Iraq's murky future

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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

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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

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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

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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

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

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

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

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

New world found in outer solar system

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

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

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

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

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

Foam 'might have struck shuttle'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pervez Musharraf, dictator of Pakistan, tells a joke.

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

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

Baghdad truck bomb kills 40

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

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

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

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

Iraq: Bush's Islamic Republic

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

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

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

A truce or a fig leaf?

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

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

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

Mayor blames Middle East policy

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

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

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

Weekend of slaughter propels Iraq towards all-out civil war

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

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

Israel escalates attack on Palestinian towns

Why Marx is man of the moment

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

No two minute silences for them in Europe.

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

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

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

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

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

Taking in London
Collateral Damage

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

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

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

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

The illegality of the Wall: One Year On

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

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

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

The myth of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

London bombings: Inquiry so far

The destruction of our common past in Iraq.

Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed

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

Terror Begats Terror
Bombs in the Underground

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

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

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

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

The price of occupation

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

38 dead in London blasts

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

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

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

“Blair placed this city in the firing line”

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

Al-Qaeda shadow looms over London

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

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

Deep Impact stories:

XMM-Newton detects water on Tempel 1

Hubble captures Deep Impact collision with comet

Comet collision to shine new light on stars

European Southern Observatory´s page for Deep Impact studies.

Deep Impact impactor to strike comet Tempel today.

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

Has Cassini found a lake of liquid hydrocarbon on Titan?

Iraq: A bloody mess

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A year ago the supposed handover of power by the US occupation authority to an Iraqi interim government led by Iyad Allawi was billed as a turning point in the violent history of post-Saddam Iraq. It has turned out to be no such thing. Most of Iraq is today a bloody no-man's land beset by ruthless insurgents, savage bandit gangs, trigger-happy US patrols and marauding government forces... On Sunday the American Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, told a US news programme that the ongoing insurgency could last "five, six, eight, ten, twelve years". Yesterday in London, after meeting Tony Blair, the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, tried to be more upbeat, commenting: "I think two years will be enough and more than enough to establish security"... The news now from Iraq is only depressing. All the roads leading out of the capital are cut. Iraqi security and US troops can only get through in heavily armed convoys. There is a wave of assassinations of senior Iraqi officers based on chillingly accurate intelligence. A deputy police chief of Baghdad was murdered on Sunday. A total of 52 senior Iraqi government or religious figures have been assassinated since the handover. In June 2004 insurgents killed 42 US soldiers; so far this month 75 have been killed. The "handover of power" last June was always a misnomer. Much real power remained in the hands of the US. Its 140,000 troops kept the new government in business. Mr Allawi's new cabinet members became notorious for the amount of time they spent out of the country. Safely abroad they often gave optimistic speeches predicting the imminent demise of the insurgency. Despite this the number of Iraqi military and police being killed every month has risen from 160 at the handover to 219 today.

Snipers with children in their sights

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When reporters pressed the issue, the army promised a full investigation, but a few weeks later it was quietly dropped. This has become the norm in a military that appears to value protecting itself from accountability more than living up to its claim to be the "most moral army in the world". As Tom Hurndall's parents noted yesterday after the conviction of an Israeli sergeant for the manslaughter of their son, the soldier was put on trial only because the British family had the resources to bring pressure to bear. But there has been no justice for the parents of hundreds of Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers... B'Tselem argues that a lack of accountability and rules of engagement that "encourage a trigger-happy attitude among soldiers" have created a "culture of impunity" - a view backed by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which last week described many army investigations of civilian killings as a "sham ... that encourages soldiers to think they can literally get away with murder". In southern Gaza, the killings take place in a climate that amounts to a form of terror against the population. Random fire into Rafah and Khan Yunis has claimed hundreds of lives, including five children shot as they sat at their school desks. Many others have died when the snipers must have known who was in their sights - children playing football, sitting outside home, walking back from school. Almost always "investigations" amount to asking the soldier who pulled the trigger what happened - often they claim there was a gun battle when there was none - and presenting it as fact.

US 'in talks with Iraq with Iraq rebels'
Insurgents reveal secret face-to-face meetings.

