Burma rebuilding risks Pagan jewel

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The sunsets are still spectacular - a golden glow brushing the curves of 2,000 ancient temples and pagodas clustered on the edge of the Irrawaddy River in central Burma. But today some of the world's leading experts have accused Burma's military regime of waging "archaeological blitzkrieg" against the legendary Buddhist treasures of Pagan. "They're ruining it," said Richard Engelhardt, regional advisor for the UN's cultural arm, Unesco. ...almost everywhere I saw signs of the "false" and "misguided" restoration work which Unesco and other experts have so bitterly condemned.

Khartoum facing war crimes probe

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The International Criminal Court at The Hague is to launch an inquiry into alleged war crimes in the Darfur region of western Sudan. The court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, is expected to announce on Monday the details of what will be the ICC's biggest ever investigation. A special United Nations inquiry has given the ICC the names of 51 potential suspects, a BBC correspondent says. The UN says about 180,000 people have died in the two-year Darfur conflict. It says more than two million people have been forced to leave their homes in the region.

The breakthrough that wasn't

Claims of a breaktrough in deciphering the Oxyrhynchus Papyri were "somewhat" exaggerated.

Seymour M Hersh - from My Lai to Abu Ghraib

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My Lai told us that the we don’t fight wars any better than the “nips” and the “krauts”. Nobody fights wars well — it’s always brutal and it always involves a lot of abuses. These things happen in war, and to think otherwise is madness. So we in the US are always naive. We thought we could do it better. And what’s pernicious about Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan is that, as bad as we think it is, the whole story isn’t out yet. It’s even worse. The American people are gradually getting into this. But John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, refused or wasn’t willing to deal with the war. When people ask me what I think of Kerry not bringing up Abu Ghraib, I always have a pat answer, “You’ve got to admire his brilliance in not dealing with the war, because now he’s president, which shows he was right!” The only shot Kerry had was to make the war an issue — and he didn’t do it.

The failed siege of Fallujah

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After two devastating sieges of Fallujah in April and November of 2004, which left thousands of Iraqis dead and hundreds of thousands without homes, the aftermath of the US attempt to rid the city of resistance fighters in an effort to improve security in the country continues to plague the residents of Fallujah, and Iraq as a whole. Simmering anger grows with time among Fallujans who, after having most of their city destroyed by the US military onslaught, have seen promises of rebuilding by both the US military and Iraqi government remain mostly unfulfilled... Thus, rather than improving security and stability in Fallujah and Iraq, the siege of Fallujah has accomplished nothing more than devastating the city and spreading the Iraqi resistance into other cities, such as Qaim, Beji, Baquba, Mosul, Ramadi, Latifiya and many areas of Baghdad. It could easily be argued now that the siege of Fallujah accomplished the exact opposite of its stated goals - rather than bringing increased security and stability, it has inflamed tempers, deepened sectarian rifts and spurred the Iraqi resistance into levels of attack rarely seen prior to the siege.

4032 Palestinians have been killed and 44666 injured by Israeli troops and settlers in the occupied areas of Gaza and West Bank since 29.09.2000.

Jerusalem orders Palestinian homes to be razed

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Jerusalem's city council has ordered one of the largest mass demolitions in the city's recent history, with plans to raze the homes of about 1,000 Palestinians in a neighbourhood claimed by Jewish settlers. The council says about 90 buildings served with demolition orders were built illegally over the last three decades on a site of religious and archaeological value just outside the Old City walls, and that they are being destroyed to restore the area as a national park. But Israeli human rights campaigners say the real intent is to forcibly remove Palestinians from an area, Silwan, that is an important link in the government's plan to encircle Arab East Jerusalem with Jewish settlements... Among those served with a demolition order is Mo hammed Badran, who says he was born in 1961 in the house the council now wants to raze. Mr Badran has papers from the British mandate era in the 20s that appear to show his grandfather owned the land where the house now stands."I have been taxed on this house since the day they introduced it to East Jerusalem in 1973," he said. "If the house was illegal, why did they take the tax?"

Changing planet revealed in atlas

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An atlas of environmental change compiled by the United Nations reveals some of the dramatic transformations that are occurring to our planet. It compares and contrasts satellite images taken over the past few decades with contemporary ones. These highlight in vivid detail the striking make-over wrought in some corners of the Earth by deforestation, urbanisation and climate change.

The Jewish leadership of Jerusalem plans to raze down 88 Arab homes to create a "Jewish archaeological park" - and ethnically cleansing a part of the city, to unleash a new circle of violence in the process.

China hails legacy of great adventurer

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Almost a century before Columbus, at a time when China was the richest and most advanced country in the world, Zheng He [also known as Cheng Ho] sailed further than anyone before him, at the head of an armada bigger than the combined fleets of all Europe.

Zheng He died on his last voyage in 1433.

The reason for the abandonment of the fleet was not just solely suspicion of the outside world - it was only part of it. After the last Mongol troops were driven out of China proper in 1380, the land borders of China were peaceful for several decades. In about 1420 this more peaceful era became to an end and more money and more troops were needed to defend the northern and western borders. Partly because of the defence of the northern borders the capital had been transferred from Nanjing to Beijing in 1403, and the rural areas around the new capital couldn´t support it´s populace and the court. The new capital needed a constant flow of food through the Grand Canal. Less and less money were available to the great sea expeditions as the new capital and the military stationed on the borders engulfed an ever increasing part of the state´s income.

It’s Israel’s Racist Apartheid Wall, Stupid

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I wonder if Abbas had Joshua’s trumpet tucked inside the maps he carried to Washington, the maps of Israel’s ever expanding “facts on the ground.” The maps demonstrate Israel’s continued expansion of Jewish military outposts and settlements in the West Bank. They illustrate the path of the Israeli Racist Apartheid Wall which divides Palestinians from their land and from one another and signals the proposed disappearance of an Arab controlled East Jerusalem. It is only through a careful examination of the maps that issues of the viability of a Palestinian state come into focus. The maps Abbas warily carries on behalf of the Palestinian people at home, in refugee camps and scattered in a Diaspora throughout the world do not contain the Roadmap to Peace but to Palestinian extinction. The maps clearly show that even if direct aid by the millions of dollars is given to the Palestinian Authority, unless something is done to stop Israeli expansion and force Israel’s retreat, it is a matter of time before the Zionist attempt at genocide – the complete erasure of Palestine – is complete. As wishful thinking Zionist often state, “There is no Palestine.” Make no mistake, it is a battle cry for total eradication.

Annan upset by Darfur devastation

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UN chief Kofi Annan has called for rapid action to end violence in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, during a visit he described as "heart-wrenching". Thousands greeted the secretary general as he toured a refugee camp and a burnt-out town that survivors said was bombed by the government... Mr Annan visited the Kalma refugee camp, near the town of Nyala, which is home to 120,000 people. Tribal leaders told him that in recent months 56 people had been killed in the camp and 580 women had been sexually assaulted. They blamed the attacks on Arab pro-government militias and Sudanese police.

Focus on reconstruction in Fallujah

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Reconstruction of Fallujah, the city which was the scene of fierce battles between US forces and insurgents between November 2004 and January 2005, has been slow according to local officials. Little progress has been made despite Washington allocating US $200 million for rehabilitation efforts and compensation for families. Nearly 80 percent of the population fled Fallujah, which is 60km west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad and so far only half of them have returned, aid officials have said. Local people complain that there are still no basic facilities such as sewage systems, adequate electricity and water supplies and there are disputes over how much compensation has been distributed so far. About 70 percent of buildings, many of them houses, were destroyed during the conflict. The Ministry of Health (MoH) said there were 650 civilian deaths in a report issued in April. However, it has been suggested that the number could be as high as 1,300.

