A little suspicious death of the elder son of the
late head quisling of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov.
After all, Ramzan Kadyrov can´t be the next head
quisling of Chechnya if he isn´t the leader of his
own family.

Hopefully Ramzan joins his father and brother soon
in the same graveyard.

The world tallest bridge, the Millau bridge, is
nearing completion. It looks beautiful.

More at the architects pages.
Which, at least in Flash, are quite stylish.

Almost 40,000 died in Finnish civil war.

Pretty good summary. Some mistakes, but nothing major.
The Whites claimed after the Civil War that 16 000
people have died; a study by the Lutheran Church soon
after the war found 24 000 dead. New studies in 1960s,
when the war became studied by neutral historians,
brought the number to over 30 000.

The funny thing is that the Whites claimed the Reds
to be barbarious monsters, who murdered and pillaged;
when in fact it was they who did most of the butchering.
But as the saying goes, the Whites won the war, but
the Reds won the peace. All the plans that the Whites
for the future of Finland crumbled sooner or later.

Cassini approaches Saturn, makes a vital engine burn
(more) and takes a great picture of the rings.

I have found Alan Derschowitz´s claims for the use of
torture to be at best, naive, and worst, simply appalling.
He continues in the same vein in this column,
wanting now to rip the Geneva conventions. The reason
being that as torture and murder committed by American
soldiers and agents can´t be wrong, it must be the
international laws that are wrong! They must be torn
so that Americans can torture and kill with good
conscience, and because that the US shouldn´t have
to in the future suffer humiliation because these
kinds of actions. Stopping committing atrocities
is not a possibility to Derschowitz, who seems to
be a living embodiment of "my country, right or wrong"
style of thinking.

The reasons he gives for destroying the Geneva
and Haag conventuons show his lack of knowledge of
the basic history of the world during the last century,
because they are nothing new. States and inviduals who
have broken the Geneva and Haag treaties have been saying
the same things since the time of their signing.
According to people like Derschowitz´s, it´s
not the criminal that´s guilty, but the law he´s
broken. Not a very uncommon claim in any court room.

American simplicity at it´s worst. "We must have the
right to do whatever we think is necessary to guarantee
our victory, because we are the good guys!" But no side
in any conflict has ever thought of themselves as the
bad guys. All have always been fighting for good and
noble reasons, and every atrocity has always had it´s
supporters.

Closing your eyes from reality, the National Review style.

The problem with this New Republic column is
that the basic assumption that The United
States wants to change the way it´s currently
viewed in the Middle East and the whole world.
After all, the United States current government
consists of people who publicly claim that the
way to achieve the United States goals is bullying
and use of force. Iraq war may have make things
hard for some of them, but it´s pretty certain
that the American blindness for the limits of
military force as a way to achieve geopolitical
goals will continue.

Secondly, if the occupation of Iraq would have
gone smoothly, the United States would have
likely invaded Syria, the weaker of the two.
And if George Walker Bush gets a second term in
the White House, it could still do so.

Thirdly, the believe that United States could or
would want to act neutrally in Palestine is a bogus
one. The United States current, previous or future
governments have never been nor will ever be ready
to force Israel to accept a peace deal the Palestinians
could accept, which would mean the pre-1967 borders,
even if the basic demographic facts show that this
is necessary; in reality, much larger state would
be needed to feed rising population, even if the
refugees living abroad could stay in the countries
they are now. Nor does the US governments want this.
What they are doing is bying time for Israel so that
it can steal more land and more natural resources.

So the basic problem is the assumption that the US
government wants the US to be seen as a nice guy,
when all it wants is to be seen as the biggest bully
in the school yard. Democrats may want the United
States to wear silk gloves, but their view of USA´s
position in the worldis pretty much the same.

I think that Niall Ferguson is a really sad
little man. He imagines a British Empire that
never was and wants the US to be the "Second
Anglo-Saxon Empire", which will do only good,
because they are good, and even if something
nasty happens, it isn´t bad, because somebody
else would do even nastier things if these
Anglo-Saxon Rulers of the World wouldn´t.

