“They should not leave this series of discussions that have been held in Beijing with the slightest impression that the United States and its partners and the nations in the region will be intimidated by bellicose statements or by threats or actions they think might get them more attention or might force us to make a concession that we would not otherwise make,” he said. news.com.au (Need I translate? Only the U.S. is permitted to attempt to intimidate with such bellicose threats, since we’re the only superpower.)
In Case You Were Wondering Dept. I:
No weapons detected at 80 sites on top 100 list: “…And the White House appeared to be trying to scale back expectations that weapons of mass destruction will be found.” Star-Ledger (Newark)
In Case You Were Wondering Dept. II:
Annan Labels Coalition ‘Occupying Force’: ‘U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Thursday on the U.S.-led coalition to respect international law as the “occupying power” in Iraq, drawing immediate ire from U.S. officials.
“I hope the coalition will set an example by making clear that they intend to act strictly within the rules” governing occupations, Annan told the U.N. Human Rights Commission.’ Seattle Post-Intelligencer
In Case You Were Wondering Dept III:
Corporate Vultures Swoop Into the Killing Fields: “Iraq is going to hell. Shiites are killing Sunnis, Kurds are killing Arabs and Islamists are killing secular Baathists. Baghdad, the cradle of human civilization, has been left to looters and rapists. As in Beirut during the ’70s, neighborhood zones are separated by checkpoints manned by armed tribesmen. The war has, however, managed to unite Iraqis in one respect: everyone loathes the United States.” — Ted Rail
The Fix Is In –
Programmers can stop Internet worms. Will they?
Building a brick wall for worms seems like an obvious improvement, but to make it work, de Raadt’s team had to rethink the entire way the operating system allocates and uses memory. It changes the way programs are compiled, and it slows down the computer’s performance (by only a few percentage points, de Raadt claims). Worst of all, it requires other techies to rewrite parts of mission-critical applications, update operating systems, and possibly reinstall the operating system on every one of their company’s computers in order to put the fix into place.
Such an upgrade could cost thousands of dollars for a small company, millions for a big one. Not to mention that any engineer knows that fixing one bug can introduce another, and “don’t break my applications” is an IT manager’s prime directive. That’s why no one’s bothered to stop buffer overflows—not even as an option—for the past 15 years. But the cost of refusing the cure keeps getting higher. In 1988, the Morris worm knocked out only a few geek enclaves. This past January, Slammer grounded airline flights, put 911 callers on hold, and shut down 900 computers at the Department of Defense.
That kind of threat led the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to underwrite a $2.3 million grant to OpenBSD in 2001 as part of a search for crack-proof computers. But DARPA withdrew its funding last week, allegedly because of an interview with the Globe and Mail in which de Raadt veered from explaining his team’s new code to call the war in Iraq an oil grab. Slate
Hu really runs China?
“…(T)he political crisis that erupted in China this week—the sacking of two officials for covering up the extent of SARS, the government’s admission that it had mismanaged the emergency, and its subsequent apology for doing so—taught China-watchers two lessons about Hu Jintao: He controls more of the Chinese Communist Party than many had previously believed, and he controls less of China than you may have thought.” Slate
‘Protest cola’ targets Muslims
A Derbyshire company is launching a range of “Muslim-friendly” drinks as part of a backlash against American brands including Coca-Cola.
The Qibla Cola Company claims its products are an alternative for people who “reject injustice and exploitation” and as a means of protesting against what it calls the “colonial” administration of President Bush.
