“People’s willingness to help someone during a chance encounter on a city street varies considerably around the world” American Scientist

an Adaptation for Overcoming Constraints of the Social Niche:

We outline a new theoretical model of the evolutionary adaptiveness of minor and major unipolar depression. According to our social navigation / social niche change model, the evolved function of depression is the analysis and eradication of a severe socially imposed mismatch between the depressive’s capacities and opportunities for fitness-enhancing activity, where the constraints responsible for the mismatch have a broad or even pervasive basis in the individual’s social network. Minor depression, which we operationally define as a level of depression that can be intentionally hidden from social partners (and often is), optimizes the mind in several ways for (1) identifying possible mismatch-reducing revisions of the individual’s socioeconomic niche and (2) planning active negotiating tactics to achieve their implementation. Major depression may ensue in cases where active tactics of negotiation or coercion consistently fail to yield the investments and concessions from social partners required for substantive niche revision. Watson, PJ & Andrews, PW. 2002.

Toward a revised evolutionary adaptationist analysis of depression:

The social navigation hypothesis. JAD 72, 1-14

The ‘gambler’s fallacy’ results in more crime: ‘They shouldn’t bet on it, but convicted crooks do…

as they commit more crimes under the gambler’s delusion that if they were caught once, they won’t get nabbed again, a new University of Florida study finds.

Like gamblers, repeat lawbreakers expect the odds are in their favor and that they won’t be apprehended again unless they were extremely unlucky,” said Alex Piquero, a UF criminologist who conducted the study.

“It’s the idea that lightning never strikes twice (in the same place) – that if I do a lot of crime, get caught and get punished, it can’t happen to me again tomorrow,” he said. “Speeding is the perfect example. People may drive the speed limit for a few days after getting a speeding ticket, but they soon resume their old driving habits because they think there is no way they can get stopped again so soon.” ‘

The Olden Mean: “When the posthuman future meets our pre-posthuman selves.” — Cullen Murphy, The Atlantic Monthly

Religious attack horrifies British Muslims: “The body of a Muslim woman was desecrated in a hospital morgue by someone who covered her with strips of bacon, police said Thursday.” The Globe and Mail [via walker, who has a particular ‘radar’ for these depravity stories…]

“People’s anxieties and fears over e-mail etiquette and the inescapable phenomenon of digital blunders has given rise to a new term — pre and post mail tension (PPMT).

As many as half of us fail to properly understand personal e-mails–giving rise to conflicts which may not have occurred if messages had been communicated face-to-face–and blame the resulting confusion for arguments and even relationship break-ups. ” ZDNet

The Strategist and the Philosopher:

Who are these Neoconservatives who play an essential role in the United States President’s choices alongside the Christian Fundamentalists? …The Neoconservatives shouldn’t be confused with the Christian Fundamentalists who are also found in George Bush’s entourage. They have nothing to do with the renaissance of Protestant fundamentalism in the Southern, “Bible Belt” States which is one of the rising forces in today’s Republican Party. Neo-conservatism is East Coast and a little Californian also. Its sources of inspiration have an “intellectual” profile, often New Yorkers, often Jewish, who started out “on the left”. Some still call themselves Democrats. They have a political or literary magazine in hand, not the Bible; they wear tweed jackets, not the double-breasted blue green suits of the Southern televangelists. Usually they profess liberal ideas regarding social and moral issues. Their goal is neither to prohibit abortion nor to impose prayer in the schools. Their ambition is other.

However, explains Pierre Hassner, the singularity of the Bush administration is to have assured a conjunction of these two currents. George W. Bush has made Neoconservatives and Christian fundamentalists live together. The latter are represented in the government by a man like John Ashcroft, the Attorney General. The former have one of their stars as Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. George W. Bush, who campaigned from the center right without any very precise political anchorage, has realized a surprising and explosive ideological cocktail, marrying Wolfowitz and Ashcroft, Neoconservatives and Christian fundamentalists, two opposite planets. Le Monde [via truthout]

Blix: ‘UN Inspectors could be back in Iraq in weeks’. “Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Thursday his experts could be back in Iraq within two weeks of a green light from the Security Council and predicted Washington would one day welcome them back.” Boston Globe

Venezuela has proof Washington was behind failed coup:

A senior Venezuelan army general said the government of the South American country has proof the United States was involved in a short-lived coup against President Hugo Chavez last year.

Army Gen. Melvin Lopez, secretary of Venezuela’s National Defence Council, said Tuesday “proof exists” the U.S. administration was involved in the mid-April putsch. He declined to give further details. “We have the evidence,” Lopez said during an interview broadcast by Venezuela’s state-run television channel.

Lopez said three U.S. military helicopters were on Venezuelan territory during the coup.

A spokesmen from the Pentagon declined comment on the allegation Tuesday night. CBC

The US government should be “embarrassed” over the apparent failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the main justification for going to war, retired intelligence officials said Thursday.

“It’s going to be very embarrassing when it turns out they have nothing to declare,” said former defense intelligence analyst Eugene Betit.

Another, former CIA station chief Ray Close, said: “I’m hoping they will be embarrassed into acknowledging a role for some independent body. And who could it be but the UN?”

As the “smoking gun” continued to elude US sleuths in Iraq, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix called for experts to return to the country to determine whether the weapons allegations had any foundation. Agence France-Presse

“Misinformation spreads even faster than the virus itself.” — Declan McCullagh, Reason

Every so often, when I catch up with New Scientist news, I hit upon an amazing concentration of stories that resonate with importance or fascination, to any number of which I feel I could post links. So I will:

• ‘Safe’ lead levels still damage children’s IQ: Blood levels below maximum limits still dent intelligence, new research shows – in fact, most of the damage occurs at low levels
  
• Adult stem cells tackle multiple sclerosis: The cells sought out and repaired damaged nerves in mice – primate experiments are now underway
  
• Flashes seen by astronauts remain mysterious: The strange streaks of light seen by people on space missions, linked to cosmic rays, still defy a full explanation
  
