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2 September 2002
AUSTRALIAN  DIARY

- WINNING IN PALESTINE -

After years of the Clinton hobble on their actions, the Israelis seem to have applied a winning strategy.

There are four primitives on which the "martyr" strategy depends.  For the "martyr, there are three motivations, (1) self reward, (aka the forty virgins), (2) family reward (US$35,000 for families of "martyrs") and (3) national recognition.  Also necessary is a central organization, (Hamas or whatever.)

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that appealing to the concupiscence of teenage boys by the promise of forty virgins for eternity is an inducement to self immolation, however that appeal is attenuated since religious leaders seem to be divided on the validity of the Jihad.

It is likely that the Israeli policy of threatening to deport the families of suicide terrorists has provided a disincentive that balances the incentive blood money of US$25,000 by the Iraqis and the $10,000 by the Saudis offered to the families of "martyrs".

The program of eradication of terrorist leadership should be at least making it less comfortable for Hamas and like organizations.

In IRAQ, the Bush policy that Israel not be restrained from attacking Iraq would give a wise Saddam Hussein a few sleepless nights.  The threat posed by Israel is not the hundred odd nuclear weapons in it's armory.  The threat is more nebulous than that.  Israeli threats are rarely telegraphed, but unusually effective.

It must by now be dawning on a majority of muslim terrorists that Bush is not a "touchee-feelie" leader like his predecessor, but their worst nightmare.  He is the state governor who never granted clemency on death row, now promoted to President of the USA.
 

- INDONESIA -

There were recent reports in Australian media that the Indonesian people were being offered a new constitution.

Since that new Indonesian constitution will have been prepared by politicians, it is unlikely that it would improve the lot of the majority of Indonesian citizens.

The US constitution was constructed not by politicians, but by the freedom fighters who won independence from the UK.  Most of the other so called "democratic" constitutions around the world were constructed by politicians, and are already permitting corruption on a grand scale.  In Australia we are not allowed to hear about endemic government corruption by reason of defamation laws, and it festers.  In the USA such corruption is exposed to the antibiotic action of publicity.

It is probably better that government be improved by piecemeal modification of the constitution.  Australians seem to have learned that lesson.  Perhaps that is why they did not permit the (politician suggested) modification of our constitution that would have enabled a politician's president to supplant Queen Elizabeth as head of state.

A modification to our constitution that would be accepted by a majority of Australians would be that permitting citizen initiated legislation permitting direct democratic government.   Such devolution of power will only be offered when the dishonesty of politicians has caused degeneration of society to the point of collapse.
 

Perhaps by about 2015.
 

SPIN ARCHIVES.