Israel and Palestine

I can't take it any longer. It is time for me to jump into the Israel-Palestine fray. First, let me throw out some resources. Jim Lerner (Zach's dad) pointed me to a PowerPoint presentation that, while perhaps overly dramatic, is all too accurate. Please watch the presentation. It includes information that people should know. For more information, check out some of the following articles/sources:

“Arab-American Perceptions of U.S. Policy Toward the Middle East” - a good and informative article Another Arab Perspective - a piece of crap essay that illustrates how misguided the positions of many of the Arabs and Muslim extremists are.

Here is the complete text of "The Clash of Civilizations" by Samuel Huntington. If I had to pick one general purpose, academic source for this subject, I think Huntington would be it.

This is a good comprehensive resource, and this is the best way I've found to keep up to date on what's going on (in addition to reading the headlines).

For more in-depth reading on the subject, check out From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman. He's a good author, and his books aren't too dry.

Ok. Now that that's out of the way, on to my analysis. It is going to take A LONG TIME and be VERY HARD to solve the problems there. By solve the problems I don't just mean reduce the violence, but rather create an environment in which violence will not soon erupt again. I am going to lay down my interpretation of what is and has been going on in and around Israel lately. I recognize that many disagree with me. I understand and appreciate that. I am however, very interested in this subject, and somewhat education on it. Knowing that, you may take my views for what they're worth to you.

Arafat is a terrorist. There really isn't a way around this. At first, he was openly a terrorist. Then, after the Oslo accords in 1993, he became this more official figure and everyone hoped he wouldn't engage in terrorism anymore. Whether or not he actually plots bombings I don't know. He does, though, secure weapons and intelligence, through his organizations, for suicide bombers. He also encourages and incites bombers in his public addresses and writings. He also appears to have ties to militants all over the world, including some in Iraq, Syria, and Iran. He supports terrorism. People are often quick to point out that Israel attacks Palestinians with its tanks and attack choppers, but the Palestinians have nothing to fight back with but homemade bombs. This may be true, in some ways, but it's no excuse. Israel isn't trying to take over all of the Middle East. They aren't going out and killing civilians on purpose. Trust me, if they were, they could do a much better job of it. Some Arabs DO want to take over all of Israel. Also, sending a child or an 18-year-old girl with a bomb strapped to her into a marketplace to blow up innocent people is much different from trying to catch guerilla soldiers, and accidentally shooting the people amongst whom they hide, even if you aren't too careful about who gets in the way. I'm sure Israel has done some ugly things in this conflict - but are they really more ugly than suicide bombings? They're probably less ugly.

So the question becomes: Why don't we deal with him like other terrorists? Even Israel is afraid to kill him. He is a hero to lots of Palestinians. He is also the only authority in the region. Mostly this is because dissidents are suppressed and a calculated system of indoctrination is at work in Palestine. The news there is so biased it's hard to believe anyone pays attention to it, but they do, because EVERYTHING they hear is equally biased, and this just reinforces their biases.

Clearly, I agree with that presentation very much. I don't think it's a complete picture of what's going on, but I do think that the info it presents is pretty accurate. My understanding is that there are two camps within the US administration right now. One side believes Arafat is a good-for-nothing inciter, and no negotiations should happen with him unless he reigns in terrorism and stops being two-faced about it. Lots of members of Congress seem to agree with this position. The other side, the one that the State Dept. seems to hold, and that the President is more or less going along with, is that, despite the moral ambiguity associated with not branding Arafat a terrorist, the Middle East is too explosive for us NOT to deal with Arafat as a head of state. The destabilizing tendencies there are the biggest and most immediate problem, and must be dealt with. The UN is no help, and neither is the EU.

