Megiddo

Today I woke up almost early and went on a trip to visit Megiddo city ruins (Tel Meggido Israeli national park). Mount Megiddo (Har Megiddo in hebrew) is known in the Bible as Armageddon (the wikipedia entries are great on both subjects). On the picture you can see the entrance to the city, built during the reign of King Salomon (~3000 years ago).
Two things impressed me during the visit, the first one is that the hill is actually half artificial, most of the height coming from 26 layers of cities built starting more than 6000 years ago (some archeologists even talk about remains aging back to 10000 BC).
The second one is the effort that was put in the water system. On top of the hill there is a gigantic hole (roughly 40m deep counting the steps down) followed by a 70m horizontal tunnel getting out on the side of the hill in a hidden place where was located the local water source.
The scenary from there is fantastic, you overlook the Jezreel valley, and also have a great view on Mount Gilboa, Mount Tabor and Nazareth. I'll try to create a panorama from my pictures and will post it on my flickr.
On my way back I decided to take the mountain road passing through Dalyat Al Karmel, and ended up being pretty happy about that choice. It was olive harvest time, I stopped near an olive tree field and ate some Druze pita with labane and za'atar under the shade of a green oak, tasting this year's olives, chatting, drinking coffee and playing backgammon with the harvesters.

I finished the trip at the Mushraka to watch the sun setting down on mount Karmel.

Akko Festival 2005

As last year I went to the first evening of Akko festival. Last year it was full of concerts, street theatres and other forms of art demonstrations, as well as filled everywhere with people selling good food, so I enjoyed it a lot.

Unlike last year my car was stopped by the Police 1.5km before the center of Akko and sent to an out-of-town parking lot where shuttle were supposed to bring me to the old city. After a few traffic jams and lots of police barrage (4 that I can think of), I finaly end up on that parking lot, and start to wait on the shuttle line. When I realise that there is 15 min waiting and that I'll have to pay I just decide to do the walk.

The moon was full or almost, and the night was beautyfull, reasonably fresh and dry for here. Soon after I pass another police barrage to enter the festival, it looks super crowded, I start to be excited so I head to all the places in the moat and in the squares where the action took place last year ... to find these places deserted. I keep on searching, and outside of food merchants (still a lot but not as many) I barely find 1 or 2 guys playing some music. I head to the bazar where local artists were exposing work, ... I pass yet another police barrage and nada, empty.

Streets are full of bored people, there is nothing to be seen, nothing to do besides buying food or other stuff... I was pretty disappointed, and when I talk with Octavio he tells me there has been a lot more people visiting than last year but it seems the only 2 areas where there is some demonstration are paying areas with fixed time spectacles. It was enough, I go around my beloved streets of Akko, buy some bread and some Ramadan cakes (the semoul ones filled with date paste) and head back home.

I hope the next days are going to be better than that because there are 1000s of cops deployed, lots of organisation, lots of visitors, but yet anything attractive to be seen :(.



PS: On the picture above you can enjoy the view of a bunch of bored people.

Banias

I took advantage of the vacations here to go spend some time in the Galil and around the Kineret. I like this picture because it's very historically charged.
This is a view on the roman city of Ceasarea Philippi or Panias or Banias (Banias Wikipedia entry), with an antique synagogue in the center. The green area at the bottom of the cliffs on the left and center of the picture is one of the Jordan river source. At this spot carved inside the cliff was a temple dedicated to greek god Pan built during the Alexander the great era. It is also a pilgrimage area for christians.
On top of the right hill is Nimrod (cf my post about it) citadel built by the Mamlouks and the crusaders, and on the left background is mont Dov and the Sheba farms. According UNO Mount Dov is Syrian territory occupied by Israel, but it is at the Lebanon border and Syria gave it to Lebanon while it was occupied. Now Hezbollah is still fighting against Israel because they claim ownership of this land despite Israel having fully pulled out of Lebanon International borders.

New usage model for falafels

Jpost reports an interresting new usage for falafels: smuggling drugs into your sandwich. I think this can only happen here, how the hell did the policemen think abouth searching INSIDE the falafel balls of the sandwich the guy was bringing. This gives you an idea of how ingeniously the smuggles and the searches are done around here (and also gives you a hint of what I have had to go through countless times at the airport :).

Qassam vs Airstrikes

Well it all restarted, Gaza pullout is finished, and the circle of I shoot you because you shot me restarted. You can read articles on Haaretz,
or Libe, or any other press on the web...

The difference now is that they are not anymore Israelis occupying Gazas, and the Gaza border follows the UN recognized border. So what is it changing ? Well Israel is deploying artillery and might just start to shoot a little less carefuly because there is no more Israeli to injure. So i guess things are heading again in the wrong direction :(, I thought that the disengagement truce was a first step in the right direction and hoped for it to just be the start, but some seem to refuse any idea of peace.

Gaza/Egypt border

With Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the border control got handed to egypt. The first days Egypt took a popular measure of opening the border so people could visit their families, etc... This was very nice of them, and probably improve heir image in Gaza, however, as usual in this type of case, the porous border was used to smuggle a big load of weapons into gaza, so much than NYT reports prices halved on AK-47 and handguns in Gaza. Is this doing any good ?
Obviously this just comfort the anti disengagement in Israel, that this was a bad thing to do for security, darkens even the picture of PA security forces that just look the other way when this happens.

Finally, I am almost not surprised to see that this is ignored by the french press which focuses on other aspects of the future of Gaza (economical ones, which will be fundamental if peace happens one day). So once again you get half the information reading the french press (like le Monde or Liberation) and the other half reading the US one (WP or NYT)and the remaining details with Israeli and Arab world press.

Red nose ecologists

Hating SUVs inside cities like Paris started to do some commando actions against them. Find their blog here.

PS: kind of private joke for Izard.

Paella

Oguz was rightfully pointing at the fact I didn't publish any paella pictures even though I spent one month in spain. Here is a picture of a nice paella very similar to the one we had together on the Barcelonetta piers. I have to say it was pretty darn good ;). 

PS: sorry for the soft g, it doesn't appear on my keyboard ;)

State of law in Gaza ?

I just wanted to point out these articles about the assassination of Moussa Arafat: Libé, Haaretz (2), NYT...
(btw they don't seem to agree on something as simple as his age).

I can't really understand all the implications and reasons around that, but having a man being assassinated by a little army without any opposition from the security forces does not sounds especialy good. Maybe a little trial for corruption would have been better before the execution, no ?

Some News

I haven't given news recently so here they are. My passport is being stamped by the proper Israeli ministry so I'll finaly be fully legal here until ...

