Links and Minifeatures 2008 04 21 Monday

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Carnival of Personal Finance

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I am adamantly against a draft. But if we have to have one, according to certain people on the left who claim the underprivileged are paying an inordinately large share of the burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan, then Jules Crittendon has the form it should take correct. (He's incorrect about Heinlein, by the way)

I agree with him that the fight from the left in favor of the draft is a fight to get middle America to join the war protests. Glory days of Vietnam protests and all that, as opposed to the few score who turn out for their protests currently.

But a draft is wrong. Dictatorships need conscript armies - free countries where the citizens have a reason to defend them will attract volunteers. The best measure of a state's worth is how many people volunteer to defend it when that defense is necessary. At this point in time, the United States appears to have plenty of those volunteers, bless them. Yes, we've had a draft in the past. But right now, more than enough people are volunteering, so that our military can afford to be quite picky. Don't believe me? Ask recruiters. Ask people who were rejected by the military. The mass media loves to make a big story about the military accepting more people who failed to complete high school. But the percentage of people in the military who have completed high school is higher than the general population. The percentage of people with college degrees is also higher, and advanced degrees as well. And I happen to believe that the average moral IQ inside the military is enormously higher than such places as Berkeley

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Mashaal offers truce if Israel withdraws from 1967 lands

The leader of Hamas says his Palestinian militant group is offering Israel a 10-year truce if it withdraws from all lands it seized in the 1967 war.

Khaled Mashaal says he made the offer to former President Carter in talks on Saturday.


And this is supposed to be some kind of breakthrough? Some sort of willingness to coexist with Israel? Notice the wording: not peace, but truce. In other words, a break in the fighting with full intention of resuming later.

See Hudna:

A particularly famous early hudna was the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah between Muhammad and the Quraysh tribe, ending with Muhammad marching on Mecca along with 10000 men, two years after the hudna was signed, and taking over the Quraysh.

According to Umdat as-Salik, a medieval summary of Shafi'i jurisprudence, hudnas with a non-Muslim enemy should be limited to 10 years: "if Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet made a truce with the Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud"

But because Muhammad got strong in two years, he broke the truce. This is precisely what Hamas is asking for: space and time to get strong enough to fight on more even terms.

This isn't any kind of a breakthrough. It's grandstanding while trying to lure your enemies to sleep while you arm.

an alternate source

HUDNA - Arabic word often translated as "cease-fire.- Historically used as a tactic aimed at allowing the party declaring the hudna to regroup while tricking an enemy into lowering its guard. When the hudna expires, the party that declared it is stronger and the enemy weaker. The term comes from the story of the Muslim conquest of Mecca. Instead of a rapid victory, Muhammad made a ten-year treaty with the Kuraysh tribe. In 628 AD, after only two years of the ten-year treaty, Muhammad and his forces concluded that the Kuraysh were too weak to resist. The Muslims broke the treaty and took over all of Mecca without opposition.

If Mr. Carter's supposed christian beliefs are correct, I imagine some part of the management heirarchy will want to take this up with him upon arrival in the afterlife.

Hot Air says it's even worse than I have outlined.

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Call that precipated polygamist raid may have been a hoax

Don't get me wrong. That cult needs to get investigated and shut down if they were doing what they were accused of, and law enforcement is claiming they have plenty of evidence.

But it's just as easy to "drop a dime" on some innocent party. Say one of your neighbors calls in something false about you? You're going to have your life ruined, and face many thousands of dollars in legal expenses.

Say some well meaning law enforcement officer who happens to be mistaken asks some associate to phone in an anonymous tip?

Transparency is a good thing. But you have to know who the accuser is, as well as the accused.

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This page contains a single entry by Dan Melson published on April 21, 2008 1:00 PM.

Real Estate: Giving Someone a Monopoly Does Not Encourage Top Performance was the previous entry in this blog.

What $5 (and Higher) Gas Means to Suburban and Exurban Real Estate is the next entry in this blog.

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