Leading hotels of the world paris’s festival thousands israel

The Red Sea Jazz Festival, held in Eilat every August, has just ended.
It offered dozens of wonderful performances and hundreds of gifted
musicians to tens of thousands of listeners – and not one single
recycling bin. Over the four days of the festival, Neviot sold
hundreds of thousands of half-liter bottles of water at NIS 8 apiece.
Yet it did not bother setting up one recycling bin. Apparently, no one
conditioned its license on protecting the environment. It will take
1,000 years for these water bottles to biodegrade. And the polystyrene
plates on which a significant portion of the food there was served
will never biodegrade.

Some 85,000 people attended this year’s festival, the 22nd in Eilat,
making it the largest ever. Thousands of cars were stuck in traffic
jams, because there were no regular shuttles from the hotels and the
beach to the festival site at the port. Such shuttles, for a nominal
price, could have prevented both the traffic jams and the air
pollution, as well as enabling the thousands of teenagers who flock to
the festival, to get to the port without needing to take a taxi or
hitchhike. Eilat is a small city, and nighttime bicycle rides along
the beach could have been lovely. But the city does not have a single
store that rents bicycles. In Paris, by contrast, there are tens of
thousands of bicycles available for rent right on the street. Nor does
Eilat have a bicycle path along the shore. It is also not possible to
bring a bicycle to the city by bus. And, of course, there is still no
train to Eilat. So a festival that was wonderful for the ears, the
eyes and the soul harmed the present and future for every one of us.
The quantity of air pollution, unrecycled bottles and nonbiodegradable
materials could have been reduced had a little attention been paid to
this issue. If Neviot is turning a profit on its franchise to sell us
water, it should be required to recycle the bottles. And eateries
could be required to serve all food on biodegradable plates. This
festival, one of the world’s leading jazz festivals, must also be
committed to international standards of environmental protection. The
Red Sea Jazz Festival could have been green – as could all the other
festivals that took place in Israel this summer. I did not visit
those, but one can safely assume that the amount of pollution those
festivals produced was no less.

Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers
real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the
Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of
Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense,
diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli
politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq,
Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the
Diaspora.

Al davis oakland raiders’s al raiders he’s

In The Princess Bride, Westley only had to make it through the Fire
Swamp once. But San Jose Mercury reporter Tim Kawakami has to brave
the danger that is the Oakland Raiders’ Alameda headquarters on a
regular basis, and that’s much, much worse. It’s not an easy job, but
it’s never boring. By now you’ve probably seen the video of , which
has become a viral superstar in the few short hours it’s been up
today. Herrera offering to punch Kawakami, and the reporter replying
that he’d “love to own a piece of the franchise” has become the quote
of the month so far.

But what was it actually like to be in the eye of the NFL’s most
dysfunctional hurricane? When will Lane Kiffin actually be fired? And
most importantly, just when does Al Davis arrive for work each day? I
talked with Kawakami about all of this — turns out he lives just
down the feeway from me — and more. Let’s talk silver and black
and blue, after the jump.

Tim Kawakami: Not really. But things are not going well with the
organization. They have a head coach they don’t like, and tensions are
high. (Raiders front office personnel) are thinking about their
loyalty to Al, so tempers are on edge. They can’t yell at Lane Kiffin,
so they yell at me. It’s not surprising. But although I wasn’t
shocked, something of this nature rarely happens. You can never really
be prepared for it.”

I wrote a column describing how a Raiders official distributed printed
copies of an ESPN.com article critical of Kiffin to the press, and the
question I asked Kiffin at the press conference centered around that.
That’s when Herrera interrupted and began yelling. I didn’t mention
Herrera’s name in the article, but I will now. Since he started
yelling in front of five cameras, I guess it”s OK to have it out
there. And he did distribute it. Others blogged about it before I ever
wrote it.

Not at all. You can see in the video that he has this look on his face
that seems to be saying, ‘See? Look everybody, this is what I have to
put up with here every day.’ In fact, Lane called me today to
apologize for what happened. But I told him that I don’t need an
apology, and certainly not from him, who had nothing to do with it.