We have started to plan fifille's vacation here and we might manage to get everything ready more than 1 month ahead which would be a personal record :).

I am starting to plan a trip sailing from Haifa to Cyprus during Rosha Shana week (new year here). It'll depend on the weather and how many people we can get but it looks like some good future fun.

Being a kid in Pensylvania USA

can get you charged with a felony... This is basically what is explained here . In their school the kids were given a laptop for their studies (they couldn't refuse taking it or return it, some tryed). The admin password happened to be written on the back of the laptops, the kids used it to gain access to the computers and do all sorts of things that were originaly blocked on the laptops, like chatting together, watching porn, etc...
As a deterrent the administration did put 13 of them to trial (while a hundred or so used the pass). Hopefully with all the bad advertising around this the charged were dropped and they had to do some community service. Did they even think of punishing the admins for being incompetent and the persons that took those decisions for being stupid ? No...

Original story found on slashdot.

Bat-Mobile

I am now going through all my Barcelona pics :). I found this one taken during the Gracia festival. Many strange items were hanged in the streets. I liked the idea of a bat-mobile ( mobile=cell in french and spanish :). 

Castellar de nhug

Yesterday, Fernando took me to Castellar del Nhug, a very nice little traditional village in the Catalan Pyrenees mountains. We got pretty wet thanks to our weather misprediction, but still have enjoyed the beautifull place. More pictures as soon as I go back to Haifa, which should happen tomorrow... 

Tristan bathing in a dinky boat.

Last weekend I went to Narbonne-Plage to visit Olivier, Claire and Tristan. We had very good time together, despite strong winds and poor weather. Here is a picture of Tristan in his favourite element : Water (he doesn't really seem to care whether it's hot or cold :). For those that know the "Petit Singe" blog, you'll recognize the toy. 

Festival de Gracia

Yesterday evening, Fernando took us to the Festival de Gracia (Gracia is one of the villages forming Barcelona). Some streets were decorated with crazy stuff like these trash-punk vampires, some other with soft blues mimicing the depth of the seas, etc... Very original. Best part was all those little concerts everywhere and those giant bar stands servin mojitos and capihrinias :). 

Bavure, planes falling like flies, etc...

It seems that we know a little bit more about what happened to that Brazilian guy that got assassinated by Scottland Yard in the subway a few weeks ago. According ITV he was mistakenly "identified as" one of the supposed suicide bombers. Still I can't believe that they put 7 bullets hin his head before asking him questions... Even Israeli Forces don't shoot the ones they suspect of carrying a bomb (and they still shoot quite easily if they think they are at a danger).

Liberation is also reporting it, for the french readers ;).

To complete this last days sensational informations, yet another plane crashed, this time killing more than 150 french passengers. This is the 4th major plane incident this month, I never heard of that many in such a short time.

Finaly today over 200 (yes two-hundred) bombs exploded in Bengladesh. These were low power explosions, but enough to injure many people. Again it would be some extremist Islamist group that acted. Even if it wasn't, nobody has problems trusting it, it tends to become so common. Well ... but 200+...

More Gaudi

More pictures of Gaudi architectural crazyness, here the roof of some covered area in the Gueil Park, north of Barcelona.  

Antonio Gaudi

At the beginning of the 20th century, Barcelona had a crazy architect called Gaudi. He's the one that spent all his life building the sagrada familia, that is still unfinished 80 years after his death, but he did build other things, like this building. He loved the forms of natures and said squares do not exist in nature, so the building is quite strange and original. 

Fontaine musicale

This weekend Valou came to visit me here in Basrcelona. We enjoyed the city, toured many Gaudi architected buildings, drank good local cider, sangria and cava and ate lots of tappas. Very nice weekend indeed, that was concluded by the beautyfull musical funtain show near Montjuic. 

Israeli jewish terrorist

killed 4 israeli arabs (muslims and christians) in a bus headed to Haifa when they disagreed on a talk about the disneygagement. He appeared to be an IDF deserter (he refused to participate to disengagement). He got lynched to death by the surrounding people that survived his fire.
Haaretz, Liberation, Le monde and many more report the event.

And the tension is not yet at its peak, many people have automatic weapons in Israel and I do fear that more just get crazy like that :(.

Barcelona (2)

I will probably post a lot of pictures from Barcelona in the coming month, so here I start. Fernando took me on a walk around the Olympic site before going to a Gallician restaurant (his original area) after work. Here is a taste of what was on the way :).

In Barcelona

I left Haifa around 2:30 AM monday, thanks again Cyrille for driving me to the Airport. For once I didn't got checked for hours at the border (there was a guy with longer hair than me on the same plane:). I arrived in Barcelona shortly before noon, dropped my stuff in my new appartment and went to work. I was surprised by the weather in Barcelona that was very enjoyable: only 26C and a little bit of rain in the evening, not what I expected :). To start with Barcelona pics, here is one from the Sagrada familia (cathedral in construction for a century) that i took in february this year.

Flying to Barcelona

I am leaving home in Haifa for my future temporary home in Barcelona. See ya'll in europe.

News

I haven't posted many news recently, I have been busy at work and getting sunburnt on the beach. Las week I enjoyed a full day at Arziv again, and this monday I organized another breath fire thing on Haifa beach with the local french connection. Everybody seemed to enjoy this pretty much.

Finaly my visa renewal didn't come on time so I am moving to Barcelona and going to work with the UPC folks until my work permits gets re-approved. So I won't be here for the Disneygagement, I don't know if it's good or bad, probably good for my health and bad for my natural curiosity.

Triple bang

Well, after London subway being under attack for the second time in one week, Egypt got the 4th attack in the year today. Over 88 deaths in a triple suicide bombing in Charm. Yet another slaughter signed Al-Qaeda. Many of the victims were egyptian workers...

/cry

Akko streets

Yesterday I was back in Akko, Mounir had invited me to join them to a barbecue. Ihad some time to spend before meeting them so I went and took a few pictures of the streets of that city I like so much. Later on we ate barbecue, smoked narguile... on the Arziv beach just below Roch Aniqra until 1 am. We had lots of fun, but I wish I would speak arabic, it would make things so much easier :).

Gaza on fire

This morning, going through my usual blog-browsing I noticed on Rafahpundits that things were getting very bad in Gaza.
Yesterday evenings rockets were fired by Hamas from the strip to the northern Negev. An Israeli woman died. This triggered response from the Israeli Air force which fired a few missiles which seem to have killed noone yet. The PA police in an attempt to stop the Hamas to shoot more towards Israel had serious clashes with them. Abbas who is currently in Gaza declared the state of emergency. Several militants and policemen were injured in the clashes and 2 deaths.

