Short version of my blog

Power Games

The Austrian DerStandard took an interview from Ilka Schröder, an ex EU parlamentarian. In it Ilka gives her explanation to EU willingness to finance PA, and, despite well known facts of misuse of the money, refusal to investigate the money trail. Her explanation comes down to EU's desire to stick it to the Man, by failing US attempts to solve middle-eastern conflicts. This is a fight for spheres of influence. In her words, the policy is supported by very wide range of countries in EU. Which makes me ask. Would they still do the same, if US did not involved itself in Israel's troubles? Whatever Europe did, US, despite good intentions has been doing more harm then good.

And any way you put it, this makes me wonder: didn't momie told them that killing people is evil?

Mr. Olmert's Black List

I decided to make a list of all Olmert's recent strategic mistakes, and/or really illegal actions while serving as a *temporary* replacement for a prime minister:

1. Allowing Marwan Barguti to participate in elections, and to turn his jail cell into elections office.

2. Allowing Hamas to participate in elections

3. Allowing Arabs living in Jerusalem to participate in elections (division of Jerusalem anyone?)

4. Transferring money to PA with not just Fatah, but now Hamas also in power

5. Letting the resolution about disarming Iran from WMD go to UN security council with a quote about creating a WMD free Middle East (how about just disarming Israel, without ever disarming anyone else?)

6. Creating an unnecessary and brutal confrontation between Israeli police and Israeli citizens in Amona

7. Refusing to create an independent investigation comeete to investigate Amona events

Update 1:
8. Failure to prevent wold-wide legitimization of Hamas

Just for fun. Did I forget anything important? Made a mistake? Let me know.
I have a feeling I will update this list in the future.

Economy of Terror

My fellow blogger Woland, makes an important observation: construction of fusion reactors is stalling because that would collapse oil economies, as fusion reactors do not consume as much oil compared to pressurized or Boiling Water Nuclear Reactors, which in turn account for 2/3 of all oil consumption. Then, he concludes that oil-based economies as well as sponsorship of terror will deteriorate. I agree with the former, but want to argue against the later.

1. Oil Barons will still be selling oil, even if not as much as before, because other sectors of economy will still need oil (cars?) and fusion reactors will not replace existing ones that fast.

2. Even if the money river starts to dry out, oil Barons are still filthy reach. They made investments of many billions of dollars into western economies, and that money is still a very big pile, and delivering profit.

3. No matter how much economy will suffer, leaders of terrorist states will always put financing of terror as a priority. Which means that if there will be any money at all (and in any economy there is always at least some money) it will go south.

4. Eventually Western world will start sending money to those failing economies. Not enough to revive the economy, especially given the corruption, but more then enough to take some more western lives.

5. Financing terror is not *that* expensive. For example, Iran is spending in the order of several 100 million dollars a year on support of various external terrorist organizations. Even for a failing economy this sum is not out of rich.

In short, it will make a dent. It will not make any difference.

Yet another twist

Here is a funny quote from Ehud Olmert:

"They did amazing things for the country, and we do not want to make them fell like they don't belong. Part of the responsibility for the hard feelings for them is on their spiritual and political leaders, but I am not releasing the government from trying to negotiate with them".

If I didn't know what country he is talking about, I would have thought he is talking about Palestinians. Of course, Mr. Olmert refers to his own subjects, the settlers. Instead, Olmert is transferring to Hamas 45 million dollars - right after attack in Petah Tikva, and bombing of Kibutz (should I call it a settlement?). The decision is now final. And here is the twist. Just 2 weeks ago, Israeli court made a decision that Hamas must pay 20 million dollars to a family for murdering some of their relatives in Alon More. Now that the 45 million belong to Hamas, isn't Olmert obligated to act on court decision, and transfer 20 million to terror victims? By not doing so, the state of Israel is not only breaking all moral laws there are to break, not only sponsoring terror, but also doing so with the money that belongs to victims of that terror, and doing it morning after yet another terror attack.

Mr. Olmert, if you are reading this (as I am sure you are) remember this: I have family in Petah Tikva; If they got hurt, I am going to sue you.
How is that for a twist?

The Beauty and the Beast

Now, that the Hamas won the elections, the situation in Israel has changed once more. Each side has new difficulties and goals. Lets take a quick look at them.

