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

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ARMS EMBRACE

Rice holds back as U.S. rushes bombs to Israel

[From NYT, 22 July 2006] The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said.
The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said.
Its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding the Israeli bombing campaign in a way that could be compared to Iran's efforts to arm and resupply Hezbollah. The munitions are actually part of a multimillion-dollar arms-sale package.

Israel News Net reported the country was running low on bombs.

GLORIFYING TERRORISM

The plaque outside the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which has incensed the British Ambassador.

British anger at terror celebration

As Israel wages war against Hezbollah “terrorists” in Lebanon, Britain has protested about the celebration by right-wing Israelis of a Jewish “act of terrorism” against British rule 60 years ago this week.
The rightwingers, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine.

[A hot night in Jerusalem 60 years ago when the King David Hotel, HQ of the British Palestinian Mandate, was destroyed by bombs planted by Menachim Begin's terrorist group, the Irgun, killing British, Arabs, Jews and others. The Irgun was asked to do this by the main Zionist group, the Haganah, but successive governments are understandably reluctant to celebrate it.
The Irgun's defenders have always claimed that a warning was called in prior to the explosion. Police records suggest it was no more than a few minutes. The best a recently unveiled plaque celebrating the attack can say is:
From Crikey.com, edition 24 July 2006:
For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated, and after 25 minutes, the bombs exploded, and to the Irgun's regret and dismay, 91 persons were killed.
In other words, even the official, set-in-stone, spin puts the founding fathers of Israel on a moral level with the Provisional IRA.
One thing is remarkable about this – the Irgun are routinely called "freedom fighters" these days but at the time they were described as terrorists not only by their enemies – but by themselves. Indeed at the time Irgun supporters took out a full page congratulatory ad in the New York Times offering praise TO THE JEWISH TERRORISTS.
But here's the real rub – it is not because incidents such as the King David Hotel, or the Stern Gang's kidnap and murder of two British soldiers (sound familiar?) were wanton terrorist acts that Israel's government shies away from them, but because they weren't – they were legitimate, if ruthless, actions against military targets in a declared guerrilla war (the massacre of Arab villages is another matter).
Yet to acknowledge that would be to concede that urban guerrilla action can shade into terrorism. It would inevitably lead people to make similar distinctions between a suicide bomb attack on a restaurant, and the same on a military checkpoint. And the last thing wanted is that sort of symmetry, which might suggest that freedom fighting is terrorism plus time.
Still, it's an ill-wind. Maybe some sympathetic group could be persuaded to put up a replica plaque in Australia. Then we can test the government's commitment to its "glorification of terror" legislation.]

MORONS RULE

Dr James Zogby on the Middle East conflict

TONY JONES: OK. But it appears that the Israelis appear to have come to the conclusion that it is only Iran that can effectively disarm Hezbollah or even tell them what to do and that conclusion has also been reached in the United States, in Washington, by a number of very influential neo-conservatives like William Kristol. He is already suggesting that the US now take this opportunity to strike at Iran's nuclear facilities. What do you think would happen if that were the case; if the United States or, indeed, Israel struck out at Iran?

DR JAMES ZOGBY, ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE PRESIDENT: Well, you know, the infantile fantasies of the neo-conservatives have brought great destruction to Iraq and I would add to our country in the Middle East.
Lord spare us from any more of their fantasies. They're a dangerous crew. They're about as dangerous as the ayatollahs. I think a strike against Iran would open the gates of hell for everybody in the Middle East and, frankly speaking, all of the footsteps of terrorism in the Middle East go directly back to Tehran. There's no question about that.
But these morons - and I use that term advisedly - led us into Iraq and only served the purpose of emboldening and strengthening Iran, giving them unleashed power in Iran - sorry in Iraq and they pose now a greater threat in the Gulf region.
There is an absolute need to deal with Iran, but at this point in time with 130,000 US troops in the middle of majority Shiah country, with Lebanon in flames, with Iran emboldened, the last thing we need to do is to envision a war against Iran that I believe would cause grave damage throughout the entire Persian Gulf on both the Arab side and the Iranian side, leading to a greater destabilisation in that broader region.
If Iran crumbles, and it very well might crumble if in fact a war were to occur, the spill-over into several neighbouring countries would be enormous. Even a more dangerous situation than what we are currently seeing in Iraq. I do not believe, as the neo-conservatives do, in creative chaos. In fact what they have brought us is nothing creative. Just chaos. We don't need more of that.

[ABC TV Lateline, broadcast: 26/07/2006]

IDIOTS RULE

Beazley's uranium push dividing the party

Australia's Prime Minister takes aim at Opposition Leader Kim Beazley's statement that nuclear power is the policy of an idiot.

JOHN HOWARD: There are 31 countries in the world that have nuclear power. Nuclear power produces 16 per cent of the world's electricity. Lots of idiots and lots of idiotic prime minister and idiotic presidents.

[ABC TV, Lateline, broadcast: 26/07/2006]

STRANGE FRUIT

China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped "death vans" that shuttle from town to town. Yunnan province alone has 18 mobile units.

Former Chinese policeman lifts lid on organ harvesting

Earlier this month PM reported on a Canadian human rights study about political prisoners being executed and then harvested for body parts.
It claimed since 2000 almost 40,000 transplants have been carried out using body parts harvested from executed members of the Falun Gong movement.
Former Beijing policeman Sun Liyong says he knows the methods used by Chinese authorities to harvest body parts from prisoners.
Mr Sun now lives in Australia, but during the 1980s he says he was well aware of what was happening to executed prisoners.
"Before the prisoners were executed the Public Security Bureau would go to the detention centre and test their blood," he said. "As far as I know during the period I was a policeman all the organs were harvested by the Friendship Hospital in Beijing."
Records show the Friendship Hospital boasts of an excellent reputation in transplant operations.
"The Beijing Public Security Bureau would notify the Friendship Hospital before they carried out the execution of prisoners," Mr Sun said.

[China is relying more on lethal injection because it is harvesting organs of executed prisoners in an effort to supply the country's growing market for organ transplants. ]

EARTH CHANGES

Sahara Desert Was Once Lush and Populated

At the end of the last Ice Age, the Sahara Desert was just as dry and uninviting as it is today. But sandwiched between two periods of extreme dryness were a few millennia of plentiful rainfall and lush vegetation.
During these few thousand years, prehistoric humans left the congested Nile Valley and established settlements around rain pools, green valleys, and rivers.
The ancient climate shift and its effects are detailed in the July 21 issue of the journal Science.

