More lies from the British police on the de Menezes murder

Quote:

More evidence has emerged relating to the July 22 police killing of the young Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in London, providing further proof that the police systematically lied about the subway shooting and have been conducting a cover-up, with the aid of the Labour government of Prime Minister Tony Blair and a largely compliant media. Claims that there were no closed-circuit television tapes of the underground tube station where de Menezes was shot dead by eight bullets fired at close range have been refuted by the staff working at the station. According to Monday’s London Evening Standard, the staff were “amazed and furious” when told by police that tapes from the cameras were blank. An official with the rail workers’ union said that at least three of the four cameras were working. “It is most unusual to say the least,” he said of the police claims. Normal procedure is that tapes are replaced every 24 hours and kept for 28 days, and it is inconceivable that station staff would not keep to this procedure shortly after the July 7 bombings of the capital’s transport network that killed 56 people and a failed attempt to detonate devices on July 21.

Zionist attack kills 5 Palestinians in the West Bank.

No condemnation from the West. Of course not. But when the Islamic Jihad makes it revenge attack - which is all Israel wants to achieve with this attack - then the Western leaders will be swift in their condemnation and threats aimed at Palestinians. And everybody suffers because of the cowardness of the Western political leaders.

But in the end, Israel will lose. No amount of US money and weaponry can change the geography of the Middle East. If Israel will not be ready for a just peace, then it will be destroyed. Not tomorrow, not next year, but in the coming decades. It still can avoid that fate, but most of it´s population doesn´t seem to be interested. They prefer to live by the sword and die by the sword. And if they really want that, then let it be their fate.

Two fingers to America

Quote:

The fingers of mad preachers are usually far from the button, but the untimely words of Pat Robertson, easily discounted in Washington and airily dismissed by the state department as "inappropriate", might yet wake an echo among zealots in Venezuela. A similar call was made last year by a former Venezuelan president. Assassinations may be easy to plan, and not difficult to accomplish. But their legacy is incalculable. The radical leader of neighbouring Colombia, Jorge Gaitán, was assassinated more than 50 years ago, in 1948. In terms of civil war and violence, the Colombians have been paying the price ever since. No one would wish that fate on Venezuela. More.

37% of the marshlands in southern Iraq have been restored to their "original state". I doubt that they really are in their "original state", but that this is the extent of the area that is now recovering as dykes and dams in the area have been destroyed.

Exreme rightwing US televangelist Pat Robertson demands the assassination of the democratically elected Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez by US troops. More and more.

I do like it when the bastards score own goals...

The US demands that the Palestinian authority disarms Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other resistance groups. At the same time, it itself can´t do the equivalent in Iraq. Instead, it does far, far worser job. Take Haditha. US troops have given whole town over to Musab al-Zarqawi. And the only way the bumbling Yankees are capable of relieving towns of insurgents is to partially destroy them, like they destroyed a third of Fallulah. Where the insurgents are now returning. But still, the fact that they themselves can´t do the job on far greater resources and not having an occupying power on their back doesn´t stop the Yankees of making demands to the Palestinians. Of course, after all, they are "Americans", the second chosen people of god! Or so they themselves believe - even if one would think based on their success in Iraq that that especially US loving god of theirs doesn´t seem as much in love with them as they are with him.

There hasn´t been many weeks since the last time the US troops "conquered" the town of Haditha in Iraq, but at least now it is once again in the hands of the Sunni insurgents, who do what they want in the town. And that seems to include killing fair numbers of most likely totally innocent people. I did wonder at the time why the US troops blew up a bridge in a town which had supposedly come under their control again.

