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Reporting on the Middle East, Science, and Education for December 29, 2007 - כ' טבת תשס"ח
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Richard on Hamas Occupies Palestinian Lands.
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by Asher Zelig Fried, Arutz Sheva, December 28, 2007
See Also: Jew Visits Bethlehem
See Also: No Jews in Judea
Israel stands accused of conducting a brutal military occupation of Arab lands inhabited by an indigenous, peace-seeking Arab population. Repeatedly, in newscasts and the press, Israel is characterized as harshly subjugating another people. These accusations are dangerous, a pervasive lie, and an existential threat to Israel. They are a classic manifestation of a much utilized propaganda tactic known as “The Big Lie.”
Accusations resulting from this falsehood exceed all bounds of truth and continue relentlessly. Incredibly, many are now accepted as “articles of faith” by increasing numbers of those who heretofore viewed Israel favorably. These accusations have become the common ground that transforms casual supporters of Israel into vocal Israel-bashers, and the glue that today binds every manner of Israel’s enemies.
Israel’s “occupation” of the disputed areas began subsequent to its 1967 victory in the Six Day War, when Jewish settlement of Judea and Samaria began in earnest. Initial Arab reactions were positive, as working relationships were maintained between Jewish communities and their Arab neighbors. Jews would regularly visit Arab towns and employ local townspeople. The Arab standard of living improved significantly as its per capita income increased exponentially. Local roads were modernized, water supplies increased, electricity and telephone communications were developed, and a new tourism industry flourished. With rare exception, there were no road-blocks, lock-downs, or curfews, as Arabs worked and shopped in Haifa and Tel Aviv, and Jews shopped in Ramallah and in local Arab villages.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on December 29, 2007 - כ' טבת תשס"ח at 8:38 pm
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By Ted Belman, Israpundit, December 28, 2007
See Also: Satire on LA Times Bias
The LA Times continues with its pro-Palestinian advocacy and it’s misinformation. It recently published Will peace cost me my home? by Ghada Ageel who is a self professed “third-generation Palestinian refugee”. There are tens of millions of third generation refugees all over the world who neither claim a right of return nor would they ever claim to describe themselves that way. They and their parents have gotten on with their lives.
She demands that “Any Mideast pact must give Palestinians the right to return home.”
War always creates refugees who have similar stories to tell. Nothing unusual there but the war was started by her people and they are to blame for her grandparents tragedy.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on December 28, 2007 - י"ט טבת תשס"ח at 12:57 pm
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Press Release from www.nili-mideastpeace.org , December 27, 2007
In the Spirit of the Recent Holidays and Hopes Raised by the Annapolis Conference Religious Leaders Call For Determined U.S. Leadership for Mideast Peace in 2008
In the spirit of Hannukhah, Christmas and Eid al Adha and in light of renewed hopes generated by the Annapolis conference, religious leaders of the unprecedented National Interreligious Leadership Initiative (NILI) are calling for active, determined leadership by Secretary of State Rice and President Bush in 2008 to help Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations succeed. NILI leaders include H.E. Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, Rabbi David Saperstein, Bishop Mark Hanson, Dr. Sayyid Syeed, David Neff, and heads of twenty-five national organizations. NILI is urging public support, including Congressional support, to achieve the following results. (Full statement at: http://nili-mideastpeace.org/advocacy.html.)
Consistent with the Road Map, the United States should press urgently for reciprocal steps by Israel and the Palestinian Authority to improve conditions on the ground and restore hope that a peace agreement is possible. Steps should include a comprehensive ceasefire; the Palestinian Authority developing effective coordinated security, ending illegal arms shipments and militias; and Israel freezing expansion of settlements, releasing Palestinian prisoners, and easing movement for Palestinians. Public monitoring of these steps is essential.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Christianity, Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, Recent Posts on December 27, 2007 - י"ח טבת תשס"ח at 6:01 pm
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From HealthNewsDigest.com, Dec 24, 2007
Top Five Women’s Health Stories of 2007 as Selected by the Society for Women’s Health Research
(HealthNewsDigest.com) - WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Society for Women’s Health Research announced its top five women’s health stories of 2007 today. The list covers advances of particular interest to women and new sex-specific treatments.