Many political scientist types talk about the importance of institution building in the Palestinian world. Much of the money for this endeavor has come from Europe and the US. In the recent occupations by Israel, much of this infrastructure was destroyed. Unfortunately, this is probably a good thing, because as the presentation illustrates, the institutions there are not those of a free and open society. My personal opinion is that Clinton was naive in dealing with the Palestinians. He was too trusting of Arafat. Despite how politically incorrect this sounds, I believe that the US is doing exactly the right thing right now. They are, to a reasonable extent, allowing Israel to dismantle some of the terrorist infrastructure in these occupied areas, while simultaneously navigating a tense international relations situation. As Israel pulls back, and Arafat sits atop a rejuvenated Palestinian population, the time will be ripe to strike. I think we should go in there, create a demilitarized (except for us) buffer zone, and then invest a large amount of money in rebuilding this new Palestinian state. Arafat will have to go. He needs to be set up for a fall by Saudi Arabia and other like minded nations. They must pressure the Arabs to accept the West's rebuilding plan, which will include the replacement of the Palestinian Authority with a more reasonable government. Then the troops are going to have to stay there for a long time - probably thirty years, because it will take that long before a generation of Palestinians grows up in a world where Israel and Palestine are separate entities, both recognized by Arab neighbors. I think institution building is indeed the key in the new state of Palestine. Arafat does not want to build those institutions; he wants to maintain the status quo at best, and at worst, destroy Israel. We need to use him to get to a point where we can create a Palestine, then get rid of him once and for all.

It always amazes me how high the cost of freedom can be. On a related topic, I'm beginning to believe that, like certain others issues, this issue is FULL of personal biases. So, for the record, I am not Jewish. I don't really practice any religion. I don't have any particular connection to Israel. I am 1/4 Lebanese, but my family there was not Muslim. They were Catholics. I don't feel that I am biased, but I'm sure I have my predispositions, just like anyone else.

Automatic Stabilizers

I was reading an article about private enterprise helping government to produce the kinds of systems and technologies needed in the war on terrorism (ie sensors, identification devices, information sharing technology, etc...). The article makes frequent reference to the relationship of VC's to big business, government, and technological innovation. Somewhere down a ways in the article it mentioned that incubators have fallen out of favor lately, and even suggests a possible role for the government providing "incubation services" to startups. This gives me an idea.

When economic times are tough, what do companies do? One thing they do is lay people off. Another thing they do, because they now have less employees, is vacate office buildings. Sometimes they even sell office equipment, although they probably often put it in storage. This is a big waste, because lots of office equipment obsolesces very quickly.

I am a big fan of automatic stabilizers in the economy. In addition to government spending programs as automatic stabilizers, there are also even more fundamentally automatic stabilization tendencies in a market economy. For example, when the economy is in recession, and interest rates go down, average mortgage payments also go down, increasing disposable income for consumers. What if the government created an automatic stabilization program around incubation. When the economy turns sour, investors are wary of investing in risky new businesses. Whereas the bubble economy was being driven fiercely by internet investment, the number of startups and IPO's now is probably lower than what would be healthy.

So we have too few innovative businesses being funded in a down economy, and we also have vacant office space and displaced workers. What if the government offered a tax break or a subsidy to companies that offered up their extra office space, employees, business services, and equipment to a startup - basically offered to incubate a startup. When the economy was good, it wouldn't be worth it to a big company to spend their time on that, but when the economy turned sour, it might mean the difference between laying people off or keeping them. Obviously, only certain types of firms with certain kinds of expertise would be able to do this. But companies that could certainly do that are companies like Sun Microsystems or HP, which recently laid lots of people off. They have exactly the kind of expertise, employees, and existing systems that an innovative PC hardware engineering firm might need to get off the ground. I would suspect the same relationship might exist with drug companies and biotech startups.

This idea would clearly need a lot more development. What do y'all think?

Money

Karaoke is a funny thing. I've been afflicted with the "Money" craze lately. It's awesome. I've done a little research on the subject, and figured out lots of things. First, I'm going to start with some background information about my new favorite movie, then move on to my analysis of the plot and the stars themselves.

The song they're singing is called "Money" and it's by Wax. It's track 5 on her second album, also titled "Money." That, itself, is a cover of an older song called "Hello, Mr. Monkey" by Arabesque. It's from the 70s. It sounds like it's from the 70s. Email me if you want the Arabesque song. Email me if you have the Wax mp3. I can't find it anywhere. I know one of you Korean people out there has it.

