20090115-20090208 catch up….

0115 (2009-02-08)

Australia wildfires kill 108

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/584300

* related to global warming?

0116 (2009-02-08)

Middle-class communities disappearing

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/584203

* level of immigration = too high?  $ on them.

* multicultural policy right?  keep their own culture rather than melt into..

* immigrant = low income, high crime rate? skilled labour not recognized…

0117 (2009-02-08)

Vet’s relationship with accused firm at issue

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/583873

* is there no debate on whether euthanasia on pet is right or not..?

0118

Toronto man breaks record for watching TV 72 hours straight

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/584367

* totally a waste of time…  however i think many housewives can easily break this record..

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20090114 Israel’s Goals in Gaza? By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: January 13, 2009

permalink: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/opinion/14friedman.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

I have only one question about Israel’s military operation in Gaza: What is the goal? Is it the education of Hamas or the eradication of Hamas? I hope that it’s the education of Hamas. Let me explain why.

I was one of the few people who argued back in 2006 that Israel actually won the war in Lebanon started by Hezbollah. You need to study that war and its aftermath to understand Gaza and how it is part of a new strategic ballgame in the Arab-Israel arena, which will demand of the Obama team a new approach.

What Hezbollah did in 2006 — in launching an unprovoked war across the U.N.-recognized Israel-Lebanon border, after Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from Lebanon — was to both upend Israel’s longstanding peace strategy and to unveil a new phase in the Hezbollah-Iran war strategy against Israel.

There have always been two camps in Israel when it comes to the logic of peace, notes Gidi Grinstein, president of the Israeli think tank, the Reut Institute: One camp says that all the problems Israel faces from the Palestinians or Lebanese emanate from occupying their territories. “Therefore, the fundamental problem is staying — and the fundamental remedy is leaving,” says Grinstein.

The other camp argues that Israel’s Arab foes are implacably hostile and leaving would only invite more hostility. Therefore, at least when it comes to the Palestinians, Israel needs to control their territories indefinitely. Since the mid-1990s, the first camp has dominated Israeli thinking. This led to the negotiated and unilateral withdrawals from the West Bank, Lebanon and Gaza.

Hezbollah’s unprovoked attack from Lebanon into Israel in 2006 both undermined the argument that withdrawal led to security and presented Israel with a much more vexing military strategy aimed at neutralizing Israel’s military superiority. Hezbollah created a very “flat” military network, built on small teams of guerrillas and mobile missile-batteries, deeply embedded in the local towns and villages.

And this Hezbollah force, rather than confronting Israel’s Army head-on, focused on demoralizing Israeli civilians with rockets in their homes, challenging Israel to inflict massive civilian casualties in order to hit Hezbollah fighters and, when Israel did strike Hezbollah and also killed civilians, inflaming the Arab-Muslim street, making life very difficult for Arab or European leaders aligned with Israel.

Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its Air Force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future.

Israel’s military was not focused on the morning after the war in Lebanon — when Hezbollah declared victory and the Israeli press declared defeat. It was focused on the morning after the morning after, when all the real business happens in the Middle East. That’s when Lebanese civilians, in anguish, said to Hezbollah: “What were you thinking? Look what destruction you have visited on your own community! For what? For whom?”

Here’s what Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, said the morning after the morning after about his decision to start that war by abducting two Israeli soldiers on July 12, 2006: “We did not think, even 1 percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude. You ask me, if I had known on July 11 … that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not.”

That was the education of Hezbollah. Has Israel seen its last conflict with Hezbollah? I doubt it. But Hezbollah, which has done nothing for Hamas, will think three times next time. That is probably all Israel can achieve with a nonstate actor.

In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population. If it is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims. Now its focus, and the Obama team’s focus, should be on creating a clear choice for Hamas for the world to see: Are you about destroying Israel or building Gaza?

But that requires diplomacy. Israel de facto recognizes Hamas’s right to rule Gaza and to provide for the well-being and security of the people of Gaza — which was actually Hamas’s original campaign message, not rocketing Israel. And, in return, Hamas has to signal a willingness to assume responsibility for a lasting cease-fire and to abandon efforts to change the strategic equation with Israel by deploying longer and longer range rockets. That’s the only deal. Let’s give it a try.

notes

Hezbollah.  真主黨

20090113 Apple Chief Temporarily Steps Aside By BRAD STONE Published: January 14, 2009

permalink http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/technology/companies/15apple.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Casting a pall over one of the world’s most closely watched companies, Steven P. Jobs, chief executive of Apple, said on Wednesday that he was taking a leave of absence because of health concerns.

