Rhetoric and Reality of War

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Language has once again deconstructed what visuals originally portrayed. The desperate attempt of Iraqis to assert a level of sovereignty in their own country becomes a mega conspiracy, where the aggressor and the victim swap roles in a twisted sort of way.The Iraqi reality, however, is too grim to bear any resemblance to what the British and Americans are disseminating. The bloody images, the ever rising death toll, the mounting insurgency are all indicative of an occupied country revolting, where the line between occupied and occupier is most clearly manifest.

Remembering Mohammad Al-Durra

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Two men shot Muhammad Al-Durra five years ago this week, on Sept 30, 2000, two days after the outbreak of Intifada II: The occupation soldier who shot the fatal bullet that killed him, and the photo journalist who shot the iconic picture that immortalized him. Muhammad, of course, was the 12-year old boy killed in the arms of his father, who had vainly tried to shield him from harm as both crouched, compressed and trapped, between a low wall and a large metal barrel at the Netzarin Junction. The harrowing image, filmed by Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma for France 2 television, carries the emblematic power of a battle flag. Its heart-rending intensity, its fevered veracity, puts it beyond all rational understanding. It is a lasting image of the war against the Palestinian people and how Israel has conducted it.

Yesterday ongoing Israeli attacks against Palestinians killed 3 in Jenin, today 2 in Nablus.

Another mass murder in Iraq, this time in the town of Balad, where 3 bombs yesterday killed 99 and wounded 124 people. Today, at the town of Hilla, a car bomb killed 12 people and wounded 47 people. Attacks in both towns seem to have been targeted against Shiites.

Wild gorillas have been first time observed to use tools in nature. More and even more.

I have to say that I´m impressed - especially about that use of branch to test water depth.

The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk now for four consecutive years. More.

At the same time, a German study shows that a rise of 4,1 degrees Celsius in average temperature - a very conservatice estimate nowadays - during this century will lead to an average rise of 30 cm in global sea levels. More.

Long-sought Maya City — Site Q — found in Guatemala

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The proof—an in-situ panel carved with over 140 hieroglyphs that fill in a key 30 year chapter in classic Maya history—was found in a little known ancient royal center called La Corona. Roughly 40 years ago, the antiquities market was flooded with many exquisitely carved monuments of apparent Mayan origin. Many were purchased for private and museum collections despite a lack of provenance. Because of their similar style and shared subject matter, it was suggested that they came from some still unknown site located somewhere in the Peten lowlands. This site called Site Q — an abbreviation of the Spanish “ ¿que? ” or “ which? ” —has been the target of many expeditions. More.

Torture is US Policy, Not Aberration

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Given the extraordinary flow of disclosures, confirming the use of identical U.S. torture practices throughout Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, the "bad apple" defense is coy at best. It is impossible for so many soldiers to dream up identical techniques by coincidence. We are dealing with official policy, not individual excess. Legal responsibility goes all the way to the top... Since these torture techniques constitute obvious policy, and many were specifically authorized, why are our top-level officials not under indictment? The Fourth Geneva Convention protects non-POWs, including saboteurs and insurgents. Such people may be tried and imprisoned, but not tortured. Our criminal laws make it a felony to conspire to torture a detainee abroad.

Famine continues in Niger.

Charles Kennedy, leader of the British Liberal Democratic party, says that Tony Blair´s blind obedience to George W. Bush is costing lives in Iraq.

True, but this has been clear for over two years. So what else is not new, Charles?

Israel plans to steal a slice of northern Gaza by building another illegal wall on Palestinian land.

Echoes of the Northern Ireland conflict in Basra. More.

The Forgotten Horror of Sabra and Shatila

Heatwave makes plants warm planet

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The really surprising finding came with the calculation that during the heatwave, European plants and their ecosystems were putting more carbon dioxide into the air than they were absorbing. "In the past we expected that climate change would benefit European ecosystems because growth tends to be limited by the short growing season," said Andrew Friend, "but this analysis hadn't taken into account the possibility of extreme events. "The conclusion of our study is that this extreme event meant a loss of carbon across Europe - a loss which undoes many years of net uptake." ... During an average year, the net effect is that European plants absorb around 125 million tonnes of carbon (MtC). But in 2003, according to this analysis, they released 500 MtC to the atmosphere. By comparison, global emissions from burning fossil fuels amounts to about 7,000 MtC; by giving rather than taking, European plants were adding about 10% to the global total. "This shows that short-term climatic events such as the 2003 heatwave occurring over regional areas like Europe can have major effects on the climate globally," commented Julia Slingo.

