MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

"Where the bee can live, man too can live" - Juliette de Bairacli-Levy

Howard's science award lauds military applications of the bee

The Prime Minister's Science Prizes, awarded in Parliament House in Canberra, went to Professor Srinivasan of the Australian National University for studying the brilliance of bees and even how their brains may be adapted to fly combat aircraft.

Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan: "What I could tell you about is something that really excites me for some of my future work. I'm getting more and more interested in trying to learn how sophisticated these small nervous systems are in terms of being able to feel emotions and feel pain."

WAR IS HELL

Israel confirms phosphorus munitions used in Lebanon

Israel has confirmed for the first time that it used controversial white phosphorus shells against military targets in southern Lebanon, an Israeli newspaper has reported.
White phosphorus munitions cause severe burns and agonising deaths.
The chemical seeps into the bloodstream and causes respiratory problems and other ailments in victims, which has lead many to demand it be classified as a chemical weapon.
The Haaretz daily has reported that Israeli Government-Parliamentary Relations Minister Yakov Edery told law makers last week that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have used phosphorus munitions.
"The IDF made use of phosphorus shells during the war against Hezbollah in attacks against military targets in open ground," he told the newspaper.

[The International Red Cross and other human rights groups have long argued that phosphorus weapons should be banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
US leaders went on the defensive after reports surfaced last year that American troops in Iraq had used phosphorus in the battle for Fallujah in 2004.]


Melting the Skin Off of Children

In a documentary by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.

"Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for."

The Independent, US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah

EXPANDING SCIENCE

Occult claims clamor for serious study

A telepathy study, presented at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, involved 63 people asked to say in advance which of four friends or relatives was calling on the telephone.

The session featured research from Rupert Sheldrake, an independent biologist who is funded by Trinity College, Cambridge, that claims to have found evidence that some people know telepathically who is calling them before they answer the telephone. The answers were 45 percent correct, which, the researchers claimed, was above the 25 percent expected through chance. A host of angry British scientists said telepathy is "a charlatan's fancy".

"Either I or the scientist is a fool with our opposing views of probability,'' wrote William James, the famed American psychologist and philosopher 100 years ago regarding another famous experiment.

The risk of appearing foolish, he believed, was the least of the dangers. There also was the risk of failing to investigate the world in all its dimensions, or making it appear smaller and less interesting than it really is.
He worried about a time when people would become "indifferent to science because science is so callously indifferent to their experiences".

[He worried also that a close-minded community of science could become a kind of cult itself, devoted to its own beliefs and no more.]

Discussion between Rupert and a skeptical Prof Peter Atkins

Professor Peter Atkins, who is a chemist at Lincoln College Oxford: You can’t rely on any of these experiments. There is no serious work done in this field. The samples that people use are very tiny, the effects are statistically insignificant, the controls are not done in a scientific way. On the whole there’s just no point in doing it. There are no serious reasons for believing there should be an effect of telepathy anyway. There is no mechanism within modern science to account for it. There’s nothing that drives people to believe in it except sentiment, emotion, and things like that.
[Sheldrake is] just playing with statistics.
Interviewer: Let’s put that to Rupert. Rupert Sheldrake, he says you’re just playing with statistics. He doesn’t believe a word of it. What do you say to him?
Rupert Sheldrake: Well I’d like to ask him if he’s actually read the evidence? May I ask you Professor Atkins if you’ve actually studied any of this evidence or any other evidence?
Atkins: No, but I would be very suspicious of it.

HIPOCRITES RULE

Italian MPs Caught In TV Drugs Sting

Italy's privacy authority blocked the broadcasting of a television show exposing the widespread drug use of Italian politicians. The 'Lene' program carried out secret tests for illegal substances on 50 members of parliament.
Almost a third tested positive for cocaine and cannabis.
Although the identity of the parlamentarians was not revealed, the authority blocked the program saying it violated the privacy of the MPs who were unaware they were being tested.

A reporter interviewed lawmakers on a draft budget being debated in parliament.
Prior to the interview a make-up artist dabbed the faces of the interviewees and their perspiration was later tested for drug use. The drug wipe revealed drug consumption in purportedly in the 36 hours prior to the interview.

