staccato signals of constant information
Fight spam, please, do NOT publish this (above) address --INSTEAD publish a link to this blog, i.e.
"http://lasers-in-the-jungle.blogspot.com"
Possibly 62 million people lost their lives in World War II—about 25 million soldiers and 37 million civilians, with estimates varying widely. This total includes the estimated 12 million lives lost in the Holocaust.
In May 2000, more than 22 years after United Nations Security Counsel Resolution 425 was passed, Israel withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon. Prior to the withdrawal, opposition voices inside Israel were putting high pressure on the Israeli government to withdraw from Lebanon as they saw no valid reason for staying there and having to sustain the Lebanese resistance attacks.
Lebanon had not lived up to its end of the Resolution which called for the Lebanese government to assert its control over the southern region.Lebanon was called on by UN Resolution 1391 of 2002 and urged by UN Resolution 1496 of 2003 to do so.
As a result of Lebanon's inability to assert control of the region, Hezbollah,funded by Iran holds de facto sovereignty over much of South Lebanon.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Associated Press
In the message broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, Ayman al-Zawahiri, second in command to Usama bin Laden, said that Al Qaeda now views "all the world as a battlefield open in front of us."
The Egyptian-born physician said that the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Palestinian militants would not be ended with "cease-fires or agreements."
"It is a Jihad for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq," al-Zawahiri said. "We will attack everywhere." Spain was controlled by Arab Muslims until they were driven from power at the turn of the 16th century.
He also said that Arab regimes were complicit in Israeli fighting against Hezbollah and the Palestinians. "My fellow Muslims, it is obvious that Arab and Islamic governments are not only impotent but also complicit ... and you are alone on the battlefield. Rely on God and fight your enemies ... make yourselves martyrs."
...
In 1947, following increasing levels of violence together with unsuccessful efforts to reconcile the Jewish and Arab populations, the British government decided to withdraw from the Palestine Mandate. The UN General Assembly approved the 1947 UN Partition Plan dividing the territory into two states, with the Jewish area consisting of roughly 55% of the land, and the Arab area roughly 45%. Jerusalem was planned to be an international region administered by the UN to avoid conflict over its status.
Immediately following the adoption of the Partition Plan by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, David Ben-Gurion tentatively accepted the partition, while the Arab League rejected it. Attacks on civilians chiefly by Arabs but also by Israelis soon turned into widespread fighting between Arabs and Jews, this civil war being the first "phase" of the 1948 War of Independence.
The State of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, one day before the expiry of the Palestine Mandate.
Following the State of Israel's establishment, the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq joined the fighting and began the second phase of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. From the north, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, were all but stopped relatively close to the borders. Jordanian forces, invading from the east, captured East Jerusalem and laid siege on the city's west. However, forces of the Haganah successfully stopped most invading forces, and Irgun forces halted Egyptian encroachment from the south. At the beginning of June, the UN declared a one-month cease fire during which the Israel Defense Forces were officially formed. After numerous months of war, a cease fire was declared in 1949 and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were instituted. Israel had gained an additional 26% of the Mandate territory west of the Jordan River. Jordan, for its part, held the large mountainous areas of Judea and Samaria, which became known as the West Bank. Egypt took control of a small strip of land along the coast, which became known as the Gaza Strip.
During and after the war, then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion set about establishing order by dismantling the Palmach and underground organizations like the Irgun and Lehi. Those two groups were classified as terror organizations after the murder of a Swedish diplomat.
Large numbers of the Arab population fled or were driven out of the newly-created Jewish State. (Estimates of the final refugee count range from 600,000 to 900,000 with the official United Nations count at 711,000.) The continuing conflict between Israel and the Arab world resulted in a lasting displacement that persists to this day.
Immigration of Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees from Arab lands doubled Israel's population within a year of independence. Over the following decade approximately 600,000 Mizrahi Jews, who fled or were expelled from surrounding Arab countries and Iran, migrated to Israel.
For someone from Europe driving in the USA probably to most weird thing about traffic laws is the fact that quit often you can cross a red light if you are turning right (and some times if you are turning left).
Unfortunately the exact law varies from state top state and sometimes changes from one part of the state to another.
Also a large collection of traffic signs supersede or, sometimes, reeenforce the generic laws.
(Pink Floyd, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn) - Astronomy Domine
Astronomy Domine
Lime and limpid green, a second scene
A fight between the blue you once knew.
Floating down, the sound resounds
Around the icy waters underground.
Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania.
Neptune, Titan, Stars can frighten.
Lime and limpid green, a second scene
A fight between the blue you once knew.
Floating down, the sound resounds
Around the icy waters underground.
Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania.
Neptune, Titan, Stars can frighten.
Blinding signs flap,
Flicker, flicker, flicker blam. Pow, pow.
Stairway scare Dan dare who's there?
Lime and limpid green, the sounds around
The icy waters under
Lime and limpid green, the sounds around
The icy waters underground.