• SARS virus is mutating, fear doctors: Scientists in Hong Kong are scouring the virus’s genetic code, after the symptoms presented by patients change
  
• New fuel tank design linked to shuttle disaster: A combination of a new external fuel tank design and an ageing spacecraft may been triggered the tragic chain of events
  
• Depleted uranium casts shadow over peace in Iraq: To overcome Iraqi forces, coalition troops fired thousands of shells tipped with DU – but its long-term health effects are still not fully understood
  
• Botox could break the pain barrier: Combining the potent neurotoxin with a protein from the Mediterranean coral tree could give a long-lasting treatment for chronic pain
  
• Snail mail attack could be launched online: An avalanche of unwanted post could be released upon a victim using only an internet connection and some simple code
  
• Double DNA chance of identifying Saddam: Two DNA techniques could be used to recognise the former Iraqi dictator – one offers relative ease, the other certainty
  
• Alcoholic blackouts may lead to heavier drinking: Drinkers may fill in the blanks after binges with rosy memories, putting them at greater risk of future alcoholism, say researchers
  

Did the White House “Enforcement Squad” Write Dale Petroskey’s Letter to Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon? BuzzFlash News Analysis

Gunter Grass: “Many people find themselves in a state of despair these days, and with good reason. Yet we must not let our voices, our no to war and yes to peace, be silenced. What has happened? The stone that we pushed to the peak is once again at the foot of the mountain. But we must push it back up, even with the knowledge that we can expect it to roll back down again.” CommonDreams

Howard Dean: “After reading a recent article that called into question my opposition to the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war, I wanted to state my position clearly to set the record straight. I appreciate that the editors of Common Dreams have given me this opportunity.”

“Tens of thousands of Iraqis demonstrated against the US occupation of Iraq in central Baghdad today after religious leaders spoke out against America.” Guardian/UK

And: “The exiled leader of the biggest Iraqi opposition group called Thursday on Iraqis to converge in the Shiite holy city of Karbala to oppose a U.S.-led interim administration and defend Iraq’s independence.” Yahoo! News

…that could grow to $680 million.

The San Francisco construction and engineering company will receive $34.6 million to start work under Thursday’s award, but could earn the larger figure over 18 months if Congress approves the funds. NY Times No surprises here.

The United States is a great nation and a great people that is also capable of great acts. The overthrow of the Iraqi fascist dictatorship is one. Its completion calls for another that matches the terrible seriousness of this moment: an expression of humility. openDemocracy

Neo-Cons Have Long Had Damascus In Their Sights.

Documents signed by neoconservative heavyweights suggest that the era of engagement with Syria is history. TomPaine

The War in Context: ‘Since most Americans never set foot on foreign soil, to be told that we are now citizens of a pariah state is a claim that will just as likely provoke disbelief or indifference rather than being a cause for alarm. But those Americans who now out of desire or necessity travel overseas are repeatedly being confronted with stark choices on how to represent themselves in the face of widespread hostility. Do they venture forth as proud Americans ready to rebut false accusations and defend a noble but widely misunderstood nation? Do they try and pass themselves off as Canadians, or do they simply plead, “I’m not responsible for my government?” ‘ Remarks were prompted by this article: Islamic world less welcoming to American scholars. NY Times

America is on probation. That, in four words, is my verdict on Gulf war II. America can still prove, by what it does over the next few years in the Middle East, that it was right in what it did during this last month of war. On what I see at the moment, I fear that the United States will show itself to have been wrong. Not grotesquely, criminally wrong, but prudentially, politically wrong. Then “the judgment of history”, invoked by Tony Blair in the House of Commons on Tuesday, may come in the famous words of Talleyrand: “It was worse than a crime; it was a mistake.” — Timothy Garton Ash, Guardian/UK

‘Iraq Is All Yours’.

The Hill once again caved to pressure from the White House in allowing the Defense Department control over funds allocated for the post-war reconstruction of Iraq. Alternet

Where Are They Now?

Two years after they left the federal government and one year after a ban that limited their lobbying activities expired, more than half of the top one hundred Clinton White House officials went on to represent, work for or advise businesses and entities in areas they regulated while they were in office, a Center for Public Integrity survey has found. Center for Public Integrity

It puts transgenic animals on fast track & weakens animal drug regulations.

Urge your Senators to neither support nor cosponsor

S. 741, the Minor Use/Minor Species Act (MUMS). This

bill is controversial and full of loopholes. If passed,

MUMS would abbreviate the Food and Drug Administration’s

(FDA) review procedures of genetically-engineered animals,

including fast-growing salmon, and it probably would

worsen the human health crisis of antibiotic resistance

by allowing the wider use of antibiotics in agriculture

and aquaculture. Center for Science in the Public Interest

‘The fall of France was astonishingly swift. After regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, it was only a matter of time before Tony Blair and George W. Bush said that they had “no plans” to attack France. The detested Jacques Chirac had long been a thorn in their sides. He was a past friend of Saddam Hussein, welcomed Arab exiles and had a suspiciously large Muslim population. Above all, he refused point-blank to disband his force de frappe weapons of mass destruction. As Donald Rumsfeld had said back in 2003: “Things mean consequences.” France posed a clear and immediate threat. The coalition acted in pre-emptive self-defence. It was a pity about the Louvre.’ Times of London

“While all news organizations prepare obituaries in advance of the deaths of famous individuals, the folks at CNN inadvertently gave the Internet-surfing public a chance to preview how the network’s web site would note the demise of Vice President Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, and a few other prominent figures. Until earlier this afternoon, a CNN server housed mock-ups of web pages announcing the yet-to-happen deaths. The CNN pages, which were discovered by the intrepid folks at fark.com, were yanked about 20 minutes after being exposed (though TSG was able to grab a few of the pages for posterity’s sake). The premature obituaries, housed in a publicly accessible area of the CNN server and searchable via Google, were apparently the work of Peter Rentz, a senior multimedia designer at CNN. The mock-ups are virtually identical to the obituary design currently used by CNN when a notable person dies (click here to see how CNN covered the Queen Mother’s March 2002 death). In fact, elements of the Queen Mum’s obit template can be seen in the below Cheney design. In addition to Cheney and Reagan, CNN also prepped online farewells to Fidel Castro, Bob Hope, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, and Gerald Ford.” The Smoking Gun

Sci-Fi Shrine for Seattle, Complete With Aliens: “In the nearly two centuries between Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Matrix, science fiction has captivated countless millions of readers, listeners and viewers. Now one of them is taking his obsession to a higher level, investing $10 million to $20 million to build a temple to the genre.