Not angry at all, and you can see that on the video, I think. It was
like it was in slow motion, like I was in the middle of a hurricane. I
was trying to be calm. The video is out there for everyone to see and
judge for themselves.

Kind of crazy. I have to say that there are certain members of Raiders
Nation who are not happy with me right now. Al Davis loyalists will
support him to the bitter end. And hey, I salute Al. I don’t agree
with a lot of his decisions, but I’ve said before that he’s
accomplished more in his life than I ever will, and that’s a fact. But
a lot of people have written in support of the way I handled myself.
Some Raiders fans have said that they were embarrassed over what
happened.

Al’s still a sharp guy, and he knows football, but the energy level
just isn’t there the way it used to be. Things don’t go at a normal
speed at Raiders headquarters. Al wants to fire him, but at the same
time he has to figure out what to do afterward, and he’s not ready for
that yet. He’s got to hire someone else, and that’s not an easy thing
to do when you don’t get to work before 4:30 p.m. each day.

No one’s ever seen him at the office before then. I KNOW that he’s not
there in the mornings. So he may sit at home and plot his moves until
3 a.m., because he’s a night owl, but at home there’s no one to talk
to about it. Things get done when you’re in the office in the morning
working the phones, and that’s hard to do on Al’s schedule. By the
time he gets in, the day is over.

Al knows football. But he’s also paranoid; he’s into conspiracy
theories about himself. He was that way when he was 40, but even more
so now. And the ability to think around that gets harder as he gets
older, so that effects his judgment. Also, he used to have people
around him who were good at public relations. Guys like Bruce Allen,
who were there during the Gruden years. Allen was a real people person
and could help Al deal with the outside world. But Bruce is gone now.
Al has absolutely no one around him who is good in dealing with
people. It’s just Al in the darkness now.

Do you know the Deng Xiaoping story? That’s the infamous one, I guess.
It was at the press conference announcing the hiring of Kiffin.
Afterwards I was talking to Al, and remarked that I thought it was a
strange hire, given that Kiffin was so young and had no head coaching
experience. Al didn’t like that, and said: ‘I’ll bet you don’t even
know who Deng Xiaoping was.’ I was like, what? What does that have to
do with anything? Al pressed it. ‘Who is Deng Xiaoping?’ So I thought
for a minute, and said, ‘Well, if I’m not mistaken, wasn’t he the
General Secretary of the Chinese government during the Tiananmen
Square massacre?’ And Al repiles, ‘But what can you tell me about him
other than that? See? You don’t even know anything about your own
culture.’ I said, ‘Al, I’m Japanese-American, not Chinese.’ And Al
said, ‘Ohh, geez. I bet you’re going to kill me on that now.’ It all
happened in front of about 20 reporters, so I didn’t have to.

Well, I’ve covered the Philadelphia Eagles with Buddy Ryan, the Los
Angeles Rams with Chuck Knox, the Lakers, the 49ers, the Warriors, but
nothing’s been like this. Covering the Raiders is like covering
boxing. You just never know what’s going to jump out at you. What
happened Monday just illustrates what’s going on there in vivid
fashion. It’s a peek behind the curtain. You never really know what
you’re going to see.

In order to view comments on deadspin.com you need to enable
JavaScript. If you are using Firefox and NoScript addon, please mark
deadspin.com as trusted.

The al davis raiders million team raiders

The 49ers and Raiders ranked 30th and 31st, respectively, out of the
32-team league, with only the , at No. 32, ranked lower.

Forbes valued the Oakland Raiders at $861 million, up 6 percent from a
year earlier, with 2007 revenue of $205 million and operating income
of $27 million.

The team is owned by Al Davis. A former assistant coach with the ,
Davis became head coach of Raiders for three seasons in 1963 and
bought an initial stake in the team in 1966, becoming managing general
partner.

That same year, Oakland opened at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum,
now McAfee Coliseum. The Raiders played in Los Angeles from 1982 to
1994, and then returned to Oakland.