[In the 1930s the 'Sleeping Prophet' Edgar Cayce told of the past fertility of the Sahara ... "The Nile entered into the Atlantic Ocean. What is now the Sahara was an inhabited land and very fertile." (Reading #364-13)]

SEPARATION OF POWERS

Lawyers urged to speak out about Hicks's treatment

The New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery QC, has urged the legal community to speak out about the treatment of Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks.
Speaking last night to more than 100 members of Newcastle's legal community, on the NSW central coast, Mr Cowdery reiterated his concerns about the continued detention of Hicks, saying his treatment was an unprincipled disgrace.
He described recent criticism by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer that he, Mr Cowdery, should "stick to his job", as offensive and patronising.
"My job is intricately bound up with the protection and the observance of the rule of law, so I see being concerned about, holding views about and expressing those views about David Hicks as being part of my responsibilities," he said.

[ The 30-year-old convert to Islam was captured in Afghanistan where he allegedly fought alongside the ruling Taliban against US-led forces who invaded after the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.]

DEATH PREMONITION

Jake Kovco ... dreamed of his death one month before he was shot.

Diary of Kovco's death dream

Private Jake Kovco was worried by a premonition he had about being shot in the head a month before he died in Baghdad, an inquiry has been told.
The board of inquiry into the death of the 26-year-old father of two has heard how he wrote about a disturbing and graphic dream he had one month before he died on April 21.
Pte Kovco wrote in his personal diary on March 31 about the dream the previous night in which he was shot in the head with his own 9mm pistol.
"I'm a bit worried it could be a premonition about a bullet hitting me in the head ... f--k I hope not," he wrote.
Pte Kovco stressed in his diary entry that while the dream had unnerved him he had no intention of ever shooting himself.
'Very happy with my life'

["Don't get me wrong, I don't have any intention of shooting myself," he wrote. "I'm very happy with my life. It just shook me up a bit."]

CASHLESSNESS

Show me the money: Mohammed is a terrorist now
Western Union profiles Muslim names

Money transfer agencies like Western Union have delayed or blocked thousands of cash deliveries on suspicion of terrorist connections simply because senders or recipients have names like Mohammed or Ahmed, company officials said.
In one example, an Indian driver here said Western Union prevented him from sending US$120 to a friend at home this month because the recipient's name was Mohammed.

[An executive who deals with security measures said about 1 percent of the store's 30,000 daily money transfers - about 300 a day - are delayed or blocked because of suspected terrorist links. Thus far, all have proven false, the executive said on condition of anonymity, because she wasn't permitted to speak to the press.]

NET NANNIES

Web postings worry summer camp directors

Summer camp directors have a new scourge, and it is not mosquitoes or impetigo. It is the Internet, specifically sites like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster, where young people often post personal or revealing information
Some camps are banning or limiting digital cameras, fearful that images could wind up in undesirable places online. Some are telling counselors, parents and campers to remove camp references from personal Web pages, blogs or social networking sites like MySpace or Xanga.

[ Some camps, like Camp Fernwood, a girls camp in Poland, Maine, are trademarking their names, logos or slogans so they can legally order others not to use them online. ]

UP IN SMOKE

New airline targets smoking niche

German entrepreneur Alexander Schoppmann wants to reignite the romance of travel. Schoppmann is all fired up about a business opportunity born from the anti-smoking trend -- a luxury airline that allows passengers to light up.
He plans to launch Smintair (that stands for Smoker's International Airways) in March as the first smoking-permitted carrier, with flights from Dusseldorf to Tokyo's Narita International on two Boeing 747 aircraft.
Schoppmann says he's seeking a return to simpler times, when air travel seemed exotic and cigarettes were not verboten.

BIG BIRD

Huge, scary bird sighting in Manchester

Pat Grether is a skeptical person. The 53-year-old mother and grandmother doesn't believe in ghosts or aliens. She's not crazy, nor does she drink or partake in the kinds of substances that would result in a person seeing a huge, scary bird in her backyard. Which happened last Monday morning, she said.
Her dog, a 6-month-old chow named Bear, was in the backyard of her home. It was about 10 when she heard Bear yelping and barking.
Grether went outside to see what the problem was. It sounded like something had frightened Bear, she said, something big, scary and weird.

Pat saw it as soon as she walked out the door. At first, she thought it was one of those big kites kids sometimes fly in the field. But it wasn't. It was a huge bird.
"It looked like a Cadillac," she said. By her estimation, the bird had a wingspan of 18 to 20 feet.

[In the following weeks, about a dozen people called and e-mailed to report that they, too, may have seen the giant bird that Grether reported. Story here.]

UP IN SMOKE

Tobacco shares concern confounds State premier

New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma says he cannot understand concerns about Government money being invested in a tobacco company.
NSW Treasury has bought a stake in the owner of Phillip Morris, which makes a number of high-selling cigarette brands.
The head of the Cancer Council, Dr Andrew Penman, says it the Government is hypocritical to convey strong anti-smoking messages at the same time it is profiting from shares.
The Opposition's health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, also says it is unacceptable for Mr Iemma to try and defend the investment.

[Putting their money wher our mouth is?]

MONEY SHOT

Kevin Andrews ... 'dickhead'

NSW Nationals Leader backs away from insult of Kevin Andrews


Grant Lee is the head of the Macleay Teachers' Association in country New South Wales. He organised a meeting of the group earlier this week, attended by State Nationals Leader Andrew Stoner, to discuss the industrial relations reforms.

The Discussion centred around Australian Workplace Agreements and the Federal Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews.

Grant Lee, head of the Macleay Teachers' Association, NSW: Andrew [Stoner] was making the point, several times, that the no-disadvantage clause would make it so that the AWAs (Australian Workplace Agreements) would be protecting Australian workers.
I had to point out to him that under the Howard Government's IR laws, the no-disadvantage clause has actually been abolished.
He was surprised by this. He disagreed at first, but then he said: I'll have to check with my Federal colleagues about that and get back to you. Then he went on to say: but if the no-disadvantage clause has gone, I've got a problem as well.
And then several minutes later into the meeting he actually said to us: if Kevin Andrews got rid of that, frankly he's a dickhead.

[Labor says NSW Nationals Leader Andrew Stoner was right on the money with his description.]