Italy has one of the toughest drug laws in Europe. Under new legislation, people found in possession of cannabis could risk having their passport and their driving licence suspended. Dealing in cocaine or cannabis is punished with jail sentences of between six and 20 years and a fine of up to 260,000 euros.

Yahoo News version

[The program was to air on Italia Uno, one of three national television channels owned by the family of the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi]

FLASHBACK

Chirac drumming up support to halt US-British rush to war

French President Jacques Chirac is lobbying other heads of state to join him at an emergency summit of United Nations Security Council members to search for a compromise on Iraq, according to a statement from his office at the weekend.
The presidential palace also reiterated France's objection to a US-British draft resolution giving Saddam Hussein a March 17 ultimatum to destroy illicit weapons or prove he has none.
"War is not a small thing," Mr Chirac's office said. "When you declare death or life, this merits being taken to the highest level of responsibility."

[SMH: March 10 2003]

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Anna Politkovskaya. Shot by an assassin in the lift of her apartment building.

Prominent Journalist, Kremlin Critic, Shot Dead In Moscow

Hundreds rallied in downtown Moscow on Sunday to protest the murder of crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
the apparent contract killing Saturday of Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of the war in Chechnya who had tirelessly uncovered abuses against civilians, became a major focus of the protest that drew about 500 demonstrators to Pushkin Square.

Russian Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, 48, had today been due to publish an article on torture and kidnappings by pro-Moscow forces in the restless southern republic of Chechnya, her colleagues said. About a dozen other Russian reporters have been killed in Russia since Putin came to power.

Politkovskaya was poisoned on a flight to Belsan during the hostage seige which ended in the deaths of hundreds, mostly children. She was intent on arranging negotiations to defuse the situation.

Belsan questions

Was the hostage-taking preventable? How many guerrillas were there, and did any of them manage to escape? Why did the bombs in the gym explode, and why did the roof catch fire? The tank parked outside the school: how many times did it fire, and at what targets? Exactly why did the hostages die? Were there any plans to storm the school, and was there any possibility of reaching agreement with the terrorists on a "peaceful" withdrawal?
Other publications add further questions to this list. What were senior state officials doing during those three dark days? Why were orders from the Interior Ministries of North Ossetia ignored? They had prior information about the guerrillas planning an operation. How did a number of armed terrorists manage to enter Beslan at all?
That last question, as the Kommersant newspaper reports, is answered by Shamil Basayev in a statement posted on his Kavkazcenter.com website shortly before the first anniversary of the tragedy. He claims that his people were "encouraged" to seize the school by "the special services of North Ossetia".

ANIMAL FARM

BBC crew gathers evidence of organ harvesting in China

An undercover BBC crew appears to have found direct evidence of organ harvesting from executed prisoners, which is thriving on a growing demand from desperately ill foreigners.
BBC learnt that the going price for a liver transplant is now $125,000 and that according to the doctors, the donors are recently executed prisoners.

TRANSCRIPT:
I've told the hospital I'm looking for a new liver for my ailing father. The chief surgeon, Dr Dung, tells me he can get a matching liver in less than three weeks. Then I broach the awkward issue of where the liver will come from.
We have heard that many of the organs come from executed prisoners.
DR DUNG: Yes, it's true.
RUPERT WINGFIELD-HAYES: Another man arrives. This is the hospital's agent for dealing with foreign clients. He's eager to do business and produces documents for making a payment of £50,000 to a bank account in Hong Kong. He's also far less discrete.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To put it bluntly, it's true. We use a lot of organs from executed prisoners. The prisoners on death row have done many bad things. Before they die they give their organs as a present to society. It's a good thing.
RUPERT WINGFIELD-HAYES: Then an astonishing admission; that an increase in executions ahead of the 1 October national holiday means there is a sudden abundance of organs.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 1 October is China's National Day.

Mass arrest of Falun Gong practitioners on National Day

At first all appeared quiet. But then suddenly, at about 0830, throngs of Falun Gong protestors emerged amid the crowds, holding up large banners and shouting "Falun Gong is good".
Hundreds of police swarmed onto the square to try and suppress the protests but their efforts were hampered by the vast numbers of ordinary tourists, who gawped in amazement as the protestors were tackled.
Ranks of uniformed police began to clear the square completely as the Falun Gong protestors were gradually rounded up, herded onto buses and driven away.
The number of protestors is estimated to run into the hundreds.

