DUMBING DOWN

A demonstrator wears a similar T-shirt at a New York protest.

Arabic T-shirt sparks airport row

An architect of Iraqi descent has said he was forced to remove a T-shirt that bore the words "We will not be silent" before boarding a flight at New York.
Raed Jarrar said security officials warned him his clothing was offensive after he checked in for a JetBlue flight to California on 12 August.
Mr Jarrar's black cotton T-shirt bore the slogan in both Arabic and English.

He said he had cleared security at John F Kennedy airport for a flight back to his home in California when he was approached by two men who wanted to check his ID and boarding pass.
Mr Jarrar said he was told a number of passengers had complained about his T-shirt - apparently concerned at what the Arabic phrase meant - and asked him to remove it.

"We Will Not Be Silent" is a slogan adopted by opponents of the war in Iraq and other conflicts in the Middle East.
It is said to derive from the White Rose dissident group which opposed Nazi rule in Germany.

[After a difficult exchange with airline staff, Mr Jarrar was persuaded to wear another T-shirt bought for him at the airport shop.]

SUNNI-SHIA SNAFU

Private pessimism on Iraq grows

In a confidential memo, the outgoing UK ambassador in Iraq, William Patey, has warned that civil war is a more likely outcome in Iraq than democracy.

"It sometimes feels as if Baghdad is descending into madness. Over the past seven days, within sight of our bureau, we have seen a simultaneous suicide, rocket and mortar attack and a car bombing.
Last night in Baghdad, a bomb was planted under a football pitch to kill children as they played."
- BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood

[William Patey's telegram does not depart from the official formula that civil war is neither imminent nor inevitable. But he does say it is probably the more likely outcome, at this stage, along with the break-up of Iraq.
Even what he witheringly refers to as President Bush's lowered expectations for Iraq - of a government that can sustain and defend itself - must "remain in doubt".]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

LRA leader Joseph Kony is wanted by the ICC for war crimes.

LRA rebels in DR Congo withdrawal

Lord's Resistance Army rebels are leaving their bases in the Democratic Republic of Congo as demanded by a peace deal with Uganda's government.
The truce, signed on Saturday, has a ceasefire coming into effect on Tuesday and gives rebels three weeks to move into assembly points in southern Sudan.
Thousands have died during the 20-year conflict in northern Uganda, and more than one million have fled their homes.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) wants the LRA's top officials - among them Joseph Kony - to face charges including murder, rape and forcibly enlisting children.
The LRA has abducted thousands of children and forced them to fight since the conflict began.

[Abduction, brutalisation and desensitisation: ABC Radio's Radio National program All in the mind aired a harrowing account of the effects of pressing children, some younger than 10 years old, into becoming killers. Transcript and audio download available here.]

Senior Child Protection Specialist Michael Wessells: I've talked with young people in Sierra Leone who said that they were pumped up on what they called 'brown brown' which was mostly amphetamines and cannabis and alcohol, all at once. And the way they used to do the 'brown brown' was they would cut your temple, or your pectoral muscle on your chest and they would literally pack it in to make sure that you had a good healthy dose inside of you. And they would tell me when I went into combat that I felt no fear. And villagers often said that the worst thing was when they saw these small boys' units, when they showed up with what they described as 'that look on their face', they knew that horrible things would happen.
They were out of their minds and some of those small boys' units were involved in committing atrocities. One of the ways that the RUF, the rebel group in Sierra Leone, terrorised villagers was to commit mutilations. They would literally line people up and ask , 'Do you want a long sleeve or a short sleeve?' And if you said long sleeve they'd take a machete and hack your arm off at the elbow and if you said 'A short sleeve,' they'd hack your arm off at the shoulder.

MAD MATHS

Grigory "Grisha" Perelman has been described as an "unconventional" and "reclusive" genius.

Maths genius declines top prize

Grigory Perelman, the Russian who seems to have solved one of the hardest problems in mathematics, has declined one of the discipline's top awards.
Dr Perelman was to have been presented with the prestigious Fields Medal by King Juan Carlos of Spain for solving a century-old problem called the Poincare Conjecture.

