Category Archives: Politics & Economics

No really, some of my best friends are French

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The French government has banned my iPod from store shelves because it’s too loud, according to French Law. I’m only allowed to hear up to 100 decibels of music in France, as opposed to the 104 my iPod can muster, and the caring French nanny state has decided my ears may not take that kind of abuse. Never mind that European law says it’s perfectly fine (they have a law about this at all? Do they also cap the noise level at hard rock concerts? Silly me, they soon will). Never mind that the noise level depends on the impedance of the headset rather than the iPod. So Apple will have a software fix in place next week that will bring the iPod back in line with fragile French sensitivities. But who took the time to go test an iPod in the first place?

Yes, the French government has been on a roll lately when it comes to annoying people. As for the Common Agriculture Policy championed by the French, it is simultaneously the EU’s biggest single expenditure at 45% of its total budget and its most anti-free market, anti-capitalist, anti-third world, market-distorting, anti-competitive embarrassment. But at least the French and their cronies have begun to feel the need to justify this obvious swindle. In a letter to European newspapers 2 weeks ago (noticed and skewered by this week’s Economist) the French agriculture minister defended CAP not just on the grounds that he wants to preserve the inefficient ways of small farmers, whose sole contribution to society is to make the French feel warm and fuzzy about themselves in their belief that they are all quaint rural types deep down. They also defend it on the grounds that the third world should be dissuaded from growing the kinds of crops that EU farmers grow because, well, you figure it out:

Some also claim that the CAP is responsible for hunger in the third world. Nothing could be further from the truth. Agriculture in a number of these countries, particularly in Africa, is primarily concerned with promoting self-sufficiency in food. This is seriously undermined by the destruction of traditional agriculture, which encourages an increase in imports and in the indebtedness of these States.

In other words, We the EU are slapping all these tariffs and quotas on your imports because we believe you are making a terrible mistake in trying to develop. Wow. The audacity of these poor people, trying to weasel their way into our markets.

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Stockholm Stories I

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Milk cartons here have public service announcements, like they do in the US. Sometimes it’s a poem. Sometimes it’s a tip for healthy living. And before the elections a few weeks ago, they sported get-out-the-vote messages. One of these said something to the effect that elections are a time for making “smart decisions”. Unfortunately, this message was nixed by the parliamentary overseers, who decided it had too much editorial content. The word “smart” had to go. So in the end, the cartons read that elections are a time for making “decisions”.

And who can blame the overseers? If people are supposed to make smart decisions when they vote, as opposed to, say, selfish decisions, or uninformed decisions, or spiteful decisions, they’d all have voted for the liberals.

Please kill me

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The Swede of Tunisian origin who tried to board a plane for London last month with a loaded gun on him has been released. Never mind that he had taken flying lessons in the US for no apparent reason. There just was no evidence to suggest he was planning to hijack anything, it turns out. The only thought that comes to mind is: Does this mean we can all carry loaded weapons on board as long as we don’t intend to hijack anything? And if we get caught, we get slapped on the wrist and sent off on our merry way? Who came up with this law? If you’re gonna outlaw guns in Sweden or on planes, it would help if you do it a little more forcefully than ask nicely. But there is a silver lining: Kerim Sadok Chatty will have to hang out here locally in Stockholm for the time being. Can’t wait to run into him. Don’t know if he got his gun back, though.

Naive Impressionist

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What a moron. Jews knew beforehand about the September 11 attacks, says New Jersey’s poet laureate, because he read it on the internet. The internet, that rock-solid source of truth.

On a different note, it is difficult from this side of the Atlantic to gauge what is the media frenzy du jour. You’d think the internet knew no bounds, but unless you also go check the front page of the New York Post you are at risk of missing the local story everybody’s talking about. For example, has the above story already enjoyed 2 days of over exposure, or is it about to be picked up, or will it pass under the radar screen? Difficult to tell. Suffice to say it is not a story that will perk European ears.

The Europeans, of course, have their own conspiracy theories to debunk.

