Sunday, January 18, 2009

Robert Fulford on "Disproportionate"

Robert Fulford clarifies the stupidity of using the fantasy-like word "disproportionate" in the National Post

Robert Fulford on the disproportionate criticism of Israel's self-defence Posted: January 17, 2009, 9:30 AM by NP Editor Robert Fulford, Full Comment Canadian politics

The big word in Middle East politics this week is “disproportionate.” Political leaders around the world love it, and no wonder. Applied to the Israel-Hamas struggle, it quietly weakens Israel’s position and displays sympathy for the Palestinians while making those who use it feel both righteous and compassionate.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain says that “to a friend like Israel, you have to tell the truth. And if you think the reaction is disproportionate, you have to say so.” He makes it sound like a favour he’s doing for Israel. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, has criticized “disproportionate use of force.” Louis Michel, aid commissioner of the European Union, calls Israel’s attack on Hamas “totally disproportionate.” Dozens of other politicians have said the same.

The Canadian Press, in a 744-word story on reactions to the Gaza campaign in Canada (total number of anti-Israel words in that story: 744), managed to find a man-in-the-street to utter it during a Vancouver protest — a man who said “extremely disproportionate.”

That word bundles together ambiguity, deception and covert hostility to Israel’s dream of a secure future. It says: “I of course support Israel’s right to defend itself — but not in this way.” We are expected to assume there must be a better way to defeat Israel’s tormentors, a way that will win the world’s respect. No one ever explains this strategy, perhaps because no such strategy exists.

A recent article by Natan Sharansky, who served 10 years as a Cabinet minister in Israel, outlined the historic context of this issue. In June, 2001, the most recent in a series of suicide bombings that had started the previous September killed 21 Israelis at a Tel Aviv discothèque. Several Cabinet ministers wanted to endorse an IDF plan to strike back at the bases of the killers but that idea was dropped when foreign leaders, horrified, predicted that military action would provoke international disapproval. During the next nine months, the bombing of restaurants, hotels and public spaces became a persistent part of life in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Ordinary activity was paralyzed.

The terror reached a climax when more than 130 Israelis were killed in one month, March, 2002. The Cabinet sat all night to discuss Israel’s response. Finally it authorized Operation Defensive Shield, a series of attacks on terrorist centres. Naturally, the UN and many countries condemned Israel. The American secretary of state, Colin Powell, insisted that the operation stop. Pro-Palestinian propagandists damned Israelis as war criminals, spreading an elaborate lie about a massacre at Jenin — and media around the world believed them.

And yet, as Sharansky remembers it, this was a relatively small price to pay for what followed. Terror was crippled. The number of Israelis killed fell to fewer than a dozen during the following year. The Second Intifada was over. Israel’s cities came to life again. And so did the West Bank, where economy grew healthier over the next six years: “If there is hope in the West Bank today, it is because Israel abandoned the ideas of proportionality and diplomacy in handling terror,” Sharansky says.

Israel’s critics demonstrate a meagre grasp of its situation. In thinking and talking about the Middle East, too few in the West show any imagination. Israel faces a relentless, implacable enemy. Diplomacy and “the peace process” will do nothing to stop Hamas or its sponsoring nation, Iran. Hamas doesn’t want a better deal with Israel; it wants Israel to cease existing, as does Iran. To achieve that end they will proudly sacrifice many of their own people, not only warriors but also women, children and the old.

Israeli forces are ordered to avoid harm to civilians wherever possible. So far as we can judge by the reporting from Gaza, this policy is being followed. But so long as Hamas hides behind women and children the results are inevitable: Women and child will in some cases suffer and die.

Given that fact, given that heavy civilian losses are inevitable, should Israel simply decline to fight? Perhaps some nation, somewhere, will take that attitude at some unforeseeable moment in the future. It would be a truly radical idea, lifting Gandhi’s principle of civil disobedience to the level of national policy. We can hardly expect that Israel, which has always lived under the threat of destruction by its Middle East neighbours, will be the first to take that bold and possibly suicidal step. Yet that’s the course implied by those who glibly and piously condemn “disproportionate” warfare. National Post robert.fulford@utoronto.ca

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VIDEO:Canada Human Rights

VIDEO of CTV PowerPlay Canada Human? Rights Commission?

Iranian S-Elections?

Evolution / Intelligent Design

Legitimate Questions Should Be Discussed

I am reminded of how established "science" has been wrong many times before such as in the case of Piltdown man. So could it be wrong now? Or has it been perfected? Should not reasonable arguments be considered?

We have become a nation of beggars

Terence Corcoran reports in the National Post on Friday, January 16, 2009 that the STIMULUS everyone is yelling for may only work over a short period and may actually MAKE THE ECONOMY WORSE over longer periods.

[Read the article below for the researchers who studied this phenomenon.]

POINTS

- "What if, as a wide and growing school of economists now suspect, the government spending and stimulus theory is a crock that is shovel-ready to be heaved out into the barnyard of economic waste?"

- Even disciples of Keynes, such as Harvard's Greg Mankiw, recently highlighted economic studies that show government spending binges -- shocks, they are sometimes called -- don't seem to help the economy grow. They might even make it worse.

