Russia backs Kyoto climate treaty

Kyoto treaty must be just a beginning.

28 Palestinians and 3 Israelis have died during the violence of the last two days. The occupation must end.

In Iraq, things "continue as usual". Tens of people have died in attacks, whose most bloodiest were attack in Baghdad, whose two bombs claimed the lives of 41 people, of whom 34 were children. This occupation must end too.

Jimmy Carter writes that "basic international requirements for a fair election are missing in Florida".

Diplomatic desert

South Africa and Morocco, never the best of friends, are at loggerheads over Western Sahara.

Morocco, Israel of the Atlas mountains.

A Nation? What Nation?

Quote:

The government of Israel does not recognize the Israeli nation. It says that there is no such thing.

I made a blog, Pöytälaatikkorunoutta, for my poems in finnish. They are rather weak, but so is this blog too, so... I post new ones when I write them. I doubt that I will post old ones. I have a couple of thousand of them, and none are even mediocre works of art.

The conquest of Galilee.

UN High Comissioner for Human Rights attacks Darfur 'fear and rape'.

Colin Powell admits that situation in Iraq is getting worse.

Zarqawi has method in his madness

It´s a curious thing that if you kill a few people, you are a monster, but if you kill tens of thousands, you can still be a statesman, an honorable general, a hero etc. No doubt al-Zarqawi can be called a monster, but the fact is, the thing that disturbs people most in his actions are not the killings; his group has killed hundreds of people in bomb attacks, but these got far less publicity in western media than the brutal murders of hostages. The victims of bomb attacks are faceless and mostly non-western. The hostages his group has murdered are given faces by these videos, their helplesness and their suffering are not hidden, they are shown. This makes al-Zarqawi such a reviled figure. He doesn´t hide his crimes, he uses them as a propaganda weapon. His propaganda has then different messages for muslims and westerners.

If he would just make demands for the release of the hostages and then kill them in secrecy when his demands are not met, he would not be seen as such a terrible figure. After all, hostage taking and killing of hostages are nothing new in human history. And in reality, these kinds of public murders are neither. But in the past the audience was limited.

For example, let´s go to England during one of it´s civil wars in the 1140´s. King Stephen(1097-1154, ruled 1135-54), the nephew of Henry Ist(1068-1135, ruled 1100-35), was fighting against her cousin Mathilda, the daughter of Henry Ist, for the crown. During a siege of a castle of Mathilda´s supporter, the commander of the castle gave one of his sons, just a boy, as a hostage, for the time of a ceasefire, during which the negotiations for the surrender of the castle would be held. These were unfruitful and as the commander was not ready to surrender, the king decided to hang the boy so that his hanging could be viewed from the castle walls, which would show the determination of the king to take the castle, the helplessness of the defenders to do anything to stop him and how useless it would be for them to resist him.

This was nothing uncommon at the time. King Stephen had executed large number of men in the same manner. But for his undoing, he wasn´t ruthless enough. When everything was ready, the king couldn´t hang the boy, who didn´t understand his coming fate. The boy, William Marshal, lived and in his late years became the regent of England in 1216. Stephen in the end, after the death of his eldest son, made a peace with Mathilda´s son Henry(1133-1189) in 1153 and made him his successor in England. Stephen´s younger son was denied the crown and died fighting in France in 1159.

This kind of executions of hostages served the same kind of role that al-Zarqawi´s videos do. They just had a very limited audience. Nowadays al-Zarqawi has a global audience.

Cave dwellers defy Israeli eviction bid

Palestinians who have scratched a living for generations in the desert defend their biblical way of life.

The only good thing in autumn to me nowadays are the dark skies. Good for observing, before the snow comes. And usually there´s been during the time that I remember far more clear skies on autumn than in winter. Some winters during the last years have been quite bad. Clouds for months, and not a piece of a clear sky. Last winter wasn´t that bad, compared to many others it was good.

