In the wake of the Rav Moti Alon scandal, I reach the conclusion that homosexual Jewish rabbis and Moslem religious leaders are in the same risk category as Catholic priests. The common difficulty, which all of them encounter is the lack of a legal (from their religion’s perspective) means to satisfy their desires.
In today’s world, no act of legitimate self-defense or good deed by Israel goes unpunished. The story of the woman from Gaza, who tried to smuggle a bomb in her person when entering Israel for medical treatment, is known. Israel is accused of committing war crimes during the Cast Iron operation, nevermind the years of war crimes committed by the other side - the Palestinians in Gaza especially after the Israeli pull out from the Gaza Strip at 2005.
The most recent twist is the accusations that Israel utilizes the medical aid to Haiti as a pretext to steal organs for transplanting.
The best response to this accusation and others related to Israeli aid to Haiti, which I saw so far, is in http://www.rantrave.com/Rave/Israeli-Aid-to-Haiti.aspx. The writer challenges the accusers to compete with Israel and overshadow its aid efforts by efforts of their own.
Whenever you feed people, who could not feed themselves, please do not only shed tears on their bad fortunes. Please do not stop at providing them with a meal.
Please ask them about the circumstances, which prevented them from being self-sufficient.
Then do something to ameliorate those circumstances. Sometimes you can do a lot for the price of a single meal for a group of people.
I suspect that several responses will go along the following lines.
Some people will turn out to be lazy bums with feeble excuses - they should NOT be fed.
If you have a lot of money to donate, usually the best way to use it to help those non self-supporting people - is to make it easier for them to train for a better paying occupation.
The following is an adaptation of the English translation of a talkback, which I wrote in response to an article in Ira Abramov’s blog (written in Hebrew), which commented on the results of the elections held in Israel at 2009 February 10, whose results showed the decline of the Israeli Left.
I do not think that the Israeli Left lost the elections due to leadership failures, divisiveness or other nonsense.
I think that it was a victory of the Palestinians in their war against the Israeli Left, pure and simple.
After such battles, which ended with unequivocal victory of the Palestinians, why does anyone still wonder that the Israeli Left lost its influence over Israeli politics?
Suppose you have been contacted by someone with a great Web 2.0 idea and he wants you to join his startup.
You need to know whether he knows what he is talking about.
The following checklist may help you tell the clueful apart from clueless.
I hope people will be able to contribute advice concerning each item in the checklist as well as more items I missed.
If what Alan Carter says in his The Programmers’ Stone blog is right, then the way our society treats software developers is like requiring surgeons to operate in non-sterile theaters, with inadequate equipment and without enough help from other doctors and nurses.
In the 28.11.2008 issue of “7 Days”, the Saturday supplement of Yediot Aharonot, Yair Lapid wrote about “The Real Crisis”. It is about the financial crisis facing several nonprofits, which live on donations from well to do people, and which perform various services in behalf of people at need. Eventually, this financial crisis could adversely affect several vulnerable people.
The crisis is due to the drying up of the donations due to the financial/economic crisis happening now. Yair Lapid’s conclusion is that the Government should provide for those services rather than relying upon nonprofits.
I would like to offer another solution to the problem.
At times of economic depression, traditional economic doctrine calls upon governments to pump money into the economy. Usually this is done by make work projects, infrastructure investments, etc.
I suggest that in addition to the above measures, the Government hand out stimulus money also to the above nonprofits, in proportion to the amount they got from donations in previous years. Only nonprofits, which meet the criteria for proper management practices, would qualify for this.
My reasoning is that such monetary infusion will help keep employed people with special skills, so eloquently listed by Yair Lapid. Also, since it can be assumed that people vet on nonprofits before making donations, the Government money will be almost well-spent as the monies of the private donors during previous years.
In This is not the end of capitalism, Mark Shuttleworth (of Ubuntu fame) points out the need for capitalism with regulation. The regulators - those people who would regulate businesses - would need to have extraordinary personal qualities of resourcefulness, wisdom and incorruptibility. In other words, they need to have caliber like E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen (the qualities required by Lensmen include intelligence, utter incorruptibility, a high drive to succeed, and the highest drive to fight evil).
However, like Santa Claus, such people exist only in fiction. Therefore another solution is needed. A practical solution would, by necessity, be based upon a system, in which imperfect and corruptible people would nevertheless do almost as good job as incorruptible ones.
Fortunately, there is a precedent for systems obviating the need for supermen. The 18th century political philosophers faced a similar problem. They were faced with the problem of designing a regime, in which people will enjoy freedom, even though they are governed by other imperfect people. The solution was to devise a system of checks and balances. It was embodied in the constitution of USA and worked well for several years.
Therefore, a possible solution to the problem of regulating capitalism is likely to come from a system of checks and balances. In the following I’ll try to sketch a possible design for such a system.
A business operating in an industry, which needs to be regulated, has to answer to the following stakeholders:
Regulation, when it is enforced, aims at restoration of balance of the interests of all those stakeholders. Regulation has to be enacted when money fails to work as a means to motivate the business to serve its stakeholders in a balanced way.
Let’s try to set up a feedback loop, in which bad regulation translates into loss of profits. This can be accomplished by nominating people, who act like the historical kings or modern Benevolent Dictators For Life (BDFLs). Each BDFL will be responsible for regulating all businesses in a particular geographical area. Every business in the region will pay the BDFL 1% of its profits. On the other hand, the BDFL will be subjected to lawsuits from any stakeholder, who believes to have been wronged by a business under the BDFL’s responsibility.
Thus, the BDFL will have an interest at ensuring that the businesses in his area will prosper in a balanced way. Since small businesses have larger growth potential than big businesses, the BDFL will tend to favor small businesses. The BDFL will balance the interests of businesses with those of the other stakeholders when formulating regulations, so that the business will thrive and the BDFL won’t lose too much money to lawsuits.
This proposal is incomplete, and leaves out answers to several questions such as:
Yesterday, USA elected the next President. Obama won the elections by clear cut margin. There was higher than usual turnout of voters.
Next Tuesday, on Nov. 11th, there will be municipal elections in Israel. In some cities, in particular Jerusalem, the elections will have critical importance.
I’d like to urge everyone eligible to vote - to vote in those elections.
The other day I stumbled upon the Website http://copyfree.org/, which advocates a software licensing model somewhat similar to LGPL.
See the Website for arguments in favor of this licensing model.
I would, however, stick with GPL/LGPL due to the following reasons:
