Robert Fisk: a propósito de Gaza

Robert Fisk: Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored
Monday, 29 December 2008

We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more – providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs – who, as we all know, only understand force.
Ever since 1948, we've been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis – just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist "death wagon" will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be "liberated". And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise "restraint" – as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.
The blood-splattering has its own routine. Yes, Hamas provoked Israel's anger, just as Israel provoked Hamas's anger, which was provoked by Israel, which was provoked by Hamas, which ... See what I mean? Hamas fires rockets at Israel, Israel bombs Hamas, Hamas fires more rockets and Israel bombs again and ... Got it? And we demand security for Israel – rightly – but overlook this massive and utterly disproportionate slaughter by Israel. It was Madeleine Albright who once said that Israel was "under siege" – as if Palestinian tanks were in the streets of Tel Aviv.
By last night, the exchange rate stood at 296 Palestinians dead for one dead Israeli. Back in 2006, it was 10 Lebanese dead for one Israeli dead. This weekend was the most inflationary exchange rate in a single day since – the 1973 Middle East War? The 1967 Six Day War? The 1956 Suez War? The 1948 Independence/Nakba War? It's obscene, a gruesome game – which Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, unconsciously admitted when he spoke this weekend to Fox TV. "Our intention is to totally change the rules of the game," Barak said.
Exactly. Only the "rules" of the game don't change. This is a further slippage on the Arab-Israeli exchanges, a percentage slide more awesome than Wall Street's crashing shares, though of not much interest in the US which – let us remember – made the F-18s and the Hellfire missiles which the Bush administration pleads with Israel to use sparingly.
Quite a lot of the dead this weekend appear to have been Hamas members, but what is it supposed to solve? Is Hamas going to say: "Wow, this blitz is awesome – we'd better recognise the state of Israel, fall in line with the Palestinian Authority, lay down our weapons and pray we are taken prisoner and locked up indefinitely and support a new American 'peace process' in the Middle East!" Is that what the Israelis and the Americans and Gordon Brown think Hamas is going to do?
Yes, let's remember Hamas's cynicism, the cynicism of all armed Islamist groups. Their need for Muslim martyrs is as crucial to them as Israel's need to create them. The lesson Israel thinks it is teaching – come to heel or we will crush you – is not the lesson Hamas is learning. Hamas needs violence to emphasise the oppression of the Palestinians – and relies on Israel to provide it. A few rockets into Israel and Israel obliges.
Not a whimper from Tony Blair, the peace envoy to the Middle East who's never been to Gaza in his current incarnation. Not a bloody word.
We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's "research and assessment division" announced that "no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them". Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.
Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it. Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated "terrorism". So what was the reaction last night? The Israelis threaten ground attacks. Hamas waits for another battle. Our Western politicians crouch in their funk holes. And somewhere to the east – in a cave? a basement? on a mountainside? – a well-known man in a turban smiles.

Para otra versión del asunto: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/agonia/Gaza/trampa/Israel/elpepiopi/20081230elpepiopi_11/Tes?print=1

Feliz Año a todos!!!

No tiene desperdicio

Garantías vs. Legitimidad

While Detroit Slept

international herald tribune
Thomas L. Friedman

Wednesday, December 10, 2008
As I think about the U.S. government bailing out Detroit, I can't help but reflect on what, in my view, is the most important rule of business in today's integrated and digitized global market, where knowledge and innovation tools are so widely distributed.

It's this: Whatever can be done, will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you. Just don't think it won't be done. If you have an idea in Detroit or Tennessee, promise me that you'll pursue it, because someone in Denmark or Tel Aviv will do so a second later.

Why do I bring this up? Because someone in the mobility business in Denmark and Tel Aviv is already developing a real-world alternative to Detroit's business model. I don't know if this alternative to gasoline-powered cars will work, but I do know that it can be done - and Detroit isn't doing it. And therefore it will be done, and eventually, I bet, it will be done profitably.

And when it is, America's bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet.

What business model am I talking about? It is Shai Agassi's electric car network company, called Better Place. Just last week, the company, based in Palo Alto, California, announced a partnership with the state of Hawaii to road test its business plan there after already inking similar deals with Israel, Australia, the San Francisco Bay area and, yes, Denmark.

The Better Place electric car charging system involves generating electrons from as much renewable energy - such as wind and solar - as possible and then feeding those clean electrons into a national electric car charging infrastructure. This consists of electricity charging spots with plug-in outlets - the first pilots were opened in Israel this week - plus battery-exchange stations all over the respective country. The whole system is then coordinated by a service control center that integrates and does the billing.

Under the Better Place model, consumers can either buy or lease an electric car from the French automaker Renault or Japanese companies like Nissan (General Motors snubbed Agassi) and then buy miles on their electric car batteries from Better Place the way you now buy an Apple cellphone and the minutes from another telecommunications operator . That way Better Place, or any car company that partners with it, benefits from each mile you drive. GM sells cars. Better Place is selling mobility miles.

