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There’s a new party plane at Moffett Field. Not another boring Boeing — this one’s a Dornier Alpha Jet, a German/French built fighter plane that seats two. The New York Times is updating its report faster than I can retype, so I’ll skip NASA’s phony backstory and cut to the facts: “It is not clear who exactly owns or flies the fighter jet. Mr. Schmidt is an avid pilot.” I’d love to replace this Wikipedia stock photo with shots of the real thing. Pics or it didn’t happen, right?

Thank you for patiently awaiting the wonderful post I’m about to unveil for my day trading, option scavenging, investment guru audience! (ok so maybe some of you just started putting a couple bucks in the market like I did 2 years back…)I’ve been doing some serious soul searching lately and I’m going to make this the personal part of this post. I’ve been trying to be the best trader I can be, a scavenger of information as soon as it hits the wire, an alert….all out hacker of the market, no limit hold em….die till I win with the money in my account and not yours mindset. I’ve been searching, testing, studying, reading, and taking on the most challenging battle I’ve ever fought. I believe this to be the best and most informing venture I’ve ever ridden. When I got into this mindset, I knew I wanted to form an all out blitzkrieg on the market…a self fulfilling adventure to turn my mind into a stone wall of psychological strength.Now on to market stuff….My Caterpillar Inc. (Public, NYSE:CAT) call on January 12th, 2007 is now up 231% on the FEB $60 Call Option. Remember Me? I called for long term support, and it bounced nicely. Seems as though cyclicals are definately back in the groove..My long term Energy & Oil positions are boding well. In this post Here I said it would be a great idea to start buying up energy stocks as we all know oil wouldn’t go any lower than $50 a barrel, come on Saudi Arabia loses billions each day oil goes down $1 buck..Some random quips that have been on my mind lately:The Metals sector is hot! (one of my first daytrade fetishes, Titanium Metals.Corn which is eventually made into Ethanol has been on a tear, scalp! (ADM, ANDE, PEIX)Stay away from Apple Inc., at this point in time you will get burned like a hot day in Miami while wearing baby oil..RIMM options are a daytraders dream come true..30% a day is my forteQQQQ options move slower than your grandmother’s driving..Follow oil & gas inventories, they make for easy money on the stock trading side…(BTU, CHK, DVN, CNX)Make the best $69 a month investment of your life and follow Phil over at, Phils Stock World, he teaches me about trading the markets, how oil really works, and even manipulation in the market is easy to catch when you know what to look for..He only trades options, and always hedges them to even out the risk/reward, plays on momentum and sells into the rallies…don’t we wish we all traded like that..?*-Some of my favorite insights are:”If I own $100Bn worth of energy stocks in my fund, what do I care if my energy trader loses 10% buying $1Bn worth of NYMEX barrels this month if it boosts my portfolio 5%? There are hundreds of funds with the motive means and opportunity to do this - all it takes is one dishonest fund manager - thank goodness there are none of those!”"Don’t forget when I sell a contract, I buy it back when I feel like it (in a virtual sense). So If I sold 1,000,000 shares of $500 calls (10K contracts) for $22 yesterday to pick up an extra $22M against my $500M position, all I have to do is sell off 10 or 20,000 shares here and there to drive the price down so I can buy you out for $7, a $15M gain for me. If I shave $10 off Googles price in the process, what does that really cost me? At most $10M. And if I know the sell-off is BS because I’m causing it, all I have to do is wait for the other suckers to panic and then buy back my shares and cause a buying frenzy the other way.Not that anyone would ever actually manipulated the markets for personal gain of course…”I would like to say that this is one of the toughest businesses in the world. You fight for every dollar. Anyone who ever says playing the stock market is easy and money just flows like wine should be smacked. Wall Street is vicious, and there are hungry hedge fund managers ready to eat you alive. A great story of success goes to Steve Cohen, ever heard of SAC Capital? Baidu.com? Yea well he owns a large percentage of the companies shares for himself. A self made billionaire. His first day as a junior options trader in the Arbitrage Dept. he made an $8,000 profit, and eventually was making around $100,000 a day for the company.Well if you want to know what arbitrage is, it’s one of the greatest things one can ever get involved with…why you ask? No RISK! No way, a no risk trade in the stock market you say, yes well you have to be set up to do it, like a firm on Wall Street. 1 Option gives a great example of what Market Making Firms do in ARBITRAGE Plays. I found it to be very very informative & interesting…because it’s for the big boys.Trades today included scalping RIMM & QQQQ options, and buying the dips in the Dow Jones Futures (YM), and boy did that pay off today, whew!! New All Time High!I shorted TIE near the top for 2500 shares and covered for a couple of nickels as it came down….More to Come…CalTrader

From time to time I get a guest book entry. That’s amazing. Then, every once in a while I get A GUEST BOOK ENTRY. Such was the case with Terry’s. I just blew up my last write in disgust which is a good sign it’s time to let someone else have the floor. Terry’s note has come just in time. I make comments along the way. they will be in brackets ([my words]) And, I’ve edited it a bit.Hello, Came across your site and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I am from Marksville and really enjoyed the Avoyelles stuff. It brings back memories of early “train spotting” as a young kid. [I think he is speaking of ride I did tracing the Texas&Pacific to Mansura, Louisiana]You should have continued to Marksville where there is still evidence of the old grade as well as creosote timbers from the old trestle over Coulee Des Grues. A point of interest [is] the original depot in Marksville [which] became a feed & seed store and was later torn down in the mid 80’s. It was at the end of the line where, as a kid, I remember one or two box cars parked behind the building which delivered feeds and such. We sometimes were brave enough to explore the interior of the cars when the doors were open. The old depot building from Cottonport was moved to Marksville long after the line was abandoned and became a fruit and vegetable stand called “Blink’s.” Now it is a shop that sells concrete yard decorations and such. I also remember, every once and a while, being able to see the old MP engines pushing one or two cars down the line whenever my mother shopped at Dixie Dandy near the line. At Mansura, the line actually passed through the front parking lot of a Texaco station on the corner of Hwy 107 & Hwy 1. [I believe that station is now a tire store with a neat mural on it, my guess]Other vague memories include going to “Simm’s Oil” in Mansura with my uncle to buy drums of motor oil and hydraulic fluid for his farm in Hamburg. There would be one or two tank cars parked in the yard. This was an Exxon products distributor.Also, we would go to Paul Wall Farm supply, which you indicate as the “Ag Industry” on your map. Besides the farm supply, there was the attached grain elevator. Behind that area was Roy Pecan Company which was beside the tracks. The pecan company burned to the ground in the early eighties with owner Shep Roy inside the building. There were sometimes hopper cars parked beside Paul Wall’s and a box car or two beside the pecan company. Speaking of Hamburg, I would spend summers at my uncles farm. I would always run to the corner of the front yard whenever the KCS trains ran along the L&A line to “count” the cars and guess if there was or not a caboose at the end of the train.There was a siding which went to the O.P. Berridon Feeds & Seeds business. I clearly remember going to visit my grandmother from Marksville while catching a ride with my cousin Randy. He was then a reporter for the Marksville Weekly News.I’m not sure of the year, but there was a major derailment at the spur near the feed business. Traffic on Hwy 1 was stopped [for] nearly a mile away, but flames could be seen hundreds of feet in the air. Randy quickly grabbed his camera from the back seat and took off running along the highway to get photos for the newspaper. I think some of his photos were even used in the Baton Rouge paper reporting on the story. Enough rambling. One last bit of info. I remember as an early teen, taking a Jeep ride with my uncle Mayeaux from Hamburg along to Big Bend and then going through woods roads all the way to the site of the old town of Naples on the Atchafalaya. There were concrete blocks where I imagine turn buckles secured the barges for the ferry. I