Mr. Jobs wrote in a letter to Apple employees, released after the markets closed, that he had learned over the last week that his health problems were “more complex” than he originally thought. He said he planned to return to Apple at the end of June and in the meantime would hand day-to-day control of Apple over to Timothy D. Cook, its longtime chief operating officer.

Mr. Jobs, 53, wrote that curiosity about his health continued “to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well.” He said he would maintain the chief executive title and stay involved in major strategic decisions.

Mr. Jobs’s leave of absence is the latest twist in a story that has left the company’s shareholders, analysts and ardent fans exasperated and straining to divine any hidden meanings in the company’s vaguely worded communications.

In his letter, Mr. Jobs offered no new details about the cause of his health problems. In a letter last week that was meant to calm fears about his condition, he said a “hormone imbalance” was robbing his body of proteins and causing him to lose weight. Mr. Jobs recovered from pancreatic cancer after surgery in 2004, but has appeared unusually gaunt at recent appearances.

Two people who are familiar with Mr. Jobs’s current medical treatment said he was not suffering from a recurrence of cancer, but a condition that was preventing his body from absorbing food. Doctors have also advised him to cut down on stress, which may be making the problem worse, these people said.

An Apple spokesman, Steve Dowling, said the company had no comment beyond Mr. Jobs’s letter.

Apple shares dropped sharply in after-hours trading after the release of the letter, losing $6.03, or 7.1 percent, to $79.30. The stock fell 2.71 percent in regular trading amid a broad market slump.

Charles Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company who follows Apple, said the stock market would probably fear the worst.

“It is reasonable to expect, given the history of Steve’s illness, that the market is probably going to assume that he is not going to return to Apple,” Mr. Wolf said.

In June, when Mr. Jobs appeared strikingly thin at a company conference for programmers, an Apple spokeswoman said he was recovering from a “common bug.” Soon afterward, Mr. Jobs acknowledged to The New York Times that he was suffering from digestive difficulties related to an operation he had as part of his cancer treatment.

Then last week, Mr. Jobs sought to calm speculation about his withdrawal from his regular keynote speech at the annual Macworld conference by acknowledging he had a “hormone imbalance.”

“The letter last week pretty much tried to reassure people that his health condition was extremely minor, but obviously it is more serious than first thought,” Ryan Jacob, founder of the Jacob Internet Fund, which owns a stake in Apple and is based in Los Angeles, said. “It’s disturbing.”

As news trickles from Apple about Mr. Jobs’s health, some shareholders and analysts have expressed frustration.

A spokesman for the Securities and Exchange Commission, John J. Nester, declined to comment on Apple’s situation. But he said that in general, while there were no specific requirements for companies to disclose the health of their officers or directors, companies needed to assess whether health problems could have a material impact on results.

For most companies, such information is not crucial because they are not as closely associated with one person. But Apple may be an exception. Since he helped found Apple in 1976, and particularly since he returned in 1997 after a decade-long absence, Mr. Jobs has been inextricablylinked to the company and its brand.

Over the last eight years, he has, seemingly single-handedly, powered Apple back to the forefront of the technology industry. Apple has sold 180 million iPod music players, and in the last 18 months, it has sold more than 20 million units of its iPhone.

But Mr. Jobs does not run Apple alone, and now at least one of his deputies will have a moment in the sun. Mr. Cook joined Apple in 1998 from the computer maker Compaq and is responsible for the company’s manufacturing and sales operations.

“I don’t think we know enough about Tim since he has never really been in the limelight,” said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “What we can say is Apple has a complicated business model with enormous seasonality. But it has been exceptionally well run across a number of dimensions for a number of years. I think a lot of that credit goes to Tim.”

By all accounts, Mr. Cook does not have the long-term vision or showmanship of Mr. Jobs, who appears capable of peering around corners into the future of technology, and can whip crowds into a frenzy merely by taking something new out of his pocket.

That is why analysts and shareholders saw so much portent in Mr. Jobs’s 170-word letter.

“These are times where you reflect about what Steve Jobs means for the company,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. “At the end of the day, investors need to come to grips with the reality of a post-Steve Jobs world. This is the most urgent wake-up call they have had.”

