Archive for November, 2009

US peace initiative


So Israelis are not on the edge of their seats hoping that President Barack Obama can, despite all the difficulties, create a new peace process or revive an old one. Instead they are sceptical, and cynical about anything other than more of the same.
Most people are much more concerned about Iran and its nuclear plans than about Palestinians, who are a known, containable commodity. The Iranians are much more worrying.
I am sitting writing this in the shade of some pine trees in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank. All the houses around me are illegal under international law.
If anything, the Palestinians who think all of this occupied land should be theirs are even more cynical and sceptical about peace than the Israelis.
Many Palestinians are convinced that history’s lesson is that Israelis are out to steal their land. Not just the soil and rock, but the water underneath it too.
Plenty of Palestinians say that they prefer it when seemingly harder-line right-wingers like the current Israeli prime minister are in power.
The left, they say, are good at deceiving foreigners but they are just as determined to take land as the rightists.
For more than 15 years, on and off, Palestinians have watched leaders on the TV talking about peace.

Peacemaking


Then they look out of their windows and see land they believe is theirs disappearing under concrete, as Israel builds homes for Jews in the occupied territories.
That is why the Obama administration in Washington has been pushing hard for a freeze on settlement building, to create a better atmosphere for talks.
Israelis are surprised, hurt and a little angry that an American president appears to be putting the feelings of the other side above theirs.
A former American negotiator looked back on the long record of failure in peace talks and said that one of the problems was that the US acted as Israel’s attorney.
America’s commitment to Israel is still unshakeable but it looks as if President Obama wants to try to be more like an honest broker, not the family lawyer.
By the way, there is plenty of pressure on the Palestinians too. But that is as predictable as the summer sun around here.
When the BBC sent me to live in Jerusalem in 1995, it was in the early days of the Oslo peace process. I left behind a perfectly good news story in Bosnia, with which I was somewhat in love. A Spanish colleague in Sarajevo asked me what on earth I was doing.
“They’ve made peace in the Middle East,” she said. “You’re nuts. The story’s over.”
But a couple of months after I arrived, a Jewish fanatic shot Israel’s prime minister dead and that peace process started taking blows that in the end killed it. A couple of years later my Spanish friend moved to Jerusalem.
Every attempt at peacemaking has failed. The fundamental problem has not been solved.
Two peoples, both haunted by the past, want the same piece of land and cannot find a mutually acceptable way to share it, or split it.
Until they do, there will not be peace here or anything like it.

Middle East ‘haunted by the past’


Israelis are good at welcoming family and friends.
Shops in the concourse at Tel Aviv airport sell presents for the new arrivals. You can buy a nice bunch of flowers, a blow-up love heart, or a balloon shaped like a helicopter gunship.
One family, excited and emotional as they waited for some longed-for reunion, stood under their hovering balloon, military green with painted-on missiles and a payload of helium.
This week, Israel has been hanging on to a real-life flying tragedy.
A young pilot, Captain Assaf Ramon, was killed when his F-16 jet crashed on a hill in the West Bank during a training flight.
The young man’s father – a celebrated air force flyer who took part in the raid on Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 – was Israel’s first astronaut. He was killed when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003.
One of the reporters at the funeral looked round the graveyard and saw a continuous thread, not just between the son being laid alongside his dead father, but also with the first Zionists in the area. He called them farmers with guns, two of whom were killed by Arabs 77 years ago.
Many Israelis feel as if they are surrounded by enemies.
That is why, in a country with compulsory military service, it does not feel strange to greet someone at the airport with an inflatable gunship. It is why a reporter can connect the deaths of a young pilot today and those of pioneers in the last century.
The same historical vibrations teach that the Arabs are unremittingly hostile, and that Israelis must always be on their guard. Why else do they need an air force? Why else did Jewish farmers have to carry guns?

