You can still buy Izal medicated in the supermarkets

That brings back memories of visiting my granny. Just what *is* the point of making bog paper like that??

tomlevell: – What do you use to feed Flickr photos onto Facebook?

If you’ve lived in a few places, and have scattered friends, it’s quite a good way to keep some sort of contact. People sometimes write funny or interesting things for their large group of friends that they wouldn’t bother to write just for you. But if you don’t get anything out of it yourself, don’t use it – no-one is forcing you to.

Just another data point, which may not help you much – I had a LaCie drive that failed. But it turned out it was the power supply that had failed, and it worked fine with a different power supply. Bit weird, as the drive still would turn on and sounded like the disk was spinning, bur anyway, using a different power supply did the trick. Apparently this is common with LaCie.

oh dear mr rockwell doesnt like the 135 or the 105 at all

Wait a week, he’ll have changed his "mind".

The best place to get opinions on this stuff is Nikonians, as guitarmanjon says above.

Why is it bad to surf for porn at work, and OK to surf for STW chat?

The good thing is, once you get comfortable with the concept, your Camelbak gets a lot more useful (best to use water, not energy drinks :-)

What is your budget??

I nearly always use booking.com – if you have an idea of which area to stay and check the reviews you rarely go wrong. For example, last time we stayed at Hotel St Paul Le Marais, which was very well located, and also quiet and comfortable.

But it doesn’t really matter – Paris hotels are generally good value compared to British ones, and then you are in Paris, so your hotel is secondary :-) All you have to do is sleep there!

Cheap stuff. Here in Holland I pay 300 EUR PER MONTH for gas and lecky. Heaven knows what this cold weather will be doing to my finances :-(

Push the nuisances into the fellow Arab country…

That is clearly the Israeli tactic, and I suspect that if we look at a map of the Middle East in 100 years or so we will see that they achieve exactly that, and that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is just as much a footnote in history as, say, the Armenians in Turkey. That is, at the end of the day, the pile of shit we call “the human race”.

As a matter of interest, what sort of thing do you e-mail that is so sensitive you want to encrypt it? (Not a criticism, just curious …)

A little more than “a cavalier attitude to civilian casualties” :

August 9th 1948 – here is an extract which can be verified from the Haaratz newspaper ..

‘I saw fit to remove her from the world’

By Aviv Lavie and Moshe Gorali
.
.
.

At about 6 A.M. the next day, Private Eliahu was on guard duty and saw the abducted girl leaving the hut. He asked her where she was going and she told him, weeping, that she wanted to see the officer. Private Eliahu showed her the way to Officer Moshe’s tent. She complained to him that the soldiers had “played with her.” He threatened to kill her and sent her back to the hut. A short time later, while shaving at the water pipe, Sergeant Michael asked the platoon commander what to do with her. Officer Moshe ordered him to execute the girl.

And no, the British TV reporters aren’t lying to you – Israel really won’t let them in.

So how come there’s TV footage even though Israel won’t allow reporters in ? Well I think you’ll find that’s fairly easy to explain.

Whilst the BBC and ITN might not want to have a permanent presence in the occupied territories, TV cameramen from other countries, specially Arab countries, might well have been there before things started to kick off.

As Jeremy Bowen explains on the BBC website:

“[On January 10] I got back into the BBC armoured vehicle with Hamada Abu Qammar, who is one of our Gaza producers.
You may have heard him on the BBC from Gaza in the last two weeks. As the correspondents can’t get in, Hamada and his colleague Rushdi Abu Alouf are on broadcasting duties.”

So the truth is much more mundane than the usual anti-semitic conspiracy.

Just as an aside – iTunes is moving quickly to DRM-free music, so these discussions may soon be a thing of the past.

Version 2 is a big improvement, so maybe you should have stolen that instead.

I choose not to comment about it because talking peace and tolerance is the only way forward, if some one could start that debate on here and over there.

Well, you seem to be a bit confused. This is an internet forum. Whatever we agree or decide here will have less than zero impact on the children being starved and bombed in Gaza.

