(no subject)

SIGDOC is in Toronto this year (in October). The call for papers is on the vague side, and I'm never any good at figuring out how to fit things I know into vague outlines in CFPs. I wonder if I should pursue this.

(No, I don't actually know if my employer would send me. They'd probably be more likely to if I were out there making a good name for our company, though.)

(no subject)

The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said, "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria" and that, "politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the United Nations Security Council, "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."

[...]

In 1931, Lewis French conducted a survey of Arab "landlessness" and eventually offered new lands to any Arabs who had been "dispossessed." British officials received approximately 3,200 applications, of which more than 2,600 were ruled invalid by the government's legal adviser because they came from Arabs who were not landless. This left only about 600 landless Arabs, 100 of whom accepted the government land offer. The masses of dispossessed Arabs apparently did not exist or simply were not interested in reacquiring land.

Mideast conflict origins (part 1)