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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (200365)	3/24/2007 12:52:37 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 793717

Likud is winning in the polls, so that would be Bibi. I don't understand what delays the next election, but there is something that prevents Likud from trying to call a no-confidence vote yet.

To: LindyBill who wrote (200365)	3/24/2007 1:47:10 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793717

Carl in Jerusalem, an Orthodox Israeli blogger, has posted his opinions of Captain Ed's comments on Olmert's proposals: Israel can't give enough of Jerusalem to satisfy the Arabs Captain Ed Morrissey raises the issue of Jerusalem in his discussion of the Saudi plan this morning. The Captain claims that Olmert, by accepting the 'Saudi plan' would be going even further than Ehud Barak went, by returning to the 1967 borders. Maybe, but not by much: Ehud Olmert took a step yesterday that not even Ehud Barak made in his quest to reach a comprehensive peace plan with the Palestinians. In Tel Aviv yesterday, Olmert embraced the Saudi initiative, which calls for a partition of Jerusalem, a return to 1967 borders, and the end of all settlements. ... In exchange for openness to the Saudi initiative, the Israelis want to see some modifications. The right of return has to go, although the Israelis might still be open to trading more territory in exchange for that point, as Barak suggested at Wye. They want the plan to include "confidence building" stages in order to ensure that Israeli security remains at the forefront. They also want to make sure that the borders Israel accepts are defensible against another attack through the territories -- the reason Israel occupies them in the first place, a point that many conveniently forget. The Arab nations attacked Israel twice through those lands when they belonged to Jordan. Actually, Barak did try to divide Jerusalem at Camp David and even more so at the Taba talks in January 2001 (by which time he was a lame duck for all intents and purposes). He was willing to give the 'Palestinians' all of the Arab neighborhoods in the city (nearly all neighborhoods in Jerusalem are either entirely Arab or entirely Jewish, although mapping them would look like a crazy quilt). In fact, he tried to give them the neighborhoods before he went to Camp David. Fortunately, he failed. Had he succeeded, you would have had a lot more suburbs like Gilo being shot at from a lot more Arab villages like Beit Jallah and Beit Sahur. Yours truly could have been a target - we live about 300 meters from an Arab village. Yes, in Jerusalem. Where talks broke down was over the Temple Mount. Barak tried to reach an agreement that the 'Palestinians' would control the top of the Mount, while Israel would control the ground underneath the Temple Mount. Israel would also have controlled the Jewish quarter, and would have had access to it through the Armenian quarter. The rest of the Old City would have gone to the 'Palestinians.' Arafat turned down the offer. This sounds like a loser to me, however. Israel will not accept the partition of Jerusalem easily, nor will the nation blithely support the dismantling of its settlements in the West Bank. The forced removal of settlers in Gaza created a firestorm of criticism, and that decision involved far fewer settlers in a much less defensible area. Given Olmert's popularity, I doubt he could get the Knesset to sign off on such an agreement. After botching the war and the peace in Lebanon, not too many will trust him with the Saudi initiative. It sounds like a loser to me too. But I have a lot less faith than Ed does in what Israelis might do were Olmert to try to implement these proposals. And Ed may not understand how the Knesset works: if any proposal is declared a 'no confidence' vote, all government ministers must vote in favor or automatically lose their ministries. And all coalition members must vote in favor or they risk the coalition falling and their losing their seats in a subsequent election. Unfortunately, the coalition includes a lot of VERY selfish people who will have no qualms about putting their own self-interest ahead of the country's. And all the polls indicate that were elections to be held today, there would be a drastic turnover in the composition of the Knesset. At least so long as Olmert continues to head <s>Kadima</s> Achora. [Kadima, the official name of the party, means 'forward'; Achora means 'backward'.nsc] Condoleezza Rice has another round of diplomatic visits in the region, and she is expected to push the moderation of rhetoric about Israel as a forerunner to regional talks. Rice and the US have likely pushed the Saudi initiative as a replacement for the so-called Roadmap; it's doubtful Olmert would have embraced it on his own. It's hard to understand why the US keeps pushing this on Israel when the Palestinians won't support the treaties they've already signed, let alone agree to bargain in good faith with Israel now. The Bush administration should cease efforts to broker a deal until the Palestinians prove themselves ready to accept peace and a two-state solution as a permanent settlement. Again, I disagree. Israel has been bringing its own grief upon itself without American help for many years now. I'm sure that Olmert is leading and Rice is following. I agree that the Bush administration should cease trying to promote a deal. But if Olmert keeps trying anyway, can we really expect President Bush to be more Catholic than the Pope? israelmatzav.blogspot.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (200365)	3/24/2007 3:15:21 AM
From: KLP	Respond to of 793717

NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records March 19, 2007 jpl.nasa.gov Sharkansky links us to this article with the note below... >>>>>>>>March 21, 2007 Global Warming Update (XVI) Breaking news from ancient Egypt: "NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records". Maybe the last few ice ages weren't prematurely terminated by over-reliance on the internal combustion engine after all. Al Gore, call your office! Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 21, 2007 10:03 AM \| Email This <<<<<<<< Long-term climate records are a key to understanding how Earth's climate changed in the past and how it may change in the future. Direct measurements of light energy emitted by the sun, taken by satellites and other modern scientific techniques, suggest variations in the sun's activity influence Earth's long-term climate. However, there were no measured climate records of this type until the relatively recent scientific past. Scientists have traditionally relied upon indirect data gathering methods to study climate in the Earth's past, such as drilling ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica. Such samples of accumulated snow and ice drilled from deep within ice sheets or glaciers contain trapped air bubbles whose composition can provide a picture of past climate conditions. Now, however, a group of NASA and university scientists has found a convincing link between long-term solar and climate variability in a unique and unexpected source: directly measured ancient water level records of the Nile, Earth's longest river. Alexander Ruzmaikin and Joan Feynman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., together with Dr. Yuk Yung of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., have analyzed Egyptian records of annual Nile water levels collected between 622 and 1470 A.D. at Rawdah Island in Cairo. These records were then compared to another well-documented human record from the same time period: observations of the number of auroras reported per decade in the Northern Hemisphere. Auroras are bright glows in the night sky that happen when mass is rapidly ejected from the sun's corona, or following solar flares. They are an excellent means of tracking variations in the sun's activity. Feynman said that while ancient Nile and auroral records are generally "spotty," that was not the case for the particular 850-year period they studied. "Since the time of the pharaohs, the water levels of the Nile were accurately measured, since they were critically important for agriculture and the preservation of temples in Egypt," she said. "These records are highly accurate and were obtained directly, making them a rare and unique resource for climatologists to peer back in time." A similarly accurate record exists for auroral activity during the same time period in northern Europe and the Far East. People there routinely and carefully observed and recorded auroral activity, because auroras were believed to portend future disasters, such as droughts and the deaths of kings. "A great deal of modern scientific effort has gone into collecting these ancient auroral records, inter-comparing them and evaluating their accuracy," Ruzmaikin said. "They have been successfully used by aurora experts around the world to study longer time scale variations." The researchers found some clear links between the sun's activity and climate variations. The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common - one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years. The researchers said the findings have climate implications that extend far beyond the Nile River basin. "Our results characterize not just a small region of the upper Nile, but a much more extended part of Africa," said Ruzmaikin. "The Nile River provides drainage for approximately 10 percent of the African continent. Its two main sources - Lake Tana in Ethiopia and Lake Victoria in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya - are in equatorial Africa. Since Africa's climate is interrelated to climate variability in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, these findings help us better understand climate change on a global basis." So what causes these cyclical links between solar variability and the Nile? The authors suggest that variations in the sun's ultraviolet energy cause adjustments in a climate pattern called the Northern Annular Mode, which affects climate in the atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere during the winter. At sea level, this mode becomes the North Atlantic Oscillation, a large-scale seesaw in atmospheric mass that affects how air circulates over the Atlantic Ocean. During periods of high solar activity, the North Atlantic Oscillation's influence extends to the Indian Ocean. These adjustments may affect the distribution of air temperatures, which subsequently influence air circulation and rainfall at the Nile River's sources in eastern equatorial Africa. When solar activity is high, conditions are drier, and when it is low, conditions are wetter. Study findings were recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.