didn’t own a camera then so I have no photo’s. I’d like to repeat that journey. I’m not sure if there are locked gates now, but my family owns property along the river just south of Naples and I may have access that way.Also, I remember “frog hunting” with my brother along Bayou Courville and passing under an old trestle from the “tram” line as it was referred to by locals.Then he wrote back:One correction I just recalled. The Marksville Feed and Seed Store burned down in the early 80’s….. There is a narrow one lane bridge a few hundred yards upstream called the Sarto Lane bridge which has been preserved and placed on the National Register. There is a visitors’ center in the old Big Bend post office across the Hwy from it. My uncle, Carlos Mayeaux was instrumental in getting the bridge preserved.Thanks TerryIf interested in Terry’s Uncle’s achievement, I have done a report visiting Big Bend, the museum and bridge location. The link is listed below. It has a very good collection of pictures in the store. I suggest a visit. It is the best two dollar tour in Louisiana and the ride there is scenic. The guide is very knowledgeable about the whole area and loves to tell it all. That area has a lot of varied history. Plan a morning there. The host is the guy that hooked me up with the train book that has led to so many of my recent adventures. Here is a link to the Big Bend story, Going Around the Bend . I thought I’d done one when C.Alphonso had come but I remember I was too busy keeping him out of trouble to shoot any pictures. But, he insisted I take his picture as the store keeper. There would be no robbers at that store. Guaranteed. C.Al can get a little crazy.Here’s the article he was referring to: The Avoyelles Branch

Published on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 by McClatchy Newspapers by David LightmanWASHINGTON - No one cog in the federal government’s machine of financial regulation let down the country by failing to prevent the latest shakeout on Wall Street. The entire system did.”They just haven’t done a particularly good job,” said James Barth, a senior finance fellow at the Milken Institute, a nonpartisan research group based in Los Angeles.Kathleen Day, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer-oriented research group, explained the regulatory lapses more starkly: “The job of regulators is that when the party’s in full swing, make sure the partygoers drink responsibly,” she said. “Instead, they let everyone drink as much as they wanted and then handed them the car keys.”Analysts and politicians are raising serious questions about the nation’s financial regulatory system, which dates to the New Deal era.On Monday, one Wall Street bank, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy protection and another, Merrill Lynch, sought comfort by selling itself to Bank of America for $50 billion. Earlier this year, the government helped enable the sale of faltering investment bank Bear Stearns to J.P. Morgan Chase, and more recently took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.Such troubles were supposed to have been prevented, or at least mitigated, by regulatory systems that the nation began to put in place after the banking system collapsed at the start of the Great Depression.Many banks at the time were badly wounded by their personal and financial ties to securities trading. The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, and later the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act, mandated the separation of banks, insurance companies and securities firms.Those and many other federal laws stabilized the banking and securities markets, but by the 1970s, a stumbling U.S. economy led to a change in America’s political-economic values. Ronald Reagan led a movement that came to power in 1980 proclaiming faith in free markets and mistrust of government. That conservative philosophy has dominated America for the past 28 years.Even after taxpayers had to rescue deregulated savings and loans, or S&Ls, with a $200 billion bailout in the late 1980s, the push to loosen regulation paused only briefly.In 1999, President Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act, which tore down Glass-Steagall’s reforms by removing the walls separating banks, securities firms and insurers.Under President Clinton and his successor, the government became eager to promote home ownership. Interest rates were low, the market grew for loans to borrowers with weak credit and private-sector mortgage bonds boomed. About 38 percent of those bonds were backed by subprime loans. They are at the root of today’s financial crisis.A generation ago, banks, credit unions and S&Ls issued home mortgages that they retained on their books as an asset. The lenders had a stake in receiving full repayment of the loans from creditworthy borrowers.But in recent years, mortgages began to be sold to firms that cobbled the loans together to create mortgage-backed securities, or mortgage bonds. Loans to the least creditworthy borrowers carried the highest risk but gave the highest returns, so banks and other institutional investors bought loads of them. Except no one was policing the creditworthiness of the borrowers.The process helped more people buy homes, and a booming mortgage-bond market, led by investment banks, was in full swing by 2005.When borrowers who had secured loans with adjustable interest rates, however, found their rates going up, many were unable to pay. That meant that holders of bonds backed by these mortgages were stuck with securities worth much less than their face value - or nothing at all. That created a solvency crisis for the banks that loaded up on them - and virtually all of them had.Some regulatory agencies issued warnings, but credit-rating agencies still said that the bonds - and the banks that issued and bought them - were safe. It turns out, of course, that many were not.”There was a view that the secondary market excesses could be prevented by the broader application of risk-evaluation models by the investment firms,” said Barry Bosworth, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “In fact, risk evaluation is more of an art than a science, and the (private-sector) institutions fooled themselves,” said Bosworth, a former adviser to President Jimmy Carter.With Congress eager to expand home-ownership, regulators felt pressure to deal lightly with mortgage loans to low-income households, and virtually no one proposed national regulation of non-bank lenders or mortgage brokers.Had regulators questioned sub-prime lending, they would have been harshly criticized, said Edward Kane, a professor of finance at Boston College.”Imagine what congressional committees would have said,” Kane said. “They would have asked about affordable housing. It was a no-win situation for regulators,”Warning signs began to appear. At least nine federal agencies oversee some part of the mortgage market, and from 2004 to 2007, at least three had issued warnings about risky loans.Still, none was willing to end the financial revelry.”It was another example of an asset bubble that appears periodically. An economy will disregard risk, and when people see another investor making money by investing in an asset, others will throw caution to the wind,” explained Nicolas Bollen, professor in finance at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management in Nashville, Tenn.In such an environment, said Day, of the Center for Responsible Lending: “No one wanted to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”

Published on Friday, June 23, 2006 by CommonDreams.orgSite: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0623-23.htmby Russell Mokhiber and Robert WeissmanIt is every customer’s nightmare.You take your car in for an oil change.And the guy goes down the checklist of things they have done — and charges you $60.But did they actually do what they said they did?They said they changed the fuel filter.But did they?They said they flushed the transmission.But did they?Trust, but verify.Tipped off by a Jiffy Lube insider, KNBC — the NBC affiliate in Los Angeles — wired two test cars with hidden cameras to watch Jiffy Lube mechanics at work.Those cars were then driven to Los Angeles-area Jiffy Lube outlets to get an oil change.At one, the mechanic recommends that the fuel filter be changed.”We pay up, but they didn’t change the fuel filter,” KNBC reporter Joel Grover told his viewers earlier this month. “We know that, because before taking our car in, we lowered the gas tank so I could mark the fuel filter. After leaving that Jiffy Lube, we checked the fuel filter and the original one that I had marked was still on the car.”At another Jiffy Lube outlet, the manager recommends a top-of-the-line transmission flush.”It’s a machine called T-Tech, which they’re supposed to hook up to the transmission lines under the car to suck out all the dirty fluid,” Grover said. “But the entire time our car was being serviced, we noticed no one ever touched that machine. And our hidden camera shows no one