Lefty Blogs
williampfaff ++ ++
Russian News ++
seaton-newslinks. USA expat in Europe ++
bilegrip Asu spleen ++
us-rockstroh a rant, not a blog ++
aboutmyplanet eco ++
sfgate ++
crookedtimber ++
onthecommons ++
sjlendman ++
....
abutamam freeiraq ++
airamericaradio +
amygdalagf +
angryarab ++
annezook +
antiwar ++
norwegianity
terrorism-news
blogspot
ourtomorrow
politickybitch
welcome-to-pottersville
aviraqi
billmon ++ whiskeyB
consortiumnews ++
dahrjamailiraq
dailywarnews ++
drforbush +
english +
fallujahinpictures
freespeechradio
halcyondays ++
healingiraq
hereticalideas ++
icasualties
maru
om
boxspinning boxes

jamaicaobserver newspaper
jameswolcott +
lefarkins +
liberalgirlnextdoor ++
lonehighlander Libya, not lefty
mahablog +++ solid
maruthecrankpot +
indymedia melbourne
messopotamian +7Apr06
monkey ++
motherjones ++
fisk
nocapital +
norightturn +NZ
peakoil ++
pilger +
politicalhumor +
raedinthemiddle
rafahtoday Feb05?
rense w= wacko conspiracies
rigorousintuition x
hegemon ++
ruckus ++
rudepundit ++
satiricalpolitical +
scaramoucheblog ++
secretsinbaghdad ++15Ap06
Energring
aliveinbaghdad ++
riverbendblog ++
sideshow +++
signs-of-the-times +++
slashdot ++techy
talkleft ++
thinkprogress ++
thismodernworld +++
uncapitalist ++
velorution ++ bicycles
org ++Brazil peasants
warandpiece +
warfare.ru +russia military
greenpeace
allhatnocattle
alternet ++
americanpolitics
antiwar
gbruno ++YT
axisoflogic ++
blackcommentator
bobharris +
bradblog +
buckfush +funnies
buggery +
buzzflash ++
changeforamerica
countercurrents
counterpunch +++
crisispapers
crooksandliars ++?
csmonitor
dahrjamailiraqhref="http://www.dailykos.com/
davidcorn
democracynow
democracyuprising
dissidentvoice
earthfirstjournal
earthstation5
empirenotes
foodfirst
fpif
fromthewilderness
geocities
granta
grist ??
gristmagazine
guerrillanews
gulf
hizbollah
huffingtonpost ++
informationclearinghouse
infoshop +
inthesetimes x
iranmania x
ivaw
jihadunspun
juancole ++
kuro5hin ++ notlefty
kurtnimmo ++
lrb ++ Iraqi?
mahablog
lewrockwell ++
marklynas climate change
mnftiu get your war on comics
motherjones
nilemedia
nybooks
occupationwatch
oriononline
palestine
prisonplanet
rall ++ Ted Rall cartonist
ratical
redpepper
rense
robert
rollingstone
scoop
selvesandothers ++
smirkingchimp
snappingturtle
socialistworker
spiked
tblog
theiraqiroulette
theleftcoaster +
thepoorman +
tnr ++ magazine
tompaine ++ mag
traprockpeace ++
truthout +
boondocks ++
crowning3
. . . helix
Base
rain radar
Weather
worldtribunal +
worldwatch ++ $ required
zaman + Turkish news
youcantmakeitup + ?
youngfox ????????????
bareknucklepolitics videos?
popdrain videos??
discovery videos??
cs videos??
aegisIraq video??
mariyaguchi video??
iwilltryit video..
baghdadtreasure
ahram cairo newspaper
felbers
thepartyline
jfaughnan 28/04/2006 10:25AM
shrillblog +
thinkprogress +
marchforjustice + pictures
messopotamian + Iraqi not so radical, but scared (also see IraqTheModel which was a USA front, but is now also scared)
scaramoucheblog +
counterpunch
.............
blogads liberal blogs by CPM $ per view
malakandsky ++ stolid?
republicoft + black gay parent??
dailykos ++
rawstory ++
democraticunderground ++
atrios ++
workingforchange +
leftinthewest +
dembloggers +
talkingpointsmemo +
firedoglake ++
vastleft ++
pamspaulding +
americablog +
washingtonmonthly ++
mydd +
politics1 +
bartcop ++
politicalwire +
sisterstalk black lesbian?
culturekitchen ++
alternet
wonkette +++
billstclair +
freefreedomtoldhere ++ pipe bomb

