http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA47508
Note the last sentence, about the need to prevent the jerking up and down of oil prices, which discourages investment in other forms of energy. With prices continuing to fall to one-third of what they were a year ago, this can be done only through taxation. There's a way, if there's a will.
Posted on 8:18 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Fings ain’t what they used to be.
Lionel Bart wrote that about the changing East End in 1960, when I was a child and the world seemed immutable.
The teenager had expressed a desire to see where my parents came from so we took advantage of a school inset day to visit Shoreditch, Hoxton and Bethnal Green earlier this week.
My parents met on Christmas Eve 1941 in a pub called the Horns on the corner of Hackney Road and Kingsland Road. Dad asked Mum out and they agreed a day after Christmas. Mum stood Dad up. The war raged for another year, Dad in the AFS (Auxiliary Fire Service) and Mum making munitions boxes. Christmas 1942 Dad walks into the Horns and Mum is in there again. This time she didn’t stand him up and they married in 1945.
The Horns changed its name in about 1983 to Browns, when there was a fashion in the pub world for possessive names with a hip sound to them, but it remained a pub. Not my favourite pub but handy for the hospital opposite and Dad’s work.
My favourite pub was the tiny Conqueror down Austin Street. I also always liked the look of the Flying Scud further down Hackney Road but for some reason we never went in there. The scud is a small boat not a missile, by the way. During the first Gulf War the Mirror sent a reporter in to interview the regulars about how they felt about their name being hijacked.
The Flying Scud is closed, boarded up and derelict. The Conqueror is closed, boarded up and being worked on. The owners made several applications for demolition so that a new block of “executive” flats could be built; the last application was to renovate the existing flat above the bar and convert the bar into a second flat. The workmen wouldn’t answer when I asked what it was going to be.
Browns is still operating, behind closed doors and blacked out windows as a “striptease and private dance venue”. The next pub up from the Flying Scud is an old gin palace called Ye Old Axe. This is now Brown’s rival in the striptease business midweek, with a rockabilly night at weekends.
There is an obvious joke to be made in the two places still open, and operating for that particular clientele, being the Axe (or chopper) and the pub-formerly-known-as-the-Horns.
The cheering bit was the development within the site that was the factory where Dad worked for many years. The Victorian buildings have been cleaned and modernised and are studios, design workshops, publishing offices and the like. The site provides a living for over 400 people, which is about as many as in its factory days. When it was a grimy factory I never realised how attractive the proportions of the buildings were.
This is the rather grim looking Browns. There was a pub called the Horns on the site in the 19th century but the front is definitely 20th century; whether 30s or 50s I don’t know.
This is the old gin palace, Ye Old Axe. The Victorian and Edwardian brewers had such confidence in their business that they were prepared to have the pub’s name and address permanently displayed in tiles, not in ephemeral paint. The tiles (inset bottom right in the photo) are from the decoration below the window. The place looks very, very shabby.
These are the remains of the Flying Scud and the Conqueror. With pubs closing everywhere at the rate of 4 a week I doubt they will ever be friendly family pubs again but I hope that the buildings themselves can be preserved.
Posted on 1:56 PM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
BBC Newsnight (h/t Alan) has an exclusive interview with Dmitri Nabokov, son of .... oh, I can't remember. I'm not sure if this video will work or if the programme is accessible outside the UK. (Update - can't post the video, follow the link if you can.):
In an exclusive interview, the son of novelist Vladimir Nabokov tells Newsnight why he is defying his father's wishes to posthumously publish the controversial writer's final novel.
After the death of the notorious libertine Lord Bryon, who was mad, bad and dangerous to know, his memoirs were thrown into the fire at the offices of his publishers John Murray in Edinburgh, in 1824.
The poet's literary executors decided to destroy Byron's journals in order to protect his reputation.
Bryon's short but eventful life had taken him to Switzerland, among other places, and his Prisoner of Chillon was inspired by the brooding medieval castle of the same name on Lake Geneva.
A hundred and fifty years or so after Byron's death, another writer associated with sexual controversy passed away on the banks of the lake, posing a conundrum to his own executors.
He was Vladimir Nabokov, author of the brilliant but scandalous Lolita (1955), a blackly comic account of middle-aged Humbert Humbert's infatuation with a 12-year-old girl.
At the time of his death in 1977, Nabokov was working on another novel, said to deal with some of the same challenging if uncomfortable themes.
