Owners and Squatters

On this day:
1184 BC
Trojan War: Troy is sacked and burned, according to calculations by Eratosthenes.
1776
The Continental Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to the Committee of Five to draft a declaration of independence.
1938
Second Sino-Japanese War: The Chinese Nationalist government creates the 1938 Yellow River flood to halt Japanese forces. 500,000 to 900,000 civilians are killed.

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James Howells, who lost his hard drive containing $742M in Bitcoin, finally ended his search for the hard drive after 12 years.

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"I could end the deficit in five minutes,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in a 2011 interview. “You just pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.”

This is getting some renewed internet action. The problem is with the "pass a law" part.

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Why are students demonstrating at Harvard over Israel and not in front of the Russian embassy over Ukraine?

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7% of people over age 65 are regular cannabis users.

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Owners and Squatters

Israel and its enemies is more complex than simple jealousy, although it plays a part. It is the worst of tribalism, expansionism, greed, unforgiving historical resentment--the Hatfields and the McCoys writ large, armed to the teeth and blinded by righteous fury over something most can't remember.

The West, horrified by the murderous WWII, tried to set aside a self-contained political and cultural entity where Jews could enrich and protect themselves. They chose a desert occupied by ill-defined, wandering nomads who had just lost a war. Losing a war has consequences, usually a lot worse than losing some desert. 

But drawing borders and appointing kings have a lot to overcome. See Korea, Vietnam, the Ottoman Empire, the 100 Years' War, and much of Africa. And while the Jewish claim to the area is well documented, everything in history has a precedent. Jewish claims in the Middle East are more literate than the Irishman's claim to London, but no more valid. And how old is national sovereignty anyway? The Treaty of Westphalia? So, all borders start from 1648?

There should be a statute of limitations on national sovereignty. Everyone has some claim or other if you go back far enough. Right now, publicity and PR trump everything. But, as time goes by, big weapons in the hands of a few will trump everything. If the world thinks Gaza is a problem now, imagine what will happen when Iran has a nuclear weapon. How will these problems be resolved? 

Israel was created out of whole cloth by a sympathetic Britain--ratified by the UN--in a land they conquered, for the benefit of a culture that had suffered horribly. Tough but historically common. (minus the kindness)  And the conquered people were displaced. (unsympathically) So, which injustices will we right? Greece-Turkey? The Falklands? The defeat of the Anglo-Saxons? The defeat of a Stone Age people without the wheel by the European People of Steam?

Do the Picts want Edinburgh back? The Chiricahua want Austin? It was said seriously by a commentator about the LA riots that California was originally Mexico's. That is, they stole it first. 

Putin is a metaphor for this world: cynical, virtueless, grasping, homicidal, self-absorbed ambition. He and people like him will destroy the house to evict the squatters. But in Israel, the squatter is similarly armed. And if Israel can't keep what they were given, they will respond Sampson-like and reduce the Middle East to a smoldering, lifeless radioactive trinitite.

"If everyone lights just one little candle," also starts a zillion small fires. Not seeing the realities here and ignoring the risks is childish. And, on a global scale, life-threatening.