Paul G. Allen, a billionaire businessman and co-founder of Microsoft, is planning to build a “cultural project” in Seattle that will seek to draw visitors into the science-fiction experience.” NY Times

Re-Code.com Is No-Code.com As They Shut Down: Last week’s Salon article about re-code.com’s satire site offering printable barcodes at whatever price you wanted, combined with Wal-Mart’s threatening of the site received plenty of attention. Various blogs and newswires all picked up on the story, and now re-code.com has shut itself down. The 26-year-old art student who runs the site has realized that he might be in over his head, as hundreds of high-priced corporate lawyers swarm around him. I still wonder what is actually illegal about the site? Clearly, using such a barcode to change a price is illegal. However, that site is not illegal. Anyone could go out and make their own barcodes, if they wanted to. There’s nothing illegal about making barcodes. Using them to set your own prices, however, is a different story. This is, once again, a strategy of “security by obscurity”. Wal-Mart’s thinking appears to be “if we hide the information on our security weaknesses, then we can pretend they don’t exist”. Techdirt [thanks, walker]

I’ve followed the contention over cellular phone number portability ever since I became aware there was none. I’ve been with the same cellular carrier for ten years; having had a consistent phone number has been a fringe benefit more than a motivation not to switch, because I’ve been happy with my service, but it is clear that it prevents many from switching. The FCC is mandating number portability — which it rationalizes as increasing competition — by November of this year, after many postponements based on industry concerns that they are in effect being mandated to pay the expenses connected with losing customers. This latest lawsuit argues that the FCC is exceeding its statutory authority in requiring portability, which is a claim not given much credence by telecommunications industry observers. Portability has reportedly not damaged the European cellular industry and has its wisdom. However, it may lead to a shakeout in the industry and decrease diversity, it seems to me. Since infrastructure is a largely fixed cost, the companies threatened with financial losses will only be those whose customer base shrinks significantly if the new rules stimulate increased carrier switching — those which provide appreciably worse service. If marginal companies fail, competition in any regional market will suffer, not increase, no? It may in a sense be similar to the last decade’s airline deregulation situation, which was supposed to benefit the consumer and increase competition but was the beginning of the shakeout in the industry, which is now far kinder to business travellers whose fares are paid by corporate expense accounts than the casual vacation flyer like myself. Whether centralization of the cellular industry will on the whole be good or bad for the consumer is, it seems to me as an end user, an open question. I use my phone largely in a local market, so a larger national network with less out-of-network roaming is of less value to me than to a business traveller, although it is convenient to be reachable coast-to-coast on the five or six occasions each year that I am out-of-area. In principle, though, progress toward the ideal of a universal phone number which is fully portable, permanent, and through which one can be reached wherever they are in time and space, seems desireable. Now, if they would only combine that with number universality across media, so that with one address or ‘phone number’ people can reach me with voice, fax, email, paging and IM, I’ll be fully content — except when I don’t want to be reached…

Some facts you might have missed in the media hoopla over the ‘capture’ of Abu Abbas;

These facts are not meant to imply that those who plan terroristic acts that end in the murder of innocents should not be prosecuted, but only to remind readers of the disconnect between the facts and the overheated rhetoric of the United States and its media outlets. If Abu Abbas is indeed one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, than the world is a far safer place than we have been led to believe. — AQ Jensen, American Samizdat [via walker]

adopted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, arguing the United States cannot kill, jail or occupy all of its adversaries.

“And if they don’t, they can go straight to hell.” news.com.au

…(A)nti-capitalist protesters who fancy themselves cyberpranksters… drew the ire of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, with a website that encouraged people to “name their own prices” by offering hundreds of substitute bar codes.

Wal-Mart considered the ploy an incitement to theft and sent a cease-and-desist letter dated April 2 to one of the companies that was hosting the website, Re-code.com.

Re-code.com’s operators responded by disabling the link on their website that allowed users to print sheets with a selection of bar code labels that could be slapped on store items.

(…)

Re-code.com still provides a database of bar codes that can be copied and pasted into printing applications. It suggests, for instance, that users stick a label for Nerf balls over the bar code on a box of rifle ammunition. Wired

Although he denies being among those inciting people to switch the bar code labels, the website’s owner is one of the renowned anti-capitalist pranksters The Yes Men.

they carried during the Iraq war, but the holiday brought crushing restrictions for Palestinians.” NY Times The irony is lost on no one; Passover marks the ancient Hebrews’ liberation from bondage in Egypt and, by extension, the way it is observed by many celebrates the aspirations for liberation of all the world’s oppressed. Of course the Israelites’ liberation was brought about by the visitation of terrible afflictions on their oppressors, including — ultimately — the Angel of Death. Happy Passover to those of you who mark the occasion; please do not make the apostle of Terror the centerpiece of your celebration!

“The U.S. should promote reform or regime change in Syria, but we have no legal basis to do it now by military means and are not likely to try.” — Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times

Scientists have definitively identified the cause of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, as a new form of the coronavirus, the World Health Organization announced April 16.

“The pace of SARS research has been astounding,” said David Heymann, executive director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Program. “Because of an extraordinary collaboration among laboratories from countries around the world, we now know with certainty what causes SARS.” Disaster News Network In case you were wondering, identification of an infectious agent is not trivial. There are specific criteria, codified by famous pathologist Koch in 1882 and now known as Koch’s Postulates, to establish that a specific organism causes a specific illness. The organism must: (a) be found regularly in instances of the disease, (b) grow out when infected body fluids are inoculated onto a culture medium, (c) cause the disease when the cultured organisms are introduced into a laboratory animal, and (d) be recoverable and culturable from lesions in the diseased test animal. A more modern molecular modification of Koch’s postulates links a disease not to the presence of the organism but its molecular traits, e.g. surface antigens or identifiable portions of the organism’s genome. Establishment of the fact that a given organism causes a disease is the sine qua non for generating diagnostic tests for the disease, for precise case definition, for developing vaccines, population screening efforts, and ultimately specific therapies.

