Why Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan chose the year 2038 as the point at which his country will cease to exist, I do not know, but that’s what he’s been saying in stump speeches to his home audience, as I report in my new book, How Civilizations Die. He can’t be too far off. A generation from now, Turkey will cease to exist in its present form. The ratio of Turks to Kurds today (defined by cradle tongue) is about 4:1, but Turks have 1.5 children on average, while Kurds have 4.5. In little over a generation, Kurds will comprise half the military-age population of Anatolia. After decades of civil war and 40,000 casualties, Turkey’s Kurdish problem is as vivid as ever.
Erdogan, like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is inherently incapable of rationality. Turks and Persians both show a total fertility rate of 1.5, which portends national disaster–as both leaders have said repeatedly in public. In Turkey, Iran, and almost everywhere in the Muslim world, women with a high school (let alone university education) stop having children. Paradoxically, the best-educated populations–Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey and Iran–have the same fertility rate as the Europeans. Demographically, the Muslim world has passed from childhood to senescence without ever having reached adulthood.
What’s the rational self-interest of a doomed culture? Rather than return to the Western fold, Turkey is likely to become more and more erratic. “Fatalism” does not begin to describe the mindset of the new Turkish Islamism. Its guru, Fethullah Gulen, whose movement controls several Turkish banks, the Zaman news organization, and billions of dollars of other business assets, is a madman by Western standards. He is less a modern Islamic thinker than an Anatolian shaman who lives in a world infested by magic beings, by jinn and sorcerers, as one can verify by consulting his published writings. Erdogan, the small-town Anatolian boy made good, comes from this magical world. He has a peasant’s shrewdness and self-preservation instincts, and a politician’s knack for the pulse of his constituents. The conjunction of his magical world-view and the misery of his country’s long-term prospects, though, cannot have a good outcome.
Update, Sept. 27: Erdogan’s security personnel beat up UN security guards when they attempted to stop the Turkish delegation from going through the wrong door on the way to the General Assembly. The New York Post account includes video. Erdogan mistakenly headed for the visitors’ gallery rather than the General Assembly room, and the guards were attempting to direct him to the correct entrance. That’s without precedent. What planet is this guy from? Hmmmm…. Short temper, craving for sugar? You know who Erdogan reminds us of.
“Turkey’s Kurdish problem is as vivid as ever.”
Please be sensitive about naming ethnic groups that way (“Kurdish problem”).
As for demographics, I don’t think the Minister considered that as minorities grow, they become wealthier and have far fewer children. The “problem” is self-correcting in a way.
“Please be sensitive about naming ethnic groups that way”
How about not? Kurdistan is the Middle East of the Middle East. Albanians are Victorian Britons in comparison. Kurds have shown no adaptation to modern civilization in generations if not centuries, and it would be an historical tragedy for Turkey to become swamped by this pernicious minority.
The native (in the sense that it’s possible) peoples of Turkey should take whatever action is necessary to live, dishonor before death when the future of their nation is at stake! There is no greater crime than treason!
Turkey must act rationally, and do what is just, ignoring what dying degenerate liberalism would call “evil”. There’s nothing more evil than abandoning one’s birthrights.
Higher Game wrote: “Kurds have shown no adaptation to modern civilization in generations if not centuries, and it would be an historical tragedy for Turkey to become swamped by this pernicious minority”.
I’d like to see your list describing all the ways in which Erdogan’s Islamists are so much more civilized than the KRG of Talibani and Barzani. In any case, the “civilized” Turks don’t seem to mind this “pernicious minority” so much in N. Iraq as they have an extensive business presence there.
Thank you for making Baobo’s point so very well.
:The native (in the sense that it’s possible) peoples of Turkey should take whatever action is necessary to live, dishonor before death when the future of their nation is at stake! There is no greater crime than treason!”
The native peoples of Turkey/Anatolia aren’t Turks.
For the record.
Please tell us your Modest Proposals are just that.
On the contrary, the Kurds constitute perhaps the only affirmative answer to the question, “Can a people be both Muslim and sane?”
Whether the Kurds are sane or not is immaterial. The Kurds want to be America’s friend like no-one else in the Muslim world. And if anyone deserves a state, it’ s the Kurds, who have done a fine job of running their zone in northern Iraq. What’s not to like? We should back them.
Kurds would turn to the Chinese just as readily, or anyone else. They piggyback on states, rather than construct them. They’re always a convenient fifth column for the right price. Hessians, without the discipline and snappy uniforms. This doesn’t help long term stability in the region.
Their betrayal of Saddam Hussein when he fought post-revolution Iran should never be forgotten. The Kurds don’t understand the moral implications of treason in the same degree as a healthy civilization; they have a sort of natural mistrust that prevents them from organizing central government.
They have proven valuable in the West’s oil wars, but this cooperation won’t help in the long run. Turkey can bounce back one day and reclaim some degree of former glory. Has-been nations tend to do that. Never-were cultures are much less likely to make it.
The Kurds in Iraq seem to be one of the most sensible populations in the middle east. They are pro american, secular, treat their women well, and seem to be devoted to making money and improving prosperity, and mainly just want to be left alone and not oppressed. And the Kurds in Iraq even treat religious minorities well, as the Yesidi, Shia, Christians, and even Jews have lived there for years and never had any trouble. Perhaps the Kurds in Turkey cause trouble because they have constantly been oppressed, and if the Turks treated them with some respect, instead of treating them like they treated Armenians, they wouldn’t cause any trouble.
“Please be sensitive about naming ethnic groups that way (“Kurdish problem”).”
You do realize that Spengler/Goldman is himself Jewish? It’s safe to assume he knows what he needs to about “The Insert-Ethnicity-Here Problem”.
I think it was Mark Steyn who argued that the “demographic game” could be seen as the game “Last man standing” being the winner. By the time the Kurds start having fewer kids the population balance between them and the Turks will likely have a major effect on the internal politics of Turkey, and possibly even Iraq.
We see the same thing here in the US, the Hispanic population is growing relative to the other racial groups here. That will change American politics, in fact one pundit I read (and not a conservative one) argued that party politics in the future are going to be more based, or centered on, ethnic/race concerns due to there not being one racial group with a clear and dominant majority.
Demographics may or may not be destiny, but will certainly have a major effect on the future of all of us.
Rifle308
in the US, Hispanic immigrants may be Mexican, PuertoRican, Cuban, Colombian etc. They are not a monolith.
And unlike the Kurds or the Muslim minorities in Europe, their children intermarry. Come to my family reunion sometime.
Hispanics are becoming, and increasingly will become, “white”, just as happened to the Irish and Italians and Jews. The result will be race becoming less relevant, as whites increasingly outnumber blacks.
The Italian grocer, the Irish cop, and the Polish meat packer changed the face of America, too. And now their Republican-voting grandkids from the suburbs walk their great-grandkids down the aisle to marry a Gonzales or a Gomez, thinking “at least he/she’s Catholic”.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
What I’ve never understood is why a high school education – or university and higher – leads to such a profound collapse in fertility rates in the Muslim world. Women are the biological bottleneck, it’s true – but why the profound difference in birthrates between the educated women of the middle east and the women of America (the large majority of which gain at least a high school education)?
On the other hand, considering fertility rates in Korea, Japan, and Europe as a whole, maybe I should ask what makes American women different; my American friends at college all assumed that marriage and (more specifically) children were somewhere in their future, after they got a job and lived independently for awhile. Not so for my foreign friends. Many of them told me how much they hated children, which I always found pretty horrifying.
Some time ago on an Israeli TV show some female doctor said Israeli women still see motherhood as part of their self-realization as women. She said it as if it was something bad, some primitive anti-feminist oppressive social misconception Israeli women should “progress” beyond to become more like the women in the advanced European societies. Mind you she was talking about educated working women who also have children, not about ignorant obedient powerless wives who spent their lives pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen, as the cliche goes.
Israeli birth rate, incluing secular Jewish birth rate, is still at or above replacement level and I don’t want us to follow Europe. Secular Jews are borderline. If we continue to import contemporary Europeanism the birth rates might fall under replacement level within a generation or two.
I came to the conclusion already some time ago that Europe, and maybe the West as a whole, is no longer a viable model for imitation. The West brought many great things to the world, but it went too far in more than one way, and if it continues on the same path it will become extinct. I don’t want us to follow them into the abyss. I think we should be very selective in learning from the West, stop looking at it as the beacon of human progress that should be followd blindly, and start seeing it more as a great civilization that might be at the end of its road, unless there are some dramatic changes. Take after everything that is good, but learn from the mistakes, and start getting closer to several Asian cultures that still have future prospects (like India maybe), learn some things from them. Maybe get a little closer to nature, not forget where we came from.
As for the US – it mustn’t follow Europe.
It’s beyond me how so many people fail to see that Europe as it is today isn’t advancing into an ever brighter future. Why so many people still want to copy it, even policies or cultural traits that are obvious failures, if not disasters. Conservative parents mustn’t neglect the education of their children and leave it to the education system. They should give them good solid conservative education that will enable them to resist the liberal indoctrination in school and college. That may help to preserve the US. After all, liberals have lower birth rates, so there are more children born to conservative families which place more emphasis on family values and the importance of children and parenthood.
As for the women of the Middle East – I really have no idea why female education correlates with such a collapse in birth rate. After all, it’s an ultra-conservative culture and the family is very central in it, so I’d expect an educated woman will still have 2-3 kids. Perhaps in these countries the entire burden of raising the children still falls on the woman, so they might find it too difficult to do it all. In Iran people may not want to bring children into the hell they’re living in. But Turkey? I really don’t know.
America has a residual Christian culture, which still holds hope for the future. They still view abortion as evil, even if 1/3 of women unfortunately have one, and even if they try to silence their consciences. They have not surrendered to the culture of death. And that is why there is more life here.
The situation in Turkey is no so bleak and can be modified by economic policies.
Turkey is is much better shape than Greece — which is now the basket case of Europe and will be for generations.
Simplistic models of demography are misleading–the issue is productivity not the number of children.
In agricultural economies families needed lots of children to work the farm
–with the mechanization of and consolidation of farms productivity increases dramatically–increased productivity–smaller families.
Turkey is migrating from an agricultural to an industrial and High Tech economy very successfully and it is the model for the MENA.
Recently Sweden shows shows birthrates will increase rapidly with a change in the economic incentives for parents.
As this model is adopted by the rest of Europe the birthrates will self correct.
“Recently Sweden shows shows birthrates will increase rapidly with a change in the economic incentives for parents.
As this model is adopted by the rest of Europe the birthrates will self correct.”
Interesting, links or citations to articles, webpages, etc please.
Anyway, rising birthrates are not going to help in the near to middle time frame (1 to 20 years)as to the pensioner numbers vs worker numbers, etc, that are bankrupting the nations of the West. You cannot suddenly create a “bumper crop” of 18 to 24 year old productive workers.
Elena — Don’t assume that “American women” are having children at any appreciable rate higher than the ethnic Turks (or most Europeans). The national averages include a large number of immigrants having large families here; I forget the precise numbers, but if you look at only non-immigrant women in this country, the rate is pretty much at European levels. It’s like looking at Turkey’s overall birthrate (1.5 * 75% + 4.5 * 25% = 2.25) & saying that it’s demographically stable & should have no problem existing in 2038; this “stability” masks a looming change in the ethnic balance of the country that will have big political consequences. In more homogenous countries (Korea, Japan), there are no large bodies of immigrants with high birth rates to make up for the failure of the natives to reproduce.
