Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Background
On September 10, 1973, the Provisional IRA bombed Euston Station in London. On February 3, 1974 a further bomb destroyed a bus on the M62 motorway killing 12 soldiers and family members. The National Defence College in Latimer, Buckinghamshire was bombed on February 12, 1974.
Ward was arrested on 14 February 1974 and on 4th November was convicted of all three bombings.

Judith WardJudith Ward Appeal
One of the main pieces of forensic evidence against Judith Ward was the alleged presence of traces of nitroglycerine on her hands, in her caravan and in her bag.
Thin layer chromatography and the Griess test were used to establish the presence of nitroglycerine. However, later evidence showed that positive results using these methods could be obtained with materials innocently picked up from shoe polish, and that several of the forensic scientists involved had either withheld evidence or exaggerated its importance.
This was one of a series of miscarriages of justice during the latter half of the 20th Century.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

West Lomond
West Lomond is the highest point in the county of Fife, Scotland and the highest peak in the Lomond Hills. Its volcanic dolerite cone rises above an escarpment of carboniferous sandstone and limestone layers. The conspicuous cones of West Lomond, and its neighbour East Lomond, are visible for many miles around, which explains their name, the 'Lomond' or 'Beacon' hills.
West Lomond is usually climbed from Craigmead car park on the Falkland-Leslie road, as this sits at a height of almost 300 metres. From the car park, leave the trees by a wishing gate, and follow a broad grassy path roughly north-west which joins a track after about 320 metres. Follow this track and subsequent path, which has recently been re-laid to limit erosion, all the way to the summit cone of West Lomond. On reaching this cone, follow the path that skirts round the north side of the peak, which then climbs up the far side to the summit. On the summit are the remains of an Iron Age Hill fort.
Another route leaves from the Bunnet Stane and climbs diagonally up the steep north slopes of the escarpment to a gap in the cliffs, above which one gains the plateau a short distance from the summit cone. On this route there are more interesting features to the landscape, however the climb is steeper and begins at a much lesser altitude than the Craigmead car park.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Witebsk Voivodeship
Witebsk Voivodeship (Polish: Województwo Witebskie) was a unit of administrative division and local government in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (from 1569 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) since 15th century till the partitions of Poland in 1795.
Voivodeship Governor (Wojewoda) seat:
Voivodes: Samuel Sanguszko (1629- XI 1638), Paweł Jan Sapieha (15 VIII 1646-)
Administrative division:
Vitebsk Voivodeship consisted since the Andrussov peace 1667 of two lesser units-counties (powiaty):Witebsk and Orsza.The first was lost two Russia in 1772, and only a little part of the second belonged to the Commonwealth until 1793.
Witebsk

Sunday, October 28, 2007


This article or section uses citations that link to broken or outdated sources, and are deemed unreliable. Please improve the article or discuss this issue on the talk page. Help on using footnotes is available. This article has been tagged since August 2007.
Interstellar space travel is unmanned or manned travel between stars. The concept of interstellar travel in starships is a staple in science fiction. Interstellar travel is tremendously more difficult than interplanetary travel due to the vastly larger distances involved, and intergalactic travel more difficult yet.
As a practical goal, interstellar travel has been debated fiercely by various scientists, science fiction authors, hobbyists and enthusiasts.
Many scientific papers have been published about related concepts. Given sufficient travel time and engineering work, both unmanned and generational interstellar travel seem possible, though representing a very considerable technological and economic challenge unlikely to be met for some time, particularly for crewed probes. NASA has been engaging in research into these topics for several years, and has accumulated a number of theoretical approaches.

The difficulty of interstellar travel
Astronomical distances are sometimes measured in the amount of time it would take a beam of light to travel between two points (see lightyear). Light in a vacuum travels 299,792,458 meters per second or about 186,000 miles per second.
The distance from Earth to the Moon is 1.3 light-seconds. With current spacecraft propulsion technologies, a trip to the moon will typically take about three days. The distance from Earth to other planets in the solar system ranges from three light-minutes to about four light-hours. Depending on the planet and its alignment to Earth, for a typical unmanned spacecraft these trips will take from a few months to a little over a decade.
The nearest known star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.23 light-years away. The fastest outward-bound spacecraft yet sent, Voyager 1, has covered 1/600th of a light-year in 30 years and is currently moving at 1/18000 c. At that rate, a journey to Proxima Centauri would take 72,000 years. Of course, this mission was not specifically intended to travel fast to the stars, and current technology could do much better. The travel time could be reduced to a few millennia using lightsails, or to a century or less using nuclear pulse propulsion (Orion).
No current technology can propel a craft fast enough to reach other stars in a reasonable time (Star-Trek-like time). Current theories of physics indicate that it is impossible to travel faster than light, and suggest that if it were possible, it might also be possible to build a time machine using similar methods.
However, special relativity offers the possibility of shortening the apparent travel time: if a starship with sufficiently advanced engines could reach velocities approaching the speed of light, relativistic time dilation would make the voyage seem much shorter for the traveller. However, it would still take many years of elapsed time as viewed by the people remaining on Earth, and upon returning to Earth, the travellers would find that far more time had elapsed (on Earth) than the subjective travel time. (This effect is referred to as the twin paradox.)
General relativity offers the theoretical possibility that faster than light travel may be possible without violating fundamental laws of physics, for example, via wormholes, although it is still debated whether this is possible in the real world. Proposed mechanisms for faster than light travel within the theory of General Relativity require the existence of exotic matter.