ever touched the transmission lines underneath. But they charged us for the T-Tech service anyway. And it happened to us again at another Jiffy Lube.”In fact, Grover says, he got stiffed at five out of nine Los Angeles area Jiffy Lubes he tested.Jiffy Lube insiders told Grover that Jiffy Lube employees are on a quota system.”They are pushed to sell a certain amount of repairs per car,” Grover said. “And they say with the big volume of cars that come into these stores, there’s really no way to do all the repairs they sell.”The 31 Los Angeles area Jiffy Lube centers are owned by Heartland Automotive.Jiffy Lube issued a statement saying “it does not tolerate the problems discovered in the KNBC report.”The company said that six employees, including a district manager shown in the video, “are no longer working for Heartland Automotive.”Five of the service centers found to have been ripping off consumers were closed for two days in May for “re-training.”Jiffy Lube also said that it would institute its own “mystery shop program” to ensure that “all procedures and policies are properly followed.”"Over the next several months, video cameras and monitors will be installed in the 31 Heartland Automotive-owned service centers so customers can watch their services being performed,” the company said.”Further violations of company policies could result in the revocation of franchise agreements for the affected service centers.”Why not institute that policy for all 2,200 Jiffy Lube centers across the United States?Are Jiffy Lube customers to assume that they too are being ripped off?A Jiffy lube spokesperson answered this way — Jiffy Lube has a number of quality-control processes in place to ensure customers receive a high-quality experience. Some of these include a nationwide mystery-shopping program and required computer-based and on-the-job training for all service center employees. Jiffy Lube customers also have several options available to them if they believe for any reason they have not received top-quality service. Toll-free customer service phone numbers are printed on the back of every Jiffy Lube invoice. Customers can also request the return of their old parts — excluding used motor oil and other fluids — after they have services performed.As for us, from now on, we’re either going to change it ourselves, or go to our local garage.Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press).© 2006 Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

A recent post by Akusai reminded me that I wanted to write a post about Direct Buy (warning that stupid link talks). Unlike Russel’s story about Amway, this is not a tale of a cult-like business, preying on the simple minded who seem to have trouble with simple arithmetic. However, its not that easy to find much detailed information about Direct Buy, so I thought I would post some stuff about how it works, and why it works for some people. Its not a pyramid scheme, and I want to say this up front: I fully believe some people may save a ton of money by using Direct Buy. I just think that most people won’t.My wife and I renovated our kitchen recently. It cost quite a bit of dough (in the 40 grand range - wow). It looks great, we love it, and from my engineers perspective its solid (Corian is a bit wimpy, but the new stuff is nice looking). And yes, it took twice as long and cost twice as much as we expected. It seems to be a law of nature.We also recently bought another building that we are renovating. This time, while we still wanted to put in a nice kitchen and bath, we decided we wouldn’t be going full guns. We would be cool with looking nice without necessarily being nice. Since we ultimately have 3 apartments to do, we thought we would look into Direct Buy (there is one very near us).I asked two friends of mine who did join Direct Buy if they thought it was working for them. They both said that they feel like it does. You know, that word really sets off alarms in my head. It means they didn’t check. They each gave me one example where they were sure they saved a bunch. But as I pried more and more, it was clear that they didn’t know about the majority of their purchases because once you join, you might as well get everything through there and presume that each item is a good deal.So the first thing we did was schedule a time for one of their introduction meetings. They sit down with you, give a very short schpiel and then put you in a room where they give you a longer schpiel with some movies. The host was very nice and friendly. All in all it is very much like one of those sessions where you go somewhere to win free airline tickets and all you have to do is listen to a timeshare pitch for an hour or two.The movie/talk session discusses their basic plan: You pay a fee to join, then after three years you pay a yearly fee. You are free to leave to program at any time (err, without your fee reimbursed). Their claim is that they have a direct link to the manufacturers, so that you don’t pay ANY mark up between the manufacturers price. They claim that Direct Buy only makes their money from the membership fees.To be clear, this fee is 4500 dollars. It pays for your membership for 3 years after which you pay something like 180 dollars a year. So when they tell you this, they also break down the average savings. They have a bar graph that shows the average savings for different types of products (I tried but could not take a picture of it, so I’m recalling this from memory. For example, the average savings for furniture was something like 44% off of the MSRP. Appliances were like 25%. The average of all the averages was something around 30%. I have no reason to believe that these numbers were faked in any way. But you will see how it works in a second.The play is that since you save 30% on your purchased goods, you will get your membership fee back as long as you spend over 15,000 dollars. Will you spend 15K over the next 10 year? Of course you will, and they have everything for your house you will need: Lawn chairs, floorings, windows, kitchen cabinets, bathroom stuff, tile, couches, chairs, tables, beds, and the list goes on. They have over 700 products that you can buy.Then came the anecdotes. Being relatively used to skeptical thinking, all of these anecdotes, even if true, have no basis in reality. The 4 people interviewed could be the only 4 people who this works for, how the hell should I know? For each anecdote they presented you can find many more who feel oppositely. So I am not a big fan when presented with anecdotes to support a case.OK, so showtime is over. They give us a little tour. You see that there are lots of shoppers there. You see that they really do have lots of product that you would use if you renovate or are building a house. But I had no real way to evaluate their claim. I didn’t have prices for things that I would buy from somewhere else. Frankly, no one sells at MSRP. So what are the average savings when you take that into account?Folks, here is how Direct Buy can make their claims. When someone is using averages to make quantifiable claims you have to remember that an average is a single number that represents many points. So when they say they save you an average of 44% on furniture, that means that they save you 80% on some furniture and 10% on others. So, are you happening to buy the stuff that you save a lot on, or the stuff that you don’t? There is no way to know without actually deciding what you want, checking some prices and comparing those prices when you get in there.But we didn’t do that. So I was trying to wean out the system from him right there. I wanted to know if this was going to work for me or not. He caught on that I was an engineer, and stereotyped me. Brokers do the same thing, apparently engineers and teachers are the worst. They want all the detailed information. Well excuse us!Anyway, I asked about how many people continued their membership after the first 3 years. I wanted to understand the basic level of happiness from this. He told me it was close to 85%. But in retrospect, to me its amazing how many people are making choices on what ‘feels’ good. I asked about appliances. He admitted that they actually don’t do that well on appliances. Only around 10% savings.Thanks to my handy little iPhone i was able to pull out some more questions to ask him. I told him to describe all the costs associated with making a purchase. Now a shipping cost reared its head. He couldn’t tell me what the shipping cost was, because it depended on the item. Then I asked about KraftMaid cabinets. Well those are done through a distributor, so there is an extra 1-2% cost associated with those. There were a variety of other things that were done through partners/distributors.Other tidbits: They claim that if you refuse the offer, then you can’t go back to Direct Buy for 7 years. This is to protect their ’secret’ pricing. Even though the only pricing you have heard by this time was the anecdotal stuff in the movie.Shopping ExperienceI told my wife to go and try to find