Karen and I did something fun at home – we baked this 4-layer German chocolate cake.  It was quite a monstrosity and there was no chance we could eat even a quarter of it, but it took 2 hours to make it and the building staff at my office thought it was great. Shopping for the ingredients and making a cake is a fun thing to do at home on a Sunday.  If you like cooking, consider Cook’s Illustrated, a monthly magazine that costs about $20 yearly. It’s different from the others because instead of showing you pretty pictures and recipes that you won’t make, it analyzes various foods and cooking situations and tells you what kinds of things to do or to avoid. So, for instance, we read its article about German chocolate cake which tells you about all the kinds of variations they tried and which ones they liked best and for what reasons followed by two or three recommended recipes; we chose one and made it. Speaking of cooking, I found out that enrollment in cooking schools shot up since 9/11. I have no idea why.

Last month I gave a certain benefit of the doubt to Fahrenheit 9/11 and received a strong rebuttal. If you saw the movie and found its presentation of facts worthy of consideration, then look at 

http://www.davekopel.org/terror/59Deceits.pdf

Use Internet Explorer; Netscape tends to crash when opening this file. This coming month I am to see “Control Room” which is supposed to be much better in this category.

Here’s a few amusing tidbits about Americans that I think you’ll enjoy. There is a multi-million dollar mail-order business offering people “a free quarter” if they will send in 3 postage stamps in return. At 3 x 37 cents (plus the stamp to send the stamps) that costs $1.48 to get 25 cents. You do get the quarter, but you also get yourself put on tons of junk mail lists.....A survey out this week shows that even after a retraction is made of a news story that turns out to be false, the majority of Americans asked about it months later still remember the false story as being true. In Europe the results were reversed, meaning they remembered the retraction. 

In our religious sphere, 4 years ago there was this organization called Eidah which billed itself as having “The Courage to be Modern and Orthodox.” It had almost 1,500 people show up to its convention at the Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. I’ve gone to its conferences and found them getting progressively same-old and with smaller attendance. This year they’ve gone to a much smaller format and the Passover season calls for a 3 week symposium of leading rabbis to discuss the shift from handmade to machine-made matzahs (those Passover crackers we eat instead of bread). Makes you wonder what kind of issues of importance are out there that will bring all these rabbis together in the same room.

I understand that in Iraq Allawi won the popular vote but that due to irregularities and hanging chads the winner was declared to be George Bush...Even with the Sunni boycott, over 60% of Iraqis voted, which is much higher than the percentage that votes in American elections. One day I suspect that Iraq will be a normal democratic country in which people will not care to vote....John Kerry said last week that Bin Laden must have wanted Bush to win, because the day after his pre-election video came out, Kerry went down in the polls and never came back. Global Thoughts predicted that Bin Laden would want Bush to win.

MIDDLE EAST – DEMOCRACY 

I was hoping so much that Iraqis would have the guts to get up and vote, and I have said for awhile that given the chance, they would confound the skeptics who thought the election wouldn’t happen. Once the voting started, the Arab TV networks moved away from covering the violence and instead focused on the voting. The skeptics were similarly proved wrong in Afghanistan and, as I will later discuss, the Palestinians also had a real election that was considered legitimate. Stories of what people did to vote were inspiring. As I mentioned in November, I have my own lump in my throat when I go to vote. It is a special thing for each person to have a chance to be equal for a day and to have a say in the future of his or her country and that country’s role in the world. We can be cynical but a vote is a vote if it is counted and elections create a certain momentum. The ones boycotting the elections in Iraq were not anti-US; they were against losing their privileges in Iraq. The ones boycotting in Palestine were not so much anti-Israel as against the idea of having a legitimate government that would declare them mafias and take away their guns. The election was more important in the long run than the invasion itself. Since the Iraqi election, Iraqis are not looking at the Americans as the ones in charge in Iraq; now they are either hopeful or angry toward their own elected leaders. I believe that, as I have previously stated, Iraqis will in the crunch see themselves as Iraqis and not just as tribal members and will work together to build an Iraqi nation. The Shiites know they have to work with the Kurds if they don’t want them to secede, and they both have to work with the Sunnis in order to have stability and a pan-Iraq national identity. I think the Sunnis realize that the writing of the constitution is something they need to participate in, and that the world sees the elections as legitimate. I think they will join the political process now.

