Guest essay by Eric Worrall
[UPDATE: Edited from Penn State to University of Pennsylvania 8:43 am Pacific Time ~ ctm]
h/t Nick – If there was one Israeli initiative you would think radical greens would support, that would be Israeli efforts to restore ancient forests and improve national CO2 sequestration with a massive tree planting programme.
But no – according to Penn State University of Pennsylvania Student organisation “Fossil Free Penn”, the tree planting initiative is environmental racism.
Penn Students Hold Presentation on Environmental Racism
The student group Fossil Free Penn held a discussion on environmental racism as part of its weeklong engagement project called “Divestfest” Wednesday afternoon.
…
In discussing environmental racism, the speakers highlighted the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Jewish National Fund, an organization that plants trees in Israel, was a major subject of discussion. After asserting that the organization acted unjustly by purchasing land from Palestinians in the early 1900s in deals from which the Palestinians did not profit, the presenters looked into the symbolism of “making the desert bloom,” a phrase the students argued connected the forest environment to whiteness, evoked the notion of “a vacuum that the European savior can come nourish,” and ultimately incentivized “artificially making these areas look more like Europe.”
The students found a particular problem in the planting of pine trees in Israel and the West Bank, drawing a “connection between pine trees, forestation, and the way they further the colonialist agenda through capitalistic (sic) means of timber production.”
While pine trees are an invasive species and can be bad for certain environments, the solution is not merely to plant native trees like the olive tree.
“If we are talking about environmental justice, we have to consider intersectionality,” one of the presenters said. “We have to consider the way that different environmental agendas are being used in order to romanticize and support things that may be in violation of human rights and ancestry rights.” Additionally, the students urged the audience to “look for the complexity in the way that issues are whitewashed.”
…
Read more: https://statesmanonline.org/2017/11/03/students-hold-presentation-on-environmental-racism/
Penn State University of Pennsylvania , the place where your kids can learn from greens that planting trees is wrong, unless they are planted by people with a politically acceptable pedigree.
The greens just don’t know when to stop digging.
They are always looking for that pot of gold. Wonder if they know that leprechauns are imaginary?
The article was interesting, who knew that trees were racist? LOTR taught us that trees don’t like orcs, but is it really necessary for this student group to call ex-jordanians “Orcs” as and such hated by certain trees. That seems overly harsh! Ha.
Love this quote “We have to consider the way that different environmental agendas are being used ….bla bla.” Yah, ain’t that just the thing. All these agendas, how to make them fit together? Good luck with that.
Further, “The students mentioned how environmental racism has occurred in the United States as well. They explained that 58% of people living near oil train tracks in Philadelphia are people of color.”
Well if the enviro crowd wasn’t so prejudiced against black people then they would stop blocking oil/gas pipelines and help reduce the amount to be transported by train. Ahh, yes – back to how to make all these agendas work together topic.
With regards the comment that 58% of people living near oil train tracks are people of color – first, to the brain dead that think that, one, there are NO people not of one color or another, two, I would guess, by the way the statement is worded, they believe the train track was laid through a community of “people of color,” and not that the housing came after the train tracks were laid.
Frenchy77,
Re “…LOTR taught us that trees don’t like orcs…” it was the (sentient) Ents, rather than trees, who held a hatred of Orcs.
Or simply that minority groups have historically been poor, and the poor go in areas with less desirable housing, like near rail lines, because it’s cheaper. They try and make some perverse agenda out of it when it’s the results wrongs done decades ago that aren’t even relevant to decisions made this century.
As a scientist I often look at that phrase “People of Colour” in this way.
A white object reflects all colours of light.
A black objet reflects no colours of light.
Therefore, being white, I am a person of colour. Indeed I am a person of all colours.
Logically, physics tells us, a black person is not a person of colour.
Thanks, Paul Mackey. I’ll remember that. Funny how reality cuts thru oft-used propaganda-phrases.
The ancient cedars of Lebanon were deforested millennia ago to build the ships Phoenicians used to colonize Carthage and other places, and to develop trade that the Greeks & Romans improved upon. Only isolated stands remain. Reforestation is one of the better ideas for that region. There’s no reason forests couldn’t regrow and become sustainable the way they are elsewhere in the world. Cedar warships are obsolete, but the wood is good for furniture, and other things.
The Mediterranean pines that once covered Italy, Greece and the Levant, supplied boat timbers for the thousand ships that Helen’s face allegedly launched. Again, reforestation has been insufficient, and much of Greece is now barren. Blaming “racism” for either deforestation or reforestation is inane, merely an example of how our universities are spending $250,000 per student to turn promising young minds into commies and crybabies.
Forestry is an ancient science mixed with art. It builds soil, conserves water, moderates extremes, produces useful products, and creates landscapes that inspire artists. I thought these collegiate blowhards are supposed to be tree-huggers. Apparently if you can blame European culture for anything that pops into your head, the true cause doesn’t matter, results don’t matter, learning something new doesn’t matter, the fate of Mother Earth doesn’t even matter. Only rage. blame, and reverse bigotry matter.
Exactly so. The Med area was far more forested in the past and there are native conifers.
I have an Aleppo Pine (Pinus Halapensis) planted here at our place in Australia and think about the people of Syria when I mow around it.
One result of all the reforestation around the Med, and with the pine forests which are planted in Israel, is more, and more intense, forest fires. Which are, of course, then blamed on The Warming.
Tom Gelsthorpe,
Great comment.
I recall that the French made a great effort to reforest North Africa when they deemed it to be a part of France, but one of the first things that occurred in Algeria after independence was to cut down all the “French” trees.
I visited the Western Ghats in India in 1974 and again in 2000, and was amazed by their reforestation efforts. Ranges of hills that had been brown were green. To some degree this was made possible because propane could be used for cooking, rather than wood and dung. Another positive change was that goat-herders were educated to see trees as producing forage in their shade, and the herders stopped breaking down branches for goats to munch. The areas in the shade were grassy and looked less over-grazed. The greening of the hills apparently changed even the weather. Slight rains that occurred after the monsoon was over, (called “elephant monsoons” in that area), had increased. Even when it didn’t rain, increased cloudiness lessened the baking heat, (which tended to become intense and debilitating just before rains returned.)
I think it was around that time I recognized the difference between a conservationist, interested in sane approaches to more beautiful world, and an environmentalist, who seem insane and often motivated by hate.
This is not surprising in the least. One must remember that the “Green” movement gained its most significant backer up to that time in National Socialist Germany.