Some will say that Abbas is loosing control on Gaza (did he really had it), but at least this time Israel can't say the PA didn't do anything in order to stop attacks towards Israel... I really fear that the next month will be like the past days were, bloody and sad.

Department event

Yesterday evening our department had an out of site event at the beach of Arziv, northern of Nahariya. It was pretty nice, and clearly better from similar events I had been at in the US... The interresting part was when I threw Omer in the sea and he had the keys of the car in his pocket :). Few hours later we discovered that a mazda 3 alarm cannot be deactivated just using the key...

Hopefully for us after opening the wett remote command, drying and cleaning it up for 20 minutes I managed to operate it back and we could go back home. On the way back we spotted a billiard place and decided to try it out. Was our lucky day, it was the grand opening and it was free ! :).

So remember if you want free billiard throw the driver in the water with the car's keys, especially if they are absolutely necessary to start the car...

Netanya mall bomb

A suicide bomber detonated himself killing 2 other people at the entrance of a mall in Netanya, it seems civilians managed to barr him the entrance in the mall. The Islamic Jyhad claims responsability for this. Like it's going to help their cause... I just hope the fragile cease fire between Hamas, PA and Israel will remain and not get crippled further by this.

There's 1 month remaining before the disengagement, more and more people are displaying their political colors on their cars, t-shirts etc... Orange is the color of the ones against and Blue the color for pro-disengagement. I'm wearing a blue ribbon on my car, If anyone had told me that one day I would show support for something Sharon was going to do I would never have believed it... The oranges have mostly stopped their stupid protests in which they were pissing off the rest of the population (blocking roads etc..) but got stupid enough to plant a fake bomb in a bus stop in Jerusalem... Like this country does not have enough real ones...

Peace.

RC cars

Sunday is Karate day for Pierre's wife, so I often come by on sunday evening, we eat pizza drink beer and play with tiny RC cars on his balcony. I know it sounds both childish and "beauf" but we're enjoying it quite a bit :). Yesterday a couple of friends joined us so we had a race. I was impressed by how small those things are, when I was a kid a RC car was at least 30cm long, now they're like 5 long and 2 wide have lights, good steering etc. The ones we are using are ZipZaps, enjoy.

Sad day in London

This morning 3 trains and 3 buses blew off in London, 1 day after the celebration of their victory in organizing the 2012 Olympics. The BBC is posting updates as they come. Unfortunately it seems that the casualties are numerous, like the world needed more subway bombs... I'm going to stop the rant here as I could go for hours on how it is bad for everybody, especially the ones who did it...

Edit: Revendication by Al-Qaida in Europe...

Experimental salad

Today while browsing on various cooking blogs and websites to find out what to go buy to the supermarket I noticed a vietnamese salad that looked good. Because I lacked many ingredients and adapted it my way I won't call it Vietnamese anymore.
You'll need half a white cabbage, 3 - 4 carrots, 3-4 mushrooms, 1 chicken white, cashew nuts. Cut everything very finely, fry the chicken in a pan. For the sauce, press 2 lemon juice, add about the same amount of soja sauce, 4 tea spoons of sugar, 4 ground garlic cloves, 2 tea spoons of hot chili and some cesame oil (I used tehina). Cut the chicken in small pieces while still hot, spread on the salad with crushed cashews and add the sauce.

The desert is an apricot/fig/peach salad with lemon juice, mint leaves, some rose essence, sugar and a bit of cachaca.

It took me 15 mins and this tastes great.

Per request

Aaron the Truck Driver said: "I have a request.Pictures of the people who live there. The local people. Any local people."
So here is a picture:

You did say any local...
Ok, let me find real people's pics, like the ones that do work with me during a group event in western Galil:

Kineret

This was a long weekend, I spent today in northern Galil, between a Kiboutz preparing goat cheese and a "speed boat" trip on the Kineret (Tiberias lake). The picture shows the lake looking towards south-east and was take from a nice little coffee-shop lost in the mountain. 

Belvoir

Today I woke up around noon, like many weekends, but for once I was quite awake, maybe it was because I didn't party the night before, who knows. Anyway I was awake and I felt like visiting a new crusader fortress, yeah like that. I had 3 options but as it was quite "early" I picked up the farthest one that was supposed also to be the nicest one. It was build in the 12th century and as it name says, you're supposed to get a nice view from it.

I picked up the car, discovered a new way to get out of Haifa towards the west going through a road that would have its place in the "Corse Rally" (at least that's the way I drove) and 1:30 hours later I am in the Jordan Valley south of the sea of Galil climbing up a steep road towards Belvoir also know as Kochav Hayarden: Star of the Jordan in hebrew or Kaukab al-hawa: star of the winds in arabic). The castle sits at a pretty windy placeand has a fantastic view on the Jordan side and over all eastern and southern Galil from Mt Gilboa to Nazareth.


It is in a pretty decent shape as you can see on the pictures and it has a 6 to 8 meters deep moat. I was really pleased, especially that I arrived late enough to not pay any entrance fee ;). Many rooms in the center of the Castle are still covered and it is supposed to be one of the crusader fort that is in the best shape.

I had a very good time there, but had to leave because it was closing (I hate the fact that everything closes early here on fridays for shabbat, I'm always late :). I decided to take the "road" the other way which is more direct towards home. It just happens that this one is a gravel road, so this time it was more like a Morocco Rally :). On my way towards home I spotted the Mount Tabor:

And remembered that I only visited the orthodox monastery there and not the Catholic church. Hopefully it was still open and there was a lot of pilgrims singing and praying so it was also nice to the ears.

Like it wasn't already a day busy enough Raph and Laure invited me for dinner, and I'm finishing the evening with a mojito.

Visa stuph

We will file my visa renewal paperwork tomorrow, the expected delay is over 2 months so I am starting to make plans for august. The best option seems to go to work in Barcelona while waiting for the thing to be approved. Seems I'm gonna have some extended vacations in Europe, yay !

Turtle day

Why was this day a turtle day ? Well, we (bunch of french) met a cute little turtle on our way to Sahne this morning and we spent our day eating fruits, sunbathing (under the shade of olive trees obviously, nobody's staying outside of the shade here) and swimming in an everhot river (28°C all year round - 82°F) in semi-natural pools. What do you think the turtle we met in the morning did all day ? Sleep under an olive tree and eat some yummie stuff and eventually have a bath so that was definitely a turtle day.