Its decision to launch a range of drinks comes months after a French company launched Mecca Cola in a bid to cash in on anti-US sentiment among Muslims. Guardian/UK
U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites:
“As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq’s future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites’ organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country.” Washington Post
A Star with two North Poles
![//science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/images/currentsheet/eit304.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/images/currentsheet/eit304.jpg "UV image of the sun at solar maximum")
“Sometimes the Sun’s magnetic field goes haywire and the effects are felt
right here on Earth. Using a supercomputer and data from NASA’s Ulysses
spacecraft, scientists are beginning to understand a curious event two
years ago when the Sun sprouted two north poles.” NASA
Industrial Strength
“Julie Bargmann’s on a mission: Can a tough girl from New Jersey teach the EPA how to make Superfund sites live and breathe again?” Metropolis
Spiritual Refugee:
Junko Chodos: “In a society that does not allow for the existence of individuality, the effort to become an individual invites persecution. Although this sort of persecution is not as visible as political persecution it is nevertheless fatal to one’s spiritual being, so the persecuted person becomes an exile. One usually goes into this sort of exile only after a sustained battle against the cultural system in which one’s whole life is wrapped up. The battle is painful. Wounded and bleeding, one becomes an exile. These people I call “spiritual refugees”; I consider myself one of them.” CrossCurrents
Weapons of Mass Confusion —
A Security Strategy Doomed to Failure: “Whatever the merits of the case for war against Iraq, the terms of debate about the Bush administration’s larger strategy are flawed. The new emphasis on WMD has not been accompanied by any serious public discussion of the differences among such weapons. A security strategy that fails to acknowledge those differences and their consequences for U.S. foreign and military policies is doomed to failure—in Iraq and elsewhere.” — Owen R. Cote, Jr., Boston Review
Also: Stakes high for White House in arms search: Too early for criticism, administration insists. DenverPost In other words: ‘Just you wait.’ I have said repeatedly that, if clandestine arms are found, the sociopathic dysadministration will announce their ‘discovery’ when it is coincidentally most politically opportune to deflect mounting denunciation.
Smart Heuristics:
“Isn’t more information always better?” asks Gerd Gigerenzer.
…Gigerenzer provides an alternative to the view of the mind as a cognitive optimizer, and also to its mirror image, the mind as a cognitive miser. The fact that people ignore information has been often mistaken as a form of irrationality, and shelves are filled with books that explain how people routinely commit cognitive fallacies. In seven years of research, he, and his research team at Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, have worked out what he believes is a viable alternative: the study of fast and frugal decision-making, that is, the study of smart heuristics people actually use to make good decisions. In order to make good decisions in an uncertain world, one sometimes has to ignore information. The art is knowing what one doesn’t have to know. The Edge
Eric Harris Admitted Homicidal and Suicidal Thoughts
To this day, the authorities want us to believe that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold showed absolutely no signs of being violent before they and others unknown (and officially unacknowledged) committed the Columbine massacre, the bloodiest school shooting in US history.
We’ve already seen that just two months before the killings, Harris turned in a graphic short story about a massacre as a school assignment.
The three documents below are from Harris’ juvenile diversion file. They were sent to The Memory Hole by Randy Brown, a Columbine parent and a member of the Columbine Records Review Task Force. In them, Harris tells the authorities that he has homicidal and suicidal thoughts, and his parents reveal that their son has suicidal thoughts. The Memory Hole
R.I.P. Nina
![//newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39126000/jpg/_39126157_simone2pa.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39126000/jpg/_39126157_simone2pa.jpg "Farewell, Nina")
Jazz great Nina Simone dies at 70: “Nina Simone, the jazz great whose rapsy, forceful voice helped define the civil rights movement, died Monday at her home in France, according to her U.S. booking agent. She was 70.
Though she remained a top concert draw in her later years, she was quite frail… At a 2001 concert at Carnegie Hall, she had to be helped to the stage, and was later seen sitting backstage in a wheelchair.” AP/Salon I listen all the time to a compilation CD I made from my scratchy Simone LPs on the very day I first learned how to burn CDs. From the joyousness of ‘Here Comes the Sun’ to the plodding, inexorable anguish of ‘Just Like a Woman’, Simone’s jazz chops were not at all trivialized by covering pop tunes, which coinhabit the Simone heights for me with ‘I Need a Little Sugar…’ and ‘Mississippi Goddamn’.
Also: Nina Simone: The End of an Era. BBC
Embedded in Washington:
When it comes to the mainstream media, embedded journalism is hardly a new phenomenon. In fact, collusion is its most essential nature, argues writer and editor Tom Englehardt in Mother Jones (in language that makes it sound inspired by the renewed fever over the Matrix sequel, it seems to me):
It may seem that the Pentagon invented “embedding” for the war in Iraq. The media has certainly reported the phenomenon that way. But it’s worth remembering how ordinary a phenomenon embedding actually is. The world is largely brought to us, here in these United States, by the deeply embedded, complete with a deeply embedded worldview and little consciousness of the rules by which the embedees live and work. It works so much better that way, when no one bothers to point out the problems, and no one even thinks that you might be an embedee.