“The medical news in 2007 show how important it is that researchers continue to focus on women’s health and sex differences,” said Phyllis Greenberger, M.S.W, president and CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research, a Washington, D.C., based advocacy organization. “We applaud the Gynecologic Cancer Foundation for forging a national consensus on ovarian cancer symptoms. And we commend cardiologists working to answer questions about sex differences in heart disease. We look forward to more advances in 2008.”
The top women’s health stories of 2007 as determined by the Society for Women’s Health Research are:
1. First Consensus on Ovarian Cancer Symptoms
The Gynecologic Cancer Foundation (GCF) announced in June the first national consensus on ovarian cancer symptoms. Ovarian cancer has been long considered a silent killer because of the perceived lack of warning signs. According to GCF, ovarian cancer is the fifth deadliest cancer among U.S. women killing 15,000 annually. There is a 90 percent cure rate when women are diagnosed in Stage I of the disease. The announcement and promotion of the consensus statement should lead to earlier diagnosis and earlier intervention for many women.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Recent Posts, Women's Health on December 25, 2007 - ט"ז טבת תשס"ח at 6:19 pm
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Christian Persecution in the Middle East.
By Nina Shea, National Review Online, December 24, 2007
In the two millennia since the child’s birth in a humble manger in Bethlehem, the good news of Christianity has spread to every continent, inspiring more followers than any other religion today. But the lands that once were the cradle of Christianity have turned distinctively inhospitable to the faith. Fiercely intolerant variants of Islam are taking hold in the region, many of them fueled with ideology and funds from Saudi and Iranian extremists.
From Morocco to the Persian Gulf, we are seeing the rapid erosion of Christian populations, thought to now number no more than 15 million. These are the communities that have disproportionately been the region’s modernizers, the mediators bridging east and west, its educators and academics, as the Lebanese Catholic scholar Habib Malik observes. For empirical evidence he has to look no further than his own father, a principal drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The loss of Middle Eastern Christianity has profound meaning for the Church. But it should not be a matter of concern to Christians only. These Christian communities, along with a handful of other non-Muslim minority groups, such as the Bahais, Mandeans, Yizidis, Jews, together with the anti-Islamist Muslims, are the front-line in the terrible worldwide struggle taking place today between Islamist totalitarianism and individual rights and freedoms. The extinction of these ancient church communities will lead to ever more extremism within the region and polarization from the non-Muslim world. This will hurt us all.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Christianity, Islam, Monotheistic Religions, Recent Posts on December 25, 2007 - ט"ז טבת תשס"ח at 12:01 pm
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“I have nine sons, seven daughters, and two wives. Life has become so hard. I’m thinking of selling the half `dunam’ of land I own, if I want to continue in this business, because these days, everything here depends on how much cash you have, as no one can give you anything on credit any more.”
See Also: Broken Record Response
BEIT LAHIYA, NORTHERN GAZA, 25 December 2007 (IRIN) - Sanctions imposed in the Gaza Strip in recent years, which reached a peak of severity following the Hamas takeover of the impoverished enclave in June, meant farmers could not export their goods, whilst on the domestic market prices plummeted because of over-supply.
Forty-one-year-old Hekmat Abu Halima from Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza tells his story:
“I planted 35 `dunams’ [a `dunam’ is 1,000 square metres or 0.1 hectares] of land with potatoes on 1 September. This cost me 150,000 shekels [about US$37,500], as I must also pay rent for each `dunam’ of 300 Jordanian dinars [about $420] a year, in addition to the costs for fertiliser, diesel and fees for the workers.
“In early December, I reaped the potatoes and sold the produce locally. I then handed the land over, back to its owner, and decided not to plant again in the January season because I do not have enough money.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on December 25, 2007 - ט"ז טבת תשס"ח at 9:10 am
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See Also: Visiting Bethlehem
See Also: Peace on Earth
By Ana and Angela Barrios, The Manila Times, December 24, 2007
“The presence of the singers, orchestra and soloists transcends the differences existing among peoples of the world, and unites us in friendship and hope in this deeply symbolic season.”
