Should Dubai laugh Israel out of Gaza and the West Bank?

Should Dubai laugh Israel out of Gaza and the West Bank?

Was it oil mad money that empowered a couple of hundred thousand native Dubains -- along with a million or so foreign workers -- to "build them" a global showcase? Not recently; these days Dubains realize about 2 billion dollars a year from oil, some more from natural gas. Their natural resource is their natural business sense (a resource unknown to Israelis?). [See Vali Nasr's 2009 book "Forces of Fortune."]

After downing 200 billion (2010) US direct aid dollars over 40 years Israel has little to show but a vastly overbuilt military which could literally repel an invasion by British, French and German ground forces at the height of their Cold War force levels -- 3,000 NATO quality tanks on defense equal 9,000 on offense; Central European armies 1980s tank count: only 6,000. (Throw in 3,000 more for, then, active duty US Army and we have a match after all. :-])

Israel smashed a 1973 all out surprise attack by Egypt, Syria and Jordan BEFORE collecting hundreds of billions to pay for high tech weaponry but after the Arabs were overloaded by Russia with the then novel Sagger anti-tank and still deadly SA-6 anti-aircraft missiles. [Read up on the 1973 war in US Army chief historian, Col. Trevor N. Dupuy's book "Elusive Victory."]

Great green gobs of US military aid may have enabled Israel to embrace an ultimately self-destructive -- muscle-flexing/sandy-land grabbing -- lifestyle: can be honestly likened to "welfare mentality." Do land grabbing "Tell Tale Hearts" add to very real Holocaust memories to provoke irrational invasion fears (2010 Middle East nations, including Iran, are preoccupied with their modern middle classes struggles to get the upper hand zero inclination for any knock-down-drag-outs)? Could two millennia of neighborhood building rather than nation building have confused Israelis about the difference between the two?

Doing a Dubai -- instead of a Zionist "1984" -- with even half those US aid dollars could have profited enough to procure all the land in the sand that Israel could ever covet.

DIRECT AID TO ISRAEL SINCE 1970 (millions of dollars)
Year------ Nominal------- Adjusted-------------------- Total

1970---------- 93.6--------- 530.00

1971--------- 643.3------- 3,489.70

1972--------- 430.9------- 2,264.00

1973--------- 492.8------- 2,438.47

1974------- 2,621.3----- 11,681.53

1975--------- 778.0------- 3,177.07

1976------- 2,337.7------- 9,026.23

1977------- 1,762.5------- 6,389.79

1978------- 1,822.6------- 6,141.49

1979------- 4,888.0------ 14,791.92-------------- 59,930.02

*****************************************

1980------- 2,121.0------- 5,655.14

1981------- 2,413.4------- 5,833.05

1982------- 2,250.5------- 5,123.66

1983------- 2,505.6------- 5,526.91

1984------- 2,631.6------- 5,564.61

1985------- 3,376.7 ------ 6,894.62

1986------- 3,663.5------- 7,343.71

1987------- 3040.2-------- 5,879.68

1988------- 3,043.4------- 5,885.87

1989------- 3,045.6------- 5,656.11-------------- 59,363.36

*****************************************

1990------- 3,034.9------- 5,377.16

1991------- 3,712.3------- 5,988.20

1992------- 3,100.0------- 4,854.38

1993------- 3,103.4------- 4,178.46

1994------- 3,097.2------- 4,591.46

1995------- 3,102.4------- 4,472.42

1996------- 3,144.0------- 4,402.40

1997------- 3,132.1------- 4,287.37

1998------- 3,080.0------- 4,050.36

1999------- 3,010.0------- 3,969.37-------------- 46,171.58

*****************************************

2000------ 4,131.85------- 5,144.00

2001------ 2,876.05------- 3,569.88

2002------ 2,850.65------- 3,481.31

2003------ 3,745.15------- 4,471.79

2004------ 2,867.25------- 3,334.75

2005------ 2,612.15------- 2,938.50

2006------ 2,534.5--------- 2,762.05

2007------ 2,500.2--------- 2,649.75

2008------ 2,423.9--------- 2,474.59

2009------ 2,550.0--------- 2,611.82-------------- 33,438.44

*****************************************

-------------------------------------------------198,903.40

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/

A school paddling is a BEATING (instictive hunters don't spank) + new DOUBLE BARRELED insight!

http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

When I first wrote my 5 part essay opposing school corporal punishment I wrote:
"Being a male of the species who evolved primarily to swing a bat on meat I would have no problem personally paddling kids if only I could see their little office management inefficiencies as morally offensive (if only I could forget that kids who mess up the most are most likely to be emotionally messed up the most; a teacher can never tell)."