The skill of critical thinking escapes the greenies. They produce nothing that is useful to anyone who has a life.
Turn it into a palm oil plantation….that should make them happy
Do these universities teaching anything besides whining?
Good question. I can testify that UC Berkeley taught whining — mixed with smugness — when I was an undergraduate there 50 years ago. One prof insisted that the island of Mauritius was “doomed” to chronic misery and starvation because of overpopulation, dependence on sugar production, small size, and geographic remoteness. As it turned out, Mauritius developed a thriving, varied economy, is now a middle income country, and considered one of best success stories in sub-Saharan Africa. Admittedly, Mauritius is 1200 miles offshore, but that was supposed to be a disadvantage, not an advantage.
Another prof said Brazil would NEVER succeed at modern agriculture because of poor soil, backward practices, etc. etc. Yet a few years ago, Brazil passed the U.S. as world’s largest soybean exporter, a category the U.S. had dominated since WW II. Most of Brazil’s beans go as chicken feed for China, another country for which there was no hope of success.
I still try to love Penn State, Michael Mann and all.The football team beat Rutgers. That’s worth something, right?
Absolutely. I was born in Philadelphia.
As a Penn Stater, Mann is a huge embarassment!
early 1900’s I doubt that a lot.
well, you shouldn’t
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_National_Fund
Jewish land purchases in Palestine began quite a bit earlier than 1900. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_Palestine
And the land that the Paestinian Arabs unloaded on the Jews was largely worthless swamps and deserts until the Israelis went to work on it and now it is valuable land, but it wasn’t then.
The JNF, to which I contribute hundreds of dollars annually, was established by Theodore Herzel, the founder of modern Zionism in 1901 to redeem the land of Israel.
Since its founding, JNF has purchased (redeemed) land in Israel where it now owns about 13% of the total, and holds it as a trustee for the entire Jewish people everywhere. These purchases are all voluntary transactions. JNF does not have the power to engage in forced transactions. Not only that, but for the first half of the 20th Century, the land of Israel was ruled by foreign powers.
Before WWI, the land of Israel was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was a theo-political institution, ruled by the Sultan, who was also Caliph. As such, he was considered by Sunni Muslims, to be the religious successor to the prophet Muhammad. In that Medieval polity, land was mostly owned by a very narrow aristocracy, who seldom resided on or worked the land.
As a result, the land of Israel was not only owned by foreigners, it had been stripped and rendered unproductive by transhumance, poor agricultural practices, and neglect. Anyone interested in what it looked like in the late 19th century should read Mark Twain’s “Innocents Abroad”.
In addition to purchasing land, JNF has engaged in planting the trees (not all pines), draining swamps, and establishing communities. Its first community establishment was Tel Aviv.
In recent years, JNF, the State of Israel, and Israeli scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs, have worked to solve Israel’s chronic water problems. They have succeeded in making Israel self sufficient in water through conservation, recycling, and desalination. It points the way towards solving environmental problems through adaptive technology, not finger pointing and impoverishing the people.
Most of that west bank land was SEIZED not ‘bought’. 700,000 Palestinians were expelled during israels creation and then all those villages were seized in israel proper. In the west bank where they build israeli settlements they just take the land or offer compensation that is so low, it is refused.
The situation in israel/palestine today is that 4 million palestinians are confined to disconnected bantustans that together comprise less than 10% of the overall territory in the west bank and gaza. They cannot move between occupied territories or into israel itself unless they have some type of menial labor day job and have a daily entry permit which are hard to get (aphartheid is basically modern day slavery). Palestinians are not ‘israeli citizens’ so they are not represented in parliament-so they cannot stop any of this. There are israeli settler only roads all over the WB that confine them to these bantustans even more and make movement impossible (just google west bank map. Israel gives the settlers many times more water than what the Palestinians get. Jewish settlers often attack Palestinian agricultural land and burn down their olive trees, they also vandalize palestinians houses constantly..you can see them doing that on youtube. Olive trees are one of the few things Palestinians can grow because they are allowed so little water.
Israel is the worst racist aphartheid state in history. Desmond Tutu once said that the former apharthied regime in south africa ‘never dreamed’ of making the aphartheid there as bad as israels. There is an excellent film called “Roadmap to Aphartheid” that compares the 2 countries, Israels aphartheid is WAY WORSE, it makes segregation in the american south look like disneyland.
White European countries are forced to import millions of arabs and africans fleeing wars in places like Iraq/Syria which were started by american neo-con zionists like Pearl and wolfowits and if they do not they are called ‘racists’ but israel does not even let Palestinians refugees back into their own country and does not even allow Palestinians out of their bantustans because israel is a ‘jewish state’ but Germany cannot be a ‘white state’ because zionists wil call the ‘racists’.
one correction, 10% of the overall territory which is israel proper, west bank and gaza are where the palestinians bantustans are, just look at a west bank map.. can you imagine if blacks and hispanics were denied citizenship and sealed into disconnected area’s that together comprise less than 10% of the USA or of California, imagine if blacks and hispanics were forced to live in riverside and snabernardino counties-a hoter dryer landlocked area while the entire Los Angeles and Orange, and San Diego counties were a ‘white state’ you can only image what kind of violence that would create.. Palestinians are called ‘terrorists’ for rebelling against such an outrage.
Sam,
Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz were indeed among those advising Bush the Younger in 2001-03, before the liberation of Iraq and overthrow of the mass murderous tyrant Saddam.
Do you think that making popular government possible in Iraq was a good thing or bad? Thanks.
Your tax dollars at work…
yes on tax dollars “at work”.
And Penn is a private (Ivy League) “non-profit” uni, that pays no taxes, like Harvard, Yale, Stanford (not an ivy, I know), et al. despite quite sizable endowments and investments.
Penn may be “private” but it collects far more money either outright in the form of grants, or indirectly through privileges under state and Federal tax laws, than any public institution. It being “private” means that it has no accountability to the taxpayers.
Between government backed student loans and government research grants I would bet well over 50% of Penn’s operating budget comes from state and federal tax dollars.
The left in the US and Europe has taken the Arab Muslim position that unbelievers, non-Muslims, have no rights when dealing with Muslims. This raving inconsistency is rationalized as opposing colonialism, a view that white Europeans have no rights in dealing with third-world populations, a mirror image of the actual colonialist position.
Kitsch Marxists reduce everything to the Marxist narrative, whether environmentalism, Liberation Theology, or property disputes.