20090112 Making Room for Miss Manners Is a Parenting Basic By PERRI KLASS, M.D. Published: January 12, 2009

permalink: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/health/13klas.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

For years, I took care of a very rude child. When he was 3, I called him rambunctious — and I talked to his mother about “setting limits.” At 4, I called him “demanding.” At 5, he was still screaming at his mother if she didn’t do what he wanted, he still swatted me whenever I tried to examine him, and his mother asked me worriedly if I thought he was ready for kindergarten.

I could go on (he didn’t have an easy time in school), but it would sound like a Victorian tale: The Rude Boy. I never used the word “rude” or even “manners” when I spoke to his mother. I don’t describe my patients as rude or polite in the medical record. But I do pass judgment, and so does every pediatricianI know.

It’s always popular — and easy — to bewail the deterioration of manners; there is an often quoted (and often disputed) story about Socrates’ complaining that the young Athenians have “bad manners, contemptfor authority.” Sure, certain social rubrics have broken down or blurred, and sure, electronic communication seems to have given adults as well as children new ways to be rude. But the age-old parental job remains.

And that job is to start with a being who has no thought for the feelings of others, no code of behavior beyond its own needs and comforts — and, guided by love and duty, to do your best to transform that being into what your grandmother (or Socrates) might call a mensch. To use a term that has fallen out of favor, your assignment is to “civilize” the object of your affections.

My favorite child-rearing book is “Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect Children,” by Judith Martin, who takes the view that manners are at the heart of the whole parental enterprise. I called her to ask why.

“Every infant is born adorable but selfish and the center of the universe,” she replied. It’s a parent’s job to teach that “there are other people, and other people have feelings.”

The conversations that every pediatrician has, over and over, about “limit setting” and “consistently praising good behavior” are conversations about manners. And when you are in the exam room with a child who seems to have none, you begin to wonder what is going on at home and at school, and questions of family dysfunction or neurodevelopmental problems begin to cross your mind.

Dr. Barbara Howard, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and an expert on behavior and development, told me that a child’s manners were a perfectly appropriate topic to raise at a pediatric visit.

“It has a huge impact on people’s lives — why wouldn’t you bring it up?” she said. “Do they look you in the eye? If you stick your hand out do they shake it? How do they interact with the parents; do they interrupt, do they ask for things, do they open Mommy’s purse and take things out?”

Dr. Howard suggested that the whole “manners” concept might seem a little out of date — until you recast it as “social skills,” a very hot term these days. Social skills are necessary for school success, she pointed out; they affect how you do on the playground, in the classroom, in the workplace.

We also think of social skills as a profound set of challenges that complicate the lives of children — and adults — on what is now called the autism spectrum. Children with autism, whether mild or severe, have great difficulty learning social codes, deciphering subtle body language or tone of voice, and catching on to the rules of the game.

Therapy for these children can include systematic training in social skills, sometimes using scripts for common human interactions. And one lesson, Dr. Howard said, “is that you can teach this stuff, and we maybe aren’t teaching it as well as we should be to children who are developing normally.”

And of course, one of the long-term consequences of being a rude child is being a rude adult — even a rude doctor. There are bullies on the playground and bullies in the workplace; it can be quite disconcerting to encounter a mature adult with 20 or so years of education under his belt who still sees the world only in terms of his own wants, needs and emotions: I want that so give it to me; I am angry so I need to hit; I am wounded so I must howl.

I like Miss Manners’ approach because it lets a parent respect a child’s intellectual and emotional privacy: I’m not telling you to like your teacher; I’m telling you to treat her with courtesy. I’m not telling you that you can’t hate Tommy; I’m telling you that you can’t hit Tommy. Your feelings are your own private business; your behavior is public.

But that first big counterintuitive lesson — that there are other people out there whose feelings must be considered — affects a child’s most basic moral development. For a child, as for an adult, manners represent a strategy for getting along in life, but also a successful intellectual engagement with the business of being human.

I did not enjoy visits with my rude patient. Despite his generally good health and his normal developmental milestones, I couldn’t help feeling that the adult world had failed to guide and protect him. He was loud and demanding and insistent, but one of his basic needs had not been met: no one had taught him manners.

As a pediatrician, I worry about the trajectories of children’s growth and development: measuring a baby’s head size, weighing a toddler, asking about the language skills of a preschooler. Manners are another side of the journey every child makes from helplessness to autonomy. And a child who learns to manage a little courtesy, even under the pressure of a visit to the doctor, is a child who is operating well in the world, a child with a positive prognosis.