Last wish
The novelist Kingsley Amis, reviewing Lolita, had written mischievously, "Where's all the sex, then?"
 |
 My father told me what his most important books were. He named Laura as one of them. One doesn't name a book one intends to destroy. 
|
It was rumoured that "all the sex" was in this last book.
Nabokov made his wife Vera promise him on his deathbed that the manuscript would go the same way as Bryon's diaries.
The book never appeared, and the world was entitled to think that it had read the entire corpus of the dazzling stylist.
But Vera Nabokov never fulfilled her husband's last wish. She agonised about what to do with the incomplete novel, while it gathered dust in the vaults of a Swiss bank.
She could not bring herself to commit the manuscript to the flames. On her own death, the burden passed to the Nabokovs' only child, Dmitri.
A man who has combined the careers of opera singer and racing driver, Dmitri was also a respected and assiduous translator and editor of his father's works.
But it seems he could no more resolve the dilemma of Nabokov's last book than could his mother.
Subject of speculation
Over the years, and particularly since the advent of the internet, the fate of the novel has been much debated by Nabokov readers and academics.
With something of his father's talent for creating a stir, Dmitri has given the impression that he was prepared to see the book disappear for good, only to leave others with a strong sense that publication was in the offing.
Vladimir Nabokov's final, incomplete novel is to be published in 2009.
|
The affair of Nabokov's last book has become a kind of literary striptease, with tantalising glimpses of this sensation flitting into public view. Its title was said to be The Original of Laura.
A scholarly journal devoted to Nabokov studies ran a competition inviting readers to submit prose in the style of the author.
Of the five entries published by the magazine, two were said to be by Nabokov himself, unpublished fragments of Laura.
Its plot apparently concerns a portly academic called Philip Wild, and Flora, his much slimmer, "wildly promiscuous" wife.
Flora catches Wild's eye because of her resemblance to a young woman he had once been in love with. Wild is preoccupied by his own mortality, and resolves to obliterate himself from the toes upward, through the power of meditation.
Death, be it ever so unlikely, is a theme of the book, as it is in so much of Nabokov.
All the principal characters in Lolita are dead by the time Humbert tells his tale, Humbert included.
Some biographers have traced this fascination to the hapless end of Nabokov's own father, a Russian noblemen and politician, killed by a bullet meant for someone else with whom he happened to be sharing a platform at the time.
Finally, at the age of 73, Dmitri Nabokov has said that his father's last book will be spared the bonfire. Indeed, it will be published next year in what is likely to be the literary event of 2009.
Dmitri Nabokov pictured with his father, Vladimir, in 1961.
|
Newsnight went to meet Dmitri at his house in Montreux, where he talked for the first time in a television interview about what led him at last to his decision.
"My father told me what his most important books were. He named Laura as one of them. One doesn't name a book one intends to destroy."
Of his father's last wish, Dmitri said: "He would have reacted in a sober and less dramatic way if he didn't see death staring him in the face. He certainly would not have wanted it destroyed. He would have finished it."
Dividing opinions
|
It's perfectly straightforward. Nabokov wanted it burnt, so burn it.
|
With all due ceremony, a white-gloved attendant shimmered into Dmitri's sitting room, bearing the book from the vaults. It consisted of a grey wallet containing dozens of hand-written index cards.
It was Nabokov's practice, having conceived of a novel in his head, to plot it out on cards in longhand, before producing finished pages.
Because of Dmitri's unsleeping filial protectiveness, not to mention the terms of his publishing deal, we were not allowed to read the masterpiece through, let alone film it to anything like its full extent.
The book will be published unfinished, just as the master left it.
The literary world is in two minds about it.
John Banville, winner of the Booker prize, worries that it might compare unfavourably to Nabokov's greatest achievements. But he told us it is as fascinating and compelling as unpublished work by Joyce or Beckett would be.
Tom Stoppard says: "It's perfectly straightforward. Nabokov wanted it burnt, so burn it."
Scholars note that Nabokov had form in this area, once wishing to see a match applied to a novella of his called The Enchanter, ironically a kind of prequel to Lolita.
Perhaps it is true that his final work is even more scandalising than the earlier book, that it has "all the sex" in it.
The last of the veils hasn't quite slipped from Laura yet.