something she liked. The dude helping us out was friendly and explained that shopping there was different than in normal stores. You had to look through manufacturers catalogs. To be honest, its a pain in the ass, however all the sales people are quite knowledgeable and helpful if you are trying to find some sort of look. but it didnt matter, there is no real way to get an idea of the look and feel of a piece of furniture from a 3″ picture.Apples to ApplesThis is something you will hear often from a Direct Buy sales person. “When you do an apples to apples comparison, you will find Direct Buy to provide significant savings”. Well folks, there is one problem with that statement and its a huge one. There is almost never, apples to apples. What are really identical matresses differ from store to store by markings, stitching, the name and the price. Or oppositely, some products have the exact same part numbers, but differ from store to store by their construction. For example, a lawnmower may be cheaper by 200 bucks at one store, but it has brass pins instead of stainless steel ones. It happens for computer products. So even if you comparison shop, and find that something is cheaper at Loews, then the Direct By people will say “well that’s clearly an inferior product!”The Rest of the Experience.My wife lost her patience and just wanted to get out. To her, she was cool with the claim of 30% savings while I wanted to press on it some more. But nothing pains me more than to see her in distress. We paid 4500 bucks and left.We talked about it and decided with 3 apartments to do, we’ll be fine.New York State has a law that says, that anyone has 3 days to get out of any membership deal. Friday, when we joined was our first day. Saturday was the second, and Sunday (when they were closed) was our third. Further, to really see if there was savings we had to meet with their kitchen counter people to get a quote. I had to meet with their window people to get a quote for windows. Clearly we were not going to be able to check pricing within 3 days.So, my wife went to Loews (if you don’t have Loews near you, its like Home Depot, a gigantic hardware store). She walked around while I checked prices at Direct Buy. We checked on stuff we needed, some lawn chairs, a specific refrigerator, bamboo flooring, and a few other stuff. The lawn chairs were far more expensive at direct buy, simply because they had some far out name brand stuff and didn’t have any of the made in china crapola. For lawn chairs, we are good with crapola. The bamboo flooring which looked identical to the stuff Direct buy had, was 26 cents per square foot cheaper than at Direct Buy. The refrigerator was about 10% cheaper at direct buy. Things were not looking good.I told ‘Todd’ that I was ready to cancel my membership right now. I told him flat out that since I have not had a chance to actually check their claims, and the little that I have been able to check did not bode well, that there was no reason for me to stay. He fed me the apples to apples line again. Then he came up with a new line. This one was about long term investments. If I give 5000 dollars to a broker, what are my expectations. I told him, that on average I expect to double my money every 7 years. He said, “Right, and with this investment, on average we give you a 30% return, not just a 10% one!”. Well, I must admit, I knew something was wrong but I couldn’t put it together immediately. I told him “Wait a second.. The stock market is a long term investment based on future prices of stock. The difference is that I want to check current pricing for what I want to buy that you have for sale right now.” It occurred to me then that, if they are so comfortable in their claims, that they should have no problem with me going to Loews, getting pricing, and coming back to have them match it, apples to apples. I told him, “Either you give me two more weeks to be able to leave with a full refund while I check this, or I am leaving today”. He gave me the two weeks. I got it in writing.In those two weeks, I had a kitchen designed for the apartment that I would really put in there. I’m not doing this for fun and games. I actually need a kitchen, and if Direct Buy is a good deal, then I am all for it. I didn’t choose bottom of the line stuff from Loews, and I didn’t choose top of the line either. Their Shenandoah series is middle of the road. It looks pretty good, and consumer reports rated it about what I expected, middle of the road. We didn’t choose any wacked out styles, just maple shaker style, pretty common. We chose a granite counter top that we liked. I also prices out a large window we need for a renovated barn we have in the Catskills.For a kitchen at Loews, they help you design the kitchen, choose the counter top, schedule the installation and so forth. Everything is done in one spot. Direct buy has subcontractors, who give you a better deal on their work, and vendors. So if you want a kitchen, you buy the cabinets at DB, but then you have to call the granite people yourself and schedule a design appointment with them, then you have to call the installers yourself, and schedule all that work with them. Its far less convenient, but worse…..They couldn’t beat Loews price. As I mentioned before, there is no apples to apples. DB doesn’t have Shenandoah cabinets. They have other brands that Loews doesn’t have (Omega, diamond). Diamond is lower end than Shenandoah, both consumer reports says so, and so did the DB people, by their own admission. So I told them to price it out with their lowest end stuff. Diamond has maple shaker style, so no biggie to me. THey simply could not beat the price. I handed them the exact drawing and parts list that Loews made.So I go over to the windows. I priced out a Pella window. Same thing, it was cheaper but only 10% and the installation was more expensive.Leaving Direct BuySo, I told Todd I was leaving. He sat me down in his office and he told me he was mad at me. He went on about how I didn’t do an apples to apples comparison. I told him about the cheaper bamboo flooring at Loews. He went into the rant about how DB stuff was better and as an engineer I should know that there are differences, and that he was very disappointed in me. I said I just wanted bamboo flooring. I had no way to evaluate the binders they used, and know way to know if one was better. Loews guaranteed their stuff for the same amount of time as DB. I told him that I asked their cabinet people to price out their lowest grade stuff and they still couldn’t beat Loews midrange stuff. The funny part was that they had the consumer reports ratings out there in the open. It showed that Omega was top of the line, Shenandoah was middle and Diamond was lower (mills pride being at the bottom). I said, “why is your low end stuff more expensive than Loews midrange stuff?”. He then went into why things aren’t really apples to apples. I responded with “I know!”. They seem to try to use the Apples to Apples argument in both directions.In the end he kept his word and let me out.ConclusionClearly Direct Buy was not for us. It limited our choices if we wanted to save money on each purchase, and it made shopping harder. Worse, our choices of stuff never lead to a 30% discount from other places.at best it was 10% which would mean I would have to spend 45,000 dollars before my initial membership fee paid off. Forget about the extra shipping charges, or their ‘qualified’ vendors and partners that end up raising costs to you.I have no doubt that someone could save a lot of money. But you have to think about the type of things you buy. do you generally buy high end, name brand stuff? Well Direct Buy might be good for you. I think most people don’t and don’t bother to check if they are getting a deal. I think with their system, most people are not getting a deal.One bit of information I should have asked was if those average savings they like to blab about are averages for the products they have, or average savings of their customers. I strongly suspect its the former.One quick hint. I will not do this, but both of my friends offered that I could use their membership to get the stuff I wanted. I told them not only would it be cheaper for me if I didn’t do that, I don’t have any desire to scam Direct Buy. But I know its being done, the way they are set up, means that anyone can ‘lend’ their member ship to anyone.Lost in AveragesI wrote this post mostly to document how Direct buy works. But while writing it, I am realizing that many things are lost in averages. For example: what if Washington DC’s gun ban actually did bring down violent crime by 10% on average. What if it brought it down by 50%? What gets lost in those averages is individual rights. I for one don’t see how the constitution says anywhere about an individual right to own a gun, but apparently extreme right wing judges disagree with me (big surprise there).Often individual rights are lost in averages. Its important to look for these when discussing the effectiveness of one program or another.

