". . . a republic, if you can keep it."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Wednesday that Israel was “very far off” from a decision about an attack on Iran over its nuclear program.
Barak was speaking on Israel’s Army Radio ahead of a planned visit this week by U.S. armed forces chief General Martin Dempsey that has triggered speculation Washington would press Israel to delay any action against Tehran’s nuclear program. 
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The general trend in our times toward increasing intervention by the state in economic affairs has led to a concentration of attention and dispute on the areas where new intervention is proposed and to an acceptance of whatever intervention has so far occurred as natural and unchangeable. The current pause, perhaps reversal, in the trend toward collectivism offers an opportunity to reexamine the existing activities of government and to make a fresh assessment of the activities that are and those that are not justified. This paper attempts such a re-examination for education.
Education is today largely paid for and almost entirely administered by governmental bodies or non-profit institutions. This situation has developed gradually and is now taken so much for granted that little explicit attention is any longer directed to the reasons for the special treatment of education even in countries that are predominantly free enterprise in organization and philosophy. The result has been an indiscriminate extension of governmental responsibility. . . . .
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If this happened in a country our politicians WANT to invade, this would be front page news for weeks. Instead, it is a side note.
Youngsters in Iraq are being stoned to death for having haircuts and wearing clothes that emulate the ‘emo’ style popular among western teenagers.
At least 14 youths have been killed in the capital Baghdad in the past three weeks in what appears to be a campaign by Shia militants.
Militants in Shia neighbourhoods, where the stonings have taken place, circulated lists yesterday naming more youths targeted to be killed if they do not change the way they dress.
Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2112960/90-students-Iraq-stoned-death-having-Emo-hair-tight-clothes.html#ixzz1p6mDv11M
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Translation: Everybody must obey.
The world can no longer afford to ignore the environmental cost of economic growth and must redefine the very concept of national wealth, a UN panel of heads of state and environment ministers said Monday.
The panel challenged leaders to recognise that “current global development is unsustainable.”
“We need to chart a new, more sustainable course for the future, one that strengthens equality and economic growth while protecting our planet,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in Addis Ababa to mark the release of the panel’s report, which outlines more than 50 policy recommendations. (Read more)
A depressed Army reservist who made a phone call for help says dozens of police responded by surrounding his home and arresting him, vandalizing and searching his place without a warrant, seizing his dog and killing his tropical fish.
Matthew Corrigan, who lives alone with his dog, sued the District of Columbia in D.C. Federal Court.
Confronted with a massive police presence after his plea for help, Corrigan says, he denied officers permission to enter his house, but they entered and trashed it anyway, saying, “I don’t have time to play this constitutional bullshit!” (Read more)
In a ruling on 31 January, the BBC Trust defended its decision to censor the word “Palestine” from a freestyle by rapper Mic Righteous on 1xtra in February last year. In the performance (above), he rapped:
I still have the same beliefs
I can scream Free Palestine,
Die for my pride still pray for peace,
Still burn a fed for the brutality
They spread over the world.
BBC production staff covered up the word “Palestine” with the sound of broken glass. The censored version was also aired in April. Responding to the original complaints, the BBC said that “Mic Righteous was expressing a political viewpoint which, if it had been aired in isolation, would have compromised impartiality.”
Yet its own guidelines make allowances for “individual expression” for “artists, writers and entertainers”, as long as services “reflect a broad range of the available perspectives over time”. The BBC argues that a late night music show was not the appropriate place to get into political debate as it was not obvious when these other views would be aired.
Amena Saleem, of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: ‘”In its correspondence with us, the BBC said the word Palestine isn’t offensive, but ‘implying that it is not free is the contentious issue’, and this is why the edit was made.”
But the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is a fact, not a statement of opinion. The UN Security Council classifies Israel as the “occupying force” in the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, in upholding their decision, the BBC Trust has not addressed this key issue in the complaints. Consequently, nine complainants have said that their main point, that the BBC “demonstrated bias against Palestinians”, had been ignored.
At the time, the PSC made the point that the BBC did not ban the song “Free Nelson Mandela” in 1984, even though Mandela was considered to be a terrorist by many western governments. (Read more)
Armenian residents of Jerusalem’s Old City are protesting a municipal decision to designate a parking lot in the area solely for Jews, although part of it stands on land belonging to the Armenian Patriarchate.
Parking is a major problem in the Old City, and some residents of the Jewish Quarter claim it is one reason secular families have been moving out. One of the parking lots serving this quarter is adjacent to the Armenian Quarter and is partially built on land owned by the Patriarchate, though the land has been leased by the Jewish Quarter Development Company since the 1970s.
For decades, the parking lot was open to all, though Jewish Quarter residents paid far less for a parking sticker than their Armenian neighbors. But around two years ago, Armenians were forbidden to park there.