Posted on 2:02 PM by Mary Jackson
A Musical Interlude: Mama Goes Where Papa Goes (Jane Green)
Posted on 12:59 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Where In The World It Was
Yesterday a quiz was put up. This was it:
Chickens on the second floor.
Dickens on the third.
Hard, with all that squawking,
To catch his every word.
Where in the world is it?
One potential entrant (Mary Jackson) complained that the first floor (American) is the ground floor (English) and the second floor (American) is the first floor (English) and so on, just as high as you care to go, and she wanted to know, in no uncertain terms, “what’s the storey.” My response was that what might be called this décalage-des-étages problem was really no problem at all. One only had to know that Dickens was on the floor above the chickens, and that those chickens squawked, and somehow interfered with Dickens. I also asked her to be careful in how she referred to “Mr. Graham Storey.”
Now it’s time for the answer.
You will find therein a description of Dickens, on his second American tour, at a reading he gave (“A Christmas Carol,” “The Trial”) on March 23, 1868, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He gave the reading in the Mechanics Hall on Main Street (hence the “rude (but bookish) mechanicals on Main Street” in my reply to Mary's complaint), a building completed in 1857 by the architect Elbridge Boyden, and for 151 years famous for its excellent acoustics and, once again, for its restored elegance. It was on the third floor (where there is now a “Dickens Room”) of that magnificent building that Dickens gave his reading. Unbeknownst to Dickens, the New England Poultry Club Association had for several days been having its pwn meeting, and exhibition, on the second floor, in what is now Washburn Hall, the one flanked by busts of William Wheeler (on the left) and Ichabod Washburn (on the right). For Dickens to read, the lights had to be lit, or turned on, on the third floor, and that light seemed, to the sleeping cocks on the second, to be the light of dawn. And as usual they began their accustomed aubade, the well-known cock-a-doodle-doo, fabled in song and story. And of course that woke up the hens, and they began, in their own hennish way, to squawk. The noise was such that it reached the room above, and Dickens’ auditors had some difficulty making out his words above the din. Reference to this incident can be found not only in The Letters, but mentioned in that same footnote #2 – in a book by Dolby, Dickens’ agent for the American tour, Dickens As I Knew Him (p. 258).
I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to have a movie called “Dickens in America,” which would allow the employment English actors (a good idea) and and at the same time be sure to attract American financing (an even better idea). British actors, American money. It could open with scenes of Americans shoving each other on the docks at Baltimore, as they await the arrival of a ship due to bring the latest installment of “Nicholas Nickleby.” And then there would be scenes of Dickens. In Boston, at a dinner with the local worthies, Emerson at their head. Dickens in New York. Dickens in Philadelphia. Dickens in the
entrepôt of Cinncinnati, close to Ole Kaintuck, or wherever it was that he found the raw material from which to construct the American chapters, with that brevetted Kentucky colonel, coney-pitching his land sales, in “Martin Chuzzlewit.”
And in that movie, Dickens should be seen being welcomed by the worthies of Worcester in March 1868, and recalling for them that he had been in their magnificent city some 26 years before, as a guest of former governor Davis, but was now delighted to be here again, to read to you from some of the work of which you have shown yourself, my American cousins, to be so appreciative. Scenes of Dickens walking dignifiedly up the two flights of stairs at Mechanics Hall, all the way to the third floor, passing the entry to grand Washburn Hall on the second, where the camera notes, but Dickens, hurrying by, did not, a sign that reads “New England Poultry Club Association Exhibition.” Dickens, now standing at a podium, reading from “A Christmas Carol.” Dickens, a few minutes into his reading, distinctly hearing a cock crow, and then another one, and then another one, and then a whole parliament of them, chauntecleering. Dickens, now with a discomfited and puzzled air, continuing to read, while to the crowing of cocks has now been joined the squawking of hens. Dickens, raising his already dramatically loud voice, so as to be heard over the amazing barnyard din. Dickens, reacting first with incredulity, and then with anger, as someone from the back of the hall, to which he has returned from a quick trip downstairs to find out what was going on, announces that “I’m afraid it’s the poultry exhibition downstairs. The light from here woke up the roosters, and they must have thought it was time to crow. There’s really nothing we can do.”
A good scene, and what’s more, one that did not have to be made up, with Dickens, himself the evening’s planned cock of the walk, in the Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts, being interrupted by other, more traditional, cocks of the walk that his own presence had inadvertently awakened.