Interstellar distances
The mass of any craft capable of carrying humans would inevitably be several orders of magnitude greater than that necessary for an unmanned interstellar probe. For instance, the first space probe, Luna 1, had a payload of 361 kg; while the first spacecraft to carry a living passenger (Laika the dog), Sputnik 2, had a payload over 20 times that at 7,314 kg. This in fact severely underestimates the difference in the case of interstellar missions, given the vastly greater travel times involved and the resulting necessity of a closed-cycle life support system.

Probes versus human travel
Interstellar travel designs fall into two categories. The first, which we will call slow interstellar travel, takes a great deal of time, sometimes longer than a human lifespan. The second, which we will call fast interstellar travel assumes that the difficulties above can be conquered.

Speculative interstellar travel
Slow interstellar travel designs such as Project Longshot generally use near-future spacecraft propulsion technologies. As a result, voyages are extremely long, starting from about one hundred years and reaching to thousands of years. Crewed voyages might be one-way trips to set up colonies. The propulsion systems required for such slow travel are less speculative than those for fast interstellar travel, but the duration of such a journey would present a huge obstacle in itself. The following are the major proposed solutions to that obstacle.

Slow interstellar travel
A generation ship is a type of interstellar ark in which the travellers live normally (not in suspended animation) and the crew who arrive at the destination are descendants of those who started the journey.
Generation ships are not currently feasible, both because of the enormous scale of such a ship and because such a sealed, self-sustaining habitat would be difficult to construct. Artificial closed ecosystems, including Biosphere 2, have been built in an attempt to work out the engineering difficulties in such a system, with mixed results.
Generation ships would also have to solve major biological and social problems (Sex and Society Aboard the First Starships). Estimates of the minimum viable population vary - 150 is about the lowest, but such a small population would be vulnerable to genetic drift, which might reduce the gene pool below a safe level. A generation ship in fiction typically takes thousands of years to reach its destination, i.e. longer than most human civilizations have lasted. Hence there is a risk that the culture which arrives may be incapable of doing what is needed- in the worst case it may have fallen into barbarism. Also, they may forget that they are on a generation ship. Stephen Baxter's story Mayflower II (in the collection Resplendent) explores both of these risks.

Generation ships
Scientists and writers have postulated various techniques for suspended animation. These include human hibernation and cryonic preservation. While neither is currently practical, they offer the possibility of sleeper ships in which the passengers lie inert for the long years of the voyage.

Suspended animation
A variant on this possibility is based on the development of substantial human life extension, such as the "Engineered Negligible Senescence" strategy of Dr. Aubrey de Grey. If a ship crew had lifespans of some thousands of years, they could traverse interstellar distances without the need to replace the crew in generations. The psychological effects of such an extended period of travel would potentially still pose a problem.

Extended human lifespan
A robotic space mission carrying some number of frozen early stage human embryos is another theoretical possibility. This method of space colonization requires, among other things, the development of a method to replicate conditions in a womb, the prior detection of a habitable terrestrial planet, and advances in the field of fully autonomous mobile robots. (See embryo space colonization.)

Frozen embryos
The possibility of starships that can reach the stars quickly (or at least, within a human lifespan) is naturally more attractive. This would require some sort of exotic propulsion methods or exotic physics.

Fast interstellar travel
If a spaceship could average 10 percent of light speed, this would be enough to reach Proxima Centauri in forty years. Several propulsion systems are able to achieve this, but none of them is reasonably cheap.
In the sixties it was already technically possible to build 8 million ton spaceships with nuclear pulse propulsion engines, perhaps capable of reaching speeds of about 7 percent of light speed. One problem with such a propulsion method is that it uses nuclear explosions as a driving force, and, paradoxically enough, under current nuclear test ban treaties, nuclear explosions are only legal on Earth. See Project Orion for details.
Fusion rocket starships, using foreseeable fusion reactors which hopefully should be feasible roughly about 2040, should be able to reach speeds of approximately 10 percent of that of light. These would "burn" deuterium.
Light sails powered by massive ground-based lasers could potentially reach even greater speeds, because there is no need to accelerate the fuel. But decelerating a solar sail looks very problematic. An hybrid design (accelerate by laser sail, decelerate by fusion rocket) would probably be more effective.
In 1960 Robert W. Bussard proposed the Bussard ramjet, a fusion rocket in which a huge scoop would collect the diffuse hydrogen in interstellar space, "burn" it on the fly using a proton-proton fusion reaction, and expel it out of the back. Though later calculations with more accurate estimates suggest that the thrust generated would be less than the drag caused by any conceivable scoop design, the idea is attractive because, as the fuel would be collected en route, the craft could theoretically accelerate to near the speed of light.
Linear Accelerator Propulsion (LINAC) using invariant mass electron / microwave beam as propellant. An inexhaustable supply of electrons in space makes the technology capable of continuous 24 x 7 non-stop propulsion operation constantly accelerating at 1 g where NLS would then be possible. "Einstein For Dummies", By Dr. Carlos I. Calle, PhD, NASA senior research scientist Pub. Date: June 2005, ISBN 978-0-7645-8348-3, Pages: 384 Pages. If the total distance is X, then the total travel time T is given by the expression
If X = 4.3 light-years, then T = 3.6 years. Dozens of stars could be reached in five to six years. In fact, a traveler could even go the Andromeda galaxy (2,000,000 light years) in under 29 years (Ship Time in Years) if a constant acceleration could be maintained. Dr. Steve Schaefer Ph.D. Princeton University (Physics).
Finally, there is the possibility of the Antimatter rocket. If energy resources and efficient production methods are found to make antimatter in the quantities required, theoretically it would be possible to reach speeds near that of light, where time dilation would shorten perceived trip times for the travelers considerably.