In the sense of a changing ethnic balance, the US is rather like Turkey; the difference, though, is that the US has actually a rather better record of handling & assimilating ethnic minorities than most countries. It’s very possible that in 50-100 years the Hispanic population will have assimilated into the dominant culture, albeit with a bit of “reverse assimilation” as some Hispanic customs get mainstreamed. It’s harder to imagine this happening in Turkey, where the Turks have spent the last 70 or so years trying to eradicate Kurdish culture unsuccessfully, giving it a large, growing, & possibly quite hostile minority group that might start thinking of turning the tables.
Government Drone –
Isn’t that the heart of the problem, though? I have no problem seeing Hispanic immigrants as American as you or me (thus counting their ethnics birth-rates with my own ethnic group – although isn’t that a little superficial in America? I certainly don’t count myself among a monolithic ‘white’ whole, and the way Mexicans fight with everyone else, I doubt they think of themselves as part of a ‘Hispanic’ whole either), but I guess the same isn’t true for the Turks regarding the Kurds. ‘lil bit of a shame, that.
But doing a cursory internet search brings up birth rates of 1.84 for non-hispanic whites and indians, 2.06 for asian and pacific islander, 2.11 for blacks, and 2.99 for hispanics. Leaving aside the hispanic outlier, birthrates are still not as terrible as the 1.5 number given above, let alone a country like Japan, which has somewhere around 7 births per 1000 people. Although Spengler states rising literacy as the reason for this drop, why didn’t the same catastrophic collapse happen here? Although I can’t find any literacy statistics separated by gender, American illiteracy rates dropped to 3% by 1930, and have stayed there every since. But the fertility rate hardly collapsed – it’s been a long, slow decline, significantly helped along by birth control, later marriage, and (perhaps) greater access to abortion, along with a dozen or two other factors. But in Iran, the same collapse (America is at 14 births per 1000 people, Iran is currently at 16 per 1000) took place in a significantly compressed time period.
Granted, Iran also had a supposedly very successful national family planning policy from 1989(?)-2006, but that doesn’t explain much either. The Chinese 1-child policy has been pretty successful (for a given value of ‘successful’, anyway), but there’s no denying that if the Chinese government ended it today, birthrates would explode. The same has not happened in Iran, which ended their population control methods 5 years ago.
In the end, giving birth is very much a ‘personal’ choice in the modern world – a choice every woman has to make on her own. I’d just like to know why Iranian (or Japanese, or Korean, or European) women are choosing to forego children, or only having one, while American women are still having one or two (if not more, depending on various factors) per family.
And now I’ve just given myself a headache reading all these articles. I really would like to see a breakdown of fertility by rural vs. urban populations, or by religion and socioeconomic class, instead of the ever-present ethnic breakdown. Probably the most interesting chart I found was one showing the American birthrate by state, showing the large disparities between different regions of the US. Something to think about, eh? [http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763849.html]
“I’d just like to know why Iranian (or Japanese, or Korean, or European) women are choosing to forego children, or only having one, while American women are still having one or two (if not more, depending on various factors) per family.”
-the common explanations are either to do with economics or cultural (religious) values. I think the latter get to the core of the matter. Yes, as populations urbanize and develop welfare states and pension plans, children have less narrowly-economic value to parents in old age. Yes, it is relatively expensive to raise children in a modern society, and they take up a lot of time and money that could be otherwise spent on oneself and the endless desires produced by consumer culture. But ultimately, none of this is determinative. If one feels a cross-generational obligation to something greater than oneself, then one can resist the all-consuming desires and one is more likely to desire and find a way to have children, though there will always be some who can’t or shouldn’t. And to have a sense of a (covenantal) obligation across time, one needs to value certain religious/cultural traditions, which maybe need not entail rigorous religious practise, though the degree to which these values can survive without a ritualized life is an open question i think.
I think I should add to that: the economic restraints on having children can indeed be felt strongly, especially in a city like mine where housing costs are way out of line with average incomes due to a continuing bubble. Thus, in order to make children a higher priority than economic success, one may well have to be consciously and active resistant to the reigning value and career system and find one’s niche outside the major urban or economic centres. Still, I think it is ultimately a question of what one values, not of economic determinism. Problem is, so many today are raised so that they don’t know what they value, until it’s too late. There are a lot of unhappy older people now who didn’t get around to having children.
To the extent that the US is somewhat more fertile than Europe, i would stress the greater cultural and religious values over any economic difference.
Its called affordable family formation. Everything else is hogwash.
Hogwash? There are wealthy people without a lot of children – and not always are they wealthy because they don’t have children. They could afford more, but they’d rather not. There are relatively poor people who find a way to have lots of children – and I don’t mean state welfare takers. In any case, most people fall into the logic of the reigning value system and the economy adapts and reflects that to the point people can think it is what determines things. Children are expensive because when people don’t have a lot of them, they do other things, for example: creating workplace/career competitions that help validate the idea that children are a burden; bidding up house prices with cheap credit provided in hopes of keeping a construction-heavy economy and social welfare state ponzi schemes alive just a little bit longer. The economy is not an inhuman machine that breaks us to its will: it is a reflection of the values we mostly have. The less we value children the more expensive they become as the economy struggles to finance an aging population, in the custom to which they are habituated, until it no longer can.
At least that’s an argument, Mr. H.
I stand by my comments and predictions.
I lived in Japan from 1991 to 2000 and saw the effects of the post-bubble stagnation on Japanese economy and society. I saw how the lack of opportunity for young people transformed them from the hard-driven corporate climbers into the indolent slackers that they are today. My prediction is that the same process will occur here as well, unless we start to have real (not bubble) economic growth here in the next few years.
Being a slacker is a rational choice in a no-growth economy with limited opportunity. The slacker life-style is the life-style choice that is most optimized for a no-growth economy. Indeed, it is both irrational and unreasonable to expect people to make any other choice. If the U.S. experiences the same prolonged post-bubble stagnation as Japan, its fertility rate will also decline to Japanese level, as lots of American young people will choose to become semi-permanent slackers. This process is inevitable.
If you want people to have kids, you need to have a growth-oriented economy with lots of opportunity. It is silly to pretend otherwise.
…as populations urbanize and develop welfare states and pension plans, children have less narrowly-economic value to parents in old age.
A welfare state pension scheme is a trap that lures people into believing they needn’t have children of their own (and the “narrowly-economic” expense of raising them) because the State has promised that they can retire on the “economic value” of other people’s kids.
What’s overlooked is that other people have come to the same conclusion.
Some of this discussion is behind the curve, which is forgivable, because the academic work on the topic is fairly recent. There’s a plethora of literature from the Max Planck Demographics Institute and other scholarly organizations during the past half-dozen years showing clearly that the decisive variable is religious faith. Europeans and Americans of faith have the same fertility behavior. There are just a lot more Americans of faith. Evangelicals have a fertility of about 2.6, Episcopalians around 1.2 I review the literature in “How Civilizations Die.”
In fact, I had done my own statistical study of faith and fertility in 2005:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GH02Aa01.html
But I didn’t use it in the book, as the demographers subsequently mined the data pretty thoroughly.
If you don’t believe me, you can read the liberal sociologist Eric Kaufmann tearing his hair out over this: “Will the Religious Inherit the Earth”?
Dear Mr. Goldman,
I will consider your book when I make my next Amazon purchase. Having just finished Mark Steyn’s After America, it looks like just the thing to satisfy my masochistic tendency to read depressing books.
Kind Regards,
Robert
Was Erdogan bluster (below) intended solely for PR, or is he looking for trouble?
Israel Seeks to Calm Tensions With Turkey By ETHAN BRONNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/world/middleeast/10israel.html
“the Turkish prime minister threatened to use his navy to accompany aid flotillas to Gaza and to challenge Israel’s plans for gas exploration and export in the Eastern Mediterranean.
“Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Al Jazeera, the Arabic network, that he would use his warships to prevent Israeli commandos from again boarding a Gaza-bound ship as they did last year, killing nine passengers, and from letting Israel exploit natural gas resources at sea.”
Three words for you – Affordable Family Formation (and lots of economic opportunity). Without it the birth rate plummets to 1.2 or lower in the next few years (in the U.S.). This is my prediction. Why? The U.S. is and has been following the exact same pattern as Japan for the past 15 years. Like Japan’s bubble in the 80′s, our bubble was 1995-2008. Like Japan’s post-bubble stagnation during the 90′s, our is now. Japan’s post-bubble stagnation killed economic opportunity for their next generation, who responded by becoming slackers. The same pattern will happen here as well.
Alexandr Solzhenitysn drew the same conclusions as a Russian patriot by the late 1970s, most famously in his Harvard commencement speech where he told the ‘best and brightest’ that post-Communist Russia could not simply ape their model, it would never work. In this sense, I think the Russia-Israel rapprochement Washington’s old fart Cold Warriors do their best to ignore is very good for both countries. A growing number of Russians gets to see what a dynamic, high-tech economy not totally dependent on natural resource exports looks like up close, while Israel is reminded where its ancestors and a disproportionate share of its best minds came from and that it cannot neglect developing its own natural gas and ag resources.
Alexandr Solzhenitysn drew the same conclusions as a Russian patriot by the late 1970s, most famously in his Harvard commencement speech where he told the ‘best and brightest’ that post-Communist Russia could not simply ape their model, it would never work [post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s and David P. Goldman's own experience with it would back this up]
David – It is interesting that you mention connection Erdogan and Gulen have with the occult. It reminds of something I saw on the military channel about the Hitler, Himmeler and othr Nazis. They too were into the occult. (It was not for nothing that the Nazis appropirated the swatiska for their national emblem.) I wonder if Erdogan and Gulen see themselves as modern day Nazis? They seem to be going down the path with the way they have destroyed the Israeli-Turkish alliance.
Anyway – There should only be shalom, and you should have a Shabbath Shalom.
Issue not Muslims or Christians
Issue is West towards East
Turkey now turning from West towards East
Turkish population is not what’s in Asia Minor .. from Uighur to Phosphorous is Turkish hemisphere .. Iran more Turkish than Turkey
Kurds have lots of children ? ? Music to Iranian ear .. Kurds main pillar of our beloved Persia, that’s why we took care of their wife and children last 60 yrs
birth rate of Iran ? ? In Iran-Iraq war, Khomeini said make children .. and things exploded .. Iran’s state policy was to slow down population growth .. if needed, and religious leader order so, birth rate will go up again
All what Spengler says is because of Zionist State Israel .. wishful thinking .. Issue not Islam will disappear, Issue Zionism has failed, is disappearing .. you can not built you home on other people’s home .. this idiot Natayahu gave kiss of death to Israel, since he PM, things fast tract into toilet
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At least Netanyahu knows Engish
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LOL
David, as that pedophile Moh said, don’t look who says, look what he says.
You were wrong all those yrs and things coming to this now
NYT :
“JERUSALEM — With its Cairo embassy ransacked, its ambassador to Turkey expelled and the Palestinians seeking statehood recognition at the United Nations, Israel found itself on Saturday increasingly isolated and grappling with a radically transformed Middle East where it believes its options are limited and poor.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/world/middleeast/11israel.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
Even Haaretz says things going badly wrong
” Israel is paying for Gaza war with Turkey and Egypt crises ”
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-is-paying-for-gaza-war-with-turkey-and-egypt-crises-1.383688
Zionist do not need F-35 .. they need wise leader
sorry for bad English .. as you know, English Azari’s 4th language out of 5
.
Ha’aretz are Nervous Nellies. See my interview tomorrow in Ma’ariv.