OUR GALAXY

Laser images of Milky Way centre

UCLA astronomers and colleagues have taken the first clear picture of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, including the area surrounding the supermassive black hole, using a new laser virtual star at the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii.
"Everything is much clearer now," said Andrea Ghez, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, who headed the research team. "We used a laser to improve the telescope's vision — a spectacular breakthrough that will help us understand the black hole's environment and physics."
Astronomers are used to working with images that are blurred by the Earth's atmosphere. However, a laser virtual star, launched from the Keck telescope, can be used to correct the atmosphere's distortions and clear up the picture.
This new technology, called Laser Guide Star adaptive optics, will lead to important advances for the study of planets in our solar system and outside of our solar system, as well as galaxies, black holes, and how the universe formed and evolved, Ghez said.
"We have worked for years on techniques for 'beating the distortions in the atmosphere' and producing high-resolution images," she said.

[Ghez and her colleagues took "snapshots" of the center of the galaxy, targeting the supermassive black hole 26,000 light years away, at different wavelengths. This approach allowed them to study the infrared light emanating from very hot material just outside the black hole's "event horizon," about to be pulled through.]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Australlian Attorney General Philip Ruddock and shadow AG Nicola Roxon.

Shadow AG points out another promise crushed under Government jackboots


Nicola Roxon: About 12 months ago the Government went through very detailed negotiations ... to ensure ... that children wouldn't be kept in detention but now these new changes are saying it's OK to keep children in detention as long as they're in Nauru but not here in Australia.

SECRET CENSORSHIP

Stuff you don't hear about on the tv

Top stories include news of accelerating government secrecy, massive civilian deaths in Iraq, continuing election fraud, environmental destruction, police state surveillance, and pending wars over geopolitical policies.

MORALITY SQUAD

US broadcasters have been under pressure to clean up the airwaves since Janet Jackson's breast exposure during a dance routine at the 2004 Super Bowl.


Hefty rise in US indecency fines

US broadcasters transmitting indecent material face a tenfold increase in maximum fines, to $325,000 per violation, under new legislation.
President George Bush, signing the law, said, "This law will ensure that broadcasters take seriously their duty to keep the public airwaves free of obscene, profane and indecent material."

[The FCC defines indecency as "language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities."]


Stones songs censored

The Rolling Stones were censored during their halftime performance at the Super Bowl XL in Detroit this year.
TV censors deemed two lyrics (from Start Me Up and Rough Justice) too sexually explicit to be broadcast and they were cut from the three-song show.

EMPEROR'S CLOTHES

British art gallery displays slate as art

One of Britain's most prestigious art galleries put a block of slate on display, topped by a small piece of wood, in the mistaken belief it was a work of art.
The Royal Academy included the chunk of stone and the small bone-shaped wooden stick in its summer exhibition in London.
But the slate was actually a plinth and the stick was designed to prop up a sculpture.
The sculpture itself - of a human head - was nowhere to be seen.
"I think the things got separated in the selection process and the selectors presented the plinth as a complete sculpture," the work's artist David Hensel told BBC radio.

["Given their separate submission, the two parts were judged independently," the Academy said in a statement. "The head was rejected, the base was thought to have merit and accepted.]

WAR OF WORDS

21-year-old Saudi inmate Yasser al-Zahrani and two other inmates committed suicide at Guantanamo Bay.

US backs away from Guantanamo 'PR stunt' remark

The United States is seeking to distance itself from remarks made by a senior diplomat who described a triple suicide by inmates at the Guantanamo detention camp as "a good PR move".
Colleen Graffy, deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, told the BBC that the suicides by two Saudi nationals and a Yemeni appeared to be a conscious "strategy".
"It does sound like this is part of a strategy - in that they don't value their own lives, and they certainly don't value ours; and they use suicide bombings as a tactic," Ms Graffy said on BBC's Newshour program.
"Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move."

[Ms Graffy works under special envoy Karen Hughes, a trusted aide of President George W Bush, who is assigned the task of improving the US image abroad, particularly in Islamic countries.]

Hanging oneself in a jail cell could hardly be defended as a "martyrdom operation".

NEW SOUNDS

A Ring tone meant to fall on deaf ears

The young have a new weapon that could change the balance of power on the cellphone front: a ring tone that many adults cannot hear.
In settings where cellphone use is forbidden — in class, for example — it is perfect for signaling the arrival of a text message without being detected by an elder of the species.
A mobile phone ring tone is the offshoot of an invention called the Mosquito, developed last year by a Welsh security company to annoy teenagers and gratify adults, not the other way around.
It was marketed as an ultrasonic teenager repellent, an ear-splitting 17-kilohertz buzzer designed to help shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while leaving adults unaffected.

[Download MP3 audio file.]

PLUMBING THE DEPTHS

Guantanamo suicides a PR move, says US

A top US official has described the suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a "good PR move to draw attention".
Colleen Graffy told the BBC the deaths were part of a strategy and "a tactic to further the jihadi cause", but taking their own lives was unnecessary.
But lawyers say the men who hanged themselves had been driven by despair. There have been dozens of suicide attempts since the camp was set up four years ago - but none successful until now.

[Ken Roth, head of Human Rights Watch in New York, said the men had probably been driven by despair.
"These people are despairing because they are being held lawlessly. There's no end in sight. They're not being brought before any independent judges. They're not being charged and convicted for any crime." ]

INVISIBLE MAN

Invisibility cloak leaves the realm of magic at last

HIDING objects inside a cloak that channels light around them to make it look as if they aren't there may soon be possible thanks to a breakthrough idea by materials scientists.
It raises the prospect of invisibility shields that could hide objects sitting right under your nose.
Objects are visible simply because light scatters off their surfaces and into your eyes. So in theory, a cloaking device could work by steering light around an object so that you see only the light from behind it, and not the object itself.
Now John Pendry, a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London, and his colleagues have worked out how this could be done with a spherical cloak that channels light around an object hidden at its centre.



FLASHBACK: Alienation News May, 2004: On the battlefield, an invisibility cloak could be just the ticket. Straight out of a Harry Potter adventure, the cloak is covered with tiny light-reflective beads. It appears to be transparent as it's fitted with cameras which project what is in front of the wearer onto the back of the cloak, and vice versa.