An article in the Mirror/UK on Bush’s warnings to Syria gives extensive column footage to Lawrence Eagleburger’s call for his impeachment if he attacks Syria:

Lawrence Eagleburger, Secretary of State under George Bush Senior, said American public opinion would not tolerate action against Syria or Iran.

(…)

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday said there was “no question” that Syria was harbouring senior Iraqi figures. But Mr Eagleburger, who accused Syria of having an outrageous record on terror, said an extension of the war was unthinkable.

“You saw the furore that went on before the President got sufficient support to do this,” he said. “This is still a democracy and public opinion rules. If George Bush decided he was going to turn troops on Syria now and then Iran he’d be in office about 15 minutes.

“If President Bush were to try it now, even I would feel he should be impeached. You can’t get away with that sort off thing in a democracy.”

“An aspiring rapper who has been charged with murdering his roommate and eating part of her lung did so as part of his record label’s plan to cultivate a “gangsta” image for him, the victim’s mother charged in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles.

Antron Singleton, a rapper who goes by the stage name Big Lurch, faces murder and torture charges after police found him staggering naked and covered in blood on a southeast L.A. street April 10…” page6.com [thanks, walker]

‘ “My father crapped bigger ones than George Bush,” says the former president’s son, in a flame-throwing conversation about the war and the Bush administration’s efforts to lay claim to the Reagan legacy.’ Salon

Be sure to see the April 15th headlines at Unknown News. Scroll down to the fascinating collection of items all beginning “Cop Arrested…”

George Bush has said: “It will be no defence to say: ‘I was just following orders.'” He is correct. The Nuremberg judges left in no doubt the right of ordinary soldiers to follow their conscience in an illegal war of aggression. Two British soldiers have had the courage to seek status as conscientious objectors. They face court martial and imprisonment; yet virtually no questions have been asked about them in the media. George Galloway has been pilloried for asking the same question as Bush, and he and Tam Dalyell, Father of the House of Commons, are being threatened with withdrawal of the Labour whip.

Dalyell, 41 years a member of the Commons, has said the Prime Minister is a war criminal who should be sent to The Hague. This is not gratuitous; on the prima facie evidence, Blair is a war criminal, and all those who have been, in one form or another, accessories should be reported to the International Criminal Court. Not only did they promote a charade of pretexts few now take seriously, they brought terrorism and death to Iraq.

A growing body of legal opinion around the world agrees that the new court has a duty, as Eric Herring of Bristol University wrote, to investigate “not only the regime, but also the UN bombing and sanctions which violated the human rights of Iraqis on a vast scale”. Add the present piratical war, whose spectre is the uniting of Arab nationalism with militant Islam. The whirlwind sown by Blair and Bush is just beginning. Such is the magnitude of their crime. — John Pilger, ZNet Magazine

The looting of the National Museum of Iraq, a repository of treasures from civilization’s first cities and early Islamic culture, could be a catastrophe for world cultural heritage, archaeologists and art experts said on Friday.

“Baghdad is one of the great museums of the world, with irreplaceable material,” said Dr. John Malcolm Russell, a specialist in Mesopotamian archaeology at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

Though he and other scholars of antiquities were alarmed by the reports of looting, they were not surprised. They said they feared the next cultural target could be the important museum in Mosul, a northern city that is also in turmoil. The Mosul museum holds many Assyrian artifacts from the nearby Nineveh ruins. NY Times

Russell was choking up at times while interviewed today on NPR. He was elated by comments from Colin Powell he interpreted as an endorsement of the notion that the U.S. has a responsibility to protect and retrieve the antiquities. He was a little defensive when the interviewer asked if one should be upset about art treasures in the face of the enormous human losses, but remained composed and adamant. This is potentially the worst destruction of antiquities since the burning of the fabled Library at Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, he said, and challenged us to grieve for more than just the loss of life in the Iraqi conflict.

US authorities had been warned that this was coming.

For weeks before the war, archaeologists and other scholars had alerted military planners to the risks of combat, particularly postwar pillage of the country’s antiquities. These include 10,000 sites of ruins with such resonating names as Babylon, Nineveh, Nimrud and Ur.

Cites U.S. Iraq War Precedent: ‘Defence Minister George Fernandes reiterated Indian warnings that Pakistan was a prime case for pre-emptive strikes. “There are enough reasons to launch such strikes against Pakistan, but I cannot make public statements on whatever action that may be taken,” Fernandes told a meeting of ex-soldiers in this northern Indian desert city on Friday. The renewed warning came just hours after US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington would strive to cool tensions between nuclear enemies Pakistan and India, who have fought three wars since 1947.’ Agence France-Presse

Cites U.S. Iraq War Precedent: ‘Defence Minister George Fernandes reiterated Indian warnings that Pakistan was a prime case for pre-emptive strikes. “There are enough reasons to launch such strikes against Pakistan, but I cannot make public statements on whatever action that may be taken,” Fernandes told a meeting of ex-soldiers in this northern Indian desert city on Friday. The renewed warning came just hours after US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington would strive to cool tensions between nuclear enemies Pakistan and India, who have fought three wars since 1947.’ Agence France-Presse

I liked Enetation enough to give a donation to the author, in return to which I was upgraded to an Enetation Pro user. The main advantage is that supposedly he puts all the comments for my weblog on their own server, so access should be faster. I also get an email notification any time anyone posts a new comment. The problem is, I have a sense not all of the comments were transferred over to the Pro server as promised, and I am not sure every comment being entered here is being retained. If this post doesn’t have any comments attached to it, would some of you please try to enter a comment (or several) to see if they appear here? If you try and cannot do so, please write me to let me know. Thanks!

