St Basil on evolution, Wayne on Chavez & Jordan,tom_lasseter on Iraq, China, Sony rootkit

St. Basil the Great as saying that some people, "fooled by the atheism that they carry inside of them, imagine a universe free of direction and order, as if at the mercy of chance."

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France:
waynemadsen
WMR has emphasized that the arson attacks are well planned, coordinated, and only plaguing the three major NATO countries that opposed the war in Iraq, For that reason, European law enforcement and intelligence agencies should place 24x7 surveillance on Israeli diplomatic and intelligence personnel who may be engaged in "Lavon Affair" and "911" style false flag operations. Such an operation aimed at Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez may have just been uncovered in Trinidad and Tobago.

In what may have been an attempt to stage a set of bombings in the Caribbean oil region and point the finger at Venezuela's significant Arab and Muslim population, a Russian-born Israeli national was recently arrested in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Vatang Agrunov (who uses the aliases Bhatang Agranouve and Dahtang Mik Agarunov), 26, is being questioned by Trinidadian authorities for his connections to four bombings in Port of Spain this year

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Jordan:
informationclearinghouse
Israelis evacuated from Amman hotel hours before bombings : A number of Israelis staying on Wednesday at the Radisson hotel were evacuated before the bombing by Jordanian security forces, apparently due to a specific security alert. They were escorted back to Israel by security personnel.

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Population declining:
Russia is losing 2,000 people a day, and is expected to go on doing so for the next 45 years. In the other European countries of the former Soviet Union, the outlook is, if anything, even worse: in Ukraine the decline is expected to be over 40% and in Belarus nearly 30%.
.. In Asia the big loser will be Japan where the population has just started falling, two years ahead of expectations,
.. Italy: at present there are 58 million Italians, and if they continue to reproduce at their current low rate there will be 20% fewer ..by 2050, even allowing for immigration.

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Egypt election:
csmonitor
With the opposition group expected to at least triple its numbers in parliament, a significant shift in the country's political dynamic is afoot. Today, for the first time in decades, not a single Muslim Brother sits in jail, and candidates are campaigning openly as Muslim Brothers.
..............
Last month's Muslim-Coptic riots in Alexandria, in which three people died and a nun was stabbed, highlighted tensions between the two communities.

"There is no desire to give the Copts representation in parliament and this is among the reasons that the Christian feel oppressed," says Milad Hana, a secular Coptic writer. "There is more and more a sectarian air within the ruling powers in Egypt."
..and I re-read "Mountolive" just last week
[for latest news see: egyptelection

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China Inc : How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World by Ted C. Fishman
..China "Wal-Mart with an army."
Deng Xiaoping : From 1978 onward, he started decollectivizing the economy. I
but absolute poverty, defined as living on $1 a day or less, has fallen from 64% to 17% of the population.
[but see V Smil & methane generator destruction: All of the thousands of methane generators from the CulturalRev days have been trashed. Meanwhile methane generators are the latest thing in Sweden...
Smil also points out that China's economy is becoming less energy intensive, ie more output per Joule.
Probably wont be enough to prevent the Middle Kingdom from coal-cooking the planet...]
[ps: 22Nov05 Aus aid in Inner Mongolia, currently includes Pigshit Methane generator.. what goes around...]

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Iraq, news from a 'peaceful' province:
tom_lasseter
"They say attacks are down. Well, no s---," Hendricks said. "We're not patrolling where the bad guys are."
U.S. patrols on a parallel road, Route Marie, ended in late May.
Pointing to Route Marie on a map on the wall of his barracks, Hendricks traced a 2-mile stretch of the road with his index finger.
"They kicked our a-- off this road," Hendricks said. "They hit us with so many IEDs we had to stop using it."

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mercurynews
Tom Lasseter
Shwail told the officers that Ayatollah Hussein al-Sadr had informed him that the troops must stay in Kadhemiya to protect the Shiite faithful.

"Sayyid Hussein al-Sadr has more influence than (Prime Minister) Ibrahim Jaafari," Shwail said, using an honorific title. "The battalion in Kadhemiya won't be moved from there for the next 100 years."

The officers looked at each other, dismayed. Their men, stretched thin in the insurgent hotspots, are shot and killed regularly.

"But sir, we need more troops," one officer said.

"The problem," Shwail said, "is convincing Sayyid Hussein al-Sadr."

Some Iraqi troops went a step further, saying they were only awaiting word from the marja'iya before turning on American forces

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bowman.typepad a couple of conservative links:
amconmag
James P. Pinkerton:
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, comprising six members: China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Since then, the SCO has expanded: India, Pakistan, and Iran now enjoy “observer” status. It remains to be seen, of course, whether this ambitious new Eurasian entity possesses much weight; so far, America and its allies have ignored the SCO’s resolution that we quit Afghanistan.
... ...
Barry Lynn, in his new book, End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation, argues that if present trends continue, the Chinese will soon be able simply to pull the plug on our economy—and so we won’t be able to fight China even if we want to, or have to,
..
chief financial officer of CNOOC, Yang Hua..“What is ‘human rights’?” Yang asked rhetorically. “I’ll tell you what it means. It means having guaranteed access to energy.”

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foreignpolicy
Stephen M. Walt
Rumsfeld and other administration officials blame our problems on Baathist “dead-enders” and radical jihadis, aided and abetted by Syria and Iran. It’s not the Bush administration’s fault we’re losing, we are told; it’s our enemies’ fault. That is no defense at all, of course, because it merely reminds us that the Bush team failed to anticipate what would happen once Saddam was gone and we “owned” Iraq

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csmonitor sysinternals
Sony cripples your Computer:
But when Mr. Russinovich, chief software architect for Winternals Software, did a thorough investigation he was shocked to find the source of the rootkit: a commercially produced music CD from Sony BMG. Not only that, but when he manually tried to erase the program, it disabled his computer's CD drive.