In the past, when I was younger, I quite enjoyed autumn. It had this melancholic beauty that I then liked. But now, years tend to go too fast and every autumn marks a one year more lived and one less to live. Gray, rainy days are just so depressing. But when I stand under a clear sky, seeing hundreds of stars above, then it´s nice that it´s autumn. Then everything else vanishes and even self recedes. I don´t feel that I am watching the universe, I feel that I am part of it. Like were are, but you need experiences like this to fully understand and feel the fact; feel the universe that spreads all around you, (likely) without an end.

One year has passed since Edward Said died.

Israel and the Arafat Question.

I would have so much to write about this, but some other time. I have been awake now almost constantly for one and a half days, so lambasting Dennis Ross isn´t as entertaining an idea as it would otherwise be.

But, Americans don´t seem to understand that you can´t be an effective broker of a peace deal when you try to get as best a deal you can for one side, instead of trying to get a deal that is acceptable to both sides. Anyway, I think that nothing would have come out of the peace deal anyway, gallups at the time showed clear Sharon lead over Barak and the polls didn´t show that a peace deal would have saved Barak´s hide; Sharon had already claimed that he wouldn´t honor any peace deal made by the Barak government; US government was changing and anyways US was totally incapable of pressurizing Israel; and there was a lot of opposition on the Palestinian side, and not only among Hamas&Jihad.

Lastly, I can´t understand this American obsession about persons, in this case Jassar Arafat. Jasser Arafat this, Jasser Arafat that, Jasser Arafat is bad, we will not talk with Jasser Arafat blah blah blah blah. Like little children. Getting entangled with personalities and losing the plot when this becomes an obsession.

Americans must recognize that elections are not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - not in Afganistan and not in Iraq. Things will not magically turn alright if elections can somehow be kept. But US government will insist that they will, and if elections can be kept, will afterwards claim that things have improved, even if they wouldn´t have.

Musharraf warns of 'iron curtain'.

If one takes as positive an adjustment of Pervez Musharraf´s game, one can see sense in his double game of appeasing both the Americans and the radical islamists. The sense being that his survival depends on it that he gives something to both sides and so does part of what the Americans want him to do and at the same time he doesn´t drive the extremists into a too difficult a position, so that he doesn´t alienate all of them. Some of course try to kill him, but giving room to the religious conservatives does buy him at least time. And towards the Americans he has to show his usefulness so that he doesn´t drive Pakistan into international isolation and give reason to the US to start supporting the democratic opposition. So, to the Americans he has made himself an irreplaceable man and to the religious extremists he has given more room to maneuver and a chunk of power - but one day even the more moderate and cautious among them probably will want to have whole power, not just part of it under Musharraf´s dictatorial reign.

Antarctic Glaciers Melting Faster -Study

Israel's nukes serve to justify Iran's.

And one shouldn´t forget the Pakistani nukes out of the equation either.

Martian methane hints at oases of life?

Washington Post is angry that the US government supports also other bastards in Asia, not only those in Tel Aviv that the Post itself loves.

I admit that Musharraf is a dictator who tries to ride two horses - those of the West and those of the conservative/radical islamism - at the same time and I hope that he doesn´t succeed, even if things could go quite ugly after he is out of the picture. But when it comes to Pakistani democracy, much of the blame goes to the corrupt major parties of Sharif and Bhutto, who did little to give democracy and non-religious parties a good name in Pakistan.

The massacre of Mesopotamian archaeology

When is looting "under control"? But frankly, archeologically Iraq will soon be worthless when it comes to those archaeological sites that are known now. Several of the most impartant ancient cities are pretty much gone and our view of the history of civilization in Mesopotamia will always be poorer because of this war and it´s consequences. One example is the transition from Sumerian to Babylonian era between about 2000-1750 BC. The major cities of this time, like Isin and Larsa, are among the sites that have suffered the heaviest part of the looting.

