As you’ve heard this month…and baby makes 3. Since she is Daddy’s Little Girl she came to life 37 minutes ahead of schedule. So far, it’s not really that big a deal. After all, I’m not the one trying to feed the baby 8x a day and with a baby nurse around I haven’t been woken up at night. The interesting highlight this week was lying in bed with little Elizabeth Regina having her check me out. My little handkerchief sticking out of my pajamas shirt pocket was a curiosity to her and my wife was rooting for her to reach out and grab it! The Chanukah holiday is a celebration of miracles and for Karen and I this was our own little miracle — we are quite blessed and happy. I’ve been testing a new JVC camcorder with a hard drive that is supposed to make it easier to deal with video files and I’ll let you know how it works out. I’ll put a few samples up on the site after this month so you can see what you think.
Meanwhile in the rest of the world with an eye toward 2006 predictions….Whoa, you’ll have to pardon me if I’m not going to predict much with regard to Israel, given what is happening right now. More later.
U.S. — Mayor Bloomberg starts his second term a very popular mayor. He intervened with the transit strike to help end it while the governor of New York, who has much more to do with this matter, tried to stay away from it. If Bloomberg wants a national position, he may have a good chance in later years to get it. Stocks still look good in 2006 and the housing market should continue to retreat further; prices are still too high. Bush could make a comeback given a broad consensus that it is time to think about getting out of Iraq. The Democrats don’t really have much to distinguish themselves with. Airlines are finally becoming competitive — one way fares on American and Continental have been lower than Jet Blue; now if they would just become a bit more flexible on changing your tickets.
Europe: France — interesting to note that obesity rate is close to 40%. They may hate America but they seem to be eating its fast food. McDonalds counts France as one of its most profitable countries. Not much movement with the Euro/Dollar although Germany is expected to have a better economic year in 2006; early indications are that the new chancellor made good impressions at her first economic summit with a command of details and a plodding businesslike method where she got people to agree to things. Romania is becoming a big outpost for the US military.
Africa — 40 years ago, Zambia had the same domestic output as South Korea. Since then, South Korea has increased by 32 times. Zambia is the same. When you hear that I’m visiting Africa, perhaps it will mean that something will change.
Middle East — Syria: First cracks are showing now that former VP Kaddam went out with sore grapes from his comfortable exile in France and ratted on Assad. Few really want to get rid of Assad so I expect things to pass. Meanwhile, Lebanon and Syria will be ignored. Iraq will slowly improve and the Americans will try to leave. By the way, I just love that 16 year old who flew off to Baghdad to take a look around. My kinda guy. Iran — I don’t know if a military campaign would succeed. I’ve heard that it would take 3 weeks of bombing to have an effect and I can’t see how the Israelis could get away with such a sustained campaign and why the Americans would do it. I’m afraid that going after Iran would just rally the citizenry around their government just like in Iraq and that we would create even more chaos. The Israelis are ambiguous as a matter of national strategy but some people I speak to who are in a position to know think they are capable of acting on this matter. I don’t know but the way Iran’s president is I wouldn’t mind if they did whatever they thought they had to do and Sharon was the right kinda guy to do it. Even Jordanians have told me that they’d be thrilled if the Israelis got rid of this threat. No doubt that they will have the bomb if they aren’t stopped, if they can be stopped. That wouldn’t be a problem by itself but this is a rogue country with a leadership that cannot be trusted to be responsible. Iran’s president is a menace and the world has seen his type before. His statements cannot be ignored or minimized as a need to placate domestic opposition. It is also not acceptable to try and pressure the US by saying vile things about Jews. What have the Iranians brought to this world in the past 25 years with this government besides terrorism and fanaticism? Nice country — outlaw government that must be put in its place as a deterrence for others who think this is the way to go. Palestine — Abbas is a transitory figure who nobody respects. When the Hamas was shelling Israel with rockets this month, he told their leadership that it was their problem to deal with. That wasn’t the idea when the Israelis pulled out of Gaza and it is the main reason why nothing is coming of it. If the Israelis give in on voting in East Jerusalem, it tells you that they don’t care if Hamas does well in the elections; if not and Abbas uses this excuse to postpone the elections, then it tells you otherwise. The East Jerusalem matter is a smokescreen; Hamas is going to win 40% of the vote and Abbas doesn’t know what to do because Hamas is going to be calling the shots from now on in Palestine and they least of all have any respect for Abbas. The Israelis seem OK with this because they expect that Hamas will have to deal with power and moderate itself as they have already done in several cities where they are exercising power such as Bethlehem. If not, well the Israelis can destroy them later on. Right now, the Israelis are not killing Hamas-nicks but the other ones who are simply going out to bomb them and nearly 50% of the public surveyed is OK with dealing with Hamas. Sharon was set to do very well in the elections as long as his health isn’t an issue. Peretz is an electoral disaster and will probably get some ministerial portfolio in a Sharon-led government anyway so people have no reason to waste a vote for him as prime minister. — I wrote this before Sharon had his second stroke. Now, as he is on the operating table, I know why I’ve been sitting on this article the last few days without sending it — everything is about to go up in smoke here because this is a truly untimely event. Ehud Olmert is my personal choice to succeed Sharon for the short term. He is responsible and moderate (he said aloud what Sharon was thinking before he himself said it aloud) although as corrupt of any of them. 2006 will either be (1) a year in which nothing happens because there is nobody strong enough to do anything from the Israeli side; (2) a year in which everything happens because everybody realizes they either fill the void with an agreement or sit around for years while nothing happens; (3) outsiders via Hamas or Syria or Iran try to take advantage and God knows what happens. If the Palestinians really want anything to happen, they ought to try and control their troublemakers and see if they can be good partners for the (2) scenario.
