[bias] only one side is considered

"Truth is the first casualty."

We're living in an age of distortion and bias, where the truth is no longer loved. It's just astounding how someone can see a piece of evidence in front of him/her, a fact which no one disputes and just ignores it completely in making the opposite case.

1. Obama was given a clear order by the USSC to produce his vault copy birth certificate by December 1st, 2008, thereby clearing all doubt of his eligibility to be President.

Now that is unequivocal. Produce a document. He didn't. Now what I'm getting here from certain bloggers is, "Do you know more than the Supreme Court?" "Obama was democratically elected" and so on. No one is talking about that or arguing it. It has nothing to do with addressing the issue. We're arguing the statement in italics and it has not been addressed. That puts him in defiance of the judiciary.

2. Hamas has been constantly firing rockets at Israel for a considerable time.

In any global interpretation of such an act, if you fire rockets into someone else's country and you are the government, you are declaring war. Analogy - your neighbour across the road starts lobbing footballs at your house. Do you ignore it or do you consider that an act of aggression which requires a response?

Now anyone who sees these two things and who is basically sentient and able to speak and read the English language knows that these two statements have not been denied. They happened.

"But me no buts."

All the "buts" need to be addressed, yes. The whole scenario has to be seen in context, yes. But none of these "buts" negate the basic premises in 1 and 2. That is, they need to be addressed before the discussion can go any further.

So, to return to the start, it is astounding how these can just be blindly ignored by supposedly educated peole.

[ultimate cynicism] the man has that elite gall

The public needs to display the same spirit as during the second world war and "rise to the challenge" of the crisis, the Prime Minister is to insist.

How dare he make reference to a time of honour and attempt to press it to his own purposes.

There is taking the p--s out of the country through policies which produce what we have today. It's another stage in cynicism altogether to have the nerve to say that it's jolly good stuff which will test out the character of the people he disdains.

I'd venture to suggest that if he were to walk down any High Street, he might not make it to the other end.

[which camera] nikon delivers the traditional

When you don't have much disposable income but were involved in semi-professional photography and processing for years, then there's a bit of a dilemma.

The simplest solution is to get a little point and shoot for around £100 and accept that you're only going to have a basic recording of an event. It's not photography per se but it is what it is and fulfils a function.

Now if you're at the opposite end and really appreciate fine photos, [this being in the eye and experience of the beholder], then it's probably best to hold off until you can set aside the £900-1000 and do it properly. The first principle here is that you must have manual compositional ability on the camera and the ability to change lenses.

For that reason, the Nikon D60 seems as compromising as you'd be prepared to go - this was particularly encouraging:

If you have leftover lenses from Nikon SLR cameras or just want to get a lens that is better or cheaper than the one supplied in a kit, you can get a Nikon D60 body only. But keep in mind that unlike other digital and film SLR cameras from Nikon, the D60 (and D40 or D40x for that matter) do not support focusing if the lens does not have its own motor. In other words, with D60 or D40/D40x, you will either have to focus older-style lenses yourself or use newer focus motor-equipped lenses.

I've always preferred to carry around my own lenses and filters and so this solution seems the best compromise. A 400mm telephoto is an absolute essential, as far as I can see, along with, say, a 120-180mm zoom for medium work and the standard 18-55mm for close in stuff.

You might disagree but I can't see the point of the middle route of Canons, Minoltas and so on with their auto-everything and restricted lens and aperture settings, despite their ease of use. Ease of use does not seem the main criterion in photography. You'll fork out up to £700 but for an extra few hundred, you can have the state of the art for base SLRs.

Just an opinion.

Here are some compatible lenses, motor driven.

[palestine] just the facts please 2

To start with, the Arab peace initiative, on the surface, looks good:

• The principle of Land for peace.
• The conviction of the Arab countries that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties.