The hope of archaeology in Iraq may lay in those places which are known to us from historical sources, but which haven´t been found yet, like Akkad, capital of the Akkadian empire, the first major semitic state in history, which first time united Mesopotamia under single rule between 2350-2200 BC.

Optimism in London, carnage in Iraq.

Making call on sham of political polling

New results from instruments on ESA`s Mars Express show that water vapour and methane in the Martian atmosphere overlap with each other and the near surface ice that NASA´s Mars Odyssey has found.

US government is picking a fight with Venezuela.

Democracy is a hard pill to swallow for the US government.

Caveful of Clues about Early Humans.

Possible evidence of interbreeding between modern humans and the Neanderthals from Romania.

It would be nice if there would have been interbreeding between modern humans and the Neanderthals. It´s certain that the Neanderthals didn´t leave any recognizable genetic inheritance to the populations living now where they once lived, so either the interbreeding was quite limited or the hybrids didn´t leave descendants. Purely on emotional grounds it would be nice that Neanderthals would have modern descendants; the species are no more, but the extinction wouldn´t be 100%. Not quite. 99,999% or something like that.

Most likely, if there was interbreeding, few of the hybrids survived to produce offspring of their own, if any did. One question is of course how the two populations would have viewed these hybrids? Would they have been accepted in either one of them?

Iraq leak has Blair back in firing line
Secret memos warned of new dictators and a lack of post-invasion strategy

Blame No 10's hubris and genial naivety
The PM ignored all the warnings from experts, writes John Kampfner

Just as Tony Blair is entertaining Iraq´s new Saddam Hussein, the past comes back to haunt him.

UN threatens sanctions on Sudan.

Embargo on oil exports is likely.

US plans to sabotage the United Nation´s General Assembly´s coming attempt to put sanctions, including arms embargo, on Israel.

Two weeks in Beit Arabiya.

<>Sequestered in Nablus

Iraq had no WMD: the final verdict.

Just vague plans, which the US&UK governments will use as a foundations for the fantasies they will build to protect their asses.

Intentions Versus Reality in Iraq.

Blair 'lacked post-Saddam plan'.

Iraqi car bomb kills 23 in Kirkuk.

Tibetans show 'evolution in action

A gene for well oxygenated blood is spreading in the Himalayas.

Losing God's image

Chechnya murderer pardoned

One of the great warriors of the "War against Terrorism", as this nonsense is known.

Maybe Vladimir Putin´s daughters one day end in the hands of similar men. Old Testamental justice, you know.

Settlers or Sharon? No. Neither.

US government threatens Syria.

56 years of the murder of Folke Bernadotte.

The Anglo-Australian Planet Search Team finds 5 new planets.

The death and disorientation of the children of Gaza

In their homes, in the street, in UN-run schools, Palestinian youth are not safe from Israeli bullets

136 children have been killed in Khan Younis and Rafah alone during the second intifada.

Far graver than Vietnam.

Most senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale.

Let´s hope they are right.

The USA led attack against Iraq was illegal, says Kofi Annan.

Germans and Japanese leaders were executed after the Second World War for the same reason. Both countries had signed the Briand-Kellogg pact, a USA&France initiative that forbitted starting wars that weren´t started in self-defense.

Iran's nuclear ambitions

I have to admit that the current problems of both Russia and US are not totally a bad thing in my view; the deeper US sinks in the mess that it has created in the Middle East and Central Asia, the the better for the EU, and the more problematic the southern part of Russia becomes and the more Russia has to spend it´s energy on internal problems, the better it´s for us little guys living as it´s neighbours. The problems of US give EU more room to maneuver and flex it´s muscles both politically and economically - or would, if it´s leadership would have more courage and spine. And the internal problems of Russia mean that it´s neighbours have one problem less to worry for the time being. Weak US and weak Russia are both good things.

Sudan, China - it´s main backer in the UN - and lesser supporters of the Khartoum regime are playing in the UN the same kind of game that US and Israel have played so many times.