Now, on to the movie. I'm not an expert on Karaoke, but the production seems pretty nice doesn't it? The backgrounds are cool and somebody uses a little echo effect on their voices and laughter. The fun really begins when Chubby yells "money" for the first time. About 30 seconds into the movie, she starts to get her dance on, too. She does this Chris Tucker-like dance that she expands on later. Around 1:30 Chubby sticks her tongue out. Then, not 15 seconds later, she goes into this bizarre yelling thing. I really, really want to get the Wax mp3 so I can hear how that part sounds on the CD. When she starts her yelling, Skinny goes down. There's another time that she falls, but I can't remember where. She's obviously embarrassed. Chubby manages to get though it, although just barely. A little after 2 minutes, Chubby starts doing what was instantly a classic in my book. She does this weird-ass thing where she hits her hand with her fist, then brings it up to her forehead over and over, quickly. Sometimes this is punctuated by this little finger wiggling thing. At 3 minutes she begins to hack up some phlegm but thinks better of it. Skinny goes down again at 2:30 from laughter. They miss a couple lines of words at this point. But skinny makes an excellent recovery, and does her best singing in the next few lines. At 2:40, when Chubby comes back in, she seems serious about the singing. For once, they sound good together. It also makes the video 100 times better, because it makes it more real. If you haven't noticed, I consider this the climax. Then, to make sure you remember that she's funny, Chubby pulls a Mary Catherine Gallagher, sniffs her armpit, and smells her fingers.

I hope I have answered a few questions about this quirky video. But I have questions of my own! Why does she yell? What are all those weird dances? Why are they dressed so warmly (presumably indoors)? Also, and this takes a good eye to notice, but I think there is a screen on which the two girls can see themselves. Sometimes when Skinny starts cracking up, it looks like she's seeing Chubby on a monitor. Anyone else see what I'm talking about? The monitor would be down and to the left of the camera, from the viewer's POV.

Note: Although I claimed that this was my favorite movie, the Unit 1 prostitute video, and "Ahhh! You scared me!" are still up real high on the list as well.

The BCG

First up is the BCG. No girls, I did not misspell BCBG. So, some time ago, one of my professors told us how the Boston Consulting Group got famous by essentially telling companies to embark on lots of projects, even if the ROI might not be there, because the benefits of learning how to do the project would more than make up for minor profit shortfalls. Anyway, I learned this juicy tidbit in class, and then stopped thinking about it forever. Or so I thought.

Then the other day I was reading slashdot, and I found this article about GNU/Linux and Open-source software / Free software (OSS/FS). The section on TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is what piqued my interest. Notice how a company can save a gazillion dollars by buying Redhat for $76 (or downloading it for free), instead of purchasing licenses for Windows at approximately one $unbornchild per computer.

My reaction was, "Yeah, but all these IT fools at random places are dumb. They could never manage real Linux servers." They might have an equal amount of downtime with either solution, but at least they could get the Exchange server running. I used to work at the Medical Board of CA, where it takes 20 IT staff to replace a hard drive. I was trying to imagine them migrating hundreds of users over to anything. Then I was thinking about how what they really need is training classes.

Total Cost of Ownership --> Technical Training. Then it donned on me. They could use all the money they were going to save on servers and licenses for said classes. There are lots of comprehensive, 1 week courses out there on Linux server administration and setup for about $2,000. So let's say a company has 400 users, and an IT staff of about 20. If each of them went to 100 hours of classes, that would be something like $120,000. Well, if you would truly save $280,000+ with a OSS/FS solution it might well be worth it - even if you had to pay for lots of training. Not only would you still be saving big bucks, but your IT staff are going to be learning a lot about a real OS at the same time. Three full weeks of training each for 20 people is a lot of classroom time - probably more than most IT depts. do in a whole year for all purposes combined.

Now this is even better than what the BCG is preaching, because it sounds like the ROI could be quick (like 1-2 years), AND a company could be increasing their stock of human capital at the same time.

Just another reason why we should all learn to use the command line.