More about 2003 UB313.

Vatican in terror dispute with Israel

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The Vatican's stinging rebuke came after Israel demanded to know why the Pope did not refer to a Palestinian suicide bombing in remarks he made on Sunday condemning terrorist attacks in London and Sharm el-Sheikh. In a 1,300-word communique, the Vatican said: "It has not always been possible to follow every attack against Israel with a public declaration of condemnation." It said one reason for this was that "the attacks on Israel were sometimes followed by immediate Israeli reactions not always compatible with the norms of international law ... It would thus be impossible to condemn the [terrorist operations] and pass over the [Israeli retaliation] in silence". The statement also expressed irritation with the reaction of the Israeli government to the Pope's original comments and said it was not prepared to "take lessons or instructions from any other authority on the content and direction of its own statements".

I have had my doubts about the new pope, but he seems to have something many other world leaders lack:Spine and courage.

Another day, another big object beyond Pluto. And this time the finders call it a planet, about one and a half times the size of Pluto, which makes it´s diameter about 3400 kilometers. It´s orbit lays beyond what is now though to be the boundary of the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt. It´s currently 97 AU(1 AU = 149,7 million kilometers) from the Sun, never coming closer than a 67 AU. More.

All 4 suspected bombers of July 21st failed suicide bombings in London have been now arrested, alive and well. Innocent bystanders are shot 8 times in the head, real terrorists are taken alive by using a taser.

New world found in outer solar system

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Astronomical detective work led to the stunning discovery of a large new world beyond Pluto – and hiding in plain sight. The object could be the biggest in the Kuiper belt of rocky objects that orbit the outer reaches of the solar system. The first data made public about the object suggested the object could be up to twice the size of Pluto, but newly revealed observations indicate the object is about 70% Pluto's diameter... Estimates of the object's brightness... suggested the object could be as large as twice Pluto's diameter if it was relatively non-reflective object. In the hours since, another team of astronomers revealed independent data on the object taken with some of the world's most powerful telescopes. They give the object's size at about 70% Pluto's diameter, in line with estimates for a relatively reflective object in the first MPC notice. They say also say the object is orbited by a tiny moon... The MPC reports the object is about 51 Astronomical Units from the Sun - 1 AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Its orbit brings it comes as close to the Sun as 35 AU, while Pluto maintains an average distance of about 39 AU. ...plane of the object's orbit... is tilted by 28° with respect to the orbital plane of most planets, where surveys tend to scan the skies for Near Earth Objects.

A moon for 2003 EL61? (K40506A is another, unofficial name for 2003 EL61.)

NASA grounds space shuttle fleet after near-disaster in Discovery launch

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NASA is capable of technological marvels, as in the Deep Impact probe which deliberately struck the comet Tempel 1 on July 4, a feat that has been compared to hitting a bullet with another bullet (although actually much more difficult than that). But the space shuttle program is a technological nightmare, with electronics and engineering that were cutting-edge in the 1970s now preserved in an almost fossilized form in 2005. While the US military employs the most modern technologies for the deeply reactionary purposes of American imperialism—destroying human lives and the infrastructure of civilization—the resources devoted to manned space exploration are pathetically inadequate. There are 2.5 million parts in the shuttle, most of them based on specifications of 30 years ago, when the space shuttles were built. (Discovery is a relative youngster at 21 years old). Until the Columbia disaster, NASA still had some computers running with Intel 8086 microprocessors, the first ever used in PCs, which run about 300 times slower than today’s best computer chips. Wiring, bolts and other metal parts are replaced as they wear out, but some date back to the original construction. According to one press account, some electronic components contain transistors hand-soldered into circuit boards, a method of assembly that would be laughed out of any modern factory. According to another, NASA engineers “are sometimes reduced to hunting for obsolete hardware and electronics on eBay.”The new NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, made a revealing comparison, likening the space shuttle to a clipper ship—i.e., a once brilliant but now completely outmoded technology.

