Lots of countries are unhappy with their borders. Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait in 1990 in part because he felt that the British had erred in not giving modern Iraq a deep water port, which made Iraq ‘indefensible’ and put it at an economic disadvantage. Pakistan believes that its failure to secure the headwaters of the Indus Valley rivers in Kashmir in 1947 puts it at a permanent disadvantage vis-a-vis India and makes the country overly vulnerable (‘indefensible’). Netanyahu’s immoral argument that a country just has to take by main force whatever it feels will make it more secure is astonishing and is a standing danger to world peace if it were taken seriously by other countries.

“Bibi” Votes Republican — Patrick J. Buchanan

Obama was not saying the 1967 borders were to be the end of negotiations but the starting point. Indeed, where else would one begin land negotiations if not from the last recognized map?

Palestine’s Hidden History of Nonviolence — Yousef Munayyer

It wasn’t until nonviolent protests were met with severe repression that Palestinian guerrilla movements began.

Here Comes Your Nonviolent Resistance — The Economist

So now we have an opportunity to see how Americans will react. We’ve asked the Palestinians to lay down their arms. We’ve told them their lack of a state is their own fault; if only they would embrace non-violence, a reasonable and unprejudiced world would see the merit of their claims. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of them did just that, and it seems likely to continue. If crowds of tens of thousands of non-violent Palestinian protestors continue to march, and if Israel continues to shoot at them, what will we do? Will we make good on our rhetoric, and press Israel to give them their state? Or will it turn out that our paeans to non-violence were just cynical tactics in an amoral international power contest staged by militaristic Israeli and American right-wing groups whose elective affinities lead them to shape a common narrative of the alien Arab/Muslim threat? Will we even bother to acknowledge that the Palestinians are protesting non-violently? Or will we soldier on with the same empty decades-old rhetoric, now drained of any truth or meaning, because it protects established relationships of power? What will it take to make Americans recognise that the real Martin Luther King-style non-violent Palestinian protestors have arrived, and that Israeli soldiers are shooting them with real bullets?

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• The Newsweekly’s Last Stand — Michael Hirschorn (The Atlantic) – Really interesting piece on the odd success of The Economist. Great insights for business and journalism. Money quote: “The irony, as restaurateurs and club-owners and sneaker companies and Facebook and Martha Stewart know—and as The Economist demonstrates, week in and week out—is that niche is sometimes the smartest way to take over the world.” Whether it will last, though, remains to be seen. The media and news world is changing fast, and The Economist will eventually have to adapt like everyone else. The question is whether they find a way to fill the same niche as the platform shifts.
• Off-Balance-Sheet Federal Liabilities — James Hamilton – Hamilton does a nice job of summarizing some rather complicated accounting. The key here is the difference between the first and second graphs; the real problem, in other words, is not the fiscal stimulus, but rather the unsustainable rise in health care costs. As to all the “off-balance-sheet” vehicles the government uses, how have they been working for Wall Street lately?
• CAFE Kills (GM) — David Henderson – Henderson is consistently one of the best commentators on CAFE standards. This is another excellent insight; the comparison with a fuel tax is the crucial point.
• Say It Ain’t So, Joe — Marc Lynch – Whoa, let’s slow down the dogs of war here.
• A Deadly Organ Donor System — Jeff Jacoby – An excellent idea that deserves more attention.
• Interior Secretary Salazar, Senator Reid Announce ‘Fast-Track’ Initiatives for Up to 100,000 MW of Solar Energy Development on Western Lands — Climate Progress – This is exciting news.
• Sweden: Negative Interest Rates and Quantitative Easing — Edward Harrison – Greg Mankiw and a few other economists have been pushing for more aggressive monetary policy, including negative interest rates, which are pretty unprecedented. This is going to be a very educational experiment. I’d be curious to know what Scott Sumner thinks…
• Fatal Assumptions — yelvington.com – Excellent analysis of what is wrong with the newspaper industry — on the inside. We won’t see journalism right its ship until the publishers recognize these facts and trends.
• A Case to Watch — Greg Mankiw – An important test. Resist peer pressure, Mr. President!

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