As for extending your philosophy to Gaza, of course that would be nice, but it seems a bit far-fetched that as long as one side is refusing to talk to the other, and all the while trying to kill them, and destroy the lives of the unlucky survivors that it is going to happen, and your implication that there is an equal blame for that situation is a little naive.

chewkw and ernie_lynch are like IDF and Hamas of this forum, do you think you two could get together face to face and discuss the issue. Or would the entrenched views of both sides prevent a positive out come, if you guys can’t do peace how will it ever happen in Isreal/Palestine.

That analogy is more apt than you realise – you assume that in a situation you know nothing about, that the two combatants must be half-right and half-wrong, so that Israel and Hamas just need to sit down and have a nice cup of tea and split the difference. However, in reality – which is seen easily in this thread – one side is absolutely wrong. Of course it is not a big deal that chewkw spouts bollocks from morning til night, but in the real world people are dying because of Israel.

For example, it riles me that on British television news I see a reporter stood just outside Gaza proclaiming that the media are prevented from reporting from inside Gaza and then I watch 10 minutes of television footage from inside Gaza. How has that been made available then?

No – they say that reporters are prohibited from ENTERING Gaza (in defiance of the Israeli courts – see who is really in charge in Israel). Some correspondents (if not BBC staff) are already there.

What strikes me is the difference between the sanitized news served up on TV at 6 o’clock and the more unpleasant reading even on their own web site.

While i dont support Israel and what they are doing anything that wipes out terrorists and their supporters cant be bad.

Well there’s your problem right there. Do you imagine that the kids that grow up in a shit-hole, with their parents killed or maimed by the Israelis, and no prospect of a normal life, will be more, or less likely to support Hamas? For every fighter that the Israelis manage to kill, 100 more will be motivated to take their place.

psling – since you didn’t follow the reference I gave earlier, I will quote for you a passage that describes what Gaza is. If you want to call it something other than a camp, be my guest.

————————-

In the U.S., all our TV pundits and major newspapers ever tell us about the Gaza Strip is that 1. it’s a Hamas stronghold, and 2. it’s the most densely-populated piece of real estate on earth. But they don’t tell us that it wasn’t always like that. They don’t mention that Gaza wasn’t a stronghold of Islamic nationalism till Israel’s occupation administration in Gaza funded Hamas as a counterweight to the secular nationalism of the PLO, then engaged in a phony 15-year “peace process” that hopelessly compromised the secular nationalist parties that had supported a compromise peace with Israel, leaving Hamas as the only credible resistance to the continuing occupation.

They don’t tell you either about the time before the Gaza Strip became the most densely-populated place on earth; when Gaza was a small coastal city, rather than a moon scape,

and its environs were wheat fields and orchards – cultivating citrus products, dates, grapes, figs and mulberries – rather than refugee camps.

And they DEFINITELY don’t mention how the transformation in Gaza’s fortunes came about. They don’t tell you where those 1.5 million people now squashed into the Gaza Strip came from. Because they come from what is now Israel, and they didn’t leave their homes there voluntarily in order to spend their days in an overcrowded, bombarded slum. Eighty per cent of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees. These are the people who have been expelled from Israel since 1948, and always had to be expelled according to the logic of Zionism, if a Jewish state was to be created in Palestine, where most people happen not to be Jewish. The vast majority of the people in the Gaza Strip are the original inhabitants of the towns and villages of southern and coastal Israel, who took refuge from Zionist armies in Gaza City because it was the last southern city left in Palestinian hands in 1948.

In short, the people in the Gaza Strip who are today firing rockets at the towns of southern Israel are, overwhelmingly, the children and grandchildren of the Palestinian people who were expelled by Israel from those very same towns in order to gerrymander a Jewish majority where one did not naturally exist.