Big Trans-Neptunian Object(TNO), 2003 EL61, found beyond Pluto in the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt. It´s either a bright asteroid/huge comet - these denizens of the solar system´s edge are difficult things to describe in a way that wouldn´t create wrong impressions - or possibly a planet bigger than Pluto itself, if it´s dim enough. Some objects found from the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt have been previously thought to be bigger than they really are, because they have been found out to be brighter than expected.

Foam 'might have struck shuttle'

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Nasa officials have said they now believe at least one shard of protective foam might have hit a wing of the Discovery space shuttle. But they said they were confident the craft would make a safe return.

As was to be expected, Nasa has grounded the space shuttle fleet indefinetely until the problem with the heat tiles is solved. And as there seems to be no easy solution, Nasa can only either forsake this decision, somehow find a way to solve the problem or move the orbiters to museums.

Discovery in possible heat tile trouble. Is the end of the US manned spaceflight at hand?

If there really is damage, the crew is safe if they just stuck on staying at the ISS and waiting for the Soyuz crafts to bring them down two at a time.

But even if there is not serious damage, the decision to launch the shuttle again will be hard to make as no one knows what will happen the next time and the whole heat tile arrangement has been proved very fragile to damage.

Justified Murder: Don't Ever Become a Terror Suspect!
(As if You Have a Choice)

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And the Western press, especially in the United States, has completely accepted this sense of justified colonial preemptive slaughter of civilians. For example, the Western press is quick to recognize every violation of a cease fire by Hamas, but a prior shooting of Palestinians by Israeli forces is not seen as a violation. Why? Because the Israelis are shooting “terror suspects,” even if they are teenagers out for an evening walk. Similarly, when American troops kill Iraqis who wander too close to an American convoy, that too is viewed as a justified killing of “terror suspects.” The foreign occupier, in this system, is protected by his own set of quaint laws and military logic, and it is the hapless native civilian who is the perpetual “terror suspect.” ...The flaw in this technique, of course, is that it will do exactly to this war on terror that it did to violent colonialism – it will lead to a continued escalation of bloodshed marked by short periods of respite, used for recuperation and rearmament... History is chock full of examples where brutal and prejudicial anti-terror policies have done more to propel the cause of terrorism than to quell it. The only real way of defeating terrorism is to take away the political agenda of the terrorists – to deny them any reasonable grievance whatsoever. The reason why the West was largely successful in defeating terrorists such as the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof group or the Symbionese Liberation Army is precisely because their grievances failed to find a sympathetic ear among any sizeable section of their community. But it is exactly these successes that have blinded some thinkers in the West to the inherent flaws in their approach to anti-colonial terrorists, who actually do have a political platform of genuine grievances. The West is also quick to follow Israel’s lead in its “successes” against terrorism but, again, they fail to realize that Israel is fighting a war of occupation, aimed at converting large expanses of Arab territories into sovereign Israeli land. Any number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli war can be justified as a necessary part of the politicide of the Arab masses, which coincides with the Israeli need for security.

It is curious to read the excuses made by current and former British police commanders about the "shoot to kill" -policy. Basically they are claiming that "Israel told us to do it" and then they continue bragging about Israeli expertise in fighting against "terrorism". I doubt that these are the kind of claims that will make British Muslims to trust the police. It´s more of a case making a bad situation worse.

Pervez Musharraf, dictator of Pakistan, tells a joke.

Police gun down worker in London subway: another tragic consequence of Blair’s war policy

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The public state execution of Jean Charles de Menezes in a London subway carriage on July 22 marks a watershed. England, the country of the Magna Carta, is now one in which innocent civilians can be shot dead on the capital’s streets at the discretion of the police, without any explanation, much less justification, and with the only outcome being a brief statement of regret... Not only did Menezes have no connection with the terror attacks, police had no grounds to suspect that he might be involved in such crimes, or any others, for that matter. That he was seen leaving a house that had been placed under police surveillance wearing “suspicious” clothes was enough for police to act as judge, jury and executioner.... The overwhelming majority of British people opposed the war against Iraq precisely because its catastrophic implications could be foreseen. There was no end of warnings that the resulting destabilisation of the Middle East would increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks in major metropolitan areas and the imposition of greater security measures, with dangerous implications for civil liberties.

