Wikileaks: The source of the scoops

Glenn Greenwald notes that nearly half of NYT's issues in 2011 relied on Wikileaks. For this service to journalism, Wikileaks is being investigated by a secret grand jury in the US.

The whole article by Greenwald is worth reading.

Cash transfers and UID

An important analysis and statement on cash transfers and UID.

The Seema Azad and the Vishwa Vijay case

On the 8th of June 2012 a court in Allahabad, pronounced life imprisonment to 36 year old Seema Azad, writer and editor of Dastak (a monthly magazine) and the Organising Secretary of the PUCL for alleged Maoist support (a la Binayak Sen). A critique on the PUCL website.

Here is a old media report on the case.
 
From The Hoot:
"The duo [she and her husband] were arrested shortly after Seema wrote against Ganga Expressway Plan, a project that would have displaced many farmers and also highlighted arbitrary arrests of Muslim youth by the Special Task Force in Azamgarh."

Links

India undercounts its poor by Himashu

" ... has provided ample evidence of the significant impact of such minimal interventions (MDM expenses aggregated less than Rs 10,000 crore in 2009-10) have on poverty reduction."

Inequality Matters by Radhicka Kapoor

"Planning Commission estimates indicate that the ratio of per capita income between the top 15% and bottom 15% of the population has risen from 3.9 in 2004-05 to 5.8 in 2009-10 in rural areas. In urban areas, the ratio has gone up from 6.4 to 7.8, indicating that not only the inequality between the two groups is on the rise but also that the benefits of economic growth have not trickled down to those at the bottom of the distribution."

Electricity costs in Delhi

EPW has an article on the role of deregulation in the increase of power costs in Delhi. The whole article is worth a read, but here are the points which I got from it:

• The privatization has put them outside the ambit of RTI and CAG.[1]
• The higher costs are due to cost of power puchased[2]
• Costs increased due to deregulation in electricity market, because of opaque short-term puchases and discretionary trading of electricity. [3]
• The discoms have no incentive to reduce costs on purchases since it is, by regulation, directly passed through to customers. [4]
• Many of the unregulated merchant traders in electricity have been guaranteed state-granted captive coal blocks. [5]
• Hence, the customer are paying for not only discom's profits but also profits of merchant trading companies. [6]

***********   Notes   *************
 Article is "Pricing Electricity in Delhi" by Kannan Kasturi, EPW, Jan 5, 2013

1. "the utilities have gone to court against attempts to bring them under the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act while the state government itself has been reluctant to recommend a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) audit of their accounts despite recommendations from the regulator."
   (Ramachandran, Smriti Kak (2012): “RWAs Want
   CAG Audit of Discoms’ Accounts” ) link 
2. "It appears that DERC raised tariffs both times in response to a single factor deemed to be outside the control of the discoms – the increase in the cost of power purchased by them."
3. "Power was allocated and its cost set by the government; the cost of power was considered a pass-through as far as the operations of the distribution utilities were concerned.  Over the years, significant changes have occurred in the electricity genera- tion and trading business with private producers, traders and exchanges coming into play with merchant power. Trading in electricity has become an important part of the operations of a distribution utility, especially one servicing a metro- politan area, and involves significant discretionary spending and sales. "
4. "...considering that the cost of power is a pass-through cost as far as the utilities are concerned and in no way affects their profits."  
5. A few examples include Jindal Power, GMR and Lanco Infratech. (Noor Mohammed, "Jindal Power ignores coal min directive on merchant sale of power", Financial Express, Jul 30, 2012)
6. "The larger problem however lies in the unregulated electricity market. Delhi’s consumers are paying not only for the regulated guaranteed profits of the state-owned generation and transmis- sion companies and private distribution companies, but also for the unregulated profiteering of the merchant producers and other market players."

Blogging resumed, perhaps

I might be resuming posting on this blog after a long hiatus.

On rural health care

In response to an article by Arvind Panagriha in Economic Times discussed on another blog.

I would like to throw out a different way of thinking about this. My point is that this issue has nothing to do with “socialized medicine”. Let me elaborate.

Panagriha’s main contention is:
…it is time to accept the fact that the government has at best limited capability to deliver health services and that a radical shift in strategy that gives the poor greater opportunity to choose between private and public providers is needed.