Europeans have a right to have their own white countries in Europe in whcih they are indigenous, they should not be forced to import millions of arabs and africans and destroy their race and culture. Askanazie Khaazaar Jews do not have a right to have a racist aphartheid state in palestine or israel-whatever you wanna call it, if they wanna live there than they can live there with equal rights like the white people in south africa, why is south africa and rhodesia forced to end aphartheid but the zionists continue their aphartheid outrage and american and european tax payers are forced to fund it?
You are ignoring history. The Muslim residents of what was then that part of Turkey backed the losing side in every major war in the past hundred years, and now act as if there should be no consequences for those actions.
There have been rather unjust actions towards the losers in war in the past hundred years, from Anatolian Greeks to Sudeten and Polish Germans. You also do not mention that the various Arab countries expelled/expropriated almost all their pre-1948 Jewish populations.
Most of the Arab countries refused to accept the Muslim losers in the civil war as subjects, and decided to keep the dispute going, despite losing several wars.
Before you make the claim, no, I’m not Jewish.
Aliyahs to Israel have brought people from many diverse regions, including the Middle East, Russia, Europe and Africa. Arab speakers who are citizens of Israel have the same rights as any one else there.
And last I checked, the Palestinians want a single state under Sharia law. If European countries who are being flooded with “Syrian” migrants want to know how to maintain a representative democracy while under threat from mus11ms who want Sharia, they can look to Israel.
Extremely sad how far my alma mater has fallen!
wow… awesome. Who would have thought pine trees could be racist… unless of course you think in terms of white vs black pines. olive trees vs pine trees? Christian S. M. Turney FGS FRGS ( Professor of Climate Change and Earth Science at University of New South Wales. leader of the dreaded Akademik Shokalskiy got stuck in ice on Christmas Day 2013 only two weeks after leaving New Zealand. ) was to plant a bunch of trees in Australia to remove the ‘carbon footprint’ of the rescue attempts. Can that be racist?
Everyone needs a safe space….except conservatives and pine trees
Antarctica is very white – so it is inherently racist.
Of course it is. just look at the way it treats poor bicolor birds.
Arctic is even worse. Only white bears allowed. That hunt down poor seals as soon as they stop being white.
Arctic, on the other hand, gets lots of soot from fires volcanoes.
Thus becomes “less white”.
Is that better or worse? hmmm. !
I may be mistaken but i thought that Lebanon was famous for cedar trees. Isn’t it on their flag? Ecologically speaking arent both countries in the same zone? Their cedar is an evergreen, not that much different than a pine.
Sigh.
The fame of the Cedars of Lebanon is biblical in age, but enviro-rapists cut them down long ago.
I wonder if these pea brains object to reforestation projects planting Lebanon cedars?
Like this one:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi3ifHztbzXAhVOzGMKHbagA8kQjRwIBw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fjtanoukhi%2Flebanon-cedarsel-barouk%2F&psig=AOvVaw0QW_9F9pUFkacMRqY-z8iG&ust=1510692226792854
There must be some ulterior rationale for harvesting English walnuts rather than Black walnuts, no?
English/Persian walnuts are much easier to shell, and produce more nuts per tree, as English walnuts have been bred for that. Black walnuts have a stronger flavor, which is something of a marketing or preference issue.
” and produce more nuts per tree,”
UEA, and U Exeter !! 🙂
If you aren’t in lockstep with leftist thinking, nothing you do is correct.
+1 Not sure if there is anything else to say after that. Maybe one could get philosophical: If you open your mouth at Penn State and there are no leftists around to hear you, are you still wrong?
The Israelis could come up with a free, completely non-polluting, easy source of electricity and give the technology to the world for free and these bozos would find something to complain about.
Depends. Liberal or Arab Israelis are OK. The only one OK, in fact.
Jew Israelis would never give something for free, they know that /sarc
That is anti-semitic slander.
it is, indeed, hence my /sarc tag. Unfortunately it is obviously the only rationale behind “Fossil Free Penn” rant. Those are plainly anti-semitic, even though they would deny that.
To be fair, if ever they would succeed in destroying Israel again, you can trust them to stage protest against your lack of empathy toward the poor Jew “Climate refugees” that would flow out of Palestine (not at all because of new Hamas leaders abuse against Jews, of course…).
Don’t you agree?
Walter – note the /sarc in the comment.
If they were able to do that, their main reason/goal would be to harm the oil producing States … /sarc
The US will be a leader in oil.
Not a quote – but you get the picture – POTUS has tweeted that, I gather.
/not
Check out “Fossil Free Penn”‘s website. It is associated with the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), not Penn State (State College). Eric, please remove and re-post the article accurately.
Not that Penn State isn’t a center for whacky behavior. They are in the news far too often for goofy doings.
As a 1971 engineering grad, I am often embarrassed. Problem No. 1: While a dean at Penn State, current PSU president Eric Barron hired Michael Mann, and still supports him strongly. This assures the U of a prominent position in continuing climate lunacy.
Reply: Updated. The URL will still reflect mistake ~ ctm
“The University of Pennsylvania has significant influence as an institution and this power should be used ethically. ”
————–
Any agenda becomes ethical when it is your agenda, is that it, U Penn?
Come now, all power should be used ethically. Whether 117 vRMS or 220-240 vRMS.
In fairness, it isn’t U Penn behind this nonsense, it is the group “Fossil Free Penn” located at that august university.
Should U Penn allow such activity? Of course! That’s exactly the point of free speech.
By their words will we know them.
Allowing the speech, for sure. Only giving the boot to any of these nuts that are supposed to be learning, not preaching as if they already knew something.
“you think you know enough? ok, we accept your resignation. No refund”
Would it be acceptable to plant cedars and return the landscape to one the ancient peoples would have recognized?
Wasn’t it a lot wetter 3000-4000 years ago in that region of the world, when the Cedars of Lebanon prevailed?
Earthling2,
Yes, it was wetter. The wettest time was back when the entire Sahara was green, and the world was much milder. Recent “climate optimums” were wet, while colder periods were dry. It is interesting to read the Old Testament with some awareness of how the desert landscape would green, and streams would flow, and then dry up again. (Alarmists are strangely blind to such history.)
I like this collection of images of Roman Bridges over rivers that are now dry:
?w=566&h=649
I touch upon the old history at the start of this old post:
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/arctic-sea-ice-not-all-its-cracked-up-to-be/
Moderately
You mean the Palestinians?
Jews have been there the whole time too. Christians have been there almost as long, and both longer than Muslims since that faith is the youngest of the 3.
Mike
I was referring to a group of people, not their religious persuasion.
