Married to Another Man
Israel´s Dilemma in Palestine
Two rabbis, visiting Palestine in 1897,observed that the land was like a bride,"beautiful,but married to another man". By which they meant that, if a place was to be found for Israel in Palestine, where would the people of Palestine go? This is a dilemma that Israel has never been able to resolve.

No conflict today is more dangerous than that between Israel and the Palestinians. The implications it has for regional and global security cannot be overstated. The peace process as we know it is dead and no solution is in sight. Nor, as this book argues, will that change until everyone involved in finding a solution accepts the real causes of conflict, and its consequences on the ground.

Leading writer Ghada Karmi explains in fascinating detail the difficulties Israel´s existence created for the Arab world and why the search for a solution has been so elusive. Ultimately,she argues that the conflict will end only once the needs of both Arabs and Israelis are accommodated equally. Her startling conclusions overturn conventional thinking---but they are hard to refute.

Ghada Karmi is one of the world´s most renowned commentators on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a well-known figure on British radio and TV. Born in Jerusalem, she was forced to leave as a child in 1948 and grew up in Britain where she became a physician, academic and writer. Currently, Karmi is a research fellow and lecturer at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. She is the author of several books, including her most recent, widely acclaimed memoir, In Search of Fatima.
by Palest. author Ghada Karmi
*********************************************************

The problem in the Middle East is not Iraq as they want you to believe - it is Israel, and Israels war against the Palestinian people. It is the tragedy of Palestine, still unresolved, that is the real issue...

They say they are looking for weapons of mass destruction. To them we say look in Israel!

Bush and Blair say they are punishing Iraq for breaching United Nations resolutions, to them we say what about Israel?

Bush and Blair say Iraq has possible links with international terrorism. To them we say go to Israel to see actual state terrorism.

Bush has a list of rogue states that he wants to tackle, but he´s missed out the one rogue state which occupies other peoples land and has weapons of mass destruction - Israel!

In the old city of Ankara, Huseyin Kaya and Baki Alkan make a living of tin plating, a dying profession in Turkey. Copper utensils are traditionally plated with tin, a non-toxic metal, to assure food safety.

Excellent photos !!!!
http://pozometre.blogspot.com/2008/05/turkish-tin-platers-for-video-click.html

Division of Epidemiology, American Health Foundation, New York, NY 10017.

A hospital-based, case-control study of 235 male patients with laryngeal cancer and 205 male control patients was conducted to determine the effects of exposure to diesel engine exhaust and diesel fumes and the risk of laryngeal cancer. All patients were interviewed directly in the hospital with a standardized questionnaire that gathered information on smoking habits, alcohol consumption, employment history, and occupational exposures. Occupations that involve substantial exposure to diesel engine exhaust include mainly truck drivers, as well as mine workers, firefighters, and railroad workers. The odds ratio for laryngeal cancer associated with these occupations was 0.96 (95% confidence interval, 0.5 to 1.8). The odds ratio for self-reported exposure to diesel exhaust was 1.47 (95% confidence interval, 0.5 to 4.1). An elevated risk was found for self-reported exposure to diesel fumes (odds ratio, 6.4; 95% confidence interval, 1.8 to 22.6). No association was observed between jobs that entail exposure to diesel fumes, such as automobile mechanics, and the risk of laryngeal cancer. These results show that diesel engine exhaust is unrelated to laryngeal cancer risk. The different findings for self-reported diesel fumes and occupations that involve exposure to diesel fumes could reflect a recall bias.

PMID: 7870446 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Here in the USA, those toxic sprays have made my daughter ill. One example read about San Francisco
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/06/MN69VD309.DTL


Believe it or not: ALL DIESEL trucks and busses are still allowed.

Deadly Diesel Fumes
Published Feb. 24, 2005

The deadly effects of breathing diesel fumes came into sharp focus this week when the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) released a report[1] estimating that diesel fumes kill about 21,000 U.S. citizens each year.