[The conjecture says - colloquially - that the three-sphere is the only type of bounded three-dimensional space possible that contains no holes. ]

Professor John Ball, outgoing president of the International Mathematical Union, said he had spoken to Dr Perelman of personal experiences with the mathematical community during his career that had caused him to remain at a distance.
"However, I am unable to disclose these comments in public," he said, adding: "He has a different psychological make up, which makes him see life differently."
Manuel de Leon, chairman of the ICM, said: "The reason Perelman gave me is that he feels isolated from the mathematical community and therefore has no wish to appear as one of its leaders."

[In 1996, Perelman turned down a prize awarded to him by the European Congress of Mathematicians. Observers suspect he will refuse a US$1m prize offered by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Massachusetts, US, if his proof of the Poincare Conjecture stands up to scrutiny.]

PAST LIVES

Severely malformed ear (microtia) in a Turkish boy who said that he remembered the life of a man who was fatally wounded on the right side of the head by a shotgun discharged at close range.

Where Biology and Reincarnation Intersect

In 1993, Ian Stevenson MD, head of the Department of Psychiatric Medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine [Charlottesville, Virginia], published "Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons", this article was based on his presentation at the 11th annual meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration at Princeton University in June 1992.
His paper presented dramatic evidence of how past life traumas become so embedded in an individual's cellular memory that they are carried from one life to the next.

Published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Volume 7, No 4, pp 403-410, 1993.

Almost nothing is known about why pigmented birthmarks (moles or nevi) occur in particular locations of the skin. The causes of most birth defects are also unknown. About 35% of children who claim to remember previous lives have birthmarks and/or birth defects that they (or adult informants) attribute to wounds on a person whose life the child remembers. The cases of 210 such children have been investigated.
The birthmarks were usually areas of hairless, puckered skin; some were areas of little or no pigmentation (hypopigmented macules); others were areas of increased pigmentation (hyperpigmented nevi). The birth defects were nearly always of rare types.

In cases in which a deceased person was identified the details of whose life unmistakably matched the child's statements, a close correspondence was nearly always found between the birthmarks and/or birth defects on the child and the wounds on the deceased person.

Alternative rendition.

[Naevi are caused by visible clusters of cells in the skin. Vascular naevi are due to clusters of blood vessels, melanocytic naevi are due to clusters of pigmented skin cells (melanocytes), epidermal naevi to keratinocyte skin cells and so on. The exact cause of why these occur is unknown but it may relate to localised abnormalities of certain genes. There is no known way to prevent them.]

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

Kidnapped at age 10, Natascha has escaped her dungeon now aged 18.

Austrian woman, kidnapped at 10, flees dungeon prison

An Austrian girl, abducted in 1998 when she was 10 years old, has been reunited with her parents after fleeing a basement prison, Vienna police said today.

``A young girl disappeared eight years ago,'' Police General Nicholas Koch said at a press conference.
``What we have now is a grown woman.''
Natascha Kampusch, now 18, broke free yesterday afternoon. Her kidnapper, identified only as Wolfgang P., died last night after he was hit by a train, Koch said. Police are investigating whether he killed himself and are searching his house.

[Kampusch disappeared on the morning of March 2, 1998 as she was on her way to school, prompting Austria's largest-ever manhunt. Police interviewed more than 1,000 owners of white mini-vans, the kind of car Kampusch was seen entering the day she went missing.]

COINCIDENTALLY

Diverted European flight leads to 12 arrests over suspicious behavior

A Northwest Airlines plane flying from Amsterdam to India was escorted back to the airport by Dutch F-16 fighter jets Wednesday, and police arrested 12 passengers whose behavior had aroused the crewís suspicion.
Coincidentally, among the 149 passengers aboard Northwest Flight NO0042 was the tipster who first alerted the FBI to al Qaida operative Zacarias Moussaoui's odd behavior at a Minneapolis area flight school five years ago.

[Nelson and a fellow flight-school program manager have been hailed as heroes for their phone calls that led to Moussaouiís Aug. 16, 2001, arrest and brought the FBI tantalizingly close to uncovering the Sept. 11 terror plot.]

OUR COSMOS

The claims are based on observations of the Bullet Cluster.

