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 ++
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dailywarnews ++
drforbush +
english +
fallujahinpictures
freespeechradio
halcyondays ++
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icasualties
maru
om
boxspinning boxes

jamaicaobserver newspaper
jameswolcott +
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lonehighlander Libya, not lefty
mahablog +++ solid
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messopotamian +7Apr06
monkey ++
motherjones ++
fisk
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norightturn +NZ
peakoil ++
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rafahtoday Feb05?
rense w= wacko conspiracies
rigorousintuition x
hegemon ++
ruckus ++
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satiricalpolitical +
scaramoucheblog ++
secretsinbaghdad ++15Ap06
Energring
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slashdot ++techy
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uncapitalist ++
velorution ++ bicycles
org ++Brazil peasants
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warfare.ru +russia military
greenpeace
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alternet ++
americanpolitics
antiwar
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axisoflogic ++
blackcommentator
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bradblog +
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buggery +
buzzflash ++
changeforamerica
countercurrents
counterpunch +++
crisispapers
crooksandliars ++?
csmonitor
dahrjamailiraqhref="http://www.dailykos.com/
davidcorn
democracynow
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earthfirstjournal
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empirenotes
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fromthewilderness
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granta
grist ??
gristmagazine
guerrillanews
gulf
hizbollah
huffingtonpost ++
informationclearinghouse
infoshop +
inthesetimes x
iranmania x
ivaw
jihadunspun
juancole ++
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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 +
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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
.............
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republicoft + black gay parent??
dailykos ++
rawstory ++
democraticunderground ++
atrios ++
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firedoglake ++
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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

04 August 2006

Manuchehr Mohammadi, Israel's barbaric, Pritchard on TheOilDrum, Hybrids

Iran's Foreign Relations Vice Minister Manuchehr Mohammadi told Venezuelan state television, "The first consequence of these sanctions would be an increase in the price of oil to around $200 per barrel."

childtank
uncapitalist
Only in a world where the de facto ruler is a White male (with a red-neck mentality and an IQ well below triple digits) could Israel's barbaric response to feeble Palestinian rocket attacks (that had registered zero fatalities) and to the capture of three of its soldiers (who were complicit in genocidal acts) be considered an act of selfdefense
___________________________________________________
"Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate ceasefire must be implemented," Ahmadinejad said, according to state-run television in a report posted on its website today.
[this is not calling for genocide]


Pritchard
They moved this pretty picture since Dec2004, so here it is again
theoildrum
Pritchard on TheOilDrum
____________________________________________________

peakoil
GM admits Hybrids are just a P.R. Stunt
smallpoxgirl
Smallpoxgirl's avatar

03 August 2006

Alexander Friedman, Katia Nasser, Vatican on the rag, Zelzal-2, "I think this is a damn input

My Heroes:
Alexander Friedman, St Petersburg Cosmologist, mathematician, Balloonist. Wrote to Einstein to tell him he was wrong, the universe is expanding. What Chutzpah!
Held the world record for highest balloon flight, died aged 37 from the ill-effects of altitude
....
Nasser
Katia Nasser, reporting from the front line in Lebanon
______________________________________________________
Vatican on the rag:
telegraph 30/06/2006)
.."Destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion. It is the same thing," said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family.
"Excommunication will be applied to the women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos [and to the] politicians that approve the law," he said in an interview with Famiglia Christiana..

billmon
First Afghanistan, then Iraq, now Lebanon? Someone needs to explain to Shrub the concept of the tar baby.
[ I caught mice #4 #5 on gluepads. I have to wonder why they put the 2nd 3rd & 4th feet on the pads
see my Kos diary
gbruno
I get a dozen comments, all of whom seem to think I am far far out.
Accused of channeling Syd Barrett - now I can retire!]

snappingturtle
cep:
Zelzal-2 rocket fired from Bekaa Valley into Tel Aviv/Jerusalem : 700m
So unlike the Iraqi Al-Husayn missile, the Hezbollah Zelzals would have a high probability of hitting a city centre .. with about 20% greater destructive force over the Al-Husayn Scud, and one could anticipate significant Israeli casualties
..in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War .. Iraq fired 189 Al-Husayn-model Scuds into Tehran, Isfahan, and Qom, killing 2000 Iranians and wounding another 6000: an average of 10.5 deaths per rocket.