Furthermore, diesel fumes cause 27,000 nonfatal heart attacks and 410,000 asthma attacks in U.S. adults each year, plus roughly 12,000 cases of chronic bronchitis, 15,000 hospital admissions, 2.4 million lost-work days, and 14 million restricted activity days.

And that is almost certainly not the worst of it. The Clean Air Task Force report cites numerous studies revealing that diesel soot:

Degrades the immune system (the system that protects us all from bacteria, viruses and cancers);
Interferes with our hormones, reducing sperm production, masculinizing female rats, altering the development of baby rats (changing their bones, thymus, and nervous systems), modifying their adrenal and reproductive hormones;
Causes serious, permanent impairment of the nervous system in diesel-exposed railroad workers;
Induces allergic reactions, not limited to asthma, causing children to miss thousands upon thousands of school-days — a primary cause of school dropout, consequent low self-esteem, and subsequent life- failure.
The new report is based on the most recent available data from the federal EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) combined with EPA risk models, with calculations carried out by Abt Associates, a consulting firm that frequently performs contract studies for the EPA.[2]

The key findings of the report should come as no surprise. The dangers of breathing diesel fumes have been known for at least two decades.

More than 20 years ago, numerous researchers confirmed and reconfirmed that they could cause lung cancer in laboratory animals breathing air laced with diesel fumes.

To anyone taking a precautionary approach, this confirmed knowledge of diesel´s ill effects on animals would have jump-started a search for alternative ways to power on-road and off-road machines, to phase out diesel in an orderly step-wise fashion.

But the National Academy of Sciences did not take a precautionary approach. The New York Times reported Dec. 23, 1981, that the Academy acknowledged that diesel soot is known to contain suspected cancer- causing substances. But the Academy said, "no convincing epidemiological evidence exists" that there is "a connection between diesel fumes and human cancer." In other words, let´s not act on the animal evidence -- let´s hunker down and wait until we can line up the dead humans. This is the risk-based approach to public health. It is the opposite of a precautionary approach.

Twenty years ago, in the spring of 1985, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) issued a scientific report about the dangers of diesel fumes in New York. The New York Times reported May 18, 1985: "Diesel emissions are probably the single most important air-quality threat in New York City today," said Eric A. Goldstein, a lawyer for the environmental group and an author of the report. "But city, state and Federal agencies have not yet mounted a broad-based counterattack."

The Times reported then that a spokesperson for the New York State Environmental Conservation Department acknowledged that diesel fumes cause lung cancer in humans but, he said, the state was "not yet sure"

how big the problem was. The state had no plan for dealing with diesel because "we have not identified the extent of the problem," he said.

This is a classic example of the risk-based approach. Ignore the evidence so long as it is not 100% airtight. Use uncertainty as an excuse to delay. Wait for the dead bodies to pile up, then slowly acknowledge the need for action.

By 1985, there was no doubt that dead bodies were piling up. But the exact number of corpses remained uncertain, so the risk-based approach allowed "business as usual" to continue.

From a precautionary perspective, knowing that a technology causes lung cancer, and knowing that hundreds of millions of people are exposed to it, just naturally kicks off a search for less-harmful alternatives. But no one in 1985 was taking a precautionary approach.

In 1988 the federal government´s Robert A. Taft Laboratory in Cincinnati published NIOSH report 88-116, officially confirming that exposure to diesel fumes causes lung cancer in humans.

At this point the precautionary principle would insist that a search for alternatives begin. Other fuels? Other kinds of engines? Filters for trapping the fumes and soot? Innovative modes of transportation for moving goods and people? Other ways of planning city growth, to reduce reliance on trucks and buses? Electrified steel-rail mass transit? Maglev trains? Hydrogen? Steam? Compressed air? The alternatives are many.

A precautionary approach would focus attention on eliminating the problem rather than arguing over the exact body count. Is a diesel- free world possible? Working backward from the vision of a diesel-free world, what steps could we be taking today to achieve the vision? That is the essence of a precautionary approach.