Lately I have been thinking that I must have been too insensitive to the pain I would be meeting out to the harmless school kid (for nothing yet: tardiness is just traffic control -- we don't beat people, least of all children for traffic control).
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Then I saw a silly auto insurance commercial where the lady salesperson for some reason brandished a full sized wooden paddle. Seeing the paddle I could fully envision myself pounding away on some poor kid"s flesh -- as hard as possible; can't cause any permanent physical harm; do the job!

What's behind this? Sociobiological answer: powerful male hunting instinct (overall concept filled out below -- point will be that there is very much an instinct).

What is the point of the hunter/killer insight for opposing school corporal punishment? Hunting instinct delivers a spanking BEATING -- not a spanking, doesn't it? [3 second illustration, click here: http://nospank.net/paddler3.wmv]
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Now that we have established a school paddling as a beating on a visceral, emotional level, we can fully appreciate why paddling a student for no legitimate reason could be prosecuted under the law as a violent assault.

Which in turn makes it harder to justify the exception for violent school beatings from Fourteenth Amendment mandated equal protection of the law. 90 of female corporal punishment and 75% of male are for tardiness -- traffic control. The rest could be said to be for office management (dress code, etc.).

Anti paddlers make a sales error -- they "define deviancy down, undercutting their own purpose -- by concentrating on the secondary mal effects of paddling. The correct sociobiological (how we are emotionally wired) approach, if you ask me, is that paddling is a violent beating (large) to correct little inefficiencies (small) on the part of school children. The core problem is that teachers have got this very backwards. If we don't seem to emphasize the serious violence itself why ask anybody to care about the secondary damage.
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(More info on evolved human male hunting behavior -- just to fill out the concept: Got claws -- or only nails? Got fangs -- or only HUGE fang roots (check them out -- ask your dentist what they are)? Got four feet? Send you off into the woods with a club and a sharp stick and you are not likely to return with the bacon? Got an idea -- like get the other boys? That is the only way you (plural) are going to trap a feral animal that relies on it's body -- not it's brain. UPSHOT OF ALL THIS: you, human male tend to think in the third person-cooperative. Try to get a new idea through to you and the first thing you are likely to think is what everybody else is thinking -- likely you will (instinctively) see no way to rearrange all that and the new idea may pass out of your head like it was never there. Just to fill out the concept...)
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FLASH -- NEW DOUBLE-BARRELED INSIGHT:
A few days ago it occurred to me that this hunter/paddler link could be stretched further: that maybe we beat children as an unconscious OUTLET for hunting instinct in our modern paperwork lives (who is into paperwork more than teachers and principals?). This is not to portray anyone as vicious. It can explain stories mostly from decades ago of some men volunteering to do the then frequent paddling for other teachers -- that is, explain that they might not be the monsters such stories make them out but possibly totally unconsciously just outletting hunting instinct.

Today it occurred to me why we cannot beat adult fellow school employees with the all out effort with which we customarily paddle school kids (think of the gasping boy in the Boonville video). When we beat a kid like that we are not thinking of the pain we are inflicting at all -- not at all -- we are only thinking of the job. We could not beat an "equal" adult without thinking of the pain -- while only thinking of the job -- which is why we cannot beat a "social equal" employee we are obligated to fully respect.

At very least we can never do "the job" if we can think of the pain (not if we are normal I would say). Next thing to figure out (to wait for it to "occur" :-]) is exactly what allows us to think of the job only when beating a child -- a perfectly normal sociobiological (evolved behavior) expectation. In the meantime it might help the cause to share with school paddlers the insight that they could not beat a school child if they thought of the pain they were trying to inflict (they are trying to do "the job" with all their might) -- just could stop a lot of them in their tracks.

