly in the wrong on this issue.

I've had a hard time finding hard information on the legal justification of settlements. It is clear to me that, to the extent that the Israeli government is encouraging settlements (whatever their legality), they are not acting in a coherent fashion. Israel has always stated that the occupation of the territories is temporary - hence why they have made no attempt to annex them. Yet, if they are encouraging settlements, that would seem to be to make it difficult to affect a withdrawl.

I suspect that we have a problem here of pragmatic political realities ("we have no need to occupy this territory permanently") hitting religious politics ("it is our God-given right to retake territories we held 2,000 years ago"). Religious politics (on both sides) I have no patience for; the argument that The Koran, The Torah (or The Bible for that matter) "says so" should be utterly irellevent in international policymaking. It should be utterly irellevent in domestic policymaking, as well, but as long as these governments run themselves, that's their decision.

Why does this matter? Well, if the Israelis are occupying the territories immorally, the Palestenians, I believe, do have a right to use violence against the settlers to remove them. If someone came and took your house and land, I believe you would have the moral right to use whatevever force was needed to retrieve your property. You would not of course, have the moral right to blow up someone else back in Israel who had nothing directly to do with it.

Off to do more research... Finding good info about Israeli history online is so hard, because the first 50 hits on any search engine are so polemic on either side that it's impossible to sort fact from fiction.

I'm a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal. And they recognized, officially in an editorial, that they are an American paper, and that their duty to America and her soldiers comes above any "duty" to report every scrap of information that they come across. However, I've seen them slipping a couple of times. Most recently in this story, republished on MSNBC.

Some incentives, however, can be pure deceptions. Sgt. Giersdorf says prisoners may be told they could be repatriated if they cooperate, or that their wounded friends might get the best medical care, even though interrogators know that neither would happen.

BRILLIANT! Nice going, WSJ! Let our enemies know we're negotiating in bad faith! It's more important that Americans know what's happening than that the Army be able to figure out where the next target is! American reporters and publishers need to remember that, as comfy as things have seemed at home, we are still at war. And we need all of our operational capabilities. When you publish a story like this, you remove tools. Maybe not on the prisoners we have now - who presumably are not getting morning delivery of the Journal in Guantanamo Bay - but I'm sure this kind of information will make it into Al Qaeda interrogation-resistance training materials in the future. And while I'm at it, what the hell was the instructor thinking, letting a reporter hear him say things like "We expect you to lie a lot?"

This is from yesterday's New York Times, but if you missed it then, it's an amazing read. Apparently the House of Saud told President Bush that, if he didn't free Arafat and get Israel tto grant the Palestenians a state, that they'd stop producing extra oil to blunt Iraq's reduction, and kick us out of bases in Arabia. "Mr. President, me and some of the princes were talking, and, well, we think now is a great time for us to become more irrellevent to you...how can we make that happen?"

Hurt my back...getting out of bed, today. Ouch. Kids, don't get old if you can help it, it sucks.

Howard Drew has given 28 gallons of blood since World War II. He's got the world record, and still going strong...

Glenn Reynolds comments on seeing "NOT LAMAR" bumperstickers in Tenessee. Which immediately made me think that a programmer would express that opinion "!Lamar," which seemed a neat symmetry to me.

Right Here.

The Sacremento Bee has an AP story about Monday's California Supreme Court decision stating that cities and counties have the right to ban gun shows on their property. This doesn't mean they can ban them on private property, but, realistically, most venues big enough for gun shows are owned by munincipalities.

The AP has a story about how they found a Neanderthal skull with an axe mark in it. I was going to link to this with a sarcastic comment about how fairly intelligent primates have been killing each other for tens of thousands of years, but instead I'm linking to it to note its breathtaking lack of information stretched into a full piece. The victim was killed either by someone he knew, or someone he didn't know. And he was nursed back to health by someone a little before he died, except that there is absolutely no evidence for that other than the conjecture that he would've been too dazed to fend for himself. And it includes this gem:

The location and angle of the cut indicate that the individual attacked was either in front of or behind the victim, the Zollikofer's team reported.

Wow. That is a stunning piece of scientific research, to be able to figure out that the attacker was either in front of or - get this - behind the victim. As opposed to, er, what, exactly? Under?

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz is reporting that Sharon is backing settlers in an attempt to shore up his domestic base. Now, the settlement is one issue I still don't understand all that well, but that it seems pretty clear to me that Israel is either flat wrong about or at best not acting in its own self-interest. Apparently, relations within Israel's coalition government are poor, with Sharon being pulled in incompatible directions by the left and right wing; the left unhappy that a more concilliatory tone is not being set, with the right unhappy that a more hawkish tone isn't ben set.

Glenn Reynolds told a brief story about media overhype in a New Orleans hurricane, this morning, which reminded me of something that happened to my mother a few years ago in the small town in North Carolina that she lives in. There had been some heavy rains for several days, and few of the lower-lying areas in the county were beginning to fill with shallow pools of water, including my mother's side yard, which always forms a wide, shallow pool when there is a lot of rain. That morning, a local television crew knocked on her door, and asked her, on camera, if she was worried about flooding. "Oh, no," she said, "it always looks like that when it rains, but it's never come anywhere near the house." That night, her side yard was on television. But the interviewee was some other woman who had expressed great distress about the potential for flooding. I have never once seen a news story where I knew the particulars as an insider (and, thanks to my work in high-profile companies in Silicon Valley the past few years, I got a lot of opportunity) and there was not at least one significant factual error, omission or distortion to make a better story. Never. Unlike a lot of people, I don't think there's any conspiricy, here. I think a lot of it is sloppiness - by definition, half of journalists are below average - and I think some of it is selectively ignoring some facts to make a better story (or to create a story, at all). But I'm a very firm believer in the maxim, "Never attribute to malice what may be explained by incompetence."