Ma’ariv site? The newspaper? Not Ma’ariv? Reading you in Hebrew will be such a treat (unless the interview was in English…)
Haaretz is the only MENSCH among Israeli papers .. as Mensch as a papers can be in that place .. Israelis should be proud of Haaretz, a cause for envy
That monkey game, left & right, just to fool Israeli Joe .. Israeli economy controlled just by 16 rich family, money made by “monopolizing” all Israeli economy
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_42/b4199010761878.htm
The 16 families (controlling groups) are:
Ofer Brothers
Borovitch Brothers
Sheri Arison
Nochi Dankner
Hamburger family
Mozi Vertheim
Zisapel family
Lev Leviev
Miki Federman
Haim Saban
Fischman family
Shachar-Kez family
Strauss family
Shmeltzer Family
Yitzhak Tshuva
LOLOLO
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Let’s see; Israel has a population of 7 million. America has a population of 300 million. Proportionally, that would be equivalent to 687 American families controlling the bulk of the US economy. If Business Week published a headline saying that 687 families dominated the US economy (let’s say, by owning large shares of its biggest corporations, would anyone care? Once again, we have an arithmetic problem here. Must have something to do with the curriculum at Iranian universities.
16 families, are worth together 118 Billion Nis .. they own 20 percent of Israel’s top 500 largest companies.
They directly employ 650,000 workers in Israel and indirectly
another 100,000 workers .. and their companies total 570 Billion NIS
–
David P. Goldman
Let’s see; Israel has a population of 7 million. America has a population of 300 million. Proportionally, that would be equivalent to 687 American families controlling the bulk of the US economy. If Business Week published a headline saying that 687 families dominated the US economy (let’s say, by owning large shares of its biggest corporations, would anyone care? Once again, we have an arithmetic problem here. Must have something to do with the curriculum at Iranian universities.
–
if 687 American families would own 20% of American economy and employ 30% of American working people, what would that be ? ?
and
those 16 families are rich ONLY because of MONOPOLY .. they are not in technology invention or all those wonderful successes in pharma .. they in consumer product, bread and butter .. the technology sector are Iraqi Jews and and and
This pure and simple crony capitalism .. MAFIA (same as Ayatollah cronies)
And David, this not from our beloved Iran .. this from my good Ashkenazim Israeli friends IN ISRAEL, demonstrating daily
You not dealing with fools .. the emperor has no cloths (anymore)
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English no more good
Natanyahu should learn Farsi .. he will need it soon
LOL
BTW, I just received my copy of the book “Why Civilizations Die” and have started reading it. Its quite good and a healthy antidote to the “over-population” brouhaha. I think demographic projections beyond 40-50 years are rather speculative. Nevertheless, the theme of the book is still valid.
“Demographically, the Muslim world has passed from childhood to senescence without ever having reached adulthood.”
Allow me to commend you on your tactfulness in prefixing your sentence with “Demographically”.
Tactfulness has nothing to do with it. It’s called analogy……’>……..
There’s a more prosaic reason why Americans have kids and the rest of the developed world does not. America, particularly the “red” states, is very kid-friendly in the form of (usually) affordable suburban living. Much of East Asia lives in high-rise condos, which are not kid-friendly at all. Housing in Europe is bleeding expensive. Only the U.S. has the car-oriented spread-out suburbs that make it attractive to have kids. The rest of the world largely does not have these. Also, many of the cities in the “blue” states (San Francisco, NYC, boston, etc.) are not exactly kid-friendly either and have fertility rates that reflect this.
The other reason why Americans have kids is that we are (usually) an optimistic people. We are a frontier society built on pioneering principles. We believe that our economy will continue to grow indefinitely and continue to offer great opportunity for generations to come. We believe we will go to Mars, colonize the asteroids, and go on to the stars. This is American optimism. The rest of the world generally does not share these dreams.
I also think this is why Americans generally believe in religion and Europe does not. For Americans, religion is tied into the frontier, pioneering ethos. It is the Protestant work ethic. American Christianity is based on this pioneering spirit and that is what allows for religion to thrive in America. Religion in the rest of the world is nothing more than a justification for feudalism and stagnation. That is why it is dying and rightly so. Religion without pioneering is worthless.
Due respect, I think you are over-reading this……
The reasons are more stark. One, having children implies one has to be the responsible adult. This is seldom fun and nobody want the trouble. Also, if you’re a child grown old, why do you want to be shown up by someone that’s good at it?……’P…….
Two, and more sinister; having children results in generations – a realisation that there were people before your time on this planet and that there will be people after. In a few words, YOU WILL DIE. Without a belief in continuity professed as belief in G_d, this is insufferable……..
Third, and from casual observation; those that do have ‘families’ (we will be kind here…..) and noting the first two conditions, are doing a very bad job of it. Even with a TFP close to replacement. Contrary to what Woody Allen says, you have to do more than just show up. You hafta play the game…..
TFP -> TFR, Total Fertility Rate……..
Is said, Arab spring,and now Israeli spring,is due to economic reason .. prices going up, income going down
” One in every four Israelis lives below poverty line ”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/one-in-every-four-israelis-lives-below-poverty-line-1.4932
LOLOLO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0QV8FJ8lhM
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Doesn’t anyone else read the numbers around here? Poverty in Israel is defined as a household per capita income of $6,600 per year. The last number I can find for average per capita household income Iran is $960, or one-seventh the Israeli poverty level. I guess they don’t teach arithmetic at Iranian universities — otherwise people might get mad.
those 16 families do not create wealth .. they have monopoly in consume products .. that is why Israeli economy can not create added value, create wealth
that bit tech and other innovations, wealth creation, is not done by these 16 families
that is why Israel becoming poorer and poorer
Iran is the leading scientific paper release .. all this despite exporting an HP printer to Iran being a crime .. 35 yes of sanctions
should tell you something
and
re Iranian mathematical skill
Iranian Sharif University, and not Israeli Technion is the lead Stanford and MIT PHD students supplier .. humbly, get your fact straight before distorting them
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Israel becoming poorer and poorer
Are you serious? OK. Maybe you are. Could you cite a reference?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Israel
GDP per capita $29,500 (2010 est.)
We’re dealing with some serious arithmetic issues here.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/features/israel-s-greatest-threat-is-not-security-it-s-poverty-1.337939
Isn’t 2038 when the Unix clock rollover occurs? Kind of like a geeky version of the Y2K bug. Seems an odd coincidence.
Yes.
This thus tells us that Turkey is really an advanced simulation running on a Unix platform, but that nobody’s updated the Turkey simulation to use a 64 bit time_t.
Hey, at least they’ll have to take it down for maintenance to make the fix…
so if fertility is destiny, does that mean the Filipinos will inherit Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, etc.?
Already farmers in rural Korea are importing wives from SE Asia, and Japan is developing robot caretakers for the elderly and importing Japanese ethnics from South America so they don’t have to import caretakers…
I dunno, I think Turkey’s moving away from the West and towards Islamic fundamentalism, is a way for them to combat the birthrate problem? It might be low right now, but in 20 years, with the status of women much reduced?
Starting up a fight with another country is another way to ratchet up the nationalist fervour, which often increases the birthrate.
Still, I hope you are right. The Kurds, while not perfect, are pretty decent people. They have every right to be as upset as Palestinians, but for the most part, haven’t thrown a hissy fit by using terrorism (no matter what the label the PKK gets, they’re more akin to the Irish Republican Army, closer to guerillas)
http://www.stopfgmkurdistan.org/
Sorry, but Kurds are barbaric savages. Turks and Iranians need higher fertility and other high-testosterone activities to stop these freaks. They’re Somalians with a few more recessive genes, that’s all.
When wading through comments on the Middle East, one often encounters tired old antisemitic tropes. I commend you on your refreshingly new choice of target.
Turkey has more short range problems; they are incurring foreign debt at a prodigious rate. A Greek bankruptcy could puncture this balloon and take the Turkish economy for a bad ride or possibly they could ride it out and take the hit the next time but eventually it is going to happen.
Iran, although loved by at least one Azeri, has major issues also and in fact is high inflation high unemployment state with no prospects of escaping from that condition. In that country, a major problem is the choke hold that Mullah (or Iran National Guard) owned enterprises have on the country – they get first shot at any govt funds available for lending, exemptions from some of the price controls that other companies have to suffer and first shot at imports.
The
As for Turkey, some of the MSM are picking up the Turkish economic story:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9a6d9f4c-dc7a-11e0-8654-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1Xh14X6Tz
in generations to come, Turkish economy will grow, @least, 10 fold
yes , 10 fold
how ?
Turkey is setting the stage to cater to Turkic people to the east .. at least 200 million people (probably 300+)
Iran and Turkey will dominate, economically & militarily, the New Middle East .. Iran will dominate it in terms of Civilization
stage for the above is being put in place
West knows this and maneuvering for being a partner with the main player of the New Middle East
Israel, so called Jews, have not yet sensed the wind shift .. hopefully recent events will open their eyes
Real friends of Israel (and Jews) would quit sable swinging and try to get on the train
That is why, good for BiBi to learn Persian, and, like Nixon, drop in in Tehran to shake Ahmadi hand
otherwise, time not on your side David, not at all
that from a friend of our beloved Yahudi
do not forget, the cultural (and spiritual) center of Judaism is not Israel, but Iran ..Iran has more holly Jewish places than Israel
so, you speaking with a friend
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Sort of like Larry Niven’s “Mote in God’s Eye”. Except with a single cycle.
Why should Americans care whether fundamentalists Turks or fundamentalist Kurds rule that forsaken country. Give Constantinople back to Greece, then America might give a damn.
You could just hand away Constantinople to Greece or Prussia to Germany, and they wouldn’t have any people to populate it. They’re imploding right now, as it is!
AzariLoveIran, you are 100% right. Israel is in decline, and Iran and Turkey are rising. Iran and Turkey should continue with their current policies which will lead them to assume their rightful place in the world, while leaving Israel to collapse. Instead of arguing with all of the nefarious Zionists here, I urge you to convince the proud Iranian and Turkish people to continue steadfastly on their current path. Tout va pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes!
Kris
you don’t want to be where the puck is right now
You want to be where the puck will be down the road
that is how you win the hockey game
Did not know this a Zionist gathering
Schöne Grüße an Pasta
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don’t be fooled .. Ahmadinejat the new Saladin , Teyyip same as NATO
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/7ed3e438-dfb5-11e0-b1db-00144feabdc0,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F7ed3e438-dfb5-11e0-b1db-00144feabdc0.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fdiegetics.net%2Fforum%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ff%3D3%26t%3D1775%26p%3D49580#axzz1Y0K6JkY0
Financial Times
Erdogan’s brand benefits Arabs and the west
By David Gardner in London
As Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, continues his triumphal tour of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, the countries that have successfully overthrown tyrannies in the unfolding Arab awakening, he can justly lay claim to be the most popular politician in the Arab world.
There are those who argue he is the non-Arab leader Arabs have most admired since Saladin – a Kurd from Mesopotamia – recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187.
In western capitals, Mr Erdogan is decried for his strident Israel-bashing, which is seen as cynical populism, a naked play for the Arab gallery. Yet the Turkish leader’s popularity is an invaluable asset – to the Arabs and to the west.
What the Turkish leader is selling is the successful political brand of his neo-Islamist Justice and Development party (AKP).
So far, he is wiping the floor with a noxious competitor, the aggressive and sectarian Islamism of the mullahs in Iran. The outcome of this regional contest between Turkey and Iran will help determine the future of the Middle East, as the Arabs fight free of the stifling cocoon of often western-backed despotism and strive to create a new democratic order.