GET A MAC

NSA Builds Security Access Into Windows

A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has shown that special access codes for use by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) have been secretly built into all versions of the Windows operating system.
Computer-security specialists have been aware for two years that unusual features are contained inside a standard Windows driver used for security and encryption functions. The driver, called ADVAPI.DLL, enables and controls a range of security functions including the Microsoft Cryptographic API (MS-CAPI). In particular, it authenticates modules signed by Microsoft, letting them run without user intervention.
At last year's Crypto 98 conference, British cryptography specialist Nicko van Someren said he had disassembled the driver and found it contained two different keys. One was used by Microsoft to control the cryptographic functions enabled in Windows, in compliance with U.S. export regulations. But the reason for building in a second key, or who owned it, remained a mystery.

[Now, a North Carolina security company has come up with conclusive evidence the second key belongs to the NSA. Like van Someren, Andrew Fernandes, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina, had been probing the presence and significance of the two keys. Then he checked the latest Service Pack release for Windows NT4, Service Pack 5.
He found Microsoft's developers had failed to remove or "strip" the debugging symbols used to test this software before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for the two keys. One was called "KEY." The other was called "NSAKEY."]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

The Purpose Driven Life-Takers

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City.
You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice.
You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old.

[You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.]

REEFER MADNESS

Study Shows Marijuana Smoke Does Not Raise Cancer Risk

A study presented at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society found that smoking marijuana, even heavily, does not increase the risk of cancer.

Dr. Donald Tashkin, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, has studied the effects of marijuana on the lungs for years and had expected the study to reveal that heavy marijuana use results in elevated cancer risk.
Past studies have yielded varied results on this question, but most were conducted on a small scale and possibly affected by bias. The large-scale UCLA study focused on 2,200 people, about 1,200 of whom had lung, oral, laryngeal or esophageal cancer.
The findings of the study now have researchers considering the possibility that marijuana may have a protective effect against cancer, perhaps deterring tumor growth.

[Past studies have shown marijuana smoke to contain many of the same carcinogenic chemicals found in cigarette smoke.]

MARK OF THE BEAST

Proposal to Implant Tracking Chips in Immigrants

Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has proposed implanting the company's RFID tracking tags in immigrant and guest workers. He made the statement on national television on May 16.
Silverman was being interviewed on "Fox & Friends." Responding to the Bush administration's call to know "who is in our country and why they are here," he proposed using VeriChip RFID implants to register workers at the border, and then verify their identities in the workplace. He added, "We have talked to many people in Washington about using it...."

[The VeriChip is a very small Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag about the size of a large grain of rice. It can be injected directly into the body; a special coating on the casing helps the VeriChip bond with living tissue and stay in place. A special RFID reader broadcasts a signal, and the antenna in the VeriChip draws power from the signal and sends its data. The VeriChip is a passive RFID tag; since it does not require a battery, it has a virtually unlimited life span.]

UP GO THE WALLS

The Botswana Zimbabwe border: much of it now fenced.

Botswana, Zimbabwe row over electric border fence

Relations between Botswana and Zimbabwe are reported to be deteriorating as the Batswana government continues to construct an electric fence along the two countries' border. Botswana is fencing out the increasing numbers of Zimbabweans fleeing their country's economic and political collapse.
The Zimbabwean government has claimed that "Botswana is trying to create another Gaza Strip" by constructing an electric fence, according to Zimbabwe's High Commissioner to Botswana, Phelekeza Mphoko. In Harare, the 2.4 metre high fence has caused protest and frustration, as it is seen as a symbol of the growing stigmatisation of Zimbabweans.

[Earlier this year the government of Botswana decided to erect a four metre-high electric fence along the 500km border shortly after an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in that area.]



US border fence plan 'shameful'

The 260-159 voice vote on an amendment to a bill on illegal immigration "mandates the construction of specific security fencing, including lights and cameras, along the Southwest border for the purposes of gaining operational control of the border.

Mexican President Vicente Fox has described a US proposal to build a fence along 1130km of their 3200km border as "shameful".
He said the proposal - which Mexican officials have compared to the Berlin Wall - was a "very bad signal" from a nation of immigrants.
The US House of Representatives passed an immigration bill last week, backing the building of such a fence.




The 'separation barrier".

Israel's 'security wall': the findings

According to Reuters, the leaked report from the international court of justice has condemned Israel's barrier.
"The Court ... finds that the construction of the wall, and its associated regime, are contrary to international law."



Israel's security 'fence' lines are still fluid. Click image for large version (2.5mb).

Despite the fact that Israel has the better arguments regarding both the jurisdiction and merits, the World Court will most likely accept jurisdiction and declare that the fence - at least in its current route - is a violation of international law. The arguments outlined above will likely have little impact on the court, especially since it has previously stated that the political context or implications of an opinion would not affect its decision-making.31 -- Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs






And what is happening in Giza?

Walls Encircle Pyramidal Complex at Giza

Since the beginning of 2002, Dr. J.J. Hurtak and a European team of investigators and explorers have been recording the construction of a massive system of walls being placed around the historic pyramidal sites and the larger unexcavated area of Giza, Egypt — an area covering 8 square km.
The walls have been built in stages. Images taken in February of 2002 reveal the walls extending far out into the desert where, for the most part, they have not been noticeable to the average visitor.

[Are these walls being built for a few experts who are to find an underground sphinx or obelisk, or a connection between Osiris and the constellation of Orion? Are the chambers of the deep being closed in the 21st century to students of world culture history?]

PARROT SKETCH

Is this parrot psychic? Try a pollygraph test.

Aimée Morgana noticed that her language-using African Grey parrot, N'kisi, often seemed to respond to her thoughts and intentions in a seemingly telepathic manner. We set up a series of trials to test whether this apparent telepathic ability would be expressed in formal testing.
He scored 23 hits: the mean number of hits expected by chance was 12, with a standard deviation of 3.

Listen to N'kisi here. It is difficult to discern which is the human and which is the smart one.

[Parrot's oratory stuns scientists (January 2004)]

COINCIDENCE?

Kazakh 'lighter' tower catches fire




[Kazakhstan's tallest building, affectionately known to locals as "the cigarette lighter" due to its shape, has lived up to its name by catching fire.]

DOOMED, DOOMED

Prof. James Lovelock talks about the fate of humanity.

This has nothing to do with global warming but ...

Carbon in the ocean is changing its chemistry; coral reefs are in danger and creatures with shells may be destroyed.
CO2 enters the ocean as a dissolved gas, it reacts with the sea water and it is making the ocean more acidic.
Since the pre-industrial 1800s to the present, the ocean's acidity has increased by about 0.1 pH units.