@Ozonebust
Then the answer is “no”. The concept of “Palestinians” as a people is a post-1948 invention of the Arab nations who tried to obliterate the nascent state of Israel. The amalgam of Bedouin tribes that have been indiscriminately slapped with that label do not have a common cultural or linguistic heritage, and as nomads have had a rather primitive concept of land ownership. The only thing that binds them now is their hatred of Israel, otherwise they’d be gleefully trying to slit each others’ throats. In fact, see the PLO vs Hezbollah for just such a continuing instance.
D.J.Hawkins
See below map from 43 AD – known world at that point.
Enlarge the map and it will show Palestine.
History has been re-written by the sound of it, much like historical temperatures.
There are plenty more at different times.
Regrds
D. J. Hawkins November 13, 2017 at 10:46 am
“Palestine” is ancient. It comes from the biblical Philistines, the coastal people who fought the Hebrew hill tribes. Persians, Greeks and Romans referred to the southern Levant as Palestine.
The ancestors of today’s Palestinians weren’t all Bedouins. Far from it. They were agriculturalists as well as pastoralists and town- and city-dwellers as well. Before the Arab Conquest, they, like Jesus and other Jews during the Persian, Hellenic and Roman periods, spoke Aramaic.
True, some Arabs did move into the region after the Conquest, but ethnic admixture has been going on in the Levant since the Neanderthals. About three thousand years ago, Arabic, Canaanite and Hebrew were dialects of the same West Semitic language.
PS: The Jewish aliyahs from 1882 onwards were to Palestine.
In 1929, the Palestine Zionist Executive was renamed, restructured and officially inaugurated as The Jewish Agency for Palestine by the 16th Zionist Congress, held in Zurich, Switzerland.
After the fall of the western Roman Empire, Palestine continued as a formal provincial or district name under the Byzantines (Palaestina Prima) and the Islamic Arabs (Jund Filastin). The Ottomans however divided the Levant into five districts named after cities, all under the province of Damascus. But “Palestine” continued in common parlance to refer to the region of the southern Levant, the north being Syria (to include present Lebanon).
After the defeat of the Ottomans in WWI, the League of Nations awarded Britain the Mandate of Palestine. So the term was really never out of currency from biblical to modern times.
DNA analysis of recently discovered graves have been matched with those non Arabs living in Lebanon not Palestinians.
And just in case you needed a reference for the DNA information.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/2017/07/canaanite-bible-ancient-dna-lebanon-genetics-archaeology
crowcane November 13, 2017 at 4:58 pm
Hardly surprising that ancient remains from Sidon, Lebanon would show Canaanite affinities, since that area was part of ancient Canaan and Phoenicia. Palestine too was originally part of Canaan, which, according to the Bible, was invaded by the Hebrew tribes. Arabs are also part of the Semitic mix of the Levant.
The Canaanite language was so similar to Hebrew that its cuneiform writings, which like Hebrew use only vowels, might as well be Hebrew. Some of the Ugaritic texts are identical to passages in the Old Testament.
The Canaanite language was so similar to Hebrew that its cuneiform writings, which like Hebrew use only vowels, …
Ancient Hebrew used only consonants.
Ancient Egyptian had few vowels, as does Arabic.
Mike,
All the Semitic languages have and had vowels, as too did their Afro-Asiatic linguistic kin, like ancient Egyptian and its modern descendant, Coptic.
You seem to be confusing writing system with the spoken language. Ugaritic cuneiform used only consonants, as do the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets, based upon Egyptian hieroglyphs, as to are the Greek and Roman alphabets. But that doesn’t mean that those languages lacked vowels.
Hebrew uses diacritical marks to indicate vowels.
@Ozonebust
I did not claim that there wasn’t an area of the Middle East known as “Palestine” on various maps in various configurations through history. But that “Palestine” was more akin to say, the American “Southwest”. Few if any who inhabit that region considers themselves as “Southwesterners”. If asked where they come from they will say “Nevada”, “Arizona”, or “Texas”, or possibly “the United States”. Their cultural identity does not derive from the over-arching region they inhabit. This is the former sense of “Palestine”. It was later co-opted and molded into a monolithic creature, sprung fully formed as Venus from the brow of Zeus as a weapon to be wielded against Israel in the political sphere and on the battleground.
D. J. Hawkins November 14, 2017 at 4:14 pm
You’re roughly right with respect to the Ottoman Empire. But there had been actual states or provinces with “Palestine” in their name from biblical times right down to the Turkish conquest of the Levant. The term was revived by the League of Nations for the British Mandate, and was used even by the Jewish authority in Palestine between the wars.
Cedrus libani, commonly known as the Cedar of Lebanon is a species of cedar native to the mountains of the Eastern Mediterranean basin. It is an evergreen conifer that can reach 40 m in height. Cedrus libani is the national emblem of Lebanon and is widely used as an ornamental tree in parks and gardens.
There are cedars in the NW of Cyprus in the Troodos mountain range…a beautiful valley of them.
My idea of “intersectionality” is a good piece of hickory across the skulls of these anti-Semites.
The Green train makes another whistle stop. There’s always room for more passengers.
The windows are really projection screens and no one will mention the end of the line.
All Aboard!
I think I’ll stay on the platform. Don’t wanna be aboard when it pulls into that depot way down yonder.
It’s more than planting trees. In the Negev desert, Israel severely restricts the movement of the nomadic tribes and their herds of goats. The result is that the desert is greening itself – quite naturally. You can see the result if you look on Google Earth at the Egypt-Israel border between 25 and 50 km SE of the coast at Gaza. The Egyptian side is a barren sandy desert with scattered shrubs and the Israel side is mostly covered in a grey-green carpet of grassy stuff.
As far as I can gather, the nomads are not actually Palestinians, so they don’t count /sarc
It was my impression that most of the Israeli/Zionist land purchases were from Turkish (Ottoman Empire) landowners, not so much from Palestinians.
The nomadic Bedouin are Arabs. Some of them inhabited Palestine for a long time. A lot of the recently arrived Palestinians were Arab immigrants too, and indeed, even the UN gave them refugee status as newly minted Palestinians only after 2 years after having arrived from elsewhere in the Arab world. A fairly good book on the history of all this, including land purchases from the Turkish (Ottoman) land owners pre 1917 is: From Time Immemorial – The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine by Joan Peters.
Whilst agreeing with Smart Rock may I be permitted, by quoting from two of the numerous contemporaneous sources, to correct his impression, which is easily gained from revisionist propaganda, that the Arabs (Palestinians) did not sell their land to the Jews.