But the risk-based approach serves the purposes of "business as usual," and therefore has the backing of powerful special interests.

So long as the exact size of the problem is uncertain, risk assessors can always call for delay and more study. And, since scientists-for- hire can always reinterpret old data to cast doubt on the nature of the problem, action can be stalled for decades. This is in fact what has happened with diesel.

On May 2, 1995 the New York Times reported that researchers were casting new doubts on the evidence that diesel fumes cause cancer in humans. They acknowledged that diesel soot might endanger people by aggravating conditions like asthma, chronic bronchitis and cystic fibrosis, but lung cancer? Probably not, they said.

The Times reported then, "Studies in humans found that those with an occupational exposure to diesel smoke had lung cancer rates 20 to 50 percent higher than other workers, but none of the studies were precise about the level of exposures...." so the studies could not be relied upon to tell us the true cancer danger among the general public in places like New York City and Los Angeles.

Doubt is a powerful helpmate when your goal is to maintain "business as usual." The risk-based approach waits for the holy grail of scientific certainty to emerge from the data -- until then, just keep on truckin´.

So now in 2005 we awake to learn that we have a public health disaster on our hands, with at estimated 21,000 deaths each year caused by diesel fumes, and more than 100 times that number made sick.

It is time to engage in an urgent search for a way out of this diesel disaster. Every college and university that receives any public funds (including tax exemptions for private institutions) could to commit to doing something to solve this problem, engaging in a coordinated effort to figure out how to make the U.S. "diesel-free or darn near" within 15 years. Given that we have "risk assessed" our way into this problem, we could refuse to wait for further study to determine the exact placement of the decimal point. We could take precautionary action now, aiming to ELIMINATE this problem.

But precaution is not (yet) fashionable. Risk-assessment is. So, for example, in our home state of New Jersey (which likes to think of itself as environmentally progressive), the state´s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has set a goal of reducing diesel emissions by 20% over the next eight or nine years -- during which time an additional 7 or 8 thousand citizens of New Jersey will have been killed by diesel fumes with many times that number made sick.

But a recent study revealed that truck traffic in New Jersey is likely to increase 80 percent (!) in the next 15 years,[3] so the DEP´s plan seems unlikely to make any real headway against the diesel deathtrap.

Their goal is too timid.

Something much larger is needed. Something bold, innovative, aggressive and comprehensive. Something commensurate with the size and urgency of the diesel menace.

Every state´s colleges and universities that receive public subsidies could focus enormous resources on this problem, to find solutions as quickly as is humanly possible.

Diesel presents a conundrum for urban designers and planners, and for those with urban transportation know-how. It is a complex engineering problem, fraught with fundamental questions in several hard sciences.

It is an environmental problem, a medical/biological problem, a legal problem, and a management problem. It is an enormous public health problem. It is a problem of public administration and good government.

It is, above all else, an ethical problem, a problem of fairness and justice -- those most harmed are those least able to defend themselves, children of the urban poor. Philosophers, economists, sociologists, psychologists, historians, writers, and all the humanistic disciplines (arts, dance, theater, literature, film, and music) could make important, unique contributions. Knowledge and skills from business, labor, and decision-making are needed. Every discipline could contribute because this diesel poses a fundamental question for a self-governing people. In the original conception of this country, how was democracy supposed to work? Who is supposed to decide?

Because the diesel industry involves huge sums, diesel presents us with a fundamental problem of democratic self-rule. Despite mounting evidence of widespread harm, diesel has been maintained all these years by corporations and their trade associations and lobbyists -- from Detroit and Houston to Washington and in every statehouse -- who have run roughshod over the needs and interests of the American people for the last half-century, a tiny few who wield life-and-death power over the many -- harnessing governments to employ their risk-based approach to deflect and stymie the search for least harmful alternatives. (To learn more about this appalling story of corporate crime against the people of the U.S., see Rachel´s #439 at www.rachel.org, and see the video, "Taken for a Ride," which tells the story of a proven conspiracy between General Motors, Firestone Rubber, and Standard Oil of California to buy up and destroy the streetcar systems of 80 U.S. cities and replace them with diesel buses).[4]

At bottom, the diesel problem forces us to ask, What does our democracy really mean? How can a tiny minority of powerful people keep the multitudes locked into this deadly dead-end technology decade after decade? Surely, another world is possible. The publicly- subsidized institutions of higher learning in every state could help us all visualize and then realize that better world.