“One day I came home from work and the lot was closed,” said Mussa Marizian, an Armenian Quarter resident whose windows overlook the parking lot. “The quarter’s management decided we shouldn’t park there; they just got rid of us. Jews who live in the Muslim Quarter are allowed to park there, but I, who live right on top of the parking lot, am not allowed.”
The development company subsequently asked the municipality for a waiver to enable the lot to be permanently used for parking, even though it is zoned as open public land under Jerusalem’s master plan of 1978.
On Thursday, the city’s planning and building committee approved the waiver, over the protests of both Armenian residents and the Patriarchate’s representative, attorney Mazen Qupty, who argued that most of the land was owned by the church.
“It was hard to hear the very inconsiderate arguments made by the people of the Jewish Quarter about the needs of their Armenian neighbors,” said Yosef “Pepe” Alalu, the Meretz deputy mayor, who voted against the waiver. “How can it be that the parking lot used to be open to all but now Armenians cannot enter?” (Read more)
Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters, according to a profile of the billionaire in Details magazine.
Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch–free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place.
. . . .
“There are quite a lot of people who think it’s not possible,” Thiel said at a Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) “That’s a good thing. We don’t need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don’t think it’s possible they won’t take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it’s too late.”
The Seasteading Institute’s Patri Friedman says the group plans to launch an office park off the San Francisco coast next year, with the first full-time settlements following seven years later.
Thiel made news earlier this year for putting a portion of his $1.5 billion fortune into an initiative to encourage entrepreneurs to skip college. (Read more)
A teenager has been arrested for allegedly making comments on Facebook about the deaths of six British soldiers in Afghanistan last week.
According to Sky News, Azhar Ahmed of Ravensthorpe (19) posted comments on his profile page, criticizing the level of attention British soldiers who died in a bomb blast received, compared to that received by Afghan civilians killed in the war.
He was arrested on Friday and charged over the weekend.
A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: “He didn’t make his point very well and that is why he has landed himself in bother.”
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Imneizil is not connected to the national electricity grid. Nor are the vast majority of Palestinian communities in Area C, the 62% of the West Bank controlled by Israel. The solar energy has replaced expensive and clunky oil-powered generators.
According to the Israeli authorities, these solar panels – along with six others in nearby villages – are illegal and have been slated for demolition.
Nihad Moor, 25, has three small children. The family live in a two-room tent kitted out with a fridge, TV and very old computer. She also has a small electric butter churn, which she uses to supplement her husband’s small income from sheep farming.
“The kids get sick all the time. At the moment, because of a change in the weather, they all have colds. Without electricity I wouldn’t even be able to see to help them when they need to use the [outdoor] toilet at night,” Moor says. “I don’t want to imagine what life would be like here if [the panels] were demolished.”
Imneizil’s solar system was built in 2009 by the Spanish NGO Seba at a cost of €30,000 to the Spanish government. According to the Israeli authorities, it was built without a permit.
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul secured his first caucus
victory over the weekend, by winning 29 percent of the popular vote
among the people of the U.S. Virgin Islands. However, the mainstream
media decided to report that despite coming in second with 26 percent,
Mitt Romney was the real winner.
The Republican Party of the U.S. Virgin Islands reported the results as “112 to Paul (29%), 101 to Romney (26%), 23 to Santorum (6%), 18 to Gingrich (5%),”
In response, The AP and other mainstream reports yesterday claimed that Mitt Romney won caucus, because he stands to come away with more delegates. (Read more)
Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave. (Read more)
How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.
What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.
Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.
It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail.
All government “services”.
Ms. Ramanathan and her husband, Ramesh, along with Sridar Iyengar, set out to change all that in August 2010 when they started ipaidabribe.com, a site that collects anonymous reports of bribes paid, bribes requested but not paid and requests that were expected but not forthcoming.
About 80 percent of the more than 400,000 reports to the site tell stories like the ones above of officials and bureaucrats seeking illicit payments to provide routine services or process paperwork and forms.
“I was asked to pay a bribe to get a birth certificate for my daughter,” someone in Bangalore, India, wrote in to the Web site on Feb. 29, recording payment of a 120-rupee bribe in Bangalore. “The guy in charge called it ‘fees’ ” — except there are no fees charged for birth certificates, Ms. Ramanathan said.
Now, similar sites are spreading like kudzu around the globe, vexing petty bureaucrats the world over. Ms. Ramanathan said nongovernmental organizations and government agencies from at least 17 countries had contacted Janaagraha, the nonprofit organization in Bangalore that operates I Paid a Bribe, to ask about obtaining the source code and setting up a site of their own. (Read more)
See My Theory of Bribes.