The 49ers are valued at $865 million, up 8 percent from a year ago.
Forbes put the 49ers 2007 revenue at $201 million and operating income
at $4.1 million. The team is owned by Denise DeBartolo York, whose
family bought it in 1977. The 49ers first played in 1946.

Team values in the Forbes report are based on market size, brand
management, stadium deals and the portion of the franchise’s
contribution to the revenue shared among all 32 NFL teams.

Al davis raiders’s davis al raiders

Al Davis has shocked the football world once again with a firing no
one expected. Gobears2008 describes the scene at the press conference.

Alameda, CA – In a twist that has shocked even long-time Raiders fans,
Al Davis has announced that he will fire himself.

Davis’ press conference, attended by major sports reporters from
across the country, apparently began with an attempt to justify the
firing. “First off, I fired Al Davis today for cause,” Davis began.
“I’ve given him every chance to win, but no championships in 25 years
…I couldn’t just stand by and watch my team not win.”

“Al Davis has shown no sense of respect for the Raiders organization,”
he continued. “It wouldn’t have mattered even if Oakland had won it
all last year, because Davis is such low-class, lying, cheating, just
plain no good, stain on spotless model of integrity of the shining
beacon of hope to all of humanity that the Raiders franchise
represents to all of us as human beings. Plus he drafted a kicker in
the first round, a

“It was within my grasp, the trophy was mine,” Al recalled. “But just
as I was about to grab it, I was sucked into a black hole. Then I woke
up. I knew that my time was up.” Then Davis jumped up and shouted “the
dark forces of ESPN have temporarily defeated me, but I’ll be back!”

Davis disappeared for a few minutes, then came out again to announce
that he was suing himself for wrongful termination. But he then
aggressively asserted, “As long as I am with the Raiders, that lying
scum Al Davis will never get a dime of Al Davis’ money.”

Davis has kept his successor a tightly-guarded secret, but word has
already leaked to the press that he has already interviewed himself
for the job.

Go BEARS…stick to writing about your team…last time i checked it’s
been about the same amount time since the bears have won a
championship as well….

I assume you mean the Chicago Bears (funny how no one assumes I’m a
Baylor fan). Anyway, I’m a Cal Bears fan (last championship: 1922),
and a Niners fan, but I don’t hate the Raiders, and would be glad if
Al Davis removed himself from power (realizing that of course this
would never actually happen). Anyway, it’s not meant to be serious.

Standard Messaging Rates or other charges apply. To Opt-out text STOP
to 4INFO (44636). For more information text HELP to 4INFO (44636).
Contact your carrier for more details.

Davis kiffin raiders in al davis raiders

Oakland Raiders new interim head coach Tom Cable, left, and owner Al
Davis, right, listen during a news conference at Raiders headquarters
in Alameda, Calif., Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008. The Raiders fired head
coach Lane Kiffin on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008, just four games into his
second season. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

ALAMEDA, Calif. (AP) — The Oakland Raiders fired Lane Kiffin on
Tuesday just four games into his second season, ending a public feud
with owner Al Davis that had been simmering since the start of the
year.

“I reached a point where I felt that the whole staff were
fractionalized, that the best thing to do to get this thing back was
to make a change,” Davis said during a lengthy news conference. “It
hurts because I picked the guy. I picked the wrong guy.”

Kiffin had a 5-15 record since being hired last year, losing his final
game 28-18 on Sunday to San Diego.

The decision to remove Kiffin was more about his frequent criticisms
of Davis’ franchise as it was the team’s performance on the field.
Those critiques reached a peak when Kiffin distanced himself from the
defense after a blowout loss in the season opener, saying that was
under coordinator Rob Ryan and Davis’ control.

However, during a news conference Tuesday, Davis also critiqued
several of Kiffin’s coaching and personnel decisions. Among other
things, he said Kiffin objected to the Raiders using the first pick in
the 2007 draft on quarterback JaMarcus Russell.

“I didn’t think it was any one thing, it was a cumulative thing,”
Davis said. “The pattern just disturbed me.”