Team finds 'proof' of dark matter

Until now, astronomers have only been able to infer the existence of dark material through the gravitational effects it has on ordinary matter.
Researchers have now discovered what is effectively the gravitational signature of dark matter created by dark matter and ordinary matter being wrenched apart by the immense collision of two large galaxy clusters.
In the cosmic smash-up known to astronomers as the Bullet Cluster, these components have been pulled apart.
The astronomers were lucky enough to catch the collision just 100 million years after it occurred -- the blink of an eye in cosmic time.

SAVVY INVESTMENTS

HYDERABAD HYDRA

Pakistan blames West for terrorism

Writing this weekend in the News, Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani Prime Minister, recalls that General Zia-ul-Haq, who toppled her father's regime in a coup in the 1970s, played a key role in assisting the US and the Mujahadeen to defeat the Soviet-backed Afghan government.
'This alliance not only brought modern weapons and technology to the Mujahadeen but converted my homeland from a peaceful nation into a violent society of Kalashnikov weapons, heroin addiction and a radicalised interpretation of Islam,' she stated.
Thus, she suggests, were the seeds of the current harvest sown.

'You have created a monster and now you don't know what to do with it,' said Senator Asfundyar Wali, the Awami National Party senator who was jailed at the age of 14 for his political beliefs and has been arrested many times since. 'The war against the Soviet Union turned refugees into jihadis.'
Throughout that war, the CIA channelled an estimated US$3bn into the hands of the Afghan resistance groups and their foreign fellow-fighters

[General Zia-ul-Haq brutally ruled Pakistan under martial law for more than a decade before he died when his plane exploded in mysterious circumstances on 17 August 1988, killing him, along with five generals and the American ambassador]

JUSTICE FOR DAVID

David Hicks

Moving mountains one hill at a time

Guantanamo Bay's token white man, David Hicks, has now spent almost five years in detention without a trial.
His US military-appointed legal representative Major Michael Mori has been meeting with politicians from all sides in Canberra, and support for this shameful situation is at an all-time low.
Australia's Government is starting to waver, but to really face facts and take action, they need to see and hear from we the people that enough is enough.

On Wednesday, the people of Adelaide are coming together to do something about it. You and your family are invited to join in. GetUp is hosting a candlelight vigil in Adelaide with Major Michael Mori, culminating in a walk to the office of Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, where we will present our letter of demand to repatriate David Hicks.

[Major Michael Mori will speak at 5:30. Sunset is at 5:49, when we will light our candles and walk peacefully to Alexander Downer's ministerial office nearby, to present our letter of demand.]

CASH COW

Systems to have little direct role in terror fight

The estimated costs for the development of major weapons systems for the US military have doubled since September 11, 2001, with a trillion-dollar price tag for new planes, ships, and missiles that would have little direct role in the fight against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The soaring cost estimates -- disclosed in a report for the Republican-led Senate Budget Committee -- have led to concerns that supporters of multibillion-dollar weapons programs in Congress, the Pentagon , and the defense industry are using the conflicts and the war on terrorism to fulfill a wish-list of defense expenditures, whether they are needed or not for the "war on terrorism".
The report, based on Defense Department data, concluded that the best way to keep defense spending in check in the coming years lies in "controlling the cost of weaponry," especially those programs that the Pentagon might not necessarily need.

[The projections of what it will cost to acquire "major weapons programs" currently in production or on the drawing board soared from $790 billion in September 2001 to $1.61 trillion in June 2006, according to the congressional analysis of Pentagon data.]

VOX POPULI

Little grey men spin a new reality

Left and right alike promote their interests by coining phrases which often insinuate meanings that bear no relation to the original words. Beware this Unspeak

The Conservatives under David Cameron talk a lot about "social welfare". It sounds warm and fuzzy, but what do they mean by it? The phrase arose alongside "the welfare state", implying that the well-being of all was the responsibility of all: a responsibility discharged through the operations of government. Yet what it describes for the new Tories is almost the opposite: an intention to farm off some of the duty of ensuring welfare to other, voluntary organisations. Under the friendly-sounding cloak of "social", it expresses a wish to save money by abrogating governments' duty towards the unfortunate.

[Copy of full article here.]

CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS

US judge rules wiretaps illegal

A US program to tap some phones without warrants is unconstitutional, and must be halted at once, a federal judge in Detroit has ruled.
The scheme, approved by President George W Bush in 2001, involves tapping conversations between some callers in the US and people in other countries.
Civil liberties campaigners brought the case against the program, which was uncovered by the US media.
The White House said the scheme was legal and it would seek an appeal.