For Sharon, Gaza was just the latest act of a long war
The US backing of the pullout has loaded the dice in Israel's favour

Quote:

..in accepting Israel's maximalist demands at the outset, President Bush has loaded the dice in Israel's favour and made the achievement of a just settlement a near impossibility. Faced with the combined pressure of the region's strongest power and the world's strongest power, the prospects for the Palestinians look hopeless. It must be understood that there can be no possibility of real peace without justice... The Palestinians will remain trapped in poverty and despair, and their plight will continue to foster anger and violence. Much of it will be directed against the west. If this is to be avoided, and if a just and workable settlement is to become possible, it will be necessary for others to combine and act self- consciously as a strategic counterbalance to American influence in the region. The most obvious vehicle for this would be the European Union's common foreign policy, but there are many other countries that could form part of a powerful international coalition. Just as the Americans, on behalf of Israel, have laid down certain parameters for a final settlement, it would be the objective of this coalition to set out the conditions that would meet the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations. A good working basis for such an approach would be the Geneva accords negotiated informally by a group of Israeli and Palestinian politicians two years ago. Limited Israeli gains in the West Bank (2% of its territory according to the accords) should be matched by equivalent land ceded to the Palestinians; there should be some refugee returns to Israel, consistent with the preservation of its Jewish character; and East Jerusalem should be the capital of the new Palestinian state. Pursuing such a course would elicit a furious response from Washington, and it must be doubted that this British government has the stomach to deal with it. But its strategy of proximity and persuasion has failed to move American policy in a constructive direction, and the settlement that is emerging is one that will bring lasting shame on everyone associated with it. If we allow our leaders to acquiesce in it, we will never again have to ask: why do they hate us?

The problem is that the Western leaders are so scared of 17 million Jews that they are quite willing to engage in a "clash of civilizations" with 1100 million Muslims to avoid angering Israel and the Jews worldwide. For example, the European Union leaders have stopped even their feeble criticism of Israel´s landgrabs in the West Bank and no longer oppose Israel´s annexation of East Jerusalem. They won´t talk about it with Palestinians, they won´t talk about it with leaders of Muslim countries and they won´t talk about it with reporters. All they do is make threats towards Palestinians. The hapless Jack Straw, Germany´s Green-turned-to-Likudnik foreign minister Joschka Fischer and the useless Spaniard Javier Saviola all have made the same kind of threats of Israeli attacks against Palestinians if Palestinians don´t do as the Israelis order them to do. Everything will be well if Israel is given a free hand, according to their unvoiced but plainly visible daydreaming. The Palestinian question will vanish.

So, the Western leaders believe that by giving Israel free hand to take what it wants, large chunks of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, they will have peace. At least peace from mad, racist Jews who claim that all who don´t do as they want them to do are antisemites. I think that some of the Western leaders may understand what kind of effect their support for the full annexation of the third holiest city in Islam by Israel will have, but they simply don´t care. They will gladly take hate, suicide bombers in their own cities and decades of warfare - just so that they wouldn´t anger Israel, which they have made unto something that the small state isnt:The world´s only real superpower.

The missing masterpieces

Kelly tells good stories, but many of them are just that: just stories. Confucius(traditionally 551-479 BCE) never wrote anything, as far as we know. All that is connected to his name either is written or collected by his followers, usually centuries after his death, or has no connection whatsoever with him. The works of Aeschylus(525-456 BCE) were hardly the sole property of the Ptolemaic dynasty, nor were they destroyed in 640. The whole thing about the burning of the library then is a fable. In reality, it´s existence after the middle part of the 1st century BCE is not certain. It could have been destroyed then, as Caesar(102/100-44 BCE) invaded Egypt, or it could have been destroyed in 272 CE as Romans fought the Palmyran troops in Alexandria, or in 391 CE in the hands of a Christian mob etc etc. And of course, the poet Homer didn´t exist.

Stress, trauma strain Palestinians

Quote:

WHILE MANY eyes focus with a mix of cautious optimism and horror on Gaza, the turmoil in Israel and the rage and sorrow of Jewish settlers, the lack of attention to the lives of more than 1 million Palestinians who share the tiny stretch of coastline is striking. As Avraham Burg, former Knesset member, recently wrote: "Take all the settlers' screams about discrimination and laments about suppression, multiply them many-fold, and you will feel what the Palestinians have lived with for many years without our seeing or feeling." ...The international community can play a positive role politically and financially; building a foundation of trust, a mutual cessation of hostilities and future coexistence. It must also develop and fund social and economic infrastructures for this devastated community. The 8,000 Gaza settlers have a commitment. Why not 3.5 million Palestinians?