I don´t like it when the US&Israel do this, and I don´t like it when others adopt this same kind of technic.

"They are building walls around us"

Of Schools and "Jewish only" roads in Jerusalem.

Israeli attack kills 10 Palestinians in West Bank, among them 11-year old girl.

Sharon hints that Arafat may be killed

Politically cornered now, Sharon is a wild beast that will try anything to save himself.

Israel will ditch road map, says Sharon

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, told the Yediot Ahronot daily that there might not be any troop pullbacks after Israel had carried out its so-called unilateral "disengagement" from the Palestinians - withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank settlements - in 2005.

"It is very possible that, after the evacuation, there will be a long period when nothing else happens," Mr Sharon said. He told the paper it was impossible to say whether this could signal decades of stalemate.

The only good thing in this is that it´s the grave of the Jewish state he is digging with his American friends, not the grave of a Palestinian state.

When will Britain and Europe act?

Jack Straw is against Israeli expansion. But he does nothing

Never. EU is a paralyzed paper tiger with a multiple personality disorder. So it hides behind words and does nothing. And Great Britain wants to be a special friend of the US, so it can´t act against the best friend of the US.

All will suffer because of this. But politicians seem to prefer being sorry later when the other option is action now.

It's Worse Than You Think

As Americans debate Vietnam, the U.S. death toll tops 1,000 in Iraq. And the insurgents are still getting stronger

Pity that the majority of Americans are notably people who don´t think of these kind of things or care about them. At best they are herd animals, at worst they simply don´t care if they know and most of the time they just don´t know.

One can claim that there are tens of millions of Americans who know and who oppose the war. Yes, but they are not the majority, they have never been and sadly they probably will not be in the foreseeable future.

The support of the war in Iraq and that it hasn´t dented the gallup ratings of Bush isn´t so surprising when you take this dim view of the Americans. After all, even when South Vietnam fell in 1975, third of the Americans thought that they should still have had ground troops in Vietnam, continuing the war.

Media Coverage of Suicide Bombings - All Effect, No Cause

But when Israel kills Palestinians, western media is quick to give the Israeli government´s or army´s view of the killings and their reasons or excuses for it and then doesn´t question these.

I personally don´t understand what is so especially terrible in suicide bombings that would make them worser or morally more bad than other forms of large-scale killing of people, innocent or not? Does it really make the killing of maybe tens of people more acceptable if the killer is a man (or a woman) in a uniform who launches a missile from a airplane or a helicopter? Surprisingly, many people think that it does. I don´t understand this kind of thought. Certainly what matters is the result. And the reasons for the carnage. Real ones, not the propaganda of a one side of a conflict.

Journalist´s personal experience of the US attack against civilians in Haifa Street.

Throughout the human history, believers of all sorts have claimed divine support for bloodbaths that they themselves have committed.

After reading this article, I was reminded of the crusaders that conquered Jerusalem in 1099. After massacring at least 30 000 civilians, all Muslims and Jews(3000 of which were burned alive in a synagogue) of the town and those of it´s Christians that weren´t able or given chance to proclaim their religion, they went to the supposed grave of Jesus and prayed to thank God for the great victory he had given to them. The will of God had come true, they thought.

Turkey warns US on northern Iraq

Up to 10 000 people die because of the conflict in Darfur every month.

US government knew of abuses in the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp already in 2002.

The Guardian´s article about books in the Arab countries.

Even according to the US government, there are not only bad terrorists, but also good terrorists.... The kind of which can help you win a major state in a presidential election...

I don´t understand these folks who want Islam to have a `Reformation´. Don´t they know anything about the western Christian Reformation of the 16th century, it´s leaders and it´s consequences?

