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- ECONOMICS -
In August 2000 SPIN explored the root cause of the recent economic woes, how it produced devaluation & revaluation, advised why Australia's dollar would keep falling & considered the decline of investment capitalism and the factors (taxes) & (computers) causing that decline. Further analysis & advice for investment were made in March 2001. The effect of oil shortages & liberalism on the US economy was examined in August 2001.
Now that the US economy seems to be in recovery, (the Australian economy did not recess) it is time to re-examine the fundamentals.
Australia, like the USA, is a world leader in Internet usage. World economists have not yet developed a computer model that quantifies the effect of the internet (or even computers) on business. Australia, like the USA, continues a sustained economic expansion.
Because of high telecommunications charges, most of Europe
lags in Internet usage. Most of Europe has high taxes. Most
of Europe lags Australia & the USA in economic growth.
QED.
- ISRAEL - PALESTINE -
What will the Israeli Palestinian war cost the world? How much money, how many lives, what misery?
Many of the problems of Palestinian arabs are financial. They have nothing to live for, no hope, no path to self improvement.
Those who have nothing do not value life. Give them a little, and the chance to gain more, and there will be value in their lives.
For Palestinians, there is a stick but no carrot. The absence of a stick is not a carrot.
Arafat is a failure. Someone is needed who will give them hope. Someone must establish a framework, and provide incentives.
Israel has offered Palestinians what they said they wanted in terms of land. The Palestinians would not accept because it became clear that they wanted the destruction of the concept of Israel. Like a child they must be taught. No matter how many temper tantrums, what belongs to someone else is theirs, not yours.
In the meantime, local warlords have a "cause" that focusses discontent. Because of the oil treasure on Muslim Arab lands, the convenient response for most of Europe & most of the world is to remove the irritant by destroying Israel. Only the USA has the guts to see and state the truth. Possibly that is because the USA has lived through an attack by suicidal terrorists.
Since Moses there have always been arabs of jewish faith in Palestine. The various recent occupiers (Byzantine, Arab, Crusaders, Mamluk Ottoman, British) of the land have either encouraged or discouraged Jewish settlement. Arab muslims in Palestine like to take as the starting point of their ownership the most recent Nadir of Jewish population in the region, (1918) and blame the British mandate for their administrative policies. If asked the Jewish arabs would probably take the starting point for their claim as some date when they formed a majority in the region, and were driven out by a conqueror.(3rd.March 2003)
The Muslims of the world will not admit it, but it is the terror that has created the occupation. In 1948 the original state of Palestine (which was previously a mandated territory held by the British from the Turks after the first world war) contained Arabs of the Jewish faith and Arabs of the Muslim faith. This territory was divided by the world (i.e. the UN) into a Jewish Arab state and a Muslim Arab state, because the two religions of Arabs were slaughtering each other, (a bit like Rwanda, where since 1992 the majority Hutus have ruduced the commercially dominant Tutsis from 25% to 15% of the 7,500,000 population) and it was felt that the political winners in a combined Palestine would have persecuted the losers. The Jewish arabs called their part of Palestine "Israel", for some obscure historical or religious reason. The Muslim arabs kept the name Palestine.
Since then, whenever free to do so, the Muslim arabs of Palestine have committed acts of terror against the Jewish arabs. In an attempt to prevent the terror, the Jewish arabs have occupied the Muslim arab state of Palestine, and attempted to bring peace to the region. On several occasions they have relinquished control, however every concession has been seen as weakness, because the Muslim arabs have responded on each occasion by redoubling the intensity and frequency of their terrorism.
Now the Muslims are trying to tell the us (the rest of the world) that the occupation creates the terror. Ha ha. We know what that is. The jewish arabs call it "chutzpah".
The correct ethical response is to treat the suicide terrorists as criminals. They are teenagers conforming to a bloodthirsty religion of a bygone era, and their beneficiary families are nothing but cynical murderers of their own blood for a reward of US$25,000.
Whether the world will allow the Jewish arabs to solve this problem will be a measure of the cupidity of the world. The "atrocities" in Jenin are far less an atrocity than are the atrocities of Palestinian bombers. The 15,000 people in the square kilometer that is Jenin harbor 5,000 Palestinian terrorists. If Mary Robinson would be even handed, she should investigate Arafat as a war criminal for his subsidies to terrorism. The Israel Defense Force cannot be expected to risk soldiers in Jenin in an attempt to find and punish only the guilty. Those who choose to live as neighbors to terrorists must anticipate the possibility that they may become "collateral" damage.
In Australia we have experience of Arab Muslims. Last year gangs of them were seizing & raping Sydney girls traveling on the NSW public transport system. Apparently anyone not wearing a Bourka was "asking for it".
Come to think of it, I wonder
if the IDF is taking recruits?