Titan is with you again

Titan is also back from the holidays and into the routine of life, mostly orbiting Saturn and waiting for Cassini to drop by for an orbit shift and a bit of a chat. Huygens is taking up space on the surface but is suffering from dead battery syndrome.  Above we show some of his photoartistry.  As usual, we call your attention to our Human Rights Action blog and ask you to pick up on the links and take action on behalf of people who are suffering persecution and discrimination around the world.

IN MEMORIAM ALEX KARRAS 1935-2012
Alex Karras who died this week of multiple illnesses had two successful careers, one as a tackle for the Detroit Lions NFL team and an equally successful one as a television and movie actor.  He was among the more than 3,500 former players who are suing the National Football League, in cases that have been consolidated, over the long-term damage caused by concussions and repeated hits to the head.
We remember both of his personae well and fondly.  He played for the Lions where he anchored the defensive line for 12 seasons over 13 years, 1958 to 1970.  He was also a thorn in the side to the League management in that he objected strongly to the way players were treated like chattels on the one hand, deployed as seen fit, and children on the other, held to restrictive behavioral standards, scolded and disciplined.  He was suspended in 1963 for betting on games, which he regarded as a personal vendetta of the commissioner for what amounted in his  view to a bagatelle.
He was born on July 15, 1935, in Gary, Ind., where his father, George, a Greek immigrant, was a doctor, and his mother, the former Emmeline Wilson, was a nurse. An all-state football player in high school, he attended the University of Iowa, where in 1957 he won the Outland Trophy as the outstanding interior lineman in college football. In 1958, he was drafted in the first round by the Lions.  On television he would, with tongue in cheek, claim that he was the son of a steel worker from Gary and that he enjoyed sacking quarterbacks because their fathers took them on picnics when they were kids.
Much as it was great to see him play, it was also great to see him in his dramatic career.  He played in several films and TV series, served in the the ABC broadcast booth for Monday night football and  wrote a few books, including a send up of broadcasting entitled "Tuesday Night Football" and an autobiography.  In Blazing Saddles, he played an outlaw who knocks out a horse.  We append an obituary from the New York Times.   Rest in Peace, Alex.

SOMETHING A BIT POSITIVE AND A RANT
We are pleased that the appeals court in Russia has released one of the Pussy Riot singers and we call for the release of the other two as well. It is outrageous that they are being sent to serve their term in a notoriously tough prison camp where conditions will be most difficult and it will be hard for them to have visits from their children.

"Virgin Mary, redeem us from Putin" frightened the President

We are also glad(wow, we are starting to sound like Pollyanna) that people in Pakistan including Muslim clerics have received a wake up call from the attempt by the Taliban to murder Malalah Yousafzai, but the issue of freedom of education for girls and freedom of religion in general is still problematic there.  The blasphemy laws of Pakistan are a blasphemy against humanity.

Muslim women protest

BEAR BILE FARMING
In Asia, there is a superstitious belief that the liver bile of bears has medicinal value.  As a result, bears are captured in the wild and "milked" in a very cruel manner in so-called bear farms.  It is a vile practice causing untold suffering to innocent animals.

© The Endangered Species Restoration project, S. Korea

 We are pleased to note that the   International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) passed a motion to end bear bile farming at their World Congress on Friday night. We hope that this will bring pressure on various governments to take the required steps.
The new IUCN motion calls for:

    Countries to close down bear bile farming and extraction facilities,
    Capping the growth of the industry in China,
    Those who back the bear bile industry and claim it doesn’t affect wild bear numbers, to provide independent scientific evidence to the next IUCN World Conservation Congress.
The IUCN also specifically encouraged the governments of South Korea and Viet Nam to continue efforts towards ending bear farming

PETITION FOR A TUNISIAN RAPE VICTIM
AVAAZ is calling for a petition signing on behalf of a Tunisian woman who was raped by police officers and is facing "indecency" charges.  Please sign against this outrage.