The Raiders said Kiffin was fired for cause, meaning they will likely
try not to pay him for the remainder of his contract. He signed a
three-year deal worth about $6 million when he took over last year.

The 79-year-old Davis was front and center for more than 90 minutes,
sharing the stage with Cable for some of that time and then sticking
around afterward to take more questions.

Dressed in Raider silver-and-black, his face weathered by years of
standing on football sidelines, Davis sat at a podium reading from
notes illuminated by a large desk lamp. He seemed angry at times,
blaming Kiffin for most of the Raider woes, though he also blamed
himself for hiring him in the first place.

The firing comes a day after the St. Louis Rams let go of Scott
Linehan, marking the second firing at the quarter point of the season.
The last time a coach had been fired this early in the season was when
Davis got rid of Mike Shanahan after four games in 1989.

Cable is regarded as one of the top offensive line coaches in the
game, and worked with successful units in Atlanta and Oakland. He
spent four years as a college head coach at Idaho, and was also an
assistant at UCLA, California and Colorado.

“This is in many ways a strange day,” Cable said. “I have a friend who
lost a job. That’s difficult in this business but, as we know, this is
a business. It is time for us to move forward and to put the past
behind us. … We have a good coaching staff here and a good football
team here.”

Kiffin’s job security was in question as far back as January, when a
dispute with Davis over whether he could replace Ryan as defensive
coordinator led to a resignation letter being drafted for the coach.
Kiffin refused to sign it and the feud went on throughout the
offseason as Kiffin questioned big-money signings and other personnel
moves made by Davis.

The situation grew more heated with Kiffin’s comments on Davis’
involvement with the defense two days after a season-opening 41-14
loss at home to Denver. Three days after that, reports surfaced that
Davis was ready to fire his coach at any time and it dragged out from
there.

Kiffin did his best to deflect the controversy and never went to Davis
to lobby for his job or a resolution. The team played much better the
past three weeks, beating Kansas City and taking leads into the fourth
quarter against Buffalo and San Diego before losing.

“I know that we left this team a lot better than when we got here,”
Kiffin told KPIX. He is expected to have his own press conference on
Wednesday.

Davis’ once-proud franchise has fallen on hard times of late, with the
blame going beyond one coach. Oakland has an NFL-worst 20-64 record
since the start of the 2003 season, a stretch spanning the tenures of
Bill Callahan, Norv Turner, Art Shell and Kiffin.

Oakland has lost at least 11 games for five straight seasons, tying
the dismal Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the 1980s for the worst stretch in
NFL history.

Since returning to Oakland in 1995, the Raiders have had just three
winning seasons and will be on their eighth head coach. The success
mostly came under Jon Gruden, who led Oakland to division titles in
2000 and ’01 before leaving for Tampa Bay. Callahan took the Raiders
to the Super Bowl the following season, but there was nothing to cheer
about in that 48-21 loss to Gruden and the Bucs — and nothing
since.

The one constant during that period has been Davis, who won three
Super Bowl titles in his first 21 years with the Raiders but has had
little success over the past quarter-century.

Kiffin, the son of longtime NFL defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin,
was just a 31-year-old assistant at Southern California when Davis
hired him to replace Shell in 2007. With that, he became the youngest
head coach in the NFL’s modern era.

Davis said at the time that Kiffin’s youth was not an issue, pointing
to the success the Raiders had in the past with young coaches like
John Madden and Gruden.

Kiffin, instead, is following the path of Shanahan, who was hired at
age 35 in 1988 and then fired four games into his second season. Until
this move, Shanahan had been the only coach Davis had fired in the
middle of a season since joining the Raiders in 1963.

The al davis picture kiffin season davis

Take this offseason for example. The defensive coordinator was fired
until the owner said he wasn’t. The head coach wanted to be fired and
the owner wanted him to resign, so Lane Kiffin ended up back for a
second season. Former players criticized the franchise as soon as they
landed with other teams. And the $55 million wide receiver got beat up
and robbed in Las Vegas, then wanted to retire in training camp before
being talked out of it by the owner.