Justice and CIA

Finaly some democratic country's justice is looking at CIA illegal actions on their territory, like abducting people they do suspect of terrorism. Come on, couldn't they just ask Italy for their cooperation if they were real terrorists ? What would the US say if the french secret services were abducting some of their residants without notice ? Oh maybe it is just because countries like Italy wouldn't let them handle their prisoniers like they wanted (read torture). Or maybe because since the GI's killed the Italian secret agent that was freeing their journalist in Iraq, the Italians are pissed off and want to hit on something.

Google maps

Google started to have high resolution satellites pictures of all Europe, as far as Israel. I live here (in the middle).

If you know where to search you can find Dimona (Israeli nuclear plant) as well as all the territory pretty detailed (even Nezarim, Gush Katiff and co...). I am surprised as in the US they tend to blur sensitive spots...

Tension Raising 3 ...

Well, with Israel resuming targeted assassinations on Islamic Jihad members, the suicide bombing attempt intercepted at Eretz , massive arrestations in the west bank and communication between the two parties not really being bidirectionnal, I think I can say that the tension is raising again :(.

Only good thing left is that Sharon still plans to disengage from Gaza in august, but the days of peace hope seem to move farther away.

Maybe I'm just too tired, worked for too long today and partied too late yesterday but I have hard time seeing anything positive in the past few days local news.

Some bad news

The visa that allows me to work in israel is expiring on July the 30th and it seems my employer didn't take the required steps to renew it, so I have just initiated the process. It might take up to 3 months to get the renewal so I will eventually be kicked out of this country (this is absolutely not due to the israeli immigration services, outside of their standard administration slowlyness) in 38 days, and will have to work from another place until my visa get renewed. I'll keep you updated on that, but I don't know much besides I've filled lots of forms in the past 2 days.

Sand sculptures

Last weekend there was a sand sculpture competition on Haifa beach, we only saw it on tuesday night but it was pretty neat. They bring giant boxes with compressed sands and then sculpt it and get pretty nice results. These sculptures can resist wind and rain for over a year supposedly, and are guarded day and night for now so there is no man-induced wear. This sculpture ranked second on the competition but is in my opinion the best, plus it is my best picture of that night to :).

Little Game III

What's this ? Again 100% unphotoshoped picture. Price is a free beer next time you meet me (or any other non-alcoholic drink).

Casino Bar

During our trip in Egypt we found what I think is probably one of the nicest place to hang around in Cairo. This bar was called the "Casino bar" and is situated along the Nile waterfront on the Giza side (not far from the Zoo on Nile Street). We just entered there by luck the first evening and then we came back every single evening we spent in Cairo. Waiters were very nice, drinks excellent, food very good and abundant and all was quite cheap. So we just spent hours chatting, smoking narguile and watching the young egyptian crowd that was having fun here as we were the only tourists (or it seemed like it). One nice and original thing was that they were using jeans as seat covers, Jyby loved it and took a few pictures of it. More pictures in my flickr.

Road trip to Cairo

Back from Egypt ! Here is a quick summary of our trip.

We left last tuesday with my car and drove to Eilat where we parked. We passed the border to Sinai at the Taba crossing, and everything went pretty smooth, actually too smooth. Once in Sinaï we start to ask for our visa to Cairo (no need for any Visa when going to Sinaï fro Israël) and they answer us that they don't deliver any visa for Egypt and that we have to go back to the Egyptian consulat in Eilat in Israël... So we spent one night in a nice Sinaï hotel with a view on Salah El Din fortress, and the next day we went back to Israël to get those stupid visas. This is the sunrise on the fort:


We almost got kicked out of the consulat when they saw Jeremy juggling to pass time while waiting for the stamp but we got it in a few hours. We passed the border again and took a taxi for Cairo. We loved that 5 hour trip through mountains, desert, a tunnel under Suez canal and finally Cairo. Here is one of our encounters on the road :


We stayed in a cheap Hotel right by the Giza Zoo and we were lucky to have a view on some green which is pretty rare in Cairo. Our next days are probably close to every (not really organized beforehand) tourist tour excepted our long evenings spent in a nice cafe along the Nil river drinking fresh juices and smoking chicha.

So I got pics of Pyramids taken during our 25km Camel back riding hike (I lost a few vertebras in this story :) :


Mosqs (in the Cairo citadel):


and Churches (In Old coptic Cairo):


For the trip back we took a bus from Cairo to Taba (5x cheaper than the taxi that was already not too bad). We woke up at 5 to wait for a late bus that happened to break after 20km... So we changed bus at the depot and the new bus lost air conditioning like 5 minutes out of the depot. We were the only non arabic speakers in the bus, but seeing the bus reliability I wasn't too suprised to see no other western countries tourists in it :). It took us over 8 hours to arrive in Taba, where we waited over 2 hours at the border because we came back at the end of a 4 days long israeli weekend (monday 13). After 5 more hours driving through all Israel and an automatic gearbox attempting multiple suicides (made in France obviously) we finally arrived to the term of a 17.5 hour travel.

Jeremy flew to France today so you might meet him pretty soon if you're near Paris (a dragon-clown carrying a unycicle in the airplane).

Vacation to Egypt

Jeremy and myself are leaving for Egypt this morning. See you next week.

ABC Fire breathing

I have seen a few tutorials on the net about fire breathing (fire blowing?) but none really satisfies me so I'm going to try to share my experience in this area. I'll start with the usual disclaimers, do not do this alone, do not do this if you are not confident in your reflexes, you can have all sorts of bad things happening to you ranging from irritation, to burns and irremediable lung destruction. However if done properly this can be quite fun and low risk.

I have been doing this for over 10 years now, but not professionally nor on a regular basis (unless you call few times a year regular), so all I say apply only to this kind of use. I strongly disencourage anybody to do that on a regular basis and for long periods of time in a row. In those 10 years I have introduced over a dozen of persons to it, and none of us ever had a single accident not even a single light burn (crossing fingers).

First thing to do is to buy an appropriate flamable product, this is probably the most important part as a wrongly chosen product can be extremly dangerous.

Flammable Liquid are usually sorted by their flashpoint temperature (at which they ignite in contact with a flame) :
a. Class 1 flammable liquid shall include those having flash point below 100° F (38° C). Some examples are: gasoline, naphtha gas, jet fuel JP-4, alcohol, etc. (100° F - 38° C); and
b. Class 2 flammable liquid shall include those liquids having a flash point above 100° F (38° C). Some examples are: varsol, some cleaning solvents, diesel fuel oil No. 2-D or 4-D.