India — No reforms but who cares? The country continues on a roll. Japan — there has been movement upward in 2005 but Stratfor intelligence predicts they have already hit their high and 2006 will not be as good. China continues to crack down on its people while governing as if they don’t exist and perhaps they can get away with this forever but I don’t think so. Another 10 years and maybe it will be a different country. Russia — It is so corrupt that it is unpredictable as a governing country. Yukos showed that the government would tear down a successful company because the president felt threatened by its CEO. Now Russia shuts off gas to Europe via a pipeline in the Ukraine. The reason might be good and Russia will ultimately succeed in getting Ukraine to toe its line, but it just shows that Russia is not a reliable partner with a pipeline to Europe because it will shut it off while it has a dispute with its carrier. Russia will never be a serious country to deal with as long as it doesn’t learn to play by the rules. This is a world of business and China and Russia are just unpredictable and corrupt players whom the rest of the world can live without.
Musings — How about all the major religions coming together to agree on a day of rest? It’s impossible when on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday some part of the globe is offline. You only get 3 days a week to get everyone on a conference call. In the Jewish religion, if a prisoner loses track of what day it is, he starts counting 7 days and then it is the sabbath. Meaning there is no real god-given reason why the sabbath has to be on Saturday. Same is probably true for the Christians and Moslems. It’s rather clear that these later-founded religions wanted their sabbath on any day other than Saturday and then the Moslems obviously took whatever day the Christians and Jews hadn’t taken. So let’s get off our high horse and shoot this one out (you know, with the finger like you do on the playground).
Interesting speech I heard this month from Effi Eitan, highest ranking Orthodox Jewish soldier in the Israeli Army, a Brigadier General who is the new head of the National Religious Party. He was fishing in Alaska and would be wandering a day or two alone. What if he should see a grizzly bear, he asked his burly American redneck guide? He was thinking that his kids would stand around his grave making a laughingstock of him for having been 30 years in the army only to be felled by a bear in Alaska, a thought he couldn’t bear. “Stand up straight and tell him to go fish somewhere else, that this is your place.” Sure enough, a day later, down by the lake eating his can of kosher tuna fish this happened and he did as he was told. “First the bear got up on its hind legs and looked very huge and stood around considering the logic of my argument.” The bear went away. When he saw the guide later on, he said he had thought he was kidding but it worked. Why? The guide said, “You have to show you are a human being. Once the bear recognizes that, he sees you as the crown of nature and respects you. Otherwise, you are an animal and food to him.” Eitan analogized it to the Israeli Army and said that the army has to keep a higher standard and not lower itself to the behavioral norms of those it occupies. Right now, it is a fact that most of the people being killed in Gaza are being killed by other Palestinians and that the rate of killing has increased since the pullout. During the Gaza pullout, not even one Israeli was injured seriously by another Israeli despite the many opportunities that could have explained even an accidental injury or death. The fact that even Palestinians believe the Israelis behave themselves is a source of respect because otherwise the Israelis would be food to their neighbors who ought by numbers to make mincemeat of them, he said. Not so if you are the crown of nature. Otherwise, how do you explain the viability of a lone man in the wilderness with the big grizzly bear, he says. Animals aren’t bad, the Bible commentators explain — they just behave in a certain way if the human being around them behaves the wrong way. An interesting thought, when you think that you have to fight fire with fire. An interesting thought for Americans who feel that the only way we can deal with Iraq is to go around busting everything in sight. Clearly, the Iraqis are not like us but we are not helping ourselves kicking ass there.
Another interesting human interest story he told: During the Gaza pullout, a squadron of 17 pilots came to a house. They were all very secular, with sunglasses and crewcuts. The owner of the house said he’d leave if the lieutenant would remove the mezuzas from the doorposts (a Jewish sacred item on a doorpost as commanded in Deuteronomy) because he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The soldier refused. All the others also refused because they believed it was bad luck under the Jewish religion to do so and didn’t want to screw up their air force careers with bad luck. They got the commander of the whole area who was Yemenite and he also refused. All the person had to do was remove two small nails from a doorpost. Finally, the owner relented and said that if their heritage was so meaningful even to these secular dudes who normally think religion is silly or irrelevant, he realized that they were just following orders to evacuate them but were not insensitive to their heritage or to the reality around them. An interesting thought in terms of understanding the fabric of a society even when it appeared that it was being torn apart.
As of this writing, the untimely departure of Sharon from the political scene will test the fabric of both Israeli and Palestinian society — how to take advantage, perhaps to show extra responsibility during a vulnerable period with a void of leadership, and what to do with the assets of power and leverage held by the respective sides. I will update in less than a month as events unfold.