(i) Number of doctors:
He further makes a point:
With a population of 1.1 billion, this implies approximately 1,700 people per doctor. In comparison, there are just 400 people per doctor in the United States and 220 in Israel.

Why compare to US and Israel? Considering they are one of the richest in the world.

Why not compare to Cuba, a much poorer country? And a much more “socialist” country to boot. Cuba has higher proportion than both US and Israel (in fact one of the highest in the world).

(ii) India actually has one of the lowest spending on health in the world (proportional to total govt. spending) (3% of total expenditure). Compare this with 19% for US, 12% for Israel, 11% for Cuba and 5% for Vietnam. The private spending (of an individual) on health is 5 times the govt. expenditure. In this sense, India has one of the most privatized health care system in the world.

If you compare apples with oranges, you’ll get absurd results.

Self-Defence

These words by Bertrand Russell are uncannily true and hence, very funny:

The next kind of war to be considered is the war of self-defence. This kind of war is almost universally admitted to be justifiable, and is condemned only by Christ and Tolstoy. The justification of wars of self-defence is very convenient, since so far as I know there has never yet been a war which was not one of self-defence.

Bhopal on KBCS

In December 1984, one of the worst industrial disasters in modern times occurred in Bhopal, India, killing tens of thousands of people. The survivors are still seeking justice, more than 23 years later. Aquene Freechild works with the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal and the Dow Accountability Network. She was in Seattle recently to talk about the effects of deadly chemicals in Bhopal and the United States to an audience of volunteers with AID and Asha among others. This is a short, 3 min edited version of the interview.

It would be funny if it weren't so sad

From Democracy Now!

Majeed al-Alawi: “Secretary of Defense thank you very much for the excellent speech. I was wondering whether you think the Israeli nuclear weapon is a threat to regional security or not?”

Robert Gates: “No, I do not.”

The statement by Gates was greeted by laughter from a room filled with government officials from Middle Eastern countries.

Just the right response to this nonsense.

Indo-US nuclear deal and Iran

Here's one of my letters published in Eat the State!, a local newspaper.

Allan Nairn on Guatemala

The courageous Allan Nairn calling for Elliot Abrams to be tried for crimes against humanity.

Invasion Newspeak

See this: INVASION - A COMPARISON OF SOVIET AND WESTERN MEDIA PERFORMANCE, a comparison of Soviet and American invasion newspeak.

Nikolai Lanine examines Soviet propaganda during Afghanistan war. Change a few names and lo' and behold! You get the American propaganda during Iraq war!

One of the snippets which would resonate with events today:

n 1988, Pravda reported that Afghan president Najibula had criticised this ”interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan”. (Pravda, February 9, 1988) The newspaper failed to mention that the Soviet Union was itself guilty of illegal external “interference“. Instead, journalists blamed the West for ”pouring oil onto the fire of the Afghan conflict”. (Pravda, February 22, 1987) Ignoring the fact that much of the fighting in Afghanistan was in +response+ to the Soviet occupation, the media were also heavily critical of Iran and Pakistan.

Iran was criticised for “supporting the armed Islamic opposition” and for “sending its political emissaries and agents into the territory of Afghanistan”. (Spolnikov, 1990, pp.104-105) Russian journalist Andrei Greshnov, who worked as a TASS correspondent in Afghanistan for eight years in the 1980s, describes in his book “Afghanistan: Hostages of Time” (2006) how for several years, starting in the early 1980s, he was tasked with collecting information on Iranian Shia infiltration across the Afghan border near Herat. Iranian influence was very tangible in Western Afghanistan and widely confirmed by the testimony of Soviet soldiers interviewed (by Lanine) over the last 20 years.

George Galloway's wit

George Galloway is a colourful and courageous anti-war MP in Britain who incidentally also hosts a radio show. He's full of the gift of the gab. Here's on of his phrases commenting on a former communist:

John was all for the men behind the wire.
Now he wants to make the wire ever higher.

On Annapolis

Chomsky on Israel/Palestine and Annapolis.

Milton Friedman and Chile

One of the things for which Milton Friedman is both reviled and hailed is his connection with the "Miracle of Chile".