就是家教問題囉…

e+細路真係….

20090111 Notes From the Chairman By BONO Published: January 9, 2009

permalink: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/opinion/11bono.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Once upon a couple of weeks ago …

I’m in a crush in a Dublin pub around New Year’s. Glasses clinking clicking, clashing crashing in Gaelic revelry: swinging doors, sweethearts falling in and out of the season’s blessings, family feuds subsumed or resumed. Malt joy and ginger despair are all in the queue to be served on this, the quarter-of-a-millennium mark since Arthur Guinness first put velvety blackness in a pint glass.

Interesting mood. The new Irish money has been gambled and lost; the Celtic Tiger’s tail is between its legs as builders and bankers laugh uneasy and hard at the last year, and swallow uneasy and hard at the new. There’s a voice on the speakers that wakes everyone out of the moment: it’s Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” His ode to defiance is four decades old this year and everyone sings along for a lifetime of reasons. I am struck by the one quality his voice lacks: Sentimentality.

Is this knotted fist of a voice a clue to the next year? In the mist of uncertainty in your business life, your love life, your life life, why is Sinatra’s voice such a foghorn — such confidence in nervous times allowing you romance but knocking your rose-tinted glasses off your nose, if you get too carried away.

A call to believability.

A voice that says, “Don’t lie to me now.”

That says, “Baby, if there’s someone else, tell me now.”

Fabulous, not fabulist. Honesty to hang your hat on.

As the year rolls over (and with it many carousers), the emotion in the room tussles between hope and fear, expectation and trepidation. Wherever you end up, his voice takes you by the hand.

•

Now I’m back in my own house in Dublin, uncorking some nice wine, ready for the vinegar it can turn to when families and friends overindulge, as I am about to. Right by the hole-in-the-wall cellar, I look up to see a vision in yellow: a painting Frank sent to me after I sang “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” with him on the 1993 “Duets” album. One from his own hand. A mad yellow canvas of violent concentric circles gyrating across a desert plain. Francis Albert Sinatra, painter, modernista.

We had spent some time in his house in Palm Springs, which was a thrill — looking out onto the desert and hills, no gingham for miles. Plenty of miles, though, Miles Davis. And plenty of talk of jazz. That’s when he showed me the painting. I was thinking the circles were like the diameter of a horn, the bell of a trumpet, so I said so.

“The painting is called ‘Jazz’ and you can have it.”

I said I had heard he was one of Miles Davis’s biggest influences.

Little pithy replies:

“I don’t usually hang with men who wear earrings.”

“Miles Davis never wasted a note, kid — or a word on a fool.”

“Jazz is about the moment you’re in. Being modern’s not about the future, it’s about the present.”

I think about this now, in this new year. The Big Bang of pop music telling me it’s all about the moment, a fresh canvas and never overworking the paint. I wonder what he would have thought of the time it’s taken me and my bandmates to finish albums, he with his famous impatience for directors, producers — anyone, really — fussing about. I’m sure he’s right. Fully inhabiting the moment during that tiny dot of time after you’ve pressed “record” is what makes it eternal. If, like Frank, you sing it like you’ll never sing it again. If, like Frank, you sing it like you never have before.

If.

•

If you want to hear the least sentimental voice in the history of pop music finally crack, though — shhhh — find the version of Frank’s ode to insomnia, “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road),” hidden on “Duets.” Listen through to the end and you will hear the great man break as he truly sobs on the line, “It’s a long, long, long road.” I kid you not.

Like Bob Dylan’s, Nina Simone’s, Pavarotti’s, Sinatra’s voice is improved by age, by years spent fermenting in cracked and whiskeyed oak barrels. As a communicator, hitting the notes is only part of the story, of course.

Singers, more than other musicians, depend on what they know — as opposed to what they don’t want to know about the world. While there is a danger in this — the loss of naïveté, for instance, which holds its own certain power — interpretive skills generally gain in the course of a life well abused.

Want an example? Here’s an example. Take two of the versions of Sinatra singing “My Way.”

The first was recorded in 1969 when the Chairman of the Board said to Paul Anka, who wrote the song for him: “I’m quitting the business. I’m sick of it. I’m getting the hell out.” In this reading, the song is a boast — more kiss-off than send-off — embodying all the machismo a man can muster about the mistakes he’s made on the way from here to everywhere.