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Nationalist Geographic

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We went to Jericho two days ago, and then on to Qumran, where they discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. In Jericho we visited a school run by Franciscan monks for the local kids, who are predominantly Muslim. In the main hallway, a Palestinian flag. On closer inspection, you notice that the flag is drawn inside the borders of greater Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza, without any sign of borders. Hmm.

In Qumran, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority manages an excellent archeological site of an Essene community that perished 2000 years ago, but not before burying their manuscripts in nearby caves. The brochure has a map of the sites the Authority manages. it’s a map of greater Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza, without any sign of borders. Hmm.

There is a difference between the two maps, though. The Palestinian outline of greater Israel does not include the Golan.

You're all wrong

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The first comprehensive study of this blog has been conducted by Matthew Rose. Here are the findings:

You wondered once why some of your posts get more comments than others. I was bored, browsing through your library, and have some theories about the circumstances under which most replies happen:

— Anything Eurof responds to; because it’s important to always disagree with him

— Anything Kenny responds to; bc he’s always thoughtful

— Anything Felix doesn’t respond to; bc no-one can ever figure out what he’s getting at

— Anything about girls or sex

— Nothing about real political issues of substance.

With this in mind, I will now endeavor to post a blog that will elicit no comments whatsoever: It’s about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


Dad in front of the Church of the Nativity with our armored Jeep


The parents in Bethlehem’s market street


Al Aqsa paraphernalia and repaired bullet holes

I’ve refrained from blogging my impressions about my stay here in Israel until now, not just because it is so terribly difficult to be nuanced in this place, but also because until today major pieces of the puzzle were still missing for me. I’ve had a great time in Israel proper, zooming up and down 8-lane highways, hiking through Roman ruins, sitting on the beach or going out in Tel Aviv. The quality of life in Israel is very high; Tel Aviv proper is a slice of New York transported wholesale to the Mediterranean. But I hadn’t yet seen the other side of this equation–the West Bank, and Palestinian town life. Today (Sunday) we drove to Bethlehem, and then further south on some backroads to Hebron before looping back into Israel proper.

It’s a blog, so I will limit myself to vignettes of things that struck me–metaphorically, of course.

— Wimps: American supporters of Israel who are loath to travel here are total wimps. They are not just playing into the hands of terrorists (along the lines of, “If I don’t go to Israel then the terrorists have already won”), they are exacerbating a serious recession brought on in part by a collapsed tourism industry. Above all, they are terribly bad at calculating the chances of getting blown up by a suicide bomber. As always, the situation on the ground is a lot different from the bad-news focus of television. Israelis are very stoic about not crimping their style–restaurants and bars in Tel Aviv are full, albeit with guards at the entrance; and perhaps there is a preference for places that are somewhat more recessed from the outside. But the Tel Aviv Love Parade was in full swing last night, the beaches are full, and weekends are spent driving off to BBQs in the hills.

— Eyewitnesses: I met Itay and Ephrat’s dad, Eli, for Lunch in Jaffa last week. We drove through Tel Aviv to get there, and on the way he pointed out to me several places where suicide bombers had struck. A cafe on the main street, a disco on the beach… a dozen people died here, two dozen people there… Today, in Bethlehem, a teenager saw us looking at a poster on a shop door; he explained in English it commemorated a mother and daughter that had been shot there by the IDF during the siege; he was also vocal about this weekend’s latest killing of 11 Palestinians, the majority of them clearly civilians.

— Space: Both Israel and the West Bank are a lot emptier than I expected. There is a lot of room in both places for accommodating their respective population booms without a need for land grabs. Unless, of course, the settlements are not a result of population pressure, but borne of a deliberate policy to change the facts on the ground. Most shocking is the sheer physicality of a settlement. They are often shiny and new, snug on a hilltop with a big Israeli flag fluttering above, with protective fencing all around. The Palestinians, meanwhile, are immobile in their valleys, blocked by Israeli checkpoints. Most of these settlements were expanded or even started in the past decade, despite Oslo, and this is the main evidence Palestinians point to in their case that Israelis will never allow anything more than a rump Palestinian state. It is the one question that I have never seen answered to my satisfaction; pointing out that Palestinians have never had a state anyway, as someone did, is not an answer–Jews did not have a state until 1948 either, and no, states that existed 2000 years ago don’t cut it. If they count, Israel should be part of Egypt, because the Pharaohs were here first.