Interstellar travel Sub-light-speed travel

Light speed travel

Main article: Teleportation Interstellar travel via transmission

Main articles: faster-than-light and Faster than Light Travel Faster than light travel
According to General Relativity, spacetime is curved, according to the Einstein equation:
G_{mu,v}=8pi,GT_{mu,v}
General relativity may permit the travel of an object faster than light in curved spacetime . One could imagine exploiting the curvature to take a "shortcut" from one point to another. This is one form of the Warp Drive concept.
In physics, the Alcubierre drive is based on an argument that the curvature could take the form of a wave in which a spaceship might be carried in a "bubble". Space would be collapsing at one end of the bubble and expanding at the other end. The motion of the wave would carry a spaceship from one space point to another in less time than light would take through unwarped space. Nevertheless, the spaceship would not be moving faster than light within the bubble. This concept would require the spaceship to incorporate a region of exotic matter, or "negative mass". As a practical means of interstellar transportation, this idea has been criticized; see Alcubierre Drive.

NASA research

Eugene Mallove and Gregory Matloff (1989). The Starflight Handbook. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 0-471-61912-4. 
Zubrin, Robert (1999). Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization. Tarcher / Putnam. ISBN 1-58542-036-0. 
Eugene F. Mallove, Robert L. Forward, Zbigniew Paprotny, Jurgen Lehmann: "Interstellar Travel and Communication: A Bibliography," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 33, pp. 201-248, 1980.
Geofffrey A. Landis, "The Ultimate Exploration: A Review of Propulsion Concepts for Interstellar Flight," in Interstellar Travel and Multi-Generation Space Ships, Kondo, Bruhweiller, Moore and Sheffield., eds., pp. 52-61, Apogee Books (2003), ISBN 1-896522-99-8.
Zbigniew Paprotny, Jurgen Lehmann: "Interstellar Travel and Communication Bibliography: 1982 Update," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 36, pp. 311-329, 1983.
Zbigniew Paprotny, Jurgen Lehmann, John Prytz: "Interstellar Travel and Communication Bibliography: 1984 Update" Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 37, pp. 502-512, 1984.
Zbigniew Paprotny, Jurgen Lehmann, John Prytz: "Interstellar Travel and Communication Bibliography: 1985 Update" Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 39, pp. 127-136, 1986.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Architect of the Capitol
The Architect of the Capitol (AOC) is responsible to the United States Congress for the maintenance, operation, development, and preservation of the United States Capitol Complex, which includes the Capitol, the congressional office buildings, the Library of Congress buildings, the United States Supreme Court building, the United States Botanic Garden, the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building, the Capitol Power Plant, and other facilities. The Congressional office buildings include the Russell Senate Office Building, the Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Hart Senate Office Building, the Cannon House Office Building, the Longworth House Office Building, the Rayburn House Office Building, and the Ford House Office Building as well as the dormitories and schools for the Senate pages and U.S. House pages.
The Architect of the Capitol is one of three members of both the Capitol Police Board, which has jurisdiction over the U.S. Capitol Police, and the Capitol Guide Board, which has jurisdiction over the United States Capitol Guide Service. The other members of both boards are the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms and House Sergeant-at-Arms.
Until 1989 the position of Architect of the Capitol was filled by appointment from the President of the United States for an indefinite term. Legislation enacted in 1989 provides that the Architect is to be appointed for a term of ten years by the President, with the advice and consent of the United States Senate, from a list of three candidates recommended by a congressional commission. Upon confirmation by the Senate, the Architect becomes an official of the Legislative Branch as an officer and agent of Congress; he is eligible for reappointment after completion of his term.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Clovis
Clovis may refer to:
In geography:
In royalty:
In archaeology:
In literature:
In biography
Clovis, California
Clovis, New Mexico
Clovis I, the first king of the Franks to unite that entire nation
Clovis II, king of Neustria and Burgundy
Clovis III, the king of Austrasia from 675 to 676
Clovis IV, the sole king of the Franks from 691 until his death
Clovis culture, the Paleo Indian culture of North America that first appears in the archaeological record of North America
Clovis point, the oldest flint tools associated with the North American Clovis culture
Clovis Dardentor, 1896 fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne
Clovis Sangrail, a character in the short stories of Saki, named because he was "so appallingly frank"
Clovis Cornillac (born 1967), French actor

Thursday, October 25, 2007


This article is part of the series: Politics and government of the Palestinian National Authority
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (Arabic: منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية; Munazzamat al-Tahrir al-Filastiniyyah  or Munazzamat al-Tahrir al-Filastiniyyah) is a multi-party confederation and is the organization regarded since 1974 as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."