Christian Science Monitor has a new article about the Maya writing system. Curious thing is that the writer always uses the past tense of the Maya and a small map included in the article is titled "Where the Maya lived". Nobody seem to have told the writer that the Maya number in the millions today.

Scandal of 'phantom' aid money

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Well-heeled consultants and companies in the west are the beneficiaries of a global aid system which results in less than 40p in every pound helping to eradicate poverty in the developing world, according to a report out today... The G7 countries - Britain, the US, Germany, Italy, France, Canada and Japan - spent only 0.07% of national income on real aid and would need a tenfold increase to hit the UN target, ActionAid said... Just 11% of French aid is genuine, says Action Aid. France spends nearly $2bn on technical assistance and $0.5bn on refugee costs in France. Debt relief, an accounting exercise, is 40%. Of US aid, 86 cents in the dollar is phantom, largely because it is tied to the purchase of American goods and services. George Bush's Aids drugs plan excludes cheaper, generic drugs, so giving lucrative contracts to US pharmaceutical companies but treating fewer patients.

Guantanamo Bay

Guantanamo Bay is a basically a place where the Americans can play out their fantasies of revenge for the 11.09.2001 attacks. By humiliating a few hundred men they think they are humiliating all the muslims. That is the essence of what is going on.

There has not come out any important information from Guantanamo, as almost all of the prisoners are either footsoldiers ignorant of any plans their superiors have, or they are innocent. In the few cases where there has been in what could be called as local militant operatives impronised in Guantanamo, the Americans seem not to have found them out.

Torture and humiliation don´t work. The reason why torture was abandoned in judicial procedures had far more to do with the fact that it didn´t work than any humane reason. Already in the 16th century surviving judicial records from Europe torture is losing ground. Not because officials of the time would have been more humane than their predecessors, but because it didn´t work in something like 90% of the cases where it was used and where the result is known. The movement to abolish the use of torture in judicial procedures came only later, in most countries during the 18th century.

Of course, eventually you can torture most people to confess anything you want them to confess. But getting useful information out of them is totally another matter. And this the modern propagandists of torture don´t seem to understand. Somehow, they believe that torturing people will force them to tell the truth. In reality, it makes them to tell stories they think the torturer will believe and which will then bring an end to the torture they are enduring.
The innocents have no hidden truths to tell.

US terror laws 'creating a new generation of the disappeared'

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The United States is condoning torture and abuse in the name of the war on terror, setting up a latter-day Gulag and creating a new generation of the "disappeared", according to Amnesty International. A report from the human rights group accuses governments from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe of systematic and often brutal erosion of civil rights.

As a preparation for the new movie, I read several Star Wars novels. One of them stood above the rest in it´s sheer awfulness. R. A. Salvatore´s "Vector Prime" was this waste of forest. Not only does Chewbacca get killed, it has an alien invasion ship that "scientists" believe to be an asteroid. Asteroid that travels faster than light. Star Wars has had often problems with astronomy - Empire Strikes Back has this monster inside an asteroid, which doesn´t make any sense (but SW asteroid belts seldom do when compared to their real life equivalents, in density etc) and in the Attack of the Clones Dooku´s ship looks like it has a solar sail, but it seems to have absolutely no use for it, etc - but this book beats all that has come before. The "asteroid" is only a top of an iceberg. Big iceberg,

Steven Barnes´The Cestus Deception started well, but then lost steam as the book progressed. And it didn´t really feel like Star Wars. Of course, Barnes is an apprentice of the evil Dark Lords Niven&Pournelle, which might have had something to do with my opinion of the book. But still, this book lacks in atmosphere and was was written by an author who didn´t seem to be comfortable with the Star Wars universe.

On the other hand, "Survivor´s Quest" by my favorite Star Wars novelist, Timothy Zahn, and "Tatooine Ghost" by Troy Denning felt both like "true" Star Wars. They had the right atmosphere, the feel. "Survivor´s Quest" had Saint Mara of Jade, but she was less irritating than usually, and Zahn gave more room for Luke and less time for his own creations. Of which I hope the smugglers all get cruel and senseless ends in future books. "Tatooine Ghost" binds the prequel trilogy with the original trilogy and it is in it´s own right a little gem of a book. The rodents are irritable, but a little nuisance in the end. Both books also have the adventage that they don´t have any loose Imperial superweapons.

Lastly I read Steve Perry´s "Shadows of the Empire", whose comic version I read some ten years ago. It is a book whose action happens just before the Return of the Jedi. The heroes are searching for Solo and Vader is searching for his son. Solid work, has the right feeling, the author knows SW universe, but Luke comes out a little bit weak. He´s more the rather backward farm boy from a backward planet that we see in A New Hope than the experienced Jedi knight in ROTJ. Still, it´s no "Vector Prime".

Voyager 1 has reached the edge of Sun´s realm. More.

Last Friday I went to watch the new Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith. Twice. And it was worth it. There were couple of moments that didn´t really work, like Anakin´s turn to the dark side - he succumbed too easily - but as a whole I liked it. In fact I liked it much and intend to go see it again soon. In many ways this movie is superior to Return of the Jedi and in this Lucas has achieved what the didn´t in the first two movies of the prequel trilogy: Anakin´s fate really touched me, imaginary character that he is. Of course he did bad things after his fall to the Dark side, but totally good guys don´t make good tragic heroes. They make good martyrs.

As I watched the movie first time, I didn´t want to see him change to the suited Darth Vader, which surprised me somewhat as in the past I have viewed the suited Vader as a "cool villain" - as he is most often described. But as I have now watched the original movies again after seeing Revenge of the Sith, his character has immensely more depth, feels far less threatening and in fact quite a sad man. Not a cool villain, but a victim. OK, victim of his own actions, his own ambition, his own fears, but still a victim. And as I left the movie theater the first time, I really didn´t want to see the movie again, even when I had the ticket already bought. Because the movie was that good - I felt sad for Anakin, and in lesser extent, Padme - and the end was so sad. Of course I went to see it again, and it felt as good and sad as the first time I saw it. And also it felt quite short. Some of the cuts made to the movie, like the beginning of the Rebellion, would have fit well in the movie. And would have tied couple of open threads.

A surprisingly good end to the prequel trilogy - and a good starting point for the original trilogy.

Indonesia is truly a "democracy" nowadays. Not democracy, but "democracy"... But that doesn´t seem to bother the Western leaders who think that "democracy" is all that Indonesia needs.

In courtesy of Village Voice, few pictures of the civilian cost of war in Iraq.

Amazon destruction accelerating

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The Amazon rainforest is being destroyed at near record levels, according to new figures released by the Brazilian government. The environment ministry said 26,000 sq km of forest were chopped down in the 12 months prior to August 2004. The figure is the second highest on record, 6% higher than the previous 12 months... The loss of 26,000 sq km means almost a fifth of the entire Amazon has now been chopped down.

Give the bullies a chance to repent

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For that reason, the disengagement should take place before the Ninth of Av, since there are no sins that Israel society has grown more used to than the sins of the occupation and repression that are committed on a daily, indeed hourly, basis toward the people of the Palestinian nation. The IDF and the settlers continue to dispossess them from their lands, jail them behind ghetto walls and harm their most basic civil rights. All the talk about "a return to the peace process" is hollow and empty. Since the disengagement plan was made public in December 2003, nothing has changed in the lives of the Palestinians. Day in and day out, the occupation only deepens its grip. More.