Israel Clears Main Gaza Strongholds

I personally don´t know which I want more: that the evictions go well and Israeli leadership can´t claim that withdrawal from West Bank would be too "traumatic" and hard based on the Gaza evitions, or that the settlers - many of which have come from the colonialist settlements on the West Bank - would get more violent and kill Israeli soldiers and police, and thus making themselves and the whole settlement enterprise more disliked in Israel. I just don´t know.

What next after the Gaza withdrawal?

While the economic situation in Gaza is a critical issue, the future of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be determined mainly by the next steps in the peace process. Permanent-status issues concerning borders, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and refugees must be dealt with bilaterally. Any serious observer of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will no doubt acknowledge that there can be no unilateral solution to these issues. As for the peace process's multilateral guarantors, the United States and its quartet partners - the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia - have failed to provide even the most basic facts regarding Israel's withdrawal or how it relates to the “roadmap” agreed in 2003. They cannot continue to sit on the sidelines. Washington's quixotic decision to call Israel's unilateral move part of the roadmap has failed to convince many Palestinians. The prevailing opinion among Palestinians is that the roadmap will be put into deep freeze once the Israelis complete their Gaza withdrawal. But the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, their leaders, and the international community must all respond to the challenges that will follow. Most importantly, the future of the conflict and the chances for genuine peace in the region will depend on understanding the limits of offensive military power, defensive resistance, and unilateralism. Serious face-to-face talks, in accordance to international law and with the help of the international community, are the only way forward.

Theatrics in Gaza:The Disengagement That Isn't

Quote:

When Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his plans to 'disengage' from Gaza and a tiny West Bank enclave, he maintained that his unilateral move was principally compelled by the fact that Palestinians were no partners in peace. They never were, his right wing officials parroted, a reality, they contested, and that most likely will not change in the near future. Thus 'disengagement', for the sake of Israel's security, boils down to demographic supremacy, not Palestinian rights. The Israeli narrative was always clear, albeit iniquitous. "Israel was leaving Gaza in order to retain large chunks of the West Bank," the Jerusalem Post summarized the declared positions of Israel's top officials. This concept was originally initiated by the ever-blunt Chief of Staff Dov Weisglass last year, then Israel's top military strategist, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, and, according to the Post, Sharon himself.

The settlers' retreat was the theatre of the cynical
There was no 'sensitivity training' when bulldozers went into Rafah

Quote:

Contrast the world's overwhelming coverage, especially on television, of the departure of Israeli settlers from Gaza with the minimal reporting of larger and more brutal evictions in previous months. There was no "sensitivity training" for Israeli troops, no buses to drive the expellees away, no generous deadlines to get ready, no compensation packages for their homes, and no promise of government-subsidised alternative housing when the bulldozers went into Rafah. Within sight of the Gush Katif settlements that have been handled with such kid gloves this week, families in Rafah were usually given a maximum of five minutes' warning before their houses, and life savings, were crushed. Many people did not even have time to go upstairs to collect belongings when the barking of loudspeakers ordered them out, sometimes before dawn. Fleeing with their children in the night, they risked being shot if they turned round or delayed. As many as 13,350 Palestinians were made homeless in the Gaza Strip in the first 10 months of last year by Israel's giant armour-plated Caterpillar bulldozers - a total that easily exceeds the 8,500 leaving Israeli settlements this week. In Rafah alone, according to figures from the UN relief agency Unrwa, the rate of house demolitions rose from 15 per month in 2002 to 77 per month between January and October 2004. Parts of Rafah now resemble areas of Kabul or Grozny. Facing Israeli army watchtowers and the concrete wall that runs close to the Gaza Strip's boundary, rows of rubble and ruined homes stretch for hundreds of yards.

Police shooting - the discrepancies

What the police claimed to have happened when Jean Charles de Menezes was shot and what happened according to the evidence and witness accounts.