This type of dizzying string of events has become so familiar around
owner Al Davis’ once-proud franchise that players have learned to tune
it all out.

“I tried to stay off the Internet and just in my experience here, with
all the things that have gone on, I really don’t listen to the talk or
what people expect or anything like that,” said running back Justin
Fargas, entering his sixth year in Oakland. “I just try to concentrate
on what I can do to improve as a player. That’s not going to change,
this is my approach.”

That approach might not be easy this season as the feud between Kiffin
and Davis that became public in January has simmered all offseason and
into training camp.

It began almost as soon as last season ended, with reports that
defensive coordinator Rob Ryan had been fired over a philosophical
difference with Kiffin. That was followed by a statement from the team
that Ryan in fact would be staying, as Davis made it clear that he did
not want to let his defensive coordinator go.

A few weeks later, came the reports that Kiffin asked to be fired if
he couldn’t pick his coaching staff and Davis responded by sending his
coach a letter of resignation to sign.

The game of chicken ended with both sides blinking and Kiffin coming
back for a second season despite a strained relationship with his
owner.

“We have a working relationship, and I think we have the same goal,
and that’s to get this team to win,” Kiffin said.

Raiders coach Lane Kiffin, left, is back for a second season despite a
strained relationship with owner Al Davis.

But if the team’s poor record the past five seasons and the comments
from former Raiders this offseason are any indication, nothing is
working in Oakland.

Warren Sapp told the St. Petersburg Times his time with the Raiders
was as “dark as a black hole.” Chris Carr said it was difficult to win
in Oakland because there was “so much other stuff going on there.”
Stuart Schweigert talked about “a thousand-pound bear” being lifted
off him when he was released by the team, and Jerry Porter said being
a Raider had become a “burden.”

“What they’re discussing, I can’t change, so that subject is what it
is,” Kiffin said. “I control what I can control and get us as good as
we can get with what I can control. I don’t have control of that.”

That’s been Kiffin’s mantra all summer as he has questioned the team’s
personnel decisions, which have always been under Davis’ purview.

Kiffin has been especially critical of receiver Javon Walker, calling
him out of shape during offseason workouts and singling him out for
much of camp. The $55 million contract given to Walker this offseason
was part of a big spending spree by Davis as he hopes to win his first
Super Bowl in a quarter century.

But Walker’s tenure has been marred by the robbery in Las Vegas in
June and then his desire to retire early in training camp. Davis
talked him out of it, but Kiffin has remained critical of his
receiver’s performance.

Davis has not spoken to reporters this summer, leaving Kiffin as the
public voice of the franchise. But it’s clear Kiffin has been trying
to distance himself from some of the moves the team made. It remains
to be seen if all this talk will cost Kiffin his job before the season
even ends.

Davis has only fired a coach during the season once before, getting
rid of Mike Shanahan in 1989, four games into his second season. With
a bye after Week 4 this season, Kiffin could be in danger of following
Shanahan if Oakland doesn’t get off to a quick start.

“When you take this job you realize who the owner is and you realize
most guys don’t last really long so that is what it is,” Kiffin said.
“If you sit there and worry about that and you think about that you’re
not doing the best that you can for your team.”

Coaching longevity has been rare around the Raiders. Since the team
returned from Los Angeles in 1995, Jon Gruden is the only coach to
last more than two seasons.

Joe Bugel and Art Shell each were fired after only one season, while
Mike White, Bill Callahan and Norv Turner each got two years on the
job.

That revolving door has helped keep the Raiders in a downward spiral
since they lost the Super Bowl to Gruden and Tampa Bay 48-21 in
January 2003.

Oakland has a 19-61 record since that game, the fewest wins in the NFL
in that span. It’s even a worse record than the first five seasons of
any of the past four expansion teams, which is remarkable considering
the slide started with a Super Bowl roster.

It took until midway through Davis’ 17th season with the Raiders for
the team to lose as many games as it has lost in the past five.