Can anyone doubt for one instant that the Turkish prospectus – a vibrant democracy and a dynamic economy led by Islam’s equivalent to Christian Democrats – is a better bet than the breast-beating bigotry of the theocrats in Tehran? Few Arabs do.
According to this year’s Arab Attitudes, the authoritative annual survey carried out by Zogby International for the Arab American Institute Foundation, Mr Erdogan’s ratings are so high he could be forgiven for believing (as his enemies whisper) he could recreate a neo-Ottoman sultanate. Turkey’s policies are a hit from Morocco (80 per cent approval) to Saudi Arabia (98 per cent); Iran’s are not, with 14 and 6 per cent respectively.
Even in Lebanon, stronghold of Hizbollah, Tehran’s Shia Islamist proxy, 93 per cent have a favourable view of Turkey and 87 per cent like Mr Erdogan.
But part of this picture is that President Barack Obama and the US score well below Iran everywhere except Saudi Arabia.
Egypt is the most populous and strategically critical Arab country, the cockpit of the new revolutions where the US still bankrolls the army to the tune of $1.3bn a year. It was in Cairo in 2009 that Mr Obama set out a bold new vision of America’s relations with the Middle East and the Muslim world.
Two years on, and after what looks like US capitulation to Israel on Palestine, 62 per cent of Egyptians agree with the policies of Mr Erdogan, 31 per cent with Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran’s president, but only 3 per cent with Mr Obama. The survey reveals that US prestige in the Arab world has fallen below the nadir plumbed by George W. Bush.
In these circumstances, Turkey, a Nato member and candidate for membership of the European Union, is the best bet for the west too.
Mr Erdogan and his AKP have won three successive elections with a rising share of the vote. During that time Turkey’s economy has tripled in size and per capita income has doubled.
He has brought Turkey’s army, until now the final arbiter of power, to heel. This success looks attractive to many Arab Islamists, and to many liberals too.
Islamism is bound to be a factor in the new Arab dispensation. The previous regimes’ suppression of all dissidence left their opponents nowhere to rally but the mosque. But the Turkish model suggests Islamism can be synthesised into a pluralist order. The Iranian model creates immovable vested interests, violently defended, behind a facade of divine order.
The mullahs initially hailed this year’s wave of upheaval as an Islamic Awakening inspired by Iran’s revolution of 1979. They wish. More recently, as the contest with Turkey sharpens, Iran has even called for reform in Syria, where its ally Bashar al-Assad is trying to crush a menacing civic uprising – and Turkey is becoming the organising hub for the opposition.
Iran’s Shia theocrats used to feel complacent when all they had to compete with was the quasi-theocracy of Sunni Saudi Arabia, built on the twin pillars of Wahhabi sectarianism and absolute monarchy. But the pluralist and modernising Sunni brand of Turkey’s AKP is a threat of a different order – literally – and it is devouring Iran’s market share.
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Choice is :
Iran (sovereign) or Turkey (NATO cronialism)
This FT article puts it very clearly game played
and
don’t be fooled by game plaid re Israel by Tayyip
Turkey & Israel skirmish remind me of Dems and Reps .. in the morning, they fight, evenings, in the boys club, they having together a Martini
West is highjacking Arab uprising against Oil-colonialism
Channeling Arab anger into another 100 yrs of western domination
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http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/the-oil-kings-how-nixon-courted-the-shah?pageCount=0
The Oil Kings: How Nixon courted the shah
Joan Oleck
Sep 16, 2011
The Oil Kings by Andrew Scott Cooper, published by Simon and Schuster
Anyone who’s ever driven down an American highway, idled in America’s city streets surrounded by gas-guzzling SUVs, or shivered in the Arctic-cold air conditioning of a US office building, knows the truth: the United States has an insatiable thirst for oil.
Certainly Iran’s shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, understood that need, and for eight years, 1969 to 1977, exploited it, negotiating a series of secret oil-for-arms deals with America’s best and brightest.
The effect was to leave the United States pleading for lower oil prices – and its own economic survival – at the hands of arch rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The Oil Kings: How the US, Iran and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East looks closely at those deals. Using newly declassified telephone transcripts, cables, policy briefs and extended interviews with ageing officials in the Middle East and Washington, Andrew Scott Cooper (who is an academic based in New Zealand), reveals the frightening truth of the Nixon-Ford administration’s fervent courting of the shah.
Forget those smiling White House photo opportunities: the reality is that Washington’s mismanagement of its “special relationship” with the shah played a big role in fomenting Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the 1974 oil embargo, and the 1970s near-financial collapse of the developed world.
“My search for understanding,” writes Cooper, “uncovered a hidden history of US-Iran-Saudi oil diplomacy from 1969 to 1977, the back story of the crucial eight-year period when the United States went from being the world’s number one oil producer to the biggest importer of petroleum, and when Saudi Arabia’s House of Saud replaced Iran’s Pahlavi king as Washington’s indispensable ally in the Gulf.”
Cooper’s tale begins in 1969 at the funeral of a war hero and former president – Dwight D Eisenhower – where Nixon made his first real acquaintance with the shah. The British were preparing to pull out of the region and Nixon and Henry Kissinger were anxious to secure the oil fields and shipping lanes from Iran’s northern neighbour, the Soviet Union.
Vietnam had already “exposed the limitations of US power”, Cooper writes, and the Nixon Doctrine required that henceforth only foreign proxies would “guard freedom’s forts”.
The oil-rich shah allied himself with the West in order to transform Iran into a modern power. That won him attention in Washington, as did his instant accord with Nixon. They were “essentially two lonely and insecure men who found relief in the isolation their high positions afforded”, Cooper writes, in one of many asides that make these events accessible and compelling.
By late 1969, Nixon was so friendly with the shah that he had granted the leader his own special oil quota. In exchange, the shah pledged to spend every cent of those additional oil revenues on US military and intelligence hardware. This worried Nixon’s aides. “It was one thing to fly the flag for the West,” Cooper writes, “another to arm it to face down Iraq, India and regional rebellions, pacifying a vast swath of the Middle East and Indian Ocean. Rearmament on the scale proposed by the shah,” Cooper adds, “had the potential to bankrupt Iran.”
Still, Nixon persisted, advising Iran’s lead diplomat, Ardeshir Zahedi to “tell the shah you can push [us] as much as you want [on oil prices] …” In short, the shah could “raise oil prices at will and pressure western oil companies and consumers” – all via a back channel implemented without cost assessment or risk analysis. Who cared what happened to the real Iranians not benefiting from oil dollars? The US had its precious outpost in the Middle East.
Yet while decision makers like Kissinger couldn’t care (or know) less about economics, others did. “We don’t know just how keenly the shah appreciates the limits of financial elasticity,” the CIA’s Office of National Estimates reported in 1971. The shah, the report warned, was digging himself into a debt and inflationary spiral.
Nixon was as clueless as Kissinger. Nevertheless, the president had chosen his ally in this hunt. Under the administration’s “Twin Pillars” policy, US strategy in the Gulf would rest on a strong Iran, while the other oil king, Saudi Arabia, remained in a subservient role.
The book elaborates on what happened next, although no one comes out of this particularly well. The transcripts of the oil deals reveal how Kissinger referred to Nixon as “that drunken lunatic” with “the meatball mind”, and how he negotiated a settlement with Iran that cost US oil companies their strategic hold in the Saudi oil industry.
Rigged defence contracts also emerge in these pages, most notably the one fashioned by Nelson Rockefeller, then the governor of New York, who solicited Kissinger’s help to save New York-based Grumman Corporation from bankruptcy by pushing the shah to purchase the company’s F-14 jet fighter. That deal would help carry New York state for the Nixon-Agnew ticket in the 1972 election. For his part, the shah leapt at the opportunity.
There’s more, such as the preparation of military contingency plans – which called for Iran to invade Kuwait and Saudi Arabia – and the war games that were held in the Mojave Desert to prepare for such an eventuality.
Then there are the millions of dollars in kickbacks paid by Grumman and Northrop to “middlemen” in Iran, facilitating all those weapons sales. And the scariest deal of all: Nixon’s agreement to sell nuclear power plants and fuel to Iran, with no apparent concern for the wider implications such a transaction might hold.
Add to this the fact that Saudi Arabia, too, became a regional player, in 1973. Angrily responding, with other participants, including Abu Dhabi and Dubai, to Washington’s support of Israel, King Faisal cut off oil supplies to the West. The ensuing oil embargo brought painful results: inflation soared by 12 per cent in the US and up to 33 per cent in parts of Europe. “The Saudis are getting heady over the power of oil,” James Schlesinger commented at the time; the secretary of defence actually mulled protecting US oil supplies by invading the UAE. “I was prepared to seize Abu Dhabi,’ Schlesinger recalled. He envisioned a clean surgical strike to land American troops in the heart of Arab oil country. ‘Something small. But nothing big.’”
The shah, too, pulled away from his US allies, to pursue a foreign policy based on independent nationalism and increased oil prices, while continuing to build up his weapons cache. In December 1973, he joined the rest of Opec in more than doubling the oil price.
By then, Iran’s economy was out of control. The shah’s establishment of a one-party state had removed the facade of a loyal opposition. Iran’s economy plummeted as oil production fell, in response to decreased western orders and Washington’s first real effort at conservation. The gap between rich and poor in Tehran widened alarmingly; and despite those large oil revenues, most villages still lacked running water and electricity. Young men roamed the streets of south Tehran, unemployed and angry.
The “showdown,” Cooper says, began in 1974, as the shah made it clear to the White House that high oil prices were the price of political stability in Iran. At that, even Kissinger’s rock-solid support began to falter.
In 1975, Kissinger finally seemed to break his commitment to Tehran, saying the US would use all available means “to prevent strangulation of the industrialised world”.
One of those means was to ally with Saudi Arabia against Iran. The Saudis then defied Opec with a lower oil price and flooded the market with cheap crude.
We know, of course, what happened next. In 1974, the Watergate scandal brought Nixon down and the wall of secrecy that surrounded those previously murky oil deals collapsed. On its knees, Tehran begged a $500 million loan from the US that arrived too late; and more and more talk circulated about Ayatollah Khomeini becoming a possible successor to the shah.
Cooper writes of these events with clarity, precision, and revelations that stun, even all these years later. If he’s guilty of anything in these pages, it’s of overdoing it – using three quotes where one would do, taking readers painfully through day-by-day accounts.
But lovers of history will appreciate the revelatory story he unwinds. It has resonance too in today’s era. Indeed, we are reminded of that famous quote about being condemned to repeat the past we cannot remember.
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Many members of Israel’s governing coalition are openly hostile to liberal democratic values.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/opinion/netanyahus-partners-democracys-enemies.html
The New York Times
September 16, 2011
Netanyahu’s Partners, Democracy’s Enemies
By CARLO STRENGER
Tel Aviv
ISRAEL is at a fascinating, and frightening, crossroads.
In the last two years the Knesset has proposed and passed laws that seriously endanger Israel’s identity as a liberal democracy.
It began with a law forbidding public commemoration of the Palestinian refugee crisis of 1948, known as the Nakba; it continued with the demand for all new Israeli citizens to swear a loyalty oath to a Jewish and democratic country, and recently culminated in a bill outlawing calls to boycott any Israeli group or product — including those from the occupied territories.
On the other hand, in the last two months, Israel’s democracy has come dramatically alive after a long period of hibernation. Protests for social justice have mobilized hundreds of thousands in demonstrations that have the support of 87 percent of the country, according to a Haaretz poll. These protests have become an exercise in direct democracy, forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to move beyond party politics and listen directly to the grievances of Israel’s disenfranchised middle classes.