RACHEL CORRIE PETITION
As we all know, the civil suit by the Corrie family against the Israeli government failed and the judge went so far as to say that she was responsible for her own death.  Please, US readers, sign the petition to the US State Department to investigate Rachel Corrie's death.  Maybe justice can be found on the other side
of the ocean.
A GENERAL RANT ABOUT REGIMES AND PEOPLE
This week we are not going to deal separately with the world and home since the issues we wish to bring up transcend national boundaries.  We would like to address the question of why a powerful regime so greatly fears individual dissidents and will take extraordinary steps to quiet any criticism or call for change.
WHY THE REGIME FEARS THE INDIVIDUAL
Recently there has been a flurry of articles in the West pointing out that, despite its economic might, China does not meet the criteria of a superpower.  Its main defects are a tattered social fabric, internal political corruption and the lack of a true sense of national identity.  It is no accident that last year the regime did not mark the centennial of the 1911 revolution led by Sun Yat-sen that brought down the last dynastic emperor. The Party has no interest in reminding the public of a revolution whose goal was the attainment of democracy. These same pundits point out that the Soviet Union at the height of its power could match the United States only militarily whereas in all other areas it lagged behind the Western nations.  In 1975, the French historian, Emanuel Todd predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse because of its internal weaknesses on a time scale of 15 years.  He was indeed correct.

A shared trait of such regimes, which differentiates them from liberal democracies, is the paranoid fear of individual dissidents that grips these rulers.  Anyone who raises her/his voice in protest is considered a major danger to the government and nation.  Jefferson wrote that " … governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;" A regime that is not sure of the justice of its authority and lacks the consent of the governed will persecute forcefully any poem, song, idea or thought that casts doubt upon the legitimacy of its actions.  Such regimes constantly rewrite history, such as the amnesia of the Chinese government re Tiananmen Square and the regular "updating" of the Soviet Encyclopedia.  Thus China persecutes Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei self portrait, for Time

and Mao Hengfeng 

Mao Hengfeng with her children

and holds the Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo, in prison.  Their sole "crime" was to harbor the subversive idea that human beings have inalienable rights.  Similarly, Putin and his regime tremble with fear of a few female singers (vid. above) whose voice might bring down the government and a chess grandmaster who has some strange thoughts about democratic reforms.

Garry Kasparov being roughed up by police at Pussy Riot demonstration

 The government of Belarus has gone further, jailing a young man who just photographed a few balloon borne teddy bears sent from Sweden as a gimmick to make the dictator Lukashenko appear ridiculous.

A few of the 800 teddy bears "in training"

Apparently humor is dangerous as well.
The unreasonable pursuit of Julian Assange, the man from Wikileaks,

  by the United States government is a worrisome sign of decay.

In Israel we see the fear of individual expression in the opinion censorship run by Passport Control at the borders.  Prof  Noam Chomsky was denied entry and Prof. Joel Beinin, the editor of Jewish Voice for Peace, was subjected to hours of harassing questioning at the airport, both punished for their opinions and statements.  There are countless other examples of the "Thought Police" of the Israeli government.  Most recently we witnessed the censoring,  by Yaron Dekel, the commander of the army radio station, of a song.  The song,  "A Matter of Habit" by Yizhar Ashdot and Alona Kimchi describes the feelings of a soldier compelled to commit atrocities as part of the enforcement of the West Bank Occupation.  We embed the song for those who know Hebrew.  A translation into English is available on the Tikkun Olam site of Richard Silverstein.





 It should be noted that a talk show host on this station called for physical violence against leftists and another host expressed his hope that the United States would elect a president "who really hates Arabs."  Protests against the incitement to violence were ignored and one must conclude that the station encourages such sentiments.  A call for soldiers to look themselves honestly in the face and ask about what they are called upon to do is regarded as sedition and dangerous to the well being of the state. As pointed out by Uri Blau, the act of censorship proves that every word of the song is true.

A people that believes in the justice of its ways does not fear criticism and is willing to listen and make amends as needed.  Anyone with self confidence will not be outraged because an Arab does not wish to sing Hatikva nor will he arrest demonstrators on trumped up charges of attacking a police officer or other  vile reactions towards the fundamental right of protest against the consensual norms.  One can only understand the large number of anti-democratic legislative initiatives of  right wing members of the outgoing Knesset and their irrational fury towards the New Israel Fund and various human rights organization as a result of an inner fear and feeling that indeed they have gone the wrong way. Indeed they have a majority, but if we may quote Jefferson again, "An elective despotism was not the government we fought for."  Supporters of liberal democracy and human rights must overcome their disgust and indifference and make a point of voting in the forthcoming elections.  We recommend supporting Meretz and Zahava Gal-On, but even Shelly Yahimowitz and her Labor Party are preferable to four more years of our fascist-like right wing government.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION VIOLATED
This week three Jewish women who chose to read the Torah and wear a talit (prayer shawl)at the Western Wall were arrested by the police in Jerusalem.  