I ended my response to Mary with the sentence “For some, that may be cold comfort.” That was intended to send her, and possibly others, scurrying to Stella Gibbons. I also thought that the name of the quiz –- “Where In the World Is It, Or, Even Bertie Might Have Figured It Out" -– would cause some to suspect a passage in Wodehouse describing a landed-gentry dotard keeping chickens on one floor of his Stately Home, while his impressive library –with that collection of Dickens firsts –- had been moved to the top floor, to accommodate the birds. The real point was Bertie’s last name – Wooster – which is homophonic with “Worcester” on both sides of the Atlantic. The feigned umbrage taken at Mary’s “what’s the storey” allowed the name of “Mr. Graham Storey” to be supplied. Graham Storey is one of the three editors of The Letters of Charles Dickens including, of course, that relevant Volume 12.
Where in the world is it? Mechanics Hall, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Case – un caso clinico, perhaps – closed.
Posted on 12:05 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
My infinity's bigger than yours
Ubiquitous bald brainbox Marcus du Sautoy has a mathematical poser for us. From The Times:
Suppose an hotel has an infinite number of rooms, and each one is occupied. If a new guest arrives, Hotel Infinity's proprietor can still accommodate the new guest. By shifting each guest one room along, room 1 is freed up for the new guest. Thus no one is left without a room, because there is always another one.
You might try to beat it by adding infinity to infinity. But Hotel Infinity can still soak up infinitely many new guests. Ask the existing guests to move to the room number double that of their present one, ie, the person in room 5 moves to room 10. Now all the odd-number rooms are empty and can take the new guests.
So perhaps infinity is the biggest number? One exciting moment in mathematical history was the realisation at the end of the 19th century that infinity isn't the biggest number: there are infinite infinities, each bigger than the previous one. It was Georg Cantor, a German mathematician, who came up with a beautiful argument for why there is more than one. So hold on to your mathematical hats as I take you to infinity - and beyond.
Hotel Infinity's rooms are numbered by whole numbers: 1, 2, 3 etc. Hotel Uncountable has rooms numbered using all the infinite decimal numbers - those that continue for ever after the decimal point - such as Pi = 3.14159... and the square root of 2 = 1.41421.... Both have infinitely many rooms but Cantor showed why Hotel Uncountable's infinity is bigger than Hotel Infinity's. If two hotels have a finite number of rooms, the way to tell which has the most is to pair up the rooms; the hotel with rooms left over is the bigger one. This is how Cantor realised that you should compare infinities.
So, imagine that Hotel Infinity's owner thinks that he's found a way to pair up all his rooms so that they match all the rooms in Hotel Uncountable; for example (to choose some infinite decimal numbers at random), suppose that room 1 is paired with room 0.342565..., room 2 with room 0.578027466..., room 3 with room 0.55472882... and so on. Hotel Uncountable's owner can always come up with a room that has been missed. To do this, she cooks up an infinite decimal number so that the first decimal differs from the first decimal of the room paired with room 1; in this case change the 3 to a 4. The second decimal is chosen to differ from the second one of room 2; for example, change the 7 to an 8. Keep going, arranging each time that, for example, the 100th decimal is different from the 100th decimal of the room paired with room 100. So, from these examples, the new number starts 0.485....
Why has the room with this door number not been counted? Suppose that Hotel Infinity's owner claims that this room was paired with a later number, room 412, say. Hotel Uncountable's owner can show that it wasn't. Look at the 412th decimal place of this new number: because of the way we constructed the number, it must be different from the 412th decimal place of the room you paired with room 412. So it's not the number paired with room 412.
Hotel Infinity's owner missed this room number. But even if he tried to shift all the rooms along one and add this new room to the count, Hotel Uncountable's proprietor can play the same trick, producing another missing room number. Hence the infinity of rooms in Hotel Uncountable is bigger than the infinity of Hotel Infinity.
Just one question: why "an hotel"?
Posted on 11:05 AM by Mary Jackson
The times they are a-morphing. From Google:
Phishing morphs into pharming
The Iraq War morphs into the Iran War
Multi- morphs into plural.
T-mobile G1 morphs into wireless broadband dongle
Punk club morphs into bagel place
Brilliant “burn” plot morphs into unfunny hybrid
Personality morphs into policy
The convertible shoe that morphs into a sandal
When saving lives morphs into torture and killing
Melancholy morphs into anticipation
Love morphs into lunacy
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found he had morphed in his bed into a gigantic whatev-ah. Meh.