Sunday Afternoon: Company had cleared out and I felt the need for a little ride. It would just be a relaxing meander through lovely Louisiana, no purpose, no plan. Somewhere along the way a place name came to mind, “Big Cut”. I can’t remember how I knew of this place. I think I was doing some research and happened on it. Then I asked the house railroad authority, Mr. Lueck, what the heck it was. He told me. Somewhere out on the Louisiana Plains, I decided I needed to be there. I had done a guess estimate of its location having wandered Camp Claiborne before the free range policy was terminated. I was familiar with what looked like a rail bed and this place was right there, though I’d never been to it, or if I had it had been in a blur of speed and flying mud. What the heck, I thought. It’s only 2:00 PM and I’m not that far. I found it, I shot it, I went to its opposite side and shot it, I went down in it, I shot from there, and then I traced a rail bed all the way to US165. I then came home, terminating the ride in a white out rain storm in the dark. Being soaked didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. The first thing I did was to write Mr.Lueck and tell him that I’d found BC. I really like sharing with people that get as excited or at least portray the same excitement I’m experiencing. Take my word, the number of such people is limited. Obviously, he was excited and almost immediately opened his vault of goodies and started laying them on me. I told him I needed a picture of the bridge and he sent me an article and more and more. Then when I passed that around, Mark, the map man, got into the act and offered up his collection. Seems Camp Claiborne is one of his hobbies. My dilemma is now how to handle this wealth. My pictures and ride report are both brilliant and captivating. Nevertheless, The story and pictures of the men and machines responsible for the Big Cut Bridge, and so much more, do trump my offerings a little.You will get the history first. It’s around 1941. It is one of those getterdone war stories that should be captured as a movie. These guys were not, for the most part, green inductees. They were railroad men gone to war. Let’s get started. Here’s “World War II Railroaders by William T.Church. Some pics by John B.Allen. I like to mention the photographers. First this paragraph whose gist I’ll credit as soon as I find the source. If you were wondering what the heck I was talking about, maybe this will help.The Army’s 711th Railway Operating Battalion arrived in Louisiana in August of 1941. It’s mission was to begin laying tracks connecting Camp Polk to Camp Claiborne some fifty miles away. They trudged through miles of swamps to raise twenty-five bridges, with the help of a clanging steam powered pile driver. The workers designed and built the bridges. After finishing the rail line, the 711th was sent to Iran where their Louisiana experience helped them maintain the Trans-Iranian Railroad which carried vital military materials to Russia throughout World War II.Now I’ll try to explain the necessity of the Big Cut Bridge. Not to get into what I think was a little squabble between the Red River and Gulf and the Army, let’s just leave it at “the Army’s railroad needed to cross the RR&G line to get to Fort Polk”. The Big Cut Bridge was the answer. See the map below.The Red River and Gulf Right of Way through Big Cut before the C&P.In Construction:Ready:Test:Go:There were other bridges:Approaching Spring Creek on the way to Camp Polk.The caption reads:Why were there cars being pushed? The line was notorious for derailments. The speed limit was 15 mile per hour at first and I’ll bet the cars were “track testers”.The crane would often follow at a distance.They turned this:And this:Into this:There was quite a celebration:Dignitaries arriving.And spike driven near LaCamp: Here’s the map on into Polk.Now you have an idea of the historical weight of the place a whim had led me.The NEXT PAGE will be my ride there and beyond. After leaving Big Cut, I made the mistake of following the rail bed of the Claiborne and Polk up the line to the east, then asking about what I suspected. For the ride, CLICK HERE

On my return from Anchorage, I decided to go ahead and see how much of the old Atchafalaya Branch of the Southern Pacific RR I could follow going home. I was weary from way too much fun and didn’t do such a good job. I was only secure that I was on “track” when I got to its obvious path along I-10. First you have to read about the railroad. Open this link in another window or come back when you are finished. When you are finished you’ll want to come back. If you think the Basin Bridge is a marvel, this little railroad will put that into perspective. CLICK HERE He makes one mistake. The cars were to be ferried across the Mississippi above Port Allen, not what he said, “Port Barre”. I can understand that happens. Oh, the place was of course, Anchorage, where my ride home began. Below is the map of that route. This was the way I-10 travelers had go before the stretch between Ramah and Baton Rouge was finished. I knew it well. Click to enlarge.Giving up on seeing the rail bed before getting below Rosedale, I decided to do a little sight seeing along La.77, which, by the way is fine ride.At Rosedale, yea, Rosedale, down by the river side, I shot this picture in front of Live Oak House. I’d taken one of the Guzzi in front of it years ago. It was like nothing has changed which of course is a warm and fuzzy feeling or I was whipped sideways like a beaten mule and delirious.Here’s the old one. Wow, I found it.More looking back onto the grounds:And, what might be the garage, or then, the carriage house?I went down the road and went over a hump where I could not stop. I continued and saw another fine old home I remembered.I had made the comment then, “nice driveway”. That still works.Across the bayou was this old Vicky. Back to the bump, my goodness. There it was.I decided to go ahead and get on I 10 at this point instead of backtracking and staying off of it. I hate interstates. I’m just afraid of them. Am I a girly man? I got back off at Ramah, just at the foot of the Basin Freeway Bridge.I looked back up the field and could see the line still standing above the surrounding land.It was about time for the train to be coming back from Baton Rouge. Can you see it?How about now?I then crossed the canal on what I’m saying might have been a trestle, your call. Maybe it was what took the place of the trestle. There sure were some tie looking planks around and a cow that gave me grief.I crested the levee and looked down the old right of way into the Atchafalaya Basin. The present Basin is now only 16 miles wide at this point. Here’s a Google Earth shot with some of my markers. Marker 2 is where we are now. See “Atchafalaya Bridge”. That is where the town Atchafalaya was. It is also where the new Welcome Center is. You must visit it. There is a free movie to watch.Ok, I promised you I’d show you the rapids I found. I’ve named them Black Water Rapids. This map marks their location.Beautiful.I suggest visiting after a hurricane that has dropped 12 inches of water. The falls roar with authority at this time of year.It was time to get onto the Interstate. I took one more look up the bed coming from Baton Rouge. Oops, I’d better hurry.I crossed the Basin getting off at Henderson where I looked back again.Man, that little train is fast!That’s it for my part, obviously delirious at the writing end, also.Mark has actually gotten down in the Basin and shot some of the railway. He’s shared those pictures with us and here are a bunch. They are larger than mine and if you click them you can see their full size.Ghost trains, there ain’t no such thing. Maybe. I’m out of here. That’s it.

