Alpha Stockman - Comments

Alpha Stockman

Human Security & Conflict Prevention Consultant
I am a Canadian working in Conflict Prevention, Early Warning Systems and Human Security. My bridging initiatives in using mapping technology and social networking for governence and conflict prevention has given me opportunities to take my skill set to several regions from East to West Africa. I ...more

Latest Comments
Small Caps Break Out, Powell May Try To Talk The Market Down, Buffett’s One Weakness
4 months ago

He can't talk to mark it down unless he actually says he's gonna raise rates or continue to do so. I think the horses out of the barn.

In this article: BRK-B, QQQ, IWM, AAPL
What Happens In A Stock Market Recession And How To Survive
5 months ago
Enjoyed this article, but yours is in Russian. Can you post it on this site in English?
Sadly, This Book Is Out Of Print, Because Its Wisdom Is Needed Now In The Middle East And Globally More Than Ever
6 months ago
And this one: I have some sympathy with Ben-Ami's desire to find a solution for a difficult and heart-wrenching problem. But his solutions are frequently naive or just demonstrably wrong. Some examples:
- In an attempt to refute an assertion of Avigdor Lieberman's, Ben-Ami states that "In fact, the history of Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the land of Palestine, and throughout Arab and Muslim lands, was fairly positive." Norman Stillman in his work "The Jews of Arab Lands", presents the history of the dhimmi laws throughout the Middle East as applied to Jews, and while sometimes benign, it frequently was used to humiliate and repress Jews including forcing them to walk barefoot in Muslim cities. Yemenite Jews were oppressed for centuries.
- The assertion that innocent, naive U.S. politicians are forced into compliance with AIPAC is strange at best. Politicians as victims? Let's get real. And the N.R.A. doesn't use far worse tactics? For someone who was so intimately involved in the Dean campaign, Ben-Ami seems rather thin-skinned.
- The "vocal 8%" argument seems strange for someone who grew up in the Zionist world. Prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, the Reform and much of the Orthodox world opposed Zionism. Things in this world are usually done by those who want to get involved.
- For someone who wishes to be accepted by the Jewish mainstream, Ben-Ami's implication that the "vocal 8%" are mostly Orthodox has more than a touch of bigotry. Holding on to captured territory is not a tenet of Orthodox Judaism. As well as ultra-Nationalists there are also anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews. The Orthodox Jewish world has a range of views as does the rest of the Jewish world. Ben-Ami dismissal of the Orthodox seems narrow at best.
- The concept that underlies much of Ben-Ami's view, and I assume J Street's as well, that President Obama has a better understanding of Israel's security needs than it's democratically elected officials, many of whom are drawn from its military is troubling. Rabin faced a very different world than the current post Arab Spring environment and the Israeli electorate and government have evolved accordingly.

Israel's Left has much to bring to the debate in that country and their American followers have much to bring to the table within the American Jewish community. Unfortunately, Ben-Ami does a poor job expressing their views in this book.

Sadly, This Book Is Out Of Print, Because Its Wisdom Is Needed Now In The Middle East And Globally More Than Ever
6 months ago
And this one:  There are two major failings in this book

(1)It does not make any argument at all to support the idea that Isreal has the ability to make peace with the Palestinian.

After writing the counter-argument that Isreal has tried repeatedly over a twenty year period to give back the West Bank to the Palestinians and not only not received peace in exchange, there was usually there was an increase in terrorism after such offers, he still asks "why can't they do it?"

(2)He offers zero evidence for J Street's claim that they represent anyone let alone the majority of American Jews.

Sadly, This Book Is Out Of Print, Because Its Wisdom Is Needed Now In The Middle East And Globally More Than Ever
6 months ago

Sounded interesting, but then I read this review of the book on Amazon;

"A New Voice for Israel"? Certainly not author Ben-Ami. He is persona non grata in all but the far left fringes of Israeli politics. Not J Street, which has never been acknowledged by an Israeli government, unlike AIPAC. So it takes a huge amount of chutzpah for this non-entity to call himself and/or his organization a new voice for Israel. A better description would be TRAITOR.

Ben-Ami spends part of the book telling us about his family's supposed Zionist past, as if this makes his treachery more palatable. The fact that Ben-Ami was an adviser to loony lefty Howard Dean tells us all we need to know about Ben-Ami's real interests. He is ultra-liberal, and J Street is for ultra-liberal Jews who are embarrassed by a muscular Israel. And J Street ALMOST made it - it almost became a player by passing off the line that it was pro-Israel as well as pro-peace. But then it remained silent after each Palestinian atrocity against Israel. And it lobbied to have financial aid cut off from Israel. Finally, it took money from George Soros and tried to hide that fact. The few influential supporters faded away.

The author, like most liberals, strikes a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians, and that's where his arguments fail. When Palestinians put on suicide vests and blow themselves on buses, the similarities end. When the free Palestinian state of Gaza fires rockets into Israeli towns, they are not the same as Israel. When one reads the anti-semitic hate in Palestinian school books, one understands that these people wake up each morning and go to bed each night hoping that Jews will die. That's a hard sell, even to the lost "just Jews".

This book has been out for a year now and has all of 11 reviews, including mine. No one cares. As it should be.

Joe Biden's Shameful Legacy
6 months ago

Yes, I'm sure those babies that Hamas beheaded were really bad people. Get your head on straight man.

Vaccine Makers Slump As Oral Antivirals Begin To Take Center Stage
7 months ago

What's your take on these stocks now?

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