Constitution
President

  • Mahmoud Abbas
    Prime Minister

    • Salam Fayyad (emergency rule) / Ismail Haniyeh (see note)
      Present government
      Legislative Council

      • Speaker

        • Abdel Aziz Duwaik
          Current members
          Political parties
          Elections

          • President: 1996, 2005
            Legislative: 1996, 2006
            Governorates
            Electoral Districts
            Foreign relations
            Fatah-Hamas conflict
            Israeli-Palestinian conflict

            • Oslo Accords
              Proposed State of Palestine Overview
              The PLO has no central decision-making or mechanism that enables it to directly control its factions, but they are supposed to follow the PLO charter and Executive Committee decisions. Membership has fluctuated, and some organizations have left the PLO or suspended membership during times of political turbulence, but most often these groups eventually rejoined the organization. Note: Not all PLO-activists are members of one of the factions - for example, many PNC delegates are elected as independents.
              Present members include:
              Former member groups of the PLO include:

              Fatah (Palestinian National Liberation Movement) - Largest faction, social democratic/nationalist.
              The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) - Second largest, radically militant and Communist
              The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) - Third largest, Communist
              The Palestinian People's Party (PPP) - Ex-Communist, non-militant.
              The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF, Abu Abbas faction) - Minor left-wing faction.
              The Arab Liberation Front (ALF) - Minor faction, aligned to the Iraqi Ba'ath Party.
              As-Sa'iqa - Syrian-controlled Ba'athist faction.
              The Palestine Democratic Union (Fida) - Minor left-wing faction, non-militant
              The Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF, Samir Ghawsha faction) - minor left-wing faction.
              The Palestinian Arab Front (PAF) - minor faction.
              The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC)
              Fatah Uprising/Abu Musa Faction. Membership

              History
              The Arab League on Cairo Summit 1964 initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 29 May 1964. Concluding this meeting the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its Statement of Proclamation of the Organization stated: "The claims of historic and spiritual ties between Jews and Palestine are not in agreement with the facts of history or with the true basis of sound statehood... [T]he Jews are not one people with an independent personality because they are citizens to their states." (Article 18).
              Although Egypt and Jordan favored the creation of a Palestinian state on land they considered to be occupied by Israel, they would not grant sovereignty to the Palestinian people in lands under Jordanian and Egyptian military occupation, amounting to 53% of the territory allocated to Arabs under the UN Partition Plan. Hence Article 24: "This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area."

              Creation


              (in exile in Jordan to April 1971; Lebanon 1971 - December 1982; and Tunis December 1982 - May 1994)


              (acting [for Arafat] to 11 November 2004)

              Ahmad Shukeiri (10 June 1964 - 24 December 1967)
              Yahya Hammuda (24 December 1967 - 2 February 1969)
              Yasser Arafat "Abu Ammar"(2 February 1969 - November 11, 2004)
              Mahmoud Abbas "Abu Mazen"(From 29 October 2004 - present) Chairmen of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee
              The defeat of Syria, Jordan and Egypt in the Six Day War of 1967 destroyed the credibility of the states that sought to be patrons of the Palestinian people and weakened Nasser significantly. The way was opened for Yasser Arafat, who advocated guerrilla warfare and who successfully sought to make the PLO a fully independent organization under the control of the fedayeen organizations. At the Palestinian National Congress meeting of 1969, Fatah gained control of the executive bodies of the PLO. At the Palestinian National Congress in Cairo on February 3, 1969 Arafat was appointed PLO chairman. From then on, the Executive Committee was composed essentially of representatives of the various member organizations.

              War of Attrition

              Main article: Black September in Jordan Black September in Jordan
              In 1974, the PNC approved the Ten Point Program

              Ten Point Program

              Main article: Lebanese Civil WarPLO The PLO in Lebanon and the Lebanese Civil War

              1964 : Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) founded.
              1969 : Organization of the Islamic Conference admits Palestine, represented by the PLO.
              22 November 1974 : The United Nations General Assembly grants the PLO observer status.
              9 September 1976 : Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) admitted as a member of Arab League.
              13 August 1978 : PLO headquarters in Beirut bombed, 150 are killed.
              1982: The vast majority of the PLO relocated to Tunis after being driven out of Beirut during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon
              16 April 1988 : Khalil al-Wazir "Abu Jihad", PLO 2nd in command, is killed by Israel, in Tunis.
              15 November 1988 : Palestine National Congress meeting in Algiers declared a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip (to no effect).
              14 January 1991 : Salah Khalaf "Abu Iyad", PLO 3rd in command, is assassinated in Tunis by an Abu Nidal operative.
              4 May 1994 : Palestinian Authority created to administer most of Gaza Strip and parts of West Bank The PLO timeline
              Opposition to Arafat was fierce not only among radical Arab groups but among many on the Israeli right as well, including Menachem Begin, who had stated on more than one occasion that even if the PLO accepted UN Security Council resolution 242 and recognized Israel's right to exist, he would never negotiate with the organization (Smith, op. cit., p. 357). This contradicted the official United States position that it would negotiate with the PLO if the PLO accepted resolution 242 and recognized Israel, which the PLO had thus far been unwilling to do. Other Arab voices had recently called for a diplomatic resolution to the hostilities in accord with the international consensus, including Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat on his visit to Washington in August 1981 and Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia in his 7 August peace proposal; together with Arafat's diplomatic maneuver, these developments made Israel's argument that it had "no partner for peace" seem increasingly problematic. Thus, in the eyes of Israeli hard-liners, "the Palestinians posed a greater challenge to Israel as a peacemaking organization than as a military one" (Smith, op. cit., 376).