Sale of executed Falun Gong prisoner organs in China 'shocking'
Falun Gong supporters say thousands of members have been jailed and hundreds killed.
How they were killed -- and for what purpose -- were troubling questions raised during a Congressional subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC.
The subject was a report from human rights activists who say the Chinese government is supporting the sale of organs from Falun Gong prisoners who have been executed.

Download PDF  Report into Allegations of
Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China
by David Kilgour, former Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific) for Canada, and David Matas, international human rights lawyer

UN Rapporteur Investigates CCP’s Live Organ Harvesting

The UN Human Rights Commission pays attention to the issue of the CCP killing and harvesting practitioners’ organs. Austria’s Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture will investigate the severe allegations.

MINI ME

Flores man ... a model of a skull from the newly found species of hobbit-sized humans that lived about 18,000 years ago in Indonesia.

Australian researchers back hobbit claims

Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) are backing claims that the discovery of the so-called hobbit in Indonesia does represent a new species of human.
In 2003, Australian scientists unearthed the remains of a hobbit-like species, with adults about the height of a three-year-old child, in a cave on a remote island in Indonesia.
In a new paper, ANU researchers reject claims that the skeleton of a hobbit-like species was simply a very short human with a rare brain disease.

["What is particularly interesting about it is it survived in isolation through those two-million-years or so in eastern Indonesia and its existence was quite unsuspected until very recently," ANU Professor Colin Groves said.]

MIND OVER MATTER

What makes us human?

Scientists figured out decades ago that chimps are our nearest evolutionary cousins, roughly 98 percent to 99 percent identical to humans at the genetic level. When it comes to DNA, a human is closer to a chimp than a mouse is to a rat.
Yet tiny differences, sprinkled throughout the genome, have made all the difference.
Agriculture, language, art, music, technology and philosophy -- all the achievements that make us profoundly different from chimpanzees -- are somehow encoded within minute fractions of our genetic code.

[Genetic engineering by aliens?]

BIG NUKE

Is Big Oil going nucular?

[]

'NUCULAR' DAZE

Scientists create more efficient nuclear power fuel

United States researchers have re-designed nuclear reactor fuel by changing the shape of the fuel from solid cylinders to hollow tubes, adding surface area that allowed water to flow inside and outside the pellets, increasing heat transfer.
They claim new fuel design is also much safer because it reaches an operating temperature of about 700C, much lower than 1800C for conventional fuel and further from the 2840C melting point for uranium fuel.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers believe they can make nuclear power plants 50 per cent more powerful and safer.

OILY ADDICTS

'Iraq for sale' documentary has KBR fuming

Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.

KBR's RESPONSE: "Halliburton supports an organization like Brave New Films’ right to free speech -- even when they have the facts wrong.
The claims alleged against KBR in this film represent yet another recycled rehash of inaccurate information.
Unlike a fictitious place such as Xanadu, the reality of Iraq, regardless of any political opinion or agenda, requires support and dedication that KBR is proud to continue providing to U.S. and coalition forces."
- Halliburton press release (14 Sept 2006)

HOWARD'S WAY

Australia's Prime Minister John Howard on the looming climate catastrophe

John Howard said he was “sceptical” about “gloomy” climate change predictions.

Prime Minister John Howard, a friend and ally of Bush, said he would not meet Al Gore during his Australian visit and would not heed his advice to sign up to Kyoto. "I don't take policy advice from films," Howard told reporters.

"Whilst believing that the planet is getting warmer and whilst accepting some, I don't accept all, and I believe that the methods that he [Gore] proposes will do a lot of short and medium term damage to the Australian economy."

AL GORE: “He is increasingly alone in that view among people who've really looked at the science. The so-called "gloomy predictions" are predictions of what would happen if we did not act. It's not a question of mood. It's a question of reality. And, you know, there's no longer debate over whether the earth is round or flat, though there are some few people who still think it's flat, we generally ignore that view because the evidence has mounted to the point where we understand that it shouldn't be taken seriously.”

In a talk given in February, Clive Hamiliton (director of Australia's most prominent progressive think tank, The Australia Institute) identifies John Howard as one of Australia's climate change "dirty dozen".