The first Renault and Nissan electric cars are scheduled to hit Denmark and Israel in 2011, when the whole system should be up and running. On Tuesday, Japan's Ministry of Environment invited Better Place to join the first government-led electric car project along with Honda, Mitsubishi and Subaru. Better Place was the only foreign company invited to participate, working with Japan's leading auto companies, to build a battery swap station for electric cars in Yokohama, the Detroit of Japan.

What I find exciting about Better Place is that it is building a car company off the new industrial platform of the 21st century, not the one from the 20th - the exact same way that Steve Jobs did to overturn the music business.

What did Apple understand first? One, that today's technology platform would allow anyone with a computer to record music. Two, that the Internet and MP3 players would allow anyone to transfer music in digital form to anyone else. You wouldn't need CDs or record companies anymore. Apple simply took all those innovations and integrated them into a single music-generating, purchasing and listening system that completely disrupted the music business.

What Agassi, the founder of Better Place, is saying is that there is a new way to generate mobility, not just music, using the same platform. It just takes the right kind of auto battery - the iPod in this story - and the right kind of national plug-in network - the iTunes store - to make the business model work for electric cars at six cents a mile. The average American is paying today around 12 cents a mile for gasoline transportation, which also adds to global warming and strengthens petro-dictators.

Do not expect this innovation to come out of Detroit. Remember, in 1908, the Ford Model-T got better mileage - 25 miles per gallon - than many Ford, GM and Chrysler models made in 2008. But don't be surprised when it comes out of somewhere else. It can be done. It will be done.

If we Americans miss the chance to win the race for Car 2.0 because we keep mindlessly bailing out Car 1.0, there will be no one to blame more than Detroit's new shareholders: we the taxpayers.

Tensión futbolera

60 Aniversario de la Declaración de Derechos Humanos

Gracias, entre otras, a la acción tenaz y constante de la señora Eleanor Roosevelt...








... hoy, 10 de Diciembre 2008, celebramos el 60 Aniversario de la adopción por la Naciones Unidas de la Declaración Universal, ojo universal, de los Derechos Humanos. 30 artículos para reflexionar...



Si te conmueve, asóciate a Amnistía.

In the end these companies probably will disappear

STOCKHOLM - LESSONS learned from the 1930s depression and from more recent economic crises could be the only thing warding off a new Great Depression, the 2008 winner of the Nobel economics prize Paul Krugman said on Sunday.
'If we had not already experienced the Great Depression, I think we would be about to have another one,' the Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist told reporters in Stockholm, where he will receive his Nobel prize this week.
'But the fact that we did have that Great Depression and have some economic analysis of how it happened, gives us some hope of avoiding a repeat,' he said.
Mr Krugman, who supports massive government spending on infrastructure and public works programmes as a way to revitalise the slumping US economy, said Sunday that Washington should also draw lessons from Japan's deep economic crisis in the 1990s.
'I think we need to be grateful to the Japanese for ... simply (giving) us the realisation that such things can happen and which policies do and don't work,' he said.
'The experience of Japan in the 1990s was that indeed government spending, while it may not produce a permanent cure, can greatly alleviate the pressures on the economy,' he said.
Mr Krugman has in his New York Time columns cautioned that US president-elect Barack Obama, who on Saturday vowed to make the largest investments in US infrastructure since the 1950s, may not act boldly enough to bring an end to the country's economic malaise.
'I'm very concerned about how quickly the programmes can be brought online given the speed with which the economy is declining,' he said on Sunday.
Public spending 'is in fact our only response. This is a crisis situation and we need to provide support. The private sector cannot support itself,' he added.
Mr Krugman, who won the Nobel prize for his work on the impact of free trade and globalisation, also praised Mr Obama's pick of Timothy Geithner for Treasury chief, describing him as 'very smart, very open-minded (and) quicker to realise the vulnerability of the financial system than most people'.
However, 'he faces an extremely daunting task. The simple mechanics of producing a rescue for the world economy are very hard. The pace at which things are getting worse is so great,' he said.
While supporting government spending to rescue the US economy, Mr Krugman expressed more scepticism to bailing out the country's floundering giant car makers.
There is, he said, 'a correct lack of willingness to accept (responsibility for) the failure of a large industrial sector ... in the midst of a very, very severe recession.' 'In the end these companies probably will disappear.'
Mr Krugman will receive his Nobel gold medal and diploma along with 10 million Swedish kronor (S$1.8 million) at a formal prize ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.
When asked what he planned to do with the prize money, Mr Krugman said he had yet to decide, pointing out that 'My favorite congratulatory email said: 'Congratulations, I hope you can find a bank still standing'.

El quicio de la historia..

Ya queda menos para el Inauguration Day. Léanse esta obra maestra...

Hay ciertos paralelismos...