              The PLO as a partner for peace
              In 1982, the PLO relocated to Tunis after it was driven out of Lebanon by Israel during Israel's six-month invasion of Lebanon. It remained active in Lebanon, but not to the same extent as before 1982.
              On October 1, 1985, in Operation Wooden Leg, Israeli Air Force F-15s bombed the PLO's Tunis headquarters, killing more than 60 people.

              Tunis and Algeria

              Main article: First Intifada First Intifada
              In 1990, the PLO under Yasser Arafat openly supported Saddam Hussein in his regime's invasion of Kuwait, leading to a later rupture in Palestinian-Kuwaiti ties and the expulsion of many Palestinians from Kuwait.[1]

              Persian Gulf War
              In 1993, the PLO secretly negotiated the Oslo Accords with Israel. The accords were signed on 20 August 1993. There was a subsequent public ceremony in Washington D.C. on September 13, 1993 with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. The Accords granted the Palestinians right to self-government on the Gaza Strip and the city of Jericho in the West Bank through the creation of the Palestinian Authority. Yasser Arafat was appointed head of the PA and a timetable for elections was laid out which saw Arafat elected president in January 1996, 18 months behind schedule. Although the PLO and the Palestinian Authority are not formally linked the PLO dominates the administration. The headquarters of the PLO were moved to Ramallah on the West Bank.
              On 9 September 1993, Arafat issued a press release stating that "the PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security".
              Numerous leaders within the PLO and the PA, including Yasser Arafat himself, have declared that the State of Israel has a permanent right to exist, and that the peace treaty with Israel is genuine, though members of the PLO have claimed responsibility for a number of attacks against Israelis since the Oslo Accords. Some Palestinian officials have stated that the peace treaty must be viewed as permanent. According to some opinion polls majority of Israelis believe Palestinians should have a state of their own—a major shift in attitude from the pre-Oslo years—even though both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres were both against the creation of a Palestinian state both before and after the signing of Oslo. At the same time, a significant portion of the Israeli public and some political leaders (including the former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) express doubt over whether a peaceful, coherent state can be founded by the PLO and call for significant re-organization, including the elimination of all terrorism, before any talk about independence.

              Oslo Accords

              Main article: Al-Aqsa Intifada Al-Aqsa Intifadah
              In the Cairo Declaration and the Prisoners' Document, Palestinian factions agreed to rebuild the PLO. A meeting will be held in Damascus to discuss its future.

              Development and reactivation
              The PLO was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people before the international community, and was granted observer status as a national liberation movement by the United Nations General Assembly. On January 12, 1976 the UN Security Council voted 11-1 with 3 abstentions to allow the Palestine Liberation Organization to participate in a Security Council debate without voting rights, a privilege usually restricted to UN member states.
              After the Palestinian Declaration of Independence the PLO's representation was renamed Palestine. On July 7, 1998, this status was extended to allow participation in General Assembly debates, though not in voting.
              In numerous Resolutions by the General Assembly the PLO was declared the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian People". This was recognised by Israel in the Oslo Accords from 1993.
              The PLO's diplomatic relations with other Arab countries, particularly those against Israel, are fairly misunderstood. Most Islamic Arab countries generally dislike and show contempt for the PLO, due to the fact that most of its formidable members are leftists, communists, and seculars.

              The PLO in the United Nations
              The Palestinian National Charter as amended in 1968 endorsed the use of violence, specifically "armed struggle" against "Zionist imperialism." Article 10 of the Palestinian National Charter states "Commando (Feday'ee) action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war. This requires its escalation, comprehensiveness, and the mobilization of all the Palestinian popular and educational efforts and their organization and involvement in the armed Palestinian revolution. It also requires the achieving of unity for the national (watani) struggle among the different groupings of the Palestinian people, and between the Palestinian people and the Arab masses, so as to secure the continuation of the revolution, its escalation, and victory."
              The most controversial element of text of the Palestinian National Charter were many clauses declaring the creation of the state of Israel "null and void", since it was created by force on Palestinian soil calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.
              In letters exchanged between Arafat and Rabin in conjunction with the 1993 Oslo Accords, Arafat agreed that those clauses would be removed. On 26 April 1996, the Palestine National Council held a meeting in camera, at whose end it was announced that the Council had voted to nullify or amend all such clauses, and called for a new text to be produced. At the time, Israeli political figures and academics expressed suspicions and doubts this that this is what had actually taken place, and continued to claim that controversial clauses were still in force.
              A letter from Arafat to US President Bill Clinton in 1998 listed the clauses concerned, and a meeting of the Palestine Central Committee approved that list. To remove all doubt the vote this time was held in a public meeting of PLO, PNC and PCC members which was televised worldwide and in the presence of none other than the President of the United States Bill Clinton in person, who arrived in the Gaza Strip for that specific purpose. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted this as the promised nullification.
              The fact that a new text of the Charter has never been produced the source of a continuing controversy, with critics of the Palestinian organizations claim that failure to produce a new text proves the insincerity of the clause nullifications. (Such criticism being, however, confined mainly to marginal groups on the far right side of the Israeli political spectrum). One of several Palestinian responses is that the proper replacement of the Charter will be the constitution of the forthcoming state of Palestine. The published draft constitution states that the territory of Palestine "is an indivisible unit based upon its borders on the 4th of June 1967" - which clearly implies an acceptance of Israel's existence in its 1967 borders.