In the later recording, Frank is 78. The Nelson Riddle arrangement is the same, the words and melody are exactly the same, but this time the song has become a heart-stopping, heartbreaking song of defeat. The singer’s hubrisis out the door. ( This singer, i.e. me, is in a puddle.) The song has become an apology.

To what end? Duality, complexity. I was lucky to duet with a man who understood duality, who had the talent to hear two opposing ideas in a single song, and the wisdom to know which side to reveal at which moment.

This is our moment. What do we hear?

In the pub, on the occasion of this new year, as the room rises in a deafening chorus — “I did it my way” — I and this full house of Irish rabble-rousers hear in this staple of the American songbook both sides of the singer and the song, hubris and humility, blue eyes and red.

NOTES:

Dublin – 都柏林(愛爾蘭首都)

Gaelic – irish/scottish language

Frank Sinatra: 法蘭·仙納杜拉.  昵稱瘦皮猴，著名美國男歌手和奧斯卡獎得獎演員。

My way: 仙納杜拉的代表作，在流行文化上亦常被用作為告別曲，表示一場表演的結束或一個人的離開。這亦是英國最受歡迎的喪禮輓曲。

Miles Davis: ，小號手，爵士樂演奏家，作曲家，指揮家，20世紀最有影響力的音樂人之一。

The Chairman of the Board: Sinatra acquired the nickname “Chairman of the Board” after founding Reprise Records in 1961. (http://ask.yahoo.com/20001023.html)

LYRICS:

And now, the end is near;
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, Ill say it clear,
Ill state my case, of which Im certain.

Ive lived a life thats full.
Ive traveled each and evry highway;
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets, Ive had a few;
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course;
Each careful step along the byway,
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, Im sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall;
And did it my way.

Ive loved, Ive laughed and cried.
Ive had my fill; my share of losing.
And now, as tears subside,
I find it all so amusing.

To think I did all that;
And may I say – not in a shy way,
No, oh no not me,
I did it my way.

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!

THOUGHT:

bono都寫articles喎..

開頭仲以為係果d’人權運動’類型的topic呢..

nytimes 果度有bono讀稿, and Frank Sinatra’s 1969 Version of ‘My Way,’ From the CD ‘Nothing but the Best.’首歌聽呢

searched in youtube: Sinatra in Japan (1985) – My Way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYqQCS9CDZM

ummm……我聽唔出前&後的個分別啊…ohhh  noooo……..

The Obama Gap By PAUL KRUGMANPublished: January 8, 2009

permalink: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/opinion/09krugman.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

“I don’t believe it’s too late to change course, but it will be if we don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years.”

So declared President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday, explaining why the nation needs an extremely aggressive government response to the economic downturn. He’s right. This is the most dangerous economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it could all too easily turn into a prolonged slump.

But Mr. Obama’s prescription doesn’t live up to his diagnosis. The economic plan he’s offering isn’t as strong as his language about the economic threat. In fact, it falls well short of what’s needed.

Bear in mind just how big the U.S. economy is. Given sufficient demand for its output, America would produce more than $30 trillion worth of goods and services over the next two years. But with both consumer spending and business investment plunging, a huge gap is opening up between what the American economy can produce and what it’s able to sell.

And the Obama plan is nowhere near big enough to fill this “output gap.”

Earlier this week, the Congressional Budget Office came out with its latest analysis of the budget and economic outlook. The budget office says that in the absence of a stimulus plan, the unemployment rate would rise above 9 percent by early 2010, and stay high for years to come.

Grim as this projection is, by the way, it’s actually optimistic compared with some independent forecasts. Mr. Obama himself has been saying that without a stimulus plan, the unemployment rate could go into double digits.

Even the C.B.O. says, however, that “economic output over the next two years will average 6.8 percent below its potential.” This translates into $2.1 trillion of lost production. “Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity,” declared Mr. Obama on Thursday. Well, he was actually understating things.

To close a gap of more than $2 trillion — possibly a lot more, if the budget office projections turn out to be too optimistic — Mr. Obama offers a $775 billion plan. And that’s not enough.

Now, fiscal stimulus can sometimes have a “multiplier” effect: In addition to the direct effects of, say, investment in infrastructure on demand, there can be a further indirect effect as higher incomes lead to higher consumer spending. Standard estimates suggest that a dollar of public spending raises G.D.P. by around $1.50.