......
almuajaha defunct
whynot defunct
winstonsmith defunct
samadams dormant
mquinn02 defunct
iraqblogcount ++14Apr06 suspended
iraqicomments most recent: jan2005
iraqidoctor most recent: Aug2005
georgemustgo + moved?
vialls ++Dormant (joe is dead)
warblogging Defunct
hammeroftruth quiescant?
mediastorm quiescant? +
bushwhackedusa defunct
hamasonline defunct
4Jul06

10 March 2006

MRO, Seidler, Nervi, viacampesina, Coxon, Francesca

Around 7am AET tomorrow MRO Mars orbit insertion begins
http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx

Watch MRO Arrive at Mars! [NASA TV Online]
Mar 10: Live Mars Orbit Insertion Coverage (12:30 - 2:45 pm Pacific)
..............
Enceladus, moon of Saturn seems to have water spouts... a stop off for thirsty travelers?

Harry Seidler dead at 82. I like all his buildings, most of all I appreciate his collaboration with Nervi:

"Much of the credit for Australia Square Tower belongs to the engineer, Pier Luigi Nervi, the great Italian god of concrete in the 20th century. It was Nervi who made the cladding on Australia Square an integral part of the structure. Because the columns are external, they do not waste precious office space, so allowing greater flexibility. Few office buildings even today can boast a clear-span floor.
The Italian was also responsible for the stunning heritage-listed ceiling of interlocking curved ribs in the lobby. "In many ways, the lobby was groundbreaking in its height and its transparency and lightness,"
...
The MLC Centre Cultural Environment
Nervi Structures
"Striking in appearance and structural design, the architectural ceilings in the Theatre Royal, the Tower Lobby, the King Street retail entrance cantilever and CTA Club structure were all designed by Professor Pier Luigi Nervi."
........
the MLC Centre and Australia Square in 1978 and 1967 respectively.
Both are very special buildings in that they challenged structural conventions for their time. In doing so, Rome based Pier Luigi Nervi was the structural consultant for both buildings.
...........
Nervi
more Nervi pics:
columbia
giovanidelleacli
rasche
mit
tesis
book
St Marys in SF
________________________________________________________________
La Via Campesina women occupy a farm in South Brazil
Wednesday, 08 March 2006
About 2000 women from La Via Campesina occupied the plantation of Aracruz Celulose, in Barra do Ribeiro, Rio Grande do Sul (sur de Basil), early this wednesday morning. The purpose of the mobilization is to denounce the social and environmental impact of the growing green desert created by eucalyptus monocuture. The Barba Negra farm is the main production unit of seedlings of eucalyptus and pines of Aracruz. It also has a laboratory for seedlings cloning.

Marilyn by AvedonMarilyn by Avedon
__________________________________________________________________
artexpress Coxon
artexpress in NSW
__________________________________________________________________
francesca
More Francesca
heenan heenan heenan heenan heenan heenan heenan heenan heenan

09 March 2006

Wonder Woman & BCCI, "The Salvador Option", Kyrgyzstan not for turning



wonder
floyd
What did BCCI do? "It engaged in pandemic bribery of officials in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas," says journalist Christopher Bryon, who first exposed the operation. "It laundered money on a global scale, intimidated witnesses and law officers, engaged in extortion and blackmail. It supplied the financing for illegal arms trafficking and global terrorism. It financed and facilitated income tax evasion, smuggling and prostitution." Sort of an early version of the Bush Regime, then.
The Italian bank BNL was one of BCCI's main tentacles. BNL's Atlanta branch was the primary funnel used to send millions of secret dollars to Saddam for arms purchases, including deadly chemicals and other WMD materials supplied by the Chilean arms dealer Cardoen and various politically-connected operators in the United States like, weapons merchant Matrix Churchill.
___________________________________________________________________
Abu Ghraib - The Sequel