— “Martyrs”: In Bethlehem, many of the closed metal shop stalls sport posters, often bleached by the sun and half-scratched off, of men posing with big automatic weapons, superimposed over the Dome of the Rock. Our self-appointed guide pointed to them and called them martyrs. They were indeed Al Aqsa brigade members who had been killed by the IDF during the siege of the Nativity Church. But it was never clear to me whether our teenaged guide was able to, or particularly cared about making the distinction between having an old-fashioned fight with the other side’s army on the one hand and bombing civilians on the other.

— Girls: Secular Israeli girls are incredibly hot. I had suspected as much last time I was here, but that was winter, this is summer. Dress code is almost always a barely-there halter top with plenty of room for belly-buttonage, and low hung skin-tight pants. Put them in uniform and give them a gun, and the effect is magnified. I just had dinner with Neil, Marc Young’s roommate at SAIS and colleague of John Sinclair, and we both agreed that if we ever lured Marc here, he’d be shacked up with a pretty kibbbutz girl before you can say mazel tov. I suspect Palestinian girls are pretty too; but they and their Orthodox Jewish counterparts have a knack for fishing the ugly stuff out of the bargain bin, and then wearing far too much of it.

More to follow, I’m sure…

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Smoke-free markets

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I can’t find the original results or the methodology behind this poll, and it sounds fishy too me, but the NYC Coalition For a Smoke-Free City is propping up mayor Bloomberg’s plan to ban smoking in all bars with a poll that says 75% of New Yorkers would support the ban. But hold on: It sounds like the question was a vague one about banning smoking in the workplace? And was it explained that the group considers bars and restaurants workplaces (for waiters and bartenders), while many respondents probably think of those places as recreation-places? If I was asked if they should ban smoking in the workplace, I’d say of course. But if they asked me if they should ban smoking in bars, I’d disagree completely.

But let’s say it’s true that 75% of New Yorkers prefer to go out to smoke-free restaurants and bars. That would constitute a spectacular argument against the need for government controls on consenting adults pursuing a social vice: In the highly competitive New York bar and restaurant scene, owners would spontaneously decide to make their bars smokefree in order to attract this overwhelmingly non-smoking clientele. A smaller number of venues–say 25%–would continue to welcome smokers. Non-smoking waitstaff (about 75% of the total, say) would work in the non-smoking places, smoking waitstaff in the other places.

Why isn’t this happening? Perhaps because the “poll” is a load of bollocks?

Liberals are stupid, conservatives are evil

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A Charles Krauthammer column was the topic of debate between some republican friends and me this weekend. It’s convincing, at first, but fails to consider one obvious possibility: That liberals are stupid AND conservatives are evil.

Allow me to explain. Your daily interactions with other people are in fact little positive sum games, or prisoner dilemmas. If you go into these games trusting the other party at all times (the conservative criticism of liberals), the other party will quickly learn that it can take advantage of you by making a selfish choice rather than the cooperative choice. You lose, and you are stupid for it.

If you go into these games making the selfish choice at all times, you preempt any chance of building a history of trust and benefiting from cooperation, and instead you head for a race to the bottom, friendless and unloved for initiating a Hobbesian nightmare of a world. You are evil, indeed.

In fact, the smartest tactic lies between the two, and it has been documented by evolutionary psychologists as the dominant form in which primates (and humans) interact in a social context. Because you play lots and lots of positive sum games with the individuals that you come into daily contact with, there is plenty of opportunity to reward cooperation and punish selfish defections. What you do is you trust the other party the first time; all subsequent times, you make the same choice (cooperative or selfish) that the other party did the last time. If the other party was selfish last time (because he/she is a conservative), you are selfish back the next time. If the other party was a liberal, you continue trusting them and behaving cooperatively. Let’s call it enlightened liberalism.

Interestingly, this tactic allows for educating conservatives, because they will soon learn that if they stop behaving selfishly, you will trust them again, and you will both benefit from the extra rewards brought on by cooperation. Yep, conservatives may be evil, but they’re not stupid.

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