You want to use a class 2 product and not a class 1, even attempting anything with a class 1 product is somewhere between irresponsible and suicidal. The main reason is that those products will not burn at body temperature unless they are vaporised. I have successfully used Kerdane (metal degreasing product found in supermarkets in France), Kerosene (parafine derivate, it is not jet-fuel, found in some US groceries), Petrole desaromatise (Car oriented shop in Quebec, Canada), lamp oil (various sports shop in the US), neft (found at the gas station in Israel, this is NOT naphta). These products traditional uses are cleaning metal pieces, lighting camping/garden lamps, you need to know that unless you want to explain in every shop that you are searching for a product to breath fire. You will pay for those under 2US$/l.

I have never used specifically designed products, nor white spirit nor diesel even if some people claim they are usable. Specifically designed "fire water" is usually expensive and makes small flames, diesel supposedly makes enormous flames and tastes extremely bad as white spirit does. Try to use products as pure as possible and stay away from lamp oils with additives.

Once you bought a few litters of a flamable liquid ( 1-2 litters per person is fine unless you are planning a long session), you need to test it before playing with it. Put some in a cup and try to light it up with matches, if it does light up, you need to pick up another product. Taste it, after going through 2 litters I sometimes get a light nausea feeling but nothing bad, so if it tastes really bad you probably should find something else. It should be a little oily. Last test is to pour some on your arm (or any other part of the body you don't mind to burn :) and try to light it up, it shouldn't light up and should reinsure you quite a bit (obviously be prepared to the worse). Check if the product irritated your arm, i have seen a few people having light alergies, do not proceed farther if it itches. If it did pass all the tests you are ready to go and can call your friends for a night party.

You'll need to bring some form of torch, which can be made with any 50+cm stick and a piece of coton cloth (t-shirt) wrapped around (on which you poured some of your flamable liquid). Bring a big blanket (to stop an unwanted fire), a few bottles of water for practice, rincing your mouth, body and wetting the spots you fear to burn.

I suggest doing this before the start of the party, and not letting the persons already under the influence of alcool or drugs to get anywhere close to the fire. Head outside. Remove your t-shirt, pour some water on your face, attach your hair (beard and long hair has never been a problem for me), grab a bottle of water and practice a few times. Take your mouth full of water, a deep breath and vaporize the water (making a heart with your mouth like if you were going to do a big kiss). Water drops should go as far as 3 or 4 meters depending on the wind, always do it with the wind blowing from your back. After spraying all your friends with water, when you feel reasonably confident grab the torch, have someone hand you the bottle of flamable product and fill up your mouth. Give the bottle back, make sure there is noone within 10 meters in front of you, put the torch in front of your mouth (arm extended), take a deep breath and vaporize. You can remove the torch quite fast to avoid any burn risks on your arm (or alternatively have someone hold the torch like on Haggai's pic), the flame will light up progressively the vapors towards your mouth. Thebackfire speed depends upon the wind, how strong you breathed and the product but it is usually 1 to 5 seconds. Close your mouth and stop breathing when you want to stop the flame. You will get 2 to 6m flames depending on the wind, your breath and the product.

Do not swallow the product, nor breath vapors, even if not inflamated this is supposedly the biggest source of injuries. Clean your mouth and the spills with water and a cloth regularly, and have a big shower afterwise.

I suggest you to have a camera handy, this makes beautyfull pictures (remember to disable the flash). You can do combinations with several persons and one torch, but at 3 the temperature of the air start to be so high that it becomes really unsafe (but it is extremely spectacular to have a 5m fireball).

Other ressources on the net in french here or in english here and here that I suggest you also read. Obviously, I do not recommand doing this based solely on informations gathered on the web, but some did before and are still in good shape.

Dragons !

Here is what we did yesterday on the beach, we had quite some success there. On the picture you can see me lighting Haggai's flame (one of his first ever).

Jyby's here

Jeremy arrived yesterday, I had him taste some local tabouleh and "nefles", he seems already addicted to those :). We spent the night smoking narguile and rethinking the world, as usual. Tonight we're headed to Haifa beach with some other friends and are going to blow fire, ride Jeremy's unicycle and use various other juggling devices.

See ya, unless I play the torchman ;).

What's up with the home destructions ?

I hardly believe the news when I read about court orders telling to destroy houses illegaly build (source Haaretz), to realize that it wasn't about illegal settlements in the West bank but just 20+ years old houses build in east Jerusalem... So it takes years, world pressure (american), dozens and votes and millions to destroy an illegal jewish house (if it is on the other side of the green line) and just a court order to do so with palestinians houses in Jerusalem.

Just so you understand this a little bit better, most houses in Israël have some kind of illegal extension, and many seem to never have gotten any form of autorizations to be build but they are quite old so they mostly don't get destroyed. So why destroying them now ? I thought this was a period where peace efforts were taking place ? Well maybe that's actually because of this, everyone that is unhappy about disengagement and current attempts towards peace is trying to piss of palestinians as much as they can to trigger a violent answer so they can later say, look Palestinians only want violence and strike back hard. Maybe it's not that and it's just bad luck it happens now, or it just happened all the time and got unnoticed, but it is a fact that it is typically the wrong time to do that kind of things.

NON

Is what France sayed to the European constitution... 55% vs 45% for the yes.

I am sad about this but also excited about what is going to happen, because the future after a yes would have been without surprise, but now we can expect some animation in the European politics.

X-rated X-rays

After being used on the Rafah border crossing (see Rafah Pundits here, here and here)The NYTimes reports now that the Homeland Security plans to use those new machines to screen people through clothes. They were supposed to be bad for health at that time, is it still the same machines ? Are frequent travellers risking something from exposure ? At least I guess that because of this directive the health impact will be for sure evaluated and we should have the answer finally.

Little Game (2)

Next little game, guessing what this picture is. I garantee that this is a real picture, totally unaltered, no photoshoping nothing. I took that last weekend and it's now on my desktop background :).

French wording

Libération points to a great new article of the french official journal reporting about their newest inventions. As you might already know, us French can't tolerate any english words in our language so our administration is finding replacements for all the new words. The latest in date is to replace blog (coming from a contraction of web log) by "bloc-notes", we already have "butineur" for browser, "cederome" for CDROM, "partagiciel" for shareware "mél" for e-mail... and in Quebec they already have "baladodiffusion" for podcasting.

Our politicians have long given up on understanding our suburbs talkin' but now they make sure that communication won't happen anymore.

Jewish terrorism in Haifa ?

Haaretz publishes this article about Jewish terrorist convicted of targeting Israeli Arab residents of Haifa. Like this country is not having enough problems to solve on the verge of the Disneygagement (Rafahpundits TM).