Yesterday, rockets from Gaza fell on the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Benny Tziper in the Hebrew-language version of Ha’aretz online was the only person I saw publicly mention that the Israeli city of Ashkelon was, until quite recently, the Palestinian city of Majdal al-Asqalan

whose Arab population was expelled within the lifetime of many present-day Israelis to the refugee camps of the Gaza Strip:

[…]A nice man was there at the entrance to the museum, an invalid of IDF from the Yom Kippur War, who was born and lived all his life in Ashkelon. From his knowledge and enthusiasm one could tell that he loves the city very much. He had no problem telling me how in 1953 the Arabs were expelled, and the long process of looking for a new name for the place started (the Arab name was Majdl), till it was decided to call the place Ashkelon. The entire communications between the authorities regarding the cleansing of the city of Arabs and Hebrewisation of the name is exhibited in the museum. I think that nobody makes the connection today between the fact that the Qassams land on Ashkelon and the fact that poor Arabs who did nothing wrong to anybody were put on trucks and expelled from their city to Gaza fifty five years ago, and since then they are there and Ashkelon is here. And this did not happen in wartime or as a result of hostilities, but from a cold calculation that the area must be cleansed of Arabs. There is a picture in the museum that shows the Arabs sitting and waiting in front of the of Israeli military government building. It sends shivers down my spine because it happens in the year I was born. And it is really, really hard for me to realize that at the time that my parents were happy with my birth, other people were put on trucks and expelled from their homes.[…]

life is precious, any life. So why would Hamas have the right to try and kill anyone. So simple, if Hamas really wants to stop theyre people being hurt and killed. If they stopped the rocket attacks. Israel would have no reason to be there and as such would be forced to retreat. Surely thats not rocket science (pardon the pun).

You really don’t have a clue, do you? Do you think that Hamas decided to start firing rockets just for grins? Gaza is a big refugee camp, full of people driven out of their homes, and bombed on a daily basis year after year. Hamas are the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people. At what point do you accept that they have a right to defend themselves? Or is it their fate to just lie down and let the Israelis walk over them however they want?

if the palenstines stopped hurting the small number of israelies then there would have been no cause for them to invade

Someone else turning history on its head. Hamas didn’t pick a fight, the Israelis did. Read some of the information provided in the links quoted above and form an opinion then.

Some background information[/url]. Note especially the use of human shields by the brave boys of the IDF.

Now Israelis are kicking Hamas backside and you go ape shite sitting on your high horse in the comfort of your TV lounge. Talking about humanitarian disaster big time. WTF!

The difference is that in a sense this is our war, as we created the conditions for it in 1948 by giving the Jews something that was not ours to give, because it arose from our WW2, from our guilt at the fate of the Jews in Nazi hands, and because today the Israelis claim to be upholding our values.

Palestinian lives are indeed not worth more or less than others, which is why hundreds of them are not needed to compensate for the killing of 3 or 4 Israelis who were unlucky enough to be underneath Hamas fireworks.

Why dont you lot all shut the **** up. Are the Israelis the new Nazis? No. I think its a distasteful comparison.

It may be distasteful, but the actions of the Israelis invite it upon themselves by their brutality. They themselves cheapen the memory of the Holocaust by using it as a pretext for every vile abuse of the weak and frightened people that they are so happy to dominate.

It’s Palestine causing the problem – Israel built its boarder defence and left it be but still rockets come over the boarder – so when they retaliate there the bad ones ?

Congratulations – you’ve avoided reading, or understanding, any of the huge volume of information that’s been written in recent days, and turned history on its head.

then you’re part of the problem, drj. for until you can see that neither side deserves one ounce of support from anyone, you’ll add to the misery, not bring it to a just and final end.

But as you pointed out above, I’m just sitting talking, not doing, so I’m not adding to anyone’s misery, thanks all the same.

Then we have different interpretations of someone shooting tank shells into a school.

so, drj, who are the terrorists here?

Like I said, using the word terrorist just tells you what side I’m on. For what it’s worth, I think it’s pretty clear that the Israelis are the bad guys in this story.

So – define “terrorist”. In general it seems to mean “the other guy”, and using the word “terrorist” only conveys your politcal affiliation without saying anything about the situation itself.