Baghdad truck bomb kills 40

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A suicide truck bomber struck today outside a police station in Baghdad, killing at least 40 people, the US military said. Television pictures showed a deep crater in the road outside the Rashad police station in the New Baghdad neighbourhood in the east of the capital, as ambulances and fire fighters attended the scene. Iraqi police sources had earlier put the death toll at 22. IIn a statement, the US military said a flat-bed truck loaded with 500 lbs (220 kilos) of explosives blew up at the front gate of the police station. It said 25 people were wounded in the explosion, which destroyed a dozen vehicles. More than 200 people have died in the past 10 days in an series of suicide car bomb attacks in and near the capital.

The bomb attacks in Egypt´s Sharm el-Sheikh turn out to be the biggest terrorist made massacre outside Iraq since the Madrid bombings. 88 dead and the toll will likely climb.

The man that the British police officer murdered in the London tube station yesterday was innocent. He was not connected to the bombings in any way. And even now, after this, representatives of the British government and police forces are not ready to accept that police officers can´t just go on and kill people based on a hunch. More.

As the new car bomb attacks in Egypt´s Sharm el-Sheikh show, "the war against terrorism" is going on splendidly - for the terrorists. 49 dead people and aproximately 200 others wounded this time. More.

Iraq: Bush's Islamic Republic

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On June 4, Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, attended the inauguration of the Kurdistan National Assembly in Erbil, northern Iraq. Talabani, a Kurd, is not only the first-ever democratically elected head of state in Iraq, but in a country that traces its history back to the Garden of Eden, he is, as one friend observed, "the first freely chosen leader of this land since Adam was here alone." While Kurds are enormously proud of his accomplishment, the flag of Iraq—the country Talabani heads—was noticeably absent from the inauguration ceremony, nor can it be found anyplace in Erbil, a city of one million that is the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan Region. Ann Bodine, the head of the American embassy office in Kirkuk, spoke at the ceremony, congratulating the newly minted parliamentarians, and affirming the US commitment to an Iraq that is, she said, "democratic, federal, pluralistic, and united." The phrase evidently did not apply in Erbil. In their oath, the parliamentarians were asked to swear loyalty to the unity of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Many pointedly dropped the "of Iraq." The shortest speech was given by the head of the Iranian intelligence service in Erbil, a man known to the Kurds as Agha Panayi. Staring directly at Ms. Bodine, he said simply, "This is a great day. Throughout Iraq, the people we supported are in power." He did not add "Thank you, George Bush." The unstated was understood... War always has unintended consequences. Currently we are pursuing a strategy that will not end the insurgency but that plays directly into the hands of Iran. No wonder Agha Panayi, the Iranian intelligence official, was smiling.

British police officer murders terror suspect in a London tube station. More.

Whatever the excuses, "Oh, I a was afraid he was going to blow us all apart!" etc, this is a cold blooded murder. In the early 90´s in Germany police officers took the law to their own hands in the same way and shot a member of the terrorist group The Red Army that they had aprehended. The German interior minister had to resign because of this.

A truce or a fig leaf?