Existential fears have pushed Israelis to the right; only when it comes to social questions are they willing to listen to the largely liberal middle class. Who, then, represents the real Israel? Is Israel an open-minded, liberal country with a developed sense of justice, or is it an ethnocracy with theocratic leanings?
Mr. Netanyahu believes that he can avoid agreeing to a viable Palestinian state, in the face of fierce international criticism, because he is certain that America’s heartland, as opposed to its liberal elites, is tied to Israel on ideological and theological grounds. The ovations he received in Congress earlier this year only strengthened this belief. Convinced that Obama won’t win a second term, he simply wants to hang on until a Republican president is sworn in.
His foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has a very different worldview. Mr. Lieberman’s open disdain for European leaders and diplomats is not a failure of diplomacy; he is a shrewd man, who first and foremost seeks to cultivate an image of a strong leader for his right-wing constituency. He believes that the West’s hegemony has come to an end, and that the future lies with autocratic governments like those ruling Russia and China. Hence he believes that Israel has no reason to pander to the West’s values.
To him, liberal democracy represents weakness and he contends that Israel should evolve into a stronger state with less individual freedom. At the same time, he is completely secular: his constituency is primarily of Russian origin, and many of its members are not accepted as Jewish by Israel’s Orthodox rabbinical establishment.
The national-religious parties in the governing coalition, meanwhile, are based on the belief that the Jewish people have a God-given right to what they call the Greater Land of Israel. In the long run, they want Israel to be a theocracy based on biblical law. Their participation in the democratic game is based on the prediction that Israel’s demography will inevitably lead to an Orthodox Jewish majority, and that they simply need to make sure that Israel doesn’t give up the West Bank before they rule the country.
The ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and Yahadut Hatorah, also want Israel to become a theocracy in the long run. Until a decade ago, they did not necessarily claim that Israel should hold on to the occupied territories, but they realized that their electorate is right-leaning, and they need space for the rapidly expanding families of their constituency. They see liberal elites as their primary enemies.
The paradox, of course, is that Mr. Lieberman and the religious parties are on opposing ends of the spectrum in other ways. Mr. Lieberman wants a secular state; the religious parties want a theocracy. What unites them is that, for completely different reasons, they have no investment in the values of liberal democracy, which are one of the major stumbling blocks for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. As Israeli liberals have repeated ad nauseam, such annexation will either lead to a binational state without a Jewish majority, or to an apartheid regime.
The coalition partners have found a modus vivendi primarily by uniting in their hatred for the institutions that uphold liberal democratic values: Israel’s Supreme Court, its largely liberal academic community and its human rights organizations.
Israel’s recent falling out with Turkey is just the latest example: Mr. Lieberman made it impossible for Mr. Netanyahu to apologize for the killing of nine people by Israeli commandos on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara last year by insisting that it would undermine Israel’s national pride. When Turkey retaliated with trade sanctions and threats of an increased naval presence in the Mediterranean, Mr. Lieberman called on Israel to support Kurdish militants. Mr. Lieberman keeps upping the ante for being a patriotic Israeli, pulling Mr. Netanyahu along with him.
The staying power of Israel’s governing coalition is primarily the result of the trauma Israelis sustained during the second Palestinian intifada and subsequent rocket attacks. Israelis have trouble trusting anybody but a hard-liner for fear that, once again, they will become targets of terror attacks.
Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition may seem incoherent in its core values, but it has created a potentially explosive mix that has brought considerable damage to Israel, pushing it into unprecedented isolation that is only likely to deepen if a sizable majority of the United Nations General Assembly recognizes Palestine as a state later this month. This would be especially challenging when relations are already strained with historic regional allies like Egypt and Turkey.
The irony is that Mr. Netanyahu himself is not opposed to liberal democracy. But the only way for him to prevent an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders is to hold his right-wing coalition together.
Mr. Lieberman has outflanked him and challenged his leadership of the Israeli right. Mr. Netanyahu needs to keep up with the right-wing Joneses and show that he is no less of a strong leader. The only common denominator of his major coalition partners is enmity to the core values of liberal democracy, and, for lack of choice, he has so far pandered to their wishes.
Carlo Strenger, a professor of psychology at Tel Aviv University, is a columnist for Haaretz and the author of “The Fear of Insignificance.”
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http://english.sabah.com.tr/National/2011/09/26/a-facebook-hunt-for-israel
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A Turkish newspaper published the names and photographs on Monday of more than 140 Israeli soldiers who the paper said took part in the raid on a Turkish flotilla
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/world/europe/turkish-paper-names-israelis-it-says-were-in-flotilla-raid.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Television analysts in Israel noted that the list included some well-known Israeli figures who had long since left the military, which they said gave some indication of its accuracy. There is, however, real concern in Israel about Turkey’s threats of legal action over the raid
Some of the names, Sabah said, were provided by flotilla passengers who were interrogated by the Israelis after the lead ship was towed in May 2010 to the port of Ashdod, in Israel. Others were gleaned from public postings and the Web links they contained.
Sabah said the list would be forwarded to the Israeli military for confirmation before any legal action was taken in Turkey or abroad.
well folks
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This already has been exposed as a hoax:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4128276,00.html
The list contains a large number of names of military personnel who had retired before 2010.
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Issue not whether the names authentic
Issue Turks after those perpetuators
basically a political move, making Israeli hunted
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Interesting report in ” Stratford – Global Intelligence ” of Friedman
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110926-geopolitical-journey-iran-crossroads?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20110927&utm_term=gweekly&utm_content=readmore&elq=2f45538e27f74ccba8861bf95b97a376
Friedman sent his journalist to “Islamic Conference” in Tehran
Here his report from Tehran ..
LOLOLOL
This is the geopolitical context in which I arrived at Imam Khomeini International airport late Sept. 16. Along with several hundred foreign guests, I had been invited to attend a Sept. 17-18 event dubbed the “Islamic Awakening” conference, organized by the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Given the state of Iranian-Western ties and my position as a senior analyst with a leading U.S.-based private intelligence company, the invitation came as surprise.
Geopolitical Observations in Tehran
The foreigner arriving in Iran immediately notices that despite 30 years of increasingly severe sanctions, the infrastructure and systems in the Islamic republic appear fairly solid.
Also notable was the absence of any visible evidence of a police state. Considering the state’s enormous security establishment and the recent unrest surrounding the Green Movement, I expected to see droves of elite security forces. I especially expected this in the northern districts of the capital, where the more Westernized segment of society lives and where I spent a good bit of time walking and sitting in cafes.
.. only public display of opposition to the regime was “Death to Khamenei” graffiti scribbled in small letters on a few phone booths on Vali-e-Asr Avenue in the Saadabad area. I saw no sign of Basij or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel patrolling the streets, only the kind of police presence one will find in many countries.
This normal security arrangement gave support to STRATFOR’s view from the very beginning that the unrest in 2009 was not something the regime couldn’t contain. As we wrote then and I was able to see firsthand last week, Iran has enough people who — contrary to conventional wisdom — support the regime, or at the very least do not seek its downfall even if they disagree with its policies.
I saw another sign of support for the Islamic republic a day after the conference ended, when the organizers arranged a tour of the mausoleum of the republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. We visited the large complex off a main highway on the southern end of town on a weekday; even so, numerous people had come to the shrine to pay their respects — several with tears in their eyes as they prayed at the tomb.
Obviously, the intensity of religious feelings varies in Iran, but a significant stratum of the public remains deeply religious and still believes in the national narrative of the revolutionary republic. This fact does not get enough attention in the Western media and discourse, clouding foreigners’ understanding of Iran and leading to misperceptions of an autocratic clergy clinging to power only by virtue of a massive security apparatus.
In the same vein, I had expected to see stricter enforcement of religious attire on women in public after the suppression of the Green Movement. Instead, I saw a light-handed approach on the issue. Women obeyed the requirement to cover everything but their hands and faces in a variety of ways. Some women wore the traditional black chador. Others wore long shirts and pants and scarves covering their heads. Still others were dressed in Western attire save a scarf over their head, which was covering very little of their hair.
The dress code has become a political issue in Iran, especially in recent months in the context of the struggle between conservative factions. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has encountered growing opposition from both pragmatic and ultraconservative forces, has come under criticism from clerics and others for alleged moral laxity when it comes to female dress codes. Even so, the supreme leader has not moved to challenge Ahmadinejad on this point.
Ahmadinejad and the Clerical-Political Divide
In sharp contrast with his first term, Ahmadinejad — the most ambitious and assertive president since the founding of the Islamic republic in 1979 — has been trying to position himself as the pragmatist in his second term while his opponents come out looking like hard-liners. In recent months his statements have become less religiously informed, though they have retained their nationalist and radical anti-Western tone.
For example, his speech at the conclusion of the second day of the conference on the theme of the event, Islamic Awakening, was articulated in non-religious language. This stood in sharp contrast to almost every other speaker. Ahmadinejad spoke of recent Arab unrest in terms of a struggle for freedom, justice and emancipation for oppressed peoples, while his criticism of the United States and Israel was couched in terms of how the two countries’ policies were detrimental to global peace as opposed to the raw ideological vitriol that we have seen in the not too distant past.
But while Iran’s intra-elite political struggles complicate domestic and foreign policymaking, they are not about to bring down the Islamic republic — at least not anytime soon. In the longer term, the issue at the heart of all disputes — that of shared governance by clerics and politicians — does pose a significant challenge to the regime. This tension has existed throughout the nearly 32-year history of the Islamic republic, and it will continue to be an issue into the foreseeable future as Iran focuses heavily on the foreign policy front.
Iran’s Regional Ambitions
In fact, the conference was all about Iran’s foreign policy ambitions to assume intellectual and geopolitical leadership of the unrest in the Arab world. Iran is well aware that it is in competition with Turkey over leadership for the Middle East and that Ankara is in a far better position than Iran economically, diplomatically and religiously as a Sunni power. Nevertheless, Iran is trying to position itself as the champion of the Arab masses who have risen up in opposition to autocratic regimes. The Iranian view is that Turkey cannot lead the region while remaining aligned with Washington and that Saudi Arabia’s lack of enthusiasm for the uprisings works in Tehran’s favor.
The sheer number of Iranian officials who are bilingual (fluent in Persian and Arabic) highlights the efforts of Tehran to overcome the ethno-linguistic geopolitical constraints it faces as a Persian country trying to operate in a region where most Muslim countries are Arab. While its radical anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli position has allowed it to circumvent the ethnic factor and attract support in the Arab and Muslim worlds, its Shiite sectarian character has allowed its opponents in Riyadh and elsewhere to restrict Iranian regional influence. In fact, Saudi Arabia remains a major bulwark against Iranian attempts expand its influence across the Persian Gulf and into Arabian Peninsula, as has been clear by the success that the Saudis have had in containing the largely Shiite uprising in Bahrain against the country’s Sunni monarchy.
Even so, Iran has developed some close relations across the sectarian divide, something obvious from the foreign participants invited to the conference. Thus in addition to the many Shiite leaders from Lebanon and Iraq and other parts of the Islamic world, the guest list included deputy Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook; Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) chief Ramadan Abdullah Shallah; a number of Egyptian religious, political, intellectual and business notables; the chief adviser to Sudanese President Omar al Bashir as well as the leader of the country’s main opposition party, Sadiq al-Mahdi; a number of Sunni Islamist leaders from Pakistan and Afghanistan, including former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani whom I had the opportunity of speaking with only two days before he was assassinated in Kabul; and the head of Malaysia’s main Islamist group, PAS, which runs governments in a few states — just to name a few.