[This really is an effect independent of global warming. As we show in the Arctic, global warming can make the problem even worse. – Dr Richard Matear at CSIRO in Hobart has published his research in Nature, and there's more to come.]

HOWARD'S WAY

Political Amnesia and Howard's Ten Years

The mainstream press's analysis of "Ten Years of Howard" has involved a massive dose of political amnesia. A pattern of Government lies and racism is all but ignored. Instead Howard is lauded for his "mainstream" values and for keeping down interest rates.
So what about:
- The "$8 billion dollar black hole" the government discovered upon election to office that meant it had "no choice" but to slash public funding for health, welfare and education.
- the introduction of the regressive GST despite denials before coming to office of their intentions
- the curtailing of Native Title rights with the Wik legislation.
- the lies and secrets surrounding the training of scabs by the military in Dubai prior to the MUA dispute where the PM and senior Ministers lied about their involvement
- the Children Overboard scandal where the Prime Minister and his senior ministers again lied
- the racist treatment of the Tampa and the subsequent establishment of the "Pacific Solution"
- the lies and cruelty that has occurred in the past decade in the running of on-shore immigration detention facilities.
- Howard's implicit support for the ideas of Pauline Hanson through "dog whistle statements" and a refusal to condemn her ideas and then the subsequent adoption of much of her platform
- the wrongful imprisonment and deportation of Australian citizens in Australian immigration detention
- the lies surrounding the invasion of Iraq
- the failure to sign the Kyoto Agreement and massive subsidies to the coal industry. They have also promoted the expansion of Uranium mining and other parts of the nuclear cycle such as reactors and waste dumps.
- the AWB lies
- the introduction of regressive and unpopular IR laws
- ballooning spending on Defence as the Government increasing make the Australian military another division of the U.S. "Foreign Legion".
- the racist scapegoating of Muslims both at home and abroad
- the introduction of draconian and undemocratic security laws which have wiped out centuries of hard won legal rights such as the presumption of innocence and the right to not be detained without trail.

POWER OF ONE

David Hicks before his Guantanamo nightmare began.

Anti-war mum Cindy Sheehan slams Australian PM Howard

Australian Pime Minister John Howard was an illegal combatant waging a war of terror against the world, a prominent US anti-war activist told a peace rally in Melbourne today.
Cindy Sheehan, whose volunteer soldier son Casey, 24, was killed in Baghdad two years ago, called for an end to the Iraq war and for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison, where Australian citizen David Hicks is incarcerated.
"Our governments are saying they (Guantanamo Bay inmates) don't deserve civil rights because they're illegal enemy combatants," Ms Sheehan told the rally.
"George Bush and John Howard and Tony Blair are illegal combatants, there's nothing about this war on terror that is legal.
"These people (world leaders) perpetuate the torture and the killing and they're still allowed to run free and live in society, except George Bush; he can't go outside unprotected he has to ride around in cars that are better armoured than the one my son was killed in."
Ms Sheehan was speaking at a protest rally outside the Australian Liberal Party offices in Exhibition street.
She told about 200 people the war on terror was immoral and eroded basic civil and human rights.
She said prisoners such as David Hicks – who has been incarcerated for four years after being captured training with the Taliban in Afghanistan – deserved to be treated with humanity and justice.
As for the soldiers, we must "get them the hell out of Iraq".

STALAG GITMO

Trouble at Guantanamo

Something happened at Guantanamo Bay this month. Was it an uprising? Or was it made to look that way?

Moazzam Begg, the Birmingham bookshop owner released from the camp last year, said the detention cells were too closely monitored and controlled for inmates to organise a revolt so well. Clive Stafford Smith and Brent Mickum, defence lawyers who regularly visit clients in the base, said they suspected the official accounts were "rubbish".
Begg, who was seized by the CIA in Pakistan in 2002, said he was sceptical that inmates would be able to avoid the round-the-clock surveillance by CCTV cameras, foot patrols and watchtowers to make and hide weapons.

Several guards suffered "cuts, scrapes and bruises, just like a good football game," according to Colonel Mike Burngarner, the base's chief of detention operations.

[Next month, the US Supreme Court is due to deliver a critical ruling on whether President Bush's administration can legally refuse to block legal hearings for the 460 inmates now there. ]

MONSTER WITHIN

US dismisses Guantanamo 'torture' report

The United States has dismissed as "full of inaccuracies" a United Nations report that says the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay amounts to torture.

The UN Committee Against Torture has expressed particular concern at the use of dogs to frighten detainees and shackles.
The UN committee's Fernando Marino Menendez says the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay amounts to torture and this leaves only one solution.
"We told them that Guantanamo should be closed definitively," he said.
"We indicated that some interrogation techniques being used were prohibited by the Convention Against Torture and we gave concrete examples.
"We also indicated that the prohibition of cruel, degrading and human punishment applied to any activity on foreign territory and not only within the United States. We also indicated that secret prisons were banned by the convention."

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Is it a bird, is it a plane

The US administration released video footage of 'a Boeing 757' hitting the Pentagon.
Looks like another case of the Emperor's new clothes.

FLASHBACK: Rumsfeld referrs to a 'missile' striking the Pentagon

Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center. The only way to deal with this problem is by taking the battle to the terrorists, wherever they are, and dealing with them.

Also, last week, the Pentagon staged a mock anthrax attack

The drill, Gallant Fox '06, was designed to test the response efforts for both federal and Arlington County responders. During the exercise, crews acted as though there was an anthrax attack inside the Pentagon.
The mock anthrax attack lasted less than one hour, with Red Cross members and other volunteers posing as victims. They acted out the signs and symptoms of anthrax exposure.
When exposed to anthrax, victims are forced to strip off their clothes and take showers to wash off the biological agent.

Last year there was a big false alarm.

Oh, and 'The DaVinci Code' was released too.

[Five years on, concurrent with the release of the Pentagon 'footage', this Flash video was shown at this year's Cannes film festival.]

OUR COSMOS

Cassiopeia A is not dying peacefully. Is it a rare magnetar?

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena reported this week that NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has made accidental and surprising infrared images of light echoes from a star that was supposed to have died 325 years ago in a supernova explosion. But the new infrared information indicates Cassiopeia has released "at least one burst of energy as recently as fifty years ago" from its cosmic grave 11,000 light-years from Earth.

[The echo of an energy burst is the first witnessed around a long-dead star and the largest ever seen. Another astronomer at UA, George Rieke, Ph.D., said, "We had no idea that Spitzer would ever see light echoes. Sometimes you just trip over the biggest discoveries."]