Two of the numerous contemporaneous sources.
The Mandates Palestine Report of the Palestine Royal Commission (known as the Peel Commission after its Chairman, the Earl Peel) published by the League of Nations in 1937 states:
“The Arab population shows a remarkable increase since 1920, and it has had some share in the increased prosperity of Palestine. Many Arab landowners have benefited from the sale of land and the profitable investment of the purchase money. The fellaheen are better off on the whole than they were in 1920. This Arab progress has been partly due to the import of Jewish capital into Palestine and other factors associated with the growth of the National Home. In particular, the Arabs have benefited from social services which could not have been provided on the existing scale without the revenue obtained from the Jews.”
“The shortage of land is due less to purchase by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population. The Arab claims that the Jews have obtained too large a proportion of good land cannot be maintained. Much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamps and uncultivated when it was bought.”
The then Emir, and later King, Abdullah of Jordan noted the eagerness of the Arabs “..including all the leading families such as the Husseinis, the Nashashibis, the Khalidis, the Dajanis and the Tamimis, to sell to the Jews at extortionate prices.”
He also stated:
“Or are you among those who believe that there is no harm in continuing the present deleterious mandate despite the Jewish usurpers it has brought and despite the demonstrated inability of those Palestinians now at the political helm to prevent their compatriots from selling their land? Furthermore, it is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping.”
Thanks, Solomon. You are very wise.
The Arab claims that the Jews have
=========
genetically they are one people.
the nomads are not actually Palestinians
≠=====
they are one of the lost tribes of Israel.
Technically, according to Biblical myth, the Arabs (Bedouin) were the offspring of Ishmael, son of Abram and Hagar. She was an Egyptian maid to Sarai, Abram’s wife who could not conceive a son, until she was 90 years old. After Isaac was born to Sarai and Abram, Ishmael and his mother were banished to the desert and they were condemned to wander the desert and be enemies with their half bother for time immemorial. G*d soon after renamed Abram and Sarai, Abraham and Sarah and declared his new name: “Abraham” – “a father of many nations”, and gave him the covenant of circumcision. Isaac (Rebecca) was the father of Jacob and Esau. The rest is ‘history’.
The truth is, is that ancient Israelis and Arabs shared a common ancestor, both being Semites from further east in the Persian Gulf region. Pretty much as Genesis says. I remember this all from Sunday School when I was 7 years old.
Here’s a nice contrast to the mental illness.of perpetual victimhood
https://twitter.com/NiaMAGA3X/status/929805018110316544
” … we don’t give a fkuc for your opinion”
A phrase I have used often, to good effect.
Nothing beats watching a leftist snowflake have a conniption fit when they realize we don’t give a shite.
Protein World and the Beach Body ads are another example of how to deal with whingers.
Right from a University in the middle of “The City of Brotherly Love”. Used to deliver there every once in a while to the Honors foods DC on N. 5th street. Right in the middle of what they call “the bad lands”. Company gave up the run when a driver heard a gun battle within a block of where he was parked waiting to get into the facility early one morning.
UPenn area has improved but was bordered by some ugly stuff when I was there almost 30yrs ago. 5th St is nowhere near it, though.
The hard left are reflexively antisemitic.
It makes very clear the unmistakable Na3i roots of modern environmentalism.
Antisemitism and the left wing seem to go together. Soviet Russia was not a Jew-friendly place, and Hitler was notoriously antisemitic (and yes, Hitler was a socialist. Just read the manifesto of the German Workers’ National Socialist Party, otherwise known as the Nazi Party.)
I have a theory as to why the left wing is antisemitic. The left wing is bound up with isms – socialism, communism, Marxism, whatever-ism. As such, they believe their particular ism is more important than any laws of man. Mere laws can be ignored if they are a hindrance to The Cause (whatever that might currently be). Jews, on the other hand, tend to be fervent believers in the law because they have spent the last two thousand years as a stateless people painfully learning that laws are their only protection. Jews and the left wing are almost always on opposite sides because of this.
Anyone care to comment on this?
Roger: I think that you are on the right track. You should also mention that Jewish belief is that the source of law is the Torah of Moses, revealed at Sinai. Needless to say, that really annoys all varieties of Socialists.
Great point. And the irony is that Jews tend to vote left??? Prager (a Jew) has a theory that only he can so eloquently describe, but is basically that Jews vote left to be liked. Such is a reflection of the traditionally far-superior marketing efforts of the left to make conservatives into such beasts.
What I really like is that while the greens are busy out making enemies, Israel is out developing the gas fields of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Montgomery: Jews vote Democrat because they got off the boat in NY and Chicago when those places were machine Democrat to the exclusion of everything else. They will change when the Democrats adopt the position that Zionism is racism as the loons who wrote the statement in the first post above believe.
I think Ferris said it best:
“,,,their particular ism is more important than any laws of man…” or of God–(“enddowed by their Creator…”). j
Walther,
The Democrats have as good as already equated Zionism with racism, imperialism, colonialism fascism and the source of all evil in the world.
IMO many younger and even some older American Jews feel about Israel as they do about the US, as a hegemonic bad guy.
Indeed, they certainly seem to be…witness Corbyn’s Labour lot in the UK. It stinks. I think the would-be new order know that the Judeo-Christian basis of Western Society is the main danger to their success in world domination by the extreme lefties.
This was in answer to a comment re anti-semitism but has misplaced for some reason.
Hmm, have these folks never heard of the ‘Cedars of Lebanon’? Do they not understand that the area was heavily forested and was subject to deforestation by the inhabitants? The effort was so extensive it changed the local weather?
Cedrus libani, commonly known as the Cedar of Lebanon is a species of cedar native to the mountains of the Eastern Mediterranean basin. It is an evergreen conifer that can reach 40 m in height. Cedrus libani is the national emblem of Lebanon and is widely used as an ornamental tree in parks and gardens.
The Romans were responsible for a lot of deforestation during their war against Jerusalem. I forget how many miles that extended from the city, but it was a lot
No, that was done by Cyrus and Xerxes long before Rome arrived on the scene.
No, they haven’t, and they don’t know that the Phoenicians built their trading ships out of that cedar. If they had to read up on that, it would destroy their argument.
They seem to be arguing that Israeli prospering makes Palestinians look bad; hence prospering is racist.
The ignorance of these people becomes more and more obvious.
This phrase: ‘the European savior….’ I don’t know if that means they think Jesus was some Gallic fellow who wandered down into the Land of Canaan, or that they refuse to acknowledge that Jesus was a Jewish carpenter who spent some time meditating in the desert.