Tehran has had much less success in breaching the ideological chasm, something evidenced by the dearth of secular political actors at the conference. Its very name, Islamic Awakening, was hardly welcoming to secularists. It also did not accurately reflect the nature of the popular agitation in the Arab countries, which is not being led by forces that seek revival of religion. The Middle East could be described as experiencing a political awakening, but not a religious awakening given that Islamist forces are latecomers to the cause.
A number of my hosts asked me what I thought of the conference, prompting me to address this conceptual discrepancy. I told them that the name Islamic Awakening only made sense if one was referring the Islamic world, but that even this interpretation was flawed as the current unrest has been limited to Arab countries.
While speaker after speaker pressed for unity among Muslim countries and groups in the cause of revival and the need to support the Arab masses in their struggle against autocracy, one unmistakable tension was clear. This had to do with Syria, the only state in the Arab world allied with Iran. A number of speakers and members of the audience tried to criticize the Syrian regime’s efforts to crush popular dissent, but the discomfort this caused was plain. Syria has proven embarrassing for Iran and even groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and PIJ, which are having a hard time reconciling their support for the Arab unrest on one hand and supporting the Syrian regime against its dissidents on the other.
The Road Ahead
Attending this conference allowed me to meet and observe many top Iranian civil and military officials and the heads of Arab and other Muslim non-state actors with varying degree of relationships with Tehran. Analyzing them from a distance one tends to dismiss their ideology and statements as rhetoric and propaganda. Some of what they say is rhetoric, but beneath the rhetoric are also convictions.
We in the West often expect Iran to succumb to international pressure, seek rehabilitation in the international community and one day become friendly with the West. We often talk of a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, but at a strategic level, the Iranian leadership has other plans.
While Iran would like normalized relations with Washington and the West, it is much more interested in maintaining its independence in foreign policy matters, not unlike China’s experience since establishing relations with the United States. As one Iranian official told me at the conference, when Iran re-establishes ties with the United States, it doesn’t want to behave like Saudi Arabia or to mimic Turkey under the Justice and Development Party.
Whether or not Iran will achieve its goals and to what extent remains unclear. The combination of geography, demography and resources means Iran will remain at the center of an intense geopolitical struggle, and I hope for further opportunities to observe these developments firsthand.
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When all said and done, when dust settles .. David .. believe it or not, Only friend Mosche will have in that space with be our beloved IRAN
BiBi should learn a few Farsi pleasantry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXrdHZXXdmQ
you guys always Avant-garde .. Change horse
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“You have wildfire among the leading indicators across the board .. Non-financial services plunging .. manufacturing plunging .. exports plunging .. That is such a deadly combination.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-30/u-s-is-heading-toward-another-recession-ecri-s-achuthan-says-tom-keene.html
Purchases of new houses fell in August to a six-month low as the biggest drop in prices in two years failed to lure buyers away from even less expensive distressed properties. Sales dropped 2.3 percent to a 295,000 annual pace, figures from the Commerce Department showed earlier this week.
“We at least have a couple of quarters of worsening economy in front of us,” Achuthan said. “So if you think this is a bad economy, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
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Zbigniew Brzezinski @ his best
An absolute “Must Watch”
he saying what Azari says
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teSaJ4-RZkw
” a rare opportunity, nobody could say these things and survive but Brzezinski ”
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Information Clearing House
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29432.htm
Who Are The One Percent in America ?
By Press TV
October 17, 2011 “Press TV” — The following are the largest full-service global investment banks which usually provides both advisory and financing banking services, as well as the sales, market making, and research on a broad array of financial products including equities, credit, rates, currency, commodities, and their derivatives.
1. Bank of America
2. Barclays Capital
3. Citigroup
4. Credit Suisse
5. Deutsche Bank
6. Goldman Sachs
7. JPMorgan Chase
8. Morgan Stanley
9. Nomura Securities
10. UBS
11. Wells Fargo Securities
Diversified Financials
The following are the top eight diversified financials in the U.S. in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500
1. Fannie Mae ………. $153.82 billion
2. General Electric ………. $151.62 billion
3. Freddie Mac ………. $98.36 billion
4. INTL FCStone ……….. $46.94 billion
5. Marsh & McLennan ……….. $10.93 billion
6. Ameriprise Financial ………. $10.04 billion
7. Aon ………. $8.51 billion
8. SLM ………. $6.77 billion
Commercial Banks
The following are the top ten commercial banks in the U.S. in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500
1. Bank of America Corp. ………. $134.19 billion
2. JP Morgan Chase & Co. ………. $115.47 billion
3. Citigroup ………. $111.05 billion
4. Well Fargo ………. $93.24 billion
5. Goldman Sachs Group ………. $45.96 billion
6. Morgan Stanley ………. $39.32 billion
7. American Express ………. $30.24 billion
8. US Bancorp ………. $20.51 billion
9. Capital One Financial ………. $19.06 billion
10. Ally Financial ………. $17.37 billion
Petroleum Refining
The following are the top ten U.S. petroleum refining firms in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500
1. Exxon Mobil ………. $354.67 billion
2. Chevron ………. $196.33 billion
3. Conoco Philips ………. $184.96 billion
4. Valero Energy ………. $86.03 billion
5. Marathon Oil ………. $68.41billion
6. Sunoco ………. $35.54 billion
7. Hess ………. $34.61 billion
8. Murphy Oil ………. $23.34 billion
9. Tesoro ………. $20.25 billion
10. Holly ………. $8.32 billion
Oil & Gas Equipment, Services
The following are the top U.S. firms active in oil and gas equipment and services in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500
1. Halliburton ………. $17.97 million
2. Baker Hughes ………. $14.41 million
3. National Oilwell Varco ………. $12.15 million
4. Cameron International ………. $6.13 million
Aerospace & Defense
The following are the top ten U.S. corporations in aerospace and defense in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500
1. Boeing ……….. $64.30 billion
2. United Technologies ………. $54.32 billion
3. Lockheed Martin ……….. $46.89 billion
4. Northrop Grumman ………. $34.75 billion
5. Honeywell International ……….. $33.37 billion
6. General Dynamics ………. $32.46 billion
7. Raytheon ………. $25.18 billion
8. L-3 Communications ………. $15.68 billion
9. ITT ………. $11.15 billion
10. Textron ………. $10.52 billion
Motor Vehicles & Parts
The following are the top ten U.S. manufacturing companies of motor vehicles and parts in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500
1. General Motors ………. $135.59 billion
2. Ford Motor ………. $128.95 billion
3. Chrysler Group ………. $41.94 billion
4. Johnson Controls ………. $34.30 billion
5. Goodyear Tire & Rubber ………. $18.83 billion
6. TRW Automotive Holdings ………. $14.38 billion
7. Navistar International ………. $12.14 billion
8. Lear ………. $11.95 billion
9. Paccar ………. $10.29 billion
10. Oshkosh ………. $9.84 billion
American Millionaires
The number of Americans who are millionaires is about one percent of the population. NPR
Of the 435 members of the House, 244 current members of Congress are millionaires – that’s about 46 percent and that includes 138 Republicans and 106 Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks money in politics. In fact, there are probably many more millionaires in Congress, since lawmakers don’t have to include the value of their family home and other details. NPR
In 2010, the average winner of a House race spent $1.5 million for his/her campaigns. The average Senate winner spent close to $10 million. Closely contested races are much more expensive. And about half of that money, on average, comes from an elite group of very wealthy donors. NPR
Wealthy Americans have more access to lawmakers than most regular voters and constituents do, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. NPR
The median net worth for a current member of the U.S. House of Representatives was $725,000 in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and the media net worth of a U.S. Senator was $2.4 million. Open Secrets
The richest member of Congress is Darrel Issa, whose net worth was valued between $156 million and $451 million. Open Secrets
Here is a list of the 20 wealthiest current members of Congress and their average net worth, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, based on their financial reports covering calendar year 2009. (The Center plans to unveil its analysis of lawmakers’ 2010 financial disclosures later this fall.) Open Secrets
1. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) ………. $303 million
2. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) ………. $238 million
3. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) ………. $174 million
4. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) ………. $160 million
5. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) ………. $160 million
6. Rep. Vernon Buchanan (R-Fla.) ………. $148 million
7. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) ………. $137 million
8. Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) ………. $109 million
9. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) ………. $98 million
10. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) ………. $94 million
11. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) ………. $77 million
12. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) ………. $76 million
13. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ………. $58 million
14. Rep. Gary Miller (R-Calif.) ………. $51 million
15. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) ………. $50 million
16. Rep. Diane Lynn Black (R-Tenn.) ………. $49 million
17. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) ………. $43 million
18. Rep. Richard Berg (R-N.D.) ………. $39 million
19. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) ………. $39 million
20. Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) ………. $38 million
Top Donors to Obama in 2008
The following table lists the top donors to Barack Obama in the 2008 election cycle. Open Secrets
1. University of California ………. $1.6 million
2. Goldman Sachs ………. $1 million
3. Harvard University ………. $0.85 million
4. Microsoft Corp. ………. $0.83 million
5. Google Inc. ………. $0.80 million
6. Citigroup Inc. ……….. $0.70 million
7. JPMorgan Chase & Co. ………. $0.69 million
8. Time Warner ………. $0.59 million
9. Sidley Austin LLP ………. $0.58 million
10. Stanford University ………. $0.58 million
11. National Amusements Inc. ………. $0.55 million
12. UBS AG ………. $0.54 million
13. Wilmerhale Llp ………. $0.54 million
14. Skadden, Arps et al ………. $0.53 million
15. IBM Corp ………. $0.52 million
16. Columbia University ………. $0.52 million
17. Morgan Stanley ………. $0.51 million
18. General Electric ………. $0.49 million
19. U.S. Government ………. $0.49 million
20.Latham & Watkins ………. $0.49 million
Top Donors to Bush in 2004
1. Morgan Stanley ………. $603,480
2. Merrill Lynch ………. $586,254
3. PricewaterhouseCoopers ………. $514,250
4. UBS AG ………. $474,325
5. Goldman Sachs ………. $394,600
6. Lehman Brothers ………. $361,525
7. MBNA Corp ………. $350,350
8. Credit Suisse Group ………. $326,040
9. Citigroup Inc. ………. $320,820
10. Bear Stearns ………. $313,150
11. Ernst & Young ………. $305,140
12. US Government ………. $295,786
13. Deloitte LLP ………. $292,250
14. Wachovia Corp. ………. $279,310
15. US Dept of Defense ………. $279,157
16. Ameriquest Capital ………. $253,130
17. US Dept of State ………. $225,330
18. Blank Rome LLP ………. $225,150
19. Bank of America ………. $218,261
20.AT&T Inc. ………. $214,920
American Billionaires
The following is a list of top 20 American billionaires issued by the Forbes 400 in 2011. Forbes
1. Bill Gates from Microsoft ………. $59 billion
2. Warren Buffet from Berkshire Hathaway ………. $39 billion
3. Larry Ellison from Oracle ………. $33 billion
4. Charles Koch from diversified ………. $25 billion
5. David Koch from diversified ………. $25 billion
6. Christy Walton from Wal-Mart ………. $24.5 billion
7. George Soros from hedge funds ………. $22 billion
8. Sheldon Adelson from casinos ………. $21.5 billion
9. Jim Walton from Wal-Mart ………. $21.1 billion
10. Alice Walton from Wal-Mart ………. $20.9 billion
11. S. Robson Walton from Wal-Mart ………. $20.5 billion
12. Michael Bloomberg from Bloomberg LP ………. $19.5 billion
13. Jeff Bezos from Amazon.com ………. $19.1 billion
14. Mark Zuckergerg from Facebook ……….. $17.5 billion
15. Surgey Brin from Google ………. $16.7 billion
16. Larry Page from Google ………. $16.7 billion
17. John Paulson from hedge funds ……….. $15.5 billion
18. Michael Dell from Dell ………. $15 billion
19. Steve Ballmer from Microsoft ………. $13.9 billion
20.Forrest Mars from candy ………. $13.8 billion
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“Is modern science Biblical or Greek?”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MJ25Ak02.html
LOLOL
where you get this, David
Greek and Persians are the one
What has Hebrew Bible to do with higher mathematics
Algorithm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithms
Khwārizmī
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%E1%B8%A5ammad_ibn_M%C5%ABs%C4%81_al-Khw%C4%81rizm%C4%AB
What has Einstein to do with Hebrew Bible ?