`Black August´ for US troops in Iraq. 58 US soldiers have died as 16.08. when in all of July 54 US soldiers died. Of course, all the individuals themselves almost certainly didn´t deserve to die - but then that is usual the case in all wars, in all sides. The fact is that their country deserves to loose and the only way to that end is for the US soldiers to die in significant enough numbers for the US to cut and run.

Fears over Menezes death 'leak'

Quote:

BBC home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford said the leaked documents appeared to be witness and police statements given to the IPCC. He said the statements suggest Mr de Menezes had walked into Stockwell Tube station, picked up a free newspaper, walked through ticket barriers and had started to run when he saw a train arriving. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, police said Mr de Menezes had been acting suspiciously and suggested he had vaulted the ticket barriers. Police also said the Brazilian electrician had worn a large winter-style coat - but the leaked version suggested he had in fact worn a denim jacket.

No one knows full cost of Israel's settlement ambitions

Quote:

Israel's effort since the 1967 Mideast war to fill the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jews has grown from the scattered actions of zealous squatters into a network of 142 towns and villages that house nearly 240,000 people. Now that Israel plans to spend some $2 billion to dismantle just 25 of the settlements — for which U.S. aid has been requested — it raises the question of how much money has been poured into populating these biblical lands with Jews, and exactly where it came from... Vice Premier Shimon Peres estimates Israel has spent about $50 billion since 1977, when the hard-line Likud government took over from his Labor party. Other former finance ministers and government officials don't discount a price tag — commonly floated but never documented — of $60 billion... Among the methods used, the interviews show, were government subsidies, shadowy land deals, loopholes in military spending, and an auditing bait-and-switch in which U.S. aid was used to free up billions of dollars for spending on the settlements formally opposed by the United States. Even today, with preparations under way for demolishing 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank, housing and roads continue to be built in West Bank settlement blocs Israel wants to keep in a final peace deal with the Palestinians. This contradicts the internationally backed "road map" peace plan to halt settlement expansion. And a government-commissioned inquiry in March revealed similar methods were used to build and expand dozens of unauthorized West Bank "outposts" — set up as flag-showing exercises and usually consisting of a handful of people in mobile homes. It found widespread government complicity in establishing more than 100 such outposts, and the inquiry's chief, former prosecutor Talia Sasson, called the government's actions "a blatant violation of the law." Last year, the funding of the outposts came in for sharp criticism from the State Comptroller, the government's main watchdog. It found at least two cases where the Housing Ministry funded outposts that the military had ordered demolished.

Ruins of the ancient town of Hatra are still standing, but the unnecessary war has taken it´s toll on it´s buildings.

Germany attacks US on Iran threat

Quote:

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has warned the US to back away from the possibility of military action against Iran over its nuclear programme. His comments come a day after President Bush reiterated that force remained an option but only as a last resort... Mr Schroeder directly challenged Mr Bush's comment that "all options are on the table" over the Iran crisis. "Let's take the military option off the table. We have seen it doesn't work," Mr Schroeder told Social Democrats at the rally in Hanover, to rapturous applause from the crowd.

So we're going to bolt from Iraq. Where are the cries of complaint?

Quote:

You may also have noticed that, according to The New York Times: “If the political process in Iraq remains on track and security improves, perhaps up to 30,000 troops could pull out by next spring.” You may have asked what was meant in that sentence by the words “remains on track”. The “track” looks a curious railway with some unconventional destinations. But where it leads is ever-clearer: to a resolve by politicians to stand everyday observation on its head, and conclude that we have “won” in Iraq — and sprint back home during the incredulous pause before everyone begins to laugh... Does anyone seriously suggest that a free and democratic Iraq is now heading into the home straight? Of course not. The place is going to hell in a handcart. So where are those who urged our forces in, now that the political will to keep them there is faltering?