Let´s see:Martin Luther(1483-1546) was an antisemite who claimed that aristocrats could ensure their place in heaven by killing rebellious peasants and he congratulated Ulrich Zwingli(k.1531), a Swiss Reformer, after the latter had murdered leaders of another sect by drowning them. Later Zwingli fell himself in battle. Jean Calvin(1509-1564) was a petty tyrant who executed children. And so on. These weren´t nice folk by any standard and even if the Netherlands may have partly flourished because of the Reformation, Germany certainly stayed largely a backwater until the 18th century because of the Reformation. And one shouldn´t forget the religious wars that decimated Germany in the in the 16th and 17th centuries and the Huguenot war of France between 1562 and 1598. And the Catholic backlash wasn´t exactly a complete triumph of humanity and humanistic virtues either.

Kerry still leads in the electoral college votes, which is all that matters. It would be nice kind of justice if the mentally challenged one would win the popular vote and lose the presidency to the man without charisma.

Would that make majority of the US politicos ready to change the US electoral system? Most likely not. US is deeply conservative country, one could say that it´s a petrified country, where changing these kind of things is pretty impossible.

Gas may yield clue to life on Mars

'War president' Bush has always been soft on terror
His campaign says vote Republican or die - but he lets al-Qaida off the hook

But in the United States, words are everything. Rhetoric rules. The actual facts mean very little, if anything at all. If you can erect a good public facade, that´s all you need.

Press release from ESO about the possible picture of an extrasolar planet acquired with the Yepun telescope, one of the 8.2-meter VLT telescopes at Cerro Paranal, Chile.

Facts about the 2M1207 system from The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia.

This would not be the first planet observed directly circling another star, as the 2M207 itself is a brown dwarf, a `failed star´, which makes the observation of the red object possible.

ESO telescope has taken a picture of a possible extrasolar planet.

When religion is not

Uncommon sanity from The Globe and Mail.

When religion is not

Jemaah Islamiyah takes responsibility of the Jakarta bomb, that killed 9 people.

Even now, when Indonesia is a partial democracy - nationalistic, rightwing and religious parties are legal, other parties banded, which seems to suit the West just fine, no need of true democracy in states that are not hostile to the West - the Jemaah Islamiyah is treated with extreme caution, one could say, as the fundamentalists have large support base in Indonesia (of which thanks go to the fact that secular opposition was crushed during the dictatorship of 1965-98, with the help of the West, who supported theocrats against secular socialists and now reaps what it sowed) which the government has to take account of.

And now the fundamentalists bite the hands that once fed them.

Epic food convoy crosses Sahara to bring food to the Darfur refugees in Chad

The Emerging Case for a Single State in Palestine

Quote:

The struggle for a single state will certainly be a long one. But the struggle for two states has been a long one as well, and its results so far have not been promising. My suggestion here is that the reason for such meager results has more than a little to do with the framework within which many of us have thought about the issue. I do not want to deny that there are, in politics, times in which moral compromise is necessary for the sake of preventing a far worse fate. It has become increasingly evident that this is not one of those times. The politics of Palestine require that we remove our moral blinders, not in order to attain a greater moral purity in approaching a just solution to the “problem of Palestine,” but in order to see our way to a solution at all.

American forces and their quislings have launched an offensive against northern Iraqi Shiite Turkmen town of Talafar.

Bush under pressure over military record

Four Palestinians, including a 13-year old boy, have been killed in Israeli attack on a refugee camp in Gaza. Nothing exceptional here. The colonialists continue the killings and landgrabs that have won to them the hearts and minds of the American political leadership.

Scientists 'hopeful' for Genesis

I wonder how much reason for optimism there can be as the capsule has been breached and dirt seems to have gotten inside? But on the hand, pessimism surely will not save what is to be saved from the wreckage.

New ring and possibly two small new moons have been found around Saturn. More at the Cassini Homepage at JPL.

Israel to take more land for settlers from Palestinians in West Bank.
.