[Australia's Prime Minister John Howard said terrorism was a greater threat to Australia in the future than global warming.
"I think terrorism is a greater threat because I think we are doing things about global warming. We're doing things about terrorism, but terrorism is more arbitrary, it's far more capricious, and of course its immediate consequences on the people it touches are more hideous.]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Relatives of 14-Year Old Girl Azza Hammad Killed in an Israeli raid on Rafah yesterday.

Girl killed, seven hurt in IAF Gaza strike

Israel Air Force air strikes on a house in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah early Wednesday killed a 14-year-old girl and wounded seven other people, hospital officials said.
There were no major injuries in the initial strike, which leveled the house. However, as children gathered to look at the rubble, a second airstrike hit the house, killing a 14-year-old girl and wounded seven other children, hospital officials said.

[Flashback: Not guilty. The Israeli captain who put 17 bullets into a Palestinian schoolgirl. [November 16, 2005]]

EXOTIC ETHICS

AWB lawyer denies ignoring ethics

Senior AWB lawyer Jessica Lyons has told the oil-for-food inquiry she did not put her legal ethics aside to work out how to circumvent UN sanctions.

Ms Lyons received outside legal advice that a lump sum payment would breach UN sanctions. She told AWB executives they could pay over time as long as it was to a company outside Iraq, and they could also get a deal for more wheat sales.
Commissioner Terence Cole says the advice reads as, "We can't pay, here's a way of getting around sanctions on Iraq, and an argument that we're not paying Iraq".

[The Iraqi Grains Board wanted $US2.2 million as compensation for alleged wheat contamination.
The inquiry is investigation $290 million worth of kickbacks paid by AWB to the regime of Saddam Hussein.]

HOT TOPIC

Earth's temperature nears million-year high

Earth may be close to the warmest it has been in the last million years.
James Hansen, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, says this does not necessarily mean there will be more frequent El Ninos, which can disrupt normal weather around the world.
But he says it could well mean that these wild patterns will be stronger when they occur.
The El Nino phenomenon is an important factor in monitoring global warming, according to a paper by Mr Hansen and colleagues published in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[They blame this phenomenon on global warming that is affecting the surface of the western Pacific before it affects the deeper water. ]

AMIGO NO GO

Costello questions Trujillo's $9m salary

Treasurer Peter Costello is demanding the Telstra board explain why chief executive Sol Trujillo is being paid nearly $9 million.
Mr Trujillo has infuriated the Government by strongly opposing its appointment of the former government adviser, Geoff Cousins, to the Telstra board.

[Mr Costello is demanding that the board explain why Mr Trujillo is being paid $8.7 million this year when the company's share price is falling.]

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

US report says Iraq fuels terror

The New York Times newspaper has published what it says are the findings of a classified US intelligence paper on the effects of the Iraq war.
The document reportedly blames the three-year-old conflict for increasing the threat of terrorism and helping fuel Islamic radicalism worldwide.
This latest finding, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, is the most comprehensive report yet, based on the considered analysis of all 16 of the US intelligence agencies.

[According to the New York Times, the report says the invasion and occupation of Iraq has spawned a new generation of Islamic radicalism that has spread across the globe.]

But Bush says America is safer

"We are safer because we've taken action to protect the homeland. We are safer because we're on the offensive against our enemies overseas."

Homer: Ah, not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm!
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, honey.
Lisa: By your logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away!
Homer: Uh-huh, and how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around here, do you?
Homer: (Looks around) Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.

PAPAL BULL

Pope comment 'linked to crusade'

The Pope's statement has failed to defuse the anger of many Muslims.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said recent remarks by the Pope on Islam were in line with what he called a "crusade" against Muslims.

The background to the controversy, he said, was the "wish of powers whose survival depends on creating crises".

The furore over the Pope's remarks about Islam has left many Catholics inside and outside the Vatican shaking their heads in disbelief over concerns about the Pope's attitude towards the Church's relations with the Islamic world.

The previous Pope, John Paul II, wanted to reach out to other religions and in 2001, on a visit to Syria, he became the first pope to set foot in a mosque.
Benedict XVI undoubtedly wants to achieve better relations with Islam, but there is an important proviso.
It can be summed up in a single word: reciprocity. It means that if Muslims want to enjoy religious freedom in the West, then Christians should have an equal right to follow their faith in Islamic states, without fear of persecution.


