Bydio

You know why people get upset at Israel for acting tough with Palestinian Arabs?  It’s sometimes anti-jew sentiments, but I think most of the time it’s because we expect Israel to act like a western power; like an adult.

Why does no one make a big deal out of Egypt saying this?

CAIRO (AFP) — Egypt said on Thursday it would no longer tolerate Palestinians infiltrating the country from the Gaza Strip, and threatened to break the legs of anyone crossing the Rafah border illegally.

“Anyone who breaches the border will have their legs broken,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit was quoted as saying by the official MENA news agency on public television overnight.

Because Egypt is populated by “children” who just don’t know any better.  Think of a mother making excuses for an embarrassingly petulent child in a supermarket; “he’s just tired”, “he doesn’t know any better”, “I just don’t know what’s got into him today”.

This is how many people treat the actions of thepeople and leaders from Arab, African and Asian worlds.  It becomes an excuse for a child who should know better, but is “acting out” or having a “temper tantrum”.

Y’know what?  I’m sick of these people being treated with kid gloves.  The excuses for behavior, the occasional spanking with loud protests from the other “mothers”, it has to end.  It’s time to man up.  These people aren’t children, they’re adults, and their actions should have real-life consequences.

All you “mothers” out there, you wouldn’t let your husband get away with any of the stuff these supposedly poor, downtrodden brown people do, so shut the fuck up and let daddy take out the trash.

from The Jawa Report

to: news@nature.com

To whom it may concern,

Your interactive Islamic world map* lacks the country of Israel.  It is
lumped together in a group labeled “Occupied Palestinian Territories.” 
Please be more precise with your maps, as it is a proven fact that
Israel does exist and is a shining beacon of science in the Middle East.

Without this prompt correction, I won’t be able to visit your site
because I couldn’t trust the content that is offered to be truthful or
reliable.  Of course I will have to tell others about this lack of
trust, and I’m sure they’ll agree with my lack of trust about your
content after viewing the evidence of your site’s misrepresentation.

Thank you for your time,

*Link to map: http://www.nature.com/news/specials/islamandscience/map/islam-map.html

The response from news@nature.com Chief News and Features Editor, Oliver Morton:

“news@nature.com”
reply-to “news@nature.com”
to byron
date Jul 17, 2007 5:51 AM
subject Nature Publishing Group [Incident: 070716-000649]

Dear correspondent

Thank you for your letter, one of many we have received on this subject.

The state of Israel is clearly marked on the map you refer to, though not named. It is not referred to as Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The number 34, identified as “Occupied Palestinian Territory”, refers to the occupied territories of the West Bank, as its associated line indicates. (The status of Gaza is not addressed, because the scale does not permit it). This territory, like all the numbered and named countries and territories on the map, is represented in green, reflecting membership in the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The map is clearly presented as a representation of the 57 countries of the OIC, of which Israel is not a member.

It is unfortunate that, due to a drafting error in the commercial template from which this graphic was developed, the border between the West Bank and Jordan is not shown on the map, and regrettable that we did not catch this error in our editorial preparation.

I apologise for this error, which I can see does to some extent raise the question of what entity on the map the number “34” refers to. We are publishing a correction and correcting the mistake in our online material. To avoid repeating the error we are revising the template too.

With this correction made, the question of what the 34 refers to becomes obvious; it can only refer to the otherwise unidentified green entity pointed to by the line from the number 34. Given that the convention of the map is that only green entities have numbers, I think the question of the point at which the indicator line ends, which has exercised some of those who have written to us, is immaterial. If it were to continue into the area representing the west Bank the effect of bisecting Israel would be unfortunate.

Some correspondents have suggested that this error is in some way connected with the fact that support for translating some articles in this issue into Arabic was provided by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science. I can assure you that it was not, and that the Foundation had no input into the editorial content of this issue whatsoever.

Yours sincerely

Oliver Morton

—————
Oliver Morton
Chief News and Features Editor
Nature

ABCnews.com

“You know, I’ve heard all the rhetoric — you’ve heard it, too — about
how this is amnesty. Amnesty means that you’ve got to pay a price for
having been here illegally, and this bill does that,” Bush said,
according to the official White House transcript.

You bandwagon bastards, the one president who is absolutely abysmal at giving clear and concise speeches is being called out because he misspoke?  Fuuuuuck you.  It’s like Kerry fucking up the joke about the troops.  It was obvious he was jamming on Bush, but this publicly-condemned golem misspeaks, just as you’d expect him to do, and everyone’s all over him.

Look, my point is there’s plenty to be angry about when it comes to politicians.  Using gaffes as flash points is probably the most ignorant way of pointing out that the people we’ve elected are virtually retarded.  These people can be trounced with actual facts about their actions and policy decisions.  Making a poor turn of phrase into a big deal makes the whistleblowers look like buffoons.

The word “occupation” has been accepted, foolishly, by too many in the
West. It does not adequately describe Israel’s taking possession,
because of its victory in the Six-Day War thrust upon it by Nasser and
a runaway Egyptian military, of Gaza and “the West Bank.” (An aside:
curious, isn’t it, that the topoynms “Judea” and “Samaria,” though they
have been in use all over the Western world since Roman times, and
certainly were used by Jesus and the first Christians, suddenly dropped
out of use, and the vague placename invented by the Jordanians in 1949,
“the West Bank,” was accepted and “Judea” and “Samaria” mocked as
“Biblical names used only by Israel’s right-wing” — yet at the same
time “Gaza,” a Biblical term for which the Egyptians did not find a
replacement, continues to be unembarrassedly used by those in the West
who, having no sense of history or logic, who would not be caught dead
referring to “Judea” and “Samaria”?)

The Israeli “Occupation”