Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Two planets the size of our own Neptune found by veteran planet finders.
Nobody should feel sorry for either the Israelis or the Russians. They have themselves willingly chosen the paths that causes these attacks and they can leave these paths any time they want. But they don´t want peace, not in any realistic terms. So, they and their supporters shut keep their f*cking mouths shut and don´t whine, because this is the result of their own actions, response for them. If an ordinary Russian or Israeli wants to know whose responsible to these attacks, they should look at the closest mirror. They can blame only themselves and the leaders they have themselves chosen.
This seems to be a day of bombs. 3 dead in Qalat, Pakistan, at least 8 dead in Moscow, Russia.
Straw 'Shocked' over Suicide Bombings

Of course, one can trust the hapless Mister Straw to come forth in a moment like this. After all, when Israelis do the killing in large quantities, Mister Straw declares that they have a right to kill and then, in a squeaky voice adds, that he just hopes that they would kill less civilians. And when some Palestinian group strikes back, Mister Straw comes forward to shed crocodile tears and claim his sorrow. Well, during the last three months, over 200 Palestinians have been killed by the Israelis, so Mister Straw shouldn´t be so f*cking surprised that some of from the aggressor side could be get killed too. It does happens even in colonial wars, you know.

The man is a disgrace, so no wonder that he is a member of the British cabinet, which often is nothing but a huge garbage pile of human waste.
12 Nepalese hostages murdered in Iraq?
Taking up peace, putting down arms
A nice overview of the Norman conquest from BBC. The difficulty of knowing what just exactly happened, for example during the battle of Hastings, comes nicely out.
Hamas strikes back and kills 15 people, new victims of not only Hamas, but also the current Israeli government. In the last four years Ariel Sharon has succesfully orchestrated a bloodbath that has caused the loss lives of at least 3200 Palestinians and almost 1000 Israelis.
The founder of the modern understanding of comets, Fred Whipple, has died at the age of 97.

Monday, August 30, 2004

Israeli Druze set to visit Syria
Palestinians 'resume prison fast'
East Timor marks breakaway vote
New Ebola outbreak may explain sudden gorilla disappearance

The kind of fatality that the researches think is possible would drive the subspecies to the brink of extinction; but as the Ebola virus kills it´s victims quickly - at least in humans - this seems rather farfetched.
March home to Palestine, urges Gandhi grandson Palestinian refugees.

The Moroccans used this tactic awfully in their occupation of northern Western Sahara in 1976, putting hundreds of thousands of people before their troops as they crossed the border. Why it couldn´t be used for the good? It would certainly put Israel between the rock and a hard place.

The late Edward Said weighs ideas and action; neocon Francis Fukuyama blasts Bush
Altered State

Edward Said probably believed too much about the power and role of the intellectual; but men like Francis Fukuyama show that even if an intellectual may lack the power to do good, he certainly doesn´t lack in the capability to muster his support for political adventures, which then may give legitimacy to these otherwise braindead ideas.

Fukuyama is one of those people who are ready to give their opinion in pretty much every matter and very often gets his facts wrong. Well, if he would be an ordinary man of the street, that would be his right, freedom of the speech and so on, but the problem is that when any a person of his standing opens his mouth and starts talking, lots of people believe that what he says must be true, because he wouldn´t be saying these things if they weren´t.

I loathe the very idea of "nation building". Nations are not build by other nations, they grow. The usual examples of "nation building" in the past and today are not, in my mind, conscious "nation building" as such; in most cases they are necessary action to keep a crumbling society to stand
and then slowly help it´s own people to mend it. Certainly new nation(s) would, given time, evolve on this society´s place, but much evil would have to come to be before that.

The celebrated cases of Germany and Japan after 1945 are not "nation building". The infrastructure and government of defeated nations were rebuild and the occupiers tried to adjust their governments and society in the process. Both were in the interest of the occupiers.

In Iraq an existing, if deeply flawed, society was destroyed, and ignorant bastards, blinded by ideology, then tried "nation building on the cheap", which came to resemble more, let´s say Bolshevik Russia after the revolution in 1917 than Germany or Japan after the Second World War. Existing society was destroyed by arms and by people driven by their ideology, which dictated that even working parts of the old regime should be taken down and destroyed.
No wonder that the neoconservatives are bastard ideological grandchildren of the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky(1879-1940).

Acid oceans spell doom for coral.