British Empire was far from a benign and progressive
force in the world. All empires are. I am reminded
of the praise the Pax Mongolica always gets; people
forget that before it the Mongols orchestrated several
genocides and killed a significant part of the
population of Asia. Before anything positive emerges
from empires, dark deeds are done. And even during
the heighday of the empire, dark deeds are done to
keep the Empire from collapsing.

Roman Empire gets always good publicity, even when
it really was an oppresive and authoritarian system,
which always had millions of slaves and whose rulers
were never shy of a massacre or a genocide.

The world doesn´t need empires, it needs countries
which co-operate and solve their problems together.
Empires are always waging a war somewhere.

Why do the Americans support Israel?

Cowboys and Indians. When asked, the average
American describes Israeli settlements so that
one can be quite sure that a)he/she hasn´t never
seen an Israeli settlement and b)that he/she has
watched lot of Westerns.

And of course, the American love of the Bible(which
to them means usually Old Testament & Book of
Revelations) mated with their love of serial killers,
the modern American national heroes. So in Palestine
we have Biblical serial killers with a tragic past; a
mix that the Americans can´t resist.

Plus their fantasies of the Second Coming of the Christ
in their own life time, which Israel´s existence to
them proclaims.

If Albert Gore would have been this passionate
when running for president, he would be in the
White House now.

Sadly John Kerry is repeating Gore´s mistakes.
He´s been said to present himself as "Bush lite",
and that´s largely true. Frankly, he´s too scared
to take risks; he doesn´t want to alienate anybody,
so he´s unable to take advantage of the weakness
of George Walker Bush.

Likely we see two competent men lose in consecutive
elections to a mentally handicapped man, because
they try to ape him.

Israel lays claim to Palestine's water.

One of the reasons of the conflict, which is almost
always forgotten - intentionally or not - is water.
About 33% of West Bank´s wells on the side of the wall
the colonialist are building, and maybe 50% of the
aquifers. Also Israel wants to control the Jordan river
and plans to build a wall that would separate bantustans
from it. Water - or more precisely the lack of it - plays
also a part in the plans for ethnic cleansing that the
Israelis, according to the polls, majority of them,
seem to support (because of the terrible Palestinian
terrorist of course. Blantly speaking, it´s ridiculous
for Israelis to whine about the 950 dead Israelis when
they themselves have killed tens of thousand of people
during the last couple of decades).

More stuff about Chalabi.

Of course, the rumours about Chalabi being an Iranian
spy could be just part of the civil war waged between
different branches of the government in Washington,
part of the final assault by the State Department&CIA
&FBI against the neocons&Pentagon.

Still, it´s a delicious claim. Instead of making "The
Middle East safe to Israel", as Richard Perle and others
have been shouting to be the goal of the current war,
the USA could have quite well have been making the Middle
East safe to Iran.

The are few things more enjoyable on this planet than
seeing Americans humiliated. And now they are constantly
doing it by themselves.

US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war.

Euphoria led to the Holocaust.

Another heroic victory for Israel. More.

The simple fact behind Israeli atrocities is, that
those behind them, in the typical colonial fashion,
don´t give any value for the lives of the people they
oppress. And oppressors try to find every way to make
their lives even harsher, and then they go and do this
kind of things. Just because they can, and because the
people their oppress can´t stop them.

Israeli soldiers who have been destroying Rafah probably
don´t understand their guilt when next suicide bomber
blows himself or herself and takes somes Israelis with
her/him. These kind of people rarely do.

Some articles claim that the Israeli army and inviduals
want revenge for the 13 soldiers that have died in
Rafah. And so their commit these terrible things.

But armies and invidual soldiers have no right of
revenge. If a soldier dies in action by enemy fire,
as cruel as it sounds, it´s normal. You can´t go
and revenge it. In military action, soldiers die.
If you don´t want casualties, then withdraw. Bu if
you don´t withdraw, if you yourself attack, then you
don´t have any right to whine about your own casualties
and call for revenge.

I wonder what the soldiers feel when they one day take
their own kids to a zoo? Do they remember? Do they feel
any guilt?