As the superpower, the Americans are the bully of the world and it goes with the territory. The Dutch might be loved but they have no power. We all know that if not for those American soldiers and the American economy, there would not have been elections in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine or even Georgia or the Ukraine this past year (American money and influence helped pay and pave the way for them too). In the damned if you do or don’t category, I read yesterday that Saudi and Egyptian opposition groups were critical of Bush’s state of the union address which called for more democracy in the region. They said that Bush’s calls were the same thing they had been saying for 25 years, but that it was not helpful for Bush to say such things because it was counter-productive for them. So that means that Bush should shut up and not say anything or would it have helped if he said that we are boycotting Saudi oil because we all know that they are a corrupt government hated by their people? Really, you can’t win at this game in the normal scheme of things. I understand that Bush is not pressing Putin on his government, but we did get Putin to sort of sign off on Georgia and the Ukraine. Bush is getting a bit more consistent with American policy viz. Democracy but it will never be fully consistent, partially because you have to pick your battles and the Russian situation is one of them. The benefit of getting Georgia and Ukraine outweighs the benefit of trying to pressure Putin who is clearly popular and in charge in Russia.

The solution is that America has to support economic and educational initiatives without appearing to get involved in the political process in the Middle East countries. Tom Friedman called for the creation of the Bin Laden scholars program, offering scholarships to students in the US to learn about democracy. The challenge is for the US to get Iraq and Iran to change without appearing to be dictating and for Sharon to get Abbas to change things in his realm without making it appear that Abbas is being his poodle. So we can expect that even if the parties get along, they do so quietly and continue to keep some distance from each other publicly. That means for instance that the Israelis release prisoners and the Palestinians declare that the releases are insulting but, at the same time, close off tunnels that are used for arms smuggling.

There is plenty of hypocrisy to go around. At a certain point in January, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were each pledging $10 million to the tsunami victims, the vast majority of whom were Moslem. America and Australia had each offered half a billion dollars and troops to help speed aid to victims. Switzerland had offered $20 million and American Jews alone had raised $13 million and counting, and I was told that there were thousands of envelopes on the floor at the offices of the Joint Distribution Committee (a major Jewish aid group) that hadn’t even yet been opened because of the massive response. The Saudis later raised their ante to $30 million but that was still less than the amount raised in one hour for a telethon for Palestinian martyrs. You can draw your own conclusions here.

This last week in Israel the Attorney General ruled that the Jewish National Fund’s policy of discrimination in land sales toward Jews was illegal and that the JNF and the Israeli government would have to sever their ties in order to enforce the law which is that in Israel, Arabs and Jews are equal as citizens and have the same rights to land. To understand the meaning of all this, you need to know that for nearly a century Jews put coins in blue and white boxes in their homes to pay for land in Palestine to build homes for Jews who wanted to return to Israel. The JNF is mom and apple pie for Jews and there was no question that such land should be occupied by Jews in a Jewish country. Imagine such an event happening in an Arab country. You can say what you want about Israel and its occupation, but the fact is that even with (and in my opinion at least at this moment in time because of) the occupation the Palestinians had a freer election than had previously taken place anywhere else in the Arab world and you have a legal system that rises over politics and even takes on sacred cows such as JNF in order to enforce democratic principles.

OK, now let’s be cynical again. You’re all hearing about how Natan Sharansky’s book about Freedom is on Bush’s reading list and how everyone at the White House from Condi Rice down is reading it. Ever wonder how all this happened? Amir Oren from Haaretz did some damn good research and found out. I wish I could take credit for this but I can only take credit for reading obscure op-ed pieces and telling you about it with some extra personal knowledge thrown in. Turns out that Tom Bernstein, a major campaign contributor to Bush who was also one of his important business partners and financiers, sent him galleys of this book last year before it was even finished. Sharanksy’s assistant and co-writer of this book is Ron Dermer, an acquaintance of mine from Florida who immigrated to Israel and is working his way up the ladder with Sharansky and Netanyahu. Dermer’s father is mayor of Miami Beach and his late grandfather was also mayor of Miami Beach. The family is very politically oriented and Ron apprenticed with Frank Luntz, a major Republican operative and pollster; Dermer’s dad, although Democratic, supported George Bush in the last election and Jeb Bush for governor of Florida. Anyway, the guy who sent Bush the galleys to read also recently signed for a second mortgage for Ron Dermer on his house. After Bush won re-election, Dermer and Sharansky were invited to visit the White House.  Sharansky is a major vote against Sharon’s disengagement policy and it would really help to get his vote for it. So now let’s put the pieces together: What’s really going on is that Dermer’s family helped the Bush family in a key state and, via a mutual friend, Tom Bernstein, sent off galleys of an upcoming book to the White House with the urging to give it their fullest attention. Sharansky’s vote is going to be needed in the next year. The Dermers need to make a living and they use politics to do so. Get it?