Syd Barrett (1946-2006)
La mariée mis à nu par ses célibataires, même
"Straylight reminded Case of deserted early morning shopping centers he’d known as a teenager, low-density places where the small hours brought a fitful stillness, a kind of numb expectancy, a tension that left you watching insects swarm around caged bulbs above the entrance of darkened shops. Fringe places, just past the borders of the Sprawl, too far from the all-night click and shudder of the hot core. There was that same sense of being surrounded by the sleeping inhabitants of a waking world he had no interest in visiting or knowing, of dull business temporarily suspended, of futility and repetition soon to wake again.
Molly had slowed now, either knowing that she was nearing her goal or out of concern for her leg. The pain was starting to work its jagged way back through the endorphins, and he wasn’t sure what that meant. She didn’t speak, kept her teeth clenched, and carefully regulated her breathing. She’d passed many things that Case hadn’t understood, but his curiosity was gone.
There had been a room filled with shelves of books, a million flat leaves of yellowing paper pressed between bindings of cloth or leather, the shelves marked at intervals by labels that followed a code of letters and numbers; a crowded gallery where Case had stared, through Molly’s incurious eyes, at a shattered, dust-stenciled sheet of glass, a thing labeled — her gaze had tracked the brass plaque automatically — “La mariee mise a nu par ses celibataires, meme.”
She’d reached out and touched this, her artificial nails clicking against the Lexan sandwich protecting the broken glass. There had been what was obviously the entrance to Tessier-Ashpool’s cryogenic compound, circular doors of black glass trimmed with chrome. She’d seen no one since the two Africans and their cart, and for Case they’d taken on a sort of imaginary life; he pictured them gliding gently through the halls of Straylight, their smooth dark skulls gleaming, nodding, while the one still sang his tired little song. And none of this was anything like the Villa Straylight he would have expected, some cross between Cath’s fairy tale castle and a half-remembered childhood fantasy of the Yakuza’s inner sanctum"
William Gibson, "Neuromancer", 1985
[ In July to October, 2006, I plan a series of posts celebrating the 20th anniversary of the William Gibson "Sprawl Trilogy". This is one of such posts. To find the other posts just search for the link near the upper right corner of any page of this blog. Click HERE for more details ]
links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Large_Glass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Museum_of_Art
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51474.html
Les Constellations Voisines du Pôle, 1961
"Bone and circuit-gold, dead lace, and a dull white marble rolled from clay. Marly shook her head. How could anyone have arranged these bits, this garbage, in such a way that it caught at the heart, snagged in the soul like a fishhook? But then she nodded. It could be done, she knew; it had been done many years ago by a man named Cornell, who’d also made boxes"
William Gibson, "Count Zero", 1986
[ In July to October, 2006 I plan a series of posts celebrating the 20th anniversary of the William Gibson "Sprawl Trilogy". This is one of such posts. To find the other posts just search for the link near the upper right corner of any page of this blog. Click HERE for more details ]
In the mid 80's (last century ) William Gibson wrote a series of books - "Neuromancer", "Count Zero" and "Mona Lisa Overdrive" - they late have become collectively known as the "sprawl trilogy". Some believe the zenith of "cyberpunk".
Another (short stories) book, "Burning Chrome" fits well in the "sprawl trilogy" too, and, by the way, is my favorite.
But what is "the sprawl"? The main (certainly not the only!) location of the trilogy is what the author calls the "Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis" (BAMA) - Aka " ***THE*** sprawl ".
The BAMA does not exist yet. The close we can get is the BosWas Sprawl, a place were we can drive almost 1000 Kms, between Boston and Washington, without leaving a populated area making it - argumentably - the biggest city in the world (55 millions inhabitants?)
The second part of the BAMS (the ChAtlanta) is yet somehow late in its development :-)).
Celebrating the 20th anniversary of "sprawl trilogy" I plan to drive - with a couple of travelling companions - the BosWas Sprawal, with only a couple of the detours (guess where!) and write "my Chronicles from the Sprawl".
Photo 1: The North America West Coast Sprawls (from a VERY recent article of the July 3-10, 2006 issue of "Newsweek").
Photo 2: The BosWash Sprawl (colour=population density)
from: [ http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/s/s0668900.html ]:
SPRAWL
sprawl [ sprôl ]v. sprawled, sprawl·ing, sprawls v. intr.
To sit or lie with the body and limbs spread out awkwardly.
To spread out in a straggling or disordered fashion: untidy tenements sprawling toward the river. v. tr.
To cause to spread out in a straggling or disordered fashion. n.
A sprawling position or posture.
Haphazard growth or extension outward, especially that resulting from real estate development on the outskirts of a city: urban sprawl.
Some OTHER links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BosWash
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson_(novelist)
http://www.antonraubenweiss.com/gibson/gibson1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sprawl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sprawl_trilogy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Zero
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa_Overdrive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberspace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mnemonic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rose_Hotel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rose_Hotel_(1998_movie)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Ferrara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_95
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_1
http://geography.about.com/cs/urbansprawl/a/megalopolis.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highways_along_the_BosWash_corridor
[ In July to October, 2006 I plan a series of posts celebrating the 20th anniversary of the William Gibson "Sprawl Trilogy". This is one of such posts. To find the other posts just search for the link near the upper right corner of any page of this blog ]