And, speaking of the extent of collusion:
On April 21, New York Times reporter Judith Miller broke what appeared to be one the most important stories since the war in Iraq began. In a piece that ran on the paper’s front page, Ms. Miller reported that a scientist in Saddam Hussein’s chemical-weapons program, in speaking to U.S military investigators, had claimed that Iraq had destroyed illicit weapons in the days leading up the war.
The revelation was huge news because if the scientist’s claims were true, they supported President Bush’s stated rationale for the war: that Iraq was a menace to world peace because it was secretly harboring chemical and biological weapons.
But the deal Ms. Miller made to get her piece was wildly peculiar, and it provoked concern not only among the usual journalism ethics hand-wringers, but also among her colleagues at The Times. New York Observer
Cairo buzzes with rumors about Hussein
“He was spirited out of the country by the CIA, which agreed to alter his appearance and identity in exchange for a quick military surrender to U.S. forces.
The Russian ambassador ferried him to Moscow via Syria in a car, which could explain why U.S. forces reportedly attacked a diplomatic convoy headed to Damascus.
He made a secret deal with the Americans to trade his life and the lives of his family and top aides in return for the safe release of seven American prisoners of war.
Saddam Hussein has vanished, and his top deputies and their families have fled. With their whereabouts unknown, Cairo’s rumor mill is churning out conspiracy theories by the dozens, mostly involving clandestine plots with the U.S. government.” Sunspot
Related: Steve Perry: The Buyout of Baghdad?: “Tales of a secret arrangement between the Bushies and the Republican Guard persist.” From dubious sources, to be sure, but Perry feels suggestive evidence is beginning to accumulate.
What happened to Iraq’s army?
“The whole issue of Iraqi soldiers — how many died or were wounded, how many deserted or fought to the end, where they are now — is surrounded by a veil of secrecy. Neither the U.S. forces in Iraq nor the Iraqis themselves seem to be willing to delve into it too deep. As a result, conspiracy theories about Iraq’s defeat, involving either treason or the U.S. use of ‘low-level nuclear devices,’ abound.” Salon
For 2004, Bush’s Aides Plan Late Sprint for Re-election:
“President Bush’s advisers have drafted a re-election strategy built around staging the latest nominating convention in the party’s history, allowing Mr. Bush to begin his formal campaign near the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and to enhance his fund-raising advantage, Republicans close to the White House say.” NY Times If this man’s insidious handlers succeed in co-opting the memory of the WTC victims for their purposes, it will rank as one of the most heartless maneuvers in the sordid history of American gutter politics. But will its hearlessness be matched by the Democrats’ gutlessness in failing to respond effectively?
Fellowship finances townhouse where 6 congressmen live:
“Six members of Congress live in a million-dollar Capitol Hill townhouse that is subsidized by a secretive religious organization, tax records show.
The lawmakers, all of whom are Christian, pay low rent to live in the stately red brick, three-story house on C Street, two blocks from the Capitol. It is maintained by a group, alternately known as the ”Fellowship” and the ”Foundation,” that brings together world leaders and elected officials through religion.” The Tennessean
In a chilling article from Harper’s, Jeffrey Sharlet (of killing the buddha) infiltrates the secret theocrats.
The Family is, in its own words, an “invisible” association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities.
The organization has operated under many guises, some active, some defunct: National Committee for Christian Leadership, International Christian Leadership, the National Leadership Council, Fellowship House, the Fellowship Foundation, the National Fellowship Council, the International Foundation. These groups are intended to draw attention away from the Family, and to prevent it from becoming, in the words of one of the Family’s leaders, “a target for misunderstanding.”* The Family’s only publicized gathering is the National Prayer Breakfast, which it established in 1953 and which, with congressional sponsorship, it continues to organize every February in Washington, D.C. Each year 3,000 dignitaries, representing scores of nations, pay $425 each to attend. Steadfastly ecumenical, too bland most years to merit much press, the breakfast is regarded by the Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent prayer meetings, where they can “meet Jesus man to man.”