Gone by 2065?
Gandhi Urges Palestinians Not to Lose ‘Moral [High] Ground´

The problem with `Moral Ground´ is that as unavoidably as the Palestinians
have it - except in the eyes of the ignorant, the facistic and the plain crazy -
the world also sees Israel standing above the bodies of six million victims of
Nazis. And when you are a certified martyre, you get away with a lot of things,
and even `Moral High Ground´ does little to help your victims. And then we
have to remember, that those six million Jews too had the ´Moral High Ground´.
Sexed-up Reports, Pressure on the UN ... Here We Go Again
US Claims Over Iran's Nuclear Program Sound Eerily Familiar

US government believes that it can sell basically the same war over and over
again, at least to it´s own political elite and to a substantial part of their
population. The usual vassal states will follow their masters in to the fire.

Documents confirm US colluded in Indonesia’s 1969 incorporation of Papua

If there´s an injustice to be committed, certainly United States has to participate and make sure that the crooks get their way. In Papua about 200 000 people have died. A truly great chapter in the US foreign policy.
Vietnam monkey faces extinction, could die out in 12 years.

Friday, August 27, 2004

Reports of 18th century Romantic icon's suicide were 'greatly exaggerated'

Another romantic myth bites the dust.
Venus, the habitable planet?

Funny to think that maybe the pre- space age image of Venus as a jungle planet
WAS true, but just 2 billion years ago...
An 'October Surprise'? Neocons have Iran in their Sights. More.

If the USA government is ready to throw into a wastebasket the last
remains of US respectability in the Middle East with it´s own peace
plan only to keep Ariel Sharon in power, then certainly it´s ready to
sink itself deeper in to the quicksand that Middle East has become
to the US. A joint strike with the Chosen People Number One against
Iran will not be a surprise if the poll numbers aren´t good enough in
late October. After all, short-time survival is now what the Cheney
administration is after, for it´s pet monster in Tel Aviv and itself;
nothing else matters just now.

Don´t be surprised if by the end of the year US troops are fighting Iranian
troops in Najaf. And Iranians will have the support of the Iraqi Shias.
Fourteen Times the Earth
ESO HARPS Instrument Discovers Smallest Ever Extra-Solar Planet.

Facts about the system and the planet, whose finding was announced a day earlier.

Thursday, August 26, 2004

Now for the politics of last resort - impeach Tony Blair
Applying the Geneva Convention
New European Commission dedicated to free market offensive

I wouldn´t fret about the intentions of the little piggy of Portugal.
His rule in Portugal was a disaster and his party face certain defeat
in the next elections. I doubt his reign in Bryssels will be different.
After all, he is a compromise candidate, and he was chosen not because
he has powerful backers, but because no better candidate was acceptable
to the major EU factions.

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Gandhi grandson visits West Bank.

I remember what I once read about the Soweto massacre in South Africa in
1960: that peaceful, unarmed resistance may be morally a great thing, but
against armed soldiers, who are ready to shoot unarmed protestors it is
useless. The other side must honor some lawful and moral points if unarmed
resistance is to be succesful. If they just shoot you and the world looks
by, then unarmed resistance is futile.

And what comes to Mahatma Gandhi(1869-1948), one has to remember that
his unarmed and peaceful resistance to the British rule of India caused
the loss of life of large number of people in the Indian side, as the
British acted violently against peaceful protestors, which then in many cases
caused violent protests by the Indians, which the British then suppressed
by use of force, like in Amritsar in 1919.
Poetry to the people.

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

What kind of favor is Bush doing? And to whom?
Folly in the West Bank.

Britain in split with US on West Bank homes.

Israel expands settlement growth.

Either Israel withdraws completely from the West Bank or the Israeli
Jews accept a one-state solution. The Israeli plan to annex half of
the West Bank and dividing the rest into bantustans is so outrageous
that even that whatever US administration is in power will naturally
support if - being uncapable of acting otherwise - it will not succeed.
Israel is not alone in the world with the USA.

Monday, August 23, 2004

US deal 'wrecks Middle East peace'. More.

Once again the US commits an act of utmost stupidity in the Middle East.
Probably this is all about of trying to get the Likud rebels to support
Ariel Sharon - the reasons that are given by that nameless EU diplomat
are, bluntly speaking, nonsense, considering that Israel is behind of
almost all violence today and that Israeli army has itself killed several
US citizens - and not seeing the wider picture how this will affect the
Middle East and US relations to Muslim countries and the whole world.