But only about 60 percent of the Obama plan consists of public spending. The rest consists of tax cuts — and many economists are skeptical about how much these tax cuts, especially the tax breaks for business, will actually do to boost spending. (A number of Senate Democrats apparently share these doubts.) Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center summed it up in the title of a recent blog posting: “lots of buck, not much bang.”

The bottom line is that the Obama plan is unlikely to close more than half of the looming output gap, and could easily end up doing less than a third of the job.

Why isn’t Mr. Obama trying to do more?

Is the plan being limited by fear of debt? There are dangers associated with large-scale government borrowing — and this week’s C.B.O. report projected a $1.2 trillion deficit for this year. But it would be even more dangerous to fall short in rescuing the economy. The president-elect spoke eloquently and accurately on Thursday about the consequences of failing to act — there’s a real risk that we’ll slide into a prolonged, Japanese-style deflationary trap — but the consequences of failing to act adequately aren’t much better.

Is the plan being limited by a lack of spending opportunities? There are only a limited number of “shovel-ready” public investment projects — that is, projects that can be started quickly enough to help the economy in the near term. But there are other forms of public spending, especially on health care, that could do good while aiding the economy in its hour of need.

Or is the plan being limited by political caution? Press reports last month indicated that Obama aides were anxious to keep the final price tag on the plan below the politically sensitive trillion-dollar mark. There also have been suggestions that the plan’s inclusion of large business tax cuts, which add to its cost but will do little for the economy, is an attempt to win Republican votes in Congress.

Whatever the explanation, the Obama plan just doesn’t look adequate to the economy’s need. To be sure, a third of a loaf is better than none. But right now we seem to be facing two major economic gaps: the gap between the economy’s potential and its likely performance, and the gap between Mr. Obama’s stern economic rhetoric and his somewhat disappointing economic plan.

notes:

President-elect Barack Obama warned that the U.S. risks sinking deeper into an economic crisis without an infusion of government spending and a cut in tax rates and urged Congress to act quickly on a stimulus package that may total $775 billion.

….proposing a two- year stimulus proposal that includes infrastructure spending aimed at creating or saving 3 million jobs and about $300 billion in tax cuts for individuals and businesses.

The president-elect didn’t put a price tag on his plan, though he has said it will widen the federal budget deficit, which the Congressional Budget Office yesterday forecast would hit $1.18 trillion this year. Democratic officials have said Obama’s target is a package of about $775 billion.

(http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=azAp..che8Xc&refer=us)

thought:

obama 會唔會都係言過其實卦….?

20090109 The Gaza Boomerang By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: January 7, 2009

permalink: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/opinion/08kristof.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

At a time when Israel is bombing Gaza to try to smash Hamas, it’s worth remembering that Israel itself helped nurture Hamas.

When Hamas was founded in 1987, Israel was mostly concerned with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement and figured that a religious Palestinian organization would help undermine Fatah. Israel calculated that all those Muslim fundamentalists would spend their time praying in the mosques, so it cracked down on Fatah and allowed Hamas to rise as a counterforce.

What we’re seeing in the Middle East is the Boomerang Syndrome. Arab terrorism built support for right-wing Israeli politicians, who took harsh actions against Palestinians, who responded with more terrorism, and so on. Extremists on each side sustain the other, and the excessive Israeli ground assault in Gaza is likely to create more terrorists in the long run.

If this pattern continues, we may eventually see Hamas-style Palestinians facing off against hard-line Israelis, with each side making the others’ lives wretched— and political moderates in the Middle East politically eviscerated.

I visited Gaza last summer and found many Palestinians ambivalent in a way that Americans and Israelis often don’t appreciate. Many Gazans scorn Fatah as corrupt and incompetent, and they dislike Hamas’s overzealousness and repression. But when they are suffering and humiliated, they find it emotionally satisfying to see Hamas fighting back.

Granted, Israel was profoundly provoked in this case. Israel sought an extension of its cease-fire with Hamas, and Egypt offered to mediate one — but Hamas refused. When it is shelled by its neighbor, Israel has to do something.

But Israel’s right to do something doesn’t mean it has the right to do anything. Since the shelling from Gaza started in 2001, 20 Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets or mortars, according to a tabulation by Israeli human rights groups. That doesn’t justify an all-out ground invasion that has killed more than 660 people (it’s difficult to know how many are militants and how many are civilians).