International press attacks German voters, because they vote "wrong" parties. Isn´t democracy just dreadful?

Incredibly stupid Brits pour petrol on the ground in Basra and light a match. This describes pretty well what has happened in Basra. I don´t think that you can smash the illusion of Iraqi sovereignty better than this. Blood will flow.

Nasa´s new manned Moon exploration plans look very familiar.

German elections went surprisingly well, CDU/CSU got their worst ever result and so a bourgeois coalition will not happen. The new Left party(Der Linke), formed by PDS and WASG - the SDP rebels - performed well. I´m not a big fan of Gerhard Schröder and his policies, but better him than Angela Merkel. More.

Another possible shoreline of an evaporated(?) sea found on Titan by Cassini.

The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners

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A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe... Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

Ghastly.

Bloody days in Baghdad and elsewhere in occupied Iraq. More.

I do think like the neocons who miscalculated when they attacked Iraq, the Sunnis who try to put the nascent civil war in Iraq in full gear with these attacks against innocent civilians don´t really know what they are doing. Iraq led by Sunnis will not rise from it´s grave and the fires in Iraq could spread and engulf the whole Middle East.

Suicide bombing in a Shiite neighbourhood of Baghdad kills 82 poor labourers.

The translator of a book collecting Osama bin Laden´s "messages" speaks to New Yorker.

Palestinians in Gaza celebrate the first stage in their national liberation.

Hayabusa probe arrives at asteroid Itokawa.

True democracy still denied in Japan, as the monolithic LDP secures yet another victory.

Back to the border of sanity

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Looking back on the years of the occupation, it is impossible not to come to the conclusion that there had been a march of folly here, which not only did not achieve any national goals, but also inflicted huge damage on the state, society and economy. The occupation regime imprinted a negative seal on society's norms and values; hundreds of dead were sacrificed in order to defend it, and billions were spent in order to build settlements with no expectancy for their continued existence... The damage and price caused by the occupation also exist in the rest of the territories Israel occupied in 1967. The tremendous importance of Israel's exit from Gaza is not only leaving a crowded area that is a center for terror, but also because it is a first step toward the country's convergence into reasonable borders. These must be determined according to demographic and security tests, but also must allow the existence of a sovereign Palestinian state and give expression to Palestinian national aspirations. This means that sooner or later, Israel will have to leave the vast majority of the Judea and Samaria territories in the West Bank, and allow the state of Palestine to establish its capital in East Jerusalem.

Jaxa´s Hayabusa probe is now 220 kilometers from it´s target asteroid Itokawa, whose shape is now being revelead.

In the last 15 years, thanks mainly to space probes, we have learned more about asteroids than in the in the 190 years before since the finding of Ceres in 1801.

Ice belt 'encircled Mars equator'

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Europe's Mars Express probe may have found evidence for a band of ice that once spanned the Martian equator... They found that when Mars' tilt changed to an obliquity of about 35 degrees around five million years ago, moisture trapped at the North and South Poles may have been re-deposited in equatorial regions as snow. It is also possible that water trapped in the Martian tropics since ancient Noachian times was mobilised around five million years ago. Eventually, the poles may have got smaller and a thick belt of ice formed around the tropics... He added it was possible the ice could have got as thick as several hundred metres at high altitudes.

Why America can't cope

But nobody, as far as I can see, has dared to suggest that there are deeper explanations for so disconcerting a shambles, explanations that transcend political parties or individuals. The self-image of America ...is that of a nation of uniquely hardy and resilient people predestined by God to be omnipotent in the world, be it against the forces of nature or of bogeyman dictators. Because, in reality, the reverse is so often true - present-day Americans, after all, are the most pampered human beings in history - the myths, fostered by popular culture and especially Hollywood, have given rise to a complacency that is increasingly dangerous not only for the rest of the world but for Americans, too. Hardship is only momentary and can always be overcome, hard work will always be rewarded, and other such uniquely American traits, will result in a society that is matchlessly efficient and soars to ever greater triumphs... Yet Katrina showed the fragility of the US and this belief that there is little need for strong collective leadership or institutions of the kind that European civilisations have come to value. The feelings date back to victory over the British in the American revolution: a distrust of government and a belief in the righteousness and inevitable prosperity of the little guy, equipped only with his gun, his initiative and his own humble patch of land. This culture of so-called private entrepreneurship blended with a disavowal of collective responsibilities actually gained under Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr and then Bill Clinton... Thus, on top of everything, there is an adamant refusal to learn the lessons of history or those of the forces of nature... The nation is nurtured on tales that America is paradise on earth but the reality is that it is increasingly falling behind western Europe in technology, education and healthcare - not to mention the kind of emergency and evacuation procedures and disaster preparedness needed to respond to Hurricane Katrina. A predictable natural calamity which inconveniently failed to fit in with the preordained scripts of this most cynical of US administrations has brutally exposed America's shortcomings.