[The row began last week, when Pope Benedict XVI repeated criticism of the Prophet Muhammad by a medieval scholar.]

WEATHER CHANGE

Paul Ehrlich

Old school conservative lashes out

“I’m very conservative on conservation issues. We shouldn't allow people to steal the term conservative who are actually radicals and want to destroy the world now for fun and profit. When they nominated George Bush, who was drunk for his entire time at Yale University, knows absolutely nothing, and was a terrible Governor of Texas, I could no longer stand being labeled a Republican."

Ex-Republican, Stanford Professor of Biology Paul Ehrlich.

[Download MP3 of this edition.]

ROCKET GIRL

US entrepreneur and space tourist Anousheh Ansari.

Space tourist breaks three records

A RUSSIAN Soyuz spacecraft blasted off yesterday carrying a woman set to notch up three space records: the first woman tourist, first Muslim woman, and first Iranian in orbit.
Anousheh Ansari, 40, an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur, joined a Russian cosmonaut and US astronaut in the cramped interior of Soyuz TMA-9 for a flight to the International Space Station.

Ms Ansari, a US citizen based in Texas who left Iran in 1984, said she wanted to be an example to her compatriots. "I think my flight has become a sort of ray of hope for young Iranians living in Iran, helping them to look forward to something positive, because everything they've been hearing is all so very depressing and talks of war and bloodshed," she said last week.

[Ms Ansari has not said how much her ticket cost but previous space tourists have paid the Russian space program about $US20 million ($A26.5 million).]

PONTIFICATION

"Ratz."

Pope sorry for offending Muslims

In a speech at Regensburg University, German-born Pope Benedict XVI quoted an Emperor of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire regarding:

"part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both."

[The Emperor] "addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The speech incensed Muslims across the world, resulting in the Pontif's belated apology and putting an imminent visit to Turkey into question.


[Read the Pope's entire speech [37KB PDF]]

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

IAEA blasts U.S. intelligence report on Iran

The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has written a scathing letter to a U.S. congressional committee saying part of its case against Iran is "outrageous and dishonest".
The report came a day before an Iranian opposition figure accused Iran of using lasers to enrich uranium in its bid to develop a nuclear weapon.
The International Atomic Energy Agency wrote the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, lambasting it for claiming that the Islamic republic "is currently enriching uranium to weapons grade".

[The subcommittee's report also insinuates that the IAEA may be in cahoots with Tehran in covering up Iran's nuclear ambitions. The IAEA shot back that the claim was "an outrageous and dishonest suggestion".]

STONE THE CROWS

CWA votes to push for marijuana trials

THE normally conservative Country Women's Association will lobby governments to begin trials in the medicinal use of marijuana.
In a decision that may send ripples of concern through conservative parties, the CWA national executive voted in Darwin to lobby for cannabis to be tested as a treatment for chronic pain.
Incoming CWA president Leslie Young, a member of the Tasmanian branch from where the motion is understood to have originated, said "cannabis is another option for people who are terminally and chronically ill.
"We'd just like them to do the trials and find out."
Ms Young, a trained nurse who runs a vegetable and livestock farm with her husband and 28-year-old son at East Sassafras near Devonport.

[Queensland Nationals president Bruce McIvor said his party was against the use of marijuana in any form for any purpose.]

LAW OF WAR

Bush aims to kill War Crimes Act

The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions.
The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act.

Observers say the Administration plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed Republican majority -- perhaps as part of the military appropriations bill, the proposals for Guantánamo tribunals or a new catch-all "anti-terrorism" package.

[The War Crimes Act was little noticed until the disclosure of Alberto Gonzales's infamous 2002 "torture memo." Gonzales, then serving as presidential counsel, advised President Bush to declare that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people the US captured in Afghanistan. That, Gonzales wrote, "substantially reduced the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."]

VOICE OF REASON

France rejects "war on terror"

France issued an implicit criticism of U.S. foreign policy on Thursday, rejecting talk of a "war on terror."