Probably not. Humans are very good when it comes to
evading guilt. We can convince ourselves that pretty
much everything is ok, as long as the reason behind
them is a noble one etc.

The United States is running a world wide PR campaign
for Osama bin Laden with it´s actions in the Middle
East; a campaign that reaches pretty much all of those
people that can follow mass media. And it´s free!

Surveying the ruins of Rafah.

The conflict in Palestine is an old time colonial
war between foreign settlers and the indigenous
people. The endless shouting about suicide bombers
and innocent Israeli civilian casualties is pretty
odd. As regrettable as the civilian casualties in
Israeli side are, they are in all reality small
compared to pretty much any war of independence
from colonial rule after the Second World War.
It seems that large number of people are totally
unaware which kind of conflicts these were - and
the undeniable fact of all wars: Almost all people who
die in any war are usually good and decent, normal
people. Not monsters, who deserve their fate.

It gets problematic in Palestine because the
oppressors are people that the West now considers
as eternal victims par excellence, the Jews.
After centuries of vile portrayal, they were
raised to a pedestal after the Holocaust.
And then it was forgotten that they are normal
human beings. With all the vices and virtues
of humanity.

As terrible as a genocide is, it doesn´t give any
group of people any rights to commit atrocities
when they themselves get the chance. An extreme
case of this kind of weak minded attitude that
people who have suffered should have special
rights, is that the world has been pretty much
silent on Ruanda´s participation in the "African
world war" in Congo.

Here be monsters. When myths collide.

Osama bin Laden is a ruthless bastard, but
what comes to bodycounts, deaths caused by
him are far behind many of those caused by
the West´s "noble" leaders and their dear
comrades in crime in other countries.

What many people don´t understand, is that
a man like Osama bin Laden needs lots of money,
planning and willing underlings to make
his planned atrocities to come true; a
president of the United States can kill
millions by just signing his name.

International law, as interpreted by White House
legal advisors: Double Standards? by Newsweek.

The United States government has scored an awful
lot of own goals in the last few weeks.

The destruction of archaeological sites in Iraq
continues. More.

Scale of the crimes is different, but what the
American government officials and army staff
have spoken about the mistreatment of prisoners
etc in Afganistan and Iraq have an uncanny
resemblance with what the Nazis have said as
their defence in trials, over and over again:
"We just followed orders" and "We didn´t know
about the details, we just shaped the outlines"
and that they didn´t know what happened in.
Now the ordinary soldiers are singing in choir
that "We just followed orders" and the higher
ranking officers and government officials are
claiming that they didn´t know what was going on,
even if their job demanded it. Either they should
be sacked, because they don´t are up to the job,
or they should be prosecuted for war crimes -
and for the same reason that some high ranking
Nazis were hanged, for attacking another country
without a good reason.

The world has changed much since the days of
Nüremberg trials, but still no good excuses for
atrocities have been invented.

"Flying" continents, 700 million years BCE.

What kind of implications this, if proven correct, have with
the so-called Snowball Earth theory? And the emerge of
first animals?

Which all happened pretty much the same time.

Did the movement of tectonic plates have something to
do with the end of the era of superglaciation?

United in war crimes, The United States and Israel.

New proof of the existence of the so-called "dark energy"
from observations made with the Chandra X-ray space telescope.
Sad really, I dislike the whole idea and have been
hoping that it would just go away...

What the writer of this review, Christoper Farah,
doesn´t mention, and which many, many people
doesn´t know, is that almost all of Arab countries
are based former European colonies. There were few
attempts to create anything that can be describes
as democracy by the colonial powers. In most cases,
the old elite was used by the colonial rulers to
run things. What was dangerous to them, was dangerous
to the occupying country.

So, when these countries became independent, the
existing state bureaucracy was build on the premise
of keeping the country in question under foreign
rule. The members of armies and police were old
time servants of the colonial rulers, just like
in South Vietnam. They were trained to oppress
their own people, and had rarely been held
accountable for their unlawful actions.