globalresearch
I tentatively suggest that the intelligence apparatus at the Interior Ministry is contriving attacks on Sunnis and that British and US special forces in conjunction with the intelligence apparatus at the Iraqi Defence Ministry are fabricating insurgent bombings of Shias. Overseeing the entire operation is the ‘cream’ of CMAD under the direction of top-level US intelligence asset Mowaffak Rubaie, a man already experienced at participating in bombing campaigns, undoubtedly working hand in glove with the CIA and the National Security Council in the US.

from aliveinbaghdad FUL506A
For Iraq, "The Salvador Option" Becomes Reality by Max Fuller 2Jun2005
... New York Times Magazine, in September 2004 Counsellor to the US Ambassador for Iraqi Security Forces James Steele was assigned to work with a new elite Iraqi counter-insurgency unit known as the Special Police Commandos, formed under the operational control of Iraq’s Interior Ministry (‘The Way of the Commandos’, Peter Maass, Commandos
From 1984 to 1986 then Col. Steele had led the US Military Advisory Group in El Salvador, where he was responsible for developing special operating forces .. composed of the most brutal soldiers available, replicated the kind of small-unit operations with which Steele was familiar from his service in Vietnam. Rather than focusing on seizing terrain, their role was to attack ‘insurgent’ leadership, their supporters, sources of supply and base camps. In the case of the 4th Brigade, such tactics ensured that a 20-man force was able to account for 60% of the total casualties inflicted by the unit ..
...The Police Commandos are in large part the brainchild of another US counter-insurgency veteran, Steven Casteel, a former top DEA man who has been acting as the senior advisor in the Ministry of the Interior. Casteel was involved in the hunt for .. Pablo Escobar, during which the DEA collaborated with a paramilitary organization known as Los Pepes, which later transformed itself into the AUC, an umbrella organization covering all of Colombia’s paramilitary death squads
...the economic assault on Iraq is well underway. Visible unemployment stands at around the catastrophic level of 28%, large parts of the state sector have already been sold off and wages have fallen (often to less than half of their pre-war levels), thanks in part to the introduction of thousands of cheap workers from Pakistan, India and the Philippines. These workers are often tricked into coming and stripped of their passports, effectively working as slaves .. Reconstruction projects are given almost exclusively to foreign (mainly US) companies, who pay a flat rate of 15% tax with no limits to repatriation of profits, while Iraq’s state-owned companies are excluded antiwar . In the countryside, Iraqi farmers are now obliged to buy a licence to grow genetically modified seed and are prohibited from resowing the seed developed by their ancestors in the cradle of civilisation globalresearch
... as successive imperialist powers have shown, the bottom line in combating the hopes and dreams of ordinary people is to resort to spreading terror through the application of extreme violence. In Iraq, the Salvador Option may mean returning home to find your entire family seated at table with their own severed heads served to them and a bowl of blood for relish.

alertnet
BAGHDAD, March 7 (Reuters) ..the commander of all Iraqi troops in Baghdad died from a bullet to the head while in a patrol convoy on Monday...
"The outsiders have hands on the inside," one general said.
.. ..the killing of Major General Mubdar Hatim al-Dulaimi, a Sunni Muslim who commanded the 10,000-strong 6th Division in Baghdad..
..Dulaimi, a divisional commander under Saddam Hussein
..only one bullet was fired, apparently by a sniper in a high building.