British peace activist shot by IDF troops in Gaza Strip: “Israel Defense Forces troops firing from a tank critically wounded a British man Friday as he and other activists in a pro-Palestinian group approached an army position on the edge of a Gaza refugee camp, witnesses said.

The Briton, Thomas Hurndall, 21, from Manchester, suffered a head injury that left him comatose and hooked up to a respirator, said doctors.” Ha’Aretz

A spate of misquotes and misattributions: “In all these examples, the mistakes may appear to be minor, but accurately quoting public figures and attributing statements to the correct organization or individual are requirements of responsible journalism. It’s crucial to take the time to get the facts right because small assertions can often become the evidence for big arguments.”

“There is only one country in the world that has not yet fully grasped the implications of the American invasion of Iraq, and that country is Israel. The invasion of Iraq dramatically lowers Israel’s stock as a strategic asset.” Ha’Aretz [via GVNews.Net Daily World]

Killing outmatched foes: “Coalition forces wonder why more Iraqis didn’t surrender to survive. Trauma may linger as soldiers return.” Christian Science Monitor Breeding ground for new McVeighs? Rational Enquirer [via Cursor]

Why weapons of mass destruction will be found —

The only thing that will “justify” these deaths is the discovery of vast amounts of dangerous weapons of mass destruction. It is necessary, vitally necessary, to those who orchestrated the current happenings, that these weapons be found and shown to the world as evidence of Bush/Blair rightness. It is essential in allowing the U.S. to save any face left to be saved.

So they will be found.

And millions of people, those with yard signs that say, “Iraq today, France tomorrow,” those who still confuse Iran and Iraq, those who don’t know the difference between Osama and Saddam, those who believe Bush has a serious connect with God, those who think the 19 alleged hijackers on 9–11 were Iraqis…, all these people will trust their leaders that these weapons were there all along. Online Journal

Rumsfeld Condemns Reports of Mass Looting in Iraq: “Calling rampant looting and lawlessness in Iraq an “untidy” period between war and freedom, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday condemned media reports that anarchy ruled in Iraqi cities.” If Rumsfeld doesn’t like it, it isn’t news. Yahoo!

as Chaos Reigns

The Iraqi capital sank into anarchy on Friday as residents went on a looting spree in full view of U.S. forces.

As troops still battled to contain pockets of Iraqi fighters scattered around the city, thousands of ordinary citizens helped themselves to anything they could lay their hands on in shops, factories, schools, hospitals and government buildings.

Young and old, men and women rifled through bomb-damaged buildings as well as areas unaffected by fighting.

“Is this your liberation?” one frustrated shopkeeper screamed at the crew of a U.S. tank as a gang of youths helped themselves to everything in his small hardware store and carted booty off in the wheelbarrows that had also been on sale.

“Hell, it ain’t my job to stop them,” drawled one young marine, lighting a cigarette as he looked on. “Goddamn Iraqis will steal anything if you let them. Look at them.”

But for those not helping themselves to their new-found freedom, mounting anger was being directed at the U.S. forces for doing nothing to stop the frenzy. Reuters

The problem with Bush’s “preemptive” war doctrine: “If preemption may sometimes be legitimate, is the Bush administration right to extend the case of justified preemption to preventive offensive wars? If all threats are considered imminent and unavoidable without the use of force, then yes. But although war has been transformed along many of the lines the administration suggests, not all threats are immediate and unavoidable.” — Neta C. Crawford, Boston Review

Fear and Social Discipline in the Harry Potter Novels: “Although many in the Christian right argue that Harry Potter novels oppose Christianity, this third novel actively promotes many fundamentals of Christian morality. What these novels do oppose, however, is a fire-and-brimstone image of an all-seeing deity who is always watching and waiting to punish. Through her descriptions of the wizard prison and the Dementors who guard it, Rowling suggests that there is nothing moral about a morality based on fear.” nasty

Saddam’s Body and the Neo-Materialism of the Iraqi War:

As bodies burn, as lives cease, as families are torn, as corporate catechism preaches liberation while annihilating the principles of moral justice under the aegis of an emptied democracy signifier, I cannot but obsess over corporeality, of all things: the corporeality of Coalition soldiers powering through the desert with the speed of light; the corporeality of nose-painted fighter jets bearing half-human, half-beast effigies of aggression and vengeance; the corporeality of ‘smart’ bombs into whose technological soul-less bodies the tragic art of dance-like war movement has been breathed; the corporeality of insatiable and disenchanted viewers turned embedded cheerleaders catching war highlights over a TV-dinner; the corporeality of Iraqis being robbed of their lives by furtive Coalition thieves in the middle of the night; the corporeality of the millions of non-human species burning silently in the many ecological fires not hot enough to be news. — Phillip Vannini, ctheory

An Interview with Chuck Palahniuk: “It’s doubtful that Chuck Palahniuk – literary genius, torchbearer for the nihilistic generation and Portland’s answer to Irvine Welsh, with his haemorrhaging ribbons of toxic chiffon prose that sits somewhere in the vicinity of “Naked Lunch, A Clockwork Orange and Last House On The Left” – had any idea of the storm of controversy that was brewing as he dotted the i and crossed the final t on his anthemic Fight Club manuscript. But, then again, he probably had little inkling when one afternoon he was cruising down the Portland Freeway and a driver – “a freeway sniper”- slowly pulled up alongside him and pointed a gun directly at his head, that he would become the avatar against a violent world and society.” Between The Lines

“Yemeni authorities were hunting for 10 of the main suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole after they escaped from prison Friday, officials said. The fugitives, including chief suspect Jamal al-Badawi, had been jailed in the port city of Aden since shortly after the destroyer was bombed, killing 17 American sailors. Officials at Aden’s governor’s office would not say how the men escaped early Friday. But they quoted intelligence sources as saying security forces were out in force in a major search operation.” Yahoo! News

The Quiz.

9. Who commented on Bush’s “almost giddy readiness to kill”?

(a) Senator Chuck Hagel (R Nebraska).

(b) MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

(c) CBS’s Dan Rather.