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, speaking in parliament, expressed these views on global terrorism and noted Chirac's strong opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
He said the Arab state had now sunk into violence and was feeding new regional crises.

"Let us not forget that these crises play into the hands of all extremists," the prime minister said in a debate on the Middle East. "We can see this with terrorism, whether it tries to strike inside or outside our frontiers," he added.
"Against terrorism, what's needed is not a war. It is, as France has done for many years, a determined fight based on vigilance at all times and effective cooperation with our partners.

[Villepin's speech in parliament made much of France's leading role in securing a peace agreement in Lebanon backed by the United Nations, which he said had shown the virtues of "listening and dialogue."]

ENLIGHTENMENT

Chop wood, carry water

[The lotus flower is a symbol for enlightenment. Its roots are sunken in silt and debris, yet it grows out of that debris through the water and emerges into the bright sunlight as a beautiful, perfect, fragrant flower. It does not grow out of a pure, rarefied atmosphere, but from decayed matter, from the very stuff of our lives.]

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

BIG BROTHER

The net closes

The exposure of a massive database of Google customers' search queries, some of them excruciatingly personal, highlights the internet’s power to infiltrate our privacy.

In March this year, a man with a passion for Portuguese football, living in a city in Florida, was drinking heavily because his wife was having an affair. He typed his troubles into the search window of his computer. "My wife doesnt love animore," he told the machine. He searched for "Stop your divorce" and "I want revenge to my wife" before turning to self-examination with "alchool withdrawl", "alchool withdrawl sintoms" (at 10 in the morning) and "disfunctional erection". On April 1 he was looking for a local medium who could "predict my futur".

But what could a psychic guess about him compared with what the world now knows?

[This story is one of hundreds, perhaps tens of thousands, revealed recently when AOL published the details of 23 million searches made by 650,000 of its customers during a three-month period earlier this year. The searches were actually carried out by Google - from which AOL buys in its search functions.]

DARFUR CONFLICT

Photo by BBC News cameraman Glenn Middleton in Darfur.

A peace deal signed in Nigeria offered hope that a three-year conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region, in which at least 200,000 people have died, could be drawing to a close.
But the violence is continuing.
Attacks by the pro-government Janjaweed militia have caused 2m people to flee their homes since the conflict began. Displaced people continue to arrive in camps, like this one at Gereida.

On the brink of new conflict

For days now the United Nations has nervously monitored the planeloads of Sudanese troops arriving in North Darfur.
Now the purpose of the build-up has become clear: the African Union is being asked to leave, and the days of international peacekeeping are to end. Khartoum is to settle the three-year-old rebellion on military terms.
There now seems no way that a United Nations force can be deployed in Darfur, since the idea of peacekeepers fighting their way into this vast, remote region is hardly plausible.

That will leave the huge camps housing two million displaced people extremely exposed.

EXCELLENT NO MORE

Image provided by the Canda-France-Hawaii Telescope Corp shows the impact of Europe's first spacecraft to the moon.

Europe's spacecraft hits the moon

Europe's first spacecraft to the moon ended its three-year mission Sunday by crashing into the lunar surface in a volcanic plane called the Lake of Excellence, to a round of applause in the mission control room in Germany.

[Mission officials said they had to raise the low point of the spacecraft's orbit by 600 meters by using its positioning thrusters to avoid the 1.5 kilometer-high rim of a lunar crater. Had the orbit not been raised the craft would have crashed one orbit too soon, making the impact difficult or impossible to observe.]

GRAVESTONE MILESTONE

A funeral is held August 25 for U.S. Marine Capt. John McKenna, one of more than 2,600 U.S. service members killed in Iraq.

U.S. deaths in Iraq, war on terror surpass 9/11 toll

The announcement of four more U.S. military deaths in Iraq raises the death toll to 2,974 for U.S. military service members in Iraq and in what the Bush administration calls the war on terror.
The 9/11 attack killed 2,973 people, including Americans and foreign nationals but excluding the terrorists. The 9/11 death toll was calculated by CNN.

["It's now almost five years since September 11, 2001. And the number of young men and women in our armed forces who have sacrificed their lives that we might live in freedom is approaching the number of Americans who were murdered on 9/11 in New York, in Washington, D.C., and in Pennsylvania."
- General Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.]

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.

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.]