THE WALL IS PEACE?

Jonathan Kay of the National Post has written a piece on the beautiful, peace-affirming, trade-friendly wall being constructed in Israel. Naturally, I'm not inclined to loll beneath the olive tree peering through rose-colored lenses at this one. I came across the article, again, on the message boards I'm striving to get away from. My retort:

Maximalist Palestinian delusions aside, the fence is in everyone's interests.

Right there, I take instant exception. Everyone's interests? Wishful thinking. This, quite obviously, negates the interests of those whose properties have been confiscated to build this wall (Israelis and Palestinians alike), primary means of sustenance altered if not outright destroyed by state seizure, neighborhoods and districts torn asunder by the arbitrary building of a razor-wire lined wall through their centers, and other state encroachments on private property. To excuse the negation of private property merely to accomodate state fiat is to excuse any other belligerent encroachments by the state.

What refrain do we always hear from the "Pro-Palestinian" crowd? That Israel's true intentions have always been to steal land. Since the construction of the Wall radically turns suspicion into reality, were this true or not before, it certainly lends legitimacy to the Palestinian position now. Further, mounting evidence indicates that much of the wall seems built to encapsulate water reservoirs in Israeli territory, IE, Israeli government fiat is seperating Palestinian municipalities from their traditional water sources. That's outrageous, and far from sating Palestinian discontent, expect these totalitarian measures to exacerbate it in spades.

Once a measure of security is restored in the region, Israel can slowly start making Palestinians richer, and help them build the institutions they'll need when they ultimately do get their own state.

By placing a gigantic barrier to trade right in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian co-operation, the author expects to see greater co-operation rise in time? Fat chance. Encircled and cut-off economically, how does the author in a million years expect to see Palestinians grow richer as a result? Oooh, wait, I see... "Israel can slowly"... try glacial-pace... "start making Palestinians richer". What are we talking about here, wealth redistribution? I can't fathom any other meaning from this statement in light of the reality of the Wall, which can have no other purpose other than crushing Palestinian... and even Israeli... economic prospects.

Netanyahu, who emphasized economic growth during his time as PM...

... and economic self-destruction now.

... describes an ambitious plan to create a train link from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean that would compete with the Suez canal for the transportation of Asian cargo to Europe.

Built by whom? The state or private interests? Why bother asking... it's the Israeli government, with the possible help of other governments I'm sure. With the net effect of benefitting mostly government coffers and bureaucrats and with no consideration for the true economic costs of the thing. I wonder... how over-budget will that go?

The West Bank (and perhaps even Jordan) would be linked into the rail network so that Palestinians could take part in the global economy.

As soon as their part in it can scale that Wall, right, Johnny Boy?

Another plan calls for joint industrial parks to be set up along the West Bank's border with pre-1967 Israel.

A plan? By whom? The Israeli government? So, they build these industrial parks (probably on some amount of confiscated land), there's still no guarantee any sane business would want to occupy these industrial parks once they're built. And will the IDF allow for any of these brave companies to provide for their own security once they take a chance on setting up shop there? No. That's the monopoly of the state in Israel.

In the present climate, all of this sounds like a pipe dream.

In any climate. It's top-down socialization of an economy and a heap of the totalitarianism that such socialization implies.

But recall that Mr. Netanyahu himself presided over just such an economic blossoming half a decade ago, a time during which Jews flocked to Ramallah's shops and Jericho's casino.

"Jews flocked"? What? Was there segregation there too?

No, I know. These are West Bank towns. I would posit that, unlike the author's point of view, it isn't exactly threat of death and dismemberment keeping Jews out of the West Bank now, it's their own government's military operations as much as anything else.

Those successes came to naught because Mr. Arafat and his lieutenants launched a terrorist war against Israel when Ehud Barak offered them their own country at Camp David.

Oh, yes. The Palestinian side isn't short on their own list of stupidity and statist excess either.

Once the fence is fully erected, they will no longer have that option.

Innovation arises in the damnedest of places. Has any IDF strategist ever heard of the catapault?

No doubt, Yasser Arafat and his PLO cronies do find the situation "urgent" -- but not, as Ms. Buttu suggests, because a tiny fraction of the West Bank's Palestinians will now have to pass through security gates to tend their olive trees. What they want is for the bloodletting to drag on until Israel gives in on everything, including the right of return for millions of Palestinians. As Mr. Netanyahu told me, "the reason [Palestinians] hate the fence is that it disarms the suicide bombers. That's why they're opposed to it -- because it's a weapon of peace."

