[palestine] just the facts please

This blog doesn't usually print slabs of text from Wiki but today it will. I've been reading both Arab and Jewish source material on Palestine and the only conclusion is that there is no agreement on the history.

Leaving to one side for now everyone's atrocities and quite frankly callous behaviour, there seems to have been been about two thirds Arab population around 1947 and about one third Jewish.

Both should have had a homeland there. However:

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly, with a two-thirds majority international vote, passed the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181), a plan to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict by partitioning the territory into separate Jewish and Arab states, with the Greater Jerusalem area (encompassing Bethlehem) coming under international control.

Jewish leaders (including the Jewish Agency), accepted their portion of the plan, while Palestinian Arab leaders rejected it and refused to negotiate. Neighboring Arab and Muslim states also rejected the partition plan. The Arab community reacted violently after the Arab Higher Committee declared a strike and burned many buildings and shops.

In a speech delivered on 25 March 1948, US President Truman recommended a temporary trusteeship and stated: We could not undertake to impose this solution on the people of Palestine by the use of American troops, both on Charter grounds and as a matter of national policy.[132]

As armed skirmishes between Arab and Jewish paramilitary forces in Palestine continued, the British mandate ended on May 15, 1948, the establishment of the State of Israel having been proclaimed the day before (see Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel).

The neighboring Arab states and armies (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Transjordan, Holy War Army, Arab Liberation Army, and local Arabs) immediately attacked Israel following its declaration of independence, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War ensued. Consequently, the partition plan was never implemented.

What I'm interested in is not the rights and wrongs but whether the above quote is factually accurate.

[no reason] just nice memories

[cthulhu] is coming for you

That Christmas lunch was too much.

[logic 101] clear thinking exercise

Q1: Pick what's wrong with this report:

Palestinians say Israeli F-16 bombers have launched a series of air strikes against key targets in the Gaza Strip, killing and injuring dozens of people.

Missiles destroyed security compounds run by the militant group Hamas in the centre of Gaza City, killing at least 120 people, Hamas officials said.

Hamas quickly vowed to carry out revenge attacks on Israel in response to the air strikes.

A1: That's right, students, it is a thoroughly biased report, quoting the very people who provoked the strike, leaving the other side of the question unstated. These are the same people who killed their own the day before with a misdirected rocket.

Also, the report fails to mention the daily strikes against internationally recognized sovereign territory which, by definition, constitutes a declaration of war on Israel which they were within their rights to answer at any time.

Back to school for the BBC.

Some other quotes to ponder:

Peter Dodd and Halim Barakat, River Without Bridges.- A Study of the Exodus of the 1967Arab Palestinian Refugees (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1969), p. 43; on April 27, 1950, the Arab National Committee of Haifa stated in a memorandum to the Arab States: "The removal of the Arab inhabitants ... was voluntary and was carried out at our request ... The Arab delegation proudly asked for the evacuation of the Arabs and their removal to the neighboring Arab countries.... We are very glad to state that the Arabs guarded their honour and traditions with pride and greatness." Cited by J.B. Schechtman, The Arab Refugee Problem (New York: Philosophical Library, 1952), pp. 8-9; also see Al-Zaman, Baghdad journal, April 27, 1950.

... and:

The people are in great need of a "myth" to fill their consciousness and imagination.... [Musa Alami, 1948]

... and:

Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner.... they have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even criminal. [King Hussein of Jordan, 1960]

... and:

Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees... while it is we who made them leave.... We brought disaster upon ... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave.... We have rendered them dispossessed.... We have accustomed them to begging.... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level.... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon ... men, women and children-all this in the service of political purposes .... [Khaled Al-Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war]

... and :

The nations of western Europe condemned Israel's position despite their guarantee of her security.... They understood that ... their dependence upon sources of energy precluded their allowing themselves to incur Arab wrath. [Al-Haytham Al-Ayubi, Arab Palestinian military strategist, 1974]

Interesting, eh?

[ponzi schemists] make good financial advisers

The Madoff Ponzi scheme was one thing and he was well and truly exposed. Another had a different fate:

Director Rubin and ousted CEO Prince - and their lieutenants over the past five years - are named in a federal lawsuit for an alleged complex cover-up of toxic securities that spread across the globe, wiping out trillions of dollars in their destructive paths. Investor-plaintiffs in the suit accuse Citi management of overseeing the repackaging of unmarketable collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that no one wanted - and then reselling them to Citi and hiding the poisonous exposure off the books in shell entities.

The lawsuit said that when the bottom fell out of the shaky assets in the past year, Citi's stock collapsed, wiping out more than $122 billion of shareholder value. However, Rubin and other top insiders were able to keep Citi shares afloat until they could cash out more than $150 million for themselves in "suspicious" stock sales "calculated to maximize the personal benefits from undisclosed inside information," the lawsuit said.

Non-President Obama would therefore avoid financial advisers in that interconnected group like the plague, right? No, here they are:

Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Jamie Rubin, Timothy Geithner, Peter Orszag

Obama is utilizing each and every one of them. No one is accusing the bulk of these of the ponzi scam itself but rather it is an indicator of whom Obama goes to for advice. The country is in really good hands.

Now, via Politeia, a different view of economics:

[parallels] how the mighty fall

It's worth considering parallels in politics.

In December, 2007, John Howard not only lost an election after being the second longest serving prime minister but he also lost his safe Liberal [conservative] seat in Sydney. This put him in tandem with Stanley Melbourne Bruce, the only other PM to achieve this.

Now, it seems that a CNN poll has 75% of Americans glad to see Bush go. As they don't have the same mechanisms over there and though it is not the same thing, still, can you imagine what would have befallen him if they did have the power and precedent to vote him out?

In Howard and Bush's case, it was the Karl Rove policy. In Bruce's case, it was the unions although the Wall Street Crash was at the same time.