[Mr Bush authorised the Terrorist Surveillance Programme, as the secret interception scheme is known, after the 11 September 2001 attacks on Washington and New York and insists that it is a vital tool in the US war on terror.]

NEW VAMPIRES

Australia backs call for investigation into Chinese organ harvesting

Canadian human rights activist David Kilgour, and human rights campaigner David Matas produced a report backing up extraordinary claims by the Falun Gong spiritual movement that more than 4000 of their followers have been murdered and their organs removed inside a hospital in northern China, to be used for lucrative organ transplant operations.
Mr Kilgour met with Australian MPs in Parliament House, to push for an independent investigation.

The Australian Government has confirmed that officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have asked the Chinese government to allow an independent investigation into claims of mass organ harvesting in China. [Video podcasts available.]

Opposition Foreign Affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd has backed calls for an independent investigation.



[FLASHBACK: 1943, a 19-year-old Auschwitz survivor described the horrors happening inside the concentration camp where an estimated 1.5 million people of various races, but mostly Jews, were murdered by Nazi Germany. His account, and those of many others after the liberation, was of crimes of such depravity and on such a scale that it was far beyond human comprehension. In fact many, many people said at the time, "this can't be happening".]

ROADMAP TO PEACE

FEAR FACTOR

A plan 'to commit unimaginable mass murder'

ALARMING intelligence that an attack was imminent was the trigger for police raids which captured 24 terrorist suspects, including two white converts to Islam. ...

US sources claimed last night that substantial sums of money had been wired from Pakistan to two of the alleged ringleaders so that they could purchase airline tickets. One report said they were planning a “dry run”.
...
Surveillance on internet traffic between the suspected terrorists indicated that they had considered setting off their devices simultaneously ...
...
A number of events are understood to have convinced the counter-terrorist agencies to act. A telephone call about the alleged plot was intercepted, internet communication increased noticeably and two men under surveillance disappeared off the intelligence radar. However, security sources indicated that the key event — thought to be the transfer of funds — had taken place overseas. “It was very close, and it was too risky to allow the surveillance operation to go on for any longer,” one source said.

Don't these people read the newspapers. Western intelligence services are widely reported to be tapping Internet traffic, telephone conversations and finance transfers and yet their operation -- which obviously requires strict secrecy -- is planned using the email, phones and wire transfers of money!
The Times article then names 19 of the supposedly 'innocent until proven guilty' suspects.

EARTH CHANGES

A view of Greenland and its ice sheet from space. If the ice sheet melted, global sea levels would rise an estimated 7 meters (23 feet).

Greenland ice sheets melting: Global warming advances faster than anticipated

As the world digests the flow on from rising petrol prices, the implications of its increased use are also being debated. A new study published in the journal Science reveals that global warming is melting Greenland's ice sheet three times faster than scientists had thought.

Accererating melt

By 2020, the snows of Kilimanjaro may exist only in old photographs. The glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park could disappear by 2030. And by mid-century, the Arctic Sea may be completely ice-free during summertime. As the earth's temperature has risen in recent decades, the earth's ice cover has begun to melt. And that melting is accelerating.

Sea Levels Likely To Rise Much Faster Than Was Predicted

Global warming is causing the Greenland ice cap to disintegrate far faster than anyone predicted. A study of the region's massive ice sheet warns that sea levels may - as a consequence - rise more dramatically than expected.
Scientists have found that many of the huge glaciers of Greenland are moving at an accelerating rate - dumping twice as much ice into the sea than five years ago - indicating that the ice sheet is undergoing a potentially catastrophic breakup.
The implications of the research are dramatic given Greenland holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by up to 21ft, a disaster scenario that would result in the flooding of some of the world's major population centres, including all of Britain's city ports.

[Glaciers and Sea Ice Endangered by Rising Temperatures]

HOWARD'S HYBRID

OUR GALAXY

Strange 'twin' new worlds found

A pair of strange new worlds that blur the boundaries between planets and stars have been discovered beyond our Solar System.
A few dozen such objects have been identified in recent years but this is the first set of "twins".
Dubbed "planemos", they circle each other rather than orbiting a star.
Their existence challenges current theories about the formation of planets and stars, astronomers report in the journal Science.
"This is a truly remarkable pair of twins - each having only about 1% the mass of our Sun," said Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto, co-author of the Science paper.
"Its mere existence is a surprise, and its origin and fate a bit of a mystery."