Israeli army has to face refuzeniks that do not want to evacuate settlers, others that don't want to destroy palestinian homes, right wing terrorists like this guy stealing explosives to blow up his neighborhood, and probably some more forms of smuggling. I think I've never heard of an army under such internal pressure.

Upgraded the PC

I haven't posted much in the past days. I was busy upgrading my PC with more hard drive capacity so I had to reinstall the whole system on the new drive (I was already at max hard drives on that box and the smallest one was the system one). Now everything looks fine, reinstalled. I invested into a wireless access point so I can stream movies to my bedroom without having that ugly cable on the floor. I'll see in the next few days how it works, but I'm pretty happy for now.

Mount Tabor

I promised you a picture of mount Tabor monastery last week, so here it is. It's the arch inside the Greek Orthodox church where Bishara's daughter Taleen was baptised. I was really impressed by how beautyfull the inside was.

Provocation ?

Yesterday the Sun published a picture of Saddam Hussein in his underwears with the following title "Tyrant's in his pants", and today's title is even more provocative "Bush probes Saddam's pants: I will get to the bottom of it". I have to admit that I laughed hard at the second title which is especially humiliating for Bush despite disagreing on the publication of these pictures. The Sun claims that it was given to them by american officials, that would make that leak some pretty bad PR for the americans, but unfortunately we start to be used to that.

After flushing Corans, applying fordism to torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo I really wonder what will be the next thing we'll uncover. They still try to make us believe that this is isolated cases of bad soldiers, but I am sorry when things come at this scale the hierarchy has to assume some responsability. Condemning one or two random soldiers to prison sentences is first not going to solve the problem, second an insult to the victims.

Le titre du Sun aujourd'hui en Francais : "Bush enquête dans le slip de Saddam. Le président promet d'aller au fond des choses". Forts ces anglais quand même.

Little game

What is this ? Please post your guess in the comments. I like this photo so I just found an excuse to post it :), and the subject is pretty uncommon so it's fun.

Hudna over?

Just a short post to say that the cease-fire that was progressively dying within the last weeks ended up today (unless something really new happens) in Gaza. There has been a heavy shooting in Rafah that resulted in the death of a man, israeli copter shooting at a group of hamas militants firing rockets (palestinian view at Rafah Zoo and israeli view in Haaretz). Even more recently Hamas has started a shelling of gush katiff and injured PA police officers that were probably attempting to stop them. I'll probably do a bigger press review tomorrow.

Stuffed vegetables

You all know how much I love middle-eastern food, so today I gonna try to bring my contribution to your food experience. As usual my recipe will probably have no exact proportions so just do how it feels good and blame me if it isn't because it should. I didn't find any matching recipe on my usual cooking sites so I'll give you more details.

Here I have eaten stuffed zucchinis, eggplants, cabbage leaves, wine leaves, bellpeppers and palm hearts. There are obviously many variations of each but the basics are the same. I'll base myself on zucchinis and cabbage because that's the two I know the best but by extension you can guess what to do. I think wine leaves and palm hearts need additional processing.

First part is to prepare the stuffing, ground lamb meat, rice (~1/5 meat weight, but you can put a lot of rice if you want it to be cheap), finely cut onion (1 big per 500g meat), comino, cinnamon (much less than comino), salt to taste. Put all this together into a bowl, I tend to add a little bit of hot paprika for zucchinis and eggplants.

For the leaves you need to boil them into water for 3-4 minutes, and remove the nerves.

Second part prepare the vegetables. In Europe we tend to slice them in two longitudinally and remove part of their heart, here they do it differently (and I prefer it). Choose small vegetables, ~3cm diameter and less than 15cm long, cut their "head" and empty them. That is the tricky part. Here they do have a special tool to do it without piercing the vegetable, but with a cooking knife I always manage to do it (just takes longer). Stuff them with the meat-rice-spices (make sure it is packed with a finger).

In a non sticking pot (or if it can stick just put some spare leaves at the bottom), put your stuffed vegetables, cover with water and cook for over 45 minutes (until the vegetables are cooked and the rice inside them is overcooked:). One good thing to do is to add tomato concentrate with some hot paprika to the water (for zucchinis, eggplants and bellpeppers at least).

You can add some fresh and finely cut mint and lemon juice just before serving. You can prepare them one day in advance it works pretty well.

Bon appetit !

Mini lexique pour les Francais : Eggplant = aubergine, zucchini = courgette, wine leave = feuille de vigne, cabbage = chou, bellpepper = poivron, ground = haché, comino = cumin, cinnamon = canelle, stuffed = farci, paprika = piment :p.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Yesterday evening I went to watch the hitchhicker's guide to the galaxy with Haggai. I read the books years ago and I remember enjoying the humour a lot. The movie was fun and when it finished I was disappointed by how short it was until I realized it had been almost 2 hours. Do not expect it to be a fantastic movie, but still it is very entertaining and quite well done and feels short (which in my book is a big plus, I remember being bored to hell watching the neverending action scenes of Matrix 2 and 3).

The only thing I wonder is how do react the spectators that haven't read the books nor watched or listened to the original series. I am not sure it is well made for those, please tell me if you're in that situation.

Pour les Francais je n'ai vu aucune traces de sa sortie :("Le guide du routard galactique").

Back in Israel

Et Voilà, I am back from France a little tired :). I left home Wednesday at 2 am flew to Marseille and arrived this morning at 6 am back to Haifa. France greeted me with 4 days of rain, just for me, as I heard the sun is shining now. Anyway I spent 4 days with my parents, thing I didn't really took the time to do in the past years and it was very nice despite the bad weather. The area where they stay is beautifully (and green) as you can see on this pictures. We hiked a little bit around when the weather permitted it, I took lots of flowers pictures, invited my parents to a great restaurant and slept a lot.

This morning after 4 long hours of sleep and a 13 hours travel (unfortunately no direct flight back), I came to work. I basically arrived for lunch. I insisted to read my e-mails before actually eating. What a good idea ! I had an invitation to Bishara's (co-worker) daughter baptism. I read the mail at noon, and it was starting at 1PM in mount Tabor. I rushed as much as I could, changed clothes and made it to the orthodox monastery of mount Tabor (a sister's monastery closed to the public) only 30 minutes late, it wasn't much of a problem as the priest arrived after me :). The church was absolutely gorgeous and that was the first time I was watching an orthodox ceremony so I was very interested. The ceremony happened in a small committee, and they used warm water to baptize her (how civilized !), so she didn't even cry (that was the priest first in 38 years :).