In my mind it is the utmost folly to do this kind of thing. It´s utterly
and totally wrong morally and legally, but it is also stupidity when one
considers the situation in Iraq, the very weak puppet government there,
and the position this drives the pro-US governments in Muslim countries.
One can claim that the US is doing a better job in toppling them than any
islamist milititant movement...

The US government is doing Osama bin Laden´s publicity for him. The best
PR campaign he could ever buy.

Sunday, August 22, 2004

A new legal reality for the fence.
Dalai Lama may not return in this life.
The Lessons of Najaf.

The lesson of Najaf? That puppet governments can´t use foreign military
power to crush their opponents if they want to cling to power.

Yes, the American military can make rubble out of Najaf. But Allawi´s
cabinet of collaborators would go with the holy city.

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Five new moons for planet Neptune

Relatively big, 30-50 kilometers in diameter, compared to the very small moons that has been found around the gas planets during the last years.
Antarctic craters reveal asteroid strike

Multiple craters created by an asteroid that broke up in the Earth´s atmosphere 780 000 years ago.

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Sharon rips up 'road-map' with plan for 1,001 new settler homes. More.
Massacre mars gains in Burundi.
Was the credibility of liberal civilization worth the suicide of liberal civilization?

History is full of futile wars, but the world we know wouldn´t
exist without them. How many of us would exist without the Great
War? I wouldn´t; but someone else would. We have to remember,
that not only has uncountable number of people must to have lived
to produce us, so has uncountable number of people must to have
died to produce us. If they wouldn´t have died, we wouldn´t exist.
But as I wrote above, some other people would.
Here´s the article about Wole Soyinka that I referred to yesterday.

I think that foremost all of us must be human beings and only
secondarily members of different ethnical, linguistic, religious,
political and regional groups.
Historians work to set record straight on Cuba's Taino Indians.
As the colonialists continue to commit murders in Palestine
- 9 in the last 24 hours - one of their lies is exposed.

The reason for the attack against the Hamas leader? Maybe this:

Report: Egypt struck deal with Hamas, Jihad on Gaza.

The fact probably is, that the killings in Palestine continue as
long that other countries continue their soft approach towards
the atrocities made in the name of Israel. In the best Christian
manner, I hope that the Israeli Jews got exactly the same fate
as they want to the Palestinians. After all, without Christian
support they wouldn´t be able to continue their crimes. And crimes
they are and no past crimes against Jews can make it otherwise,
even if simple minds believe that the Jewish past whitewashes
today´s Israeli crimes.

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Trotskyite view of the result of the Venezuelan referendum.
I had a rather negative view of Hugo Chavez before the 2002 coup.
As the Venezuelan opposition has time and again showed it´s idiocy
and unwillingness to act democratically, my view of Chavez has
changed. He may be authoritarian at times, but the Venezuelan
opposition seems blantly to be a worser choice than him today. As
the former coup leader has been changed to democratic leader, the
formerly democratic Venezuelan opposition is ready to use any
means possible to depose him and gain power again. Even now they
aren´t ready to accept their defeat and start getting themselves
ready for the 2006 presidential elections. And frankly, with their
shenanigans they seem to be doing excellent work of getting Chavez
re-elected. And what next? Well, the opposition has tried everything
else except assasination and foreign troops. Maybe they try them next.
Why American Jews stand strongly with Israel.

Past is always a bad excuse to support today´s oppressive regimes.
Sometime ago I read how Wole Soyinka, the Nobel prize winning
Nigerian author, was attacked (verbally) by many other Africans
in the days of Idi Amin´s reign in Uganda because Sole Woyinka wanted
Idi Amin´s regime to be overthrown and campaigned for it, where
many others thought that as bad as Idi Amin´s reign was, he should
be supported because of the same reasons basically that Foxman
here supports Israel: Africans should stand together and past
colonial atrocities give legitimacy to Idi Amin´s actions etc.
Same kind of blindness today causes many African leaders still
to support Robert Mugabe´s disastrous rule in Zimbabwe. They
too give more weight to the past than to today.

Bitter-Lemons main articles are about water, one of the usually
forgotten reasons for the conflict in Palestine.
How Old is the Milky Way ?
VLT Observations of Beryllium in Two Old Stars Clock the Beginnings. More.
Ice yields ancient 'plant matter'.
The Ultimate Stupidity.
The Attack on Najaf.
Cassini finds new Saturn moons.
Observers endorse Venezuela vote.
Muslim vote and Bush converts.