(d) General Tommy Franks. The New Yorker

“It’s time to phase out housing projects. Whether

old-fashioned or newfangled, they blight surrounding neighborhoods and prevent them from reviving.” — Howard Husock, City Journal

Yo La Tengo interviewed: “They remain the proverbial elephant examined by blind men, different things to different people. Which is okay, as far as Ira Kaplan is concerned. I asked him what he’d say if the dictionary people came knocking, wanting a definition. ‘That’s their job, isn’t it? Finding definitions. We’re happy just playing the music.'” 3am Summer Sun is their new recording, and I can’t wait to hear it…

According to Franz Hinkelammert, the West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it should try to save humanity by destroying part of it. This is a salvific and sacrificial destruction, committed in the name of the need to radically materialize all the possibilities opened up by a given social and political reality over which it is supposed to have total power. This is how it was in colonialism, with the genocide of indigenous peoples, and the African slaves. This is how it was in the period of imperialist struggles, which caused millions of deaths in two world wars and many other colonial wars. This is how it was under Stalinism, with the Gulag, and under Nazism, with the Holocaust. And now today, this is how it is in neoliberalism, with the collective sacrifice of the periphery and even the semiperiphery of the world system. With the war against Iraq, it is fitting to ask whether what is in progress is a new genocidal and sacrificial illusion, and what its scope might be. It is above all appropriate to ask if the new illusion will not herald the radicalization and the ultimate perversion of the Western illusion: destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it. — Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Bad Subjects

An interview with Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. identitytheory

…(T)here is a pattern to the Bush administration’s way of doing business that does not bode well for the future — a pattern of conquest followed by malign neglect…. One has to admit that the Bush people are very good at conquest, military and political. They focus all their attention on an issue; they pull out all the stops; they don’t worry about breaking the rules. This technique brought them victory in the Florida recount battle, the passage of the 2001 tax cut, the fall of Kabul, victory in the midterm elections, and the fall of Baghdad.

But after the triumph, when it comes time to take care of what they’ve won, their attention wanders, and things go to pot. — Paul Krugman, NY Times

The baseball Hall of Fame has canceled a 15th anniversary celebration of the film “Bull Durham,” and the shrine’s president said it was because of anti-war criticism by co-stars Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon.

Reached Wednesday night, Robbins said he was “dismayed” by the decision. He responded with a letter he planned to send to Petroskey, telling him: “You belong with the cowards and ideologues in a hall of infamy and shame.” SF Chronicle

Are psychopaths running our government? The heart of this essay counterposes, paragraph by paragraph, a recent media portrait of Bush’s personality style and daily behavior with a detailed description of the psychopath in the workplace. Clinically, one would never make a diagnosis from a distance, sight unseen, and the concept of the psychopath is rather diffuse, but it draws a thought-provoking picture. digby [via the null device]

The Godwin’s Law FAQ: One of the most famous pieces of Usenet trivia out there is “if you mention Hitler or Nazis in a post, you’ve automatically ended whatever discussion you were taking part in”. Known as Godwin’s Law, this rule of Usenet has a long and sordid history on the network – and is absolutely wrong. This FAQ is an attempt to set straight as much of the history and meaning of Godwin’s Law as possible, and hopefully encourage users to invoke it a bit more sparingly. Of course, knowing Usenet, it won’t do an ounce of good… Rebecca Blood brought my attention to Godwin’s Law and discusses some of its implications here.

Nicholas de Genova, a 35-year old assistant professor of anthropology and Latino studies at Columbia, who is upsetting alot of people, is interviewed for the first time since his controversial remarks. Chronicle of Higher Education

says Rafe Coburn, “reserved for those people who use feigned concern for the injustices heaped upon the Iraqi people to bludgeon those who made arguments against the war in Iraq. To those people, I would ask what makes the Iraqi people special when you make it obvious that you don’t give a crap about the billions of other impoverished, oppressed, and miserable people around the world.”

The accompanying mugshot captures the essence of someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. The Smoking Gun

says Independent/UK columnist Natasha Walter.

But: Net Trounced By Cable for War News: “Two separate surveys show the same thing: Americans rely on cable TV for war news vs. the Net. That aside, online news is making gains, and might provide a clearer picture in the fog of war.” Online Journalism Review

In a previous column, Walter cautions us, “Don’t idealise the soldiers fighting this unjust war.”

Do you think that Tony Blair would feel it necessary to state and restate that civilian casualties will be kept to a minimum if he were not conscious of the outrage that would otherwise result? Do you think that officers would keep briefing their soldiers on the need to treat prisoners according to the laws of war, if it were not for the scrutiny of the dissenters back home?

It is all very well to hear about how vulnerable and heroic our troops are, but we should not forget that the truly vulnerable people are not the healthy young men who chose to join one of the best-equipped armies in the world, but ordinary Iraqi people who did not choose to be caught, utterly defenceless, between a tyrant and a destructive army. Independent/UK

With victory in Iraq assured, hawks outside and inside the Bush administration have begun taking a notably aggressive stance toward its neighbor to the west, Syria.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and their main ideological ally at the State Department, undersecretary John Bolton, have all made menacing public remarks about Syria in recent days. Newsday

Is there some element in the US military that wants to take out journalists? Independent/UK Found via an important, if you appreciate his contentious writing, compilation page of Reports by Mr. Robert Fisk.

A group of German university professors, angered by the US-British war against Iraq, have launched a campaign to replace many popular English-language words used in Germany with French terms.

Saying they are appalled by the way the United States and Britain defied the will of the United Nations and attacked Iraq, the four professors declared war on borrowed English terms in German such as “okay”, “T-shirt” and “party”. Sydney Morning Herald

And, while we’re on the topic of words (how’s that for a segue?), this is from Waxy [via Looka!]: Armed with a list of spelling errors and my old friend Google, I decided to see if I could find the most commonly misspelled word on the Web. If you can do better, leave a comment.

a gallery of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning Works.

