Eva Bartlett

The daily suffering and humiliation of Palestinian civilians at the hands of the Zionists is captured by Eva Bartlett, an International Solidarity Movement activist, who has spent much time in Occupied Palestine.

Since May 2007, I have lived in different parts of Occupied Palestine witnessing the crimes of the Zionist entity and sharing in the daily tragedies, injustices and realities of the Palestinians. In 2007, I volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement for eight months in the Occupied West Bank during which time I was detained at a protest against a Jewish-only highway, arrested at a roadblock removal action, and was finally deported and banned from Occupied Palestine.

During those months, I was witness to the ugliest aspects of life under Zionist rule: attacks by illegal armed Jewish colonists and by Zionist soldiers on Palestinian children, women, and the elderly; humiliating military checkpoints, some with zoo-like turnstiles all of which serve to delay or completely prevent the Palestinians’ movement; and raids and weeks-long lockdowns on Palestinian towns and cities, in which the Zionist army ransacked homes and usually abducted one or more member of the family, including children. There are currently 195 Palestinian children in Zionist prisons.

In Susiya, a hamlet in the South Hebron Hills, I witnessed land being stolen and quickly annexed by the illegal Jewish colonists. As we were documenting this annexation, a colonist gleefully admitted that the land was Palestinian but that the grape vines they’d planted on the land were worth 60,000 shekels (roughly $17,500) and were intended for wine production. “It doesn’t matter. See, the grapes we grow will be wine. And I will drink the wine. It doesn’t matter at all that you speak.”

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Roger Tucker

The quenelle is first inserted into the cavity...

The current flap over the gesture called a “quenelle” is revealing in a number of ways. It’s instructive to look first at a couple of Wikipedia entries.

“The word quenelle is derived from the German Knödel (noodle or dumpling)” (which we know from Yiddish cuisine as a knadel)."

"French political activist and comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala is credited with creating and popularizing the gesture, which he first used in 2005 in his sketch entitled 1905 about French secularism and has been used since in a wide variety of contexts.. The first time Dieudonné used the gesture in a political context was for his 2009 European election campaign poster for the "anti-Zionist party", he stated that his intention was "to put a quenelle into Zionism's butt"..."

“The name quenelle comes from an elongated fish meatballs dish, which is said to look like a suppository. Hence, the phrase 'mettre une quenelle' ('to give someone the quenelle'), with a gesture simulating fisting practice, is similar to the English 'up yours'. The arm outstretched refers to the length of the arm going up one's bottom."

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Walter Starck

The so-called settled science of predicting future temperatures is rooted in absurd generalisations, unrepresentative sampling, trick graphs and statistical sleights of hand. The louder they shout, the more apparent their bogus discipline's flaws follies.

The average temperature for the Earth, or any region or even any specific place is very difficult to determine with any accuracy. At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. Weather stations are relatively few and located very irregularly. Well maintained stations with good records going back a century or more can be counted on one’s fingers. Even then only maximum and minimum temperatures or ones at a few particular times of day are usually available. Maintenance, siting, and surrounding land use also all have influences on the temperatures recorded.

The purported 0.7°C of average global warming over the past century is highly uncertain. It is in fact less than the margin of error in our ability to determine the average temperature anywhere, much less globally. What portion of any such warming might be due to due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions is even less certain. There are, however, numerous phenomena which are affected by temperature and which can provide good evidence of relative warming or cooling and, in some cases, even actual temperatures. These include growth rings in trees, corals and stalactites, borehole temperature profiles and the isotopic and biologic signatures in core samples from sediments or glaciers. In addition, historical accounts of crops grown, harvest times, freezes, sea ice, river levels, glacial advances or retreats and other such records provide clear indication of warming and cooling.

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