One reason why Israel´s government has moved the evacuation of Gaza settlements to mid-August could be that the western countries have basically given Israel a free hand in the West Bank as a reward for the Gaza plan. After the settlers have left Gaza things will most likely change, so Israel will try to grab up as much land and put up as many new houses for settlers in the West Bank as it can prior to the "disengament" from Gaza. If so, the time for the "disengagement" will likely be moved again to a later date.

Army 'kills 200' in second Uzbek city as thousands head for border

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Authorities in Uzbekistan have lost control of a key border town in the eastern Ferghana valley, despite a brutal clampdown that has so far claimed the lives of an estimated 700 people. If reports of further killings can be confirmed the violence would be the most brutal of its kind in Asia since China gunned down hundreds of democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The hardline government of Islam Karimov, an ally of London and Washington in the "war on terror", has dispatched an armoured force into the restive area in the east of the country after mass arrests of alleged radical Islamists sparked what appeared to be a popular uprising. Saidjahon Zaynabitdinov, head of Appeal, a local human rights advocacy group, said troops had killed about 200 demonstrators on Saturday in Pakhtabad, just outside the city of Andijan, where witnesses saw security forces kill up to 500 civilians the previous night.

Australia brushes aside East Timorese sovereignty in oil and gas deal

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Under the agreement, Dili has reportedly agreed to put off the final settlement of the maritime boundary between the two nations for a period of 50 to 60 years. In exchange, East Timor will receive an undisclosed percentage, instead of a fixed dollar amount, of revenue from the yet-to-be developed Greater Sunrise oil and gas field... Its main consequence, however, is that Canberra has succeeded in having Dili drop its claim of sovereignty over key resource-rich areas of the Timor Sea for two generations; by which time the oil and gas fields in the area will be commercially exhausted. If current international law—the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)—were applied, the international boundary would be along a line equidistant from the land territories and the only fully operating field, the Laminaria-Corallina, would fall entirely under East Timorese control. Since the field began operating in November 1999, the Australian government has pocketed nearly $US2 billion in royalties while East Timor has received nothing. In 2003 alone, Australia received $US172 million in royalties from Laminaria-Corallina—twice as much as the entire budget of the East Timorese government.

US 'backed illegal Iraqi oil deals'
Report claims blind eye was turned to sanctions busting by American firms

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The United States administration turned a blind eye to extensive sanctions-busting in the prewar sale of Iraqi oil, according to a new Senate investigation. A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them. ...the Senate report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil - more than the rest of the world put together. "The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions," the report said. "On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales.

Massacre in Uzbekistan

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One human rights observer in the eastern city of Andizhan said that up to 500 people may have perished in the shootings and the gun battles that followed. A doctor spoke of "many, many dead", witnesses said 200 to 300 people were shot dead, and an AP reporter saw at least 30 bodies in Andijan. As night fell, tension was high, with armoured vehicles positioned at crossroads and trucks blocking main thoroughfares. Terrified demonstrators tried to flee the country, seen as a key ally by Britain and the US in the war on terror. As blood-spattered bodies were lifted from the streets of Andizhan, survivors and thousands of others packed their bags and headed for neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. Some made it across the border and were in refugee camps.

Yesterday´s uprising in Uzbekistan´s Andizhan seemed to have ended in a massacre of unarmed protestors by the troops of the dictator Ismail Karimov, whose regime is supported by both the US and Russia.

First full mosaics of Titan’s surface

New primitive rodent found in Laos forces the creation of a new mammal family - the first for 31 years. (Extinct mammals, found from fossil records, not included, of course.)

The Planetary Society is collecting money for the study of old Pioneer data tapes in an effort to solve the Pioneer anomaly, and has couple of articles about it on their website:

The Unfinished Quest to Solve the Pioneer Anomaly

What is a "New Physics"?

Out of Africa and straight to the beach

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Modern humans emerged just once out of Africa - and headed straight for the beach - new genetic research suggests. Most scientists agree that modern humans left Africa relatively recently, and it was traditionally thought that the route taken was northwards, overland into the Middle East and beyond. But by measuring genetic variation in an isolated population in southeast Asia, Vincent Macaulay at the University of Glasgow, UK, and a team of international colleagues, conclude that the dispersal actually took a southern coastal route. “It looks likely that a founder population crossed the Red Sea, and spread to Australia via India and southeast Asia, taking a southern route along the coast,” says Macaulay. More.

Yet again, new moon for Saturn - one that orbits the planet in the gap in the A ring.

Mofaz: Gaza plan 'to save W Bank'

Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz has said the withdrawal of Jewish settlers from Gaza will allow Israel to extend its borders into the West Bank. He also said the pullout would enable Israel to maintain Jerusalem as the unified capital of a Jewish state... Mr Mofaz said the pullout would allow Israel to keep hold of its large West Bank settlements - which are viewed as illegal under international law - extending its future borders deep into Palestinian territory."In fact, the settlers of [the West Bank] and Gaza will be able to say in years to come that they helped establish the eastern frontiers of the state of Israel," he told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

The Western countries are praising Israel for the so-called withdrawal from Gaza and either not taking any account of claims like these coming from the Israeli leadership or else claiming, like the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, that he is "concerned", but that the UK and the EU are both uncapable of doing anything at all. Israel being the military and economic powerhouse that is compared to the EU and the feeble UK. It is curious, though, that the same Mr Straw, whose own country with is actions in Iraq and its inaction in Palestine - especially compared to it´s rhetoric - has scored so many goals for FC Osama then cries about islamist terrorism. It´s like he wouldn´t have been sowing the seeds himself.

I have high hopes that Saul Mofaz and men like him will be the doom of Israel, if it continues it´s current polict. They make the mistake so often made when people think themselves victorious: There´s always some new peace of land to annex, and then another, and then another. But the fact is this:Jerusalem could be the shared capital of Israel and Palestine. It can´t be the sole capital of Israel for long. And no Christian Zionist theocracy in the US can change that. Everyone who disagrees should only take a long and a hard look at the map of Middle East.

Just another day in 'stable' Iraq

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FOUR suicide bombs killed at least 71 people in Iraq yesterday, the latest attacks in an escalating campaign of guerrilla violence that has killed nearly 400 Iraqis since a new government was unveiled two weeks ago. The bombs, which exploded within hours of each other in Tikrit, Hawija and Baghdad, shattered any notion that a degree of stability was returning to Iraq in the wake of elections earlier this year. Just last week, following the death of a British Guardsman, Anthony Wakefield, Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, spoke of the role UK forces were playing in making Iraq a "stable and democratic country". But stability was nowhere to be seen yesterday morning as suicide bombers cut a swathe of death across the country.

One month's toll in Iraq: 67 suicide bombers

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The number of suicide attacks in Iraq has reached a record high, with more than 67 insurgents blowing themselves up in the month of April alone. New figures revealed by diplomatic and Iraqi security sources yesterday show that of the 135 car bombings that month, which took hundreds of lives and inflicted thousands of injuries, more than half were suicide missions. The number of car bombings has doubled since March... Kim Howells, the new Foreign Office minister of state responsible for the Middle East, yesterday described the attacks as "horrendous". He said: "These and other recent tragic incidents are the desperate acts of those seeking to destabilise the successful democratic political process reflected in the recently elected transitional government. They will not win."

