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| Israel-Palestine |
| Positively bizzare effort by Amnesty International to count trees |
| 2004-05-18 |
| According to the report, Israel has destroyed more than 3,000 Palestinian homes, most of them in the impoverished and densely populated Gaza Strip, since Palestinian Israeli fighting broke out more than three years ago. The report also found that 10 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land has been destroyed and more than 226,000 trees uprooted there in 2002 and 2003. The Gaza strip is 360 SQ KM and densely populated. Lets assume there is some agricultural activity, and lets further assume that say 10 SQ KM is forested. This is also certainly way to high. It means there are 23,000 trees per SQ KM (assuming those nasty Jews uprooted all the trees in the area), which is a density you might achieve in a Christmas tree farm when the trees were a few inches high. |
| Posted by:Phil B |
| #7 Amnesty International has drifted far from its original mission. |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-05-18 6:27:32 PM |
| #6 RC, is it possible that Arafat planning a checkoint attack inspired by the plot of the bard's Macbeth? |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-05-18 12:36:09 PM |
| #5 Considering the Islamic line about the trees calling out to expose Jews hiding behind them, I think we should count trees as enemy combatants. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-05-18 12:16:36 PM |
| #4 In overpopulated areas it is common for the population to deforest their own landscape due to the lack of camel dung to burn for heating. Is it possible that the original counter mistook a gardeners picture of his Brussels sprout farm for an aerial view? |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-05-18 12:13:07 PM |
| #3 Amnesty International At Gaza : "Hey, I told you not to count that tree. That palm tree is a friend of the palm tree in Jordan Tim Russert talks to." |
| Posted by: BigEd 2004-05-18 11:51:14 AM |
| #2 Asshat International strikes again. |
| Posted by: Chris W. 2004-05-18 10:51:54 AM |
| #1 Here's an orthophoto map of the Strip, circa 1999, with built-up areas indicated. Looks like built-up areas, even in an area as overpopulated as the Strip, is about thirty percent. Looks like maybe as much as twenty percent of the rest of the strip, mostly in the center and north of Gaza City, is forested. Probably orchards, although it's kind of hard to tell from this scale. Here's a small-scale land usage map. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2004-05-18 10:11:59 AM |
