On September 30 2000, two days after Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel’s opposition Likud Party, went for a walk on Temple Mount, Palestinians mounted a demonstration at Gaza’s Netzarim Junction. A 55-second piece of video footage of that demonstration, transmitted that day by the French TV station France 2, was to cause unprecedented violence in the Middle East and throughout the world.

The footage, with a voice-over by France 2’s Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, showed what was said to be the killing of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura by Israeli marksmen. Viewers saw the child crouching in terror behind his father, Jamal, as they sheltered next to a barrel under what Enderlin said was Israeli gunfire, and then slumping to the ground as Enderlin pronounced that he was dead.

That image of the boy screaming in terror before being killed was uniquely incendiary. It portrayed the Israelis as diabolically gunning down a child in cold blood, even as he cowered for his life. It ignited the Arab and Muslim world with apparent proof that the Israelis were deliberately killing their children, inciting a murderous frenzy.

Al-Dura became a poster boy for the Palestinian and Islamist war against Israel and the West. The day after the France 2 broadcast, the second intifada erupted in its full fury; according to the 2001 Mitchell report, the two events were directly connected. Twelve days later, a mob of Palestinians shouting, ‘Revenge for the blood of Mohammed al-Dura’ lynched two Israeli army reservists and dragged their mutilated bodies through the streets of Ramallah.

When al-Qaeda decapitated the journalist Daniel Pearl, the video of this atrocity was punctuated with references to al-Dura. After September 11 2001, Osama bin Laden said: ‘Bush must not forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura.’ Several Arab countries issued postage stamps with his picture. On Palestinian Authority TV and in its school books, al-Dura’s example is used to encourage other children to emulate his spirit of ’sacrifice’.

But we now know that this whole fiesta of violence and incitement was based on a lie. For whatever people think they saw in those 55 seconds, it was not the death of that boy. He was not killed by Israeli bullets; he was not killed at all. At the end of France 2’s famous footage, he was still alive and unharmed. The whole thing was staged, a fantastic piece of play-acting, an elaborate fabrication designed to blacken Israel’s name, and incite the Arab and Muslim mobs to mass murder.

To understand the al-Dura affair, it helps to keep one thing in mind: In France, you can't own up to a mistake.

The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that the Wintertons have decided to move out after being barred from claiming any more in Additional Cost Allowance (ACA) for living there. Instead, they will move into a rented flat in Westminster which will cost the taxpayer thousands of pounds a year in ACA.

Lady Winterton, the MP for Congleton, Cheshire, has written to John
Lyon, the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, informing him that the
family trust, which owns their previous home on behalf of their
children, would now rent it out to a new tenant "at the current market
rate, as now".

Addendum: The criteria for who should qualify for the ACA do, indeed, seem to open the door for some questionable activities (see this); but given the criteria, the buy-rent decision and the wealth of the MPs should not cloud the issue. Opportunity costs are still important.

Cuba is to abolish its system of equal pay for all and allow workers and managers to earn performance bonuses, a senior official has announced. [emphasis in the original as a sub-headline]

Vice-Minister for Labour Carlos Mateu said the current system - in
place since the communist revolution in 1959 - was no longer
"convenient".

He said wage differentiation should improve production and services. ...

The minister pointed out that the current wage system sapped
employees' incentives to excel since everyone earned the same
regardless of performance.

"It's harmful to give a worker less than he deserves, it's also
harmful to give him what he doesn't deserve," the newspaper article
said.

The history of mankind is the history of the struggle between the Active Man and the Passive, between the individual and the collective. The countries which have produced the happiest men, the highest standards of living and the greatest cultural advances have been the countries where the power of the collective — of the government, of the state — was limited and the individual was given freedom of independent action. As examples: The rise of Rome, with its conception of law based on a citizen's rights, over the collectivist barbarism of its time. The rise of England, with a system of government based on the Magna Carta, over collectivist, totalitarian Spain. The rise of the United States to a degree of achievement unequaled in history — by grace of the individual freedom and independence which our Constitution gave each citizen against the collective.

While men are still pondering upon the causes of the rise and fall of civilizations, every page of history cries to us that there is but one source of progress: Individual Man in independent action. Collectivism is the ancient principle of savagery. A savage's whole existence is ruled by the leaders of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

The good news from Iraq, as the Economist reports, is the guns have begun to fall silent. American and Iraqi casualties are down sharply,the sectarian-ethnic conflict is mostly over, al-Qaida insurgents are on the run as Sunni Iraqis have turned against them, and the government
of Iraqi PrimeMinister Nuri al-Maliki has increased confidence as Iraqi soldiers drove the Shia militia of Muqtada al-Sadr out of the port city of Basra and slums of Sadr City in the capital area of Baghdad.

An Iraq led by an elected government capable of securing its own interests invariably will alter the balance in favour of moderation in the hugely important Persian Gulf region. The effects of a strong and stable Iraq will be enormously positive globally. This will be the Bush legacy, as democratic Korea remains that of Truman, should the good news from Iraq become irreversible with the support of American troops.

The Iraq story, moreover, reveals that all the liberal left talk of solidarity with the poor and the oppressed of Third World countries is merely the empty noise of do-nothing hypocrites when confronted with blood thirsty thugs.

They will decry a Bush rather than advance the freedom of those beaten down by despots. 

Iraqis bear witness to this ugly truth and that is why good news from Iraq goes mostly unreported.

I do not share the optimism, infectious though it be. Democracy is a tough fit with Arab societies and with Islam. The principal reason is the inherent non separation of mosque and state in Islam. Turkey has managed it best, with Malaysia and Indonesia managing a modicum of accommodation. The risk of all these states sliding back into Shariaville, is high. The bulk of the remaining Islamic states are either hired goons - Egypt - collaborators of convenience - Saudi Arabia - or flat out hostiles, and none of these are even sniffing around a democratic structure.If they were, most like Egypt and 'Palestine', would likely vote for the other guys, as we have seen. A vote to end the vote.