Monday, August 16, 2004

Unlocking the Mayan mystery.
Why He Crushed the Oligarchs.
The Importance of Hugo Chávez.
President Hugo Chavez wins the recall vote in Venezuela. More.
In Zimbabwe, where 360,000 need antiretroviral drugs, virtually the only ones who get them are the 5,000 who can afford them.
Robots get go-ahead to save Hubble.

Hubble has been and still is a fantastic instrument, but with the price of this robot flight NASA could build several successors to Hubble. And considering how difficult the mission would be, it could quite possibly fail. Far better would option would be to built a true successor for Hubble, that would study, like Hubble, optical and ultraviolet light - those wavelengths that the James Webb Space Telescope nor other coming space telescopes wouldn´t.
The purple heart of a campaign.
Kerry is playing into Bush's hands with his pseudo-military posturing.
Germany admits Namibia genocide.
Mideast peace promoters sharply criticise Bush administration.
Czeslaw Milosz(1911-2004) died couple of days ago.

He was a great poet, but I could read him only in small doses.
Not because he would have been a "difficult poet" which he wasn´t,
but his poems were rather heavy to read. Heavy with meaning.

Here´s one of his obituaries, from New York Times, which,
in a typically American fashion, gives too much place for
his anti-Communism and too little place for his art. After
all, it will be his art for which he will be remembered,
not his political opinions.

Saturday, August 14, 2004

Friday, August 13, 2004

Israel ploughs on with huge settlement construction.

The fantasyland of modern fascists continue to enlarge it´s lebensraum.
The local leading newspaper in my home area supports fanatically Israel
both in it´s editorials, columns and news and at the same time it´s
reporters write, blatantly distorting history, that we should be grateful
for Nazi Germany for our independence. It just shows that you can have
it both ways.
The crown prince of Singapore, the capitalist North Korea, ascends to the throne.

America's dictator problem in Uzbekistan.

The writer forgets one of the usual stages in the USA`s support of
dictatorships: The replacement of a ruler with an another, which
the US hopes will be a more to it´s taste and will do the reforms
that US declares it wants. But I don´t think that Islam Karimov
should fear for this - after all, he has the support of Russia as a kind
of life-insurance, if the Americans began to seek his replacement.

Interesting question is, is Mohammed Dahlan the USA´s choice for
a replacement ruler in Palestine? Would he do the USA´s bidding
and meekly surrender to the demands of the colonialists?

Thursday, August 12, 2004

Arafat and the Palestinian question.

George Walker Bush and John Kerry are more likely to put a bullet
to their head than to force Israel to withdraw all of West Bank. And
Israeli leadership knows this.

The other participants in the "quartet" are either paralyzed by
internal strife and lack of spine like the EU, or float indefferently
on in the stream that is USA`s policy in Palestine.

Only continued, serious losses of boths soldiers and settlers in the West
Bank or trade embargo would force the citizens of Israel, if not the
leadership, to accept that Israel needs to end the occupation of the
whole of West Bank, after which the leadership might follow them.
Revenge as poetry and poetry as revenge.

The bad name of the Umayyd dynasty(661-750, 756-1031 in Iberian
peninsula) comes from a very simple fact: They lost. And the history
was written by the victors. The written works that have come to us
from the Umayyd dynasty of 661-750 have dubious legitimacy - they
may be fakes written by the supportes of the Abbasid caliphate
(750-1258, after the Mongol invasion they lived in Egypt as the puppets
of the rulers of Egypt until 1517, when the Ottomans destroyed the
Mameluk Empire in Egypt and Syria).

This is very typical; one has to remember China, where because of the
Mandate of Heaven every succesful founder of dynasty had to be
described by as a great hero and last ruler of every dynasty was a
monster, or at best a weak ruler, who was justifiably overthrown.
And the first things a new dynasty did was to start the writing of the
official history of the preceding dynasty: From the hero to the monster.
Corals adapt to cope with global warming

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Japanese deploy solar sails.

We live in the happiest, healthiest and most peaceful era in human history. And it will not last long.

Behind every failed civilization in the history of humanity there are a group
of people who told the elite to the last that everything was going splendid
and they had nothing to worry about. Today the people of the industrial
nations are the elite, and like the elite of so many human civilizations,
they are taking with them the people who have no choice in the matter
- in fact, of many don´t even know about it.

Before, the were a variety of human civilizations, each geographically
limited. If one or two fell, it had effect on the nearest civilizations, but
the failure of these civilizations had no effect on humanity on global scale.
Now, of course, we only have one, global civilization. And if this falls
because group of optimistic idiots assure the majority of today´s elite
that they have nothing to worry about, then it´s more likely than not
that ours will be the last human civilization.