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On the rebel side were representatives of insurgent groups including Ansar al-Sunna, which has carried out numerous suicide bombings and killed 22 people in the dining hall of an American base at Mosul last Christmas. Also represented was the so-called Islamic Army in Iraq, which murdered Enzo Baldoni, an Italian journalist, last August; the Iraqi Liberation Army; Jaish Mohammed and other smaller factions. According to an Iraqi commander, one of the Americans introduced himself as “a representative of the Pentagon” and declared himself ready to “find ways of stopping the bloodshed on both sides and to listen to demands and grievances”. The US officer also indicated that the contents of any discussion would be relayed to his superiors in Washington... The Iraqis had agreed beforehand to focus on their main demand, “a guaranteed timetable of American withdrawal from Iraq”, the source said. “We told them it did not matter whether we are talking about one year or a five-year plan but that we insisted on having a timetable nonetheless.” The demand did not meet with a favourable response from the American team, perhaps because a timetable is the one thing that President George W Bush has declared he will not agree to. The original discussion is said to have lasted for an hour and a half and to have broken up with the US team explaining that it would need to consult Washington. But one American official apparently asked whether the insurgents would be interested in disarming in return for a release of all Iraqi prisoners in US military camps. The Iraqi side immediately reverted to its demand for a timetable and the only agreement of the afternoon was to meet again. At the second meeting, the Iraqi sources added, two little known insurgent groups were present. They were introduced as Thawarat al-Ishreen and the Shoura Council of Mujahideen. This meeting did not go well. “The tone of the Americans was different,” the Iraqi insider said. “They were talking with a tone of more superiority, arrogance and provocation.” After a discussion about Al-Qaeda activities, the Americans bluntly advised the Iraqis to “cease all support, logistics and cover for Zarqawi’s group”. Only if links to Al-Qaeda were severed would the Americans be ready to discuss Iraqi demands. “Our response was that we will never abandon any Muslim who has come to our country to help us defend it,” the commander said... The meeting reached another inconclusive end but the two sides agreed to keep talking, the Iraqi source said. The insurgents said they had asked for a United Nations representative to attend the next round.

New - reconstructed from both newly found and old fragments - poem from Sappho!

Eric Hobsbawm:America's neo-conservative world supremacists will fail
Current US megalomania is rooted in the Puritan colonists' certainties

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All the great powers and empires of history knew that they were not the only ones, and none was in a position to aim at genuinely global domination. None believed themselves to be invulnerable. Nevertheless, this does not quite explain the evident megalomania of US policy since a group of Washington insiders decided that September 11 gave them the ideal opportunity for declaring its single-handed domination of the world... Even those who do not share the views of the old generals and proconsuls of the US world empire (which were those of Democratic as well as Republican administrations) will agree that there can be no rational justification of current Washington policy in terms of the interests of America's imperial ambitions or, for that matter, the global interests of US capitalism. It may be that it makes sense only in terms of the calculations, electoral or otherwise, of American domestic policy. It may be a symptom of a more profound crisis within US society. It may be that it represents the - one hopes short-lived - colonisation of Washington power by a group of quasi-revolutionary doctrinaires. (At least one passionate ex-Marxist supporter of Bush has told me, only half in jest: "After all, this is the only chance of supporting world revolution that looks like coming my way.") Such questions cannot yet be answered.

Third and last boom of the MARSIS radar on ESA´s Mars Express probe has been succesfully opened and the radar has functioned well in a test.

Withdrawal is a prelude to annexation

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American foreign policy has habitually displayed double standards towards the Middle East: one standard towards Israel and one towards the Arabs. To give just one example, the US effected regime change in Baghdad in three weeks but has failed to dismantle a single Jewish settlement in the occupied territories in 38 years. The two main items on America's current agenda for the region are democracy for the Arabs and a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. America, however, insists on democracy only for its Arab opponents, not for its friends. As for the peace process, it is essentially a mechanism by which Israel and America try to impose a solution on the Palestinians. American hypocrisy is nothing new. ...If she is serious about spreading democracy in the Arab world she must accept the outcome of free elections; in most of the Arab world they would produce Islamist, anti-US governments. Israel has contributed more than any other country to this sorry state of affairs. Condi and the American right regard Israel as a strategic asset in the war on terror. In fact Israel is America's biggest liability. For most Arabs and Muslims the real issue in the Middle East is not Iraq, Iran or democracy but Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people and America's blind support for Israel. America's policy towards the Middle East is myopic, muddled and mistaken. Only a negotiated settlement can bring lasting peace and stability to the area. And only America has the power to push Israel into such a settlement. It is high time the US got tough with Israel, the intransigent party and main obstacle to peace. Colluding in Sharon's selfish, uncivilised plan to destroy the Jewish homes in Gaza is not a historic step on the road to peace.

Private solar sail spacecraft Cosmos 1 has been launched.