Computer analysis provides Incan string theory

Quote:

The pair built a searchable database containing key information about Khipu strings, such as the number and position of subsidiary strings and the number and position of knots tied in them. The pair then used this database to search for similarities between 21 Khipus discovered in 1956 at the key Incan administrative base of Puruchuco, near modern day Lima in Peru. Superficial similarities suggested that the Khipu could be connected but the database revealed a crucial mathematical bond - the data represented by subsidiary strands on some of Khipu could be combined to create the strands found on more complex ones.This suggests the Khipu were used to collate information from different parts of the empire, which stretched for more than 5500 kilometres.... "Local accountants would forward information on accomplished tasks upward through the hierarchy, with information at each successive level representing the summation of accounts from the levels below," Urton says. "This communication was used to record the information deemed most important to the state, which often included accounting and other data related to censuses, finances and the military." And Urton and Brezine go a step further. Given that the Puruchuco strings may represent collations of data different regions, they suggest that a characteristic figure-of-eight knot found on all of the 21 Puruchuco strings may represent the place itself. If so, it would be the first word to ever be extracted from an Incan Khipu.

Give Iranian Nukes a Chance
In a mad world, the logic of MAD still works

Quote:

As to Iran and nukes, the surprising fact is that the MAD logic still operates today: Why hasn’t the tension between India and Pakistan exploded into an all-out war? Because both sides are nuclear powers. Why have the Arab states not risked another attack on Israel? Because Israel is a nuclear power. So why should this MAD logic not work in the case of Iran? The standard counter-argument is that in Iran, Muslim fundamentalists are in power who may be tempted to nuke Israel. (Iran is the only large Arab state which not only does not diplomatically recognize Israel, but resolutely denies its right to exist as a state). Is, however, the Iranian regime really so “irrational”? Isn’t Pakistan, with its nuclear arms and its secret services’ ties to al-Qaeda, a much greater threat? Furthermore, two decades ago, Iran was brutally attacked by Iraq (with active U.S. support), so it has every right to feel threatened.

Nice article, but Iran isn´t an Arab country. Arabs are only a very small minority, few percent or so of the population. The majority population are the Persians, who form 51% of the population, and they are Indo-europeans, whereas Arabs are Semitic.

Meanwhile, Israel Grabs the Rest of Jerusalem

Quote:

As the world's attention is diverted by scenes of the removal of settlers who had no right to be in Gaza in the first place, the real strategy behind disengagement is revealed by Israel's aggressive moves to consolidate its occupation of Jerusalem's eastern Palestinian sector. At stake is the very basis of peace between Palestinians and Israelis - a negotiated two-state solution. Israel's plan is to use "concessions" in Gaza to remove Jerusalem from the negotiation table. But without Jerusalem as a shared capital for Palestinians and Israelis, there is no two-state solution... The wall, which Israel is using to redefine Jerusalem's borders, is being routed through occupied territory in such a way as to maximize the number of Palestinian Jerusalemites behind the wall, while maximizing the amount of Palestinian land on the "Israeli" side. About 55,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem will be effectively cut off from the their city, forced to access their schools, hospitals and even families through Israeli military gates which, as Palestinians know from experience, can be closed at a soldier's whim. These Palestinian Christians and Muslims will be denied free access to the holy sites in their own city. Already, Palestinian Christians and Muslims in the West Bank can no longer freely pray at the Old City's Church of the Holy Sepulcher or the Noble Sanctuary (Haram al Sharif). Difficulty in accessing their own city will cause Palestinian Jerusalemites to go deeper into the West Bank for educational, medical and religious services. Israel will then have a pretext - "insufficient links" to the city - for revoking their Jerusalem residency rights. To date, more than 6,500 Palestinians have lost their residency rights in the Jewish state's unstated but measurable efforts to rid the Holy City of as many Christians and Muslims as possible. Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in and around occupied East Jerusalem are increasingly common, with more than 50 homes destroyed so far this year. Sixty-four homes in a Palestinian neighborhood near Jerusalem's Old City have demolition orders pending against them, even though the homes were built on privately owned Palestinian land. According to the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, there are more than 10,000 outstanding demolition orders against Palestinian buildings in East Jerusalem. Such orders are usually enforced without warning and in the middle of the night... The Palestinian Authority remains committed to a two-state solution based on international law. However, negotiations require an Israeli partner and Israel, as the more powerful party, realizes it can impose its own agenda rather than negotiate a solution.