[flit famously irritated by Fisk in 2003 getting tech details wrong, I suspect Fisk does it deliberately to annoy military-wonks]

11Sep2001:
vanityfair
08:43:06FOX: I've never seen so much real-world stuff happen during an exercise.
...
08:57:11NASYPANY: Think we put the exercise on the hold. What do you think? [Laughter.]
....
09:04:50—Is this explosion part of that that we're lookin' at now on TV?—Yes.—Jesus …—And there's a possible second hijack also—a United Airlines …—Two planes?…—Get the fuck out …—I think this is a damn input, to be honest.

The last line—"I think this is a damn input"—is a reference to the exercise, meaning a simulations input.
...
As the tapes reveal in stark detail, parts of Scott's and Arnold's testimony were misleading, and others simply false.

condi
c/o tbogg


02 August 2006

Ayta a-Shab , Kfar Kila, Baalbek, Uranium, aptamers, Titanic lakes, Mexoryl sunscreen

haaretz
Three IDF soldiers were killed in battles with Hezbollah fighters in Ayta a-Shab on Tuesday. Twenty-five soldiers were also lightly wounded.

nytimes
In the Lebanese border town of Kfar Kila, where artillery fire was heavy, residents said Israeli tanks had approached but had been forced back.
nytimes
Hezbollah said its guerrillas were fighting Israeli commandos trapped inside a hospital in the eastern city of Baalbek early Wednesday.


It is now doubted that Scipio Aemilianus sowed Carthaginian fields with salt. Salt was just too expensive.
But, a far far worse thing, Israel is sowing Lebanon with Uranium, rendering it uninhabitable for many millennia, except for those who cant leave. Those will require the old basin of sand at every childbirth, ready to smother monsters

beirutupdate
there is a black dust that is filling the air. we are breathing it in ... constantly. it has settled on my clothes, in my kitchen... it is everywhere. we are guessing it is from the Jiye power station that was bombed... it is still on fire... it is the power station from which the oil spill originated from.
..
everyone is talking about the depleted uranium in the bombs... it is everywhere now. in the air we breathe.. in the land... it will soon be in our crops... in our water... wow. every time i think that things can't get worse, they do.
i am already envisioning myself with cancer.


merk
tank 'damaged' IDFers bailing out
____________________________________________



tls
Around each of the falls we came to, and sometimes visible from the river, were lots of paintings. Usually, it was the larger aboriginal pictures we spotted first; but hidden among them, often over-painted or half destroyed by scratching, were examples of Bradshaw art. We reached the first site by scrambling up a jumble of colossal rocks, avoiding the thorny undergrowth and sometimes having to leap across dark chasms. It was a familiar environment, which reminded me strongly of parts of Africa where I have sought rock art over the past forty-four years since I first traveled by camel in the Central Sahara in 1962. The same thrilling anticipation as each overhang, streaked with red and yellow lines of oxide and ochre, looked to my eager eye like a wonderful painting, only to turn out to be natural staining. Then came the first actual painted site: a mass of large figures with bold outlines, representing familiar aboriginal motifs – fat snakes, kangaroos, human shapes and hands. It was exciting, but nothing to the shock of recognition when I saw my first Bradshaw.


titan
Titanic lakes
nasa
nasa
Xanadu's Meandering Rivers
____________________________________________________________________
27Jul06
.. U Florida.. discovering cancer earlier..Dihua Shangguan,..online PNAS..
..Antibodies are preferable to diagnosis by appearance ..but they are only available for a few cancers
..cancer tissue has a molecular fingerprint.. tools in the form of aptamers, or short strands of synthesized DNA.
..successfully design sets of aptamers that would recognize leukemia cells ..mixed in with normal bone marrow cells. also distinguished leukemia T-cells from lymphoma B-cells

pishmo bug pictures

drcharles
(A five year study at the Queensland Institute for Medical Research,, using sunscreen didn't reduce the risk of melanoma or basal cell carcinoma in adults.)
..current sunscreens provide some protection if they contain either zinc oxide, titanium dioxide or avobenzone, a 2004 Procter & Gamble study ..188 United States sunscreens .. only 56% offered significant UVA protection, even though 82% claimed to do so.
But Mexoryl seems far superior.. NYTimes (2005):
..UV sunlamp for 15 minutes. The product containing Mexoryl (along with avobenzone, titanium dioxide and other ingredients) was more than twice as effective in protecting against UVA light as any of the other