              PLO National Charter
              In 2004 the United States Congress declared the PLO to be a terrorist organisation under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1987, citing among others the Achille Lauro attack.

              The 1970 Avivim school bus massacre by Palestinian militants, killed nine children, three adults and crippled 19.
              In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the second-largest PLO faction after al-Fatah, carried out a number of attacks and plane hijackings mostly directed at Israel, most infamously the Dawson's Field hijackings, which precipitated the Black September in Jordan crisis.
              In 1974 members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), another faction affiliated with the PLO, seized a school in Israel and killed a total of 26 students and adults and wounded over 70 in the Ma'alot massacre.
              The 1975 Savoy Hotel hostage situation killing 8 civilians and 3 soldiers.
              The 1978 Coastal Road massacre killing 37 Israeli civilians and wounding 76. Designation of Terrorism by United States Congress
              On fighting against Israel:
              "I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." -- Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO (November, 1974, while speaking at the United Nations)
              "This is my homeland; no one can kick me out." -- Yasser Arafat's reply to Ariel Sharon's threat to expel him from the occupied territories. September 11, 2003.
              "Whoever thinks of stopping the uprising before it achieves its goals, I will give him ten bullets in the chest." --Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO
              "We know only one word: Jihad, Jihad, Jihad. When we stopped the intifada, we did not stop the jihad for the establishment of a Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem. And now we are entering the phase of the great jihad prior to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem...We are in a conflict with the Zionist movement and the Balfour Declaration and all imperialist activities." --Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO (During an October 21,1996 speech at the Dehaishe refugee camp)
              "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan." --PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, March 31, 1977, interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw."
              On accepting Israel:
              "Palestinians are no strangers to compromise. In the 1993 Oslo Accords, we agreed to recognize Israeli sovereignty over 78 percent of historic Palestine and to establish a Palestinian state on only 22 percent." -- Saeb Erekat, Chief Palestinian negotiator, 5 August 2000
              "Consequently, the PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian covenant." --Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO (in the exchange of letters with Israel on 9 September 1993)
              "Israel must not demand that the PLO alter its covenant, just as the PLO does not demand that the Jewish nation cancel the Bible." --Ziad Abu Ziad, senior PLO official (in a speech to the American Jewish Federation, 23 October 1993)
              In his 22 April 2004 interview with the Jordanian newspaper Al-Arab, the PLO minister still living in Tunisia Farouk Kaddoumi said that the PLO charter was never changed so as to recognize Israel's right to exist. "The Palestinian national charter has not been amended until now. It was said that some articles are no longer effective, but they were not changed. I'm one of those who didn't agree to any changes." He said also: "...the national struggle must continue. I mean the armed struggle... Fatah was established on the basis of the armed struggle and that this was the only way to leading to political negotiations that would force the enemy to accept our national aspirations. Therefore there is no struggle other than the armed military struggle... If Israel wants to leave the Gaza Strip, then it should do so. This means that the Palestinian resistance has forced it to leave. But the resistance will continue. Let the Gaza Strip be South Vietnam. We will use all available methods to liberate North Vietnam."
              "If you are asking me, as a man who belongs to the Islamic faith, my answer is also "From the river to the sea," the entire land is an Islamic Waqf which cannot be bought or sold, and it is impossible to remain silent while someone is stealing it..." -- Faisal Husseini (1940-2001), Fatah leader and PA Minister for Jerusalem, 'Al-Arabi' (Egypt), 24 June 2001.
              On whether the PLO police force will work with Israel against terrorism:
              "The Joint Security Coordination and Cooperation Committee set up under Article II hereunder shall develop a plan to ensure full coordination between the Israeli military forces and the Palestinian police..." -- from the agreement signed by Israel and the PLO in Cairo on 4 May 1994 (paragraph 2a of Annex I to the agreement)
              "Anyone who thinks the Palestinian police will try to prevent attacks outside the borders of the autonomous area is making a bitter mistake." --- Sufian Abu Zaida, a leader of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction in Gaza (Maariv, 25 April 1994)
              "If there are those who oppose the agreement with Israel, the gates are open to them to intensify the armed struggle." -- Jibril Rajoub, PLO security chief for the West Bank, during a lecture at Bethlehem University (Yediot Aharonot, 27 May 1994)
              On the right of return of Palestinian refugees:
              "I recently read an interview with an elderly Palestinian woman living in the Ein el Hilwa camp in Lebanon. Tightly gripping the rusted key to her family's farm near Jaffa, she asked her interviewer how she should explain to her grandchildren, who had known only the stench of the camp's open sewers, what it was like to wake up to the scent of fresh lemons." -- Elia Zureik, a Professor of Sociology at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, Advises the Palestine Liberation Organization on Refugee Issues
              "800,000 Palestinians among those who left after 1967 will come back in the transitional period, which is five years. Those who left in 1948 will come back after the declaration of the Palestinian independent state." -- Nabil Sha'ath, head of the PLO delegation to the talks with Israel in Taba (Al-Hayat, 28 September 1993)
              "In my opinion, the refugees problem is more important than a Palestinian state" -- Faruk Kadumi, general secretary of the Fatah council (Kul Al-Arab, 3 January 2003)
              On why the PLO signed the Cairo agreement with Israel:
              "The money is the carrot for signing the peace agreement with Israel. We have signed." -- Hassan Abu Libdah, deputy chairman of the PLO's Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction (The New York Times, 10 June 1994)
              On Palestinian statehood:
              "Palestinians believe that Jerusalem should be a shared, open city; two capitals for two states." -- Faisal Husseini, senior PLO representative in Israel, 3 July 2000
              "Gradually, stage by stage, we will reach an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as the capital." -- Faisal Husseini, senior PLO representative in Israel (Beirut Times, 16 September 1993)
              The Palestinian flag "will fly over the walls of Jerusalem, the churches of Jerusalem and the mosques of Jerusalem." -- Yasser Arafat, Former Chairman of the PLO (Jordanian TV, 13 September 1993)