Anat Hoffman of Women of the Wall (Nshot Ha-Kotel) arrested at the Western Wall, Old City of Jerusalem (photo: Women of the Wall)

 What is frightening is that the public in Israel accepts this religious bullying by the Orthodox rabbinate and even Reform Jews in the US and other places where their freedom is protected have not made a loud protest.  True, the Reform movement in the US has been funding the cases that have been brought to court, such as the most recent court order that enabled the Reform congregation of Natanya to move into a building provided by the Municipality.  For the record, the Municipality provides structures for 298 Orthodox congregations.
One is tempted to seek the wisdom of Jefferson with respect to religion.  While he was referring to Christianity, his strictures are valid for all faiths:
 I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.

And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter.

For orthodox Christianity substitute the orthodoxy of your choice and for the mystical generation of Jesus substitute the mythical miracle from your local religion. The priest is generic.

THEFT OF ART 
It is incredible that, with all the modern security systems available, thieves could make off with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of paintings by Picasso, Monet, Gauguin and Matisse from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam. It appears that successful museum jacking is not all that uncommon and apparently not too difficult.  We assume that the thieves will have trouble fencing their loot.  Let us hope that they are not fanatic Muslims out to destroy art as a Western decadence. Last week Pollyanna ranted about mutilation of a Rothko painting at Tate Modern in London.  Somehow, art security needs to be beefed up. There were no human guards at the museum, just the electronics, obviously not enough.  Here is a link to a slide show of the pilfered paintings.

WE GOT THE DRONE(EVENTUALLY)-WE ARE THE GREATEST! ARE WE? 
An unmanned aircraft flew into Israel and was shot down after about 30 minutes of flight over the country.  Our generals, air force and others, who give as!@#@!#les a bad name were all very pleased with themselves.  We are much less so. We agree with Reuven Pedatzur, writing in Haaretz, that the attempt to pass off a resounding operational failure as a success is as troubling as the snafu itself.  The drone spent hours near and in Israeli air space and yet was only shot down near Dimona.  The public deserves answers and accountability, but, as in the case of the idiot decision to open a road in the Negev thus costing the lives of many civilians, no one will be held accountable for a failure that is so unconvincingly denied. The glaring incompetence of the military establishment makes the need for peace even more urgent.  We are reminded of a conversation between Hindenberg and Ludendorf at the beginning of World War I:
H: The British soldier is a lion.
L: Fortunately for us, he is commanded by donkeys.
In the end, Germany lost the war, but not through the military genius of Sir John Haig. Norman Dixon writes that wars are won by the side whose generals are marginally less incompetent than those of their adversary.  How long can we rely on this?
WIN ONE THIS TIME
The Supreme Court in Israel has denied the petition of settlers in the south Hebron mountain area to demolish a school for Bedouin children.  Cheers.
BOOK REVIEW
CRACKPOT SCIENCE
This interesting subject is discussed in a book
Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything
Margaret Wertheim
2011 Walker and Company $27.00hb 323pp
reviewed in Physicsworld.com by Margaret Harris.  We all encounter them, the folks who are going to convince you that Einstein(or Schroedinger or Feynman) have it all wrong and they have a great new theory of everything that solves physics, chemistry, whatever.   It can be a prediction of the Second Coming of Jesus by the Hubble Space Telescope or something of that ilk.  Our favorite is the "observation" of the Pearly Gates of Heaven by the imaging system on board the Voyager spacecraft.  Since we were involved in the Voyager project, we felt cheated that the bigwigs of the project had held out on us working stiffs and we had had to rely on The National Enquirer.  The book looks interesting.

What If deals this week with lightning and its consequences.  Not much new for a physicist, but amusing.

We had a link to the significance of xkcd...

Proper disclosure: We too had to look up the Ackermann Function and Graham's Number.

Finally we thank a lady in North Dakota for providing a bit of humor and what is more important, insight into the need for artificial intelligence, since natural intelligence appears to be in short supply.