Hamas

1. Budget. PA's annual budget is 1.3 billion $, most of which coming from Europe, some from US and some from taxes Israel is charging for PA. There are 130,000 people sitting on PA's payroll, 40,000 - 60,000 of which are occationally armed and angry.

2. Economy. Hamas promised better future. Now they need to deliver. But how can one build an economy in a state of permanent warfare (the fundamental purpose for Hamas's existence), corruption (which will continue), monopolies (that are too powerful to be dismantled) and economic dependencies?

Israel and Kadima (the ruling party).

1. Conception. The conception was that Hamas cannot win the elections. They did. All intelligence was wrong, all predictions were of track, all decisions were misguided. Who is to blame? What to do to prevent this from happening again?

2. Elections. Still on track for March 28, with Kadima holding a solid lead. How to prevent the public from finding out what role played Kadima-lead government in not preventing Hamas's victory? How to prevent crumbling of the party?

3. Politics. With Hamas at the helm of PA, how can Israeli government justify unilateral disengagement, given that now it can't claim the PA will take care of things? On the other side, how can they negotiate with Hamas?

Europe

1. Hamas. How to give PA more money, now that terrorist organization is in charge? How to justify all those years of mistakes otherwise? Same goes for Israeli government.

Prediction.

Hamas is like the bastard child. You can't love it, you can't hate it. It's outlaw, but now it came back to remind of past sins and ask for money. Worse, it killed the firstborn bastard child, and wants the Estate to itself. What to do? How to save face, now that the bastard child threatens to tell the world who he is, or even light up the Mansion?

Here is what will happen. Europe and Israel will slip Hamas in pretty dresses, and try to sell that to the public. Hamas, in need of piles of euros and dollars, will play along, but only just. They will never stop calling for destruction of Israel, or blow people up. It's in their blood. They will only hold out until Israeli elections are over, and Olmert, the disengagement champion, won the race. European newspapers will start writing about reformed Hamas, and all those people that were surprised and terrified by Hamas's win, will start getting used to the fact that Hamas is the new Fatah. The going argument will be "if Fatah could reform, so can Hamas". Of course, Fatah never did, but it wont matter. In Israel Olmert already agreed to negotiate with Hamas. Of course, he mentioned some conditions. But the basics are there. He is ready. Not that Hamas would of course. Getting their hands dirty like that. But that is not the point. The point is, the message to Israeli voter: it is business as usual. Vote. For. Us. Of course, not that giving money to Hamas will make Europe and Israel terrorist sponsoring states. They been sponsoring terrorism for a while now, in form of Fatah. The only holdouts will be US and Arab countries. Iran (technically speaking, not an Arab country) will start sending Hamas new rockets. And maybe a nuclear bomb in a couple of years. Hamas will start diverting public attention from economics to war. Of course, Fatah been doing it for years, so obviously, the war will need to be bigger this time, not to loose anyone's attention. And it is possible. Hamas will take over PA's security forces (he who pays the money is the boss after all), and merge them with their own forces. This will be done under the flag of "putting all militias under one rule" - something that EU and US actually demanded from Fatah to do. This will provide future proof that Hamas is reforming. Instead, they will simply be putting even more terrorists on PA's payroll. This unified army, that can go up to 100,000, will be more then enough to do something atrocious. For example, conquer Jerusalem. Just one city. And then stop, and open negotiations, holding the Jewish citizens hostage.

Holocaust: old and new

It is the International day of the Holocaust today. Today we commemorate the fallen. Everyone, in his own way. Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert, in a grotesque gesture of supreme duplicity, ordered the transfer of 200 million shekel (about 45 million American dollars) to the new rulers of Palestinian Autonomy. The Hamas.

The same Hamas that does not recognizes the very state the money is coming from.

The same Hamas that many times declared that it seeks the destruction of Israel.

The same Hamas that murdered hundreds and mutilated thousands of Israeli citizens.
Subjects of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. His kinsmen. His relatives.
What kind of dramatic irony is that?

I am overwhelmed and speechless.