Ahhh. Sket lagi dah nak siap. Tengah tacap sana-sini. Mengadd balik link-link, meresize kan imej, dan sebagainya. Penat siot. Yang simple nieh la yang renyah. Jab ya.. pastu ada soklan kat shoutbox Anna tu, nanti Anna jawab. Kasik yang ni bereh dulu.Alang-alang dah total makeover ni, Anna menjadi lebih selective sket membubuh link. Anna akan buh link pada blog yang Anna agak kerap baca. Sebab rasa cam badak-sumbu-air-krit saja kalau buh link orang, tapi tak lawat. Skarang masih dalam proses mengedit.Then nak godek plak blog foto Anna tu.. chocolah lagik. Waduh. Banyak niehh.TERKINI >> 10:36 PMAku masih kurang puas hati, kerana bahagian putih di bahagian teks utama (entri) yang mana merupakan sebahagian besar dari layout blog, muncul sedikit lambat. Jadi skarang ni tengah figure out nak buat camna supaya dia terus muncul. Sebab masa nak tunggu dia load habis tu, nampak agak cacat. Hiah, perkara kecik je sebenarnya, tapi aku seorang perfectionist. Tu yang payah tu. Ahaha. Buat masa ni, aku biarkan yang ni dulu, dan godek plak untuk blog foto plak. Tengah bersemangat nieh. Yaw!TERKINI >> 11:07 PMSetelah bertanyakan pendapat Noe, dia kata dia pun mengalami masaalah yang sama di mana bahagian tersebut loading lambat sket. Padehal bukan image pon. Peliks. Jadi dia pon last-last buat bodoh je. Aku pun rasa aku patut begitu. Ahaha. So yeah. This is it. Cuma nak kena tambah link sana sini sket, and mungkin dalam beberapa hari ni, ubah sket-sket. Tengok mood. Okay, dari tadi nak sentuh blog foto aku yang terbengkalai tu, tak tersentuh pon. Tskk tskk.TERKINI >> 3.51 AM, hari berikutnyaAku dah giveup untuk meneruskan design blog sueannajoe.blogspot. Punyalah banyak header image yang aku wat, tapi tah, tidak ku gemar. Dah kerah banyak sangat kot otak ni. Yeah right, takat design ni pon nak kena kerah ke? Kenalah weh. Nak pilih kaler, nak pilih font, nak susun, nak pilih imej yang bersesuaian, then edit lagi plak tu, huihhh banyak. Tapi buat punya buat, rasa cam, dah takleh go on. Aku pon dah patut tidur dah nieh. Nanti bangun, sambung balik.Ni blog foto tu, ingat nak buat design yang boleh masuk ngan official website sueannajoe.com yang tak pernah update dan disiapkan selama beberapa tahun. Siot je. Mentang-mentang member belanja hosting ngan domain kan. Aku kejam. Kaylah, dah rasa berat je kat kepala ngan belakang leher ni. Mata pun dah ala Garfield dah ni. Sian laki aku terbongkang sorang kat katil, belakang ni je. Okaylah, mau terkam sama dia. Takleh nak wat apa pun, al maklumlah, cuti rasmi wanita. Tata.TERKINI TERAKHIR BUAT ENTRI INI >> 12.32PM Oktober 08Waduh waduh, akhirnya Gaddafi telah menolong Anna menyelesaikan masaalah bahagian putih background dari lambat muncul. Bincang geek sket.Seperti yang Anna sangkakan, bahagian tepi tu, feedjit lah, nuffnang lah, mybloglog lah tu suma contribute atas kelambatan bahagian tengah ni nak loading, sebab dia load suma sidebar dulu. Jadi si Gaddafi pon, suggest letak coding background:#fff di bahagian #main, so taklah nampak gelap kaler background tu bila masuk blog nieh.Tapi kalau korang perasan, bahagian tepi dan tengah tu lopong, tu takleh nak wat apa kot? Tapi takpa. Itu aku mampu memejam mata dan ignore. Haih, happy nieh. Terus hilang pening dan tidak kepuas hatian yang membuak nieh. Terima kasih Gaddafi!! {ANNA}

Writing in Midstream magazine, Elliott A Green reminds those who have forgotten that Jews, oppressed as dhimmis by Islam, were historically at the bottom of the social heap, especially in Jerusalem. Those who claim today, like Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, that Arab Palestinians were victims of the Jews, invert the truth: Jews and Zionists are generally and deplorably unaware of conditions for Jews in the Land of Israel after the Arab Conquest [634-640 CE]. Many believe that Arab-Muslim rule was benign for the Jews, not merely compared with conditions in Christian lands.Further, many used to believe even a few decades ago that the conflict with the Arabs over the Land of Israel was strictly a matter of competing nationalisms. However, since the relatively unsuccessful 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York by jihad fanatics, the informed public in the West has become more aware of the powerful Muslim religious dimension in Arab politics.This understanding has been reinforced by the Hamas’ rise among Palestinian Arabs. The Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its charter is clearly a Judeophobic document, drawing on medieval Judeophobic Muslim sources. It is not merely anti-Israel. Article 7 of the Hamas charter repeats the medieval Muslim fable about the Jews at the End of Days, which I summarize:At Judgement Day, the Muslims will fight the Jews who will hide behind rocks and trees. The rocks and trees will cry out: O Muslim, a Jew is hiding behind me. Come kill him. (..)The dhimmaBooks, articles and document collections by Bat Ye’or, Norman Stillman and others, have done much since the early 1970s to demonstrate the nature of the dhimmi status, the dhimma, for the intelligent reading public, and have highlighted the position of the Jews under Islam. In addition, recent decades have seen a broad stream of information about Islam become more available to the general educated public, although Muslim apologetics have flourished as well, perhaps even more so. Christians, Jews (including Samaritans), and Zoroastrians were subject to the dhimma in Middle Eastern countries, and this status was later extended to Hindus farther east.Tolerated non-Muslims in lands conquered by Islam –dhimmis– were required to pay tribute, the jizya, either personally or through their religious-ethnic community. The grounds for this in Islamic law are found in the Quran [sura 9:29 ]. The jizya can be considered a license to live for another year until the time comes for the next payment. Qur’an 9:29 and 2:61 also require that non-Muslims, specifically Jews and Christians, People of the Book, are to be “brought low,” that is, humiliated. Islamic society developed and refined these rules of dhimma over the centuries.These regulations stipulated that dhimmis could not bear arms. Their garments must differ from Muslim garments. They had to always show respect and deference for Muslims, such as dismounting from their donkeys when encountering a Muslim on the road. A dhimmi’s testimony in court was worth half of a Muslim’s testimony. This list is incomplete and, of course, the body of rules varied somewhat with time and place. Further, when Muslim states were weak, not all of the rules could be enforced. For instance, mountain-dwelling dhimmis could often ignore many of the humiliations as long as they stayed away from Muslim cities. It is significant that the dhimmis’ status tended to worsen over time as their proportion of the population decreased.Here’s an illustration of one of the dhimma humiliations as viewed by the Danish traveler, Carsten Niebuhr (1761-1762):In Cairo, no Christian and no Jew can show himself mounted on a horse. They only ride donkeys and must get off as soon as they encounter an Egyptian, even the least important. The Egyptians never go about except on a horse, preceded by an insolent servant who, armed with a big club, warns the man on the donkey to show the obligatory marks of respect for his master, by crying out: “Infidel, get off! . . .” `Niebuhr visited Egypt almost four decades before Napoleon, which is significant, because the late Edward Said argued that similar reports made after Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition were invalid since they were tainted with imperialism.Moshe Gil found accounts –in the Cairo Geniza documents– of Jews in Jerusalem being squeezed to collect the jizya and other taxes in the pre-Crusades period. (..)Jacob Barna’i found records of the Jerusalem Jewish community for the late 18th century revealing a startlingly similar situation to that before the Crusades found by Gil. Not only did Jews pay jizya to the Ottoman state but a series of unofficial fees, taxes, exactions and mandatory bribes to local Muslim notables and strong men.Now, contrary to what many Jews and other people have believed, conditions in Muslim lands were often worse for Jews