One more question on DADT

One question that could be added to the DADT is how many straight male service personnel have ever in their lives or would ever hang out socially on a regular basis with gay acting males. Likely answer: pretty much zero.

First, no homophobe talking here. The first place I moved to as an adult was the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan in the '60s, had a gay boy half my age living with me for a year in the late '70s, drove a San Francisco cab for three years (earned a good part of my living "hustling" in the Castro, picking up gay men and taking them home for a fee; also gay women, or anyone else who would pay the fare :-]).

Second, no homophobe here. Was approved for training to get a Ph.D. in psychology in the early '70s (still high school grad) -- so having a gay boy living with me for a year could teach me what homosexuality is all about mechanically: gays of both sexes merely see what straights see as the big MALE ego as the big FEMALE ego and are permanently blind to seeing any such thing in males. Has to be some big difference, right? But that's all there is.

Now for straight male camaraderie -- mechanically. We link up with other males on a basis gays males would consider very narrow and one-dimensional: activities we share a common interest in. That is all there is to that. If we know the biggest thing on the other guy's mind (the biggest thing on every guy's mind) is the last activity we want to do with another guy that tends strongly (understatement?) to break said link as about as much as it can be broken.

Sociobiology: nothing anyone can do about it. Doesn't have to work in every case -- or even most cases; everyone is different. But it will work that way for at least half of servicemen (how many will hang out with, etc.?). I would conjecture that it might have the most effect on straight males who are most into doing the job at hand.
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LATE NOTES ON DADT
Gays may not understand why we fear gay males as dangerous, grasping and invading -- because gays don't see men that way (!); they see said dangerous, over weaning ego in females. (Lesbos are doing their best to radiate that image.)

Think straight male aversion to paling around with gay males (see one-dimensional camaraderie above) is rationally overcome with just some common sense and good will? How much would you be willing to depend on that -- in a very liberal, upper end grammar school (especially if you watch "Law & Order" :-]) -- to advise your gay 12 year old to come out of the closet? Or how much would you fear how naturally endemic the problem is?

Questions, questions about female firefighters

Why doesn't someone find out exactly how many women firefighters have been graduated by the NYFD year in, year out since 1982 -- and then do a "where are they now"? How many have been hired in all that time, nearly 500? Why are there never more than 30 something on the force -- especially since their supporters claim they have to pass overly stringent testing?

What is the comparative drop out rate between men and women?

How many are on light duty today? I read someplace back in the '80s that 12 out of first 38 (that's the number the story quoted) NYFD female firefighters immediately opted for light duty like public relations right out of the academy.
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Jan. 10, 1983 New York Magazine cover story on rookie female firefighter by Michael Daly.

BART officer Mehserle either guilty of deliberate homicide or not -- adrenalin and stupidity

Adrenalin can make you as stupid as alcohol. When I was I Bronx cab driver the closest I came to accidents was with police cars who had ALREADY made an arrest -- blowing through red lights without lights or sirens. Whatever happened in the BART station could reasonably have raised the BART officer Mehserle's -- or anybody's -- adrenalin level.

He either intended to shoot a gun or he intended to shoot a Taser when he pulled the trigger. Given a normal adrenalin rush, carelessness can not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

As far as the rioters, they can be compared with supporters of Israel who always call its critics anti-Semitic -- they unfortunately (if maybe not consciously) may be the actual racists.

Save the polar bears -- from the penguins???

A post over at Fred Pohl's http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com gave me an idea to save the polar bear species from habitat destruction brought on by global warming. Just transfer several dozen males and females to the Antarctic and let them feed on penguins who don't have enough sense to run away.

Penguins may have to spend more time in the water. Be interesting to see how long a race of gang biting penguins takes to evolve. How will killer whales survive should penguins start to thin out? Whales can add polar bears swimming after the remaining penguins to their menu.

One further "ecological" complication could be killer whales, having learned to feed on four legged mammals, might become a danger to humans whenever they wander into our habitats. No more happy animal interest stories: get me Steven Spielberg!

Wouldn't take a government program, just one private boat could do the experiment -- may not even be a law against it!