The soup that eats like a meal

It is often hard, or even impossible to label things black or white. In terms of math, some are 0, some are 1, but most are well in between. The life, as people say, is not all black and white, there are shades of gray. Indeed, only blind can disagree with that, and I doubt many of them actually would. Yet, when it comes to interpreting what those grays mean in our pathetic human brain, people inevitably try to relate the grays to one of the only two extremes. For practical purposes it is sometimes an inevitable necessity. For many things in this world, like life and death, are white and black, and the two worlds (the gray and the black and white) need to be reconciled.

Here is where the problems start. The approaches to reconciliation are at least two:

1. The soup that eats like a meal philosophy: "trust the gray to be black (or white) because in this case for all intents and purposes, it works just like black (or white)."

2. The soup IS the meal philosophy: "trust the gray to be black (or white) because it's color is a matter of perspective".

While the difference might at first seem subtle, it is in fact as big as differences get. #1 simply admits that sometimes in choice (much like in a war) precision needs to be sacrificed for accuracy. #2 suggests that any choice can be as precise or as accurate as one wants it to be. This assumption not only allows to shift around the point of origin of this "coordinate system", but turn the entire color scale into a complete mix of colors, allowing completely different colors to neighbor each other (while remaining seemingly coherent in one's head). This, I think, is the cornerstone argument of moral relativists. And the source of their confusion. They don't see the choice #1, and assume that the only way to disagree with them is to imagine that the world is black and white. But sometimes all the soup needs is a little bit of steering.

Natural Election

Have you ever looked under a microscope and saw a dancing hamster?

Let me rephrase that:

Is it justifiable to ask a candidate for a public office to withdraw his candidacy in favor of someone else?*

On one hand, no. While a candidate is running, the voter has a choice, and can exercise his democratic right to choose. If a candidate withdraws from elections then in effect he takes away a choice from the voter. Since the withdrawal is being made to help another candidate (and not for, say, medical reason), then he also in effect tries to make the choice for the voter. This effect, if not the intent, is counter intuitive and anti democratic.

On the other hand yes, as it is perfectly feasible (and happened before) that the two ideologically close candidates will split 60%, while the third candidate, representing a minority blessed with near-absence of leaders, will win the elections with 40% of popular vote. If the majority had even more leaders, then the situation gets even worse.

In other words, democratic elections automatically create problem #2, optimal solution to which demands having at most 2 candidates, which turns out to be the problem #1, i.e., non-democratic elections. In fact the Second Round was design to do just that: to force optimization condition, and trade soundness of the solution for completeness. A poor trade.

And this is the dancing hampster, ladies and gentlemen, little question that shows the big inadequacy of modern election system. How can we fix it? What do you think?

-------------------

* The background:
Very recently Likud (right-wing party in Israel) was having elections for the leader. 3 people were left standing in the end, Netaniyahu, Shalom, and Feiglin. With Netaniyahu keeping the lead, Feiglin, not-so-distant third, but ideologically closer to Netaniahu then Shalom, was urged to withdraw his candidacy in favor of the leading candidate, to solidify his lead, as well as accused of stealing Netaniahu's brownie points, and the otherwise inevitable victory.

Resurection

After long silence I am returning the the English-speaking blogsphere. Initially I was reluctant to do so, but the endless emails and home visits I was getting from my enormous pull of fans, elevating to threats to my well being, demanding my glorious return... have prompted me to give back some respect, and jump-start a fresh, popular... OK. Enough with the astroturfing. I am back.

Expect the unexpected!

New blog

I don't like multiplying blogs, but this time my hand was forced, my foot was dragged, and my head was kicked :)
I am registering a new blog on LJ. For now mainly to have an avatar. If the posting thing will progress, it will be in russian, it will be more (but not too) personal, and it will be green.
It's hard to be green.

My little prophecy: the disengagement

Those are extrapolations from what I read in the press. I can be completely wrong.