NUCLEAR DAYS

Example: Olympic Dam mine at Roxby Downs, Australia

Destructive long-term consequences of uranium mining

The radiation from the uranium tailings (mining waste) is many million times more dangerous to humans than the radiation from the ore in its original state, says German engineer Hans-Peter Schnelbögl,
These tailings are being produced in vast quantities in Australia – 14,000 tonnes each day.
They will cost human lives for millions of years.
By law, the tailings are required to be safely contained for 1000 years. Erosion may start within a 100 years. Even after 1000 years, the tailings retain 99% of their radioactivity – a scientific fact

[The uranium tailings issue presents an unprecedented challenge to our ethical framework paralleled only by the potential for a large scale nuclear war.]

BLACK FLAGS

200,000 assault rifles 'vanish' from US hands

A 99-tonne cache of 200,000 AK47 assault rifles was to have been secretly flown out of a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished.
Orders for the deal were given by the US Department of Defense. But the work was contracted out via a complex web of private arms traders.
American defence chiefs hired a US firm to take the guns, from the 90s Bosnian war, to Iraq.
Aerocom, the Moldovan air firm at the centre of the 200,000 missing AK47s, was stripped of its licence by its national authorities a day before the first shipment.
The same airline was blasted by the UN in 2003 for smuggling arms to Liberia.

Air traffic controllers in Baghdad have no record of the flights, which supposedly took off between July 2004 and July 2005. A coalition forces spokesman confirmed they had not received "any weapons from Bosnia" and added they were "not aware of any purchases for Iraq from Bosnia".
Two other companies in the complicated sale claim to have papers proving the guns were delivered in Iraq but refuse to show them.

[The latest incident follows a separate probe claiming that thousands of guns meant for Iraq's police and army instead went to al-Qaeda. One arms broker's lawyer admitted nearly all of a shipment of AK-47s went missing. And a US official said £270million of equipment could not be traced. ]

Deeper and deeper: arming the perpetrators

Arms transportation services to Sudan are provided by air and sea generally through foreign companies, or joint arrangements with local companies.
For example, in 2004 a Moldavian registered cargo company, Aerocom, that carried shipments of arms from Serbia to Liberia in violation of the UN embargo in 2002, was carrying cargo to Sudan in 2004 and maintained a close business link to the Ukrainian national arms export company named on Sudanese arms import documents in August 2004.
In 2003 a Sudanese air cargo company leased a Kyrgyzstan-registered Antonov cargo plane from the latest in a long line of companies run by Victor Bout, a Russian arms broker named in several UN reports for violating UN arms embargoes.
The plane is reportedly based in Sharjah and run by British Gulf International Airlines of Kyrgyzstan formed in 2003 out of a Sao Tome-registered company of the same name, using the same office and staff.

OUR NOBLE LEADERS

Bush: My Best Moment as President Was Catching Largemouth Bass

President George W. Bush says his best moment as president was the time he caught a 7 1/2-pound largemouth bass.
During his more than five years in office, Bush has traveled the world's most impressive cities, met with world leaders and entertained celebrities.
But when the German newspaper Bild asked him to name his best and worst moments as president, Bush gave an offbeat answer about the best moment, while giving a more predictable response about his worst.

"The most awful moment was September the 11th, 2001," Bush said, adding that it took time to understand the depth of the terrorist attacks on the United States. "I would say the toughest moment of all was after the whole reality sunk in and I was trying to help the nation understand what was going on, and at the same time, be empathetic for those who had lost lives."

[Psychopathy has a new sound.]

SUPERMAX MOUSSAOUI

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it

Many defense attorneys for inmates convicted on terrorism charges say their clients are often subject to special administrative measures, or SAMs, ordered by the attorney general.
Bernard V. Kleinman, a New York lawyer is the only person allowed to visit his client.

He said his client often spends days at a time without leaving his cell, declining an hour of solitary exercise time because of body-cavity searches performed before and after each session.

"Anybody who thinks the death penalty was more punishment than this doesn't know what it's like to live completely alone for the rest of your life."

[Bernard V. Kleinman, lawyer, regarding Zacharias Moussaoui's Supermax destination.]

MARCHING ORDERS

Take it to the street

In 1965, Federal District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. weighed the right of mobility against the right to march and ruled in favor of those marching from Selma to Montgomery. Judge Johnson ruled:

"The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups...and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways."

CANNON FODDER

An Army of one wrong recruit

Jared is autistic.

He didn't know there was a war raging in Iraq until his parents told him last fall -- shortly after a military recruiter stopped him outside a Southeast Portland strip mall and complimented him on his black Converse All Stars.
"When Jared first started talking about joining the Army, I thought, 'Well, that isn't going to happen,' " said Paul Guinther, Jared's father. "I told my wife not to worry about it. They're not going to take anybody in the service who's autistic."
But they did. Last month, Jared came home with papers showing that he not only had enlisted, but also had signed up for the Army's most dangerous job: cavalry scout. He is scheduled to leave for basic training Aug. 16.

[Jared's story illustrates a growing national problem as the military faces increasing pressure to hit recruiting targets during an unpopular war.]

THE GREAT UNWELL

Scottish autism cases soar

A MASSIVE surge in the number of autistic schoolchildren in Scotland has been exposed after figures showed an increase of more than 600 per cent in secondary pupils with the condition in the past six years.
Official statistics show 825 pupils were diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder in state secondaries in 2005, compared with 114 in 1999 - an increase of 623 per cent. Over the same period, the number of autistic youngsters in primary schools more than quadrupled, from 415 to 1,736.

FIRST CASUALTY

CIA veteran probes Rumsfeld

To prepare for my presentations, I took along a briefcase full of notes and clippings, one of which was a New York Times article datelined Atlanta, Sept. 27, 2002, quoting Rumsfeld's assertion that there was "bulletproof" evidence of ties between al-Qaida and the government of Saddam Hussein.

This was the kind of unfounded allegation that, at the time, deceived 69 percent of Americans into believing that the Iraqi leader played a role in the tragedy of 9/11. Rumsfeld's "bulletproof" rhetoric also came in the wake of an intensive but quixotic search by my former colleagues at the CIA for any reliable evidence of such ties.