So what could Israel have reasonably done? Bombing the tunnels through which Gazans smuggle weapons would have been a proportionate response, if Israel had stopped there, and the same is true of airstrikes on certain Hamas targets. An even better approach would have been to ease the siege in Gaza, perhaps creating an environment in which Hamas would have extended the cease-fire. It was certainly worth trying — and almost anything would be better than lashing out in a way that would create more boomerangs.

“This policy is not strengthening Israel,” notes Sari Bashi, the executive director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights group that works on Gaza issues. “The trauma that 1.5 million people have been undergoing in Gaza is going to have long-term effects for our ability to live together.

“My colleague in Gaza works for an Israeli organization. She’s learning Hebrew, and she’s just the kind of person we can build a future with. And her 6-year-old nephew, every time a bomb drops from the air, is at first scared and then says — hopefully — maybe the Qassam Brigades will now fire rockets at the Israelis.”

Israel’s strategy has been to make ordinary Palestinians suffer in hopes of creating ill will toward Hamas. That’s why, beginning in 2007, Israel cut back fuel shipments for Gaza utilities — and why today, in the aftermath of the bombings, 800,000 Gaza residents lack running water, Ms. Bashi said.

“The Israeli policy on Gaza has been marketed as a policy against Hamas, but in reality it’s a policy against a million-and-a-half people in Gaza,” she said.

We all know that the most plausible solution to the Middle East mess is a two-state solution along the lines that former President Bill Clinton has proposed. It’s difficult to tell how we get there from here, but a crucial step is to strengthen President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority.

Instead, initial reports are that the assault on Gaza is focusing Arab anger on Mr. Abbas and moderate neighbors like Jordan, undermining the peacemakers.

My courageous Times colleague in Gaza, Taghreed el-Khodary, quoted a 37-year-old father weeping over the corpse of his 11-year-old daughter: “From now on, I am Hamas. I choose resistance.”

Barack Obama has said relatively little about Gaza. At first, given the provocations by Hamas, that was understandable. But as the ground invasion costs more lives, he needs to join European leaders in calling for a new cease-fire on all sides — and after he assumes the presidency, he must provide real leadership that the world craves.

Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East peace negotiator for the United States, suggests in his excellent new book, “The Much Too Promised Land,” that presidents should offer Israel “love, but tough love.”

So, Mr. Obama, find your voice. Fall in tough love with Israel.

notes

Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement
法塔赫是巴勒斯坦民族解放運動組織的簡稱。該組織成立於1959年，是巴勒斯坦解放組織中最大的派別。
從1965年1月1日起，該組織便開始了反對以色列的武裝鬥爭

巴勒斯坦解放組織(Palestine Liberation Organization，簡稱巴解、PLO），是一個巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人的政治及準軍事組織，他們專注於以約旦河至地中海一帶土地組成建立一個獨立的巴勒斯坦國，並意圖取代以色列。

The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades is the military wing of Palestinian militant group Hamas.

two-state solution: A two-state solution envisions two separate states in the Western portion of the historic region of Palestine, one Jewish and another Arab to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict. According to the idea, the Arab inhabitants would be given citizenship by the new Palestinian state; Palestinian refugees would likely be offered such citizenship as well. Arab citizens of present-day Israel would likely have the choice of staying with Israel, or becoming citizens of the new Palestine.

Mahmoud Abbas : While considered a quisling by many Palestinians, Abbas is frequently portrayed by Israel and the West as the face of Palestinian moderation

20090108 What You Don’t Know About Gaza By RASHID KHALIDI Published: January 7, 2009

permalink: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/opinion/08khalidi.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

note (sources: mostly wiki..):

140 square miles = 3個香港咁大? (hk = 426 sq mi)

人口 1.5 million vs 6.9 mil in hk…  咁都叫’crammed’ ?哈~

Ashkelon 阿什克隆。是以色列南部區內蓋夫西部的一個城市
Beersheba:貝爾謝巴，是以色列內蓋夫沙漠最大的城市，通常稱為「內格夫之都」

hamas: 哈馬斯是伊斯蘭抵抗運動組織的簡稱。 哈馬斯的主要目標就是「將以色列從地圖上消除」, 並在現以色列、約旦河西岸以及加沙地帶等地區建立伊斯蘭神權國家

The Fourth Geneva Convention (or GCIV) relates to the protection of civilians during times of war “in the hands” of an enemy and under any military occupation by a foreign power.

Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon is an Israeli politician and former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.

thought:

咁睇Israel 真係好狗喎?