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As far as Israel is concerned, it did not really care about the truce but did not mind it either. Israel never wanted to be a party to any discussion leading to a truce that would tie its hands. It considered the matter a purely internal Palestinian affair, because the media had already saturated the airwaves with the notion that any violence was solely the responsibility of the Palestinians. A truce, therefore, was only required from them. The Israelis also wanted the truce to delegitimize any Palestinian opposition, not only to the deepening occupation, but also to any Israeli plans for further expansion and colonisation. The truce, which Israel never recognized and never promised to observe -- a promise which it strictly kept -- was needed to give it the time to complete its plans of annexation, the creation of new facts on the ground, and the consolidation of its war gains. In simple terms, the truce gave Israel freedom of action at no cost, and certainly at no risk... On that basis, and with full impunity, Israel continued, under the truce, to chase and arrest Palestinians and kill them if they tried to escape arrest, it continued to build settlements on stolen land, to demolish Palestinian houses in Jerusalem to pave the ground for Jewish-themed recreation parks, and to build the apartheid wall. None of these Israeli actions were ever treated as violations by supporters of the truce. Last week, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer sharply rebuked the Palestinians and warned them that they would never get their independent state until they "end violence and terrorism." In contrast, he said he "expressed our concerns to the Israelis about the wall, about the route of the wall and the humanitarian consequences, as well as the settlement activities." The Israelis know that such weak and measly statements from EU officials are utterly devoid of force and are only designed to cover up EU inaction and collusion in front of Arabs and others who still believe that the EU has a Middle East policy independent.

I became very agitated after I read in a newspaper about Fischer´s comments. He acted like a spineless coward who allies himself with bullies because he himself is afraid of them, and proved himself to be in this equal to United Kingdom´s hapless Mr Straw, who declares that he´s "shocked" when Palestinians kill Israelis, but when Israelis kill Palestinians, he declares that "I have always supported Israel´s right to defend itself" and then pleads the Israelis to kill less civilians, if they would be so kind. Of course, Javier Solana has been also making these same kind of comments. Weak and whiny protests of Israel´s landgrabs and threats towards the Palestinians. One would think, based just on these examples, that it´s Israel who has 400 million inhabitans and EU 6,8 million.

Luckily for Londoners, "First time a tragedy, second time a farce" proved right in yesterday´s copycat bomb attempts.

Mayor blames Middle East policy

Decades of British and American intervention in the oil-rich Middle East motivated the London bombers, Ken Livingstone has suggested.

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He replied: "I think you've just had 80 years of western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the western need for oil. "We've propped up unsavoury governments, we've overthrown ones we didn't consider sympathetic. "And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s... the Americans recruited and trained Osama Bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan. "They didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that he might turn on his creators." ...He argued: "If at the end of the First World War we had done what we promised the Arabs, which was to let them be free and have their own governments, and kept out of Arab affairs, and just bought their oil, rather than feeling we had to control the flow of oil, I suspect this wouldn't have arisen." He attacked double standards by Western nations, such as the initial welcome given when Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq. There was also the "running sore" of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict... He also denounced "those governments which use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy, as we have occasionally seen with the Israeli government bombing areas from which a terrorist group will have come, irrespective of the casualties it inflicts, women, children and men". He continued: "Under foreign occupation and denied the right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs, often denied the right to work for three generations, I suspect that if it had happened here in England, we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves."

British government to intensify the attack against civil liberties after the London bombings.

Weekend of slaughter propels Iraq towards all-out civil war

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IRAQ is slipping into all-out civil war, a Shia leader declared yesterday, as a devastating onslaught of suicide bombers slaughtered more than 150 people, most of them Shias, around the capital at the weekend. One bomber killed almost 100 people when he blew up a fuel tanker south of Baghdad, an attack aimed at snapping Shia patience and triggering the full-blown sectarian war that al-Qaeda has been trying to foment for almost two years... “What is truly happening, and what shall happen, is clear: a war against the Shias,” Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a prominent Shia cleric and MP, told the Iraqi parliament. Sheikh al-Saghir is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shia spiritual leader and moderate who has so far managed to restrain powerful Shia militias from undertaking any outright attack on Sunni insurgents. His warning suggests that the Shia leadership may be losing its grip over Shias who in private often call for an armed backlash against their Sunni assailants.

Profile of the US poet Gary Snyder, part of the Beat Generation of writers, which description really doesn´t make justice to his work. I don´t intend to denigrate the Beat Generation, I like a lot of their work, but Snyder is a poet whose work is far more universal. It´s imagery is usually quite local, but not really tied to any particular time or place more than that of the old Chinese or Japanese poets. It´s just a starting point.