A fresh reminder of the Bush administration's Iraq deceptions surfaced Thursday morning, when the Spanish newspaper El Pais published an interview with Paul Pillar, the senior U.S. intelligence specialist on the Middle East and terrorism until he retired late last year. Pillar branded administration attempts to prove a link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein "an organized campaign of manipulation... I suppose by some definitions that could be called a lie."

Excerpt of transcript of Rumsfeld answering McGovern's questions.
...
RUMSFELD: Zar..., Zarqawi was in Baghdad during the prewar period. That is a fact.
McGovern: Zarqawi? He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That's where he was.
RUMSFELD: He was also… (crosstalk) He was also in Baghdad.
McGovern: Yes, when he needed to go to the hospital. Come on, these people aren’t idiots. They know the story.
...

Full transcript here. Note "non secretor" should be "non sequitur".

[Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour. A 27-year veteran of CIA's analyst ranks, he now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.]

WIRED WORLD

Electronic pollution is choking us

The curse of the mobile phone age: around your home there are countless gadgets whose electrical fields, scientists now warn, are linked to depression, miscarriage and cancer
Invisible "smog", created by the electricity that powers our civilisation, is giving children cancer, causing miscarriages and suicides and making some people allergic to modern life, new scientific evidence reveals.
The evidence - which is being taken seriously by national and international bodies and authorities - suggests that almost everyone is being exposed to a new form of pollution with countless sources in daily use in every home.

POWER AND PASSION

Russian grandpa makes it as porn star at 75

A 75-year-old grandad has become a porn star in Russia after wandering into a porn movie audition by mistake, Ananova said Wednesday.
Director Alexander Plahov said: “We were auditioning for a new film and had a number of couples simulating sex on stage when I saw this old guy standing at the back. I wandered over to ask him to leave, but then I saw this massive package straining against his trousers. I thought, “This could be an original idea”. And I was so right -- all the movies we’ve made with David have been huge successes.”
The pensioner’s biggest hits have been The Old Neighbor and The Handyman at Work. But Plahov added: “His female co-stars always complain because David believes in the beneficial power of garlic and insists on rubbing it on his erection before a scene, so it’s rather smelly.”

VAMPIRES LIVE

Chupacabra ('Goatsucker') seen in Central Russia

Reports of a beast that kills animals and sucks on their blood came from a village in Central Russia, when a farm had 32 turkeys killed overnight. The beast left the corpses bloodless, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily said.
Then reports came from neighboring villages, where more than 30 sheep and goats fell victim to the vampire. Again, the blood had been drained from corpses but the flesh remained intact. All the slaughtered animals had similar puncture wounds on their necks, different from the marks that wolves, dogs or lynx leave on their victims.

Finally, eyewitness descriptions match the traditional description of the Chupacabra, said to resemble a kangaroo and a dog with huge teeth.
“I heard the sheep bleating loudly, and when I approached the barn I saw a black shadow, like a big dog standing on its hind legs. It leaped like a kangaroo — when it spotted me it ran away,” says Yerbulat Isbasov, 18, who guards sheep in the village of Gavrilovka.
Yerbulat saw the beast again in a few days’ time, and described it as a 1.2 metre high animal with a hump on its back.

[Another witness Alfia Makasheva reported seeing a whole pack in her yard: “One was a huge reddish thing, another was dark grey, and they were being followed by a pack of pups. In the middle of the yard the red one turned its head and got up on the hind legs, as if it was thinking.”]

LAUGH IT UP

President Bush Discusses Global War on Terror

Q Thank you, Mr. President. It's an honor to have you here. I'm a first-year student in South Asia studies. My question is in regards to private military contractors. Uniform Code of Military Justice does not apply to these contractors in Iraq. I asked your Secretary of Defense a couple months ago what law governs their actions.

THE PRESIDENT: I was going to ask him. Go ahead. (Laughter.) Help. (Laughter.)

Q I was hoping your answer might be a little more specific. (Laughter.) Mr. Rumsfeld answered that Iraq has its own domestic laws which he assumed applied to those private military contractors. However, Iraq is clearly not currently capable of enforcing its laws, much less against -- over our American military contractors. I would submit to you that in this case, this is one case that privatization is not a solution. And, Mr. President, how do you propose to bring private military contractors under a system of law?

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate that very much. I wasn't kidding -- (laughter.) I was going to -- I pick up the phone and say, Mr. Secretary, I've got an interesting question. (Laughter.) This is what delegation -- I don't mean to be dodging the question, although it's kind of convenient in this case, but never -- (laughter.) I really will -- I'm going to call the Secretary and say you brought up a very valid question, and what are we doing about it? That's how I work. I'm -- thanks. (Laughter.)

FIRST CASUALTY

Truth is the first casualty of war

Australian prime minister John Howard has rejected claims by Private Jake Kovco's mother that the army and the government had covered up over the circumstances surrounding his death.
"I can give her an assurance that there will be no cover up," Mr Howard said.
The government initially said Pte Kovco died when his gun discharged as he was cleaning it.
It has since said the soldier was not cleaning the weapon when it accidentally discharged, but the details of exactly what happened remain unclear.

LIVING DEAD

OUR NOBLE LEADERS

Donald Rumsfeld, left, and President George W. Bush

Bush's wisdom: 'God told me to say dumb stuff"

"I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the Secretary of Defense."
George W. Bush, Washington, D.C. April 18, 2006 (Watch video clip.) +more

The analogy between Iraq and Vietnam has proved to be most compelling to the generals who planned and conducted the invasion of Iraq. They kept to themselves their profound disquiet about the rapid rejection of the original plan for invasion that had taken 10 years to develop, the inadequate downsized force, the absence of preparation for the occupation, and the disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi military.

[Clinging to Rumsfeld as generals lead an unprecedented revolt, Bush reveals his weakness and his disdain for the lessons of history.]

HE'S ALL STYLE

George W Bush was unwilling to let Hu bow out gracefully and insisted on more photos - dragging him unceremoniously back onto the dias by the sleeve of his jacket.

Chinese President Hu Jintao visited the US this month and was treated to a new kind of hospitality.
The Chinese National Anthem was announced as that of "the Republic of China", another name for Taiwan, the island that rebelled and seceded from mainland China and has since sought US aid in keeping Hu Jintao from grabbing it back.

... but why does the Pope support Bush?

German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican theologian who was elected Pope Benedict XVI, intervened in the 2004 US election campaign ordering bishops to deny communion to abortion rights supporters including presidential candidate John Kerry.