Sunday, August 08, 2004

Friday, August 06, 2004

Ghosts of the civil war

The past has to be faced. It´s not going to go away.
White rhino numbers are 'halved'

People who participate in attacks like these and those people who
buy from them remains of the animals should all be given their own
personal taste of extinction: They should all be sterilized. And
sentenced for life imprisonment.

Could astronauts sleep their way to the stars?


Not to the stars, but maybe to Mars?

Iraqi survey claims 37,000 Iraqi civilians killed in first seven months of war.

If this would be true, the Iraqi casualties to this day could be as high as 100 000.

Thursday, August 05, 2004

``Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we,'' Bush said. ``They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.''

New 'Bushism' Born at Bill Signing(AP), 05.08.2004.
Geologically recent vulcanic activity on Mars.

Pics of Olympos Mons from Mars Express.

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Archaeopteryx could fly, says a new study. More.
Where is Osama bin Laden?

If it wouldn´t that tape from spring - on which the speaker´s voice
is genuinely his voice, according to experts - I would bet he has been
long dead. But the fact is, that maybe except the US Republicans who
believe that he would be the ace card to seal George the Simple´s
re-election, nobody needs him, dead or alive. Not the new generation of
Islamic terrorists - to whom he probably is best hidden, not captured,
dead (they would proclaim him martyre, but to US his death would be
a victory, and in a reality, a blow to the Islamic terrorism), nor openly
in action, bossing them; not current leaders of Aghanistan or Pakistan,
not those in the US who want to use the "war against terror" to mould
the Middle East to their liking and strenghten USA´s world hegemony.
If bin Laden would be captured, there would be calls in US for "return
to normalcy", and when political pundits are speaking of a war for
American values, one that will last for generations, they certainly don´t
want to see their favourite villain and target to be removed to the pages
of history books. Every enemy needs a face, and Osama bin Laden is now
the face of the enemy, easily recognisable.

Martyrs, Virgins and Grapes


If new interpretations of religious texts by scholars - backed by
by archeological and other finds - would move people away from
fundamentalism, then we wouldn´t have literally hundreds of millions
of Christians whose basic religious beliefs are fundamentalistic.
Some of them are quite harmless, some of them are not.

One should understand that the violent strain of fundamentalism in
Muslim countries has it´s roots more in the problems of modern world
and not in Quran. Like from the Bible, also from the Quran pretty much
everybody can find backing for their personal beliefs, whatever they may
be - that´s why they are still being read. In our time, as political movements
have lost much of their appeal, religion attracts now people that would have
fought, killed and died under different flags thirty or fifty years ago.

Fundamentalism has always been with humanity, since the birth of religion,
and as long as we have religions, it will be with us. It depends on the
circumstances in societies whether it can flourish or whether it withers.
Seems that US wasn´t so much interested about re-building Iraq´seconomy than boosting US companies´ economy with Iraqi money.
Celebrating the annus mirabilis of physics by destroying the view of astronomers?

Monday, August 02, 2004

First end the conflict


What one could add to this? Not much. Very good thing is Alpher´s
understanding that violence can´t just be switched on and off just
like that - what many Americans and Israelis don´t seem to comprehend.
After a peace agreement is achieved and then put on effect, violence
will diminish and then slowly, through several years, slowly fade away.
This is not understood when calls are made to the Palestinians -
curiously many forget to made these to the state of Israel, which
now does over 90% of the killing - to stop the violence as a requirement
for negotiations to start (or not). A lone person can then derail chance
of negotiations, like happened last autumn.
The mess that is Iraq.
Manned lunar exploration "cheaper, faster" -style?

An intriguing idea, which I would like to see come true - but of course nothing will come out of it.
The mask of altruism disguising a colonial war.
Oil will be the driving factor for military intervention in Sudan.

If there has to be a "military intervention" in Darfur, it should be by
the African Union troops. Not by westerners, except in a back-up role,
giving strength to the mission that it might otherwise lack. The wars
in Sudan, which have totally local reasons, natural resources, fight for
arable land etc, would then not be mixed up with the holy war the
western fanatics are fighting with their muslim brethren. The people
of Sudan shouldn´t be drawn in to this global conflict.

The government in Khartoum deserves to fall. The problem is, that no one
is ready nor willing to participate in "nation building" in Sudan - the biggest
country in Africa - after Iraq. Khartoum government would probably fall
easily - but after that, what?