Jewish-Arab crime film captures tensions


Where were you? Where were you?,” screams the veiled woman on the screen, before breaking into heaving sobs.
She has already lost one son to drug-related gang violence and the other is late home.
“I was really crying, I wasn’t acting,” says Nisrin Rihan, one of the non-professional actors catapulted into the international limelight by the film Ajami.
Next year, the gritty tale about mafia-style murders will become the first Arabic language film to represent Israel at the Oscars.
Like Ms Rihan, who has lost three relatives to gang crime, most of its actors are locals with first-hand experience of the sprawling, scruffy streets of Ajami, a former slum in the port city of Jaffa.
Impoverished Israeli Arabs shooting one another in the shadow of the gleaming towers of Tel Aviv is far from Israel’s preferred international image.
And the aggressive police and brutal killing of a Jewish character shows a dark underside to the ideal of coexistence sometimes touted in mixed Jewish-Arab areas like Jaffa.
But many Israeli film critics and cinema-goers are nevertheless gushing over the film, shot in an intense, documentary style.
Directed jointly by Yaron Shani, a Jewish Israeli, and Skander Copti, an Israeli Arab born and raised in Ajami, it has so far clocked up the Israeli Ophir and Wolgin prizes, and a special mention in Cannes.
But in Ajami itself, the reaction is mixed.
Revenge is the problem. When someone gets killed it just goes on and on…” says student Awad Katta,19.
“It’s quiet now, but four or five years ago someone was killed every week.”
Like many Israeli-Arab viewers, Mr Katta complains that the film makes scant reference to the poverty and historical oppression which he sees as being behind the violence.
Until the war which led to Israel being founded broke out in 1948, Jaffa was the considered the cultural capital of what was then British Mandate Palestine.
Thousands of its Arab residents fled during the fighting.
Israeli Arabs – people of Palestinian descent living in what is now Israel – lived under martial law for nearly two decades.
Since then they have faced widely documented discrimination.
A young man in Ajami “doesn’t know if he’s Palestinian or Israeli, he’s confused, he doesn’t know what he is, what he wants to do,” says Ms Rihan.
“They don’t know how to express themselves, when they fight the easiest thing is to pull out a gun or a knife.”
“I’m shocked that Jews like the film more than Arabs, even though it shows that we are like this because of them!”, she adds.

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Blog: Afghan protest over ‘burnt Koran’


There have been protests in the Afghan capital, Kabul, over allegations that foreign troops in the country burnt a copy of the Koran.
Hundreds of Kabul University students led the latest protest, burning an effigy of US President Barack Obama.
The US-led Nato force has denied the claims, saying it has investigated the incident in Wardak province and found the allegations to be groundless.
The local authorities there have so far supported Nato.
They say they did find evidence that a Koran had been burnt, but blamed drug addicts and said the Taliban may be spreading rumours that foreign troops were responsible to provoke anti-American unrest.
On Sunday, a crowd estimated in the high hundreds marched through Kabul – chanting “Death to America” – to protest at the alleged desecration of the Islamic holy book earlier this month.
There were some clashes with security forces, and Afghan police fired in the air to scatter the crowd.
But protesters said they would not give up.
“We are demonstrating because American soldiers burned our holy Koran in Wardak province,” said one man. “We will keep going to embarrass the Americans for their actions.”
In this very religious country, any allegation like this has an incendiary affect.
Four years ago, almost 20 people were killed after riots erupted in several Afghan cities following a US news magazine report that the Koran had been desecrated by American interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
The magazine later withdrew its report, but by then the damage had been done.
At the time, many believed growing disenchantment among Afghans with the foreign community and its performance had helped fuel the violence.
Four years on, that record is under even greater scrutiny.

A Short Introduction To Aquarium Cycling Methods


By setting some time aside to proper cycling, your aquarium will be much easier to maintain, since the cycling process aim to produce a thriving population of
beneficial bacteria that will convert harmful waste products into less dangerous compounds. You need two types of beneficial bacteria in your aquarium.

The first type converts ammonia into nitrite, while the other type converts nitrite into nitrate. Ammonia will be produce by the metabolism of your fish and extracted
from the gills and in fish poo. High levels of ammonia are dangerous to fish, but fortunately enough there exist a group of bacteria that can convert ammonia into
nitrite. Nitrite is actually even more toxic than ammonia, but the second group of bacteria will turn the nitrite into nitrate, which is much less toxic. The nitrate
can then be removed by regular water changes.