There are at least two questions:
a) What happenned in Chile and was it a "miracle"?
b) Why did Friedman consider it a "miracle"?

Reality

Let's try to lay out what happenned in Chile. The relevant time period is 1973-late 80s, the reign of Augusto Pinochet.

Politics

In 1970, a democratic socialist politician, Salvador Allende came to power in the Presidential election. He tried to carry out moderate reforms, including minor land reform. Unfortunately, as is the norm in Latin America, this means the President wasn't going to last very long. The CIA immediately started efforts to destabilize the political and economic structure. Nixon famously declared "make the economy scream". On September 11, 1973, what is known as the "first 9/11" in Latin America, Augusto Pinochet overthrew Allende in a coup.

The Pinochet regime is well known for its brutal suppression of labour unions, dissidents and all kinds of torture, massacres and other familiar stuff in Latin America. But it was also notable for its economic policies.

Economics

Milton Friedman was in Chile in the initial period and from what I can see, his only direct involvement was giving a speech laying out the case for neoliberal reforms.

However his ideas of economic policy were followed quite widely by a group of economists known as the "Chicago Boys", alumni of the University of Chicago, where Friedman taught. The strategies included large scale "privatization" of industries, cutting taxes, privatizing Social Security and many other familiar features of the neoliberal package.

Performance

Amartya Sen, in his book, Hunger and Public Action, examines the economic performance of Chile. From a survey of the literature in the field, he finds:

"This so-called "monetarist experiment"... has been the the object of much controversy, but few have claimed it to be a sucess. The failure of the monetarist experiment to lead to a sustained and broad-based increase in economic prosperity is apparent...The most conspicuous feature of the post-1973 period is that of considerable instability...and no firm and consistent upward trend (to say the least) in the conventional indicators of economic prosperity."

From his data, the per capita GDP fell 20% from 1973-85, real wages declined by approximately the same amount and unemployment rate increased from 4% to 14%.

On the social side, the picture is a little more complex. There has been an undeniable reduction in infant mortality rate (IMR) from 1973-85 from 82 per thousand to 19 per thousand. The life expectancy at birth also increased from 64.8 to 68.3. But life expectancy at age 1 (by definition, less sensitive to IMR) stagnated at 68.6 years. He finds that:

"Favourable IMR trends have not been reflective of a corresponding general improvement in living conditions".

Also, he notes that "there's little disagreement as to what caused the observed improvements in the area of child health and nutrition". Chile had a very long tradition of public action in nutritional and health programs for children, which played the major role in observed trends in IMR.

Friedman's view

Friedman did consider the Chilean economy to have performed well.

"Oh, very well. Extremely well. The Chilean economy did very well, but more important, in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So the really important thing about the Chilean business is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society."

A few comments about that. People can judge for themselves whether it did perform well. As to the second aspect, Friedman displays an extraordinary lack of historical knowledge. Even it Latin America, it was pretty evident, the role of military and business interests in sustaining dictatorial governments. These famous lines come from one of the most decorated American generals in history, Smedley Butler, in his book War is a Racket. He talks about his activities in Latin America in the first half of the 20th century:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Friedman has held that in fact, this picture is misleading because the state in intertwined with the Big Business (which is true) and thus he held that privatizing and minimizing the state would help things along. Did that happen in Chile? From what I can make out (I need to do more research on this), most of the newly privatized business went to Pinochet's cronies and was just taking things out from the public realm, where it had, however small, a measure of control by the public, into the hands of cronies of the barbaric dictator.

Edward Herman on genocide

An excellent article by Edward Herman (of Manufacturing Consent fame) on genocide. Includes great material on Rwanda.


"The dictator Paul Kagame, one of the great mass murderers of our time, was made into an honored savior deserving and receiving strong Western support."

IAEA report

There was a piece in Reuters India about IAEA's report that India and China would be needing a lot of energy, including nuclear energy in the decades ahead. Though, there is a slight matter of the dates. The report actually came out last year and mentions very little about India and China per se. The actual incident seems to have been comments made by a senior IAEA official.

Milton Friedman: Free to choose

I watched the PBS documentary Free to choose (1990 version) featuring Milton Friedman. Each episode features a roughly half-hour narration and analysis by Friedman followed by a 15-20 min discussion between Friedman and a couple other people.