Posted on 10:49 AM by Mary Jackson
Was Al Aqsa Built Atop A Church?
An interesting article from the Jerusalem Post. This seems to corroborate the the observation that some of the inscriptions at the top of the mosque structure are actually Christian in origin. Perhaps they simply renovated the existing structure. (Thanks to del)
The photo archives of a British archeologist who carried out the only archeological excavation ever undertaken at the Temple Mount's Aksa Mosque show a Byzantine mosaic floor underneath the mosque that was likely the remains of a church or a monastery, an Israeli archeologist said on Sunday.
The excavation was carried out in the 1930s by R.W. Hamilton, director of the British Mandate Antiquities Department, in coordination with the Wakf Islamic Trust that administers the compound, following earthquakes that badly damaged the mosque in 1927 and 1937.
In conjunction with the Wakf's construction and repair work carried out between 1938 and 1942, Hamilton excavated under the mosque's piers, and documented all his work related to the mosque in The Structural History of the Aqsa Mosque.
Hamilton also uncovered the Byzantine mosaic floor and beneath it a mikva (ritual bath) from the Second Temple period, which he pointedly did not include in the publication about the mosque, but instead photographed and labeled in a file about the mosque, archeologist Zachi Zweig said on Sunday.
Zweig uncovered the photographs in the British archeological archives that are kept at the Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem.
The Byzantine mosaic floor, which was uncovered under the Umayyad level of the mosque, is "without a doubt" the remains of a public building - likely a church - which predated the mosque, Zweig said in an address at a Bar-Ilan University archeological conference.
A similar mosaic can be found at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, he said.
"The existence of a public building from the Byzantine period on the Temple Mount is very surprising in light of the fact that we do not have records of such constructions in historical texts," Zweig said.
Over the last several years, numerous marble church chancel screens have been uncovered by Zweig and Bar-Ilan University archeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkay from rubble that was dug up during Waqf construction at the site in the last decade and dumped in the Kidron Valley.
The mosaic found on the Temple Mount is dated to the fifth to seventh centuries, said Dr. Rina Talgam, a mosaic expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
"We were very surprised by the discovery of such a mosaic on the Temple Mount," Talgam said, noting that it contradicted the testimony of pilgrims who described the site as deserted in the Byzantine period and was also unlikely to have been part of the earliest mosque at the site, in the Early Islamic period, since that structure was made of wood.
"The simple mosaic pictured does not give us a hint that it was certainly part of a church but it very well could have been part of a hostel or some other nondescript structure," she said.
Since the establishment of the state, no archeological excavations have been held on the Temple Mount, in keeping with religious sensitivities of both Muslims and Jews.
"It is hard to establish with certainty that this was indeed the site of a church, but without a doubt it served as a public building and was likely either a church or a monastery," Barkay said.
He called the discovery of the photographs in the British archives both a "sensational" and "important" find.
"This changes the whole history of the Temple Mount during the Byzantine period as we knew it," he said.
Posted on 8:27 AM by Rebecca Bynum
Indian Navy sinks pirate mothership during bold stand-off in Gulf of Aden
An Indian navy warship has sunk a Somali pirate "mother ship" in the Gulf of Aden, the world's most treacherous waterway, after the bold renegades threatened to attack the frigate.
INS Tabar, an Indian frigate dispatched last month to the area to protect the country's merchant fleet, sighted the pirate vessel late on Tuesday. Indian officers said they spotted pirates moving on the deck with rocket propelled grenade launchers and automatic weapons.
"On repeated calls, the vessel's threatening response was that she would blow up the naval warship," the Indian Navy said in a statement.
"INS Tabar retaliated in self defence and opened fire on the mother vessel.
"As a result of the firing by INS Tabar, fire broke out on the vessel and explosions were heard, possibly due to exploding ammunition that was stored on the vessel." Two speedboats were seen fleeing the sinking ship.
Since the Sirius Star was captured at least three other ships – one Greek, one Thai and one from Hong Kong – have been seized by Somali pirates.
Today, Al-Jazeera, the Arabic television network, broadcast an audio tape that it said was one of the pirates making a ransom demand for the return of the Sirius Star.
"Negotiators are located on board the ship and on land. Once they have agreed on the ransom, it will be taken in cash to the oil tanker," said the man identified as Farah Abd Jameh. He did not indicate the amount to be paid.