The beneficial bacteria will of course need to be introduced to the aquarium, and this can be made by simply adding one or two sturdy fishes from species that cope
well even with high levels of soluble waste. Their waste products will contain live bacteria than can start to colonies suitable homes in the aquarium, such as sponge
filters and gravel. If you want to jump start the process, you can purchase a bacterial solution from the fish store that contains the right type of nitrifying
bacteria. You can also use gravel or sponge from an already established aquarium when you set up a new one, but you should keep in mind that this can introduce
benevolent bacteria as well.

When you purchase a bacterial culture form the fish store, you should always carefully read the label and avoid getting nitrobacter bacteria. Earlier, nitrobacter
bacteria was believed to be very powerful converters of nitrite to nitrate, but scientific studies have now showed that nitrospira bacteria are much stronger
converters. Some fish stores still sell nitrobacter bacteria, even though nitrospira bacteria are a better choice.

Another method of cycling the aquarium is the so called ‘fishless cycle’. This cycling method is much less frequently used compared to the one that uses cycling fish,
but it has grown increasingly popular during the last few years. During fishless cycling, you will add small amounts of pure ammonia to the water together with
nitrifying bacteria and wait for them to form large colonies. You will need a test kit to measure the amounts of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. Investing in a test kit
is however a good idea even if you use fish to cycle your aquarium.

A third cycling method uses plants and is commonly referred to as ’silent cycling’. This method requires a densely planted aquarium with thriving plants. You should
therefore avoid sensitive, demanding and slow growing plant species. During the silent cycling, the plants will consume nitrogenous compounds and use them as
nutrition. Aquarists fond of this method like it since it does not produce the ammonia and nitrate spikes that are common during other forms of cycling. You should
keep in mind that when plants absorb nitrogenous compounds they incorporate them leaves and stems. If the plant, or a part of the plant, dies and starts to decay, the
compounds will therefore be re-released into the water. Pruning the aquatic plants and removing any dead parts are therefore important.

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Catch More Bass On Your Next Fishing Trip


Bass fishing can be a rewarding hobby and what better fun could there be than going on a fishing vacation. Exploring a new lake in search of that giant bass can be a
fun and sometimes frustrating time. Here’s some tip on how to get you up to speed when fishing in a new area.

1. first of all you want to research the body of water. You can start by looking at maps or checking out the lake in magazines or websites. Read everything you can
about fishing in that lake, the more you find out about what to use for lures and where the fish are, the better your chances of catching lots of fish.

2. Hiring a fishing guide might be a great idea if you’re new to the area, even if you’re an expert fishermen yourself. You can hire a guide for your first day and he
can show you where the fish are biting at that particular time, then you can strike it out on your own for the rest of vacation. The guide will also be able to tell
you what techniques and lures work in this water.

At the very least, you should try to hang out at that fishing supply store and talked to some the local fishermen or the people that work there to find out where the
hotspots are. They’ll also be able to sell you what kind of lures to use.

3. Even if you’ve gotten plenty of advice on what to use for lures and were to cast, you need to stay flexible. if the fish just aren’t biting you might want to change
wars, waits or move to a different area.

4. No matter what body of water they are in, bass are pretty similar in their habits. They don’t care too much for the open water and like to stay close to logs, trees
or rocks so if you can’t get any other tips these are your best places to cast. Depending on the time of season the weather and the breeding cycle the bass may be more
likely to hang out and certain areas of the lake.

If you’re fishing vacation is in the spring time, and the bass are spawning, there are certain areas in the lake that you want to try fishing and it might be a good
idea to bring a depth finder so that you can see the car tour of the lake.

Staging bass usually can be found in ledges or troughs and even in creek Intersections. These bass will go for a bunch of different baits but your best bet might be
lizards and a pumpkin seed color or artificial worms.

You might try using artificial baits cast parallel to the deep grass. This is where staging bass often hang out. Be sure to your retrieve your beat quickly so it
doesn’t get snagged on the weeds.

a lot of times the bounce will congregate near a point that Is close to the spawning area. These areas should be finished especially if they are as cover an area. Try
spinner baits that are white or chartreuse and color in fish them just under the surface near the shoreline.

No matter what time of year you fishing, rock groupings and docks are always a great place to cast.

Remember not to take your fishing too seriously, after all this is a vacation! Getting out in the sun and fresh air is a great way to spend a day and if you can catch
a couple of fish to then that’s an added bonus!

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