              Statements made by members of the PLO

              Black September in Jordan
              1982 Lebanon War
              Palestinian political violence
              Proposals for a Palestinian state
              State of Palestine
              Palestinian territories
              Palestinian Liberation Army
              Hamas
              Israeli-Palestinian conflict
              Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict See also

              Notes

              Official sites

              Fatah the most significant organization within the PLO
              Brief history of the Palestine Liberation Organization by GlobalSecurity.org Documents

              Another translation of the draft constitution, with commentary by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research
              Commentary on the Palestine National Charter published by the Jewish Virtual Library

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Robert Cathcart
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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Royal Canal of Ireland
The Royal Canal (Irish: An Chanáil Ríoga) is a canal originally built for freight and passenger transportation from the River Liffey at Dublin to the River Shannon at Cloondara in County Longford in Ireland.
Work commenced in 1790 and lasted 27 years before finally reaching the Shannon in 1817. The canal passes through Maynooth, Enfield and Mullingar and has a spur to Longford. The total length of the main navigation is 145km (90 miles), and the system has 46 locks.
There is one main feeder (from Lough Owel), which enters the canal at Mullingar. In 2006 a commemoration marker was erected at Piper's Boreen, Mullingar, to mark the 200 years since the canal reached Mullingar in 1806.
At the Dublin end, the canal once reached the Liffey through a wide sequence of dock and locks at Spencer Dock, with a final sea lock to manage access to the river and sea, but these are no longer fully operational, and access to the river is especially challenging.
The canal is notable in that the Dublin - Mullingar railway line was built alongside the canal for much of the distance. The meandering route of the canal ensures a speed limiting curvature for the railway. The canal was bought by the Midland Great Western Railway to provide a route to the West of Ireland, originally planning to close the canal and build the railway along its bed. The total cost of building the canal was £1,421,954.
The canal travels across one of the major junctions on the M50/N3 in a specially constructed channel.
Today Waterways Ireland is responsible for the canal.
The canal is currently being repaired, and it is intended to reopen it for navigation of its full length (from the Shannon Navigation to Dublin) by the middle of 2008. In early 2007, it is possible to go from Dublin to Ballymahon, and boats of up to 22.9m x 4.0m x 1.2m are allowed. Access points currently exist near Leixlip and at Maynooth, Enfield, Thomastown, Mullingar, Ballinea Bridge and Ballynacargy.
The other large canal in Ireland is the Grand Canal from Dublin's southside through the Midlands to the River Shannon.

Monday, October 22, 2007


The Sovereign Base Areas Police is the local civilian police force for the British controlled Sovereign Base Areas (SBA) of Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus. Established in August 1960, the force has responsibility for all 15,000 residents of the SBAs, including military personnel. However, for any military offences committed by service personnel on military property, authority lies with the Cyprus Joint Police Unit, which is a military unit made up of members of the Royal Military Police and Royal Air Force Police.
The SBA police force consists of a total of 256 officers, consisting of seven British senior officers, with the remainder recruited from the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities. In addition to its regular policing duties, the SBA Police has responsibility for the operation of Dhekelia Prison.
Although the SBA Police is administered by the Ministry of Defence, it is a separate force from the Ministry of Defence Police (MDP).

Sovereign Base Areas Police See also

Sovereign Base Areas
Ministry of Defence Police
Gibraltar Services Police

Sunday, October 21, 2007

History
By the 1850s, the rapid growth of the metropolitan area meant it became too large to efficiently operate as a single post town.

Origins
The NE and S divisions were abolished following a report by Anthony Trollope. In 1866 NE was merged into the E district and in 1868 the S district was split between SE and SW.

NE and S
In 1917, as a wartime measure to improve efficiency, the districts were further subdivided with a number applied to each sub-district.
The boundaries of each sub-district rarely correspond to any units of civil administration such as parishes or boroughs; despite this they have developed over time into a primary reference frame. The numbered sub-districts were later used as the outward code (first half) of the postcode system implemented during the 1970s.
There have been a number of ad-hoc changes to the organisation of the districts, such as the creation of SE28 from part of SE2 because of the construction of the high density Thamesmead development.