01 August 2006

Sydney, Nasrallah, Omega-3, Solar power

A beautiful clear winters morning in Sydney. Dont ever come here, unless you are bombed out of your home country. Australia is the pits, fine & clear it may be. The blacks are interesting, but tend to drink more cheap wine in the morning than I do. To paraphrase the Hibbing bard: "The Blacks dont need you, and Man they expect the same"

kansascity Jul. 29, 2006 Warren P. Strobel and Shashank Bengali
JERUSALEM - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared victory on Saturday after Israel announced it was withdrawing its forces from the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbail where Israeli troops found unexpected difficulty in dislodging the guerrilla group from its strongholds.

hammorabi
The only reason why Israel attacked the multistory building and killed at least 55 innocent civilians most of them children is because of the Israeli failures to achieve any sort of victory on Hizbullah. Israeli forces have been defeated in the ground with Hizbullah and failed to achieve any advances yet the government lied to its citizens that it achieved its aims. This is why they attacked and killed and destroyed the Lebanese children and infrastructures.

“Israel is far from a decisive victory and its main objectives have not been achieved,” wrote the country’s most respected military analyst, Zeev Schiff, in the daily Haaretz.

Hezbollah, Sheik Nasrallah has said, “needs only to survive to win.” That seemed increasingly likely by week’s end.

thisfuckingwar millblogging:
The U.S. has turned Iraq into an example that runs contrary to America's values, beliefs and assumptions.
Why isn't there a single wise man in the world's mightiest country capable of telling the White House that America's enemies, whether in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East, are a result of U.S. policies? The world's only superpower gathers, nourishes and fortifies its own enemies, and as a result, U.S. policies in the region are leading toward oblivion.

NYT clips:
the Basij paramilitary force — organized, trained and equipped by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to provide a ready-made Iranian network of 90,000 full-time forces, 300,000 reservists and a mobilization base of up to a million men that would dwarf the insurgency bedeviling American efforts in Iraq
...
And on Wednesday, in Bint Jbail, a town the Israelis said they controlled, a well-laid Hezbollah ambush pinned down infantrymen from the elite Golani Brigade for hours. At times the firing was so heavy the brigade’s soldiers could not return it; eight Israelis were killed. The highly advanced Merkava tanks were reduced to ambulances and several were destroyed.

Weird Science


Fish Oil
But it had to be the right kind of fish, and prepared the right way. No effect on the heart's electrical activity was seen with fried fish, such as fish burgers or fish sticks. Those commercial products do not increase blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids.
And people who think they can take a shortcut by using fish-oil supplements are mistaken, said Alice H. Lichtenstein, prof public health Tufts U.."Recent studies have cast doubt on the belief that fish-oil supplements are beneficial," Lichtenstein said.
- I dont believe her

abc Solar power
..Things are about to change dramatically thanks to the installation of a new hybrid solar-thermal power plant. The sun’s heat will preheat the water and thus cut the amount of coal used...
Once we learn how to manufacture these arrays on a very large scale,.. we’ll be able to built plants with their own turbines without any fossil fuel.
..planning is already underway for a 100% solar-thermal facility based on this technology, at Moree NSW
..Dr Keith Lovegrove: Yes that’s the world’s biggest paraboloidal dish solar concentrator Paul.
..the initiative of the Australian National University. They’ve been working on solar since 1971. They think big dishes are the way to capture the sun’s heat, as opposed to the long, flat mirrors we saw at Liddell...We can make steam at the same temperatures and pressures as you’ll find in a coal fired power station. ..
.. Another form of solar power on the cusp of going mainstream is solar photovoltaics. ..
Dave Holland: We concentrate the sun 500 times into a very small amount of very specialised high-grade ultra efficient photovoltaics. And .. on small grids in central Australia where we are complementing the existing diesel generators.
And it’s our intention to build a 150 megawatt power station in northern Victoria ..
..One way to store solar energy is in the form of a gas. ..at the Solar Tower facility at the CSIRO in Newcastle. .. methane is pumped in and the sun’s concentrated heat forms new chemical bonds, trapping the energy.
Mr Wes Stein: Solar energy then becomes both transportable and storable..
..Another storage option is using ammonia The sun’s heat splits ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen. .. As they change back into ammonia they give off the heat that was originally trapped.