"We assure the safety of the ship that carries the ransom. We will mechanically count the money and we have machines that can detect fake money," he said. (not those dabber pens the girls on the till in Woolworths use?!)
Posted on 4:20 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Much gloating over BNP leak
The papers are full of the news that relatively recent contact details of the membership of the BNP has been placed on the internet, possibly by a disgruntled former employee, or a mole.
The site containing the list, which I found very easily last night on a comment blog, is now down. A nasty former neighbour I expected to find on it was not there but he is probably too lazy or too tight with his dosh to join. Either that or he prefers (and he is nasty enough for them) the National Front.
Regular readers will know that I have no time for the racism in the BNP, however cunningly they disguise it. But they are the only party to understand the threat that is dhimmitude and to give voice to the fears of millions. Hence their recent electoral successes, among people I would not personally condemn as racist.
Left wing groups are crowing about the “shame” of membership revealed and predicting that this will prevent people joining. The fact that membership of a legal political party can give rise to dismissal from national service jobs, or fears of threats and violence for the member or their family, as postulated on the Islamic blog where I found the link, may well increase public support for the BNP.
The membership lists may be in the public domain; the ballot box is still secret, for now.
Posted on 3:40 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
A Musical Interlude: Huggable, Kissable You (Rudy Vallee)
Posted on 9:49 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
From The Annals Of Craigslist, Or, Huggable, Kissable You
For the man who wants to pretend to be a star by supplying his very own groupie, Craigslist tonight has on offer what is described as a
Free stand up osculating fan
Posted on 9:43 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Nov. 19, 2008
Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST
Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah accused Hamas on Tuesday of staging the latest blackouts in the Gaza Strip in a bid to win sympathy and incite the Palestinian public against Israel and the PA.
The officials said that contrary to Hamas's claim, there is no shortage of basic goods, medicine and fuel in the Gaza Strip, largely thanks to the many underground tunnels along the border with Egypt.
This is not the first time that Palestinians have accused Hamas of staging Gaza blackouts under the pretext that Israel had cut off fuel supplies to the district's power grid.
Earlier this year, Palestinian journalists in Gaza City told The Jerusalem Post that scenes of Palestinian children and women holding lit candles in the dark had been staged by Hamas and some Arab satellite TV stations.
"There's no shortage of fuel in the Gaza Strip and the Electricity Company is continuing to function normally," said a PA official. "Our people in the Gaza Strip have told us that the blackouts are all staged as part of the Hamas propaganda."
Another PA official noted that Hamas's lies reached their peak last January when its legislators held a meeting in a darkened hall of the Palestinian Legislative Council - while light could be seen coming in through the curtained windows.
The official accused Al-Jazeera of serving as a platform for Hamas's propaganda machine by airing staged footage of children and women during candlelight protests in the streets of Gaza City.
"There's enough fuel in the Gaza Strip," he said. "Even when Israel reduces the fuel supplies, Hamas continues to smuggle tens of thousands of liters through the underground tunnels."
The Fatah-controlled Pal-Press Web site on Thursday quoted a senior official in the Gaza Electricity Company as saying that Hamas has been stealing fuel supplies intended for the power grid.
The official, who asked not to be identified, also denied claims by Hamas and Al-Jazeera about power outages in large parts of the Gaza Strip. He noted that 70% of the Gaza Strip's electricity came from Israel and Egypt, while the remaining 30% were being supplied by the local company.
"Hamas has seized more than 220,000 liters of fuel that was intended for generators belonging to our company," he revealed. "There's no shortage of fuel and as such there is no reason for a crisis."
The official also disclosed that Hamas militiamen had been forcing the company to cut off power supplies to some areas in the Gaza Strip so as to create the impression that the outage was due to a lack of fuel caused by the ongoing closure of the border crossings.
Posted on 9:33 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Where In The World Is It, or, Even Bertie Might Have Figured It Out
Chickens on the second floor.
Dickens on the third.
Hard, with all that squawking,
To catch his every word.
Where in the world is it?
Posted on 3:51 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Miranda Richardson as Queen Elizabeth I and Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder again. Series II Episode 2. The first scene is very funny but if you are strapped for time fast forward to scene 2 at 2.04 minutes where Queenie is talking to Lord Melchett played by Stephen Fry.
Posted on 3:15 PM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