Whatever their disconnect from reality is this time, they are becoming more and more the epitome of disgusting self-centeredness. Please keep updating us about things like this. The more we know about these trogs, the better we can repel them. We are almost obligated to find out what their real weaknesses are.
BTW, there were about 5,000 screaming twits throwing a howling temper tantrum on November 8, in groups of 3 to 10 individuals across the USA. That was the extent of their moment of ‘mindless howl at the sky’.
This sounds like the same apparatus and mode of operation as some UN special studies and committees on human rights headed by dictatorships and despots. They often sell their votes at the UN for cash and trade deals.
Another example of the anti-Semitic emotions prevalent amongst folks who, laughingly, claim that
they are pristine, ethnically speaking.
“The early 1900s” ? So they believe that the sins of the great, great, great, grandfather are visited upon the decendents? That is called racism, actually. It’s also called insane thinking.
“…a vacuum that the European savior can come nourish,” and ultimately incentivized “artificially making these areas look more like Europe.”
The students found a particular problem in the planting of pine trees in Israel and the West Bank, drawing a “connection between pine trees, forestation, and the way they further the colonialist agenda through capitalistic (sic) means of timber production.
While pine trees are an invasive species and can be bad for certain environments, the solution is not merely to plant native trees like the olive tree.”
Where to start?
1. So the Jews are European in origin?
2. Pine trees are invasive and not native to the Mediterranean? Here are some that are native:
Aleppo pine
Austrian pine
Cilician Fir
Lebanon cedar
Maritime pine
Mediterranean Cypress
Spanish Fir
Stone Pine
Turkish pine
The Mediterranean was once covered in large forests which included Pines
Pines indigenous to Israel during the Holocene include the Aleppo, Stone and Turkish Pines. There might be some others.
Calling pines exclusively European is delusional. They exist natively clear across the Northern Hemisphere, ie North America, Asia and Africa as well as Europe, and at least one species sneaked into the Southern Hemisphere, on Sumatra.
The genus Pinus probably evolved in Mesoamerica during the Cretaceous, but strangely seems never to have made it across the Inter-American Seaway to South America, or even after its closure by the Isthmus of Panama some three million years ago. Pine plantations are now extensive in South America, however.
pine trees are one of the few conifers found in tropical climates. they were prized as replacement. masts for sailing ships.
isle of pines, new Caledonia and Norfolk pines, Norfolk. island, Australia come to mind.
Ferd,
Those aren’t true pines.
The New Caledonia “pine” is Araucaria columnaris. The Norfolk Island “pine” is Araucaria heterophylla. Their genus belongs to the Araucariaceae, an ancient family of coniferous trees which achieved its maximum diversity during the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, when it was distributed almost worldwide. Most of the Araucariaceae in the Northern Hemisphere vanished in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, and are now largely confined to the Southern Hemisphere, except for a few species of Agathis in Southeast Asia.
Best known species in the genus is Araucaria araucana, the monkey puzzle tree from Chile.
And the Australian “Cyprus Pine”: Callitris, a genus of coniferous trees in the Cupressaceae family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callitris
Sam,
And very pretty they are, although perhaps of somewhat less utility as ships’ masts.
Yes true.
However, they make lovely floorboards and the white ants won’t touch them.
Whatever the white ants won’t touch is good. But what of the lamentations of the women?
(See another post.)
That is good.
There are some pines (Pinales order, Araucariaceae family) indigenous to subtropical and temperate South America.
Araucaria Angustifolia is an example very characteristic from where I live (Bento Gonçalves/RS in the temperate highlands of southern Brazil):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_angustifolia
Podocarpaceae is another family of the pinales order originally distributed throughout Gondwana and now found in South America, Africa, Asia and Oceania:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podocarpus
Exotic pines are also widespread (commercial and ornamental uses) in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile and Argentina.
If they bought land from the Palestinians, then the person selling the land profited. This is the kind of nonsense that defies logic. Paying someone for their land is not exploitation. Making the area green is not “making it look more like Europe” it is making it look like it used to before people stripped all the vegetation. It used to be “the land of milk and honey” rather than a wasteland.
People see racism in everything today. I was playing a game with my (adult) children the other day and the name “Niggurath” came up. They would not even say it because it sounded like a racial epitaph. I said it out loud several times while they cringed. Then I informed them that it was a proper name and there was nothing wrong with it. “Words only have power over you if you give them power.” It was not a particularly proud moment for me as a parent. I raised them to think for themselves and not be swayed by emotional appeals when making such judgements. A “dad lecture” ensued. They had it coming.
Their education has obviously been somewhat niggardly in this respect.
Nothing wrong with it? You fool! Shub-Niggurath is one of the Great Old Ones, the Goat with a Thousand Young! I suppose that next you’ll tell us that you plan on going around next month singing Cthulhu carols.
😉
How does a goddess get to be “Lord of the Wood”? Is she not a Lady?
I suppose that they pronounce “Niger” à la française.
Recent news stories re US combat casualties certainly do.
Yes, I guess to the broadcast powers that be, “Neezhayer” sounds less offensive than “Neyejer”.
Oh do come on, Gabro.
You know the answer to that.
Fluidity x Gender = gender fluidity.
Green math. Simple!
That was in response to Gabro’s post:
“How does a goddess get to be “Lord of the Wood”? Is she not a Lady?”
Down-under, OK? Like the post.
I spent many days of hard work planting trees in the Negev. I seem to recall working with Palestinian labourers doing the same work. We all felt that this was one thing that could not be politicised.
Everything can be politicized, and some are masters at it.
Intersectionality at the intersection of Green and Batty.
The poor Penn State greenies don’t realize that Jews have lived continuously in the area of modern Israel and the occupied territories for over three thousand years along with their Arab neighbors. They are no more colonialists than the Palestinians. A huge influx of European Jews after World War II emigrated to the Middle East to join the Jews already living there. Together they formed the state of Israel. #lessonsfromhistory
Jews and Arabs are one people separated by religion.
Oddly enough, it’s the only country in the region where all religions can practice, without harassment from the Government. Just don’t try to marry across religions, though!
I saw a photo from the space shuttle once. Israel was perfectly defined by small cumulus clouds (the effect of all the vegetation), the rest of the region was devoid of clouds.
I have a friend that worked at UPenn. I wonder if I should post this on my Facebook page?
Once wades through the hate-speech of the anti-semite bigots, all one can really see is that once again haters project their motives and intentions onto others.
In as obscure and wordy way possible.