We ate a lot of great Arabic food, chatted a lot and I had a great time. But yesterday when I was in a farm in haute Provence I would never have thought that the very next day I would be on top of mount Tabor, participating to a very happy baptism in one of the most beautiful church I have ever been in (pictures later this week). Thanks again Bishara !

Weekend in southern France

Wednesday and thursday, Israël celebrates its independance day so I have a 4 days weekend. I'm taking advantage of it to fly to Marseille to visit my family. I'm leaving home in 4 hours, that's going to be a really short night.

See you all on sunday, à dimanche.

Terrorists captures and lies...

I just read this article (on Sabbah's blog from a Sunday Times article). It just points that the latest great capture of a Al Quaeda number 3 by the Pakistanese, which made a lot of noise in the medias, appears to be just another case of mistaken identity. "Funny" that this didn't made it to the news.
Few links reporting the capture (googlized) : USA Today, CNN, NYtimes, Christian Science Monitor (random search result),...
I haven't found on those sites links to the report that there is probably have been a mistake on the guy's identity (using the search engine on their sites).

I hope to hear more about this because I wonder how many times they are going to use that kind of "Al Quaeda number X" trick to raise their popularity (I don't deny the fact the guy is a terrorist, just the Buzz around his capture).

Local version without alcohol

I was a little tired yesterday when I posted the mojito recipe, so here is the follow-up. I have tasted a lemonade here that is based on the same idea, just without alcohol. You will probably not do it for just one glass, so take a hand full of mint, crush it with a dozen of tea spoons of sugar, squeeze 4 or 5 lemons, add a few drops of rose essence (very important for the oriental taste), add 1 litter of water and put all this in the freezer to get it really cold. Taste, adjust sugar/water according your preference. It is a very efficient thirst quencher, enjoy.

Favorite cocktail

This is how my favorite cocktail looks like. Those that know me already know that I have a big rhum weakness and that this one is called Mojito (yes capital M). It is the Cuban national drink and since the vacations I spent there with Jyby a while ago I'm addicted.

I am sure you all want to know how to make this fantastic drink (or at least please fake it). I've learnt to like a few versions. First the basics, you'll need some cane sugar, liquid or powder, it doesn't really matter. In Cuba they use powder but many use liquid cane sugar syrup and it tastes great. Next is fresh mint (ask for nana here) and a citrus fruit. The original is made with regular fresh squeezed lemon juice but I admit that the best mojitos I ever drunk were made with grapefruit juice, lime also works well. Finally you'll need rhum, good one, I personally recommend Havana Club, Dillon, La Mauny, 3 rivières or Charette, eventually some good Brazilian Cachaca, and in very last case if you are totally desperate use Bacardi (still better than using vodka, but don't do it please).

So now that you have the basic ingredients you want the proportions ? Are you sure ? Ok, per glass one tea spoon full of sugar (2 if you love ultra sweet and tasteless drinks), squeeze half a citrus, add 4-5 mint leaves and crush them with the sugar and juice, add 1/3 of a glass of rhum, some ice and complete with water. An alternative to water is to complete with sprite (you might want to reduce the sugar amount by half then), other alternative is to complete with just rhum.

Among other improvements you can add 1 drop of vanilla extract, or one drop of angustura (there is some in the original recipe, it is bitter orange alcohol), and I tried recently with a few drops of Amaretto (almonds liquor) and it worked well too.

Btw i can confirm that loukoums are soluble in Mojitos, it just takes a while.

Vlog Jerusalem

Ok, first attempt to videoblog (here). This is a xvid encoded video so you might need to download the codec. The internet archive is slow to accept my files so I'll try another host, please let me know if it works.

This has been taken from the David Tower looking towards the old city (towards SE approximately). On the left you have the 2 grey domes of the church of the Holy scepulcre, then the golden dome of the rock, on its right you have al Aqsa mosq grey dome and in front (invisible) the wailing wall. Left side is arab quarter, right side is jewish and rightmost is armenian.

[edit] Merci Valou pour l'hébergement ;).

For once, news that make you smile.

Yeah, today brought up a bunch of news that put a smile on my face. They're not necessary good news, but are just mostly fun.

The son and the wife of the chief Sefarade Rabi in Israel are accused of abducting (and eventually beating :( a 17 years old boy that happened to cyber with his 18 years old daughter through some kind of internet chat and mail service and eventually met each other. I was impressed, this could be a fantastic scenario for a successfull comedy. Oh well, it s true, then it's sad, come on she's 18 and in the worst case it was CYBER sex before mariage, not real one, so relax ! Haaretz link here.

Yesterday was the International Marijuana day (I didn't even knew it existed, I'm kinda sad I missed the fun of it:), and many pro-legalization activists and just regular people went on picnics in Tel-Aviv squares. Fun, after mothers, fathers, grandmothers, workers, now baba-cools have their very own day ! Haaretz link here.

Yet another live comedy going on, the Patriarch of the Orthodox church is getting dismissed by the other leaders of his church, on accusations of corruption. Wow, maybe some cardinals should think about that and dismiss a leader that has been in Hitler Jugend ? Nah I'm dreaming, Oriental tradition is so much more evolved than roman one :). Well anyway the Patriarch isn't pretty happy about it. You can follow it again on Haaretz here as Jerusalem Post is only reporting bad and sad news.

Finaly to close that day of news, as the Macabi Tel Aviv is playing the finals of the European Basketball cup, everybody left work at 4PM to go watch the game, so I am alone at work and blogging :). It's impressive everybody really left, and was so surprised I wasn't going to watch the game. So here this final is like the Superbowl in the US, life stops for it.

[edit] Tel Aviv won :).

More News

This time I'm going to try to do it in both english and french ;).

Municipal elections have been taking place all day in Palestine. It appears that the Fatah will beat the Hamas in this poll according a report from Reuters. I believe this is a good thing for several reasons, first a poll happened and there were uncertainty about the winner (at least it wasn't supposed to be a 80%/20% poll) which is usualy characteristic of democracy, second the Hamas wants to have a political role in Palestine (good thing because until recently they have been more involved in violent actions than talks), and third Abbas Fatah is more moderate and seeks actively for now a peacefull solution with Israel.

Something kinda frightening is that the IDF raises security concerns about the pullout because leaving the Rafah border control to the Egyptian army would cause a threat to Israel. Do you seriously think that Egypt is going to attack Israel 38 years later ? I doubt it, but I am probably overconfident... I hope this kind of concerns is not going to delay nor stop the pullout.