Attacks against civilians are of course horrific, but when they are claimed to be `horrendous´ by a representative of a side that has killed tens of thousands of civilians in this war, one can do little else than to say that claims like that are hypocritical. If you want to stop the insurgents of killing innocent civilians, your side will have to do so too, Mr Howells. And will you? Of course not. And yet military leadership on your own side thinks that the fight against the insurgency is unwinnable.

So what about a declaration of truce and an open invitation for negotiations for all insurgents?

Return flights

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The news that the ivory-billed woodpecker — a bird thought to be as dead as the proverbial dodo — has been rediscovered, came as a welcome surprise to birdwatchers the world over. But many also wondered how a bird the size of a crow, with a call like a pack of hyenas, could have avoided detection for so long — even in the backwoods of Arkansas... Spix's macaw was the latest in a long line of exotic tropical birds to go extinct in the wild, as a result of habitat loss and the illegal cagebird trade. And it does not stop there. According to BirdLife International, almost 1,200 species of bird (more than 12% of the world's total) are currently at risk of extinction in the coming century, a huge increase on the 80 or so species that have died out since 1600.

Extinction is nowadays the norm, the "miracles" of founding species thought to be extinct the all too rare exception, that musn´t cloud view our of the big picture. And the big picture is that we are living during a time of great mass extinction which will leave damning evidence in the fossil record that will may be humanity´s most lasting impact on this planet.

A humiliating US gift

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The demand by the US Congress to divert $50 million of President George W. Bush's $200-million pledge of aid to the Palestinian Authority for Israeli checkpoints is something like requiring the Vatican to contribute air-conditioners to abortion clinics or divorce lawyers' fees as part of its policy of easing the plight of Catholic women. The new motto of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is very simple and direct: "From the American People." Recent conditions tacked onto a planned US grant from the American people is adding insult to Palestinian injury. Diverting to Israel millions from monies promised to the Palestinian Authority in order to reinforce Israeli checkposts deep inside Palestinian territories is a multiple insult to Palestinians. Not only is it a reduction from the meager (in comparison to the billions given to Israel) grant to Palestinians; but to divert money earmarked for Palestinians to strengthen the Israeli army's occupation is a moral and political scandal.

Face of Tutankhamun reconstructed. More.

It's in our hands, and in our power

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If the entire intent in the departure from Gaza is to temporarily calm things down, neutralize international pressure and buy time, while looking for new subterfuges with which to grab more land with the help of the flexible route of the separation fence; if every outpost in the West Bank turns into "the rock of our existence;" if every further evacuation is perceived as a trauma and not as a building block for peace - an historic opportunity, nearly the last opportunity to be a truly free nation, will have once again slipped out of our hands.

Yesterday I saw the Ridley Scott epic The Kingdom of Heaven.

And it wasn´t epic. It was a rather mediocre movie. Not a bad movie, but a mediocre movie. I think that those extra 45 minutes that Scott has saved for the DVD release should have been included in the theater release, as now the movie is shallow. It looks vast in scope, but has little depth. The main hero especially is a character that has about as much depth as Orlando Bloom´s most famous character, Legolas, has in the Lord of The Rings movies.

Of course, the history was butchered on the movie. The real Balian of Ibelin was replaced with an imaginary one, which I can understand as an artistic license, but I can´t understand why there was this moment straight from the Gladiator, where Baldwin IV offers Balian the hand of Sibylla - in real life, Isabella - and the kingship, and the fool says no, causing all the bad that will happen, just like Maximus in the Gladiator. A better thing would have been letting the movie follow real history. After all, Isabella was not the heir of Baldwin IV. The heir was Isabella´s son, the child king Baldwin V, who "ruled" a year before his own death and the disastrous rise to power of Guy of Lusignan. Who was more incompetent fool than a warmonger. And a man that the real Sibylla(Isabella) kept up with.

There were other problems. Like the one that the Christians were shown as a one monolithic entity. Of course, the Christians who ruled the Crusader states were Catholics and the native Orthodox Christians were crushed unter their feet, not as badly as the native Muslims and Jews, but who still were an oppressed people under the rule of the Crusaders. In the real siege of Jerusalem in 1187, they had little eagerness to fight for the Crusaders - in fact, according to a chronicle of the time, they wanted them to die, and were angry that Saladin didn´t kill the Latin Christians of Jerusalem. And what comes to the Latin clergy, in real life the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem left the city after the surrender with a huge load of material goods, not empty handed as in the movie. Latin Christians had to pay for their release after the surrender, but could take with them as much as they could of their goods. The poorest couldn´t pay the price demanded for release and the wealthier ones didn´t want to pay for the release of their poorer fellows, who then ended as slaves.

Other problems were the portrayal of Templars as the bad guys and the Hospitalers as good. At least in the eyes of Saladin there was no difference between them. Those Templars and Hospitalers that surrendered in the battle of the Horns of Hattin were all executed. I could continue for a long time, but couple of thing more and then I will end this. First, at the text in the beginning of the movie, it is claimed that the time of the Crusades was an era of depression and poverty to Europe. This is wrong. Of course, most people were poor, but it was also a time of great economic revival, the change from barter economy to monetary, the great flourishing of cities, of rapidly expansing population, the revival of learning etc. People in Western Europe in 1184 were better-off than their ancestors in 1084 and and far better-off than their ancestors in 984. The time of the Crusades were a good time for Europe. The time from about 1050 to 1315 was a time of constant growth and growing prosperity in Europe. Secondly, those speeches that Balian gives in Jerusalem during the siege - no Christian commander at the time would have said them. And if he would have, he would have been killed at the spot by his own troops.

FOOTNOTES

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One conclusion to draw from the unlovely spectacle of democratic governance in Iraq is that the two dominant American views of the war were both wrong. Iraq is a far less modern, less united, and less friendly place than the fondest hopes of the war’s architects would have had the American public believe. At the same time, the ability of those architects to control the outcome for their own purposes is close to zero. Some war boosters, in and out of the Administration, have nonetheless been quietly declaring mission accomplished redux, with a shrug: they never thought Iraq would be perfect, and everything from here on out is just footnotes. In public, they seem to want Americans to forget all about Iraq.

A No-Confidence Vote for Mr. Abbas

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A few months ago, President Bush announced that he would ask Congress for $350 million to support Palestinian political, economic and security reforms. Following on his word, he did just that, in his budget proposal to Congress. But last week when the House approved $200 million of the aid, it attached enough strings to strangle those good intentions. President Bush had requested that the first $200 million go directly to the Palestinian Authority, whose new president, Mahmoud Abbas, has been struggling to rein in extremist factions. But in what one Palestinian advocate correctly called a "vote of no confidence" in Mr. Abbas, the House stipulated that no money could go to the Palestinian Authority. It approved $150 million, to be channeled instead through American aid agencies, nongovernmental organizations and philanthropic groups. Adding insult to injury, the House then gave $50 million to Israel to build terminals for people at checkpoints surrounding Palestinian areas. House lawmakers directed an additional $2 million to Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America. So a quarter of Congress's Palestinian aid disbursement so far is actually going to Israel.

According to other articles, the White House spokesman told that the "White House applauds the decision."