Iraq Shias call for more autonomy

Quote:

Iraq's Shia majority should be granted an autonomous federal state in the south of the country, a senior Shia leader has said. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim made his call at a rally in the Shia holy city of Najaf, as Iraqi politicians debate the wording and balance of a new constitution... Shia religious leaders have long backed calls for the creation of a federalised Shia south, but secular Shias have been cautious, fearing that it might grant excessive power to religious parties.

The proposed name for the autonomous state is said to be Sumer. Sumerian civilization - long believed to have been created by invaders moving to then sparsely populated Mesopotamia, but according to new excavations, a continuity of earlier cultures - started to emerge circa 4000 BCE and started to use writing first in the world around 3500 BCE. The Sumerians were divided to city states until the so-called Third Dynasty of Ur - these "dynasties" were invented by the excavators of the city in the 1920-30´s and of the three "dynasties" the Third Dynasty is the only one which can be truly said to have been a dynasty; the others consist of possible rulers from two different eras that have been put together to form groups - united the Sumerian culture under it´s rule in about 2100 BC. At this time the Sumerian culture itself was most likely already dying, after a century and a half of domination under the Semitic Akkadian empire between circa 2350-2200 BCE. The decline of the Sumerian language - which has no certain relatives - could have started even earlier. After the Third Dynasty of Ur fell when attacked by the Elamites of southern Iran after a few decades of decline - it has been believed that this happened between 2008-1986 BCE, but newer evidence indicates that the Elamites conquered Ur after 1954 BCE - the Sumerian civilization ended. Ur had a special place in the following Mesopotamian culture and the Sumerian language was used as a kind of equivalent of the Medieval latin of it´s time for almost 2000 years afterwards.

Damn it, Let Go!

Quote:

Yesterday the Israel Cabinet decided to blackmail the Palestinian Authority. After months of trying to negotiate a deal so that the common customs envelope between Palestine and Israel, which has been in force since the signing of the Paris Protocol in 1995, can remain in force after the disengagement, the Israeli Cabinet pulled a rabbit out the its hat in the form of a “deal”. If the Palestinians agree to move the border to the Kerem Shalom triangle between Israel, Gaza and Egypt, then Israel will agree to retain the common customs envelope. Sounds a bit complicated – not so – here’s what it’s really about... Israel’s insistence to move the border has only one real explanation – continued control. Israel cannot imagine having a relationship with the Palestinians without it being based on Israeli control over Palestinians. Israel is leaving Gaza but Gaza is not leaving Israel. The Palestinians have had many reservations over the years regarding the common customs envelope. The leading Palestinian economists, businessmen and politicians have many times advocated ending the Paris Protocol and moving into another form of trade regime. They said that there is no reason to keep adhering to system which has not provided them with the trade benefits and at best has only supplied an efficient system of revenue collection and transfer. This is not a small matter, but when faced with all of the non-tariff barriers that Israel has established since Paris and the reality that the Palestinians are not really partners in determining common trade policies, as is the norm in custom unions, why not try something new?

Israel to keep control of Gaza access

Quote:

Israel has said it will probably retain control of Gaza skies and territorial waters after the implementation of its withdrawal plan from the area. "I think it is very likely that we will continue to control the skies and territorial waters of Gaza," Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said on Tuesday.

UN to Adopt Pathbreaking New Global Standard which Demands Return of Confiscated Refugee Land and Housing

Quote:

GENEVA -- The United Nations is expected to adopt a sweeping series of principles today that urge governments everywhere to ensure all refugees and persons displaced due to conflict and natural disasters are entitled to return to, recover and reside in their original homes, lands and properties. Prepared by the UN's Special Rapporteur on Housing and Property Restitution, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro of Brazil, the 'Pinheiro Principles' will provide the first consolidated global standard on the housing, land and property rights of the displaced. "The best solution to the plight of millions of refugees and displaced persons around the world is to ensure they attain the right to return freely to their countries and to have restored to them housing and property of which they were deprived during the course of displacement, or to be compensated for any property that cannot be restored to them. It is the most desired, sustainable, and dignified solution to displacement", said Pinheiro.