Numbered divisions
The initial system was designed at a time when the official London boundary was restricted to the square mile of the small, ancient City of London. The area it covered ('the metropolis') consisted of parts of the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire. In 1889 a County of London was created which was somewhat smaller than the postal district. Around 40 of the sub-districts created in 1917 were outside its boundary with Leyton in Essex, Ealing in Middlesex, Totteridge in Hertfordshire and Wimbledon in Surrey served by the London postal area but outside the County of London.
In 1965 the creation of Greater London caused London's boundary to expand to include these places officially as well as postally, however the new boundary went far beyond these postal districts. Royal Mail were unable to follow this change and expand the postal district to match because of the prohibitive cost. Places in London's outer boroughs such as Harrow, Enfield, Ilford, Romford, Bromley, Richmond and Croydon are therefore covered by parts of twelve adjoining postcode areas (EN, IG, RM, DA, BR, TN, CR, SM, KT, TW, HA and UB). Royal Mail now has a policy of only changing postcodes if there is an operational advantage to them and has no plan to change the postcode system to match up with the Greater London boundaries.
The London postal district currently includes all of the City of London and the City of Westminster, all of the boroughs of Camden, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Wandsworth; very nearly all of Greenwich, Lewisham, Newham and Waltham Forest; parts of Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Harrow, Hounslow, Kingston, Merton, Redbridge and Richmond. Barking and Dagenham, Havering, Hillingdon and Sutton are entirely outside the postal district. Sewardstone in the Epping Forest district of Essex is anomalously the only place to be outside the Greater London boundary but within the London postal district.

Relationship to London boundary
It is common to use postal districts as placenames in London, particularly in the property market: a property may be described as being "in N11", especially where a postal district is synonymous with a desirable location but also covers other less prestigious places. They are a convenient shorthand for social status, such that a 'desirable' postcode may add significantly to the value of property, and property developers have pressed for the boundaries of postal districts to be altered so that new developments will sound as though they are in a richer area. Some groups on the fringes of the London postal districts lobby to be excluded or included in an attempt to decrease their insurance premiums (see SE2) or raise the prestige of their business (see IG1). This is generally futile as the Royal Mail only changes postcodes in order to facilitate the delivery of post.

Significance

All Head District Sorting Offices, except London South East, were connected by and had stations on the Post Office Underground Railway.
The BBC soap opera EastEnders is set in the fictional postal district of E20.
The pop group East 17 took their name from the postcode for Walthamstow. London Postal Area Trivia
All London postal districts were traditionally prefixed with the post town 'LONDON' and full stops were commonly placed after each figure.
e.g. LONDON S.W.1.
Use of the full stops ended with the implementation of the national postcode system. More recently, the Royal Mail have specified that the post town and district should each appear on a separate line in order to increase the effectiveness of their OCR equipment.

Presentation
See the postcode area articles for a full list of the places the districts cover.

List of London postal districts
Image:london_postcodes.png

Outer districts

List of postal codes in the United Kingdom

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Hugo of St. Victor
Hugh of St Victor (c. 1078 - February 11, 1141), mystic philosopher, was probably born at Hartingam, in Saxony.
After spending some time in a house of canons regular at Hamersleben, in Saxony, where he completed his studies, he removed to the abbey of St Victor at Marseille, and thence to the abbey of St Victor in Paris. Of this last house he rose to be canon, in 1125, scholasticus, and perhaps even prior, and it was there that he died.
His eloquence and his writings earned him fame and influence that far exceeded St Bernard's, and which held its ground until the advent of the Thomist philosophy. Hugh was more especially the initiator of the mysticism of the school of St Victor, which dominated the whole of the second part of the 12th century. The mysticism which he inaugurated, says Charles-Victor Langlois, is learned, unctuous, ornate, florid, a mysticism which never indulges in dangerous temerities; it is the orthodox mysticism of a subtle and prudent rhetorician. This tendency undoubtedly shows a marked reaction from the contentious theology of Roscellinus and Abélard.
For Hugh of St Victor dialectic was both insufficient and perilous. Yet he did not profess the haughty contempt for science and philosophy which his followers the Victorines expressed; he regarded knowledge, not as an end in itself, but as the vestibule of the mystic life. Reason was but an aid to the understanding of the truths which faith reveals. The ascent towards God and the functions of the three-fold eye of the soul cogitatio, meditatio and contemplatio were minutely taught by him in language which is at once precise and symbolical.
Manuscript copies of his works abound, and are to be found in almost every library which possesses a collection of ancient writings. The works themselves are very numerous and very diverse. The middle ages attributed to him sixty works, and the edition in Migne's Patr. Lat. vols. clxxv.-clxxvii. (Paris, 1854) contains no fewer than forty-seven treatises, commentaries and collections of sermons. Of that number, however, Barthélemy Hauréau (Hugues de Saint-Victor (1st ed., Paris, 1859; 2nd ed., Paris, 1886) contests the authenticity of several, which he ascribes with some show of probability to Hugh of Fouilloy, Robert Paululus or others.)
Among those works with which Hugh of St Victor may almost certainly be credited may be mentioned:

the celebrated De sacramentis christianae fidei (On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith)
the Didascalicon de studio legendi (Treatise on the Arts)
the treatises on mysticism entitled De contemplatio et ejus operibus (On Contempoation and its Operations), Aareum de meditando opusculum, De arca Noe morali (On the Moral Interpretation of the Ark of Noah), De arca Noe mystica (On the Mystic Interpretation of the Ark of Noah), De vanitate mundi (On the Vanity of the World), De arrha animae (On the Betrothal Gift of the Soul), De amore sponsi ad sponsam (On the Love of the Husband for his Wife), etc.
the introduction (Praenotatiunculae) to the study of the Scriptures
homilies on the book of Ecclesiastes
commentaries on other books of the Bible, e.g. the Pentateuch, Judges, Kings, Jeremiah, etc. See also

German mysticism