What then of the Ottoman Turks CUTTING DOWN most of the trees in Israel to feed their wood fired steam engine driven trains? Was that NOT environmental racism? See the Jafa – Jerusalem Railway
You need to use your nu-aged racism flow chart.
1) is the alleged racist perpetrator caucasian? No — continue to 2. Yes — it’s racist.
2) is the alleged racist perpetrator an Israeli Jew? No — not racism. Yess — it’s racist
Super-capitalistic-expialidocious – noun – American English, 2017
Atoning for the stupidity of ‘greens’ with hard work through capitalism.
Just being a bit pedantic but we’re told ‘plant native trees like the olive’
But but but, its botanical name is Olea europaea and strictly, isn’t Israel in Asia – not Europe?
Olive trees are adapted to live in deserts – lets thank the Romans for their sterling efforts in making Southern Europe into one. (and North Africa although of course, should they still be around, would be blaming Climate Change’ for the environmental wreckage they caused
And further, we hear that ‘pine trees are not native’ and are invasive?
Surely the native tree for that part of the world is Cedrus libani
… an evergreen and and as close as you’ll get a pine tree without actually buying a Pine Tree such as Pinus sylvestris – they even look alike.
Does *anybody* on this planet actually *know* what they’re talking about these days?
Despite its name, Olea europaea is native to the Mediterranean region, Africa, southwest Asia, and the Himalayas. Its native distribution range is quite extensive.
Children of Abraham. Grow up, kids.
Conifers. All one family, like the semites…..
Funny how the biggest bigots, always provide the loudest lip-service.
There is nothing the Progressive Left cannot politicize and exploit in order to sow seeds of hatred. That’s why independents have abandoned them – if you can’t see it, you’re one of them.
What would these anti-imperialist ecowarriors make of this scene? An oppressed Arab goat herder exploits the bounty provided in a pine forest planted not by Israel colonists, but the British during their Mandate and named in honor of former UK Foreign Secretary A. J. Balfour, of eponymous Declaration infamy.
Perhaps these sad warriors would prefer this scene, from Biria Forest in the Galilee:
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/AN8FEP/israel-galilee-biria-forest-foresters-working-in-a-pine-forest-cutting-AN8FEP.jpg
Would they prefer barren rock and no cyclamen blooming in the spring?
There’s a small island that has been routinely loaded with invasive species in a river near me. Goats are being brought in by a nearby dairy farm, starting early in the spring and through the fall, to kill off the invasive species and clean up the place for native wildflowers.
I think it’s a good idea, because the goats will eat anything, the dairy owner gets goat milk for various cheeses, and the island gets a cleanup which costs the forest preserve committee nothing. It’s far less expensive than hiring someone with a bush-hog to go in and cut the weeds, which would also be much more damaging.
So far, no one has jumped up and down and screamed epithets about it. But I can just imagine the squawking it the Greenbeanies found out about it.
Just out of curiosity, is there a genetic relationship between the Lebanon cedar and the Siberian ‘ringing’ cedar? How many different species of cedar are there (as opposed to just pines in general)? How can restoring a species native to the area be racist?
The Middle East was once green and fertile. That’s why it was called the Fertile Crescent. (Remember that one from grade school?) Now, it’s mostly desert, which it shouldn’t be.
When I said (up above) that we have to know just how far these people intend to take this utter insanity, I meant it. I think some of them are certifiable, but that’s just my opinion, nothing else. I don’t want them as neighbors.
Virtue signaling run amok, since without consequences.
The “Ringing Cedar” is actually Pinus sibirica, the Siberian Pine, a member of genus Pinus. The Lebanon Cedar belongs to genus Cedrus. Both genera however are members of Family Pinaceae.
Thank you. I wondered about that.
You’re welcome.
The order Pinales comprises all the extant conifers. Its distinguishing characteristic is the reproductive structure called a cone. Families within this order are the Araucariaceae (see above), Podocarpaceae (also mainly SH), Cupressaceae (cypress), Pinaceae (cedar, fir, hemlock, larch, pine and spruce), Sciadopityaceae (unique to Japan), Taxaceae (yew) and the closely-related Cephalotaxaceae,
Over the years, we have seen a lot of strange ideas and people come out of (Penn State) University of Pennsylvania, some of them have even been seen to be waving hockey sticks.
One of the reasons for the stripping of vegetation from the Middle East, North Africa and the ‘Fertile Crescent’ has been the goat which eats more and closer than any other grazer. The goats came with the Arabs. The Israelis are now trying to put things back where they were in areas where they can do so.
Goats are browsers. Sheep are grazers.
As long as you keep in mind that while all goats are browsers, not all browsers are goats. For example… Chrome…
I’ll bear that in mind. No one has yet named a browser after an actual browser, AFAIK.
As in, Goat, Deer, Moose, Elk or Black Rhino.
However there is a browser called Gazelle, but gazelles are grazers. Go figure.
Dunno who introduced goats to the Holy Land, but in the Bible, they’re already there as early as Proverbs and Ezekiel.
Ezekiel 43:22-27 (ESV)
22 And on the second day you shall offer a male goat without blemish for a sin offering; and the altar shall be purified, as it was purified with the bull. 23 When you have finished purifying it, you shall offer a bull from the herd without blemish and a ram from the flock without blemish. 24 You shall present them before the Lord, and the priests shall sprinkle salt on them and offer them up as a burnt offering to the Lord. 25 For seven days you shall provide daily a male goat for a sin offering; also, a bull from the herd and a ram from the flock, without blemish, shall be provided. 26 Seven days shall they make atonement for the altar and cleanse it, and so consecrate it.[a] 27 And when they have completed these days, then from the eighth day onward the priests shall offer on the altar your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, and I will accept you, declares the Lord God.”
A lot of the damage was done by the Turks who used the woods to run their steam trains.
Deuteronomy
7:1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;
7:2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:
=======
“An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/16/israel2
=======
7:3 Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.
=======
Marriages in Israel can be performed only under the auspices of the religious community to which couples belong, and no religious intermarriages can be performed legally in Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_Israel
=======
7:4 For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.
7:5 But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.
7:6 For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
* * * * * *
Does anyone remember the Kitos war – or is that subject taboo?
I have no personal recollection of it, aged though I be.
Not too surprising however that Jews of the Diaspora took revenge on Roman soldiers during the latter part of the Jewish-Roman wars, in which the Temple was destroyed, Jews massacred, enslaved and dispersed throughout the empire.
Go away you bloody monster.