The myth of Gandhi and Palestinian reality

Quote:

While one can admire Mohandas Gandhi's nonviolent principles, one can hardly point to the Indian experience as a demonstration of their usefulness in overthrowing a colonial regime. Indeed, Gandhi's concepts of satyagraha, or soul power, and ahimsa, or nonviolent struggle, played an important role during the Indian independence struggle, however the anti-colonial period in India was also marked by extreme violence, both between the British and Indians and between different Indian communal groups. Anti-colonial Indians committed a wide variety of terrorist acts; the British government was responsible for numerous massacres and other atrocities; and communal violence before, during and after independence claimed the lives of millions of people. One simply cannot argue that Indian independence was achieved in a nonviolent context.

More killed by suicide than war

The danger for scientists who participate in space missions is that you can sacrifice most of your career on one mission, and if it fails... Genesis was one of the new small missions, not in the same league with Cassini, which had a 22 year history behind it when it succesfully was inserted on orbit around Saturn. When the nominal mission ends in 2008 - and Cassini can work several years after that - some folks have spent 26 years of their lives on the mission. That´s dedication.

The war on terror makes us less safe

Depends pretty much on who the "us" are...

I´m watching the return of Genesis sample return capsule from NASA TV.

Nasa´s Genesis probe´s sample return capsule is about to enter the Earth´s atmosphere to bring back the first samples of matter collected from space since 1976.

Direct link between global warming, genetic diversity

Proving the obvious.

The more Yankees die in Iraq, the better. The less chance of more adventures in the same style. And nobody has forced them to get enlisted to the US Army. So no tears for them.

New extrasolar planet has yet again been found.

Israeli peace activists demolish Jewish settler outpost on West Bank.

The Beslan hostage tragedy: the lies of the Putin government and its media

Report: Civil war most likely outcome in Iraq

Russian TV broadcasts siege video

Did civilians began the shooting? If so, surely the fault lies with the Russian leadership at the scene, who let them near the school.

AIPAC Spy Case Involves Intelligence on Iranian WMD

Penguin pack big ideas into tiny tomes
Sitting in a sticky Italian railway station last summer, the publisher Simon Winder was surprised and impressed when he noticed a book rack crammed not with blockbusting bestsellers but philosophical texts. "It was odd that in this hardscrabble part of Italy you could still turn up at a railway station and pick up a copy of Nietzsche," he said, "We do not really have that tradition in the UK."

My personal view of the work of the German philosopher, nutcase and hater of pretty much everybody - except beautiful German aristocratic youths of his own gender - Friedrich Nietzsche(1844-1900) is that the less places you can pick up a copy of one his ramblings, the better.

US army 'to axe Halliburton deal'

Not anything to do with corruption and overpricing according to the US Army, of course not....

Hamas swears Gaza strike revenge

And so the circle of violence continues.

UK soldier on Iraq murder charge

"Prominent" Israeli rabbis want more violence according to the Associated Press news agency.

The Caucasian vicious circle

The unwinnable war.

The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is usually to be said to be their goals, not their methods; a freedom fighter has a limited goal compared to that of a terrorist. For example, freedom fighter could have as her or his goal the independence of Chechnya, whereas a terrorist may want to use Chechnya as a base from which to campaign a war against Russia in hoping to destabilize the Caucasus and take control of other republics, like Dagestan. Usually terrorists tend to be fond of domino theories, like certain politicians of the Cold War years.

And no we get to the current occupant of the Oval Office. George W. Bush resembles a terrorist when he chooses these lofty, unachievable goals. "War against terrorism", where terrorism is to be destroyed totally and for ever is a goal fit for a terrorist. It´s pure fantasy. Limited goals, like the capture of the Al-Qaida leadership and the defeat of the Taliban government in Afghanistan that supported them were only partially achieved when they were thrown aside and the US government embarked on a fantasy project more fit for some European terrorist group of the 1970-80´s than a respectable government:"Making the Middle East democratic." And their weapon of choice, violence, was also a that of a terrorist liming in a dreamworld.