Entrenched loyalties
While Europeans share memories of the second world war, histories of 1914-18 are strictly divided along national lines. Adam Thorpe visits the battlefields and challenges the myths

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As the American historian Jay Winter comments: "Paradoxically, the more unified Europe becomes, the more the war's historiography is compartmentalised. Living in different intellectual universes ... we historians are further than ever from a European vision of the very conflict that created present-day Europe."

Fatah wins local elections in the illegally occupied Gaza and West Bank, but Hamas continues to get more and more support. It´s no wonder that they won in places like Qalqiliya, whose people have suffered so much because of the Zionists. If the peace process continues to falter - once again - the US indifferent towards it and Israel screaming that no outside power expect the aforementioned United States of Apathy can take part in them, then in the summer Hamas will probably be a serious threat for Fatah in the parliamentary elections.

Blair's departure should be speedy

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The Blair era is drawing to a close. The personal rejection of the Prime Minister took many forms. The Labour vote splintered, with both the other parties being the beneficiaries. Even those candidates who opposed the war were punished... The transition is already under way. The Chancellor's dominance is unarguable. The only question that remains unanswered is when Blair will accept the inevitable and go. If he helps the process and does not stand in the way, he will be carrying out one final service to a party for which he was such an asset for so long.

Muted victory for Blair

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Tony Blair has won his longed-for third election victory and secured his place in history. But the prime minister must know that, for the first time, it was despite, rather than because of him.

So, Labour won, Tony Blair made history by being the first Labour leader to win a third consecutive election even when his party did get whacked by voters disillusioned by the Iraq adventure. Luckily for the former socialists, the Conservatives are still a party that time forgot and most folk that probably would have otherwise voted the Liberal democrats were too scared of giving the Conservatives victory and so voted Labour. Still the libdems got the best result for liberals in the UK since the days of Lloyd George(1863-1945), the last liberal prime minister.

Nuclear Fundamentalism and the Iran Story

Variant on the "another man´s terrorist is another man´s freedom fighter":

The person who has done more than anyone else to inform the world about that nuclear weapons program, Mordechai Vanunu, left his job as a technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear facility before spilling the beans to the Sunday Times of London in 1986. The Israeli government promptly sent agents to kidnap Vanunu from Rome and take him back to Israel. As a result, Vanunu spent 18 years behind bars, mostly in solitary confinement. Since his release in April 2004, the Israeli authorities have imposed a travel ban along with other restrictions on Vanunu -- and they're threatening to put him back in prison if he keeps talking to journalists. If Vanunu were Iranian instead of Israeli, the U.S. press would be hailing him as a hero instead of giving him short shrift. Like almost every other mainstream U.S. media outlet, the New York Times has provided little coverage of Vanunu, so the American public has scant knowledge of his real-life experience with truth and consequences. Likewise, the Times has little to say about Washington's extreme hypocrisies while the newspaper and the government denounce certain other countries for their nuclear programs.

If Vanunu indeed would be Iranian, his name would be often heard in the US Congress and Senate and he would be praised as a great hero. Now he´s something of a secret.

Understanding the emotional issues surrounding al-Awda

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The right of the refugees to return is a law. It is founded on a legal premise of human rights that is so great that no individual can erase and yet so hopeless fragile that it is the only thing from which Palestinian refugees have managed to preserve their very existence. In the context of achieving two-states and resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict peacefully, how do we resolve the issue of al-Awda? Regardless of the answer, the fact is that the Palestinian right to return is undeniable and solid. It doesn’t mean it will happen. It doesn’t mean that in a two-state solution, refugees can expect to return to their lands.

First results from the British parlamentary elections(based on exit polls):Labour 37% and 356 seats, Conservatives(the party formerly known as Tories) 33% and 209 seats, Liberal Democrats 22 % and 53 seats, others 8% and 27 seats. Labour majority of 66 places, down from 161 after the 2001 elections.

The Obsession with Syria

The other reason for United States´ aggression towards Syria - the first one being of course defending the poor, helpless Israel - is that Syria is weak and that the United States itself is a bully of a nation, who likes to pick fights which smaller nations that can´t properly defend themselves against it. OK, Syria is not ruled by a model government, but then there are many countries like it in the world, third world countries governed by more or less autocratic rulers that share the United States´ disrespect towards human rights. And why then chose Syria from among these? The first reason for United States dislike for Syria, it´s undying love for Israel and especially it´s nastier deeds, of course.

It seems that the so-called Pioneer anomaly could also affect asteroids, which would mean that it it isn´t caused by anything on the spaceships themselves.

I have to admit, it´s rather a fascinating problem: A mysterious force that forces spaceships out of course. Cool stuff.

When will we see some science fiction based on this anomaly?

And the bloodbath in Iraq continues.

The last week has been among the deadliest during the war in Iraq. After yesterday´s bombings and fighting, of which the Irbil suicide bombing was the deadliest, some 250 people have died since last Friday. More.

12 small and distant moons join the ranks of Saturnian moons, bringing the total to 46.

International Law Not Fit to Print: The New York Times and Israel/Palestine

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These shortcomings came to a head in an April 19 piece by Steven Erlanger, The New York Times' correspondent to the region, titled 'Israel, on Its Own, Is Shaping the Borders of the West Bank'. The article's thesis that, 'the likely impact of the provisional new border on Palestinian life is, perhaps surprisingly, smaller than generally assumed,' was essentially based on the flawed analysis of the Wall's impact by David Makovsky. Mr. Makovsky, a former Editor of the right-wing Jerusalem Post, is now a Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a spinoff from the right-wing American Israeli Public Affairs Committee(AIPAC). On top of paraphrasing Mr. Makovsky's arguments, Mr. Erlanger quotes 144 words from Mr. Makovsky, versus only 23 words from Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. 'The land between the green line and the barrier is 8 percent of the West Bank,' Mr. Erlanger reported. He happily added that, 'Eight percent is half of what the figure was last summer,' ignoring the reality that Palestinians don't accept Israeli annexation of any of their land, Mr. Erlanger wrote that the revised Wall 'route has sharply reduced the number of Palestinians caught inside the barrier: fewer than 10,000 of the two million Palestinians in the West Bank.' He then added caveats - 10,000 does not include Wall impacts on 195,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, the Wall has cut off most of the Palestinians' best agricultural land, and the Israeli army can completely seal off Palestinian towns like Qalqilya that the Wall nearly surrounds. Though Mr. Erlanger never admits this, these caveats add hundreds of thousands of Palestinians negatively impacted by the Wall, making Mr. Makovsky's figure of 10,000 Palestinians totally misleading. Worse, Mr. Erlanger notes three times that Israeli annexation of 8% of the West Bank is close to the 5% that President Bill Clinton supposedly proposed in 2000. The emphasis on annexing 5% - 8% of the West Bank serves Mr. Makovsky's partisan political agenda - lowering the bar for expectations of what constitutes a just resolution. However, there is no justification for 'lowering the bar' when international law requires that Israel withdraw from the entire West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, analysts like Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition have explained repeatedly that Israeli annexation of a strategic 5% of the West Bank will leave Israel in control of the West Bank, and prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

Sudan Becomes US Ally in 'War on Terror'

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Sudan's Islamist regime, once shunned by Washington for providing a haven for Osama bin Laden as well as for human rights abuses during decades of civil war, has become an ally in the Bush administration's "war on terror". Only months after the US accused Khartoum of carrying out genocide in Darfur, Sudan has become a crucial intelligence asset to the CIA... News of General Gosh's visit to Washington caused consternation in human rights circles. The general is among 51 Sudanese officials implicated in human rights abuses by the international criminal court. "I quite understand that the war on terrorism means dealing with bad actors, but to fly in one of Sudan's chief committers of what Washington has formally described as genocide is deeply disturbing," said an independent Sudan analyst, Eric Reeves. He noted there had been signs of a slight thaw towards Khartoum for some time - despite the state department's official stance. More.