The small Popular Resistance Committees -group - which has former Fatah members in it´s ranks - claims responsibility for Moussa Arafat´s murder.

ESA´s newest Videotalk feature is about Cryosat.

I like these videotalks. Of course, they are largely superficial and don´t go to specifics etc, but still I like them.

Jasser Arafat´s cousin, former security official Moussa Arafat - one of the founders of Fatah - has been murdered in Gaza by unidentified gunmen.

What Gaza and what all the areas occupied of Israel need, is a total withdrawal of all Israeli troops beyond the 1967 borders and tens of thousands of international peacekeepers.

The city of Qaim near the Syrian border in Iraq has fallen to Musab al-Zarqawi´s al-Qaida in Iraq -organization, also known as Monotheism and Holy War. Government officials have been killed.

Japan´s Hayabusa space probe is only 1000 kilometers from it´s target, the asteroid Itokawa. This mission, which has been given very little attention, will try for the first time to bring back samples from an asteroid back to Earth.

New Orleans crisis shames Americans

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At the end of an unforgettable week, one broadcaster on Friday bitterly encapsulated the sense of burning shame and anger that many American citizens are feeling. The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better. It has been a profoundly shocking experience for many across this vast country who, for the large part, believe the home-spun myth about the invulnerability of the American Dream... The uneasy paradox which so many live with in this country - of being first-and-foremost rugged individuals, out to plunder what they can and paying as little tax as they can get away with, while at the same time believing that America is a robust, model society - has reached a crisis point this week.

Elegy for my city by Richard Ford.

It´s hard for people to usually understand how entire civilizations can collapse. How urban societies can swiftly be reduced to small groups of backward agriculturalists or wandering nomads? Look no farther than Louisiana and Mississippi. The thing that saves the people in there is that there isn´t a group of barbarian savages or a competing civilization next door ready to attack and finish them. In the modern world the federal government of US will eventually get things under control, how late it may be for many. But in the ancient world a civilization centered on New Orleans would have fallen. A total area of 234 000 square kilometers has been affected. The effects will have consequences that reach to a far larger area, in fact globally. Something like this - a natural disaster - could have destroyed the Mound builders along the northern Mississippi and the Anasazi(in their case, most likely severe and long drought) in the west.

New Orleans rocked by huge blasts

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The New Orleans riverfront has been hit by a series of massive blasts, and fires are raging in the area. The cause and extent of possible damage is not yet clear. The news comes as troops were sent to quell lawlessness in the city, where desperation grows. Anarchy has spread through New Orleans, where thousands of people are stranded with no food or water, four days after Hurricane Katrina hit... "This is a national disgrace," New Orleans emergency chief Terry Ebbert said... There have been outbreaks of shootings and carjackings and reports of rapes... The muddy floodwaters are now toxic with fuel, battery acid, rubbish and raw sewage... Hundreds or even thousands of people are feared to have drowned in the low-lying city, most of which is under water.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: from natural disaster to national humiliation

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The catastrophe that is unfolding in New Orleans and on the Gulf coast of Mississippi has been transformed into a national humiliation without parallel in the history of the United States... The reactionary mythology of America as the “Greatest Country in the World” has suffered a shattering blow... Washington’s response to this human tragedy has been one of gross incompetence and criminal indifference. People have been left to literally die in the streets of a major American city without any assistance for four days. Images of suffering and degradation that resemble the conditions in the most impoverished Third World country are broadcast daily with virtually no visible response from the government of a country that concentrates the greatest share of wealth in the world... The government’s callous disregard for the human suffering, its negligence in failing to prepare for this disaster and above all its utter incompetence has staggered even the compliant American media... In the figure of the president, George W. Bush, the incompetence, stupidity, and sheer inhumanity that characterizes so much of America’s money-mad corporate elite finds its quintessentially repulsive expression... Can anyone seriously believe that the current administration and its Democratic accomplices in Congress are going to launch a mass program of low-cost home construction, rebuild schools and provide jobs for the hundreds of thousands left unemployed by the destruction? More.