Our dead and injured children
Beslan was barbaric - so has been Russia's reign of terror in Chechnya

Barbaric action against civilians beget barbaric acts against civilians, not submission in Chechnya.

I find it hard to understand how this massacre in Beslan has shocked so much many people who had not been much troubled by the death of tens of thousands of people in Chechnya. Is the average person, the average journalist, the average political or military analyst or the average politician so mediocre a human being that they can´t understand suffering if they don´t see it in live television coverage?

Fierce Clashes in Iraq Kill 34. More.

The good thing is that the American death toll keeps getting higher and stands now at 995. Problem is of course that the American voters don´t care. And why should they? After all, this a war were the soldiers who die are from the lower classes and the American elections are about the interests and privileges of the Holy Middle Class, whose sons and daughters are not usually to be found carrying uniforms.

Explosions Kill at Least 13 in Gaza City

News like this make me glad of news like this. Regular American boys and girls getting killed for Israel´s "safety" on a comfortingly swift pace. Like the saying goes:"The only good American is a dead American." By the way, that whiny "desperate act of inhumanity" quote gives a nice girlish flavour to the US Army. "Oh my God, they are killing our soldiers! How could they be so inhuman! After all, this is only a war!"

Analysis: Russia's Caucasus quagmire

It must be remembered that the two Chechnyan wars are wars that the Russian government sought itself and wanted for the reasons of it´s own.

Henchman's fate uncertain

These kind of claims - that a man like al-Douri would have been just a Saddam Hussein´s "henchman"- that the western media uses will no doubt be like the ones their attorneys will use in coming trials. That all bad that happened in Iraq was the fault of Saddam Hussein&Sons and that they themselves were just henchmen who had no part in decision making and who would have put themselves in risk if they wouldn´t have obeyd.

Of course this is not the truth, at least not the whole truth. No leader, especially a dictator who lacks a popular mandate, can survive without allies, without supporters who have something to gain from the continuation of the leader´s rule and no member of the higher echelons of the Baath regime could have been just a henchman. The henchmen were to be found on the lower levels of government. People like al-Douri were all decision makers and they all had their own bases of power.

Israel changes route of barrier

International pressure helps. This is a defeat for all of those who cried against the International Court of Justice´s ruling. Now more pressure is needed to tear down those parts of the wall that don´t follow the ceasefire line.

Dual loyalties.

US fanatics who serve two masters.

It´s a naive to claim that two countries would always share the same goals and that which is good for one is good for both. This has never been true. And in this case these nuts are supporting policies that are bad for the both countries in question.

Israel seeks funds for separate Arab roads

Quote:

Israel is pressing foreign donors to finance the construction of a web of roads through the occupied territories - made necessary by the building of the vast "security" barrier and Jewish settlements in the West Bank.... It also wants funding to build new roads which take account of the barrier and its settlements. The plan envisages roads that would run parallel to each other - one for Jews, the other for Arabs. European donors have recoiled from the proposal, in part because they are concerned that funding the new roads will breach July's International Court of Justice ruling against support for construction of the barrier. The court said it should be torn down because it breaches the Geneva conventions. But diplomats say the US may be more willing to pay, given Washington's tacit endorsement of the barrier and support for Ariel Sharon's latest plan to expand West Bank settlements while withdrawing settlers from Gaza.

Top-level talks open on Kashmir

The decision on the fate of Kashmir should be made by the people of Kashmir, but neither of the sides is ready to this, and it´s hard to believe that any lasting solution can be made which is made solely by the leaders of Pakistan and India and which hasn´t the support of the local population.

And the reason why the populace are not given a chance to make a choice of their own is that according to gallups, given chance the majority would choose independence and thus both India and Pakistan would lose and neither is ready for it. After all, they have fought 56 years for the control of Kashmir and then to lose all is too hard for them to swallow.

It's too easy to blame bin Laden
Heads of security services and governments around the world have something in common with Osama bin Laden. They all stand to benefit from exaggerating the capabilities of al-Qaeda

And so myth is born.