The taxpayers of each state would feel well-served by a university system that would mount a coordinated effort to solve complex and pressing public problems, to help us preserve and enhance the common wealth, like clean air and our right to breathe it.

Suddenly every state´s very substantial brain trust within higher education would take on new relevance to the lives of the taxpaying public, and it would be appreciated and rewarded for its efforts. As a result, educational funding would naturally rise -- a win-win for higher education and for the citizenry.

In the process, the nation´s colleges and universities could gain experience working together to solve other deep problems facing us all. With close guidance from citizens, they could develop a public- interest research agenda and a modern capacity for precautionary problem-solving. With such an effort, the U.S. might actually reverse 40 years of environmental destruction and urban deterioration and finally turn the corner. That´s the diesel opportunity.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41G2DWZG4XL._SL500_AA240_.jpg



http://keetsa.com/blog/category/news/page/2/

The director was born Elia Kazanjoglou in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1909. In 1913 his family, Anatolian Greeks, emigrated to the US and settled in New York City, where Kazan’s father became a rug merchant. The future filmmaker graduated from Williams College and went on to study drama at Yale. He joined the left-leaning Group Theatre as an actor and assistant stage manager. The Group, led for much of the 1930s by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg, was one of the focal points of artistic life, and, inevitably, radical thought and activity, in New York City during the Depression years. It attracted actors and directors, as well as a variety of writers, including Clifford Odets.


In America America (1963), Kazan told the story of his uncle’s emigration from Turkey to the US at the turn of the century. For all its pain and pathos this treatment of the immigrant’s dream of passage to the new world is markedly uncritical. That the story stops and starts a dozen times, gets sidetracked, loses its way, befits a film that cannot make up its mind what it wants to say about its hero or his new country.

The Crusaders followed south, and attacked the Tower of Galata, which held one end of the chain that blocked access to the Golden Horn. As they laid siege to the Tower, the Greeks counterattacked with some initial success. However, when the Crusaders rallied and the Greeks retreated to the Tower, the Crusaders were able to follow the soldiers through the Gate, and the Tower surrendered. The Golden Horn now lay open to the Crusaders, and the Venetian fleet entered.

http://www.boglewood.com/murano/constantinople.gif

http://www.geocities.com/egfrothos/Betrayal.jpg

Bursa, the fourth most densely populated province in Turkey, is important to the national economy for agricultural and industrial production. During the past two decades, substantial migration into the region has increased drastically the risk of soil degradation. Urbanization and industrial development in the province have mainly occurred on soil types with land capability Class 1 and 2 and produce large amounts of nonbiodegradable urban and industrial waste, much of which is disposed of in the Nilufer River, the Ayvali Canal, and on agricultural land. Regulation of effluent quality disposed of to surface waters has been limited, so it was decided to conduct a preliminary survey of selected potentially toxic element (PTE) concentrations in agricultural soils and the PTEs in irrigation waters in the area to determine what potential pollution and health risk may exist. The pH and concentrations of calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and heavy metals were determined in water samples from along the Nilufer River, above and below the industrialized area, and one of its tributaries, the Ayvali Canal. The results indicated considerable pollution from industry and city sewage in the surface waters, which are used directly by local farmers for irrigation of adjacent fields. Total heavy metal contents of the Fluvisols and Vertisols showed that these agricultural soils were polluted with iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), cadmium (Cd), cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), and lead (Pb). The DTPA-extractable Cd, Cu, Fe, Mn, and Zn concentrations in irrigated Fluvisols and Vertisols indicated that the practice caused the accumulation of the Cd and Cu in the upper parts of the soil profiles. In the longer term, irrigation of the soils with the polluted waters may damage soil, crop, and human health.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a714011075~db=all~order=page

what happenes to people during prayer time in the Camii whose cell phones start ringing, will they be fined?