This LA Times piece points out that the uranium stocks, which it says could be enriched to weapons material, lay unguarded after their Iraqi custodians fled. US forces were not even aware of their existence for several days. Garret Vreeland pointed to this, noting how much background on the search for clandestine weapons it contains. As readers know, I’ve remained skeptical about the WMD rationale for the attack on Iraq. The article notes that Saddam may have had any chemical weapons the regime had moved to the Tikrit area, which has not yet fallen to advancing US forces. There’s also speculation on why, if he did indeed have CBW and was backed against the wall as he has been, he did not use them against massing American troops. It has been my point that the restraint he exercised in this regard in the face of US military intimidation, the potential harsh judgment of world opinion and/or the threat of war crimes prosecution, gives the lie to Bush’s “imminent danger” argument.

A House debate over gun rights legislation erupted into a racially charged dispute yesterday when a Republican lawmaker from Wyoming seemed to equate African Americans with drug addicts or people undergoing drug treatment. Washington Post

says Noam Chomsky in this April 2nd interview with Frontline India.

“Trusted Blog Search Tool, a search box that lets readers search the web, your site, or blogs you read.”

An extraordinary communication from the United States to UN representatives around the world has been leaked to Greenpeace. In it, the United States warns that the simple act of support for a General Assembly meeting to discuss the war will be considered “unhelpful and directed against the United States.” They further threaten that invoking the Uniting for Peace resolution will be “harmful to the UN.”

Greenpeace has been actively lobbying at the United Nations against the war, and many delegates have expressed both publicly and privately their distaste for what they see as US attempts to “strongarm” the world community to do as it is told. One delegate was so incensed with the memo circulated by the US that he leaked the full document. [via Liberal Arts Mafia]

Japanese electronics giant Sony has taken an extraordinary step to cash in on the war in Iraq by patenting the term “Shock and Awe” for a computer game.

It is among a swarm of companies scrambling to commercially exploit the war in Iraq, which has killed more than 5,000 soldiers and civilians in the space of three weeks. Guardian/UK

Mitsu said: The problem with this war (the “war on terror”) is that the connection between actions and consequences are far separated — the outrage expressed by many Arabs over this war in Iraq will likely bear fruit in asymmetrical warfare far down the line — but it will be years, not months, before we truly see the fruit of our actions. This disconnect in time creates a tremendous problem, since one of the chief mistakes people make when evaluating the success of their actions is to assume that there is no time delay. Although military victory in Iraq is likely, the mistakes our leaders made when ascertaining the reaction of the Iraqi people leads to the conclusion that they will similarly misjudge their political reaction in many other ways. Iraqis have not been fleeing the country to refugee camps — they’ve been trying to get back in to fight us. There will certainly be some who cheer our troops as they roll in — but, as one Arab history professor put it the other day, there are always people who cheer troops as they roll in: there were Lebanese who cheered the Israelis when they came in. They stopped cheering pretty quickly. synthetic zero

A key Iraqi opposition leader says he has information that Saddam Hussein survived an airstrike in Baghdad and escaped from the capital with at least one of his sons.

However, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he did not know whether Saddam was dead or alive.

“He’s either dead, or he’s incapacitated, or he’s healthy and cowering in some tunnel someplace trying to avoid being caught. What else can one say?” Rumsfeld said. CNN

Rumsfeld has made several comments about Saddam’s cowardice that are about as mature as the schoolyard taunts I remember from childhood. Pretty disingenuous considering this country’s leaders’ lack of military service themselves and how far they are from harm’s way in the prosecution of the attack on Iraq. In fact, Rumsfeld’s gibes could be considered an insult to our own troops’ bravery. (I mean, Jessica Lynch might be able to jeer at Saddam for cowering in hiding, but Donald Rumsfeld??)

Could there be a relationship (could there not??) between the above news item and this? MOAB Bomb Moved to Iraq War Region:

Military officials hoped the MOAB would create such a huge blast that it would rattle Iraqi troops and pressure them into surrendering or not even fighting.

Now that Iraqi troops have surrendered in large numbers, it was unclear what the possible targets might be. CNN

Or is it just that the boys with their toys will be damned if they’ll let this little escapade in Iraq end without the chance of a whizz-bang full-scale ejaculation?

The coalition’s hollow victory in Baghdad marks a fittingly surreal climax to a war that was always empty of meaning. Saddam’s regime has simply imploded like the wretched, ruined state that any objective observer of Iraqi affairs knew it to be. The US and UK authorities claim that a powerful regime has been brought down by their well-paced, patient prosecution of the war over the past three weeks. In reality, we can now see that the enfeebled Iraqi state all but collapsed the moment the coalition forces rolled across its borders.

Was there a war at all? There were certainly plenty of bombs dropped, guns fired and Iraqis killed by the American and British forces. But there has not been one single clash with Iraqi forces that could remotely be described as a battle. — Mick Hume, sp!ked

Results promising, say researchers: An epilepsy drug combined with a reduced-calorie diet may result in significant weight loss for obese adults, according to one of several obesity studies in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

The epilepsy drug research was prompted by reports of unintentional weight loss in epilepsy patients using zonisamide to prevent seizures. CNN As a physician (who prescribes epilepsy drugs as part of my neuropsychiatric practice and also because we use them in the control of impulsive-aggressive-labile behavior disorders), I’ve already been receiving requests from patients to be placed on zonisamide given these news reports. In fact, that is how I heard about this research finding. This is a phenomenon that has repeated itself whenever the media report that a drug shows promise for weight loss. But people should stop hoping for passive weight loss miracles, of course. Stop calling, for three reasons —

• the weight loss effect is not going to turn out to be very robust or very sustained
• the increased activity level is more important to any weight loss than the medication effects
• and the cognitive slowing and other potential side effects of taking most anticonvulsants are not pleasant enough if you do not absolutely need these medications for cause

My reading suggests there may be some promising, specific weight loss agents that work by novel mechanisms on the physiology of appetite and satiation, or on metabolism coming down the pike, but not zonisamide or topiramate or Prozac.