Israel escalates attack on Palestinian towns

Why Marx is man of the moment

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The bourgeoisie has not died. But nor has Marx: his errors or unfulfilled prophecies about capitalism are eclipsed and transcended by the piercing accuracy with which he revealed the nature of the beast. 'Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones,' he wrote in The Communist Manifesto. Until quite recently most people in this country seemed to stay in the same job or institution throughout their working lives - but who does so now? As Marx put it: 'All that is solid melts into air.'

No two minute silences for them in Europe.

When it happens in UK, it´s a tragedy. When it happens in Iraq, it´s just more of the same.

I find these kind of comments about the London bombings curious to read. Certainly anyone with a little knowledge about the history of United Kingdom and the British Isles knows that Britons have been in the past - and surely will be in the future - quite ready to kill fellow Britons. The reasons just change.

It is an insult to the dead to deny the link with Iraq

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The first piece of disinformation long peddled by champions of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is that al-Qaida and its supporters have no demands that could possibly be met or negotiated over; that they are really motivated by a hatred of western freedoms and way of life; and that their Islamist ideology aims at global domination. The reality was neatly summed up this week in a radio exchange between the BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr, and its security correspondent, Frank Gardner, who was left disabled by an al-Qaida attack in Saudi Arabia last year. Was it the "very diversity, that melting pot aspect of London" that Islamist extremists found so offensive that they wanted to kill innocent civilians in Britain's capital, Marr wondered. "No, it's not that," replied Gardner briskly, who is better acquainted with al-Qaida thinking than most. "What they find offensive are the policies of western governments and specifically the presence of western troops in Muslim lands, notably Iraq and Afghanistan." The central goal of the al-Qaida-inspired campaign, as its statements have regularly spelled out, is the withdrawal of US and other western forces from the Arab and Muslim world, an end to support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and a halt to support for oil-lubricated despots throughout the region. Those are also goals that unite an overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere and give al-Qaida and its allies the chance to recruit and operate - in a way that their extreme religious conservatism or dreams of restoring the medieval caliphate never would. As even Osama bin Laden asked in his US election-timed video: if it was western freedom al-Qaida hated, "Why do we not strike Sweden?" ...The London bombers were to blame for attacks on civilians that are neither morally nor politically defensible. But the prime minister - who was warned by British intelligence of the risks in the run-up to the war - is also responsible for knowingly putting his own people at risk in the service of a foreign power

Israel continues it illegal wall building, now in East Jerusalem, trying to steal most of it.

Taking in London
Collateral Damage

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We don't know exactly how many, because apparently our politicians don't count civilian dead, or as they referred to the individual human lives destroyed and mutilated by this War: Collateral Damage. We suspect it to be in the high thousands, and some estimates put at above a hundred thousand dead Iraqis, killed by the "War on Terror". However many it is, it's a lot of Collateral Damage. And now, on Thursday, some civilians on "our side" of the "War on Terror" were killed. Not hundreds of thousands, not thousands, actually somewhere around 50, with several hundred more seriously injured. And you know what? I suspect we'll get to learn the names of every single Londoner killed on Thursday, because by the sounds of things, they are going to be counted very carefully. Because of course, by the standards of the Western protagonists of the "War on Terror", apparently Thursday's dead Londoners were not Collateral Damage. Being the actual target, rather than incidental targets is morally so much worse.

One year on: Governments have obligations to hold Israel to account

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Ultimately, if Israel continues to defy the international community, then there are several concrete steps available, ranging from expulsion of Israeli diplomats and halting existing negotiations (for example halting arms sales to Israel from the European Union) to stopping technical assistance so long as Israel continues to violate international law by building settlements and constructing the Wall. A further measure could include the EU suspending its Association Agreement with Israel on the grounds that Israel has persistently violated the human rights clause to the Agreement.