During the disengagement, at start, things will go according to plan, and huge manpower will be in place to do it. Hamas will bomb until the moment actual transfer begins, and then stop. IDF will let it.
The removal of protesters will quickly take an unexpected turn and will become a chaos - not on palestinian side, on ours. News about events inside will be sparse and contradictory, but they will be on all channels. Mainstream media will repeat everything Sharon will say is happening, which will be far from truth. IDF will prevent cellphones from calling, communication devices from working, and will not let journalists in.
The entire country will stand on a brink of chaos as most police will be out to deal with protesters or in Gaza. With no police around in the *entire country* criminals will go wild. Protesters, on which police will concentrate, will freeze traffic and disrupt whatever they plan to disrupt. Prisons will get filled with jews of all ages down to 13 year olds, and the rest of the arrested will be put in ... yes, there is only one name for it: concentration camps. They will be concentrated in camps. Children 2 - 13 will be taken away from imprisoned parents and put in foster homes or with relatives. Later court will attempt to void rights of those parents to their children, and put them for reeducation in liberal Kibutz.
It is too hard to tell if disengagement will actually happen. All bets are open, and the crazyest things might happen. Ironically, arabs themselves will not expririence much chaos. If autonomy police will try to do anything, they get couple of bullets and quickly chicken out. Hamas will be the most organized force and will make sure everything plays out it's way on the arab side.
If the transfer will be accomplished, IDF will try to stay in the houses for time being. But, as soon as civilians are out, or before, Hamas will resume bombardment. If IDF will keep itself together they will do a large scale operation inside Gaza to stop it. Otherwise they will leave Gush Katif in huge rush, on the heals of settlers themselves. South Lebanon style.

This is my prediction, which might be untrue. I very much hope so.

Nothing new under the sun

I watched a movie yesterday (name didn't stick) about American woman marrying a Muslim and going with him to Iran of the 80s. The movie is western, but Iran is portrayed very well. And what I saw, although it was nothing I didn't know about, was quite a surprise. Before, if someone asked me about Iran I would think "evil ayatollahs", "nuclear warheads", "religious fanatics". That's about all I know about Iran. But when watching the movie I suddenly realized I am looking at something painfully familiar. Something I actually understand. It looked so much like Soviet Union period Russia! Not in big things but in many small details that merge into an atmosphere. The scale of gray everywhere; the poor apartments; the wooden doors; the dirty walls; the attitude of relatives; the job trouble; the patriarchal society (like in Russian periphery); the religious zealotry; the women wearing exact same kerchiefs as Russian orthodox nuns (only in Iran it's all the woman); the dissidents; the "revolution" with it's guardians and beneficiaries; mixture of fear, idolatry, and hate of the "system" in the air; the feeling of a lost generation.
Scary. It has the taste of evil empire in that movie. While I realize that movies distort reality, I also know that it looks real enough. Now, Iran could go down the path of USSR and disintegrate on it's own. But I doubt it. Communists made the mistake of going against Russian orthodox church. Ayatollahs are the “church”. Communists were afraid to use nuclear weapons. Ayatollahs dream to use them as soon as possible. Communists had Regan. Ayatollahs have Bush.
Do the math.

0050156873

United States Patent Application: 0050156873

This is not a joke. Do not attempt to laught. Microsoft wants to patent smile. Or the computer's "smile face" to be more exact. So smile away, while you can. Soon, you will be able to do so only with MS permission. On Windows? Just agree to the EULA, giving away all but your golden tooth. On Mac? Pay royalties to MS. On Linux? Better smile while you can.

I know I will.

And when the patent is granted, I will be smiling illegali. Because I am a rebel. Because I have no regard for the law. Because I am a danger to the society. Because I want to empeede innovation happening in Redmond. Because I am evil.

:-x

Announcement

Demonstration

Today 19th July there is going to be a demonstration in many major USA cities against transfer of jewish population of Gaza strip. List of cities is on the website. See you there!

The right to opinion

It is not a big secret that people often have opinions about things they cannot possibly understand. Such opinions are usually based on second hand information or misinformation, and are nothing more then idle talk by people that don't know any better. On the other hand, there are people that were in the midst of the events, smelled the gunpowder, and formed their own opinion based on first hand experience. So, it should be very simple to make out who has the right to an opinion and who doesn't, right? Not so fast.

For example, what if two people that lived through the same events ended up with opposite opinions? Clearly both had first-hand experience, how come they didn't reached the same conclusions? Maybe their experience wasn't the same? Maybe it is not even about the experience? Take Israel of today. Everyone lives in the same country, but somehow left and right are, to put it gently, in huge disagreement.

