No reports of any deaths. Just injuries. Bugger.
Update: 12 dead.
Expat in Israel.
Settlers in the Gaza Strip community of Rafiah Yam intend to establish their own branch of "Shuvi," an organization that has accumulated about 65,000 signatures urging Israel's immediate evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements.
It happens to us all. The question posed was what happens if you replace the Sun with a one solar mass black hole. The answer is nothing of course apart from it getting a bit dark some nine minutes[1] later. So I wanted to work out the Schwarzschild radius.
Google does calculations and understands things like:
2G * 1 solar mass/c**2 in kilometers which produces 2.95343236 kilometers. So now you know what the event horizon diameter would be.
[1] Ok, it would be 8.31675359 minutes later. Try: 1 A.U./c
For those of you do not listen incessantly to the BBC World Service I will tell you of a news item I heard this morning. Since the sad death of Alistair Cooke and the ending of "Letter from America" , the BBC has been experimenting with 'Letters' a series of radio talks from countries around the world. This time it was an Indian newspaper editor. As part of his talk he mentioned the furore over some kidnapped Indian truck drivers in Iraq. What was unusual about it was that the kidnappers demanded that India withdraw its troops from Iraq. As India is vehemently opposed to the war in general and Indian troops being there in particular this seemed odd.
When the kidnappers found out, they switched to demanding money. There is a point to all this. Rather than employee hundreds of truck drivers from various countries around the world to keep troops fed and watered, would it not be better to use Iraqis?
The cries of 'The Jews rule the World' will get louder again. I would have thought that the lessons learnt from the Lavon and Pollard affair would have be automatic by now. I especially do not want to hear 'Oh, they should have sent us that info anyway. We're entitles to it. We're allies.' I will be extremely sarcastic to any blogs I find with comments like that.
In Washington yesterday, U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli characterized a settlement freeze as only an ultimate goal.
Ereli said that the U.S. position on the settlements has not changed, and that settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip must stop.
On the Israeli side, what we're looking for and what the parties -- and what the Israelis committed to was a dismantling of outposts and progress towards a settlement freeze.
We are currently involved in technical talks with the Government of Israel in an effort to clarify their intentions with respect to the settlements, and we will continue to work with the Government of Israel towards a settlement freeze as is called for in the roadmap.
I follow the Kerry - Bush contest with a bemused fascination. It's like the Olympics without any referees. Personally I think Bush will win and the world won't end when he does. He will be a better President in his second term than the first.
The rather nasty mud slinging over Kerry's Vietnam record appears to be a repeat. The Boston News article in the url above mentions that Tricky Dicky also had a go at Kerry. My dead tree version of the IHT also points out that some of those involved in ' Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' appear to have changed their story. All very ugly stuff.
I do admire our friends who are starting the cafe. They have four children, the youngest being twins just coming into the terrible two's, he has to travel abroad for weeks on end, they've decided to start this cafe. What's an obvious step to take to help themselves out and relieve their rather exhausted friends who chip in with paint stripping, baby sitting and electrical work?
Of course... buy a six week old puppy.
While lying in bed summoning the energy to get up and face another day at work I listened to yet another BBC World Service report on Israel and the West Bank. This was by a female journalist whose name I didn't catch. The BBC World service site doesn't have it yet.
Then I really woke up. She was with IDF troops in the West Bank and unbeknown to the soldiers she spoke Hebrew. Oh dear. Soldier's talk can be rough at times. Having it broadcast did not make for easy listening.
The Home Office says all new passport photographs must be of an unsmiling face with its gob firmly shut because open mouths can confuse facial recognition systems.
The Palestinian Authority, despite promises made by its president, has made no progress on its core obligation to take immediate action on the ground to end violence and combat terror," Prendergast said.
Progress on Palestinian security reforms also "continues to be slow, and mostly cosmetic," which can only be explained "by a lack of political will to advance along that "to assess the situation on the ground and examine appropriate courses of action." Donors will also meet in New York in September to examine how they could assist in turning a possible Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank "into a true beginning of a genuine peace process," he said.
That would appear to be the end of Ahmad Chalabi. His nephew Salem is also facing charges of involvment with murder. Readers may remember that he has been convicted before in Jordan in connection with a failed bank. The USA don't like him either anymore and suspect him of leaking information to Iran.
I was amused to hear his lawyer on the BBC this morning comparing him to Konrad Adenauer. Adenauer was briefly Mayor of Cologne after the war but was removed by the British for being 'inefficient'. There is a difference of course. Adenauer was imprisoned in 1934 by the Nazis and again in 1944 for suspected involvment in the July 1944 plot against Hitler.
In the dead tree edition of the Economist from last week, I read a very unpleasant article. As we all know now, Pakistan has been very busy in the past with weapon proliferation to Libya and North Korea. There was always an unamed fourth country in the background. That country is Saudi Arabia.
Contrary to popular belief, the Arab-Israeli conflict has a reasonable solution. An orderly resettlement elsewhere of the so-called Palestinian Arabs would solve this long-standing 'intractable' problem.
Here we are in the same political minefield as that which surrounds the Falklands. Lunching with a Labour cabinet minister in 1997, I said how welcome was the prospect that a Blair government would start talks on a deal with Argentina. My guest leaned across the table: "What's in it for us?" he demanded. "The media and the Falklands lobby would go mad. About six people like you would applaud."
It is ludicrous to suggest that the populations of such places as the Falklands or Gibraltar should possess an absolute veto on all debate about their future. It is also hypocritical, given that the Tory government in 1973 summarily evacuated the 1,200 inhabitants of Diego Garcia to free up the place for use as a US base. They were not white, though of course that made no difference.
I am grateful to the Pope for reinforcing the traditional family values lacking for so long in today's sex and drug ridden world. While he didn't mention blogging , I am pleased to announce that Cathy and I will be reverting to our traditional roles when it comes to this blog. She will be polishing the HTML, dusting the paragraph marks and cleaning the comments section while I, in my role as 'blog patriach' will confine myself to making sure she has plenty to do.
Cathy will devote herself to our many blog offspring and teaching them the catechisms needed for a spiritual life in the blogosphere. I will concentrate on providing for my blog family members and thrashing them very heavily on the buttocks with a flat bladed plywood paddle I made myself in the 'Workshop for Assertive Males' currently being run in a town near you.
It's been a while since we went to the normal Saturday evening Peace Now vigil up on a crossroads on top the hills above Haifa. 'She Who Must Be Bandaged' broke her foot some while ago and we got out of the habit. It was quite gratifying to receive more support than I remember from last time. Only a few hecklers and they more muted than before.
One difference was a family from Gush Katif who came along; ostensibly to wish us all Shabbat Shalom which I thought was nice. The lady in question had seven children in tow, at least all the ones she had who could walk under their own steam. One little girl asked a question that had us stumped for a while. "Who will look after you when we are gone?". Eventually we took it to mean that they were guarding us here in Haifa by being in Gush Katif. I shall ask my work colleague who has to do reserve duty down there next month what he thinks about it. If the answer is in any way printable I shall post it here.