Brian Doherty criticizes the article in Reason‘s online site both for its “imitable Harper’s style” and its suggestion that we should worry about The Family’s adulation for Hitler’s efficacy as an organizer. This, for me, is a red herring issue, since Bush’s forces have already proven themselves far more masterful at orchestrating — if you’ll pardon the mixing of the metaphors — an Unholy Alliance between the pitifully limited political vision of the Christian Right and the morally vacuous Machiavellian neocon pseudo-intelectuals.
A Nation Lost:
‘Beware of war as an organizing principle of society. It should be a source of alarm, not pride, that the United States is drawing such cohesive sustenance from the war in Iraq.
Photographic celebrations of our young warriors, glorifications of released American prisoners, heroic rituals of the war dead all take on the character of crass exploitation of the men and women in uniform. First they were forced into a dubious circumstance, and now they are themselves being mythologized as its main post-facto justification — as if the United States went to Iraq not to seize Saddam (disappeared), or to dispose of weapons of mass destruction (missing), or to save the Iraqi people (chaos), but ”to support the troops.” War thus becomes its own justification. Such confusion on this grave point, as on the others, signifies a nation lost.’ — James Carroll, Boston Globe [via CommonDreams]
Party Patrol:
A new anti-drug law could spoil your summer fun.
Two weeks ago, the House and Senate quietly passed the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act of 2003—legislation aimed at quelling club drugs like Ecstasy and GHB. Ushered through with little fanfare, the act was piggybacked onto the AMBER Alert Bill, a package of child-safety laws with overwhelming congressional support. President Bush has promised to sign it into law in the upcoming weeks. But despite serious grassroots opposition spearheaded by organizations like the Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund, the bill passed without a Senate hearing. “It was backdoor legislation at its worst,” says William McColl, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that lobbies for drug decriminalization.
The act expands upon the so-called “crack house” statute—an ’80s law allowing prosecutors to go after the owners of “crack houses,” even if they’re neither dealers nor users. In 2001, the DEA broke ground by aiming the crack house statute at a new target—the owners and promoters of a concert venue, the State Palace Theater in New Orleans. A teenage drug overdose spurred the investigation, and the defendants were indicted for “knowingly and intentionally” allowing drug use to take place…A year later, a federal judge overturned the ban on the grounds that it violated First Amendment rights. Village Voice
The Ethics of Uplift:
“There is a slim window of opportunity somewhere in the next fifty years when we will either create entities more capable than ourselves or become them. If we close off the paths to superhumanity, others will take them or create beings to fill those opening niches. If we halt human genetic engineering, if we ban research into brain-machine interfacing, if we outlaw smart drugs and place restraints on intellectual collectives, then something without those restraints will expand into those niches. And they are not the small closed niches, the crevices in rocks or dark undisturbed caves. The only equivalent in evolutionary terms is the colonisation of dry land thousands of millions of year ago. The landscapes beyond humanity are empty now. Whatever colonises them will face immense challenges but will also have the space to expand to become whatever it wants.” — Philip Tung Yep
Dano, I Hardly Knew Ye…
Blogger’s been completely rewritten. This blindsided me; I hadn’t caught wind of this ‘Dano’ project and now it’s upon us. I remain dubious however. Although I have been wedded to Blogger (partly because my webhost doesn’t allow for Movable Type and I’m too lazy to switch hosts), I’ve been impatient with the bugs and the sluggish support. Even though I’m a paying (“blogger Pro”) customer (therefore supposed to get VIP treatment). Perhaps it has been because they were secretly devoting their time and energy to this new development project. Let us hope it is because of and not in spite of that… Let’s see how Dano’s shakedown cruise goes. (The FAQ doesn’t tell us where they got the name, though…)
The Other Future:
Via Danny O’Brien’s Oblomovka: “Trotskyist libertarian science fiction writer and Denis-Healey-level political bruiser Ken Macleod just got himself a blog. I’ve always said that if the neocons didn’t exist, Ken Macleod would have to invent them. I wonder what happens now they’re all in the same online novel?”