There were no "nation building", little plans of
creating representative governments accountable to
the ordinary people of the countries. And when
these countries became independent, the former
colonial powers tried to bring in power and keep
in power people that they thought would help them
to serve their own interests in the country in
question and in the whole region. And United States
and the Soviet Union had no problem in trying to
get oppressive regimes to their side.

So, the western powers occupied large parts of
the Arab lands, created bases for oppressive regimes,
then when these emerged (sometimes with their help),
they supported them for decades, not caring about
democracy. And now the saintly Western democracies
demand democracy and reforms and etc, like all that
was before hadn´t happened at all. And few people
in the West seem to understand, that if they do want
to forget the past, the Arabs will not.

This isn´t ancient history. The members of the
American and British governments were almost all
adults when the Great Britain still ruled Qatar,
Bahrain, Oman, the Arab Emirates, Aden and Kuwait.
Before the World War II, the only independent Arab
countries were Egypt(independent in theory 1922, in
effect 1953), Iraq(independent in theory 1932, in
effect 1958), Jemen, Saudi Arabia(established in 1932)
and Transjordania(independent 1920).

A new geological time period, Ediacaran, has been accepted by
International Union of Geological Sciences.

War crimes in Rafah continue as the Western countries
are doing their best to obstruct Israeli crimes as
little as possible.

One should think that they would already know that
the only languages that the leaders of Israel
understand are either use of force or bribery.
Carter was succesful in Camp David because he
was ready to bluntly pay for peace between Israel
and Egypt. Clinton was more interested to support
Israel than act as a negotiator.

Couple of cruise missiles to Tel Aviv would achieve
more than a decades worth of nice talk.

Another place where cruise missiles would possibly
make some nasty people change their current course.

Alexander Soltzhenitsyn is following the footsteps
of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Traditional Prejudices.
The anti-Semitism of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

I read the first parts of the The Gulag Archipelago when
the Soviet Union still existed; later I tried to read the
later parts, but couldn´t finish them. It was not that
I couldn´t stomach the contents, I just couldn´t get forward.

Of Solzhenitsyn´s fiction I have read some of his earlier
works. I have to admit, that I was little baffled then of
what was so important in them. Standard massive Russian
fiction. Of course I understood why it was disliked by the
Soviet authorities, but the importance put to them as art
by the western readers and critics was a little odd to me.
They weren´t that great.

Soltzhenitsyn is a writer of the very old school: He
doesn´t do art for arts sake. Art is always used for
other means. Fighting the Soviet system or interpreting
the history of Russia in a way that suits himself.

Some years ago I tried to watch a documentary about
Soltzhenitsyn. I couldn´t watch it for long. Reason was
that the movie was like some old Soviet propaganda film:
Alexander Soltzhenitsyn was portrayed like some Hero of
the Soviet Union. No stains in his armour.

Etana is an excellent site for those interested in
the archaeology of the Middle East. It takes it name
from an old Mesopotamian epic featuring of the king
of the same name. But in Finnish etana is not exactly
a name that creates images of royal splendor.

Wilusa, the real Troy:

Was There a Trojan War?

by Manfred Korfmann. More at Project Troia.

So, there likely was a "Wilusan war", but almost
certainly no Helen of Troy, no Achilles, no Priamos.
And soon after the Aegean, Asia Minor and Middle East
were in turmoil. The Myceneans went into terminal
decline, the Sea Peoples attacked and the Hittite
Empire fell between 1200-1190 BCE, soon Egypt was in
decline and in effect split in two after the death of
the last Ramesses (between 1085-1067 BCE). In Mesopotamia
the Assyrian Empire retreated to it´s heartland after
the reign of Tiglatpileser I(c.1115-1075 BCE). Babylon
and Elam first conquered each other and then went into
decline. The whole political, economical and cultural
landscape where the people of Wilusa had lived started
to disappear only decades after the fall of their town.

Israel now reaps in Gaza what it has sowed. But will
they learn? No. 71% of Israelis support withdrawal
from Gaza, but majority support landgrab in West Bank
and the Golan heights. They just don´t learn.