than in Christendom. At least this was the opinion of the great Jewish philosopher, Maimonides (1135-1204), who fled Spain due to persecution by a fanatical Muslim sect and ended up as a Jewish leader in Egypt and physician to the famous Sultan Saladin. He wrote in his famous Letter to Yemen:[as punishment] God has hurled us into the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us… Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.Maimonides was in correspondence with far flung Jews, from Europe to India, and knew of the conditions in the various places. Here he means that Islamic society treated Jews worse as a rule than did Christian society. The next question is whether Jewish and Christian dhimmis were equal in their inferiority in Islamic society, and if not, which were in the superior position. (..)The Italian historian of Islam, Francesco Gabrieli, wrote that:“the name ‘Yahudi’ [=Jew] acquired on Muslim lips the same odor of hostile scorn for the Jews that the term ‘Jew’ had in the Western world, more hostile and scornful than that of the epithet ‘Nasrani’ [= Christian].” Like al-Jahiz, (historians) Gabrieli and Panella explain this by the Muslim memory of the Medina Jews’ political resistance to Muhammad.This Jewish social inferiority is confirmed not only by the medieval Baghdadi Arabal-Jahiz but by a Turk quoted by Bernard Lewis. This 19th century Turk referred to some Greek Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire who regretted the Ottoman equalizing reforms of the mid-19th century. This shows that Ottoman Christians considered their status superior to that of the Jews.… whereas in former times, in the Ottoman state, the communities were ranked, with the Muslims first, then the Greeks [Greek Orthodox], then the Armenians, then the Jews, now all of them were put on the same level. Some Greeks objected to this, saying: “The government has put us together with the Jews. We were content with the supremacy of Islam.”A British envoy confirmed this ranking. Dr John Bowring was in Lebanon and Syria –Israel’s neighborhood— in the 1830s, shortly before the first of these Ottoman reforms (1839). Muhammad Ali of Egypt, who had wrested rule over the Levant from the Ottoman state at that time, had already introduced greater equality between Muslims and dhimmis in his domains. Bowring noted:The Mussulmans. . . deeply deplore the loss of that sort of superiority which they all & individually exercised over & against the other sects. . . a Mussulman. . . believes and maintains that a Christian –& still more a Jew — is an inferior being to himself. And although the Jews’ situation did improve somewhat under Muhammad Ali’s rule in the Levant, the condition of the Jews forms, perhaps, an exception [to the general improvement of non-Muslims] and cannot be said to have improved comparatively with that of the other sects.The above quotes and authorities sufficiently demonstrate that in general the Jews were at the bottom of the barrel in Arab-Muslim society. It would logically follow that Jews were also at the bottom of the barrel in Jerusalem under Muslim rule. Nevertheless, this should and can be demonstrated by sources.Jews inferior to ChristiansTowards the end of Mamluk rule –which lasted from the Mongol withdrawal in 1260 to the Ottoman conquest in 1517– a monk named Francesco Suriano lived in the Franciscan monastery in Jerusalem for some twenty-five years on and off. For six years he was Custos Terrae Sanctae or Guardian of the Holy Land for his order. That is, he was the highest ranking Western Christian official in the Land of Israel, charged by the pope with overseeing Roman Catholic interests in the Christian holy places and Church affairs in the country, and with helping Catholic pilgrims. He did not like Muslims but he did appreciate how they treated Jews. He described how they treated Jews in Jerusalem as follows:“I wish you to know how these dogs of Jews are trampled upon, beaten and ill-treated, as they deserve, by every infidel nation, and this is the just decree of God. They live in this country in such subjection that words cannot describe it. . . there in Jerusalem, where they committed the sin for which they are dispersed throughout the world [i.e., the Crucifixion], they are by God more punished and afflicted than in any other part of the world. And over a long time I have witnessed that . . . No infidel [= Muslim] would touch with his hand a Jew lest he be contaminated but when they wish to beat them, they take off their shoes with which they strike them on the mustaches; the greatest wrong and insult to a man is to call him a Jew. And it is a right notable thing that the Moslems do not accept a Jew into their creed unless he first become a Christian. . . And if they were not subsidised by the Jews of Christendom, the Jews who live in Judea would die like dogs of hunger.” The Ottoman Empire seems to have improved the Jews’ status in Jerusalem, although this was done against the resistance of local Muslims. Nevertheless, “The Jewish community… paid the jizya at rates somewhat higher than the [Greek] Orthodox.”About 300 years after Suriano, Chateaubriand, the great French writer, found the Jews still on the bottom of the social barrel. He visited Jerusalem in 1806, and later wrote:Special target of all contempt [i.e., of both Muslims and Christians], they lower their heads without complaint; they suffer all insults without demanding justice; they let themselves be crushed by blows… Penetrate the dwellings of these people, you will find them in frightful poverty… Nothing can prevent them from turning their gaze towards Zion. When one sees the Jews dispersed throughout the world,… one is probably surprised, but, to be struck by supernatural astonishment, it is necessary to find them in Jerusalem.. . to see these legitimate owners of Judea, slaves and strangers in their own land. One must see them under all oppressions, awaiting a king who is to redeem them. Yet, not all Christians living in Jerusalem were eager to hate Jews. Neophytos was a Greek Orthodox monk belonging to the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher, which governed Orthodox church affairs in Jerusalem. A Cypriot native who lived in Jerusalem for many years, he showed a certain sympathy or pity for the Jews, not excessive to be sure. Neophytos had lived through persecution and threats against his own community during the Greek revolt against the empire, when the Greek Orthodox in Jerusalem paid large sums –including golden religious objects — to the local Muslim-Arab notables in order not to suffer massacre in revenge for the Greek rebellion of the 1820s. Describing Muhammad Ali’s relative magnanimity towards the dhimmi communities after he had crushed an Ottoman-backed Muslim revolt against him in Israel (1834), Neophytos remarks that this magnanimity extended even to Jews. Under Ottoman rule, he points out, they dare not even ask permission to repair their synagogues:”As we are on the question of repairs, we must say something about the Jewish Synagogue. One year ago only, seeing the liberal dispositions of Mehemet Ali Pasha [Muhammad Ali] and Ibrahim Pasha [his son, general, and deputy], they dared to speak about their Synagogue. They asked that their House of Prayer, being in a ruinous condition and in danger of falling in, might be repaired. So, those who did not even dare to change a tile on the roof of the Synagogue at one time, now received a permit and a decree to build.” Neophytos’ words: “those who did not even dare,” imply the inferiority of the Jews even to the Christians. This shows the depth of Jewish degradation in the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem.The next witness about the Jews’ lowly status in the city is none other than Karl Marx, a surprise witness to be sure. In his report in the New York Daily Tribune (15 April 1854) on the origins of the Crimean War, Marx describes conditions in Jerusalem, where religious rivalries focused on the Church of the Holy Sepulcher served the Powers as pretexts for the war:“The Mussulmans, forming about a fourth part of the whole, and consisting of Turks, Arabs, and Moors, are, of course, the masters in every