MacLeod:
America: a country where ridiculous proportions of the population believe they were created by god, abducted by aliens, and attacked by Iraq. Also where some people believe that someone who burns a paper drawing of a US flag is as good as asking to be crushed under a bulldozer. It’s not just the Right. Every political persuasion in the US contains many more stupid people than it or its equivalent does in Europe. On the Left Bank of the Seine you see poststructuralists smoking, flirting, and eating veal. Poststructuralism in America gave us La-La Land liberal toytown totalitarianism. French Maoism gave us Sartre and Althusser. American Maoism gave us Klonsky and Avakian. (I could go on.)
I know, like, and respect lots of Americans. Most of the weblogs I follow are written by Americans. Many of the books I read are written by Americans. But this particular distribution curve has a long tail at the low end. Why? The answer I’ve come up with, after some agonising over that question, is this:
Not because Americans are more stupid than anyone else, but because there is no American party of the Left. There is no labour (labor) party. There is no liberal party. (On any scale that registers, I mean. There are Liberal and Labor parties here and there.) The Democratic Party isn’t a liberal party. It has liberals within it, which is a different thing. Nor is it a labour party, though it gets support from organised labour.
This means that the American Right can indulge in lying and character assassination with almost as much impunity as if it dominated a one-party state. And it means that the American Left either buries itself in the Democratic Party, where it’s treated as an embarrassment, or spins its wheels with a complete lack of social traction (in academia or in tiny irrelevant sects) and embarrasses itself.
GOP leaders furious with Frist
This could be an exciting sign of fractiousness in the Republican majority. Inexperienced Senate majority leader Bill Frist, eager to balance all interests and have the Senate start its Easter recess on time, not only accepted limits on Bush’s requested tax cuts but failed to announce it before taking off last week. He has raised the ire of Republican leaders in both the House and Senate and grassroots figures including freshman senator Lindsey Graham (R.-SC) who, in 1997, led the rebellion against House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Chicago Sun-Times
What might the universe have to say to Shrub right now?
Hint: It ain’t exactly fan mail
Let’s get to the point. All sources are telling me that you are more than a little outta control. Way out of line. Off-leash and lost and drunk on dreams of global supremacy and in deep need of major karmic spanking, a divine colonic. The various world deities are shooting me urgent e-mails left and right. We gotta have some words, brother. Are you sitting down? Thinking cap on? Pretzels out of reach? Excellent.
Word is you’re reborn Christian. Great. Didn’t quite get it right the first time, is what they say, what with all the inebriants and daddy’s silver spoon and dodging Vietnam and, hey, nothing snags those God-fearin’-fundamentalist votes more than claiming you rediscovered Jesus while recovering from another gin bender on Dad’s yacht, am I right? Fine and good. Whatever works, I always say.
Problem is, Jesus is a little piqued. He’s right here with me, right now, and he’s drumming his fingers on the table, eyes aflame. He has a question: “Just what in the heck do you think you’re doing in my dad’s name? Did you miss the part about ‘Thou shalt not kill?’ You dare invoke me and my father and call yourself a forgiving Christian and yet you stomp around the globe like you own it?” Christ, he is not happy. [more] — Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle [via walker]
Where’s bin Laden? Where’s Saddam? Where are the weapons?
U.S. digs, searches in vain for Iraqi chemical weapons Reuters
The American public doesn’t seem to care if there were ever any weapons, but finding them would sure be nice for American credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world. However, that doesn’t matter to the world’s only superpower anymore, does it?
Office workers give away passwords for a cheap pen:
“The second annual survey into office scruples, conducted by the people organising this month’s InfoSecurity Europe 2003 conference, found that office workers have learnt very little about IT security in the past year.
If anything, people are even more lax about security than they were a year ago, the survey found.