The Disengaged: Gaza And The Fragmentation Of Palestinian Nationhood

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"It is incumbent upon us to ask ourselves what possible benefits Israel derives for itself by continuing to squeeze the Gaza Strip even after its 'Disengagement Plan.' What does it gain by promoting policies that would make the establishment of a viable Palestinian state impossible?.."

The possible planet imagined last year near the brown dwarf 2M1207A has been confirmed to be orbiting the brown dwarf. It´s mass is about five times that of Jupiter´s and it´s distance from the brown dwarf is 55 times that of Earth´s distance from our sun. This is the first confirmed image of a planet outside our own solar system. More.

Poll: Palestinians view Abu Mazen’s performance as weak

The parable of Putin's visit

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It would be almost superfluous to mention that these words "were received with astonishment and disappointment in Jerusalem" (in the Prime Minister's Office they were even "stunned"). Not that that's surprising, or unusual. Is there any development that is not received in Jerusalem "with astonishment," usually mixed with "disappointment"? Quickly, our friend "fear" joins in: "Fear was expressed in Jerusalem" that the anti-aircraft missiles that Russia will be supplying to Syria will be transferred to terror organizations in the Gaza Strip, and that these organizations will endanger civil aviation. And at the end of the march of "fear," "disappointment" and "astonishment," her majesty, "our main concern," kicked in: "The missiles will slip from the Syrians into the hands of Hezbollah, and then they will infiltrate into Gaza and will be turned into shoulder missiles and will greatly restrict the flights of the Israel Air Force in the skies of the Gaza Strip," in the words of a senior military source.

Is truth a casualty of election?

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Blair is a politician who has a great capacity for self-persuasion before he sets out to convince others. And if it becomes politically necessary he is probably quite capable of convincing himself of the continued existence of the tooth fairy and the Marie Celeste, having just run the possibilities past the Joint Intelligence Committee to ensure they cannot rule out either possibility.

Human Rights Watch says that what happened to the Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was only the tip of an iceberg.

History lost in dust of war-torn Iraq

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Professional smugglers connected to the international antiquities mafia managed to break some of the sealed doors of the Baghdad Museum storage rooms. They looted priceless artefacts such as the museum's entire collection of cylindrical seals and large numbers of Assyrian ivory carvings. More than 15,000 objects were taken. Many were smuggled out of Iraq and offered for sale. To date, 3,000 have been recovered in Baghdad, some returned by ordinary citizens, others by the police. In addition, more than 1,600 objects have been seized in neighbouring countries, some 300 in Italy and more than 600 in the United States... The picture there is appalling. More than 150 Sumerian cities dating back to the fourth millennium BC - such as Umma, Umm al-Akkareb, Larsa and Tello - lie destroyed, turned into crater-filled landscapes of shredded pottery and broken bricks. If properly excavated, these cities - covering an estimated 20 sq km - could help us learn about the development of the human race. But the looters have destroyed the monuments of their own ancestors, erasing their own history in a tireless search for a cylinder seal, a sculpture or a cuneiform tablet that they can sell to a dealer for a few dollars. It is tough, poorly paid work carried out by jobless Iraqis with no way of earning a better income.

Sometimes you can go too far when portraying yourself humble and modest, like the new pope Benedict IX has done:

``As the trend in the ballots slowly made me realize that - in a manner of speaking the guillotine would fall on me - I started to feel quite dizzy,'' a smiling Benedict said, clearly joking. ``I thought that I had done my life's work and could now hope to live out my days in peace. I told the Lord with deep conviction, 'Don't do this to me.''' He recalled saying to God in his prayers: ``You have younger, better, more enthusiastic and energetic candidates.'' ``Evidently, this time He didn't listen to me,'' Benedict said.

Holier than thou
In the age of fame and media scrutiny the new Pope must be without sin

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It's an article of faith in the media that John Paul II died as the most famous pope there had ever been. But a fresher cause for reflection is that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, at the moment of appointment, was already more recognisable than any previous new pontiff. Usually, the new man is largely unknown to both the media and the crowd in St Peter's Square, but on this occasion background television packages on the German were ready to roll as soon as his name was announced and the face on the balcony was already familiar to international TV audiences... The German cleric's elevation has been generally interpreted as the triumph of conservative over liberal forces within the college of cardinals. But an alternative view is that the princes of the church were playing Pope Idol. Dizzied by the celebrity achieved by John Paul II, they voted for the most famous among their number: a man who, because the last pope was the first to die and be mourned in a time of live 24-hour news, had, quite improbably for a backstage Vatican theologian, become a television face.

Checkpoint for ever?

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This is happening to me more and more these days as my daily travels bring some of the concrete (literal as well as figurative) changes on the ground become clear to the eye. Traveling in the north West Bank on the road between Jericho and Tiberias one is struck with the changes happening near the former green line. The structures being built are looking more and more like a border. The problem is that the location of this new 'border' is a few kilometers inside the Palestinian area. There was a check point at the former green line and now the checkpoint has been moved inside the West Bank in parallel to the newly built structure. I have yet to hear any serious complaint about the placement of this new location deep into Palestinian lands. I am not sure whether the reason is simply lack of knowing or the fact that the Palestinian leaderships' agenda is so crowded with critical issues that some of these issues seem to fall between the cracks.

By stealing a few square kilometer there and another here and eventually - as Israel´s current plan goes - 8% of the West Bank, displacing at least 50 000 Palestinians and leaving 150 000 marooned in occupied East Jerusalem, Israel gets little in the way of plunder and much in the way of hate and future bloodshed. So little shouldn´t be the cause of so much current and future suffering.

Corpses keep coming from Iraq's river of death

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The shocking images come from Iraq's new killing fields - the small town of Madain, just 32km from Baghdad. In other times the massacre might have prompted calls for international intervention. But there are already 150,000 US and British troops in Iraq and this was done under their noses... Madain has had no police force since a mob of criminals and insurgents burned down the police station last year. The police fled. Sunni guerillas quickly took over, running the town as their own criminal fiefdom and randomly killing Shia residents, whom they considered infidels and US sympathisers. Then they launched an all-out attempt to purge the town of its Shia.

Survey of 244 glaciers in the Antarctic Peninsula during the last 50 or so years(on average the data starts from 1953), shows 87% of them in retreat. The biggest losses have come during the last 5 years. The glaciers are retreating on average 50 meters a year. Global warming - the average temperature on the area has risen by 2 degrees Celsius during the last half century - seems to be the main culprit, but shifting ocean currents maybe also a factor. Nature. BBC.

Pope Benedict XVI’s political resume: theocracy and social reaction

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The selection of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new pope is a clear sign that the Vatican will seek to use its influence to promote the most reactionary political forces within the ruling elites of countries around the world, particularly in Europe. Ratzinger’s long record as enforcer of Church doctrine and chief adviser to Pope John Paul II strongly indicates that as Pope Benedict XVI, he will aggressively intervene into political affairs, using issues such as abortion and homosexuality to foster the development of a social base for right-wing parties and policies. The new pope has close ties to ultra-conservative factions within the Catholic Church, such as Opus Dei, which are openly hostile to the core democratic principle of the separation of church and state, and seek to elevate the Church over civil authority. Such theocratic tendencies are increasingly being embraced by parties on the right as part of their ideological arsenal for attacking all of the social and democratic gains achieved in the course of the twentieth century.