SWINGING THE LEAD

Order from chaos

The “pendulums” in a scientific simulation were loosely connected to each other, as oscillators also are in many natural situations.
A textbook example of such “coupled” oscillators is pendulums with springs linking their ends together.
The scientists found that the pendulums, when pushed by forces according to a regular rhythm, behaved chaotically and swung out of sync.
Yet when the researchers introduced disorder -- applying forces at random intervals to each oscillator -- they began to swing in synch. The “forces” were applied along the rods of the “pendulums” to make them swing. 
“When you introduce disorder … the chaos that was present before disappears and there is order,” said Sebastian F. Brandt, a physics graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis and lead author of the study. The findings appeared in the January issue of the research journal Physical Review Letters. 

[Other common cases are violin strings, which are connected by their sounding boards, and electrical filters used in communications.]

TINFOIL HAT

Babs ... nutter

Clothing for the paranoid

TINFOIL hats may protect the brain from dangerous radio frequencies and mind-control rays. Or they may not, according to a group of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who tested three standard designs with equipment costing $250,000.
They found the foil actually amplified some radio signals - especially those on frequencies used by the US government - by a factor of up to 100. In summing up, they say:
"It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC [Federal Communications Commission].
"We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings."

[Of course the real problem with the classic tinfoil hat is that wearing one makes you look like a nut.]

OUR COSMOS

Another fundamental constant accused of changing


Cosmologists claim to have found evidence that yet another fundamental constant of nature, called mu, may have changed over the last 12 billion years. If confirmed, the result could force some physicists to radically rethink their theories. It would also provide support for string theory, which predicts extra spatial dimensions.

This is not the first time fundamental constants have been accused of changing over the lifetime of the universe. Most famously, there was controversy over the fine structure constant, alpha (?), which governs how light and electrons interact. Some physicists claimed it is changing while others said it was not (see Speed of light may have changed recently).

OUR NOBLE LEADERS

Cheney Gets Booed, Sheen Gets Applauded:
But the media reports it the opposite way around

Cheney threw the first pitch at a Washington Nationals baseball game.
Cheney was clearly booed by at least 80% of the attending fans at the RFK Memorial Stadium, yet the media reported a mixed reaction and the Washington Post went as far as to outright lie and claim the boos were a result of the bad pitch that bounced before the Nationals' Brian Schneider caught it, when in reality the cat-calls began as soon as Cheney's name was announced. The boos raged even though Cheney was accompanied by three injured US servicemen who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.


[Watch the video]

SEX EN LAÏCITÉ

Separation of Church and State

Laïcité is a prevailing conception of the separation of church and state and the absence of religious interference into government affairs (and vice versa). It implies free exercise of religion, but no special status for religion: religious activities should submit to the same set of laws as other activities and are not considered above the law. The government refrains from taking positions on religious doctrine and only considers religious subjects from their practical consequences on the inhabitants' lives.

The Réseau Voltaire (Voltaire Network) is an international non-profit organisation, based in Paris with offices in London and Lima, which states it aims at promoting liberty and laïcité (separation of church and state).

[The Voltaire Network was founded in the context of a campaign in favour of freedom of speech, which the founders thought was put into jeopardy by new laws enshrined in the French penal code.
After the campaign the association lived on, specialising in the study of far-right movements and religions.
It was vocal notably in preventing the French government from funding the religious part of the Pope's visit to France, and in initiating an investigation of the French Parliament regarding the French far-right militia group DPS. Since 1999, the Réseau Voltaire has dealt with international issues, notably by publishing daily news about the bombings of Serbia by NATO.]

GLOBAL WARMING

WAR MONGERELS

The really real "long war"


Savvy players in the military-industrial racket know that the "War on Terror" is just short-end money: fat and sweet, sure, but it doesn't really have legs.
"Islamofacism" is too empty a concept to sustain the kind of decades-long looting of the public treasury that the dear old Cold War used to provide – the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world just aren't interested in dressing up in Nazi drag and playing their assigned roles in the Pentagon-Neocon-Theocon war game.
I mean, Jesus Herbert Walker Christ, you can even walk your army right into the heartland of Islam and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and they still won't take the bait. Not a single Muslim nation has gone jihad over Iraq; they haven't all turned into a nice, big monolithic evil empire set on the utter destruction of America.
It's like they're all just ordinary people or something, good, bad and indifferent, largely occupied with their own concerns – personal, economic, social, religious, national.

BODY OF EVIDENCE

China selling prisoners' organs: report

A group of top British surgeons has accused China of unethically harvesting the bodies of executed convicts for transplant organs that are then sold to the highest bidder, according to a media report.
British Transplantation Society chairman Stephen Wigmore says there is growing evidence that convicts were being selected for execution to suit the needs of paying organ recipients, a report on the BBC website says.
Dr Wigmore is also reported as saying that thousands of organs are being collected without donors' prior consent.

[A huge lucrative black market for human organs has emerged in China as a result of a chronic shortage of donors.]

EASTER NEOCONS

Ancient text claims Judas was no traitor ...

An ancient manuscript dating from the third or fourth century, containing the only known surviving copy of the Gospel of Judas, has been conserved, authenticated and translated after being lost for nearly 1,700 years, scientists say.
In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus selects Judas from among the other disciples for a special task: “... you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” Jesus would thus have been asking Judas to help him get rid of his physical flesh, to free the spiritual being within.

[Scholars said the 66-page manuscript contains not only the Gospel of Judas but also a text titled James, also known as First Apocalypse of James, a Letter of Peter to Philip, and a fragment of a fourth text provisionally called the Book of Allogenes.]

... and Satan isn't such a bad guy, either

According to Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly's "Satan: A Biography", the Evil One feared by Christians is just an invention of the Roman church.
Satan is the same sort of celestial functionary we see in the Book of Job - appointed to govern the world, specifically to monitor and test human beings. A bit like an Attorney General.
And like some Attorneys General he is brutal and deceitful in his methods, and Jesus predicts that his rule will soon come to an end.
"Lucifer" -- Latin for "light bringer," or Venus the morning star -- is the result of a sloppy 4th Century Latin translation of a story about an Iraqi king. The whole tale of Lucifer being a beloved angel of God who does something bad and "falls" to Earth was entirely invented centuries later, supposedly from a verse in Isaiah about a plain old king being taunted by exiled Jews.

[IN OTHER NEWS: A new study suggests Jesus was strolling on a patch of floating ice, not walking on water.Yeah, right. That is even less believeable than the original story.]