Je disais donc que les élections municpales se sont passé aujourd'hui apparament sans heurts puisque la presse ne rapporte rien, à part une présumée victoire du Fatah sur le Hamas. C'est plutot bon signe pour plusieurs raisons, tout d'abord le fait qu'un vote où le parti d'opposition a des chances de gagner est un signe de démocratie, ensuite le Hamas veut jouer un rôle politique en Palestine, alors qu'auparavant ils étaient partisans uniquement de la lutte armée, et enfin le Fatah de Abbas est réputé plus modéré et cherche activement une solution politique au conflit avec Israel.

Une autre nouvelle un peu effrayante est un rapport de l'armée Israélienne qui émet des réserves importantes quant à laisser les Egyptiens assurer la sécurité de la frontière à Rafah. Tout d'abord ils craignent de la contrebande d'arme et d'autres produits illicites (ça ils ont raison à mon avis:) mais la partie effrayante est qu'il pensent qu'une présence militaire Egyptienne trop importante dans le Sinaï menace la sécurité d'Israël. J'ai quand même un gros doûte que l'Egypte envisage de réattaquer Israël 38 ans après, mais peut être suis je trop naïf (que de trémas!)... J'espère qu'il n'utiliseront pas ce genre d'excuse pour retarder indéfiniment le retrait de Gaza.

Actualité en vrac et en français

La situation en Israël et en Palestine est préoccupante ces dernières semaines. Depuis la mort des 3 jeunes à Rafah la presse rapporte des incidents quotidiens. Heureusement pour l'instant je n'ai rien vu passer qui semble "majeur" et qui destabilise définitivement cette trève fragile. Je me plaignais dans mon dernier post politique de l'apparente absence de volonté de faire des avancées du coté de Sharon. Même si cela reste mon impression générale il faut noter quelques points moins négatifs ces derniers temps.

Le retrait de Gaza est le fer de lance de Sharon pour montrer au monde ca volonté de faire évoluer les choses vers la paix. Malheureusement beaucoup de monde doute sur le fait que ce retrait se fasse et que tout ne serait que promeses en l'air pour amadouer la communauté internationale, le delai de quelques semaines annoncé récement dans le retrait ne faisant que renforcer l'opinion de ces personnes. Aujourd'hui le gouvernement a annoncé qu'il allait accorder la majorité de leurs requetes aux habitants de Gush-Katif qui vont être évacués dans le cadre du retrait (article d'Haaretz). C'est un progrès majeur, et l'on peut espérer que cela calmera la plupart des anti-retrait (sauf probablement les plus virulents). De même ces derniers temps la police et l'armée israélienne sont intervenues à plusieur reprises contre des extrémistes qui s'en prenait violement à des palestiniens non armés en palestine, et la détention administrative ne touche enfin plus que des palestiniens (même si j'ai en horreur ce concept de détention sans règles).

Le ballet des chefs d'état étrangers continue avec Poutine et des ministres Turcs, mais malheureusement l'ensemble des discussions portant sur la Palestine semblent aboutir à des refus en bloc d'Israel (Sharon dit non à la conférence sur la paix de Poutine ainsi que non à l'assistance de Poutine à la police palestinienne qui en a portant bien besoin pour maintenir un semblant d'ordre). Le seul chose qui semble marcher c'est les ventes d'armes $$$$...

En revanche les morts hebdomadaires de soldats Israeliens et de militants Palestiniens ont repris, et il semblerait que plusieurs attaques suicides aient été déjouées. Les militants Palestiniens cessent t'il de respecter la trève à cause des violations israéliennes, ou Israel intervient il pour arrêter des attentats en cours de préparation, on en est revenu au cycle infernal de la violence ou chacun riposte pour se venger de l'autre, sans fin... Heureusement il semblerait que les plus gros mouvements s'en tiennent à leur parole.

De son côté Abbas me semble faire pas mal d'efforts, d'un côté il menace d'utiliser la force contre les militants qui brisent la trève, de l'autre il leur propose d'oeuvrer pour un état Palestinien organisé en les recrutant dans les forces de sécurité. Le Hamas semble abandonner de plus en plus la lutte armée au profit de la politique, ce qui serait un progrès fantastique si cela se concrétisait et généralisait. Malgré certains signes de faiblesses à certains moments il semble garder le contrôle, la communauté internationale l'encourageant et le soutenant.

De l'autre côté de l'atlantique, les néoconservateurs religieux semblent s'être lancés dans une croisade inquisitrice et purificatrice contre tous les partisans d'une amérique plus libérale. Libé rapporte cela dans un article d'aujourd'hui. Je sais qu'il n'est pas dur d'écrire des articles partisans en ne regardant qu'à un côté de l'information, et qu'il est toujours facile de trouver des [|[#@[{[|{# pour déblatérer des conneries mais j'ai quand même été choqué d'apprendre qu'il existait des gens qui pouvaient penser ça:

Tyrans. La Cour suprême, qui n'est pourtant pas le QG du gauchisme américain, est également prise à partie. L'un de ses neuf juges, Anthony Kennedy, nommé par Ronald Reagan en 1988, est dans le collimateur de la droite. Son dernier forfait : en mars, il a voté avec les quatre juges les plus progressistes pour interdire la peine capitale pour les mineurs. Circonstance aggravante : il s'est appuyé, dans son argumentaire, sur la «norme internationale», ce que l'inénarrable Tom DeLay a considéré comme «scandaleux».

Lors d'un colloque organisé le mois dernier à Washington sur le thème «Remèdes à la tyrannie des juges», Kennedy a fait l'objet d'attaques publiques répétées. Certains orateurs ont demandé à ce qu'il soit démis (impeached). L'un d'entre eux, Edwin Vieira, a même dénoncé ses principes «marxistes-léninistes, sataniques, tirés du droit étranger» !

En lisant cela je conclue que l'abolition de la peine de mort pour les mineurs est un principe marxiste-léniniste satanique, et que je suis donc un marxiste-léniniste satanique et fier de l'être. Il fallait la trouver celle là quand même...

Dans un autre registre (après le coup des satanistes je n'arrive plus a avoir un raisonnement politique modéré), j'ai fini d'écrire mon article pour Onversity avant de partir en Turquie et JF l'a publié. Si vous êtes interressés par les Pénalités de branchement et prédiction matérielle dynamique dans les microprocesseurs modernes vous pouvez toujours le lire.

Sunset in Haifa

Today was a beautifull sunset in Haifa, here are 2 pictures at 12 minutes interval. When I assembled both I realize that the hill from the top one and the cloud from the bottom one matched pretty well together.