Einstein has lot to do with German Universities
Not aware of any achievement from Hebrew Bible source
ZERO
You do not agree ? ?
well, David , why not mention ONE, just ONE, Hebrew tribe Jew (not European or Russian converts) that is anybody in human history of science
Ne exist pas
Greek and Persians, David , Greek and Persians
BTW , interesting article in NYT about Macedonian Persian relation
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/arts/22iht-MELIKIAN22.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Gone is the cliché of Alexander invading an unknown Middle East in retaliation for the “Median Wars” waged by the emperors Darius and Xerxes against Greece. Intercourse between Iran and Macedonia started long before, and it left an imprint on Macedonian art that has yet to be acknowledged.
Better still, the show demonstrates that the supposedly remote Macedonia isolated in the far north of the Hellenic world was influenced at an early date by lands very far to the east. The distant Mecenian civilization fascinated Macedonia, as witness the pottery excavated at Livadia near Aiane. Some two-handled vessels — say “kantharos” if you wish to sound sophisticated — have profiles that call for comparison with artifacts found in the heart of present-day Turkey where the Hittites laid the foundations of one of their Indo-European cultures in the early second millennium B.C.
LOLOL
Why not visit Louvre, David, to polish your views about our beloved Persia
Srop that Hebrew Bible rubbish ..
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http://english.themarker.com/protesters-return-to-the-street-food-prices-rise-again-supermarkets-hike-prices-30-after-the-holidays-1.392408
Food prices in the supermarkets surveyed have climbed between 19% and 38% since the start of the Jewish holidays, based on a sample of 23 products including meat, fish, vegetables, basic foodstuffs and cleaning products – a shopping basket designed to represent a family holiday meal.
The overall average rise in prices across the supermarkets was 30%.
LOL
Taster’s Choice coffee rose 45% in the last month at Mega Bool, and you paid 46% more for Telma cornflakes at Super-Sol. Mei Eden mineral water jumped 50% in price at Kimat Hinam over the period.
biggest price rise came at Mega Bool: Chicken that was sold at a cut-throat price of NIS 6.50 per kilo before the holidays rose 130% to NIS 15 this week. Canola oil at Super-Sol Deal was 102% more expensive.
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LOL
says his actions misunderstood.
Look, folks
crooks exists everywhere
but, chief Zionist Rabbi ? ? ?
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/prominent-zionist-rabbi-indicted-on-two-counts-of-sexual-assault-of-his-students-1.393348
come on, come on
icing o n the cake would be if homo
David, care to comment ? ?
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Why Israel Will Not Attack Iran
by URI AVNERY
EVERYBODY KNOWS the scene from school: a small boy quarrels with a bigger boy. “Hold me back!” he shouts to his comrades, “Before I break his bones!”
Our government seems to be behaving in this way. Every day, via all channels, it shouts that it is going, any minute now, to break the bones of Iran.
Iran is about to produce a nuclear bomb. We cannot allow this. So we shall bomb them to smithereens.
Binyamin Netanyahu says so in every one of his countless speeches, including his opening speech at the winter session of the Knesset. Ditto Ehud Barak. Every self-respecting commentator (has anyone ever seen a non-self-respecting one?) writes about it. The media amplify the sound and the fury.
“Haaretz” splashed its front page with pictures of the seven most important ministers (the “security septet”) showing three in favor of the attack, four against.
* * *
A GERMAN proverb says: “Revolutions that are announced in advance do not take place.” Same goes for wars.
Nuclear affairs are subject to very strict military censorship. Very very strict indeed.
Yet the censor seems to be smiling benignly. Let the boys, including the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense (the censor’s ultimate boss) play their games.
The respected former long-serving chief of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, has publicly warned against the attack, describing it as “the most stupid idea” he has ever heard”. He explained that he considers it his duty to warn against it, in view of the plans of Netanyahu and Barak.
On Wednesday, there was a veritable deluge of leaks. Israel tested a missile that can deliver a nuclear bomb more then 5000 km away, beyond you-know-where. And our Air Force has just completed exercises in Sardinia, at a distance larger than you-know-where. And on Thursday, the Home Front Command held training exercises all over Greater Tel Aviv, with sirens screaming away.
All this seems to indicate that the whole hullabaloo is a ploy. Perhaps to frighten and deter the Iranians. Perhaps to push the Americans into more extreme actions. Perhaps coordinated with the Americans in advance. (British sources, too, leaked that the Royal Navy is training to support an American attack on Iran.)
It is an old Israeli tactic to act as if we are going crazy (“The boss has gone mad” is a routine cry in our markets, to suggest that the fruit vendor is selling at a loss.) We shall not listen to the US any more. We shall just bomb and bomb and bomb.
Well, let’s be serious for a moment.
* * *
ISRAEL WILL not attack Iran. Period.
Some may think that I am going out on a limb. Shouldn’t I add at least “probably” or “almost certainly”?
No, I won’t. I shall repeat categorically: Israel Will NOT Attack Iran.
Since the 1956 Suez adventure, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered an ultimatum that stopped the action, Israel has never undertaken any significant military operation without obtaining American consent in advance.
The US is Israel’s only dependable supporter in the world (besides, perhaps, Fiji, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.) To destroy this relationship means cutting our lifeline. To do that, you have to be more than just a little crazy. You have to be raving mad.
Furthermore, Israel cannot fight a war without unlimited American support, because our planes and our bombs come from the US. During a war, we need supplies, spare parts, many sorts of equipment. During the Yom Kippur war, Henry Kissinger had an “air train” supplying us around the clock. And that war would probably look like a picnic compared to a war with Iran.
* * *
LET’S LOOK at the map. That, by the way, is always recommended before starting any war.
The first feature that strikes the eye is the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which every third barrel of the worlds seaborne oil supplies flow. Almost the entire output of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Iraq and Iran has to run the gauntlet through this narrow sea lane.
“Narrow” is an understatement. The entire width of this waterway is some 35 km (or 20 miles). That’s about the distance from Gaza to Beer Sheva, which was crossed last week by the primitive rockets of the Islamic Jihad.
When the first Israeli plane enters Iranian airspace, the strait will be closed. The Iranian navy has plenty of missile boats, but they will not be needed. Land-based missiles are enough.
The world is already teetering on the verge of an abyss. Little Greece is threatening to fall and take major chunks of the world economy with her. The elimination of almost a fifth of the industrial nations’ supply of oil would lead to a catastrophe hard even to imagine.
To open the strait by force would require a major military operation (including “putting boots on the ground”) that would overshadow all the US misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can the US afford that? Can NATO? Israel itself is not in the same league.
* * *
BUT ISRAEL would be very much involved in the action, if only on the receiving end.
In a rare show of unity, all of Israel’s service chiefs, including the heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet, are publicly opposing the whole idea. We can only guess why.
I don’t know whether the operation is possible at all. Iran is a very large country, about the size of Alaska, the nuclear installations are widely dispersed and largely underground. Even with the special deep penetration bombs provided by the US, the operation may stall the Iranian efforts – such as they are – only for a few months. The price may be too high for such meager results.
Moreover, it is quite certain that with the beginning of a war, missiles will rain down on Israel – not only from Iran, but also from Hizbollah, and perhaps also from Hamas. We have no adequate defense for our towns. The amount of death and destruction would be prohibitive.
Suddenly, the media are full of stories about our three submarines, soon to grow to five, or even six, if the Germans are understanding and generous. It is openly said that these give us the capabilities of a nuclear “second strike”, if Iran uses its (still non-existent) nuclear warheads against us. But the Iranians may also use chemical and other weapons of mass destruction.
Then there is the political price. There are a lot of tensions in the Islamic world. Iran is far from popular in many parts of it. But an Israeli assault on a major Muslim country would instantly unite Sunnis and Shiites, from Egypt and Turkey to Pakistan and beyond. Israel could become a villa in a burning jungle.
* * *
BUT THE talk about the war serves many purposes, including domestic, political ones.
Last Saturday, the social protest movement sprang to life again. After a pause of two months, a mass of people assembled in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. This was quite remarkable, because on that very day rockets were falling on the towns near the Gaza Strip. Until now, in such a situation demonstrations have always been canceled. Security problems trump everything else. Not this time.
Also, many people believed that the euphoria of the Gilad Shalit festival had wiped the protest from the public mind. It didn’t.
By the way, something remarkable has happened: the media, after siding with the protest movement for months, have had a change of heart. Suddenly all of them, including Haaretz, are sticking knives in its back. As if by order, all newspapers wrote the next day that “more than 20,000” took part. Well I was there, and I do have some idea of these things. There were at least 100,000 people there, most of them young. I could hardly move.
The protest has not spent itself, as the media assert. Far from it. But what better means for taking people’s minds off social justice than talk of the “existential danger”?
Moreover, the reforms demanded by the protesters would need money. In view of the worldwide financial crisis, the government strenuously objects to increasing the state budget, for fear of damaging our credit rating.
So where could the money come from? There are only three plausible sources: the settlements (who would dare?), the Orthodox (ditto!) and the huge military budget.
But on the eve of the most crucial war in our history, who would touch the armed forces? We need every shekel to buy more planes, more bombs, more submarines. Schools and hospitals must, alas, wait.
So God bless Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Where would we be without him ?
————–
all this for internal Israeli politics
- to change the subject from Israeli revolting against food and housing prices
- to cheer-up Israeli re UNESCO fiasco
you no foolin Ahmadinejat BiBi
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Moshe, you were smart , what happened ? ?
This a disaster
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag?page=full
.
What happened ?
Come on, now everybody has it , even Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israeli-mossad-agents-posed-as-cia-spies-to-recruit-terrorists-to-fight-against-iran-1.407224
yes, agree, really stupid
Well
Here an interview in “Foreign Affairs”
Pls educate your self folks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQdOKoZ5cgo
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2 accurate and interesting articles .. crucial for Israel
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/considering-us-iranian-deal
What would the United States offer if Iran made meaningful concessions on its nuclear program, and what would Iran want in return? In other words, forgetting the nuclear part of the equation, what did Hillary Clinton mean when she said that Iran can be reintegrated into the international community, and what would Iran actually want?
Recall that in our view, nuclear weapons never have been the issue. Instead, the issue has been the development of an Iranian sphere of influence following the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq, and the pressure Iran could place on oil-producing states on the Arabian Peninsula. Iran has long felt that its natural role as leader in the Persian Gulf has been thwarted, first by the Ottomans, then the British and now by the Americans, and they have wanted to create what they regard as the natural state of things.
The United States and its allies do not want Iran to get nuclear weapons. But more than that, they do not want to see Iran as the dominant conventional force in the area able to use its influence to undermine the Saudis. With or without nuclear weapons, the United States must contain the Iranians to protect their Saudi allies. But the problem is that Iran is not contained in Syria yet, and even were it contained in Syria, it is not contained in Iraq. Iran has broken out of its containment in a decisive fashion, and its ability to exert pressure in Arabia is substantial.