The goals of the initiative:

• Full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967
• Implementation of United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.
• The establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital
• A just solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem, to be agreed upon in accordance with section 11 of UN General Assembly Resolution 194.
• The normalization of relations in the context of a comprehensive peace

The stumbling block is Jewish withdrawal from East Jerusalem. This is clearly a ridiculous demand and the Arabs know full well that it could not promote peace, despite the rhetoric:

East Jerusalem refers to the part of Jerusalem captured by Jordan in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and subsequently by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. It includes Jerusalem's Old City and some of the holiest sites of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, such as the Temple Mount, Western Wall, Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

You can not realistically expect Jews, Muslims or Christians to withdraw from this vital piece of real estate and on this little piece of the world hangs issues reverberating throughout the old world. Note that in this, there is no Israeli proposal and yet the Jewish side has agreed, in principle, to all but the East Jerusalem question, providing the terrorism stops.

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 gave a more just solution in that Jerusalem as a whole would be internationally administered territory, ensuring equal rights, each to its own holy areas and any solution not including this part of the resolution is going to be doomed from its inception. Israel and the Palestinian State would be so placed that they would have direct access from their own territory to Jerusalem, something which Proposal 181 did not solve.

One other aspect would need to be an internationally administered corridor between Gaza and the West Bank. Though it would cut Israel in two, there would be another broad corridor between south and north, over or under the east-west Palestinian one, maybe in the nature of road underpasses and overpasses. The two need never clash.

Land for peace [Wiki article]

The Gaza 'test case' is argued by some to show the failure of the "Land for Peace" strategy with the Palestinians:

Rockets launched against Israeli targets continued almost immediately after the Israeli withdrawal and have increased in the time since^[1].

The attacks from the Gaza Strip are continuing today^[2]

The area is now being used to smuggle weapons into Israel^[3]

Tunnels are being built under the border for use in the smuggling of weapons and fighters^[4]

Is presumed that Hamas is the main organization behind the smuggling and tunnels, though other groups are likely involved as well^[5]

Stop the rockets and international pressure will then be on Israel to allow more realistic, international proposals for the corridor issue.

So there is one solution for peace, if all sides are genuine in desiring it and are not hell bent on wiping the other off the map. To us, in far flung lands, this might seem like just a Sunday morning academic exercise but I'd suggest that in its solution lies the future peace of the world and avoidance of an Armageddon.

[palestine] just the facts please

This blog doesn't usually print slabs of text from Wiki but today it will. I've been reading both Arab and Jewish source material on Palestine and the only conclusion is that there is no agreement on the history.

Leaving to one side for now everyone's atrocities and quite frankly callous behaviour, there seems to have been been about two thirds Arab population around 1947 and about one third Jewish.

Both should have had a homeland there. However:

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly, with a two-thirds majority international vote, passed the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181), a plan to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict by partitioning the territory into separate Jewish and Arab states, with the Greater Jerusalem area (encompassing Bethlehem) coming under international control.

Jewish leaders (including the Jewish Agency), accepted their portion of the plan, while Palestinian Arab leaders rejected it and refused to negotiate. Neighboring Arab and Muslim states also rejected the partition plan. The Arab community reacted violently after the Arab Higher Committee declared a strike and burned many buildings and shops.

In a speech delivered on 25 March 1948, US President Truman recommended a temporary trusteeship and stated: We could not undertake to impose this solution on the people of Palestine by the use of American troops, both on Charter grounds and as a matter of national policy.[132]

As armed skirmishes between Arab and Jewish paramilitary forces in Palestine continued, the British mandate ended on May 15, 1948, the establishment of the State of Israel having been proclaimed the day before (see Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel).

The neighboring Arab states and armies (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Transjordan, Holy War Army, Arab Liberation Army, and local Arabs) immediately attacked Israel following its declaration of independence, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War ensued. Consequently, the partition plan was never implemented.

What I'm interested in is not the rights and wrongs but whether the above quote is factually accurate.

[no reason] just nice memories