Maybe just Trotskyite paranoia, but strange still:

The terrible and strange death of Nick Berg

An overdose of patriotism make people blind;
sometimes it can even be fatal - if not to the
person(s) in question, then to other people.

There´s nothing wrong being proud of your country
- if there´s a reason for it. "My country wright
or wrong" is the kind of attitude that has sent
tens of millions of people to their deaths during
the last century, as ordinary, sane people have
followed their leaders to mindless wars, thinking
that they didn´t serve those leaders, but their
country, and that it was their duty to do so,
whatever misgivins they had.

The death of Ahmad Kadyrov, the puppet ruler of
Chechnya, was a splendid thing. The death of few
outsiders was a sad thing, but Kadyrov, that modern
follower of Vidkun Quisling, got exactly what he
deserved. He betrayed his own people and allied with
the Russians, who have killed 100 000 Chechens, and
then he and his son Ramzan Kadyrov succeeded making
themselves even more feared than the Russian troops
in Chechnya. This assasination is a ray of light in
Chechnya. The Russians will never win this war.

Classical Pre-Classic Maya town in Guatemala: Cival: A
Pre-Classic Maya Site in the News by Mesoweb.

Following the archaeology of the urban Maya civilization
- urban because the Maya are still among us, their civilization
is not gone, but the urban phase of it has - is fascinating,
because you can really see usually slow humanistic branch
of science in action. The picture of urban Maya civilization
goes through changes every few years and a lost historical
era is revealed to us, like the surface of some distant planet
is revealed to us by generations of probes, in greater detail
by every new probe (that succeeds in it´s mission).

The modern history of Maya is another thing, because most
of it is so damn sad. They have faced the same problems that
most indigenous groups have had to face in the world, and
worse than most: the genocide of the Maya population of
Guatemala during the civil war is one of the forgotten genocides.
Over 150 000 dead and only a few low-ranking persons have
been brought to trial. The new Berger government has promised
change to this, but may be forgetting that promise already.

Sexual humiliation and rape of captured soldiers run
back to the ancient Greece (and probably farther), where
the rape of soldiers taken prisoners was common and
part of the propaganda to scare the other side.

Of course, their fate after that wasn´t pleasant
either: If not killed outright, slavery was a common fate
and the lifespan of average slave was low. A common
fate for a soldier taken prisoner by the Athenians was
to be sent to work in the mines. After view years they
were dead.

People have a habit of thinking that war crimes and other
atrocities are committed by monsters. But the thing is
that most are done by "good" people, who may lead totally
ordinary and lawful lives otherwise. Of course some can be
hidden sadists; by the percentage of sadists in usual
societies, the occupying powers have thousands of them
carrying their uniforms.

The relatives and friends of the American soldiers accused of
torture in Abu Ghraib claim them to be good persons, who
couldn´t never do such things. Probably the relatives of the
former Iraqi guards of Abu Ghraib prison would say the same.

If you will not be persecuted for committing atrocities and
especially if you are ordered to do them by your superiors,
then the line separating "good person" from "evil monster" is
easy to cross and you may not understand that you´re done so.

One thing that should be remembered about this scandal is
that this kind of behavior is not aberration; not by the usual
standards of modern warfare, and not by the standards of the
occupying powers in question.

Twenty years ago, both the United States and the Great Britain
were supporting among other cruel regimes the Baathist regime
of Iraq and trying to help the Khmer Rouge return to power in
Cambodza. Torturing prisoners and killing few of them is nothing
to regimes who have even supported genocides - even in Iraq -
so the loud condemnations by both US and British politicians are
really funny in their own way. True, disgusting crimes have been
committed, but far worse has been done in the past.

The "Middle East Quartet´s" meeting was typically sad event,
where the participants humiliated themselves and surrendered to
Israel, who got to play ventriloquist once again as the participants
opened their mouths and out game Israeli propaganda and policy.