Assume for the moment that Iran was willing to abandon its nuclear program. What would the United States give in return? Obviously, Clinton would like to offer an end to the sanctions. But the sanctions on Iran are simply not that onerous with the Russians and Chinese not cooperating and the United States being forced to allow the Japanese and others not to participate fully. But it goes deeper.
Iran’s Historic Opportunity
This is a historic opportunity for Iran. It is the first moment in which no outside power is in a direct position to block Iran militarily or politically. Whatever the pain of sanctions, trading that moment for lifting the sanctions would not be rational. The threat of Iranian influence is the problem, and Iran would not trade that influence for an end to sanctions. So assuming the nuclear issue was to go away, what exactly is the United States prepared to offer?
The United States has assured access to oil from the Persian Gulf — not only for itself, but also for the global industrial world — since World War II. It does not want to face a potential interruption of oil for any reason, like the one that occurred in 1973. Certainly, as Iran expands its influence, the possibility of conflict increases, along with the possibility that the United States would intervene to protect its allies in Arabia from Iranian-sponsored subversion or even direct attack. The United States does not want to intervene in the region. It does not want an interruption of oil. It also does not want an extension of Iranian power. It is not clear that Washington can have all three.
Iran wants three things, too.
First, it wants the United States to reduce its presence in the Persian Gulf dramatically. Having seen two U.S. interventions against Iraq and one against Afghanistan, Iran is aware of U.S. power and the way American political sentiment can shift. It experienced the shift from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, so it knows how fast things can change. Tehran sees the United States in the Persian Gulf coupled with U.S. and Israeli covert operations and destabilization campaigns as an unpredictable danger to Iranian national security.
Second, the Iranians want to be recognized as the leading power in the region. This does not mean they intend to occupy any nation directly. It does mean that Iran doesn’t want Saudi Arabia, for example, to pose a military threat against it.
Third, Iran wants a restructuring of oil revenue in the region. How this is formally achieved — whether by allowing Iranian investment in Arabian oil companies (possibly financed by the host country) or some other means — is unimportant. What does matter is that the Iranians want a bigger share of the region’s vast financial resources.
The United States doesn’t want a conflict with Iran. Iran doesn’t want one with the United States. Neither can be sure how such a conflict would play out. The Iranians want to sell oil. The Americans want the West to be able to buy oil. The issue really comes down to whether the United States wants to guarantee the flow of oil militarily or via a political accommodation with the country that could disrupt the flow of oil — namely, Iran. That in turn raises two questions. First, could the United States trust Iran? And second, could it live with withdrawing the American protectorate on the Arabian Peninsula, casting old allies adrift?
When we listen to the rhetoric of American and Iranian politicians, it is difficult to imagine trust between them. But when we recall the U.S. alliance with Stalin and Mao or the Islamic republic’s collaboration with the Soviet Union, we find rhetoric is a very poor guide. Nations pursue their national interest, and while those interests are never eternal, they can be substantial. From a purely rhetorical point of view it is not always easy to tell which sides’ politicians are more colorful. It will be difficult to sell an alliance between the Great Satan and a founding member of the Axis of Evil to the respective public of each country, but harder things have been managed.
Iran’s ultimate interest is security against the United States and the ability to sell oil at a more substantial profit. (This would entail an easing of sanctions and a redefinition of how oil revenues in the region are distributed.) The United States’ ultimate interest is access to oil and manageable prices that do not require American military intervention. On that basis, Iranian and American interests are not that far apart.
The Arabian Factor and a Possible Accommodation
The key point in this scenario is the future of U.S. relations with the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Any deal between Iran and the United States affects them two ways. First, the reduction of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf requires them to reach an accommodation with the Iranians, something difficult and potentially destabilizing for them. Second, the shift in the financial flow will hurt them and probably will not be the final deal. Over time, the Iranians will use their strengthened position in the region to continue pushing for additional concessions from them.
There is always danger in abandoning allies. Other allies might be made uncomfortable, for example. But these things have happened before. Abandoning old allies for the national interest is not something the United States invented. The idea that the United States should find money flowing to the Saudis inherently more attractive than money flowing to the Iranians is not obvious.
The main question for the United States is how Iran might be contained. The flow of money will strengthen Iran, and it might seek to extend its power beyond what is tolerable to the United States. There are potential answers. First, the United States can always return to the region. The Iranians do not see the Americans as weak, but rather as unpredictable. Challenging the United States after Iran has achieved its historic goal is not likely. Second, no matter how Iran grows, it is far behind Turkey by every measure. Turkey is not ready to play an active role balancing Iran now, but in the time it takes Iran to consolidate its position, Turkey will be a force that will balance and eventually contain Iran. In the end, a deal will come down to one that profits both sides and clearly defines the limits of Iranian power — limits that it is in Iran’s interest to respect given that it is profiting mightily from the deal.
Geopolitics leads in one direction. Ideology leads in another direction. The ability to trust one another is yet a third. At the same time, the Iranians cannot be sure of what the United States is prepared to do. The Americans do not want to go to war with Iran. Both want oil flowing, and neither cares about nuclear weapons as much as they pretend. Finally, no one else really matters in this deal. The Israelis are not as hardline on Iran as they appear, nor will the United States listen to Israel on a matter fundamental to the global economy. In the end, absent nuclear weapons, Israel does not have that much of a problem with Iran.
It would not surprise me to find out that the United States offered direct talks, nor to discover that Clinton’s comments could not be extended to a more extensive accommodation. Nor do I think that Iran would miss a chance for an historic transformation of its strategic and financial position in favor of ideology. They are much too cynical for that. The great losers would be the Saudis, but even they could come around to a deal that, while less satisfactory than they have now, is still quite satisfactory.
There are many blocks in the way of such a deal, from ideology to distrust to domestic politics. But given the knot that is being tied in the region, rumors that negotiations are being floated come as no surprise. Syria might not go the way Iran wants, and Iraq is certainly not going the way the United States wants. Marriages have been built on less.
and ..
from our beloved RT
http://rt.com/news/arab-spring-islamist-revolution-723/
“What we’re seeing is a Sunni-Shiite divide reemerge in the Middle East with Washington clearly backing the Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia, a close American ally. And Saudi Arabia in turn along with Qatar has taken control of the revolutions elsewhere.
“For example it’s funding the Ennahda, the main Islamist party in Tunisia. The Muslim Brotherhood and more extremist Salafi groups in Egypt on the record were saying they received substantial funds from Saudi Arabia. The Yemeni government has openly criticized Qatar for interfering in its internal affairs and funding radical Islamists. And of course in Syria the main civilian opposition is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the so-called Free Syrian Army is dominated by not only radical jihadists from within Syria, but also by jihadists from throughout the region,” . .
[..]
“The motivation for these revolutions was economic. In Tunisia for example it started with the impoverished and neglected deep south. In Syria it started in Daraa, a city near Jordan, which has been experiencing drought for three years. And in Egypt an extensive opinion poll carried out among those who went to Tahrir just after Mubarak fell showed that only 19 per cent of them put free and fair election and free expression and so on, on top of their agenda. The main priority for 65 percent was the economy,” . .
[..]
“Now the people who provoked these revolutions foolishly declared their revolutions leaderless and they didn’t have an agenda. Anyone who knows anything about revolutionary uprisings in the past… knows that what happens in the post-revolutionary chaos is that the groups that are most disciplined and most ruthless politically then fill the vacuum. When you couple that with the funding that we were talking about from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, able to manipulate the electoral process, they were perfectly poised to step into the gap and fill the vacuum and that’s what they’ve done,” . .
Interesting how Israel agreed with Wahhabi taking over Arab speaking world .. might feel good for a while .. but, down the road, disaster, for west and for Israel
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LOL
RT, the Russians, say, Friedman of “stratfor” is CIA/FBI agent
http://rt.com/usa/news/stratfor-occupy-firm-law-899/
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David ,
New released documents show , Shah knew of Egypt attacking Israel
in 1973 “Yom Kippur War” and did not inform Israel nor US
This now confirmed
Meaning, Shah had turned against Israel around 1970
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WASHINGTON – Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) General Martin Dempsey told Israeli leaders on January 20 that the United States would not participate in a war against Iran begun by Israel without prior agreement from Washington, ..
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had given a clear hint in an interview on “Face the Nation” on January 8 that the Obama administration would not help defend Israel in a war against Iran that Israel had initiated.
so, David, you on your own
and
bring it on , bring it on
LOL
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An eyeopener for you folks .. a must read
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=zahedi%20defense%20%26%20foreign%20affairs%20jan.%2025%2C%202012&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CCkQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fazadeganiran.com%2FPDF%2FDailyJan2512ZahediCopley.pdf&ei=JnotT8n4IKOliQKr-9HRCg&usg=AFQjCNGLfSu1Nfog03YCupJyGEXwK7qKLw&sig2=c7kaIJW7zTgUWIToAc9nug&cad=rja
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fact about happenings in Syria
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axvJ7XwpsUw
“A US-NATO led intervention, which would inevitably involve Israel, is already on the drawing board of the Pentagon,” . .
“[The Arab League mission] was also pressured into upholding the lies and fabrications of the mainstream media, which have been used to demonize the government of Bashar al-Assad,” . .
resembled the situation in Syria to Libya as in both cases armed terrorists supported by British and French Special Forces and said the armed Free Syrian Army is made up of Salafists and al-Qaeda affiliated militia covertly supported by Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The analyst concluded that US Ambassador Robert Stephen Ford, who arrived in Damascus in January 2011, played a central role in setting the stage for an “armed insurrection in Syria.”
“Ford’s mandate in Damascus is… promoting covertly the development of an armed insurrection. In this context, the killings of civilians perpetrated by armed gangs (supported covertly by the Western military alliance) are casually blamed on the Syrian government, thereby upholding the US-NATO mandate to intervene on humanitarian grounds,” . .
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Deep in economic crisis, the US and Europe are looking to regenerate capitalism through widespread war with the developing countries before being ready for war with Russia and China.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NB10Ak01.html
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comprehensive, accurate analysis from Stratfor (Global Inteligence) by Georg Friedman
http://bcove.me/gqxrxv0y
a “must watch” ..
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unbelievable FOXNEWS aired this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW6mwMYhSPs
JUDGE NAPOLITANO WAS FIRED AFTER THIS BROADCAST
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/world/middleeast/iran-says-un-weapons-inspectors-wont-visit-nuclear-sites.html
Without mentioning Israel directly, Mohammed Hejazi, the deputy armed forces head, said on Tuesday: “Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions.” Divisions in Iran’s leadership make it difficult to interpret the government’s intentions, but the statement showed a new level of aggressiveness in Iran’s rhetoric.
well let us see whether SHORTI (Ehud Barak) has the guts to respond
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LOLOLOL
ATOL going crazy, David
Running against Islam :
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NC02Dj02.html
LOLOL
BTW :
David , did you see that article “Alan Dershowitz, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel” asking to take Mujahedi Khalgh off US terrorist list
Is that Nobel winner Elie Wiesel ? ? asking to take guys who killed so many American serviceman in Iran Shah’s time off terrorist list ?
Come on David
Looooooooooove it
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Must watch
pretty much accurate
http://bcove.me/imh9yhgr
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dreimal hoch Günter (Grass), dreimal hoch
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/2.220/gedicht-zum-konflikt-zwischen-israel-und-iran-was-gesagt-werden-muss-1.1325809
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