Tape purportedly from bin Laden urges suicide attacks. CNN

Okay, so finally some Iraqis recognize they’re being ‘liberated’. CNN

A communique received in Jerusalem from the American administration this week says the United States is operating with strong resolution to neutralize the Iraqi threat to Israel. After the war, the message continued, the United States will deal with other radical regimes in the region – not necessarily by military means – to moderate their activities and fight terrorism. Ha’aretz

Now, apparently, is the time for all good radio and TV stations to come to the aid of their country’s war.

That is the message pushed by broadcast news consultants, who’ve been advising news and talk stations across the nation to wave the flag and downplay protest against the war.

“Get the following production pieces in the studio NOW: . . . Patriotic music that makes you cry, salute, get cold chills! Go for the emotion,” advised McVay Media, a Cleveland-based consultant, in a “War Manual” memo to its station clients. “. . . Air the National Anthem at a specified time each day as long as the USA is at war.”

The company, which describes itself as the largest radio consultant in the world, also has been counseling talk show stations to “Make sure your hosts aren’t ‘over the top.’ Polarizing discussions are shaky ground. This is not the time to take cheap shots to get reaction . . . not when our young men and women are ‘in harm’s way.’ “ Washington Post

in a sign that the perceived threat of chemical or biological attack by forces loyal to President Saddam Hussein was diminishing.

“Whatever intelligence they have is telling us the threat level has been reduced,” U.S. Marine Lieutenant Peter Rummler told Reuters correspondent Matthew Green. Reuters AlertNet

…(R)esearchers announced yesterday that numbers of great apes in Gabon have declined by more than half in less than 20 years. Experts fear the decline is even greater outside Gabon and that, unless trends are reversed, great apes could become effectively extinct in as little as two generations. National Geographic

The NYC Transit Authority eliminates the subway token in a few days, and with it passes out of existence what is dubbed by some “the most disgusting nonviolent crime ever to visit the subway”. You have to have some sympathy, however, for the desperation of the perpetrators… NY Times [vai Richard Homonoff]

A Suggested Addendum for the DSM IV: “Editor’s Note: The following diagnostic regimen has NOT been approved by, or for that matter even submitted to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) as such, but considering the press of world events and the headlong expansion of the American military presence in the Middle East and elsewhere, we felt it behooved us to help our readers get ahead of the global game…”

Thank you, Mark, for welcoming me back from my vacation. I have to point to your compilation of pointers to George Lakoff resources, including the “Metaphor” series, essential reading on how to think about the war (scroll down). And, on the same day, Mark observes the sixth anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s death, reverently.

Our origin springs from the discovery that we are part of some 50 million socially and environmentally concerned people who value and support a worldview of compassion, peace, and less materialism, and who view nature as sacred — a group identified in the book The Cultural Creatives (Ray and Anderson, 2001).

Over the past few decades, iconic musician Lou Reed has worked with a gallery of talented visual and performing artists — Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, his girlfriend Laurie Anderson, just to name a few. Now he’s tackled what he says is his toughest challenge yet: dramatizing the works of Edgar Allen Poe in music, sound and spoken voice. NPR

One Woman Enrages War Rally with Her Heartfelt Message. They have come carrying flags, wearing patriotic caps and jackets and sweatshirts — one family in a minivan plastered with praise for President George W. Bush and a bumper sticker that says “If 90% of you are for military strikes, the other 10% should be tried for treason.”

She has pasted a photograph of a young Iraqi woman on the sign and written below: “Are you willing to kill her to get to Saddam? “ If it is not already clear, I love the abstraction my country, but there’s much that sickens me about my countrymates, the jingoist boosters of the war, at this point. Dubya’s disingenuousness as to the reasons for the war aside, how is support for the au courant justification, that we are trying to liberate the Iraqi people, compatible with the “kill the gooks” sentiment that has overtaken the population as it does in all American wars? It appears that only the most cursory capacity for discriminating levels of abstraction exists in the common thought process. That Iraq is ‘the enemy’ maps inexorably to demonization of Iraqis.

truthout‘s senior writer William Rivers Pitt has just come out with his second book, The Greatest Sedition is Silence. The book details the last four years of politics in America, and delves into topics of discussion that have been left aside by the mainstream media. The mysteries and morality surrounding the 9/11 attacks, Enron and the economic meltdown, the 2000 Election, the media and a myriad of other important issues are discussed. Through it all, Mr. Pitt exhorts his readers to get involved in the workings of their country, and to not remain silent in the face of so many calamities.

The LA Times spins this around the likelihood that Saddam was killed in the airstrike, while the NY Times‘ report on the bombing is more cautious.

America’s war with Iraq in the tender years of the 21st century comes as a shock to many of us. Like Europeans in 1914, we had come to believe that our country had to a large extent renounced war as an instrument of national policy.

This may be a short and efficient war. But already there has been death, in limited numbers among our own troops, doubtless in far greater numbers among those we call our enemies. Homes, buildings and infrastructure have been destroyed and will continue to be, however precisely aimed our bombs; there will be hunger and disease; there will be the misery of refugee camps and orphanages.

What one misses in most talk about the current war is any sense of its human cost. What is wholly lacking in current political discourse is any recognition of the obscenity of war. It’s as if we’d reverted smoothly to that primitivist thinking about death identified by Freud: We must be heroes, and the death of our enemies is greatly to be wished. I don’t doubt our leaders’ desire to minimize casualties and to control, to the extent possible, “collateral damage” — our nice euphemism for the inevitable killing of civilians by mistake. But it would be more honest if our death-dealing were discussed openly and fully.

War may be a failure of conflict resolution by peaceful means. It is also a kind of failure of civilization.

— Peter Brooks, Sterling professor of comparative literature and French at Yale University and author of several books, including Reading for the Plot and Troubling Confessions, LA Times [via CommonDreams]

“Smoking gun” site in Iraq turns out to contain pesticide. A facility near Baghdad that a US officer had claimed might finally be “smoking gun” evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons production turned out to contain pesticide, not sarin gas as originally thought.

A military intelligence officer for the US 101st Airborne Division’s aviation brigade, Captain Adam Mastrianni, told AFP that comprehensive tests Monday determined the presence of the pesticide compounds. Agence France Presse [via Yahoo]