J. M. Verville

On Politics Forum I was confronted with an awesome post that I need to archive for future debate purposes.

These are the words of Tonic from PoFo (link to thread):

9% Corrupt Joined: 31 Jul 2007 Posts: 191 [ PM ]

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 12:57 pm   Verv Quote: So do you believe that Rafah should now be all Palestinian territory? Verv, I also added that what we called “Palestinian” is just what the British decided after the Ottoman Empire falled. The people themselves are infact Egyptians. Complex. No I don’t think the territory should be “Palestinian” i.e. handed to one of the Palestinian warlords (Fatah or Hamas), instead Gaza should be back to Egyptian rule. But Egypt as part of pan-Arab policy refuses to get it back they prefer is will screw Israel. Quote: What if the reverse was happening and the Egyptian bedouins were breaking over to the other side? The Egyptian Bedouins fight an economic war. They are no more Egyptian than the local “Palestinians” (means the fellahin and city dwellers.) After all the “Right of Return” and “Ethnic Cleansing” speak, the “Palestinians” in the West Bank and Gaza also worry of newcomers from the same reason. Though the newcomers in their case are “Palestinians” returnees. Source: Project MUSE, an online collection of scholarly journals http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/israel_studies/v004/4.1friedman.html Quote: Palestine, a Twice-promised Land? The British, the Arabs and Zionism, 1915-1920Indiana University Press Isaiah Friedman - Arnold Toynbee: Pro-Arab or Pro-Zionist? - In the late forties, Toynbee acquired the reputation of being a passionate Arab protagonist and a fierce opponent of the State of Israel; by his own admission he became known as a “Western spokesman for the Arab cause.” But during World War I and its aftermath, he was less than sympathetic toward the Arabs. He was greatly disturbed to note that the Syrians, contrary to assurances made by Hussein, as well as by al-Faruqi, remained loyal to Turkey and “their conscripts fought dutifully on her side . . . their leaders are too prudent and the people too peaceable to allow them for a moment to contemplate rising in arms.” Early in the War, he ascertained that, in the Turkish Asiatic provinces, there was only “a veritable cockpit of nationalities so mutilated that they have never even achieved that [kind of] unity which is the essential preliminary to a national life.” By 1917, when the general Arab uprising had failed to materialize, he concluded that they had no “national consciousness. There are Arabs in name who have nothing Arabic about them but their language — most of the peasants in Syria are such . . .” This view was not unique. The official Handbook prepared in 1918 to guide the British delegates to the Peace Conference gave the following description: The people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arab-speaking. The bulk of the population are fellahin; that is to say, agricultural workers owning land as a village community or working land for the Syrian effendi. In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most mixed race. They have for centuries been ground down, overtaxed, and bullied by the Turk, and still more by the Arab-speaking Turkish minor official and the Syrian and Levantine landowner. Foreign Office Peace Handbook, No. 60, Syria and Palestine, (HMSO, l920). It was probably prepared by Ormsby-Gore, who, during his service on the Arab Bureau in Cairo, was gathering information on Syria and Palestine. In his Survey of International Affairs for 19256 — by then he was Director of the Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) — he confirmed that, although there was “a solidarity of feeling between the Sunnis on both sides of the new Syro- Palestinian frontier,” and that “Arabic was the vernacular language of all inhabitants of Syria … the common use of Arabic did not carry with it a corresponding sense of national solidarity… Communal particularism remained .. . the dominant feature in the political life of the country.” Google Books Library Project books.google.com/ Quote:

There is a movement to get land back from the Communist government… And now the people are being investigated for their democratic protest:

HANOI (AFP) — Police in communist Vietnam have launched an investigation into Catholic land dispute protests that swelled to about 2,000 people late last week, state media and a police officer said Tuesday.

Parishioners and priests have been holding daily vigils for over a month near Hanoi’s main St. Joseph’s Cathedral, demanding the return of a house and a block of church land seized by the communist government in the late 1950s. (more…)

This is some hilarity:

  A human tongue has been served up in a hospital canteen’s chicken risotto — and bosses reckon it was accidentally dropped into the food by a doctor.Slovenian officials are investigating after a doctor complained about a strange piece of meat on his plate. (more…)

Now this is some interesting stuff to archive away:

The midlife crisis, a time of self-doubt and turmoil familiar to many in their 40s and 50s, is often viewed as a phenomenon of Western culture. But new research suggests that people all over the world are miserable in middle age.

Those are the surprising findings from a worldwide study of two million people from 80 countries. The researchers, economists Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick in England and David Blanchflower from Dartmouth College in the United States, found that happiness levels followed a U-shaped curve, with happiness higher towards the start and end of our lives. Across cultures, they found, depression and unhappiness typically strike people in midlife. (more…)

Really old news but it needs to be archived:

Washington (CNSNews.com) - The Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the current home of hundreds of wounded veterans from the war in Iraq, has been the target of weekly anti-war demonstrations since March. The protesters hold signs that read “Maimed for a Lie” and “Enlist here to die for Halliburton.”

The anti-war demonstrators, who obtain their protest permits from the Washington, D.C., police department, position themselves directly in front of the main entrance to the Army Medical Center, which is located in northwest D.C., about five miles from the White House. (more…)

This is pretty interesting research:

Researchers in Germany are confirming what sports fanatics long have suspected: Intense athletic contests, and equally passionate interest in those games, can be hazardous to viewers’ health.

When Germany competed in pivotal soccer matches during the 2006 World Cup, the incidence of heart attacks and other acute cardiovascular conditions soared in Bavaria, scientists report in tomorrow’s New England Journal of Medicine. (more…)

This is pretty awesome lies:

 Over 80 percent of the population of 1.5 million (compared to 63 percent in 2006) is dependent on international food assistance, which itself has been dramatically reduced. (more…)

Pretty amazing that a crime fo this level would be perpetrated on the Galapagos:

Ecuadorean authorities are investigating the clubbing deaths of more than 50 Galapagos Islands sea lions found in January with their skulls cracked, a state prosecutor said Tuesday.

The killings had to be committed by humans, said Jaime Estevez, who called it the work of “the criminal mind of some people who enjoy watching these animals suffer.” (more…)

I do not enjoy the tone of this article in the least and merely hope that it is alarmism:

So Romney played in nearly every early straw poll, and pandered to each conservative demographic. He joined the NRA. He talked tough on illegal immigrants, and became a crusader against gay marriage. “Strength” was his watchword. With an impressive gallery of high-profile endorsements, he was the only Republican candidate who seemed to be on the right side of nearly every issue for the plurality of the old GOP coalition.

And yet, his candidacy sputtered. His narrow loss Tuesday to John McCain in Florida was just the latest in a series of disappointments that began in Iowa and New Hampshire, two states where he had outspent his rivals and once led in the polls. His failures have many causes, which will be raked over by historians. But they also suggest a broader shift: Romney may be running to lead a Republican Party that no longer exists. (more…)

This is kind of funny and it reminds me vaguely of what will soon be happening all about Korea:

Gao Biao stands in front of the Guangzhou train station with an umbrella in his hand, staring into the crush of people ahead of him. The 27-year-old has spent the past year hard at work in a cosmetics factory in this southern Chinese city, and now he’s trying to get back home for the holidays. The trip to his hometown outside the central city of Suzhou takes more than 20 hours — if he can board. Around him, hundreds of people push towards an opening in the barrier surrounding the station. A police officer standing behind a fence shouts into a megaphone, calling for order. “I haven’t made any money here,” Gao says. “But I want to go home to see my mother.” (more…)