Nine in ten (90 per cent) of office workers at London’s Waterloo Station gave away their computer password for a cheap pen, compared with 65 per cent last year.” The Register [thanks, walker]
A new kind of literacy:
on the widening gulf between the science cognoscenti and Everyone Else : “Once we have a society where science is as exciting as football, and where attending a science lecture or debate is as relevant and fun as going to the cinema, only then will we be truly empowered as a society to harness science for what we want in life, rather than the other way round.” — Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution and professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, Guardian/UK
Debunking the Beaver:
![//www.museum.tv/archives/etv/L/htmlL/leaveittob/leaveittobIMAGE/leaveittob.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/www.museum.tv/archives/etv/L/htmlL/leaveittob/leaveittobIMAGE/leaveittob.jpg "LTB")
“…(N)ostalgia buffs should look a little more closely before embracing the Cleavers as the ideal family they never had (and can’t hope to duplicate) because, when you penetrate the idyllic surface, it’s hard to imagine anyone really wanting to be like Ward, June and the boys. A close inspection reveals a familial purgatory worthy of Tennessee Williams–toned down for TV, certainly, but still consumed with rage, sexual turmoil and plain old mendacity. This family needs help.”
Annals of Depravity (cont’d.):
I’ll second what rebecca said:
‘Two California poultry farmers who fed some 30,000 live chickens into wood chippers will not face criminal charges because they had permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, prosecutors said on Friday.’ Brooke says it best:
Tell Ann Veneman, the head of the Dept. of Agriculture, that you think that’s deeply fucked up, won’t you? Call her at (202) 720-2791 or email her at agsec@usda.gov.
Update: DA to continue inquiry:
After receiving calls, letters and e-mails from across the country, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis yesterday decided to continue investigating two poultry ranches where workers dumped thousands of live chickens into wood chippers.
Investigators will conduct additional interviews so Dumanis can decide whether to reverse an earlier decision not to prosecute ranch owners Arie and Bill Wilgenburg for animal cruelty.
Gail Stewart, district attorney spokeswoman, said Dumanis decided to reconsider after she received a letter from the Humane Society of the United States. Sign On San Diego
The Second Superpower:
“As the United States government becomes more belligerent in using its power in the world, many people are longing for a “second superpower” that can keep the US in check. Indeed, many people desire a superpower that speaks for the interests of planetary society, for long-term well-being, and that encourages broad participation in the democratic process. Where can the world find such a second superpower? No nation or group of nations seems able to play this role, although the European Union sometimes seeks to, working in concert with a variety of institutions in the field of international law, including the United Nations. But even the common might of the European nations is barely a match for the current power of the United States.
There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead, it is a new form of international player, constituted by the “will of the people” in a global social movement. The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights. This movement has a surprisingly agile and muscular body of citizen activists who identify their interests with world society as a whole—and who recognize that at a fundamental level we are all one. These are people who are attempting to take into account the needs and dreams of all 6.3 billion people in the world—and not just the members of one or another nation. Consider the members of Amnesty International who write letters on behalf of prisoners of conscience, and the millions of Americans who are participating in email actions against the war in Iraq. Or the physicians who contribute their time to Doctors Without Borders/ Medecins Sans Frontieres.” — James Moore
Bright Light Exposure Increases Male Hormone:
‘Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have found that the levels of a pituitary hormone that increases testosterone are enhanced after exposure to bright light in the early morning. The findings suggest that light exposure might serve some of the same functions for which people take testosterone and other androgens.
One of the study’s authors, Daniel Kripke, M.D. UCSD professor of psychiatry, added “the study also supports data that bright light can trigger ovulation in women, which is also controlled by luteinizing hormone (LH), the pituitary hormone we studied.” ‘ I wondered, reading this article (but not the actual scientific research paper) if the effect would persist with chronic rather than short term light exposure and whether, for example, there would be a biological difference between high-latitude and equatorial dwellers in this respect.
The impact of antisocial lifestyle on health:
A good summary of the current medical-psychological understanding of ASP (antisocial personality) and its consequences:
An antisocial lifestyle comprises a range of related behaviours that include violent and non-violent offending, substance misuse, truancy, reckless driving, and sexual promiscuity, some of which constitute self evident health risks. Overall, onset peaks at 8-14 years, prevalence peaks at 15-19, and desistance peaks at 20-29 years of age. Early onset predicts a long antisocial career. Since antisocial behaviour and risk taking is more prevalent in men, explanations may be biological as well as social. Antisocial individuals tend to be versatile in their behaviours, although early adulthood is characterised by a switch from group offending to lone offending. Overall, diversification in antisocial behaviours is seen up to the age of about 20, followed by gradual specialisation in particular types of antisocial behaviours, such as illicit use of drugs.