Or polluting the air??

Environmental Concerns in Turkey!!!!! I could hardly breath in the city of Bursa!! What an experience.


Ships sailing in Turkish waters, especially through the straits of Istanbul and the Dardanelles, are controlled for oil spills and waste dumping. A Spanish ship sank in Iskendrun Bay. It is claimed that it had chemical waste harmful to the environment and sea life. So many protests and demonstrations were widely held by different orgainizations so that funds were allocated to remove the ship and its load.

Turkish Daily News on OBAMA´s visit to Berlin

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=110908

The seabuses and ferries arriving at the Princes´ Islands piers this summer remind me of the old circus cars disgorging 1,000 clowns. Once the gangplank is down, there seems to be an endless stream of disembarking visitors.

These islands, inhabited for some 2,000 years, have had their ups and downs. This year, the day-tripper trend is definitely up. But that doesn´t constitute a “renaissance.” Less visible, but with more lasting impact, is Istanbullus´ rediscovery of the islands as a place to live.Only for monasteries and imperial exiles in the Byzantine era, and pretty much ignored through the first centuries of the Ottoman Empire, the islands gained popularity in the mid-19th century when the first steam ferries provided easier access. Before steam, it was a multi-hour excursion by caique, an Ottoman skiff powered by a team of rowers. Few bothered to come, and there were few amenities for them if they did.About the same time as the advent of the new steam ferries, the Sultan permitted non-Muslim minorities to own property. On the islands the minorities soon became the majority. Even today, Kınalıada remains largely Armenian, and Büyükada´s Jewish community is still a major presence. Heybeliada was once mostly Rum (Greeks of Turkey), but today they are few. Burgazada´s Greek fishermen are gone, but the church, a sacred spring and other memories remain.

The golden age of the islands was probably the first half of the 20th century, but by the 1980s and ‘90s, they no longer had the same cachet. Many longtime residents had left, and Istanbullus, enjoying the economic transformation of those years, had new holiday options—the Aegean, the Mediterranean, Western Europe. When we first moved to the islands in the 1990s, many of the fine old wooden houses were in disrepair, weekend crowds were sparse, and international tourists were rare. And for several years after the 1999 earthquake, many Istanbullus avoided the islands; they seemed too close to the North Anatolian Fault under the Sea of Marmara.For the last couple of years, we´ve seen a gradual increase in visitors, but this year has been a flood of both Istanbullus and foreigners. By mid-May, the ferries were already full, the picnic areas were lively, and several island merchants had added bicycle rentals to their main business. On a Sunday morning in May, I counted more than 50 pleasure-craft (50! In May!) moored in Heybeliada´s Çam Limanı bay. The Princes´ Islands season – including the expanded summer boat schedule – has traditionally been defined by the school holidays, mid-June to mid-September. That now seems inadequate.The islands may go in and out of fashion for the day-tripper and tourist, but the more significant renaissance promises to be a long-lasting one. Some of the houses we thought were goners have, at the eleventh hour, found new owners who are lovingly restoring them to their former beauty. Just two years ago, the municipality began to pipe in natural gas, allowing residents to install central heating. A simple change, but it has made year-round living on the island a far more attractive idea. Istanbullus who are fed up with the noise and congestion of the city are finding just what they need on the Princes´ Islands: a calm retreat, a safe environment for their families, and easy access to jobs in the city. Now if we can just get İDO (the ferry and seabus company) to expand the convenient summer boat frequency into the winter months. M.A. Whitten is the author of An Island in Istanbul: At Home on Heybeliada.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=110471