Overall, it's a clear and lucid exposition of Friedman's philosophy. From consulting various sources, here's a summary.

Friedman holds that individual freedom is both the best means and the ends of human activity. To this end, he proposes that any coercion is wrong on the part of the govt. unless it's given a justification. Most forms of intervention, he argues, just make things worse. He writes, in Capitalism and Freedom:

Fundamentally, there are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion--the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals--the technique of the market place.

Friedman, however, believes that there is a role for govt. - a limited role - in which it's main objectives are to maintain law and order, and rules to ensure private contracts - namely defense and security.

General comments on philosophy:

a) Since it's a very general philosophy, we must be careful of what it implies. The documentary gives a number of illustrations of the proposition. We can evaluate them and see what's going on.

b) His conception of "socialism". Not surprisingly, since we tend to have nuanced opinions about out own position and to caricaturize the opponent, his view of socialism is pretty one-dimensional. It roughly corresponds to govt. ownership of means of production.
An illustrative example happens in the fourth episode "The failure of socialism". At some point during the discussion, Henry Levin, who's supposed to be the "left" end of the spectrum, says something like "employee-owned business is also a possibility". Friedman says he has no objection to the thing per se, but that it is artificially propped up by govt. subsidies in the US.

To appreciate the joke in the idea fully, we must realize that the core of socialism, as always understood by almost every theorist, is workers' control over the means of production. Now, there are differences as to whether there should be an intermediate state facilitating the goal (communism), or should it be realized directly (anarcho-syndicalism).

In placing the "left" and the "right", we should realize, as Orwell did in his Homage to Catalonia, that Communism was a right-wing deviant of socialism (for example in the Spanish Civil War), not its core.

One of the works I'd recommend to understand this is Chomsky's Notes on Anarchism.

c) Friedman say he's opposed to concentrated power. But he has hardly any discussion of concentrated power in private hands, namely corporations. He holds that, in a competitive market, things will tend to disperse this power. I'm not convinced by his very limited argument here.

d) His role of govt. in defense and security. We can ask the question: what view of the police, security guards and the army does the ordinary worker have? Keep in mind that the US has an extremely violent labour history with security guards killing droves of union activists. The workers' views on the army (Friedman was opposed to the draft by the way), is pretty negative as well. They regarded the army as "sending poor folk to die for a war for rich folk". To get a sort of "radical leftist" - meaning workers' - view of the army, I recomment Howard Zinn's books.

Some more comments on the discussion.
a) Invariably there are discussions between Friedman, sort of a "conservative" like bankers, wall street guys or some such in the discussion together with a sort of "Keynesian" - which is in my book, sort of "centrist". They may range from "capitalism is good, but we need more safety nets" Michael Kinsley to the "capitalism does not work, both in theory and practice" Steve Cohen. Watching the objections raised by Galbraith in the first episode, I was pretty amused.
The observation I make is pretty common in the media. FAIR notes that invariably the discussion is framed in the media between committed right-wingers and sort of moderate centrists taking on the role of "left".
b) Again, the discussion presupposed a framework where socialism is "govt. intervention" or "protectionism" and capitalism is "free markets". Cohen makes a good point about this: like Eskimos having thirty words for "snow", protectionism is not a single strategy. In his view, Japan had a very intelligent govt. intervention in the economy. I'll talk more about the discussion with Cohen later.
c) There weren't any voices, both in the narration and the subsequent discussion from, say union activists. (one exception is the small quote from a teacher's union representative in the education segment, which I regard as the strongest, though still not satisfactory - more on that later.

This only scratches the surface, more on this later.

The threat of nuclearization in the Middle East

Here's a story in The Hindu on terrorism and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.

India's higher education

Economic Times has a piece on India's higher ed. Here's the NKC's (headed by Sam Pitroda) site.