Siperian beat bogs are thawing because of the global warming and will release large amount of methane - which is a greenhouse gas - in the atmosphere, which will then accelerate the warming. This of course causes more melting etc. In the end, the average temperature will rise more than the estimated 1.4-5.8 degrees Celsius during this century.

Blair lays down framework for police state in Britain

Quote:

The measures announced August 5 by Prime Minister Tony Blair under the pretext of combating terrorism show how fully his government views democratic rights to be incompatible with its warmongering internationally and its pro-business agenda at home. Blair used his monthly press conference to announce measures openly directed against immigrants and Muslims, but which set the stage for attacks on the right to free speech and for the criminalisation of all forms of political dissent... Any non-British citizen or naturalised British citizen living anywhere in the world, using any means whatsoever—including writing, producing, publishing or distributing material, public speaking including preaching, running a website, or using a position of responsibility such as teacher, community or youth leader—to express views which the government considers illegitimate can be targeted. The list of unacceptable behaviours includes: Fomenting terrorism or encouraging others to carry out terrorist acts; justifying or glorifying terrorism, fomenting other serious criminal activity or provoking others to serious criminal acts; fostering hatred that may lead to intra-community violence in the UK; and advocating violence in furtherance of particular beliefs. Anyone not covered by these sweeping criteria could still face deportation or exclusion from the country if he is considered by the government to express “extreme views” that are “in conflict with the UK’s culture of tolerance.”

US military intelligence identified four 9/11 hijackers in 2000

Quote:

Jehl’s report confirms what has been widely reported overseas but long covered up by the Bush administration and the American media: Mohammed Atta, believed to be the operational leader of the 9/11 attacks, was under US intelligence surveillance even before he came to the United States in 2000. How Atta was able to enter and re-enter the country on multiple occasions over the next year, enroll in flight school, and use credit cards and bank accounts in his real name, despite being a known Al Qaeda operative, has never been explained... The Times interviewed the former military intelligence agent at Weldon’s congressional office. By his account, Able Danger was set up in 1999 to conduct data mining from publicly accessible databases, cross-referencing with information from US agencies like the Immigration and Naturalization Service and with classified intelligence information. This technique pinpointed the names of Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, the pilots who flew hijacked jets into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, as well as Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhdar, two of the five men who hijacked an American Airlines jet and crashed it into the Pentagon... This demonstrates that the 9/11 commission was a fraud and a whitewash. Rather than uncover the real story of the terrorist attacks, the commission conducted a sophisticated cover-up of the real relations between US government agencies and the terrorists who killed 3,000 people.

Nuclear rights and responsibilities

Quote:

The developed world has no right to dictate unilaterally to developing nations how they choose to use nuclear technology. But the latter must build their own capacity to handle the technology responsibly, both individually and collectively... Each country, whether developed or developing, must be allowed to determine for itself how the nuclear option fits into its strategies for achieving such objectives. That does not mean that it should act unilaterally, or ignore international norms of behaviour (as incorporated into national legislation). But it does mean that it has both the right and the responsibility to use its own internal political mechanisms to determine its actions on nuclear issues... The West has legitimate cause to be concerned. Whatever the purely political arguments about a country's right to determine its own energy mix, any nation with such a wealth of oil and gas reserves will have a difficult task persuading the international community that its desire to develop a nuclear capacity is based primarily on its projected energy needs. But this is not in itself an excuse for justifying the strong-arm tactics that some Western countries, particularly those on record as being opposed to the current regime in Iran, are now advocating. Reporting the country to the United Nations Security Council, for example, is unlikely to be particularly effective (and would probably be vetoed by at least one member of the council). While the consequences of another US invasion in the Middle East, as reported to be under consideration in some parts of Washington, are too distressing to contemplate. Furthermore, the Iranian authorities have a powerful political argument when they point to the contradictions between the attitude of the United States administration towards themselves and towards India. In the Indian case, the administration has recently indicated it would drop a previous ban on the export of nuclear technology for civilian purposes — despite the fact that India has still not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Iran itself has.