..50 kilometre by 50 kilometre square, in the centre of Australia somewhere, to supply all of Australia’s electricity needs in 2020.

dish
future
aug 2004 [I suppose the adhesive problem is solved by now?]
he standard mirrors currently in use on the Big Dish reflect 86% of the solar radiation. If they could fitted with the low-iron glass mirrors this would be lifted to 92%."
..'glass on metal laminate' or GOML... adhesive film.. bond the 1mm back-silvered, low-iron glass on to thin metal sheet.
..the concave shapes needed for solar concentrators, results in the glass always being under compression. ..[hard to clean? need some sort of cherry-picker-robot cleaning arm ]

HAPS stands for Combined Heat And Power Solar, and instead of using a single large paraboloidal dish .. CHAPS uses arrays of paraboloidal mirror troughs to concentrate the sunlight into a line along which a string of high-quality solar cells are arranged. Behind the cells are pipes carrying water. The concentrated sunlight generates both electricity and heats water at the same time.
..silicon solar cells are very expensive. Mirrors, on the other hand, are extremely cheap ..
..between a third and two thirds of the annual hot water needed to heat the new building..
the new system can achieve up to 100 times normal intensity.

..
"Our biggest problem at the moment is the material that holds our solar cells onto the receiver. It needs to be thin and a good heat ..it also needs to be an electrical insulator ..

31 July 2006

Mel Gibson, Stem Cells, Mice

Qana
Qana
Mel Gibson loses the plot. Apparently he said that "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,"
Now thats stupid & narrow minded. A balanced enquiry would reveal that its most, not all wars.
How many traffic accidents in the world are the result of people seething as the IDF uses its new USA bunker bombs to kill wheelchair riders and children?
____________________________________________
I find Mel a tad creepy. However his movie accurately represented the RC education ca 1960. From our teachers and from the pulpit, we got hours of detailed descriptions of the pains of JC.
The Passion was thoroughly familiar to anyone who has done the Stations of the Cross.
Mel is also apparently anti gay. Well I've lived with screaming queens, and my hipag sister has lived with the same woman for years. Anyway I cant get behind the call for Gay marriage, and adoption rights for homos seems outre. Of course in my village the children more or less decide for themselves which house to live in.
I feel uneasy when I see Korean boy infants being taken by Aus couples (why does the Korean culture value girls more? they let boys go but hold onto girls)

As for Embryos, I think the RC position that a blastocyst has a soul whereas an oocyte doesnt is finikity.
If the soul is poked in by Nobodaddy, exactly when does this happen? when the sperm penetrates the oocyte? Exactly when is penetration defined? At the membrane? At the outermost Angstrom of the membrane? What about quantum uncertainty?
Or is it at first meiotic division? Or mitotic division?
I havnt seen any RC address this question, all I hear is handwaving "foetus is a person"

Regarding In-vitro Embryos and their exploitation, I dont think state money should be used for infertile couples. I think Nobodaddy makes couples infertile for a reason, ie they are sub-standard and should accept it. There are enough breeders in this world.
Otherwise, I demand my $20,000 State subsidy to have a child. Because I forgot to get married early.

Stem cells are fascinating for lab types, but those who know admit its decades before we can make the lame walk. We are at the stage of getting the first inklings of how cells are de-stemmed, or specialised. The cell that made Dolly was un-specialised simply by a jolt of electricity. We have almost no idea what the shock did, except giving us one sick sheep.

Here is where I lose most of my readers, who like cuddly animal stories. I have found the most effective way of killing mice is a glue pad. God|Darwin knows why a mouse puts its 2nd 3rd& 4th legs onto the glue, but I find them right out in the middle, belly down looking like Smeagol, screaming loudly, sort of "If I was only 10,000 times larger I would rip your throat out" and also with a kind of desperate look "How could I have been so dumb?". In a bucket of water, the smallest bubble of air emerges. I look at their beady eye as they die. Why turn away? As a youth I worked in an abattoir, with little revulsion. I doubt I could do it now. In the freezer with headless pig carcasses dangling disconcertingly pink & human looking, I did have some queazy moments. I hope I can clear my mice, too small to trip a spring, before I become too interested in killing methods.