但話說回來, 點解HAMAS會得到支持?

點解Israel會開火先?

最最最最初是為了什麼打起上來….???

20090102

todo

20090101 Bigger Than Bush By PAUL KRUGMAN (January 1, 2009)

permalink: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02krugman.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.

Some of the whining almost defies belief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, really say, “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror”? Did Rush Limbaugh really suggest that the financial crisis was the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by that evil genius Chuck Schumer?

But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?

Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.

Oh, and the racial element isn’t all that abstract, even now: Chip Saltsman, currently a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members a CD including a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — and according to some reports, the controversy over his action has actually helped his chances.

So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some on the right that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.

That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation.

The reality of this strategy’s collapse has not, I believe, fully sunk in with some observers. Thus, some commentators warning President-elect Barack Obama against bold action have held up Bill Clinton’s political failures in his first two years as a cautionary tale.

But America in 1993 was a very different country — not just a country that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today, Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes — and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.

Mr. Obama therefore has room to be bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style strategy of attacking him for promoting big government, they’ll learn two things: not only has the financial crisis discredited their economic theories, the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play the way it used to.

Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.

***note***

Alberto Gonzales:

前司法部長岡薩雷斯.

他是布什總統最親密的顧問，更一手策劃美國嚴苛的反恐法律

他更主張關押在關達那摩灣美軍基地的恐怖嫌犯，不享有日內瓦公約規定的權利。

(http://www.epochtimes.com/b5/7/8/27/n1815428.htm)

Rush Limbaugh: 保守派名嘴

Chuck Schumer: NY參議員

conspiracy:

(http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/22/limbaugh-democrats-indy/)

G.O.P.: Grand Old Party 共和黨是美國歷史悠久的大黨…(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.O.P.)

party of racial backlash:

種族：自從1964年以來，共和黨在非裔美国人中受到的支持度相當少，在近年來的全國性選舉上只獲得不到15%的黑人選票（1984到2004）。

(http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C%E9%BB%A8_(%E7%BE%8E%E5%9C%8B))

Heritage Foundation:

傳統基金會（Heritage Foundation），被視為美國親保守派的重要智囊組織

(http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E7%BE%8E%E5%9B%BD%E4%BC%A0%E7%BB%9F%E5%9F%BA%E9%87%91%E4%BC%9A&variant=zh-hant)

Ronald Reagan: 列根, 第40任總統 (1981-1989) 他始終強調他對於聯邦政府在處理問題上的能力抱持著懷疑態度，尤其是在經濟問題方面。他的解決方式是撤回政府的干涉並減少稅率和撤銷管制，以此讓自由市場機制能自動修正所面臨的問題。他在就職典禮那天說道：「政府並不是解決問題的方法，政府本身才是問題所在。」

(http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%BD%97%E7%BA%B3%E5%BE%B7%C2%B7%E9%87%8C%E6%A0%B9)

Southern strategy:

In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to a Republican method of carrying Southern states and conservative Democratic voters in the latter decades of the 20th century and first decade of the 21st century by exploiting racism among white voters.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy)

Voting Rights Act:

即是比黑人投票

Specifically, Congress intended the Act to outlaw the practice of requiring otherwise qualified voters to pass literacy tests in order to register to vote, a principal means by which southern states had prevented African-Americans from exercising the franchise

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965)

cuttin tax:

我估…減稅即是govt要減開支, 減服務, 所以窮人(black ppl)就受到較大的影響…

Negro:

this is actually an ethnic slur referring to black people.

Reconstruction:

refers to the period during and after the Civil War, between 1863 and 1877..

civil war = 南北戰爭.

南方諸州 = 奴隸制合法

(http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%BE%8E%E5%9C%8B%E5%85%A7%E6%88%B0#.E5.8D.97.E6.96.B9.E8.AB.B8.E5.B7.9E)

所以, southern states = racist..?

cul-de-sac:

dead-end street

***thought***

呢篇野真係睇死我啦…知識貧乏的結果….
我估佢想講的是
bush是的失敗係在於republicans40年前的決定

為了得到南方的支持
就反對Voting Rights Act
實行d對黑人不利的政策
做成’反政府’的立場 (因為政府比d福利出去–>幫黑人)
於是用人只要忠心, 不理能力, 忽視管理質素

如此這般, 就變成今日咁既田地喇…

40年前的因, 好漫長啊….
但當初點解要南方的支持呢?  因為有錢….?  好難明….