The Palestinians are the luckiest mofos in the world to have Jews as enemies because if they pulled that terrorism/suicide bombing/schoolkid rocketing crap on anyone else they would have been ground into dust like Carthage a long time ago.
Not really. And unless you are immortal neither do you. And anyway what does that have to do with anything?
The world is old. Every group has done something bad to others sometime in the past. We are only responsible for what WE do, not what our ancestors did.
Never realized how oppressing I was.
Sorry for all this green! So glad you guys try to burn it all the time.
/SARC
BTW – they are a bit ill informed: In the last few years (decades) the forests are planted with local species as oak, Cupressus, Syringa and the like. The pines are just too easily torched by the oppressed minorities
here.
Destroyed Palestinian village outfitted with 1,000 JNF trees memorializing Denver couple’s dead dogs
http://19453-presscdn.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/jnf.dead_.dogs_.jpg
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/05/destroyed-palestinian-memorializing/
I am the DepLorax, and I speak for the trees. Please describe the Israeli and Palestinian races. I went to school when you had to have brains to get into school. This new groupthink for retards is confusing.
The DepLorax should speak for baskets made out of trees.
The Progressive agenda knows no bounds and the MSM is more than happy to accommodate them being their mouthpiece. By design the goal is to divide and conquer and they are succeeding if you believe the MSM. CAGW is only one area of their propaganda/misinformation.
Never forget, ladies and gentlemen—my apologies for unintentional sexism, I meant—
Never forget persons, the only way to end racism is to institutionalize racism.
George Orwell expounded on the power of rationalization to twist lies into plausible truths when he described ‘Newspeak”.
Once one wades through the hate-speech of the anti-semite bigots, all one can really see is that once again haters project their motives and intentions onto others.
In as obscure and wordy way possible.
They must be trying to catch up with Yale and Penn State in reputation all slide rate. But it’s going to take a lot more sleeve.
OK, this garbage is from Penn rather than Penn State, but please permit me to note that the Nittany Lions just can’t stay away from negative publicity. It isn’t all Mickey Mann.
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/charges-penn-state-fraternity-hazing-death-192306435–abc-news-topstories.html
Of Course they ignore that Lebanon has had such a planting program for quite some time.
http://www.voanews.com/a/american_aid_helps_lebanon_replant_its_cedar_forests/1574227.html
Of course this program is good, even though it is doing exactly the same thing.
The UN wants to outlaw “cultural appropriation,” so everything the young people are repeating about “environmental justice” now is grooming them for the next UN policy. I think every crop and every conceivable item can potentially be outlawed based on this reasoning. What a bunch of sticks.
I believe if you look at CEDAW, you will see the entire UN plan to eliminate gender from children’s educational materials. As any one can see, the treaty is now rapidly proceeding in Canada and the US, whether we signed or ratified it or not. (So in the end it will be more convenient just to call every one Comrad. But where has that happened before…)
this post takes a completely
simplistic view that ignores all
aspects and subtleties of a difficult
political situation.
just to try to
score what it
thinks might be a point. sad.
Yes, your post does, doesn’t it?
“this post takes a completely
simplistic view”
ALL your posts do that, crackpot
No need for the preface !!
They are EMPTY loads
of child-minded nonsense.
If planting trees by the Israelis is `environmental racism’ then the salting of the Palestine soil by the Mamalukes in the 13th century is even more so and a huge environmental vandalism. The Israeli effort is actually a timely repair of that Historical Vandalism. Good for the Israelis. Plant more trees.
Oliver Rackham’s book “The Making of the Cretan Landscape” is well worth reading. He was one of if not the expert on woodland in the UK, as well as doing extensive research in the Mediterranean area.
There is also the story of the son taking his blind father to their native village. The father was riding a donkey and kept leaning low over the donkey’s neck. When his son asked why, his father said that he didn’t want to hit his head on the low lying tree branches. What the father didn’t know was the trees had been felled to provide fuel for the Turkish railway locomotives (as mentioned above).
Once the trees were cut, the local goats prevented any natural regeneration. Much the same happened in Scotland where the original pine forests were felled in the 18th century to provide charcoal for iron smelting and the land was then turned over to sheep farming with the same effect on regeneration.
There is a current move in certain areas towards ‘rewilding’ where the sheep are removed and the land allowed to regenerate a semblance of indigenous native vegetation. The next step is intended to be reintroducing some ancient animal species such as wild boar, elk, deer, beavers, with wolves and lynx to help stop the previous herbivore getting out of control. The only problem has been the high fences needed to keep the inmates inside have stopped the Scots from wandering wherever they want under the Scottish Parliaments recent legislation allowing the right of free access to all land and water (except for the curtilage of private houses).
Thanks to the popularisation of coal and coke from 1800 onwards, the forests of Europe were saved from total destruction and are now regrowing.
Thanks Michael Darby.
That’s the most sensible statement made by anybody in 2017.
If only the green-left had the courage to face that reality the world would be heading to a better place.
On a similar tangent, thanks to the use of kerosene instead of whale oil for lamps, the world’s whale populations were saved from total destruction.
.
Whenever dealing with attacks on Israel, it’s important to keep in mind Natan Sharansky’s 3D’s of Anti-Semitism:
http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-sharansky-f04.htm
You can’t ever satisfy the lunatic green fringe, so why try? University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State U., they’re all way out in left field (so to speak) when it comes to the sovereign rights of Israel and their unabashed support for Al Gore’s and PSU’s Michael Mann’s chicken little act. They are academic fascists. I always say the climate change “crisis” would be non-existent if not for impressionable school children and gullible college students who have forgotten the importance of scientific inquiry and skepticism.
The Kitos war was when Jews slaughtered 500,000 Romans, eating and wearing the flesh of their victims.
Nice to see the hasbara brigade out in tribal force, virtue signaling for their supremacist cult of “chosen ones”
[???? .mod]
Some historians consider Cassius Dio’s estimates of fatalities to be exaggerated. But, yes, a lot of Roman soldiers and many mostly Greek-speaking civilians were killed during the Kitos War by Jewish rebels.
AD 115-17, for anyone unfamiliar with the period, under Emperors Trajan and Hadrian, second and third of the “Five Good Emperors”.
Amusingly, the Jan/Feb issue of the alumni magazine didn’t have an article on a rather unobscure graduate of the Wharton School, the current president of the United States. Nonetheless, a great educational institution (in the past) with a Nobel Laureate in my med school class, and another 2 years later.
May God almighty help these poor, lost souls. But, I’m afraid, there is absolutely nothing He can actually do.