respect, as they are in no way affected by the weakness of their Government at Constantinople. . .”Nothing equals the misery and the suffering of the Jews at Jerusalem, inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town, called hareth-el-yahoud, in the quarter of dirt, between the Zion and the Moriah, where their synagogues are situated — the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins . . . ” [emph. added]Note that Jews were humiliated by the Christians in the city, as well as by Muslims. To be sure, Marx was never in Jerusalem. His report of the data above is almost wholly quoted or paraphrased from a book by the French diplomat and historian, Cesar Famin. (..)We have shown above 1) the state of oppression, humiliation, and economic exploitation, dhimmitude, of Jews and Christians in traditional Arab-Muslim society, 2) the Jews’ worse status under Arab-Islam than elsewhere (according to Maimonides), and 3) the Jews’ inferior status even to Christian dhimmis in Arab-Muslim society in general and in Jerusalem in particular.This history is important because history does not go away. When there is a void in general knowledge of history in a situation of national conflict, one’s enemies may fill the void with false history, inventing what suits them and their goals and interests. Hence, forgetting history is dangerous.Jews ‘victimising’ innocent Arabs?In this vein, a line stands out here from the anti-Israel tract of Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, quoted approvingly by a leading British journalist, Max Hastings:…while there is no question that the Jews were victims in Europe, they were often the victimisers, not the victims, in the Middle East, and their main victims were and continue to be the Palestinians. These authors moralize. They develop the themes of guilt and innocence. Yet it’s hard to be sure which historical period Walt and Mearsheimer are referring to. Is it all of history or the present or some past time? The indefinite, the insinuation, and the evocative rather than the specific or explicit, are features of their prose. In another passage, however, they indicate that the Palestinian Arabs were innocent when Israel became a state.A third moral justification [for Israel] is the history of Jewish suffering in the Christian West, especially … the Holocaust… Jews suffered greatly from the despicable legacy of Anti-Semitism and… Israel’s creation was an appropriate response to a long record of crimes… But… the creation of Israel involved additional crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians. Walt and Mearsheimer disarmingly admit that “the Christian West” made Jews suffer. But they implicitly exculpate the Arab-Muslim East generally –and Palestinian Arabs explicitly— of harming Jews throughout history, perhaps insinuating that Jews were not even present in that part of the world till the 20th century. Yet we have shown above that traditional Arab-Muslim society oppressed, exploited, and humiliated Jews, in Israel as elsewhere. Therefore, are the authors justified in calling Palestinian Arabs “largely innocent” towards Jews after they entered the modern world in the mid-19th century?From this time, the late Ottoman period saw improvement in the status of the dhimmis, largely thanks to intervention by European powers. This was so in Jerusalem more so than many places in the Empire. Nevertheless, World War I brought real fears that Jews in Israel might suffer the fate of the Armenians. In this context, the Balfour Declaration and international approval for its principles brought hope. However, Britain –that had protected Jews in the country in the late Ottoman period—betrayed its Mandate to foster the Jewish National Home, sometimes encouraging Arab pogroms on Jews. This started in 1920 in Jerusalem. It was followed by a series of Arab pogroms in 1921, 1929, 1936-39. The massacre and “ethnic cleansing” of the ancient Hebron community (68 Jews killed, hundreds expelled in August 1929) are remembered with special bitterness by Jews in Israel and abroad. These pogroms took place years before there was a state of Israel.Likewise, before Israeli independence, Palestinian Arab representatives demanded in 1939 that the British end Jewish immigration into the country. This was on the very eve of the Holocaust when few countries were willing to allow more than token Jewish refugee immigration. The British fundamentally complied with this demand in the 1939 Palestine White Paper, thereby closing off even the internationally designated Jewish National Home to more than a token few Jewish immigrants. Subsequently, Arab nationalists, most notably Haj Amin el-Husseini, the chief Palestinian Arab leader, collaborated in the Holocaust more directly. Husseini was effective in preventing release of thousands of Jewish children and other Jews from the Nazi-fascist domain, having Jews sent instead to Poland, where, in his words, they would be “under active supervision,” his euphemism for the death camps.It is obvious that when the UN General Assembly recommended a “two-state solution,” that is, partition (29 November 1947), the Palestinian Arabs were hardly innocent in regard to the Jews. Nor were they innocent afterwards. Arabs under Husseini’s leadership attacked and killed Jews throughout the country in response to the UN recommendation.While much has been heard since 1948 about Arab refugees, little has been heard about Jewish refugees in that war. The first refugees in the war who could not return to their homes after it were Jews who fled the Shim`on haTsadiq quarter (in what is now “East Jerusalem”) near the end of December 1947. Indeed thousands of Jews throughout the country could not return home after the war. Moreover, Jordan and Egypt forbid Jews to live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. To be sure, Arab refugees eventually outnumbered these Jewish refugees. But Jewish refugees from Arab lands considerably outnumbered Arab refugees from Israel. From nearly a million in 1948, hardly more than a few thousand Jews remain in Arab states today. Arab League states expelled their Jewish populations according to a plan drawn up before the UN partition recommendation. So much for Arab or Palestinian Arab innocence before or after 1948.Skipping over Arab provocations, wars, and terrorist attacks from the 1950s through the 1980s, we come to what many saw as a new beginning in relations, the 1993 Oslo Accords. Contrary to many expectations, signature of the accords was followed by increased terrorism, suicide bombings, drive-by shootings, etc. (…)Nevertheless, many today –like Walt, Mearsheimer, and Max Hastings too– wish to claim Arab and Palestinian Arab innocence. Now, the claim of Arab innocence was prominent in the 1940s and 1950s, although then the Palestinian Arabs were not called simply “Palestinians” as today, as if they were a people separate from other Arabs. In those days, the argument explicitly claimed that Arab-Muslim treatment of Jews was regularly benign, thus making Israel’s alleged misdeeds in 1948 all the more repugnant. The argument was first used long ago. It was meant to urge particular policies towards Israel and the Arabs. It has always been instrumental, not factual, scientific, or historical. It depends on general public ignorance of the real history, in particular ignorance among Jews and Zionists.The evidence presented above shows that throughout history, this claim has not only been false but is the very opposite of the truth. This false notion of history, of the relations of Jews and Arabs in Israel over the centuries, is widely held in academia, State Department circles, and the media. The way to dispel the falsehoods is knowledge of history, of the institution of the dhimma, of Jewish history, Arab and Muslim history, particularly the history of Jews in the Land of Israel, in all periods from ancient times through the Middle Ages to early modern times and recent times, up to the latest Qassam rocket that landed on the town of Sderot. Ignorance of history can be considered an obstacle to Israel-Arab peace.This article is based on a version published in Midstream magazine (New York, September/October 2008).