Training cameramen is terrorism

Well, he is almost six years now in Guantanamo Bay. Sami Al-Haj is an Al Jazeera cameraman.
...
And what I just discovered this week -- I got it unclassified on Monday -- the latest allegations against him. Every time they come up with something, we prove it’s nonsense. And yet, on September the 11th -- this is the second time they’ve chosen September the 11th to do this -- they alleged -- and I’ve got it right here; I’m going to read it to make sure I’m accurate you -- that the training that Sami received to become a supposed terrorist was, quote, "the detainee was trained by Al Jazeera in the use of cameras." And that’s the sort depths, unfortunately, to which we’ve sunk in making allegations against people.

Democracy Now

Milton Friedman

I've been studying, among other things, Milton Friedman in the past few days. Of course, I'm no economist, so I can only read relatively nontechnical things.

Here's the resources I've looked at:
Friedman's interview with Charlie Rose in 2005(?).
Friedman's Nobel Prize lecture.
Friedman's interview with PBS, in particular his remarks on Chile.
Friedman's draft on Indian planning.
I've just got Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom and will go through it soon.

I'll make a detailed post (or a few) on Friedman later. A few remarks though.

Friedman, in his own words, is a '"libertarian" with a small "l" and a "Republican" with a capital "R"'. I happen to hold a "left-libertarian" or "anarchist" view myself with mistrust of govt. and states. So, immediately there is a certain point of agreement and many of his observations concur with my own.

However, when it comes to, say markets and corporations, I feel that for the argument to be consistent, I should be mistrustful of corporations as well. Anarchism is basically opposition to power. On the other hand, Friedman notes that corporations are "bad" only when they're tied in with the state (which I feel they are).

That's regarding philosophy. I'll elaborate more in this and also primarily concentrate on the implementation of the philosophy.

Pew Research survey

The Pew research centre has come out with a new survey of attitudes around the world.

Myanmar, India, China

There's been a flicker of coverage on the Myanmar military junta's crackdown on the demonstrators. It's been mostly the shaking of heads and making clicking noises at the situation.

Why should Indians care?

By far the biggest culprit in this (apart from the junta of course) is China. Followed by India. Both China and India have invested heavily in keeping the junta armed and dangerous. As pointed out by Amnesty International, China is a leading arms supplier to govts. with human rights violations, including Myanmar and Sudan. India has also invested heavily in arms to the junta. Amnesty International has also accused India of selling Advanced Light Helicopters (ALH) to the junta, which would constitute violations of the EU sanctions on Myanmar, though India denies it. When you give arms to a repressive govt., it's not "non-interference" by any means.

It's widely recognized round the world that arms sales correspond to increasing repression and human rights violations. These arms are used to murder, torture, destroy and pillage. It's not pretty.

Indians have to decide whether to treat the Burmese people as dispensable in India's quest for gas resources in the region.

A good joke

"A famous comment by a Mexican foreign minister when Kennedy tried to convince him to join in the terrorist war against Cuba and the economic embargo strangulation, in fact on the grounds that Cuba was a threat to the security of the hemisphere ... and the Mexican ambassador said he had to decline, the prime minister had to decline because if he tried to tell people in Mexico that Cuba was a security threat, 40 million Mexicans would die laughing, which is approximately the right answer."

Noam Chomsky, interview with Democracy Now!, on Reagan's legacy.

Israel-Palestine conflict

This is a very controversial issue and I was thinking for a long time on how, if at all, I should comment on it.

Perhaps one of the best ways of going about this is to get to the realm of facts. There's so much disinformation and ideological probelms in this conflict that it's helpful to know what actually happenned.

I'd recommend this as a primer and essentially my view on the topic. This is a discussion between Shlomo Ben-Ami, former Foreign Minister of Israel and chief negotiator at the Camp David accords of 2000, and Norman Finkelstein, a leading and courageous expert on this topic.

A few excerpts:

On events 1920-1947
Ben-Ami: "The reality on the ground was that of an Arab community in a state of terror facing a ruthless Israeli army whose path to victory was paved not only by its exploits against the regular Arab armies, but also by the intimidation and at times atrocities and massacres it perpetrated against the civilian Arab community. A panic-stricken Arab community was uprooted under the impact of massacres that would be carved into the Arabs' monument of grief and hatred.”

On the resolution
Ben-Ami: We need to draw a line between an Israeli state, a sovereign Palestinian state, and solve the best way we can the problem, by giving the necessary compensation to the refugees, by bringing back the refugees to the Palestinian state, no way to the state of Israel, not because it is immoral, but because it is not feasible, it is not possible.