Let’s move on to another round of things that aren’t always what they seem. Remember those pictures at the Iraqi prison with prisoners being led around with leashes? Turns out the reason was that those prisoners were insane and one way to deal with violent insane people is to use leashes because they often attack people around them without warning. The problem was that they needed medicines to control these people and the government wasn’t sending them, so they didn’t have the facilities needed to deal with such people and it led to negligence, abuse and whatever else. But the leash itself was not meant to humiliate; it was what the medical staff told people to do in the absence of proper medicines.

I had thought that the majority of American immigrants to Israel were settling in the territories. Turns out that only about 3-4% of them do, according to Nefesh B’Nefesh, a private organization that has essentially been outsourced the task of immigration from America from the Jewish Agency; over 80% are going to Jerusalem and to an area called Beit Shemesh, which is within the Green Line somewhere between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Some of these new developments are quite upscale; my brother inquired about one of them called Eden Hill and when he asked how much the houses cost, he was told that if he had to ask, he shouldn’t think about living there. Sounds like a real friendly neighborhood straight out of Snobville NY...

Remember a few years back in Global Thoughts I mentioned that the US knew all along about the oil for food smuggling in Iraq. I mentioned that for a few hours one day there appeared on the Washington Post website a list of companies bidding on Iraqi oil contracts including Americans and that the article was removed quickly. According to an investigation conducted jointly by the Financial Times of London and Italy’s Il Sole 24 Ore, a business newspaper, they have proved that the US knew all along about it, wrote memos about it that circulated in Congress and, for various reasons such as not wanting to deny Jordan an economy, overlooked it. The UN might have been corrupt, but the US was not in the dark.

A few comments on the Israeli/Arab situation...The idea of land swaps is making the rounds. I’ve got no problem with it if the countries agree and the citizens living on those lands don’t object. The borders we have now were drawn on a napkin by Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia in the 1920's and I don’t think we should view them as sacred just because they exist and succumb to inertia. Despite the pan-Arab dreams of yesteryear, more Arabs see themselves as part of a tribe than of the state in which they live. Part of the idea of reshuffling the deck as has been done is to open up that can of worms and to give people the chance to live lives that make sense. Redrawing borders might make sense for some. 

Last month I mentioned that Israel isn’t running toward Syria and I wondered aloud which track comes first, the Syrians or the Palestinians. Here’s the answer: Syria is more interested in holding onto Lebanon than in getting back the Golan. It doesn’t necessarily want a peace deal with Israel. Assad realizes that he is on the back burner because Sharon has too much on his plate, but that in time it will be his turn to sit at the table and, so far based on what he has done viz. Turkey, my feeling is that he will deal reasonably with the Israelis. The truth is that right now the relationship between Assad and Abbas is more important than how Assad gets along with Sharon and the recent visit to Damascus by Palestinian leadership went rather well after having been very poor under Arafat. Assad holds a big veto over Palestinian politics because he controls the opposition to Abbas and can, via support of Hizbullah and Hamas (as the extension of Iran), undermine any quiet that Abbas might achieve. 

Sharon, Peres, Mofaz, Abbas and Dahlan are a good fit to work together in 2005 to make things happen; they all get along. Abbas will work with Hamas to have them follow the Lebanese Hizbullah profile – they will be a resistance movement within the state apparatus that has its own militia but which stays quiet and does not attack Israel in any meaningful way. As Abbas gains control and works out arrangements with the Syrians, the ground will be paved for deals to be made involving both Syria and Israel via the Palestinians, such as the recent shipment of excess apples from Druze villages in the Golan to Syria. The Golan is a tricky wicket because the Israelis want it and the occupation of it gives the Syrians the excuse to remain in Lebanon, where they are not wanted and where they are exploiting the country’s economic resources to fund their own country’s elite. The Israelis and the rest of the world are not sure they want to leave the Lebanese to their own devices which might lead to a less stable country. The country is, despite the uptick in nightlife and appearances, still woefully inadequate and corrupt. Young people are going away from there, not setting up shop. So the truth is that on the Syrian-Israeli-Lebanon track, the road right now goes through Gaza.