Independent precursors of an antisocial lifestyle include antisocial child behaviour, impulsivity, school failure, an antisocial family, poor parenting, and economic deprivation. Turning points away from an antisocial lifestyle include getting a job, getting married, moving to a better area, and joining the army. Weak bonds to society and individuals, self centredness, low empathy, and lack of religious belief are all associated with substance misuse and an antisocial lifestyle.
The impact of an antisocial lifestyle on health is increasingly well understood. For example, early contact with the police, truancy, school misconduct, and divorce are significant predictors of premature death. Higher death rates among offenders have been attributed largely to concurrent alcohol and illicit use of drugs. Impulsivity, aggression, alienation, and a tendency to experience anger and irritability in response to daily life hassles characterise those taking single health risks: rejection of social norms, danger seeking, impulsivity, and little need or capacity for relationships with other people have been found to characterise those taking multiple health risks. — Shepherd and Farrington, British Medical Journal 326 (7394): 834
Why the Web Will Win the Culture Wars for the Left:
“The architecture of the web, and the way users navigate it, closely resembles theories about the authority and coherence of texts that liberal deconstructionist critics have offered for thirty years. Deconstructionists believe that close analysis reduces any text — novel, statute, religious work — to meaningless blather. The popular response to deconstruction has always been that it’s counterintuitive, that no one reads that way, that it lacks common sense.
That will change. Like reading or breathing, web browsing itself is agnostic with respect to politics and culture. Unlike reading or breathing, however, surfing mimics a postmodern, deconstructionist perspective by undermining the authority of texts. Anyone who has spent a lot of time online, particularly the very young, will find themselves thinking about content — articles, texts, pictures — in ways that would be familiar to any deconstructionist critic. And a community of citizens who think like Jacques Derrida will not be a particularly conservative one.” — Peter Lurie, ctheory [via wood s lot]
What is Peter Falk Doing in Wings of Desire? I’m also indebted to Mark for pointing me to this delightful essay, re-enlivening one of my favorite films for me. Read it if you loved Wings… or if you’re prepared to.
We the Blog:
…in order to form a more artistic union — ‘a bold, new initiative to re-activate the ideals of democracy through discussion among artists, cultural critics and other creative people who are “repositioning themselves as new leaders in the governance of this planet, particularly in these times of crisis,” according to Founder Jeff Gates.’
“Perhaps the imagination is on the verge of recovering its rights.” — André Bréton
"Speech for the End of Time":
Secretary Randall M. Packer of the US Department of Art & Technology will conclude his nationwide tour at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC to deliver the “Speech for the End of Time.” The event will be a direct response to war cries from the Administration that are leading us quickly and inevitably down the path to a day of reckoning.
In Secretary Packer’s tour – which has included Los Angeles, Boulder, and New York City – he has announced the activation of the Experimental Party, the artist-based political party, the “party of experimentation,” and its latest initiative, “10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation.”
In the “Speech for the End of Time,” Secretary Packer will call on coalition artists to “inspire other artists into action by undergoing aesthetic operation as a form of magic designed as a mediation between our strange hostile world and the human spirit.” For more than 100 years, the avant-garde has gone forth from its studios and garrets to fight for utopian aspirations and social transformation. Today’s artists have entered a fierce struggle against a grave danger, the existential darkness that has possessed our government, that grips its soul.
For according to William Burroughs, “Weapons that change consciousness could call the war game in question.”
Human clones doomed?
“Whether or not rogue scientists could clone a human is hotly debated. After 6 years trying, on over 700 monkey eggs, Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh says not.
The current technique, his team conclude, robs primate eggs of proteins they need to survive. The ‘nuclear transfer’ procedure used to create Dolly the sheep “paralyses the egg”, Schatten says. Key proteins are sucked out when the egg is stripped of its DNA to be replaced with genetic material from another cell.” Nature
Our ancestors had brains – for dinner.