Israel is to destroy the Palestinian village of Nuaman on West Bank.

A collection of Hebrew poems on poetry from medieval Spain and Provence from the pages of Fascicle.

Lords of Creation, very nice "virtual exhibition" of Maya kingship from Mesoweb.

First chimpanzee fossils - age 545 000 years - have been found at the same as the genetic code of the chimpanzee have been sequenzed and analyzed. With other great apes, the chimpanzee is heading to extinction in the nature in a few decades, thanks to us.

4 former Lebanese security officials have been charged with the murder of the former Lebanese prime minister and billionaire Rafik Hariri.

Media seems to forget that Rafik Hariri wasn´t the only person who died in the blast.

In Iraq, a Man-Made Disaster

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Martyrdom has always been a foundation of the Shia Muslim faith. But yesterday's tragedy gave it new meaning: possibly as many as 1,000 men, women and children were killed when they fell from a bridge over the Tigris river in Baghdad, apparently fearful that a suicide bomber had been let loose among them. There was no bomber. But there was death on a massive scale as hundreds of Shia Muslims fell over the railings of the narrow bridge. Hundreds of children were among the dead. Bodies drifted for hours down river from the Qadimiya district of Baghdad. Soldiers who fired their rifles into the air compounded the carnage. Several mortar rounds had earlier exploded on the road, leading many of the marchers - commemorating the death in 799 of Imam Moussa ibn Jaafar al-Qadim, one of Shiism's 12 principal saints - to believe they were under attack. At least a million Shia pilgrims were walking to the Qadimiya mosque when the crowd, trampled upon, crushed against barricades and hurled into the river, fell from the Aima bridge. Children could be seen drowning in the Tigris in what was the greatest loss of life in Iraq since the invasion of the country in 2003.

The futility of fighting nature

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It will cost tens of billions of tax dollars, maybe much more, to create the New New Orleans. The natural inclination is to declare defiance in the face of adversity and vow to restore the city to its past glory... Many experts think simply putting New Orleans back together would be shortsighted and eventually lead to a repeat of this week's disaster. They think serious consideration should be given to concentrating homes and commerce only on strips of higher ground near the banks of the Mississippi or--even more radical--abandoning the site altogether and starting fresh somewhere less vulnerable to flood... "New Orleans has been fighting against nature for an awful long time," explained geologist Nicholas Pinter, a flood expert at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale... New Orleans is sinking, and one of the main culprits is the same levee system designed to keep the water out. Levees both intensify the flow of a river and choke off the supply of sediment that maintains an equilibrium between land and water. "When it comes to blocking off a flood plain with levees," said Pinter, "the history is failure again and again and again. One-third of all flood disasters are the result of levee failure."

The more than 960 dead from the stampede in Baghdad are being buried.

When the Moral Levee Breaks

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... where, for the first time, I saw the video of the looting that was taking place, in broad daylight, throughout The Big Easy, unencumbered by anything so prosaic as law and order. To me, the looting came as no surprise: it was a completely natural phenomenon. It was exactly what my own theory of the social order would have predicted. What else should you expect when a civilized order collapses? ...Yet Smith's failure to take humankind's primordial instinct for theft was not unique; on the contrary, all political theorists of the modern era... have implicitly assumed that we are living in a world in which acts of theft are simply unthinkable -- an unspeakable No No that protects our civilization in the same way that the levees around New Orleans were once considered to have protected its population from inundation. Alas, none of these modern political theorists ever thought to ask themselves the question, "How did it come about that the societies of the West were provided with a moral levee against the flood of self-interested and non-altruistic individualists?" ...had been so well brought up that he was no longer able to sympathize with the motives of human beings who were behaving in precisely the same way that all human beings always behave when they are struggling for survival in the state of nature. He was indignant at the thief who inhabits the id inside of every one of us. He was livid at evidence of other people's humanity.