Star Wars Saga Mapped

(Source: sunfoundation, via markcoatney)

Human rights activists are turning to Google Earth to identify the vast network of prison camps that dot the North Korean countryside and hold as many as 200,000 people deemed hostile to the regime.

Read: Google Earth exposes North Korea’s secret prison camps - Telegraph

(via brooklynmutt)

Responding to my post that asked people to send in screen shots if they came up with Israel/Palestine borders using this interactive map, University of Nebraska alum and current Marshall Scholar Zach Smith writes:

My proposal more closely resembles the Geneva lines of 2003, which ought to be unsurprising. The Israeli proposal of 2008 seems to me to be completely unserious: The annexation of some of those settlements really destroys any potential for territorial contiguity.

Don’t like Zach’s map? Make your own and send it it.

From The Atlantic, here is a thing I will definitely be using in my “Israel and the Middle East” class next semester:

Crowdsourcing an Israeli-Palestinian Border

A new interactive tool allows you to decide how many Israeli settlers to annex and what constitutes a viable Palestinian state.

One day after the Palestinians successfully upgraded their state at the United Nations General Assembly, the Israeli government announced “preliminary zoning and planning preparations” for a plot of land just outside of Jerusalem known as E1. Many were quick to condemn the move as a significant blow to the already-gridlocked peace process, perhaps even more so than other settlement construction announcements, since construction in E1 would separate the major Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem from Jerusalem. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon decried the plan as “an almost fatal blow to remaining chances of securing a two-state solution,” while The New York Times declared that “If such a project were to go beyond blueprints, it could prevent the creation of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.”

[Image: S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace/SAYA/Is Peace Possible?]

Click here to play with the interactive map directly. I’d be interested to see where different people draw the borders … if you feel like sending me a screen shot when you’ve got your map finished.

ROMNEY: Syria is Iran’s route to sea.

No, it really isn’t.

(via think-progress)

“All iPhones appear to log your location to a file called ‘consolidated.db.’ This contains latitude-longitude coordinates along with a timestamp. The coordinates aren’t always exact, but they are pretty detailed.” (via O’Reilly Radar)

Now I really wish I had an iPhone.

Be honest: it’d be fun to have your phone map all of the places you’ve been, right? Sort of like a running log of your days … or a reminder of all the fun you’ve had with your phone over time.

(via soupsoup)

What a shame that this series of maps, just published on the Rights And Humanity blog, is chock full of misinformation. It was put there by whomever blogs at the Research and Destroy blog (the name of which, yes, is pretty ironic, as is the fact that the blogger provides no attribution regarding the image’s source). The intrepid “research” and “destruction” blogger says, regarding the map:

Palestinian loss of land, 1946-2000

Pre 1947: 100% Palestinian land

1947: UN Partition Plan: 48% Palestinian land

1967 de facto line: 22% Palestinian land

As of 2005: 12% Palestinian land

The problems are many, but I’ll present three big issues along with some research that’s entirely omitted:

1. The first, second, and third maps show as “Palestinian” land in 1946 a fair amount of land that fell under the British mandate, but not all of it, as well as land that was occupied and annexed by Transjordan. Here’s a map of the British Mandate. As Wikipedia nicely explains, Transjordan “was under British supervision until after World War II. In 1946, the British requested that the United Nations approve an end to British Mandate rule in Transjordan … During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Jordan occupied the area of Cisjordan (Judaea/Samaria) now known as West Bank, which it continued to control in accordance with the 1949 Armistice Agreements and a political union formed in December 1948. The Second Arab-Palestinian Conference held in Jericho on December 1, 1948, proclaimed Abdullah King of Palestine and called for a union of Arab Palestine with the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan … Jordan signed a military pact with Egypt in May 1967, and following an Israeli air attack on Egypt in June 1967, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq continued the Six Day War against Israel. During the war, Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In 1988, Jordan renounced all claims to the territory now occupied by Israel but its 1994 treaty with Israel allowed for a continuing Jordanian role in Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem.”
2. It’s just factually inaccurate to say that 100% of the land was Palestinian prior to 1947. As the first map demonstrates, Jews owned some of the land. What the map doesn’t illustrate so well is how much, but there’s research on the matter and the answer is something on the order of 10%: “By May 1948 Jews acquired approximately two million of Palestine’s 26 million dunams. In terms of Palestine’s total land area under the Mandate, this was a small percentage. But these two million purchased dunams were among the most cultivable. They were neither in the hill regions of the West Bank/Judea-Samaria regions nor south of Beersheba. Jewish land acquisition focused on the valley and coastal regions of Palestine from 1920 through 1936. Before and after these years land was purchased also in the Galilee and later in the southern portions of Palestine, between Beersheba and Gaza. At the end of the Mandate Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip (320,000 dunams) and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan annexed the West Bank/Judea-Samaria (6 million dunams).”
3. The third map makes no mention of the fact that the borders of Israel from 1949-1967 were the result of a war with Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, nor does it note in any way that the Palestinian territory (in green) was occupied by Egypt and Jordan. Given that occupation, one might well ask — if the war had turned out differently — whether the land would have belonged to an independent Palestinian state or to the invading adjacent states.
4. Finally, regarding the fourth map, I think one would do better to go to the Palestine Monitor website (not exactly a pro-Israeli source) and look at the map of the West Bank. It’s here and it provides a great deal of helpful detail that is conveniently omitted by the map above.

It’s clear that Israel’s current policies — especially with regard to settlement in the West Bank — are wrong-headed, as I’ve said numerous times on this blog. But one need not resort to falsification that borders on outright propaganda in order to advance the very reasonable claim for Palestinian statehood. Sadly, that’s what this series of maps represents and it does nothing whatsoever to advance the conversation that will, one day, bring Israelis and Palestinians to a lasting peace.

If you thought the first version of Fox News’ misplaced Egypt was funny, then you’ll probably really enjoy this one …

(via drinkthe-koolaid)

With events in Egypt happening so quickly, it’s often difficult to get all the facts straight … like where to find Egypt on a map.

UPDATE:

Apparently, this graphic is actually from July 2009. That doesn’t make it any better … but I wouldn’t want you to think it’s from this past weekend, during the Egypt protests (which is certainly what I thought when I first saw it and posted it). Most likely, Fox News now knows where Egypt is … even if they weren’t sure back in 2009.

(Source: kateoplis, via mohandasgandhi)