Christian Europe RIP
The new Pope will hasten the decline of the old continent's formative faith

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Atheists should welcome the election of Pope Benedict XVI. For this aged, scholarly, conservative, uncharismatic Bavarian theologian will surely hasten precisely the de-Christianisation of Europe that he aims to reverse. At the end of his papacy, Europe may again be as un-Christian as it was when St Benedict, one of the patron saints of Europe, founded his pioneering monastic order, the Benedictines, 15 centuries ago. Christian Europe: from Benedict to Benedict. RIP.

From “grand inquisitor” to pope: Benedict XVI to head crusade vs. secularism, democracy

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With the selection of Josef Ratzinger as the new pope, the Roman Catholic hierarchy has placed at its head a hard-line enforcer of Church dogma, and one of the Vatican’s fiercest opponents of not only Marxism, but liberalism, secularism, science and virtually all things modern.

I think that Benedict XVI is really a compromise candidate; his election made possible to postpone - maybe for a few years - the necessary, but extremely hard job of tackling the problems that the Catholic Church is facing and choosing the way it will take in the future. The cardinals chose status quo for this time; next time the situation will be even more critical.

One wouldn´t be totally surprised if there would be a some kind of split in the Catholic Church in the coming decades. After all, they were a quite common feature in the Church during large part of it´s history. We could end seeing competing conservative and liberal cardinals electing competing popes. Not likely, but the world has seen been bigger surprises in the past few decades.

It has been claimed that one of the mistakes of the Catholic Church in the late Middle Age and during Renaissance was to elect lawyers instead of theologians as popes. They knew and protected the office and powers of the popes against Church Councils and laymen, but spiritual matters tended to get too little of their attention. It maybe that the election of learned theologians as popes instead of more feet-in-the-ground men will be seen as a mistake in the future. Benedict XVI may know everything about Catholic doctrine and be an efficient leader of the Vatican burocracy, but the way he faces the more down-to-earth matters will decide the success of his reign, and if he wants to be remembered as a succesful pope, he may have to be less than totally succesful protector of orthodoxy, and make compromises. After all, today´s popes can´t force people to be members of the Catholic Church - the luxury that most of their predecessors had - they have to make people want to be members of the Catholic Church.

Washington Post glorifies US military “ruthlessness” in Iraq

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A disturbing article by Washington Post journalist Steve Fainaru, published on April 13, serves to both justify and promote a colonial and homicidal mentality among American troops fighting in Iraq... The latest article is an indication that the Washington Post considers the collective punishment meted out against the people of Fallujah to be the model for counter-insurgency operations in cities and towns across Iraq. To do so, it needs men like Ruiz, who have been so brutalised by the desperate conditions of life in the US and their experiences in the American military that they approach killing another human being without feeling the slightest moral or political qualms.

The last pope from Europe

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So, the papacy has left Italy, probably forever. The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI looks very much like the continuation of John Paul II's papacy by other means. It is not Italian, and not in the least bit liberal... But perhaps the lesson of the new pope's election is that if the church has to choose between its authoritarian character and compromise with the rich and secular parts of the world, it will move over further to the places which are neither. It seems impossible that the next pope will be European.

First part of the Axum obelisk arrives back to Ethiopia from Italy.

The battle for the `fingernails'

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While all the attention is focused on the highly publicized evacuation of the settlers from Gush Katif, the real battle for Israel's borders is taking place in the West Bank. It could be years before the eastern border with the Palestinians is finally settled, but meanwhile, the bulldozers and builders are at work - as has been the custom of Israeli greed for the last 38 years of occupation - in an attempt to "create facts on the ground" against all logic and against the long-term interests of the State of Israel... The "fingernails" plan is meant to delay as much as possible any future discussion of the settlements in the Ariel bloc. All the harassment of the Palestinians in this interim period, harming their source of livelihood, their lands, homes and freedom of movement, will only sow more hatred. Ultimately, no separation fence route will be able to defend Israel from that hatred.

The Case Against Alan Dershowitz: The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel vs. Alan Dershowitz

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Alan Dershowitz is a well-known lawyer and professor at Harvard Law School, a prolific author, and makes regular appearances in the media. When it comes to Israel, he is particularly outspoken and taken quite seriously within certain segments of the North American mainstream. Whether he deserves to be taken seriously is another issue altogether...

Genetic testing reveals awkward truth about Xinjiang’s famous mummies

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After years of controversy and political intrigue, archaeologists using genetic testing have proven that Caucasians roamed China’s Tarim Basin 1,000 years before East Asian people arrived... The research, which the Chinese government has appeared to have delayed making public out of concerns of fueling Uighur Muslim separatism in its western-most Xinjiang region, is based on a cache of ancient dried-out corpses that have been found around the Tarim Basin in recent decades.

Israel, on Its Own, Is Shaping the Borders of the West Bank

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In the meantime, Mr. Sharon and Washington continue negotiating what a freeze means, with Israel being pushed to define where existing construction stops within large settlement areas like Maale Adumim, which was established in 1975. Israeli officials say Washington will allow construction within existing built-up areas but not outside them. Even that position, which American officials will not publicly confirm, seem to violate Israel's promises under the road map to freeze settlement growth after March 2001, including natural growth. That is why Mr. Bush was so upset, and publicly so, about the announcement that Israel was planning 3,500 new units in a 4.6-square-mile area known as E1, adjacent to Maale Adumim, enough to house 14,000 new settlers. The mayor of Maale Adumim, Benny Kashriel, says the community of 32,000, with its flowerbeds and shopping mall, is widely accepted as part of Israel and will stay that way, so that new construction is necessary to survive. "We're building in Maale Adumim territory," he said. "We're not expanding at all." Large municipal boundaries around smaller communities are a standard Israeli device, critics say, to make it seem that new settlement construction is merely "thickening" existing settlements. The official municipal boundaries of Maale Adumim are huge, larger than Tel Aviv's, and stretch nearly to Jericho. The settlement is built up on only about 15 percent of its official area.

Conservative German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has become pope Benedict XVI. So, tradition and continuity prevailed. Ratzinger is a divisive figure, but then he is an old man, 78 years old, and his papacy will not likely last more than few years - and who knows, he may, now as he has been elected, see it wise to take a small turn towards the centre - and the cardinals can then heal any wounds caused by his reign - if needed - by electing a more liberal successor.

Bush’s meeting with Sharon confirms US support for West Bank land grab

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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s April 11 visit with President George Bush provided yet another demonstration of US support for the continuing expansion of Zionist settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and for Israel’s ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.

Gaza: the Line of Memory and Despair

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It hurts living in Gaza. It always has. Even those in the equally distraught West Bank pitied us Gazans. For one, the Strip was labeled, "the world's largest open-air prison", and my old neighborhood was for a long while known as the "starvation camp". We earned this title after the first Gulf War when Israel staged a 56-day curfew in most of the Gaza Strip and we ran out of food some days after its wake. If it wasn't for some wild grasses and bushes that had grown sparsely around the camp, God only knows what would've happened.

Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world

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Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed... The papyrus fragments were discovered in historic dumps outside the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus ("city of the sharp-nosed fish") in central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. Running to 400,000 fragments, stored in 800 boxes at Oxford's Sackler Library, it is the biggest hoard of classical manuscripts in the world. The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy - the Epigonoi ("Progeny") by the 5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the 2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod, Euripides and Sophocles almost certainly await discovery.

Exaggeration? Almost certainly. Wild optimism? Undoubtedly. But hopefully there´s some truth in this.

Bush silent as top terrorist seeks US asylum

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“If you harbor terrorists, you are a terrorist,” were the words used by President George W. Bush in justifying the invasion of Afghanistan three-and-a-half years ago and launching the campaign of worldwide militarism known as the global war on terror. But the Bush administration is itself harboring a notorious terrorist, wanted for the mid-flight bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner as well as other deadly attacks on civilian targets and attempted assassinations. The terrorist in question is Luis Posada Carriles, a CIA-trained Cuban exile who slipped quietly across the US-Mexican border last month and is now formally applying for political asylum in the United States.

Audio slideshow: Liberation of Belsen

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Horrific scenes greeted British troops as they entered Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on 15 April 1945. They were accompanied by the BBC's Richard Dimbleby who recorded his first impressions for radio.

Israel clears officer of killing journalist who had white flag

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The British government formally protested to Israel after the army officer who opened fire when the film-maker James Miller was shot dead in Gaza two years ago was acquitted of disciplinary charges. The decision by the head of Israel's Southern Command to clear the officer overturned a recommendation by the military advocate general that he should be severely disciplined. Mr Miller was killed in Rafah in 2003 while walking back to his lodgings displaying a white flag and clearly identifying himself to troops as a journalist. The officer acquitted yesterday has admitted opening fire and a 79-page report by Brigadier-General Avihai Mandelblit, the advocate general, held that the first lieutenant in the Bedouin Desert Reconnaissance Battalion had fired in clear breach of army rules of engagement.

The settlement tic

And they are still frantically building blocs of houses, blocs of housing projects, blocs of settlements and "thousands of housing units" beyond the pre-Six-Day War border: not out of urban needs, not out of demographic urgencies, not for the sake of quality of life, not out of any rational economic and urban planning - but building for the sake of building, as a barrier and barricade against the very possibility of having to evacuate the territory on which the buildings will stand... At some stage this blind Zionist inertia that knows no bounds (in every sense of the word - limits, borders, restraint) and measures everything in terms of quantities and area will have to stop and focus on the quality and the flavor of our lives as Israelis. And then it will become clear that size does not always make the difference; we have already learned that when there is no peace and no security, even the most massive housing projects and houses can produce fear and misery. And as Sharon fights like a lion for more territory, and more time, and another ridge, and another "settlement bloc" with X "thousands of housing units" - he is liable to discover, too late as usual, that this war too is anachronistic and a waste of time, like most of his wars.

US and UK blamed for oil scandal

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The US and Britain are partly to blame for the scandal enveloping the UN oil-for-food programme, Secretary General Kofi Annan has said. Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein made billions of dollars smuggling oil in defiance of sanctions policed by the US and Britain, the UN chief said... US Senate investigators have alleged that the Iraqi regime received some $4bn (£2.13bn) in illegal payments from oil companies involved in the programme. The BBC's Michael Voss in New York says this figure is dwarfed by the $14bn (£7.5bn) that allegedly came from "sanctions-busting" - illegally selling oil to neighbouring states such as Jordan and Turkey. "The bulk of the money that Saddam [Hussein] made came out of smuggling outside the oil-for-food programme, and it was on the American and British watch," Mr Annan said. "Possibly they were the ones who knew exactly what was going on, and that the countries themselves decided to close their eyes to smuggling to Turkey and Jordan because they were allies."

UN condemns Israeli settlements

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The UN has condemned Israeli settlement building in Palestinian territories and called for the policy to be reversed. The resolution at the annual Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva was passed easily with only the United States and Australia voting against. Two other resolutions were also passed, calling for Israel to withdraw from the Golan and condemning its use of force.

Votes went 39-2, with 12 countries abstaining. The usual suspects supported and other usual cowards were too terrified to stand against the might of Israel.

I don´t think it to be improbable that the actions of the Israeli army during the last days, like today´s, are an attempt to provoke violence from the Palestinian side, which would then give Israel an excuse - according to it and it´s vassals - to claim that the Palestinians are breaking the ceasefire, and that so Israel can break off the negotiations and hurry on with the landgrabs.

For a Pax Europeana
Can we fold the remains of the Ottoman empire into a new European empire?

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We talk a lot these days about a Pax Americana, as a successor to the Pax Romana. The United States played a vital role in bringing peace to the Balkans in the 1990s, and could help keep the peace there now by supporting Nato enlargement. But a Pax Americana is not on offer in Europe's backyard. This one is up to us. Isn't the prospect of a Pax Europeana, embracing the whole continent, worth the undoubted risk?

There´s one simple problem:The EU is uncapable of acting when needed and even when facing the resistance from the puniest of foes, it retreates. There can be no continental peace nor empire when the will to protect even the most selfish interests of EU - not to speak of any high ideals - is lacking. In the Mediterranean, an area that should be the EU`s backyard, where it should be calling the shots, it´s standing in the aisles and watches as the US monster rages and creates problem for the EU, as many individual EU members court the monster´s favours.

EU needs leadership that has more aggressiveness, stubborness, arrogance and far more spine and will to do what is necessary for the benefit of the EU.

Who will serve the servants of God?

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Will the Curia vote as a block or might this be a conclave where the Germans flex their muscles? Or will it simply follow the old Roman adage of a fat Pope following a skinny one? One thing is certain: there is no clear front-runner in this papal election.

One thing against an Italian pope is the fact that John Paul II pretty much finished the transformation of the office of bishop of Rome to an universal leader of the Catholics. One can say that being a bishop of Rome is a continually decreasing part of the job. And selecting an Italian now would be seen too much a conservative choice, a step back if not turning the back of the Church toward the world. And certainly we must remember that the reason Italians are so overpresented when it comes to popes is that since the 11th century the pope has been selected by those cardinals that can get to Rome to attend the conclave, who of course, for transportation reasons alone, were mostly Italians, and when an Italian was elected, he tended to make mostly other Italians cardinals. Nowadays the situation is different.

The exception to the rule of Italians are the times when the papacy was under control of powerful non-Italian states; from the 6th to the early 8th century the East Roman empire put men from the Greek speaking world to the papal throne and then the German Holy Roman Emperor Henry III(1017-1056, r. 1039-56) put a succession of Germans to the papal throne in the 1040s and 1050s -as he practically saved it from the Roman aristocracy - that had made the office of pope practically their heirloom - and started the development of increasing papal and Church power, which soon pitted his son Henry IV(1050-1106, r. 1056-1105) against the pope Gregory VII(c.1020/25-1085, r. 1072-85). And of course the were the French popes of the Avignon papacy(1305-1378).

So, I would be surprised if the next pope would be Italian.

Titan probe's pebble 'bash-down'

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An ice pebble was almost certainly the first thing the Huygens probe struck as it landed on Titan... "We probably pushed the pebble to one side and then ploughed into the stuff underneath which we are pretty convinced is a 'sand' made of ice," the principal investigator on the Huygens surface science package explained.

The National Party - officially it´s successor the New National Party, but it´s the same in every meaningful way - that created the apartheid system in South Africa after the Second World War, is set to disband after getting less than 2% of votes in the last parlamentary elections.