Titan gets through the holidays

Titan is the kid with the Torah, Pollyanna is the blond girl

Titan is making his way through Succot and wishes all a happy Simhat Torah which is coming up at us.
Before getting on to the Titan business of ranting about what is wrong with the world and calling for a fix, what we Jews call Tikkun Olam, we note that the alter egos of Titan and Pollyanna, i.e. YandA, seem to have a millionaire celebrity (of a sort) namesake. We wish Mr. Yanda

Marshal Yanda

well in his career.

HUMAN RIGHTS BLOG
As usual, we call your attention to our Human Rights Action blog and ask you to pick up on the links and take action on behalf of people who are suffering persecution and discrimination around the world.

IN MEMORIAM 

Eric Hobsbawm in 2003 Photograph: Workers' Photos/Rex Features

Eric Hobsbawm 1917-2012
We mark the passing of Eric Hobsbawm, a lifelong socialist and one of Britain’s most eminent scholars, who died this week at the age of 95. He  was one of Britain’s most distinguished historians, his works on the 20th century read by generations of students, despite an allegiance to the Communist Party that he retained long after many supporters left in shame and disgust. Hobsbawm is best known for three volumes, spanning the period from 1789 to 1914: “The Age of Revolution” (1962), “The Age of Capital” (1975) and “The Age of Empire” (1987). A later volume, “Age of Extremes,” took the story forward from 1914 to 1991. His last book, “How to Change the World,” published in 2011, was not a revolutionary tract but a collection of essays dating back to the 1960s on Marx and Marxism. We are a bit familiar with some of his writings, having read The Age of Revolution years ago and we can indeed say that his style was wonderful and the ideas fascinating, albeit controversial at times to us. We append a link to an appreciation of his life and work in the Guardian.

Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm was born June 9, 1917, in Alexandria, Egypt. His father was British, descended from artisans from Poland and Russia, and his mother’s family were cultured, middle-class Viennese. The family moved to Vienna when he was two. Following the deaths of his father and then his mother, he moved to Berlin in 1931 to live with relatives, and joined the Socialist Schoolboys.

“In Germany there wasn’t any alternative left,” he said in an interview with Maya Jaggi published in The Guardian newspaper in 2002.  “Liberalism was failing. If I’d been German and not a Jew, I could see I might have become a Nazi, a German nationalist. I could see how they’d become passionate about saving the nation. It was a time when you didn’t believe there was a future unless the world was fundamentally transformed.”
He once said he was “lucky — yes, lucky enough — to live in Berlin before Hitler came to power.”
In our opinion, the fact that he remained in the Party after Hungary and Prague casts a shadow on his memory.

ARTHUR OCHS SULZBERGER, 1926-2012

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger guided The New York Times and its parent company through a long, sometimes turbulent period of expansion and change on a scale not seen since the newspaper’s founding in 1851. He died on Sept. 29, 2012 at his home in Southampton, N.Y., at the age of 86.

Mr. Sulzberger’s tenure as publisher of the newspaper and as chairman and chief executive of The New York Times Company, reached across 34 years, from the heyday of postwar America to the twilight of the 20th century, from the era of hot lead and Linotype machines to the birth of the digital world. The Times carried an obituary editorial and a large number of personal appreciations of Mr. Sulzburger. We append one of them by Max Frankel, a long time employee and associate.

THE UPBEAT CORNER
DRUG LORD CAPTURED 
Despite Titan's sourpuss nature, he does like to start out with some good news. It is indeed good to learn that a major kingpin of the Mexican drug trade, Ivan Velazquez Caballero, known both as El Taliban and as Z-50, who was a commander of the notorious Zetas cartel has been captured by the police. Let us hope that he  gets his just deserts and does not manage to wangle out by bribery or violence. There is reason for concern-on Monday, 35 police officers were arrested in operations in the states of San Luis Potosi and Veracruz, accused of having links to the Zetas.