Iraq's treasures still being looted

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"What's going on here is worse than what happened with the Baghdad museum," says Professor Elizabeth Stone of Stonybrook University in New York. "What happened at the museum shouldn't have happened. But in terms of what was taken, we knew where it came from. We have photographs. What's coming out of here, we haven't the faintest idea what it is." Professor Stone has been studying new satellite images which show hundreds of neatly-arranged holes where sites have been dug up. "We can tell the difference between the areas they're really targeting and the areas they're probing," she says. "We can really make a distinction between different types of looting." ..."Archaeological sites are being destroyed in order to find these objects," says Dr John Curtis, head of the Ancient Near East department at the British Museum in London. "In the process of that looting, very important archaeological evidence gets lost. And it's this evidence that can tell us a great deal about the civilisation."

Archaeologists fight to save Iraqi sites

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The scale of pilfering and destruction at innumerable sites is causing dismay in the profession, though many items stolen from the Baghdad Museum's storage rooms immediately after the American-led invasion have been returned. "The situation has become desperate since the end of the war," said Bill Blake, who is the head of English Heritage's Metric Survey Team and recently returned from running courses in neighbouring Jordan. "State control has effectively collapsed and people are helping themselves to whatever they can get. They are taking material for building or digging for antiquities to be sold abroad. "I have seen pictures of Bronze Age sites, dating back to 3000-4000BC, which march from horizon to horizon. They are uninvestigated as far as we know. There are tell sites [mounds of accumulated detritus from previous settlements] which look like moonscapes of hills. They have Arab cemeteries on the surface, then you dig down to pre-bronze age occupation. All sorts of cultural artefacts are disappearing - decorated pottery, sculptures and cuneiform tablets. Iraq was the cradle of western civilisation."

New findings from the threatened Mayan city of Waka.

Red Herring

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It is an irony of fate (or a triumph of folly) that Hamas was created, in fact, with the help of Israel itself. Much as the Americans created the al-Qaeda of Osama bin-Laden in order to fight against the Soviet army in Afghanistan, Israel supported the Islamic movement in the occupied territories as a counterweight to the PLO. The assumption was that pious Muslims would spend their time praying in the mosques and would not support the secular PLO, which was then considered the arch-enemy. But when the first intifada broke out at the end of 1987, the Islamists organized as Hamas (the Arabic initials of "Islamic Resistance Movement") and quickly became the most efficient underground fighting organization. However, the Security Service started to act against them only after a whole year of the intifada had passed. Now the existence of Hamas is an accomplished fact. It has deep roots in the community, also because of its widespread social services which were initially financed by the Saudis and others.

There´s nothing that is extraordinary here - but much that is ironic, as the US is now having show trials of Palestinian Americans that have funded Hamas or Jihad, and so done the same thing that Israel itself did - as the Apartheid-era government of South Africa supported Inkatha to weaken the ANC and Turkey supported it´s own Hezbollah movement to weaken the PKK etc etc.

More secrets from Karnak

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The discovery of a life-sized dyad statue of a Middle Kingdom Pharaoh and the reconstruction of two prestigious monuments are among the latest achievements of the Franco-Egyptian archaeological team working at Karnak Temple in Luxor... At the Karnak Temple, history has a special scent and taste. Within its pylons is amassed an unsurpassed assembly of soaring obelisks, awe- inspiring chapels, and splendid sanctuaries reflecting the spectacular life and great civilisation of Ancient Egypt. Although most of Karnak has been thoroughly excavated, the temple still conceals and occasionally reveals more of the Pharaohs' secrets and mysteries.

Orang-utans killed for illegal trade

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Around 1000 orang-utans are being killed each year so that their babies can be traded as pets, leaving the primate species on the brink of survival, the WWF warns in a new report.The orang-utan - meaning “man of the forest” in Malay - is native to the tropical rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo. They are already under severe threat due to intensive logging of their habitat - over 90% of the species were wiped out during the last century... It has been illegal to hunt or trade in orang-utans since 1931, but the study by WWF and TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, discovered that fewer than 10% of people found in illegal possession of the apes were prosecuted.

