John Lennon, Syria, Nietzsche, Bill Frist, Al-Dulaimi, Biofuel,Lyn Margulis

theusversusjohnlennon
US vs John Lennon, the Movie
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coffeehousestudio
RAW is sick & cant pay his rent
(illuminati anyone?)

ringsurf lefty list

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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motherjones

Bush has cited Syria’s abysmal human rights record as a reason to isolate and possibly attack the country.
The Bush administration is now ensnared in its own web of deceit. On September 19, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales responded to the Canadian findings by claiming that the U.S. acted lawfully in sending Arar to Syria. “Mr. Arar was deported under our immigration laws,” said Gonzales, who insisted that Arar was not the victim of a rendition. It was an absurd claim: why wouldn’t the U.S. deport Arar to Canada, where he is a citizen? The answer is obvious: the Bush administration wanted Arar to be tortured, and could be confident of this outcome if he were handed to the Syrians.
Gonzales tried to hedge, “Even if it were a rendition…we seek to satisfy ourselves that they will not be tortured. …And if in fact he had been rendered to Syria, we would have sought those same kind of assurances.”

[something vaguely Biblical ... render unto Syria....]

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Om

Noa Noa
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losanjealous The Nietzsche Family Circus
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Tobasco — a rough composite of “Total Debacle Fiasco.”
realclearpolitics

What do our troops in Iraq, who risk their lives every day, think when they read that their commanding general believes, "We've got to get the fuck out of here," and that a victory strategy is "not my job."

France's defeat at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina lead to a second war of national liberation in Algeria, the fall of the Fourth Republic and the call for Gen. de Gaulle to assume power. The general did, and he rang down the curtain on the French Empire.

Are we facing an American Dien Bien Phu?

Patrick Buchanan

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timesonline4Oct06

US military announced the death of two soldiers – the latest fatalities in what has been one of the bloodiest spells for American troops this year. One of the soldiers was killed by enemy fire near the northern city of Kirkuk and the other by a sniper in eastern Baghdad, both yesterday.

At least 17 troops have been killed in combat since Saturday, including eight US soldiers who died in gun battles and bomb blasts in Baghdad on Monday -- the worst day for American forces in the capital in a year.

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BAGHDAD, Iraq — The government clamped a 24-hour curfew on the capital Saturday shortly after U.S. forces arrested the bodyguard of Adnan al-Dulaimi, one of the main figures in the minority Sunni bloc of Parliament
.. on suspicion of plotting a suicide attack inside ..Green Zone.
..the U.S. Army said the man was part of an al-Qaida cell "in the final stages of launching a series of ... attacks [that would have used several vehicles and possibly suicide vests.]"
..Al-Dulaimi was not under suspicion, the Army said.
[Coup Rumours?]

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Whiskey Bar is still open 3/10/2006 11:18AM
billmon

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government. The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means.iht

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Biofuel?

allthingsbiodiesel fao
estimates of available land suitable for 'rainfed agriculture'
At present some 11% (1.5 billion ha) of the globe's land surface (13.4 billion ha) is used in crop production (arable land and land under permanent crops). This area represents slightly over a third (36%) of the land estimated to be to some degree suitable for crop production. The fact that there remain some 2.7 billion ha with crop production potential suggests that there is still scope for further expansion of agricultural land
..about 30% of the world's land surface, or 4.2 billion ha, is suitable for rainfed agriculture (Table 4.6). Of this area, the developing countries have some 2.8 billion ha of land of varying qualities that have potential for growing rainfed crops at yields above an«acceptable» minimum level. Of this land, nearly 960 million ha are already in cultivation. The remaining 1.8 billion ha would therefore seem to provide significant scope for further expansion of agriculture in developing countries.
..[this seems to ignore conservation, forests, wildlife biomes, hotspots...]
.. estimated that forests cover at least 45%, protected areas some 12% and human settlements some 3% of the land balance, with wide regional differences. For example, in the land-scarce region of South Asia, some 45% of the land with crop production potential but not yet in agricultural use is estimated to be occupied by human settlements.
So there is something like 55% of 2.7E9 ha around 1.5E9ha land available for 'rainfed' ie possible net energy positive biodiesel.

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Jatropha oil yield t/ha and world output
yield	t/ha	Billion Tons
lowest	0.12	0.18
typical low	1.5	2.25
high	6.0	9
oil consumption 2005		3.8

so typical low yield might give us 60% of our current world oil production.Its not clear how much forest would be destroyed, and how many biomes would be disrupted.
The FAO article doesnt discuss 'hot spots' or endangered biomes.

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140 billion gallons of gasoline USA/yr
..As we migrate from biomass derived from corn to biomass from .. switchgrass and miscanthus,..biomass yield will reach 20 to 24 tons per acre, a fourfold increase. ..extract more biohols.. potentially to 110 gallons per ton. The result: 2,000 to 2,700 gallons of fuel per acre (cf 400 gallons with today’s technology).
..George Schultz and ex-CIA director R. James Woolsey estimate that 30 million acres can replace half our gasoline. I estimate that 40 million to 60 million acres can replace our gasoline needs. By taking land now used to grow export crops and instead planting energy crops, it's feasible to eliminate our need to import oil for gasoline.
..Cellulosic ethanol technology promises to deliver as much as 2,700 gallons per acre by 2030.
..Greenfuel Technologies is harnessing algae farming for ethanol and biodiesel production. Human genome pioneer J. Craig Venter is busy developing a synthetic chromosome that may be able to produce ethanol. Another Khosla Ventures company called LS9 is applying synthetic biology to produce a new biofuel.
..Kergy ..the first anaerobic thermal conversion machine ..8 feet high..cellulosic ethanol through anaerobic thermal conversion rather than through fermentation or acid hydrolysis. It does not need organisms or enzymes... Biomass is heated in an oxygen-free environment to produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen... then reconstituted into various alcohols like ethanol
..Klepper can make ethanol out of cellulose or any form of organic matter. This means the usual suspects such as corn, switchgrass, sugarcane, and miscanthus but also any waste product such as wood chips, paper pulp, cow manure, and even human waste. Municipal sewage has been tested already, as has hog manure

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astrobio
Lyn Margulis, still crazy, but shes been right before..

what Mendel showed. In other words, the genetic factors are simply recombined; there's no evolution.

Now Mendel is often touted to be this backwater monk who played with his garden peas. But Mendel was in touch with the pope. He knew damn well what was going on with the concept of evolution and did not like it.

The supporters of neo-Darwinism, which is also called the modern synthesis, wanted to reconcile - they had to reconcile - Darwinian change through time with this brilliant, experimentally proven concept of Gregor Mendel.

This field they invented is called evolutionary biology by a lot of people, or sometimes population genetics. I think the whole thing's corrupt. I think it's repulsively corrupt. Because it has no reference in the real world. It was made from the beginning as a very clever generalization to combine the fact of Darwinian change through time, which seems to be based on fossils and lots of other evidence, with the evident fact that Mendel was right about genetic factors recombining. And so it developed a superstructure, a theory of which only a very small part could be verified by science. And it was called population genetics, because the word evolution, at least in this country, is a dirty word amongst a lot of people.

Earth's biodiversity.
Credit: Alexis Rockman

And as Hutchinson pointed out, symbiosis was considered communist and Russian. The great work had been done in Russia

[the great LM has recently developed some decidedly absolutist talk, - she states that symbiogenesis is the only mechanism of evolution, seems looney to me]

John Lennon Syria Nietzsche Bill Frist Al-Dulaimi Biofuel Lyn Margulis