SATIRE AND ITS VICTIMS AND DUPES
We are sure that you are all familiar with the ONION, one of the funniest and sharpest of the satire blogs around on the Web and with Andy Borowitz, another great source of fake news,  Andy now works for the New Yorker and presumably punches a clock every day. It is equally funny to see what happens when people pick up on these wild jokes and believe them. In general, there is a streak of paranoia and/or monomania that causes these things, quite often in the Arab world,  but not only there. We have the case of the sharks at the Sharm el Sheikh resort on the south side of Sinai which the Egyptians attributed to the Mossad, presumably an attack on the tourist trade or possible fishy espionage. (Titan asks if the Mossad did not own the sharks, but borrowed them, are they loan sharks? This pun was created in a different context by Aaron Barnes, who should know better, but does not) . Then as we reported a few years ago a griffin vulture, an endangered species that nests in Israel and is studied by Tel Aviv University in the hope of tracking its migration pattern and helping it survive, was "detained" in Saudi Arabia as a spy for Israel. Alas, the poor bird was carrying a GPS with the logo of Tel Aviv University. Fears for its fate are well founded.

Griffon Vultures can soar at up to 11,000 metres (36,100 ft) above sea level. A perfect vantage point?

The official Saudi news agency also picked up an a Borowitz "news" flash that in return for a few votes in the house, President Obama would confess to being a Muslim, born somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. We now have, courtesy of the Daily Beast, a compilation of the 8 most embarrassing failures of media that fell for the Onion's faux news. The Iranis and Saudis can take some comfort in the knowledge that they are in the good company of an ESPN broadcaster, a Louisiana congressman, and even the venerable Gray Lady herself, The New York Times.

Many of these are funny, but it can become dead serious when a garbage film on YouTube can be exploited and used to generate lethal violence. Indeed, there are indications that the US legation in Libya could have been better forewarned of the coming attack, but in general the backwardness of populations that can be manipulated thus is frightening. Movies such as Wag the Dog and Canadian Bacon are based on the premise that any population can be manipulated by its leaders for whatever reason. The Gulf of Tonkin manufactured incident that precipitated the expansion of the Vietnam War provides strong proof that such indeed is the case.
THE MUSLIM WORLD WAKES UP
The ongoing noise about insults to Islam has generated a great deal of smoke and flame, but not too much rational discourse. We would like to link you to two discussions, one from Newsweek magazine in which Husain Haqqani,(Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington from 2008 to 2011, a professor of international relations at Boston University and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute) calls for the Muslim world to get its act together and to stop blaming the West for its own failings. He drives home the point that the violence is about politics and not about religion. The other is by Omid Safi, Professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the author of several books on Islam, including Memories of Muhammad, a biography. Prof. Safi raises the question of how Muhammad himself would have reacted to the film. In his lifetime, he was subjected to much abuse and offense and alwaysnresponded gently. This essay was written on Sept. 12, 2012. Prof. Safi trie to introduce a voice of calm and indeed points out correctly that the killers and rioters do not represent the Libyan people.  The latter got together and stormed the headquarters of the Islamist militia Ansar al-Sharia, whose members are suspected of carrying out the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the death of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Anti militia demonstration in Benghazi

Note that it was the people of Libya and not their weak-kneed government that started the discrediting of these militias. Now the government is being driven by popular demand to disband them.

We thank Rabbi Waskow of the Shalom Center for calling these writings to our attention.  Thomas Friedman writing in the NY Times also notes that other voices are being raised in the Arab world and that some much needed self-criticism is starting to be heard. He quotes Imad al-Din Hussein, a columnist for Al Shorouk, Cairo’s best daily newspaper who concludes a blast of an article with the words, "Therefore, supporting Islam and the prophet of the Muslims should be done through work, production, values, and culture, not by storming embassies and murdering diplomats.” Tariq Ramadan of Oxford University writing in the NY Times is calling for an Arab Spring of ideas.  As Friedman writes, "What matters is not what Arab Muslim political parties and groupings tell us they stand for. What matters is what they tell themselves, in their own languages, about what they stand for and what excesses they will not tolerate." This is important since there is a long history, e.g. Yasser Arafat, of saying one thing in English for Western ears and the opposite in Arabic for the home audience.

These voices are worthy of a positive response from all of us.

A NEW DAY DAWNS FOR MYANMAR
A few weeks ago in this blog we rejoiced in the visit of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to the United States.