A few random thoughts... CHINA: A friend of mine just returned from China. Says the country is moving forward and will be the America of the latter part of the next century but they still learn by rote and are not problem solvers. Also have a shortage of home-grown management. Nothing can be taken at face value there and everything is based on family and personal relationships and hierarchies within such relationships. The legal system is improving, it is now possible to have a wholly foreign-owned company using a foreign bank in China, but it is still corrupt and money invested there is at risk, particularly in any joint venture involving a large state-owned company. The Chinese are very status conscious and will pay extra to buy a product made abroad such as a Mercedes made in Germany for an extra $20,000, even if they are told that the Chinese-produced version is the same thing. Although China has supplanted America as Japan’s #1 trade partner, the Chinese still hate the Japanese over World War II and this promises to be a wrench in the relationship between the countries. The Taiwan issue is a top subject for discussion; every Chinese person believes the Chinese must go to war if Taiwan declares independence. My assumption is that the Taiwanese understand that they cannot win such a war and that any warships will be sitting ducks to the thousands of Exocet missiles the Chinese have, that the Americans also understand this, and that the Taiwanese will not try and declare independence and that we don’t have to sit around worrying about this issue ..I once wrote that racial profiling made more sense than America’s Look at Everybody Policy. I’ve changed my mind a bit. Because today’s terrorists follow no rules, we have to change our defenses too. Since they will hide stuff in a baby diaper precisely because we wouldn’t want to look there, we have to check the babies and the grandmothers (maybe they distracted her and hid something in her bag). Soldiers and security officials of all types, from Americans to Brits and Chinese to Israelis and Beduin Jordanians are all morons, idiots or whatever, and we can all find reasons to think they are less than perfect. But they are charged with making Zero Mistakes. So we have to let them do their job and the best way for them to operate is to assume the worst in everybody and then really grill the ones who look suspicious. There just aren’t enough Swiss border guards to go around. In the same vein of keeping in step with your enemies, the Iraqi security forces in the Kurdish zone have an interesting new tactic. They are making videos showing the guys who last year were beheading people in Iraq reminding you of what they did, and then showing these once-brave people cowered in fear as they speak of remorse and religious hypocrisy now that they have been captured. The idea is to show their “macho brothers” what awaits them when they get caught and for fellow citizens to have the courage to turn these people in.

I’ve noticed that airline tickets on the major airlines are getting cheaper. Go to their websites and click for one-way fares or whatever and you’ll start noticing that the fares are becoming more rational. Bargains are even available at the last minute. They’re not yet fully rational and JetBlue is still the best by far among the domestic pack, but the industry is starting to change....George Bush gets points from me for taking on real sacred cows such as social security and farm subsidies. Seems like he wants to show he is serious about dealing with real issues. Taking on the farm lobby is real dangerous because that’s a critical area of his support, but the truth is that the country needs to inject market forces into the agricultural portion of its economy and the farming industry has been disproportionately subsidized..... I don’t know what to make of all this privatization discussion about social security and I hope the Economist does a survey on the subject but my gut is, from what I am reading, that the Bush plan is not a good one because the savings and personal benefits that are being promised will be eaten up by the borrowing that will take place over the next few decades to fund it, meaning that the benefits being promised are unlikely to be realized and lots of middle-class people could get hurt in the process. The evidence from other countries is not terribly supportive of such a retirement scheme. The Democrats are not helping themselves by just saying No and not offering alternatives, but institutions such as the NY Times are doing a good job of analyzing and objecting to the proposals. If the Republicans would just tell everybody to light up and start smoking again, I suppose people would die earlier and that would solve the pending problem of having too many people living too long, eh? (On the other hand, we have lower health costs because people are not smoking.) This issue of social security is an area that needs further study because we can’t afford to sit around and do nothing if today’s workers are to have the confidence that their contributions will be there for them when they retire.