The Exception Is the Rule

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The American occupation of Iraq is something new, but the fundamental error of the United States has a long pedigree. It is the imprisonment of the human mind in ideology backed by violence. The classic example is Stalin's Russia, under which decades of misrule were rationalized as a "stage" on the way to the radiant future of true communism. As for the miserable present, it was amusingly called "actually existing communism." The future, when it came, of course was not communism at all but the disintegration of the whole enterprise. All the "stages" turned out to lead nowhere. Once the mind is in the grip of such a system, every "actually existing" horror can be seen as a mere imperfection in a beautiful larger picture, every defeat a stage on the way to the glorious future. The simpler and more coherent an ideology, the better it can withstand the assault of fact. So today in Iraq, every act of torture, every flattened city, every gushing sewer, every car-bombing and beheading, is presented as a bump on the road to "freedom" for Iraq, or for the Middle East, or even for the whole world, in which our President has promised an "end to tyranny." (It's apparently a rule of ideology that the more sordid the reality, the more grandiosely splendid the eventual goal must be.) But a moment comes -- perhaps it is a sudden defeat, or perhaps it is merely reading a story like Shadid and Fainaru's -- when the fantasy dissolves, and then one is left face to face with the factual truth. All the "exceptions" turn out to be the rule. When that happens with respect to Iraq, America's grotesque misadventure there -- born of lies, sustained by lies and productive of more lies every day it continues -- will be brought to a close.

Mars Express has succesfully deployed the second main boom of the MARSIS radar.

History's Greatest Reoccuring Hoax: Colonization "For Security Reasons"

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Why aren't the US and Europe calling, in the strongest terms possible, for an immediate halt to the illegal wall construction and for the dismantling of the miles already up, for a halt to the illegal Kalandia construction, to the continued illegal Israeli settlements? Why are they not withdrawing their ambassadors from Israel? By not protesting, by accepting Israeli actions implicitly or explicitly as "security" policies, they are buying into the biggest hoax in history. They are leaving the Palestinians no option but to fight back - one kind of force (the kind that grabs land, builds walls and barriers and constructs illegal settlements under the protection of the Israeli army) with another kind of force (the kind that throws stones and mortar shells and explodes people in the market place), and then let each individual's conscience sort out which is defense and which is terrorism. It will take some effort to get out from under the biggest Israeli hoax of all time. You have to use imagination: "You have to imagine what it feels like to wake up one morning in your own house, the house your grandfather built long before the state of Israel existed, and to find the official notice on the wall. Your home, where you have lived your life, is soon to be destroyed; you and your children will be refugees."

Ethnic Cleansing in Jerusalem, Israeli Style

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Israeli authorities are carrying out a process in East Jerusalem that accurately be described as ethnic cleansing. It is plainly geared to uproot Palestinians from an area that historically has been known as Arab East Jerusalem and convert it into an integral, permanent part of the capital of the Jewish state. The scandalous process is recognized and deplored by the major news media in Britain and elsewhere and even by some newspapers in Israel, but it is predictably ignored in the United States. Still worse, Washington provides the financial, political and military support without which the cleansing could not go forward. B'Tselem, a private organization of Israelis concerned about human rights, calls it "a policy of quiet deportation." In its report, subtitled Revocation of Residency of East Jerusalem Palestinians, the group notes that "perhaps thousands of people have been forced to leave" and warns that the worst is still to come.

World's dry regions set to expand

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Drylands cover 41% of the planet's land surface, and are growing. They are home to over two billion people, including the world's most impoverished, in areas such as central Asia and northern Africa. One of the biggest problems is that as land dries up, it becomes unsuitable for farming. This exacerbates poverty and creates environmental refugees. The authors estimate that hundreds of thousands of people will be in need of new homes and lifestyles over the next 30 years as the Earth dries up. The effects are also felt far beyond the desert areas themselves. Dust storms from the Gobi Desert in Asia and the African Sahara are responsible for respiratory problems as far away as North America, says the report.

How Earth-like is the newly found planet that orbits Gliese 876?

Smallest extrasolar planet found

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The new planet whips around the star in a mere two days, and is so close to the star's surface that its temperature probably tops 200 - 400 Celsius (400 - 750 degrees Fahrenheit) - oven-like temperatures far too hot for life as we know it... The researchers have measured a minimum mass for the planet of 5.9 Earth masses. It orbits Gliese 876 with a period of 1.94 days at a distance of 0.021 astronomical units (AU), or 3.2 million km (2 million miles). Though the team has no direct proof the planet is rocky, its low mass precludes it from retaining gas like Jupiter. More.

Web of Cold-Blooded Lies

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In July 2002, the head of MI-6, Britain's secret intelligence service, briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet on U.S. plans to attack Iraq. Sir Richard Dearlove ("M" to James Bond fans) reported that U.S. President George Bush had decided to invade oil-rich Iraq in March 2003, in a war "to be justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy." Translation: The U.S. and British governments would concoct charges against Iraq to justify war. After Britain's attorney general warned that unprovoked invasion of Iraq would violate international law, Dearlove opined with oily cynicism, "If the political context were right, people would support regime change." Translation: Use propaganda and scare tactics to whip up war fever. British and U.S. intelligence agencies were ordered to produce "evidence" to justify a war. In the U.S., faked "evidence" and grotesque lies were fed to the frightened public by pro-war neo-conservatives and frenzied national media. The U.S. Congress clapped for war like trained seals.

Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’

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The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier. The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal. This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.

Logging threatens Borneo species

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A report from the WWF says illegal logging and clearance for oil palm plantations is destroying the habitats of several animals. Orang-utan and pygmy elephants could become unviable in just 15 years. According to the WWF, 1.3m hectares of Borneo's lowland forest is being destroyed each year. At that rate, it claims, by 2020 the remaining pockets of jungle may be too small and broken up for some species to be genetically viable.In other words, each tiny area of woodland that remains will not support a healthy breeding population of large animals like pygmy elephants or orang-utan.

Found: Europe's oldest civilisation

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Archaeologists have discovered Europe's oldest civilisation, a network of dozens of temples, 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids. More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000 years ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC. Their discovery, revealed today by The Independent, will revolutionise the study of prehistoric Europe, where an appetite for monumental architecture was thought to have developed later than in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In all, more than 150 temples have been identified. Constructed of earth and wood, they had ramparts and palisades that stretched for up to half a mile. They were built by a religious people who lived in communal longhouses up to 50 metres long, grouped around substantial villages. Evidence suggests their economy was based on cattle, sheep, goat and pig farming. More.

Searching for the truth about Srebrenica

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Professor Mient Jan Faber, former director of the Dutch Interchurch Council for Peace (IKV), said: "The Dutch have constructed a fantasy narrative about Srebrenica - the idea that, at the expense of some men, we saved thousands of women and children." After the fall of Srebrenica to the Serbs under Gen Mladic on July 11 1995, the terrified population of the enclave split into two. Some 15,000 made off over the mountains towards Bosnian-held territory. Another 25,000 streamed to the Dutch UN base at Potocari, seeking protection from troops charged by the UN security council with providing it. Some 5,000 got inside the base, which the Dutch then closed, leaving 20,000 outside. On July 12, the Serbs began sporadic killing of people outside. The following day, the Dutch ordered those cowering inside the base to leave. Their commander, Colonel Tom Karemans, left his deputy, Col Franken, to oversee the expulsion, or "evacuation" as it is known. Under the eyes of Dutch soldiers, the Serbs then separated women, children and the elderly from men and boys - the latter taken away for summary execution.

Uzbek crackdown was a 'massacre'

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Uzbekistan's crackdown on protesters in Andijan last month was a "massacre", according to Human Rights Watch, in the fullest report yet on the bloodshed. The US-based rights group called for Washington and the EU to suspend links with the Uzbek government until it allows an independent investigation. "The scale of this killing was so extensive, and its nature was so indiscriminate and disproportionate, that it can best be described as a massacre," Human Rights Watch [HRW] said in its report, presented at a press conference in Moscow on Tuesday.

One Day in Iraq: At-a-glance

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The BBC News website is reporting in detail on events in Iraq throughout the day, to try to convey the fullest and most accurate picture we can of the reality of life in the troubled country. From dawn to dusk Baghdad time, we will be reporting the news in greater detail than usual and talking to Iraqis from all walks of life about their everyday experiences and the impact of the violence that surrounds them in their daily lives. We'll be looking at what the Iraqi media and bloggers are saying and at what our readers in Iraq and elsewhere make of the situation there, and we'll be responding to your e-mails, comments and questions.

Dilemma for Washington as ICC begins Darfur probe

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday launched an investigation into suspected war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region, a development likely to present problems for the Bush administration as it opposes the court's existence and maintains close intelligence links with the Khartoum government. Up to 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during the two-year-old conflict in western Sudan, and more than 2m people have fled their homes. Independent aid and rights organisations accuse rebel groups, the government and allied Arab militia the Janjaweed of atrocities. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, called for international co-operation with his investigation, which would focus on “the individuals who bear the greatest criminal responsibility for crimes committed in Darfur”. The UN has given the ICC a list of 51 names of war crime suspects... At the same time, according to officials, the US maintains a close relationship with Sudanese officials and intelligence officers believed to be responsible for the ethnic cleansing and village burning in Darfur. US officials say Sudan is a valuable partner in the “global war on terror”. Washington also fears Khartoum's isolation would jeopardise the peace deal ending the decades-old north-south conflict.

Burma rebuilding risks Pagan jewel

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

Khartoum facing war crimes probe

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

The breakthrough that wasn't

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

Seymour M Hersh - from My Lai to Abu Ghraib

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

The failed siege of Fallujah

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

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

Jerusalem orders Palestinian homes to be razed

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

Changing planet revealed in atlas

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

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