Of course no one can really say how much real influence Osama bin Laden can have nowadays on the things that a put in the name of Al-Qaida or whether the man is really alive anymore. But as a myth of evil and as an image of a man who has courage to stand against the U.S., the former in places like Washington D.C., U.S., and the latter in places like Kano, Nigeria, he has a tremendous influence.

East Timor, the world's youngest country.

Analysis: The hostage-takers

Monsters beget by Russian brutality or imported ones?

Occupational hazards

Siege school yields more bodies

322 bodies, 155 of them those of children, have been found from the ruins of the school.

Bush leads way on campaign trail. More.

Four more years of the rule of the "Strong Leader". Why do the American Republicans sound like North Koreans when they praise their candidate?

Answer:Personality cult. They have built their campaign on personality, not on issues.

Kerry and his advisers can blaim only themselves, presenting Kerry as a lite-Bush, like Al Gore tried to do in 2000.

Of course the numbers will change and the victory of the mentally challenged one will be probably far less than 11%, but still it seems certain that the majority of the American voters will commit a crime against humanity come November and the American presidential elections.

Lot of whining in the style "How could the Chechens commit such an atrocity" in the Western media.

These idiots asking these questions seem uncapable of understanding, that the wars in Chechnya have caused the death of 100 000 human beings. They should ask, "How can the Russians commit such an atrocities, year after year after year after year?"

But they don´t.

And so they wonder, how can hundreds of children be taken captives, "What kind of people can do this kind of thing?" and they don´t give any attention to the fact that Russian forces have killed thousands and thousands of Chechen children.

Alien microbes could survive crash-landing

Israel Has Long Spied on US, Say Officials

Huge death toll as the siege ends in battle. More. More.

I have to admit that I am pretty spectical about the Russian claims of who started the fighting, because the story now told gets the Russian leadership out of the hook magnificently; they can claim that they neither stormed the building not caring for the lives of the hundreds of people kept hostage and neither they give in for terrorism.

Terrible thing, but I never thought that this would end otherwise. And the future hostage takings will have the same kind of endings as long as Vladimir Putin rules Russia.

South Korea raises fears of Asian nuclear arms race. More.

South Korea has enriched ten times more uranium than Iran, still US State Department claims that South Korea´s actions are minor compared to those of Iran´s.

No One Is Winning in Chechnya

Putin might risk bloody end to school siege

The man has already sacrificed tens of thousands of innocent people. At some point he will use force. That´s certain. He will not let the Chechens to get away.

Putin is a "victim" of his own hardman image, which brought him victory in two elections. He simply can´t - even if he would want to - negotiate with the Chechens.

The execution of the 12 Nepalese workers in Iraq

Convicted Bali bomber spotted in Starbucks exchanging jokes with an Indonesian brigadier-general.

Astronomers deny ET signal report.

Quick action. That duck was shot down fast. Curious that it got as far as the New Scientist.

Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away

Sadly, likely not messages from an alien civilization, but...

By the way, there´s no reason that the signal should be coming from a planet. It can quite well come from transmitter positioned in space.

South Korean scientists in 'rogue' nuclear experiments.

Don't blame the gap in the wall
Increased security will not bring Israeli people the safety they crave

Because more than safety they want more and more and more land. And so, when they have to choose between peace and safety and violence and landgrabbing, most of them - 66% of Israeli Jews according to a poll last month - choose the latter.

Russian pupils held in armed siege

Warmongering Israeli goverment blaims Syria for suicide bombing.

Well, you can´t certainly blaim the Israeli leadership of not trying to make the Middle East a worser place to live for everyone.

Of course the USA, which has no independent foreign policy in the Middle East, politicians will echo their masters claims.

Need for carbon sink technologies

The spirit of Saddam

With his persecution of al-Jazeera, Allawi is missing a golden opportunity to send a message about freedom of expression in Iraq