[Located about 450 light-years away in a star-forming region, four of the objects are just a few million years old, making them cosmic "newborns". They have masses between five and 15 times that of Jupiter.]

GREEN PLANET

Sweden has shut this nuclear power plant as part of its voter-mandated shift to other sources of energy, especially wind.


Sweden shuts nuclear plant in shift to wind

Swedish nuclear reactor has produced its last watt, shut down at the stroke of midnight Tuesday as part of a citizen-sanctioned shift to more environmentally friendly power.
The Barseback-2 nuclear reactor was Sweden's oldest, accounting for three percent of the country's total electricity output. Nuclear power provides 40 percent of Sweden's electricity.
The closure is part of nuclear phase-out program backed in a referendum in 1980. The first reactor at Barseback closed in 1999.

[Voters backed move in 1980, before global warming became factor]

FREEDOM

Thomas Paine


'These are the times that try men's souls'

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER" and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

[Other works by Paine]

SENDING A MESSAGE

The Hulks: Vanstone and Ruddock

The proposed privately-operated prison ship will carry customs and fisheries offiers, as well as someone to operate the deck-mounted machine guns.
Perhaps the new vessel could be 300 cubits long and be in keeping with the antideluvian idea.
Coming from part of the population with prison hulks featuring in their ancestor's past, one might expect a tad more sensitivity?

On Lateline: Talking head said the proposed ship would be armed because cause it is all about border protection.
"It sends a clear message ..." he said.

[more details later...]

YOUNG LEADERS

RACIST PLANET

Asian Carp Disrupts Life

Part of the general fear campaign regarding those 'others'?

First there was Africanized Killer Bees, swarming up from South America. Now it's the Asian Carp.
The Asian carp, first brought to U.S. waterways to eat overabundant algae, is becoming a major menace to fishermen in states such as Illinois by consuming all the plankton and depriving other fish of food. (mpg 5mb).

For reasons involving some strange logic, German measles were called liberty measles during WWI.


[Fortunately human Asians, Africans and Caucasians (Aryans?) are all the same race ... imagine the trouble if they weren't.]

CIVILIAN DEATHS

Lest we forget... Iraq ... Afghanistan

Events in Lebanon are terrible. Hundreds of innocent civilians are dead. The daily media images are horrific. It's time for the US government to use its muscle to enforce a ceasefire.
Agreed. But in another corner of the Middle East the US is using its muscle – with these results:

January: 1,778 civilian deaths
February: 2,165 civilian deaths
March: 2,378 civilian deaths
April: 2,284 civilian deaths
May: 2,669 civilian deaths
June: 3,149 civilian deaths

Thousands of civilian deaths every month – 14,423 in the first half of the year – according to United Nations figures.

[If Lebanon is bad, Iraq is a hundred times worse. Literally.]

BORDER LINES

Lebanon wants return of Shebaa Farms

Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese p rime minister, has said that if Israel wants secure borders it must withdraw from the disputed Shebaa Farms area it has occupied since 1967.
Israel, which has bombarded Beirut's suburbs and southern Lebanon with aircraft and artillery since July 12, has said it wants to weaken Hezbollah so that the Lebanese government can disarm the group.
In an interview with Aljazeera.net late on Friday, Siniora said his government cannot force Hezbollah to disarm as long as Israel continues to occupy the Shebaa Farms.
He said: "I'd like to remind you that the Shebaa Farms is not a property of Hezbollah. It's a property of Lebanon and it's for all the Lebanese.
"So anyone who would say that giving this land back to Lebanon would be considered a victory for Hezbollah is mistaken. This issue has to be looked at in totality. Lebanon gets back its land and, ultimately, Israel gets a safe border."

[The Shebaa Farms is the name given to a 10 km sq area of farmland at the point where the Lebanese, Syrian and Israeli borders meet. The Shebaa Farms were first occupied by Israel in the wake of the 1967 War, also known as the Six Day War.]

FIRST CASUALTY

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.