There was Callahan calling his players “the dumbest team in America”
in 2003, linebacker Bill Romanowski smashing teammate Marcus Williams’
face with a punch in practice earlier that season, Randy Moss quitting
on his team during his two-year stint in Oakland, and Shell benching
and then suspending Porter for insubordination.

“A lot of my friends and family are Oakland fans, so I don’t want to
have to listen to the negative talk,” said safety Gibril Wilson, who
left the Super Bowl champion Giants to sign with Oakland in the
offseason. “It’s just very important to just get back to winning, to
get back to the Oakland mystique, the silver and black. … That’s
what we need to get back to.”

Jigsaw’s jigsaw share saw

Lionsgate released this clip of an Edgar Allan Poe inspired —
Jigsaw trap from Saw V. Even if you are sick of the Saw franchise you
have to admit all four of them never skimped on the bloodshed. Check
out the clip below from the fifth installment which hits theaters Oct
28, 2008.

Almost every one brought in to try and solve the jigsaw mystery has
died or been injured. With John’s dead body in the hospital,
Officer Rigg badly injured still in the warehouse, Agent Perez
recovering in the hospital and Agent Strahm nowhere to be found there
leaves one. Upon hearing the news that Jigsaw’s games will
continue from his death Detective Hoffman has disappeared and a whole
new game is just about to start.

SHARE AND ENJOYThese icons link to social bookmarking sites where
readers can share and discover new web pages.

Horror Year Book is represented by Gorilla Nation. Please contact
Gorilla Nation for ad rates, packages and general advertising
information. horroryearbook.com is powered by Current style is

Jigsaw’s tv spot saw

Bringing another hair-rising footage from the horror thriller latest
franchise, Lionsgate have given another sneak peek into the lethal
traps.
The first TV spot for “, some snippets from this video helps to find
out the conclusion of the Pit and the Pendulum-inspired sequence and
the fate of the man strapped below the sharp pendulum. Though most
scenes of this TV spot still highlight on the tattooed man like the
previous clip, it manages to reveal brand new and never before seen
clips. One of them reveals another deathly trap set by Jigsaw for ‘s
character, Luba. Desperately attempting to escape alive, Luba who is
tied in the neck to a thin piece of string yells out that it is not
the time yet to the woman in front of her. Continuing the popular
“Saw” franchise, “Saw V” is said to be following Hoffman, who looks
like to be the last person alive to carry on Jigsaw legacy on making
others grateful of their lives by putting them in lethal traps. But
when his secret is threatened, Hoffman is forced to go on the hunt to
eliminate all loose ends. It stars also Costas Mandylor, Scott
Patterson and Julie Benz. Directed by David Hackl, it is due October
24. “Saw V” TV Spot:

Jigsaw’s game playstation marvel

Zen Studios today released three new from The Punisher: No Mercy for
the PlayStation 3, a game inspired by the Marvel franchise and
distributed exclusively through PlayStation Network. The game is based
on Unreal Engine 3 and features arena-based multiplayer action from a
first-person perspective and a long list of characters, including
Jigsaw, Bushwacker, Barracuda and Silver Sable. The game will also
feature a single-player Story mode with exclusive artwork from Marvel
artist Mike Deodato.

Google’s maps yahoo services

, an industry analyst firm that specializes in covering Web services,
released a statement today discussing its findings on the success of
online mapping solutions.

To no one’s surprise, the analyst found that in the space, while its
rivals, Yahoo Maps, MapQuest, and Live Search Maps have slipped well
behind Google. According to the analyst, much of Google’s success is
due to the fact that its competitors simply don’t have what it takes
to keep pace.

“Since our initial survey in July 2007, innovation at (AOL’s) MapQuest
and Yahoo Maps has stagnated,” and although has improved Live Search
Maps, it remains the least popular of the four top services, said
Cowen and Co. “Yahoo and MapQuest do not have the resources to keep
pace and are forced to aggressively monetize a declining franchise in
the maps segment.”

The analysts cited Google’s Streetview and public transportation
services as and its continuing investment in improving its mapping
solutions places it further ahead of its competitors.