Israel and holy sites in the West Bank are experiencing a renewed surge of tourism this year—a lot them Christian pilgrims braving the terrorist threats that always hover above Bethlehem.
Some of the pilgrims are Overseas Filipino Workers from Europe and the Arab countries.
Bethlehem is where the Church of Nativity is located and the place where, Christians believe, Jesus was born, prepared for the Christmas influx. The town’s mayor, Victor Batarseh, expects the total of tourists this Christmas to reach 65,000. This is approximately four times the number that came in Christmas 2005.
On Tuesday (December 18) in Jerusalem, the Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism Shaul Tzemach, said 500,000 Christian tourists have so far in 2007 made a pilgrimage to Israel and 340,000 tourists traveled to Bethlehem. Israel proudly claims that since its creation, Israel has provided freedom of religion for Christians, as well as for Muslims, Jews and other faiths that have holy sites in the country.
For the 2007 Christmas season, the Ministry of Tourism along with the Israeli Police and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have coordinated their efforts with the Palestinian Ministry for Tourism as well as Palestinian organizations in the private sector to ensure the safe passage of Christian pilgrims from Jerusalem into Bethlehem.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Christianity, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, Recent Posts on December 24, 2007 - ט"ו טבת תשס"ח at 9:37 pm
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From Sue Watson,
Your Guide to Special Education.
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When you think about it, learning to read involves many tasks. I’ve listed 10 things that come to mind that a child must do in order to read.
1. The child must hear and be able to recognize the sounds that are spoken and determine the differences between the sounds. This is often referred to as the auditory perception and the auditory processing.
2. The child will need to recognize the different sizes, shapes, position and form of the 26 letters.
3. The child will need to have a sense of directionality and hold the book with the cover first and the opening pages to the right. Directionality is also needed to read from left to right and from top to bottom.
4. The child will need to remember the sequence of the sounds and the syllables in the correct order. Notice how some children will pronounce spaghetti as bisghetti.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Special Education on December 24, 2007 - ט"ו טבת תשס"ח at 3:04 pm
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By Earth Talk, Dec 22, 2007
(HealthNewsDigest.com) - There’s never been a more urgent time to reduce your carbon footprint. With the U.S. government still opting out of mandatory emissions cuts, it’s up to every individual, business owner and city or state government to take steps. So here are 10 ways to get you started in the new year:
(1) Step-up Recycling and Composting. Recycling prevents carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by saving the energy it takes to make products from new materials and by saving the energy it takes to incinerate or landfill what we discard. And composting food scraps turns organic material back into fertile soil, which itself is an efficient carbon “sink.” To get started, see: www.earth911.org and www.howtocompost.org.
(2) Stay close or stay put: About half the CO2 we generate comes from our car trips, so walk, bike or take mass transit instead. Air travel also produces huge amounts of CO2, so the less you fly, the smaller your carbon footprint. See: www.culturechange.org.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Science on December 22, 2007 - י"ג טבת תשס"ח at 7:04 pm
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The 48 million year old ungulate Indohyus from India. Indohyus is a close relative of whales, and the structure of its bones and chemistry of its teeth indicate that it spent much time in water. In this reconstruction, it is seen diving in a stream, much like the modern African Mousedeer does when in danger. Reconstruction by Carl Buell. (Credit: Image courtesy of Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy)
ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2007) — Hans Thewissen, Ph.D., Professor of the Department of Anatomy, Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM), has announced the discovery of the missing link between whales and their four-footed ancestors.
Scientists since Darwin have known that whales are mammals whose ancestors walked on land, and in the past 15 years, researchers led by Dr. Thewissen have identified a series of intermediate fossils documenting whale’s dramatic evolutionary transition from land to sea. But one step was missing: The identity of the land ancestors of whales.
Now Dr. Thewissen and colleagues discovered of the skeleton of Indohyus, an approximately 48-million-year-old even-toed ungulate from the Kashmir region of India, as the closest known fossil relative of whales. Dr. Thewissen’s team studied a layer of mudstone with hundreds of bones of Indohyus, a fox-sized mammal that looked something like a miniature deer.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Evolutionary Biology, Science on December 21, 2007 - י"ב טבת תשס"ח at 4:52 pm
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