-One of the studies cited by Mr. Mankiw was by two European economists (Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig), titled "What are the Effects of Fiscal Shocks?" It looked at big deficit-financed spending increases and found that they stimulate the economy for the first year, but "only weakly" compared with a deficit financed tax cut. The overriding problem is that the deficits crowd out private investment and, over the long run, may make the economy worse. "The resulting higher debt burdens may have long-term consequences which are far worse than the short-term increase in GDP."

-A paper by two economists, including the current chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, concluded that increased taxes and "increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending."

-Roberto Perotti, an Italian economist with links to Columbia University, in "Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries," found nothing but bad news for Keynesians. Economic growth is little changed after big increases in government spending, but there are signs of weakening private investment.

- What we all might logically intuit to be true -- spend government money, especially borrowed money, and you stimulate growth -- has long been thought to be a fallacy by some economists. That thought is now spreading. British economist William Buiter said the massive Obama fiscal stimulus proposals "are afflicted by the Keynesian fallacy on steroids."

The whole article by Terrance Corcoran follows:

Are you "shovel-ready," poised to hit the ground running, or merely desperate for cheap cash to get through the recession? If so, here's your last chance to apply to Ottawa for a piece of the massive government spending-bailout-infrastructure-stimulus operation now being prepared for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's Jan. 27 budget extravaganza.

To get you going, the National Post has created an all-purpose Stimulus Canada application document. Simply make sure your company/institution fills out the form here to get in on the action.

We're just kidding, of course, or at least we were until our satirical Stimulus Canada General Application Form was mugged by reality, which is rapidly turning out to be funnier than the fanciful idea of a government department called Stimulus Canada. To all intents and purposes, Stimulus Canada already exists.

Government money to flow, the taps are opening, deficits are no problem. The spending, as Stephen Harper said after a meeting with the premiers on Friday, will be "very significant" and there will be "very significant deficits." That could mean new spending of $20-billion and deficits of $40-billion.

Industry groups, corporate opportunists, charities, municipal politicians, arts groups, provincial premiers, tech firms, mining companies, forestry operators, banks, money lenders -- in fact, just about everybody has come forward to get in on Canada's portion of what is turning out to be a mad global government stimulus pandemic.

Each claims to have a plan or an idea that they say would produce jobs, spending, investment and activity that would get Canada through the recession and stimulate the economy.

At some point, though, the clamour of claims and calls becomes absurd, and that point looks to have been crossed the other day in the United States when porn merchant Larry Flint said the U.S. sex industry was falling on hard times, business was down 25%, and it needed a $5-billion slice of the $1.2-billion U.S. stimulus program.

And why not?

Mr. Flint has a point. It is not totally illogical for anyone to think that way. If you spend a dollar somewhere -- whether building a bridge or operating a forest company or buying a car -- it generates activity. And, after all, it's a grand old economic theory, created by John Maynard Keynes, that spending, especially government spending, rolls through the economy on a giant multiplier, piling jobs on jobs, growth on growth.

Except for one problem: What if it's not true? What if, as a wide and growing school of economists now suspect, the government spending and stimulus theory is a crock that is shovel-ready to be heaved out into the barnyard of economic waste?

The Prime Minister, in his comments on Friday, seemed to be riding right into the barnyard. He said the government would be simply "borrowing money that is not being used" and "that business is afraid to invest." By borrowing that money, and turning it over to all the groups and interests looking for part of the stimulus spending, he would be jump-starting activity while the private sector got its legs back.

Even disciples of Keynes, such as Harvard's Greg Mankiw, recently highlighted economic studies that show government spending binges -- shocks, they are sometimes called -- don't seem to help the economy grow. They might even make it worse.

One of the studies cited by Mr. Mankiw was by two European economists (Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig), titled "What are the Effects of Fiscal Shocks?" It looked at big deficit-financed spending increases and found that they stimulate the economy for the first year, but "only weakly" compared with a deficit financed tax cut. The overriding problem is that the deficits crowd out private investment and, over the long run, may make the economy worse. "The resulting higher debt burdens may have long-term consequences which are far worse than the short-term increase in GDP."

Two other studies point in the same direction. A paper by two economists, including the current chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, concluded that increased taxes and "increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending."

Roberto Perotti, an Italian economist with links to Columbia University, in "Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries," found nothing but bad news for Keynesians. Economic growth is little changed after big increases in government spending, but there are signs of weakening private investment.

What we all might logically intuit to be true -- spend government money, especially borrowed money, and you stimulate growth -- has long been thought to be a fallacy by some economists. That thought is now spreading. British economist William Buiter said the massive Obama fiscal stimulus proposals "are afflicted by the Keynesian fallacy on steroids."

Over at Stimulus Canada, Mr. Harper's plan looks somewhat more modest and Canada is not in the same fiscal fix as the United States. But Ottawa and the provinces are clearly ready to borrow big wads of money from the future to stimulate the economy today. It's money that is supposedly sitting out there in the timid hands of investors who will be repaid with tax dollars later.

But if that stimulus spending does not generate much fresh economic growth, and the borrowing chews up money that private investors could invest in the future, the shovel-ready brigades who get the cash today will produce only short term gains at the expense of the long term health of the economy.

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