“Our ancestors may have eaten each other’s brains.
A new study has found genes that offer protection from prion diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), in populations on four continents. This spread might be an evolutionary response to the dangers of cannibalism.” Nature
A new kind of literacy:
on the widening gulf between the science cognoscenti and Everyone Else : “Once we have a society where science is as exciting as football, and where attending a science lecture or debate is as relevant and fun as going to the cinema, only then will we be truly empowered as a society to harness science for what we want in life, rather than the other way round.” — Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution and professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, Guardian/UK
The battle for American science:
“Creationists, pro-lifers and conservatives now pose a serious threat to research and science teaching in the US…
One of the first signs that something was changing came in March last year in the suburbs of northern Atlanta, when people started talking, a little more frequently than might be expected, about mousetraps…” Guardian/UK
Think Political News Is Biased?
Are the news media politically biased against people with “your” beliefs? If you’re a Republican, your answer depends on who you talk to, and how often.
That’s the finding of a new Ohio State University study: Republicans who frequently talk politics with other Republicans are more likely to believe that the so-called “liberal media” are biased against them than are Republicans who talk with like-minded people less often.
The Kindness of Strangers
“People’s willingness to help someone during a chance encounter on a city street varies considerably around the world” American Scientist
An Evolutionary Theory of Unipolar Depression:
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.” ‘
Innocent Bystander:
The Olden Mean: “When the posthuman future meets our pre-posthuman selves.” — Cullen Murphy, The Atlantic Monthly
Annals of Depravity (cont’d.):
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…]
Do you suffer from PPMT?
“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
Ex-spies slam US over failure to find WMDs:
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
SARS: Panic or plague?
“Misinformation spreads even faster than the virus itself.” — Declan McCullagh, Reason
Catch Up with New Science:
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
Republican Baseball:
The U.S. Betrays Its Core Values.
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
Bush: It’s Not Just His Doctrine That’s Wrong.
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.”
Thousands demonstrate against US:
“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
Bechtel Wins Iraq Reconstruction Contract:
…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.
Atonement:
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
Hawking Syria —
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
Pariah State:
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 on probation:
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
Congress to Pentagon:
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
The Clinton Top 100:
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
Take Action: Stop MUMS Act!
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
War is good, said Bush as the Louvre fell to looters:
‘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
Pre-Obituaries:
“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
‘…part museum, part amusement park and part little boy’s fantasy…’
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
Chalk One Up for Walmart’s Lawyers:
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]
Court Hears Fight Over Numbers Used for Cellphones (NY Times):
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…
"Most Wanted" Terrorist Captured:
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]
Bill Clinton today blasted US foreign policy
adopted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, arguing the United States cannot kill, jail or occupy all of its adversaries.
“Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us,” said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organised by Conference Board.
“And if they don’t, they can go straight to hell.” news.com.au
Pranksters: Steal This UPC Code
…(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.
"Israelis Mark Passover Without Gas Masks
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!
Roto-Rooter:
“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
Cause of SARS Identified:
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.
Eagleburger: Impeach Bush if he Invades Syria:
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.”
Annals of Depravity (cont’d.):
“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]
Reagan blasts Bush
‘ “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
Not-so-Unknown:
Be sure to see the April 15th headlines at Unknown News. Scroll down to the fascinating collection of items all beginning “Cop Arrested…”
Crime Against Humanity:
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
Art Experts Fear Worst in the Plunder of a Museum:
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.
India Mulls ‘Pre-Emptive’ Pakistan Strike,
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
India Mulls ‘Pre-Emptive’ Pakistan Strike,
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
Are Comments Working?
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!
Doctors Declare Him Brain-Dead:
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
Spinsanity goes to war:
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.”
War Reduces Israel’s Strategic Importance:
“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]
US troops’ anguish:
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]
Demons of necessity:
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
"Untidy":
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!
‘Is This Freedom?’ Ask Iraqis
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 Best Defense:
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
Kissing Dementors:
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
Burn Signifiers Burn!
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
Torchbearer for the Nihilistic Generation:
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
10 Suspects in USS Cole Bombing Escape From Yemen Prison.
“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