This will be extremely unlikely, Israel being both a sacred cow and source of terror to the Western governments, who seem to lose the little spine they have when it comes to Palestine. Of course they do lose their spine in the question of Chechnya etc, but everyone who knows what the world map looks like knows that the Western governments could tell to Israel what it can and what it can´t do. With Russia things are more complicated - you can´t just send troops to Grozny, but you could send them to the West Bank - but the current silence is still unacceptable. I find it odd that all these Christian leaders choose to become Pontius Pilatus when it comes to cases like the occupation and ethnic cleansing of what remains of Palestine or the still ongoing genocide in Chechnya.

The illegality of the Wall: One Year On

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One year ago on 9 July 2004, at the request of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an Advisory Opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Court made clear that the construction of the Wall and the settlements were illegal. The Advisory Opinion of the Court represents the most authoritative statement to date of the content and applicability of international law concerning Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. Last year, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed to complete the Wall by October 2005.

Suicide bomb theory after 'anxious passenger' report
Attacks could have been carried out by lone terrorist

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Police have been taking statements from survivors of the bus bombing who say they saw an "anxious looking" passenger rummaging inside a bag at his feet shortly before the blast. While detectives are attempting to establish whether the bus bomb, which was placed on either the floor or a seat, was detonated by a suicide bomber, they will not discount the possibility that it exploded prematurely. "It may have been a bomb that went off in transit," Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said... The fact that all the blasts ripped apart trains and a bus that had travelled though a tight area of the city, around King's Cross, has also prompted speculation that a small cell - and possibly a lone bomber - may have been to blame. A single terrorist would have been able to place bombs on both of the Circle line trains and, by doubling back or by alighting and walking to stations just a few hundred yards apart, place a third bomb on the Piccadilly line train. He or she could then have boarded the No 30 bus, where the final device exploded 56 minutes after the first tube blast.

The myth of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

London bombings: Inquiry so far

The destruction of our common past in Iraq.

Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed

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It's no use Blair telling us, "They will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear." They are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear." They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, out of his alliance with the United States, out of his adherence to Bush's policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush -- and Spain's subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives -- while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.It is easy for Blair to call yesterday's bombings "barbaric"' -- they were -- but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints. When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die it is "barbaric terrorism."

Terror Begats Terror
Bombs in the Underground

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Yet Blair defiantly stated, "It is important however that those engaged in terrorism realize that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. One wonders what kind of values have permitted the killings of 100,000 Iraqi civilians in the last just over two years? One wonders about the approximately 1 million Iraqis that were allowed to perish under the western-backed UN sanctions on Iraq from 1991 to 2003. Addressing further the British values, one wonders if these values condone the arbitrary detention of its citizens without charge? Do British values condone the incarceration of British nationals without charge in the gulags of its ally? Do British values condone the torture of its citizens by its ally? Do British values condone the commission of atrocities by its troops? ...The London bombings are terrorism and as such the actions are deplorable. But terrorism is terrorism no matter who is carrying it out. The numerous bombs, cruise missiles, cluster bombs, and napalm rained down on Iraqi civilians is no less terrorism and the horror and mayhem experienced by Iraqis no less than that experienced by Londoners. Western leaders who refuse to deplore and denounce the terrorism of the western world carry little moral dignity in condemning the London bombings.

Blowback Hits Britain
Londoners Pay Heavy Price for Blair's Deception

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Blair and Bush are on their high horses claiming the morality of "civilized nations" and denouncing the retaliation they have provoked as "barbarism." Their hypocrisy plays poorly in the world. Far more innocent Iraqi civilians, especially women and children, have been slaughtered than British and Americans. Why do Bush and Blair believe they should be praised for slaughtering civilians and only Muslims denounced? ...No more bluster and heroic talk from the two war criminals. The war is breeding terrorism and cannot be won. Only an even-handed diplomacy that breeds trust and ceases to rule Muslims with puppet governments can isolate and reduce terrorist acts. Muslims are not a few scattered Indian tribes with no place to hide who can be exterminated. America has no chance of imposing its will on the Muslim world. Muslims have their own will.

Tony Blair´s empty rhetoric. 38 people died because of his decision to participate in the invasion of Iraq and he just offers these old, bombastic declarations, instead of saying something like "I´m sorry. We failed. This is my fault."