She is leading her country to a new world of democracy with the somewhat surprising aid of an old enemy, the President and part of the old regime, Thein Sein. Apparently, this odd combination is finding a modus vivendi, as described by Bill Keller in the NY Times. He has interviews with both of them on his blog. (While you are there, scroll down a bit and read something quite cogent about the phenomenon that Uri Avineri calls Romneyahu). The question as to the role of sanctions in turning things around in Myanmar is discussed, pro and con. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi comments in her interview that the generals, in the course of ruining the economy through mismanagement, came to believe their own propaganda and thus could lay their failures at the door of the sanctions. I recall once hearing the late Yehoshaphat Harkavi say that there is nothing as bad for you as believing your own propaganda. The generals in Myanmar who obviously were incompetent to run a country (probably  an army as well) tried to hire technocrats to fill the gap. We met with a group of them who visited Israel in the 1990's.  They were not an impressive lot. The mismanagement of an economy can indeed bring down a military regime as we saw nearly thirty years ago in Brazil. We recall that in her 2011 Reith Lecture, Aung San Suu Kyi said that the difference between the streets of Tunis and Cairo and those of Yangoon lay in the unwillingness of the Tunisian and Egyptian soldiers to fire on their own people.  Maybe the tide has turned in Myanmar.So good luck leaders of Myanmar with your transition and the much needed rehabilitation of the economy and of the country in general.

At the end of his op-ed Bill Keller quotes an academic, David Steinberg, a Myanmar scholar at Georgetown University and a sanctions skeptic, who said the campaign for a free Burma has always included a contingent enamored of its own righteousness. Earlier generations embraced the Spanish Civil War, and then the anti-apartheid movement, he said. “Burma was the last good cause.” We take strong exception to this gratuitous insult to human rights defenders everywhere. People gave their lives for the Spanish Republic, human rights defenders in China have paid a terrible price, the struggle against apartheid levied its toll of suffering and blood. We ourselves, in our small way,  have breathed our share of Israeli army tear gas and it was nothing to be enamored of. Professor Steinberg appears to be enamored of his own wisdom and arrogance, fighting the good fight in his nice office at Georgetown University. F@#* you Prof. Steinberg!

CHILD PORN ON FACEBOOK 
Titan and Pollyanna are both outraged by the child pornography floating around the Web on Facebook. Please join the petition to call upon Facebook to put a stop to this abomination!

HOME SWEET HOME 
This is the time of year in which we are called upon to make a heshbon nefesh, an accounting of our soul. This has been done beautifully by the New Israel Fund who circulated 100,000 copies of the magazine "Soul Searching" around Israel for the High Holidays. The magazine contains 10 essays by members of NIF's International Council on the theme of atonement and was distributed ahead of Yom Kippur as a supplement with Haaretz, as well as through the NIF family of organizations. Among the essays is that of NIF Board Member and International Council Co-Chair Talia Sasson, entitled "Jews of America, We Need You". She writes, “The Jews in Israel must understand that for the majority of American Jews, like the majority of the entire American population, their support is based on the belief that the two nations share similar values. These are democratic values that include upholding basic human rights: liberty and freedom, minority rights and equality. The more Israel drifts away from its liberal and democratic image, so drift away her friends, until her brethren drift away, her own flesh and blood." She continues, "The Jews in Israel are obligated to return to the fundamental values of the country which we have turned our backs on. Readopting these values will re-instill hope and faith in our actions and Israel’s legitimacy as the homeland of the Jewish people."

The other essays in the magazine are:
In "We Have Sinned and Have Been Disloyal. What Now?" Prof. David Harel of the Weizmann Institute and Dr. Baruch Ovadia discuss the challenges to Israeli democracy. In "And Yet It Moves" Nobel Prize
laureate Aaron Ciechanover discusses freedom of creation and scientific research, and in "Why Hawks Tend to Win Arguments With Doves," Prof. Daniel Kahneman considers cognitive bias and its toll. Other essays include "Tax is not a Burden, the Price of Civil Participation," by Ishak Saporta, and "You Are Not a Master in This Matter – What Hannah can Teach us About Speaking Truth to Power," by Tova Hartman and Rabbi Charlie Bucholtz.

This week, instead of getting into details of this human rights violation and that, Titan asks all of you to hit the link to the Hebrew or English version in PDF and to read the various essays. This publication puts our major problems in perspective and points out the way to go. Shana tova to all.

We all know, as Zohar tells us, that superstition brings bad luck. Take note, Skinner must have been on to something. There is a danger in the assumption post hoc propter hoc.