Shuttle Discovery lands safely in California.

Iraq's murky future

Quote:

Keeping the Iraqi house in order is essential in the immediate future. But a divided Iraq, coupled with possible new alliances — as was demonstrated following the eyebrow-raising visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Jaafari to neighboring Iran where he was received warmly — could still turn the tables upside down, regionally and internationally. The future remains murky.

West turns blind eye as police put Saddam's torturers back to work

Quote:

In their haste to put police on the streets to counter the brutal insurgency, Iraqi and US authorities have enlisted men trained under Saddam Hussein’s regime and versed in torture and abuse, the officials told The Times. They said that recruits were also being drawn from the ranks of outlawed Shia militias. IRAQI security forces, set up by American and British troops, torture detainees by pulling out their fingernails, burning them with hot irons or giving them electric shocks, Iraqi officials say. Cases have also been recorded of bound prisoners being beaten to death by police. Counter-insurgencies are rarely clean fights, but Iraq’s dirty war is being waged under the noses of US and British troops whose mission is to end the abuses of the former dictatorship. Instead, they appear to have turned a blind eye to the constant reports of torture from Iraq’s prisons.

Discovery may need more repairs

Quote:

Nasa scientists are trying to determine whether the US space shuttle Discovery will need more repairs before being given the all clear to return to Earth. On Wednesday an astronaut carried out a pioneering spacewalk to the orbiter's underside to remove protruding material threatening the heatshield's integrity. But engineers now fear the thermal blanket near the cockpit is damaged and needs repairs to stop it tearing off... Initial photographs appeared to indicate that the thermal blanket below the cockpit window had been punctured at one end. The thermal blanket is made up of a quilt-like, padded fabric and serves as insulation from the intense heat generated during re-entry to Earth's atmosphere. Although not heavy, there is concern that a section measuring about 30cm (one foot) could tear off as the shuttle tries to re-enter Earth's atmosphere and hit the main body of the orbiter at such high speed that it could cause a grave injury.

Life in Gaza's danger zone

I really can´t understand the people that worship Israel. It´s evil. A festering wound. And past sufferings are no excuse for colonial enterprises. If you accept the evil of Israel, then you have to accept all other evils of it´s kind. There can´t be different rules for different peoples. Genocide can´t be accepted to be an acceptable excuse for ethnic cleansing and apartheid, especially when most of the colonialists in Palestine have themselves never been victims and they or their families come from areas untouched by the Holocaust. And still Israel hides behind the Holocaust. It´s a shield which it´s leaders use to protect themselves from justice. They use victims of past to deny justice from victims of today.

Methane on Mars: the plot thickens

Quote:

Methane on Mars may be produced at rates 3000 times higher than previously thought and partially destroyed by dust storms, controversial new research suggests. The work is sure to reignite the debate over a possible biological origin for the gas, but another team reports that subsurface volcanism alone - and not life - can account for the gas. ...reports further evidence of the phenomenon. Using an infrared telescope in Hawaii and the Gemini South telescope in Chile, the group found concentrations of methane ranging from zero to more than 250 parts per billion across Mars. Such a drastic difference suggests something must be destroying the methane before it can be mixed uniformly through the atmosphere, says Mumma. And if it is destroyed in one month, he says, that implies it must be replenished 3000 times faster than current estimates suggest... They say dust particles that collide during Martian dust storms can become charged, with smaller particles gaining electrons and rising on air currents. This creates a large electric field that can accelerate electrons until they break apart water molecules in the atmosphere. The detritus from this smash-up can then oxidise, or destroy, methane molecules.

More about 2003 UB313.

Vatican in terror dispute with Israel

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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'

Quote:

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)

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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?

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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?

Quote:

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”

Quote:

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

Quote:

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.