Actually, "because a tiny fraction of the West Bank's Palestinians will now have to pass through security gates to tend their olive trees" has everything to do with it. All this piece is, is an apologia for State and a tirade against property rights and trade. Lenin would be pleased.

Palestinian leaders and activists despise the fence -- or, as they call it, Israel's "Apartheid Wall."

For one of those rare moments, the Palestinian "leadership" (gang of thugs more appropriately) is on the mark. It is an Apartheid Wall. Not only are the Palestinians restricted in this sense from engaging and cooperately peaceably with Israelis as well as, per the wishful thinking with the thing, the more nefarious inclinations... so too are Israelis from engaging with Palestinians. This isn't a panacea, it's the mistaken result of fervently believing that two wrongs will make a right. I'm very partial to Israelis as a people, but their government, like all government, plainly stinks.

DON'T LOSE IT

An AP article in my local paper covering the death of Sgt. Joseph Suell, ruled a suicide by the Army, was accompanied by a photograph that just tore me up this Thanksgiving; that of the broken widow of Sgt. Suell, Rebecca, cradling a portrait of the couple in happier times. The poor woman's seeking answers for her husband's puzzling death. I wouldn't hold my breath in anticipation of her receiving any satisfactory word, but my heart's with her in her quest and the rebuilding of her life from here.

The article was actually pretty good, even including at its tail end reference to a case that has troubled me since I first got word of it. The case in question is the unfortunate story of Staff Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany, who has "earned" the unfortunate distinction of being the first soldier charged with "cowardice" since the Vietnam War. Sgt. Pogany's crime, you see, was that he had the unmitigated gall to unfortunately bear witness to the mangled, torn-in-two body of an even more unfortunate Iraqi civilian and actually being human enough to be physically shaken by it. Compounding this infraction, he actually had the nerve to seek help for his rattled senses. The Army, in its profound and benevolent way, responded and took decisive action by ordering Sgt. Pogany home to face a court martial. The charges have been reduced to "simple" dereliction of duty, but it remains beyond the pale that he still faces a court martial at all.

Note to deployed soldiers in hot zones the world over: If the stress of combat starts to wear on you mentally, DON'T SEEK HELP. It's better to flake out in the field, isn't it, rather than to face prison time back home.

EDIT: Apparently, a married couple faced cowardice charges during the Gulf War but were not convicted. No U.S. combat soldiers have been convicted of cowardice since Vietnam.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

Yeah, thus far the blog is piss. Easily explained. The author of said blog knows next to nothing of HTML. Easily overcome as well, as it is all simply a matter of one teaching oneself that which he does not yet know.

Or...

Is foolish enough to blunder headlong into a brisk series of tutorials that will leave nary an imprint and leave the student none the wiser. I am not chastened. It could very well be, like most human technological and scientific advancements, that through a combination of foolish pride and poking around where one probably shouldn't in any other conceivable model might actually result in something good and beneficial and... the point really, interesting.

One hopes.

ASTROPOLIS

People who know me and have long agitated in waves of radical paroxysm on a par with the English Corn Riots of the mid-19th century for the creation and regular maintenance of a blog by yours truly, at long last... you shall be sated!

I had grand, marvelous designs for that which would realize itself as my first blog post. Great blueprints were drawn, long-distance phone calls were placed, expensive consultants were hired. But in the end, we here at astropolis blog Inc. opted instead for the lo-tech, low-key approach... that is to say, cheaply wallowing in ego-centrism and hyperbole.

About myself for the uninitiated. Hmmm... well. Where to begin, where to begin? At the beginning then...

On Valentine's Day, 1976, I was conceived. I, like you in my audience, do not wish to be burdened by the icky details of my physical creation, so we shall fast-forward approximately nine months to November 16th, a day that found me gulping in my first fresh oxygen and witnessing my first light of day on the 13th floor of St. Joseph's Hospital in Tacoma, Washington. That same afternoon, Mr. Universe and struggling actor Arnold Schwarzeneggar was visiting the sick and the infirm quarantined and shacked up within the walls of that very same hospital. What glorious (if not vicarious) beginnings!

Now, 27 years and a day later, I find myself self-professing to be a "minarchist" bordering on "anarcho-capitalist", or "classically liberal", or just plain "libertarian". By trade, I am what millions worldwide describe as a "struggling, unemployed screenwriter seeking to direct". I live in scenic Tacoma, Washington again after failed stabs at living in other municipalities and daily I find myself fuming at the Soviet Socialist Republic my state of birth has made itself. This blog shall find me obsessing on those things that interest me most, namely:

MYSELF. FILMS. MUSIC. ECONOMICS. AND A BUNCH OF OTHER SHIT.