On Oslo (1991)
Ben-Ami: the P.L.O. will be Israel's subcontractor and collaborator in the Occupied Territories,...” "...in order to suppress the genuinely democratic tendencies of the Palestinians."

On Hamas and PLO
Ben-Ami: ...in my view there is almost sort of poetic justice with this victory of Hamas. After all, what is the reason for this nostalgia for Arafat and for the P.L.O.?...
...1990s was the first time that Hamas spoke about a temporary settlement with Israel. In 2003, they declared unilaterally a truce...

...Now, everybody says they need first to recognize the state of Israel and end terrorism. Believe me, I would like them to do so today, but they are not going to do that. They are eventually going to do that in the future, but only as part of a quid pro quo, just as the P.L.O. did it.


On 1967 borders
Finkelstein: Borders. The principle is clear. I don't want to get into it now, because I was very glad to see that Dr. Ben-Ami quoted it three times in his book. It is inadmissible to acquire territory by war. Under international law, Israel had to withdraw from all of the West Bank and all of Gaza. As the World Court put it in July 2004, those are, quote, "occupied Palestinian territories."

On Camp David (2000)
Finkelstein: ...On every single issue, all the concessions came from the Palestinians. The problem is, everyone, including Dr. Ben-Ami in his book — he begins with what Israel wants and how much of its wants it's willing to give up. But that's not the relevant framework. The only relevant framework is under international law what you are entitled to, and when you use that framework it's a very, very different picture.

Ben-Ami: ...Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well...

On Clinton Parameters (late 2000) and Taba (2001)
Finkelstein: It[Taba] ended officially when Barak withdrew his negotiators. It wasn't the Palestinians who walked out of Taba. It ended with the Israelis walking out of Taba, a matter of historical record, not even controversial.

Ben-Ami: ...Now, with regard to Taba, you see, we were a government committing suicide, practically... Our legitimacy as a government to negotiate such central issues as Jerusalem, as Temple Mount, the temple, etc., was being questioned...“Shlomo Ben-Ami is ready to sell out the country for the sake of a Nobel Prize.”

On "not-so-new new anti-Semitism.”
Finkelstein: There is no evidence of a new anti-Semitism. If you go through all the literature, as I have, the evidence is actually in Europe...the evidence is, if you look at like the Pew Charitable Trust surveys, anti-Semitism has actually declined since the last time they did the surveys. They did it in 1991 and 2002. They said the evidence is that it's declined.

Ben-Ami: I don't believe also that the number of incidents, as such, is the reflection of whether or not anti-Semitism is growing...[I] can see more xenophobia against North Africans, against foreigners throughout Europe. And in a way, in a way...The problem today is, in my view, much more that of [discrimination against] the Arab, the Muslim immigrants from North Africa, from the Middle East and other parts

On human rights
Finkelstein: ...the fact of the matter is, being faithful to historical record, the record of Labour ["left-wing"] has been much worse on human rights violations than the record of Likud ["right-wing"]... it doesn't speak too much in Israel's favor that it's the only country in the world that legalized torture. It was also the only country in the world that legalized hostage taking...Israel was the only country in the world that's legalized house demolitions as a form of punishment.

On the future
Ben-Ami: ...let us not fool ourselves. Many of the problems that the West is facing today with the Arab world will persist. The Palestinian issue has been used frequently by many Arab rulers as a pretext for not doing things that need to be done in their own societies...

...I define myself as an ardent Zionist that thinks that the best for the Jews in Israel is that we abandon the territories and we dismantle settlements and we try to reach a reasonable settlement with our Palestinian partners. It's not because I am concerned with the Palestinians. I want to be very clear about it. My interpretation, my approach is not moralistic...

Anarchism & Socialism

The following is a description taken from George Orwell's book, Homage to Catalonia. It's a firsthand account of one of the few really successful libertarian socialist revolutions in history - The Spanish Civil War.

It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senior' or 'Don' or even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving.

He goes on to say:
There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for

The War on Gaza's children

There is a major criminal atrocity going on.

Israel's Generous, Magnanimous Proposal

A picture of an ideal state.