The price of occupation

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Ever since 9/11, I have been arguing that the "war against terror" is immoral and counterproductive. It sanctions the use of state terror - bombing raids, torture, countless civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq - against Islamo-anarchists whose numbers are small, but whose reach is deadly. The solution then, as now, is political, not military. The British ruling elite understood this perfectly well in the case of Ireland. Security measures, anti-terror laws rushed through parliament, identity cards, a curtailment of civil liberties, will not solve the problem. If anything, they will push young Muslims in the direction of mindless violence. The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Just because these three wars are reported sporadically and mean little to the everyday lives of most Europeans does not mean the anger and bitterness they arouse in the Muslim world and its diaspora is insignificant. As long as western politicians wage their wars and their colleagues in the Muslim world watch in silence, young people will be attracted to the groups who carry out random acts of revenge.

38 dead in London blasts

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A series of explosions ripped through London today as suspected terrorist attacks on tube trains and a bus killed at least 38 people and plunged the capital into chaos. The Metropolitan police confirmed 35 deaths in the three tube blasts, and two further fatalities on a double-decker bus gutted by a bomb. Another person died later in hospital. The London ambulance service said it had treated 45 people with serious or critical injuries, including burns and amputations, and another 300 people with minor injuries. London hospitals reported treating hundreds of wounded. Police said the overall number of wounded was as high as 700.

How could we have forgotten that this was always going to happen?

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It is unlikely that London will claim to have been transformed in an instant, to have lost its innocence in the course of a morning. It is hard to knock a huge city like this off its course. It has survived many attacks in the past. But once we have counted up our dead, and the numbness turns to anger and grief, we will see that our lives here will be difficult. We have been savagely woken from a pleasant dream. The city will not recover Wednesday's confidence and joy in a very long time. Who will want to travel on the tube, once it has been cleared? How will we sit at our ease in a restaurant, cinema or theatre? And we will face again that deal we must constantly make and remake with the state - how much power must we grant Leviathan, how much freedom will we be asked to trade for our security?

“Blair placed this city in the firing line”

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The bomb blasts were grimly predictable. Indeed, they had been widely and repeatedly predicted--not least by rank-and-file Londoners, who knew that by taking Britain into Iraq side-by-side with the U.S., Tony Blair had placed their city in the firing line. As I write, the wreckage is being cleared and the casualties counted. But Blair has already appeared on television to address the nation, pledging to defend “our values” and “our way of life” against those who would “impose extremism on the world.” He spoke of the unity of “civilized nations” in resisting “terrorism.” While the delivery may be slicker, his “us vs. them” worldview was indistinguishable from Bush’s. Even by Blair’s standards, it was a performance of nauseating hypocrisy, as he sought to seize the moral high ground in relation to violence and destruction that he himself helped unleash.

Al-Qaeda shadow looms over London

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As London reels from a co-ordinated bomb attack on its transport system, questions are quickly being asked about possible connections to the wave of violence launched by al-Qaeda around the world in recent years. If a connection is established, it would show that the group is alive and well despite being the main target of US-led global "war on terror" and the attentions of police and security forces throughout the world... It has for some time been almost a commonplace to say that Britain was "due" an al-Qaeda strike like that on Madrid. Britain's unflinching support for the Bush administration's foreign policies, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, make it an obvious target for al-Qaeda.

Tony Blair´s dream has come true in London. The bastard went to fight terrorism in Iraq and brought it back home. He has caused this with his own decisions and actions and still continues to repeat the same crap as always. Al-Qaida has claimed responsibility. More.

Deep Impact stories:

XMM-Newton detects water on Tempel 1

Hubble captures Deep Impact collision with comet

Comet collision to shine new light on stars

European Southern Observatory´s page for Deep Impact studies.

Deep Impact impactor to strike comet Tempel today.

"New Iraq" seems to be much like "Old Iraq". The difference is, that the people oppressed under the old regime have just become the new torturers. The old story, once again. More.