I have to admit that I really can´t fathom why the world powers
want to continue with this stupidity. It´s not like Israel could or
would (they are fanatical, but not suicidal, and I doubt that
majority of Israelis are ready to die so that the 436 000 settlers
can continue to live in their colonial idyll) resist if they would just
decide to end Israel´s occupation by sending in troops. No US
president, no leading EU byrocrat or memberstate boss, no UN
secretary general, no Russian/Soviet dictator has ever lost their
job for opposing Israel, nor would they now.

I find it baffling that the Americans writing or talking about the
failed peace negotiations in 2001 between Palestinians and
Israel think that a)the treaty was good for the Palestinians and
b)it was their fault that there was no peace agreement then.
Like Francis Fukuyama - who made his reputation with being
once throughly wrong - in this interview by Al-Ahram Weekly:
Open-ended history

Christian Science Monitor continues the same theme with
Bush Out on a Limb With Sharon

It´s a typical American article, where the writer kicks Arafat
hard to justify mild criticism of Likud. In the mainstream
press of the United States this is the only way to criticize
Israel: You have to critizice the Palestinians first.

Neither seem to know the basic facts of the deal that failed;
like that the Palestinians would not have got sovereign state:
Israel would have controlled it´s borders, it´s airspace, it´s
natural resources and most of East Jerusalem. Fukuyama claims
that Palestinians would have got 95% of the West Bank; the
problem is that this is an issue, which there is no consensus:
The highest possibility, from Israeli negotiators, is 92%, but
even as low as 67% are cited by Israelis, one Palestinian source
estimate was 83%. A balanced article in New Left Review by
Baruch Kimmerling is here:FROM BARAK TO THE ROAD MAP

The estimates of Sharon´s landgrab run from 14,5% to 58%
of West Bank.

I would not want to be in the situation in which private
Maupin, if he is still alive, is when his captors see those
pictures from Abu Ghraib.

Probably the most detailed article in the web on Abu Ghraib,
by New Yorker: TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB

What has happened in the prison of Abu Ghraib (and probably
elsewhere in Iraq, like in the Baghdad airport) shows that the
Americans - and their sidekicks - have been quick to adopt the
ways of the old rulers. Or would be, if they wouldn´t have been
totally corrupted lot in the first place. The same kind of thing
has been going on in Afganistan, like the reports from what
happens in Baghram tell. And sometimes the great American
freedom fighters have sent their prisoners for their loyal Arab
vassals to torture.

I have been reading the great Polish journalist Ryszard
Kapuscinski´s(1932-) book Another Day of Life
(2001; Jeszcze dzien zycia, 1976), which tells about
his experiences in Angola as it became independent from
Portuguese colonial rule in 1975.

A great book from Kapuscinski, and one that has given
me much background for a war that I had (occasionally -
when it reached me through television news and documents
or from the pages of newspapers) followed from the mid
1980´s. One of those wars, like the civil war in Lebanon,
that seemed just to go on and on. And when northern and
central Lebanon became peaceful, the situation in Angola became
even more dire as the victory for the beast Jonas Savimbi´s
UNITA became a real possibility.

And years passed. Israel withdraw from southern Lebanon,
the SLA collapsed. War in Angola continued. There were
rumours that the United States, that had given some help
to the MPLA government after the end of the cold war,
could start instead to support the beast and his troops again.

Then, one day in February 2002, I heard from the radio that
Jonas Savimbi had been shot dead by the Angolan army. I was
very surprised and very glad - a surprising twist in a war that I
had thought would never end. Savimbi got what he deserved
and UNITA´s armed fight was finished. At last, a happy ending
for a brutal war that had consumed over a million lives.

MPLA is not perfect, but I will always choose corrupt former
Marxists over a maniac like Savimbi, one of the forgotten
great thugs of the 20th century, and one which survived to
this new millennium. MPLA, with all it´s faults, is a decent
organization. Far better than the foreign governments who
supported Savimbi through the decades, knowing perfectly
well the terrible consequences of this support.

I did a little search in the web and found out that there are
surprising number of people that have still kind words to
write about Jonas Savimbi(1934-2002). Sick bastards.

But then, there are a lot of more people writing nice words
about his comrades Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Josif Stalin,
Pol Pot, Suharto and the rest of them. Some people just
don´t are fully human.