Bodies still being found after Katrina
Tuesday 07 March 2006
Six months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, bodies are still being pulled from wrecked and rotting homes.
..The official door-to-door search of New Orleans ended
on 3 October with a toll of 972.
..Since then, 131 more bodies have been found..
Firefighters continued to search homes for a few more months, but had to stop in December when funding ran out.

alertnet
KABUL, March 6 (Reuters) - An Afghan working for the United Nations was shot dead in western Afghanistan over the weekend, a provincial governor said on Monday.
The killing took place in the Zairkoa area on the border between Farah province and neighboring Herat on Sunday, said Farah Gov. Ezatullah Wasfi. The victim, identified by the United Nations as Mohammad Hashim, worked for the U.N. human settlements agency HABITAT, he said.
Hashim, who worked for a program helping rehabilitate and rebuild villages in the Bala Buluk District, was visiting project sites when six armed men stopped his car, dragged him from the vehicle and shot him, said Tom Koenigs, the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan.

zaman
Kyrgyzstan Minister of Foreign Affairs Alikbek Ceksenkulov said the United States can not use Gansi Military Base for a possible attack on Iran.
It would be a violation of the mutual covenant between the two countries if the US decides to use the Gansi Air Base, close to Manas Airport in Bishkek, against Iran. The base was built to suppress terror in Afghanistan, Ceksenkulov told BBC Monday, adding that the base should not pose a threat to any Asian countries, including Iran.
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev also told Russian "Komersant" last week that America could only use Gansi for Afghanistan, not for Iran.
The President reminded the US access period would only be extended depending on the stability of Afghanistan.
crosswalk
Rumsfeld secured approval from Kyrgyzstan to continue using the Manas airbase there, and from Tajikistan to maintain overflight and refueling rights for U.S. aircraft.

08 March 2006

beauty personified


beauty personified, originally uploaded by Milapsinh Jadeja.

milapsinh jadeja says:
The place is Ludiya, kachchh.. in the deserts of banni (western part of india). This is supposed to be one of the few last villages in india where the houses are handmade and handpainted by the owners themselves... the community is called a meghwaali community.

Ali Farka Toure, Palmerston North, Climate Change: 'pros' & 'contras'

Ali Farka Toure is dead
ali F T
aljazeera
Toure spent much of his later years in his childhood town of Niafunke, near Timbuktu..
In 2004, Toure became the small farming town's mayor.
..he will be laid to rest in the sandy loam near Timbuktu.
"For some people, Timbuktu is a place at the end of nowhere," he once was quoted as saying. "But that's not true, I'm from Timbuktu, and I can tell you that it's right in the centre of the world."
AFP
planet-pic
__________________________________________________________________
My Life, Times and Current Medical Problems
That old bore John Cleese heaped praise on other towns and cities where he performed, but introduced Palmerston North as the "suicide capital of New Zealand".

"If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick," Cleese said.
[the old fart is actually demanding $50 to look at his web site - get a grip JC]
And Hi to my rellies in PN

Climate Change: 'pros' & 'contras'
the 'contras' - those who deny anthropogenic climate change,
seem to tend towards the idea that 'anyway, warming is good' and cold is dry deserts
eg:
What did not lay beneath ice was a largely cold and desolate desert landscape, due in large part to the colder, less-humid atmospheric conditions that prevailed.
& eg:clearlight
During ice ages our planet is cold, dry, and inhospitable-- supporting few forests but plenty of glaciers and deserts.

But note: mhieb states "Clearly, though, global warming and rising CO2 levels in Earth's atmosphere started long before the industrial revolution" But if you look at the graphs he provides "rising CO2" clearly does NOT rise before 200ybp.
So this 'debunking' site contradicts his own data!


The 'pros' , particularly the 'worst case scenario' people like Lovelock
state that warming will lead to deserts, and cooler meant more forests.
eg: leeds
If we burn all the fossil fuels that are left underground, the globe will warm by an average of up to 13 °C..That will wipe out most rainforests, destroy the fertility of many soils..

So expect most people to be confused. It seems clear to me that crop failures are a much greater immediate threat than sea-level rising. Its glib to say warming will open new farmland in Canada, if half the world cant afford to move, nor purchase Canadian grain.

Climate sites (mostly pro) peopleandplanet sciencedaily lakepowell gcrio ucsusa oriononline dailykos

zaman 14Feb2006 By Anadolu News Agency , Sydney Three Australian scientists said they were pressured by the government not to issue any statements on global warming.