Another example. If in order to have an opinion one has to experience the events first-hand, do we ever have hope to know our history? First, just a tiny portion of human history is covered by authors that claim to be witnesses of the events they describe (and way too many of those texts are forgeries, biased or were copied or translated incorrectly). More important, historians that read those originals are not witnesses, and hence are not equipped to separate truth from a lie, let alone to fill in the missing gaps of information! Yet I doubt anyone will claim that good books on history do not exist. Somehow (not often enough) historians do manage to get something right about things long gone and far away. How?

Here is my answer. Every person has his own, built in ability to make out lie from truth and right from wrong. Those who use it, slowly build up a system of values and evaluations. If one tries to at least keep the system self-consistent, lie will always attract lie, and truth will attract truth. The more lies one lets in voluntarily (and there are so many twisted reasons for this to happen!), the more lies will be later added without him even noticing. Our opinions are formed based on those values. The less lies and contradictions exist in the value system, the greater that opinion's right is to exist.

The only way to evaluate other person's opinion for quality is to first evaluate the person himself. This is highly subjective, as our own system of values might be wrong. I personally do not see escape from this deadlock. The only thing we can do is do our best.

In any event, "smelling the gunpowder" is just as valuable to understanding what is going on, as sitting in a bus is valuable to understanding how it's engine works. It can provide some quality info, but only if you know how to read it, and only up to a point.

But then again, this is only my opinion.

Young Monopolist Guide

So, you have an illigal monopoly. Great! Here is a good strategy:
Say you have a monopoly on computer operating system. Adware software makes a lot of money on your customers.
Step 1: Buy the company that creates the best Anti-adware program on the market
Step 2: Bundle the Anti-adware product with your illigal monopoly for free
Step 3: increase price on your illigal monopoly to cover the cost of Anti-adware program
Step 4: Watch yourself becoming the de-facto monopolist in Anti-adware market
Step 5: Buy the company that creates the best adware product on the market
Step 6: Stop blocking (only) it with your monopolistic Anti-adware program
Step 7: Watch yourself becoming the de-facto monopolist in adware market
Step 8: Increase price on your illigal monopoly to cover cost of the adware program
Step 9: Enjoy

For real-world example google for Microsoft. They are now doing just that.

Yellow submarine

This is a keeper. Russian Ortodox church is going to finance ongoing operations of a nuclear submarine. It is called the "St. Georgy the victor". In your face, Bin Laden!

Lunacy

Israeli government just signed a 15 year, 2.5 billion $$ deal to finance terror against itself.

Imagine you live in a desert. The only source of water on your land is a well located right next to the border with your very bad neighbor. So, you give that well to that neighbor as a present. Now you don't have any water left to drink. You are a man of principle however, and will not pay the neighbor for that water because when he was accepting the gift he promised to use the money from selling your water to buy bullets to kill you. Instead, you hire a person to be a middleman between you and your neighbor, and buy the water from him. The middleman, another neighbor, happily agrees although he has his own water to sell you. He wants the other neighbor to buy the bullets.

Back to reality. Once upon a time Barak gave Israel's only source of gas to Palestinians as a present. Now Sharon signed a 2.5 billion $ 15 year deal to buy gas from Egypt. Which signed a 2.5 billion $ 15 year deal to buy gas from Palestinians. Despite the fact that Egypt has a surplus of it's own gas, and has no buyers.

Simple questions

Anybody cares to answer?

General William "Kip" Ward, sent by Bush to middle east to be his right hand in working with Israelis and Palestinians, says that it will take Palestinian autonomy (PA) 10 years to gain control of law, order and it's own armed forces. In middle east things move very fast. Predicting something one week in advance is a very unsafe bet. In 10 years all assumptions general bases his estimation on will be gone 100 times over. In other words "10 years" = "maybe in 10 years maybe never. Not before". Two questions:

1) If PA is not in control who is? And who is going to take control over Jewish settlements that Ariel Sharon wants to evacuate? That's right, Hamas, the real power in Gaza strip. So, why are we doing this again?

2) Is Israeli and US leadership stupid or evil to want to create a sovereign country out of this mess? Worse, Bush wants territorial continuity for this new international entity. It means literally cutting Israel in two in order to create what again?!