Is it possible for a EU national (with planning) to be married in Germany?

Surely – why wouldn’t it be?

On a slightly related topic, a friend living in Vienna married a German girl. To satisfy the German requirements, he had to get a “certificate of non-marriage”, to show he was not already married. Of course such a thing does not exist in the UK, but the Embassy in Vienna obliged by scribbling some suitable words on the back of an envelope, or whatever, and accompanied it with an official stamp, for the sum of 120 EUR. However, it transpired that this would not do, and he had to go back and get another certificate that said that not only was he not married to a woman, nor was he married to a man.

Aren’t we in danger of missing the point here?

Well you certainly seem to have comprehensively missed the point.

Hamas won a free and democratic election
Israel illegally witheld tax receipts
Israel imprisoned Hamas MP’s
Their opponents, probably aided by Israel and the US, schemed a coup
Hamas pre-empted the coup and threw them out of Gaza
Israel closed the borders, imposing a state of siege and starvation, eliminating any chance of Gazans to earn a living
Israel, the US and the EU refused to talk to Hamas
Hamas agreed to a ceasefire including an agreement to open borders
Israel kept the borders closed
Israel attacked and killed Hamas members in Gaza
Hamas responded with some pretty ineffectual rockets
Israel invaded with massive and indiscriminate attacks on the Palestinian population.

Now – what should Hamas do?

How to solve the problems:

Send in Peace keepers
Stop supplying Isreal with multi-billion dollar weapon grants
Force Isreal using whatever diplomatic or other means necessary to observe UN directives on border blockades etc
Allow Palestinians the ability to build a functioning economy, and stop bombing what little of it there was
Get the two parties back to the negotiating table

Good ideas, but all rejected by Israel and the US.

Is this happening before or after hell freezes over Hora?

I’d say Hora is probably right, vile and disgusting though that situation will be.

maybe if hamass or wot ever they are called , would stop lobbing missiles , sit down and **** talk , then all the sh*t would stop

Maybe, but since Israel, the US and the EU won’t talk to Hamas (and Israel imprisoned their MP’s), who should they talk to?

Thanks, chaps – I will likely have one free day before a meeting, so those tips should do nicely :-)

(epo-aholic: wasn’t that Dubai?)

Plus what you dont hear that much in news reports- alot of Israeli’s are against the violence and feel uncomfortable about the Palestinian problem.
In that case they have the opportunity to vote out the party that leads them to war, and to publically express their opposition to being involved in murder. Israel is (as they keep reminding us) a democracy, so they can’t claim that they are fighting against the wishes of the population.

One things for absolute certain, the conflict will be resolved when its resolved, in a room around a table bit like Northern Ireland was. How about we jump the intermediate stages and get to the table bit straight away, then everyone can bugger off and ride their bikes which IMHO is a great outcome.

Good plan, but as long as Israel refuses to speak to Hamas, it can’t happen.

the arrogant gesturing of a bunch of criminal lunatics

A perfect description. Fits the Israelis to a “t”.

However I fail to see what they expect to acheive by the indescriminate launching of rockets against a civilian population

What they expect to achieve is a place at the negotiating table, once the Israelis have realised that the legitimate aspirations of a nation will not be destroyed by the military jackboot. Unfortunately for all concerned, the Israelis are rather stupid in realising this, which prolongs the suffering on all sides.

particularly after Israel has already withdrawn from their territory (in the case of the Gaza strip)

As has already been pointed out to you a few times, this is just a fiction as long as the Israelis control all access to and from Gaza. Gaza has no autonomy or independent existence. Israel has created the world’s biggest concentration camp.

Their interests would be far better served by peacefully stating their point, by demonstrating their ability to resposibly govern the Gaza strip in preparation for proper statehood.

This has been tried over and over again, but the Israelis never give anything in return for peace – either in Palestine or in Lebanon. They have a blank cheque from the US to do anything they like, and they are happy to use it, for short term political reasons, ignoring the bigger picture for themselves, and never giving a tinker’s cuss for the Palestinian “untermenschen”.