Lefty Blogs
williampfaff ++ ++
Russian News ++
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sfgate ++
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onthecommons ++
sjlendman ++
....
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rense w= wacko conspiracies
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Energring
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iwilltryit video..
baghdadtreasure
ahram cairo newspaper
felbers
thepartyline
jfaughnan 28/04/2006 10:25AM
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counterpunch
.............
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......
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mediastorm quiescant? +
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hamasonline defunct
4Jul06

17 November 2006

Manny Pacquiao, Featherweight title


c/opinoyspy

See our Manny Pacquiao - Erik Morales: The Finale COUNTDOWN
November 18, 2006 - 04:00 PM - Thomas & Mack Center, Las Vegas

Sino ang Tatapos

I havn't discovered which if any Sydney Pubs will be carrying this...

aaa
sh

,

John Howard

aaa
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John Howard, Australian Prime minister.
Announces he will give some 'Ideas about reducing the violence in Iraq' to GB43
What a pompous twerp.

Mean-minded little runt. Racist, fear-mongerer, mealy mouthed, Ex-Suburban lawyer
Has been Prime Minister of Australia for 10 years
Exactly what the mean-minded, fear-ridden, racist, greedy Australian populace deserves.

In recent weeks he has been mouthing about Carbon & greenhouse, says he will do nothing if has a cost. Predictable popularist posturing. Stand next to a solar panel for a photo-op, and throw another hundren million dollars in subsidies to coal exporters.

Big carbon has him by his withered scrotum. He blathers about nuclear power, Westinghouse probably have sent him a flattering note.

His most notable acts have been to lock refugees in containers in the desert, then to exile them out of the country to Nuie, where they exist for years without legal access, women permitted to wash once a week.
Other mean-minded racist leaders look with envy at his torture of refugees.

Australians are primarily concerned about their house prices. The most urbanised country. The filthiest people, measured by carbon emissions.
The indigenous people are in the deserts, with sub-Saharan mortality rates. Regularly beaten to death in police cells.
The city dwellers anguish over their mortgages. Each interest rate rise gets 3 times the press than in any other country. Here, your suburban house is your fortune. Come on in peakoil...

Recently the country is undergoing a 'resource' boom, digging things up and exporting coal, diamonds and Uranium etc. You dont need Jane Jacobs to tell you that the money from raw exports doesnt benefit a culture. Howard sold half Australias Gas at bargain rates to the PRC. For decades to come the Chinese will be sniggering at their good fortune in having a Howard to deal with. If any future Australian regime desires a better deal, expect the PRC to rapidly annex Australia. The local military experience consists in bullying tiny Pacific Island nations, and parking a minuscule military contingent in South Iraq, hopefully out of harms way, but enough to ensure that Howard is GeorgeW's last friend. What a pathetic pair.
So far in Iraq Aus has lost only two troops. One to a traffic accident, another got shot by a buddy while they were playing with their sidearms. A strangers body turned up in his coffin in Australia. The Australian army have just bought a bunch of Abrams tanks, only to realise they dont have the planes to transport them. When the Chinese finally get exasperated enough to annex the place, they can be assured that there are no bridges in the North that can bear those 40 tanks, so the place is pretty much open house. USA treaty, worth a snigger? A bunch of 40 year old F-111s might put up an afternoons defence.
I for one welcome out new Han overlords. Anything would be an improvement.





seal

The Official Seal of this blog
c/oseal


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tags:

16 November 2006

Gringo Honasan, Australian Broadband, Syed Qutb, Orinoco Bridge

A former colonel and senator has been arrested in connection with a plot to overthrow Gloria Macapagal Arroyo..
Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan has been implicated in nearly all of a dozen or more coups attempted in the Philippines over the last two decades.
Honasan has been in hiding since February 23, the eve of the planned uprising against Arroyo. He was arrested in the early hours of Wednesday after weeks of police tracking phone calls.
He was being treated at hospital for injuries after he tried to elude arrest by jumping over a fence.
Asher Dolina, a senior police superintendent, said although Honasan had initially resisted arrest, " ... when we already handcuffed him and he saw the futility of his resistance, he just followed us".

Honasan, 58, gained fame and notoriety in 1986 when, as a young officer advocating military reform, he led a failed plot to topple Ferdinand Marcos, the then president.
..Oscar Calderon, the police chief, said Honasan would not escape this time as he had a "gentlemen's agreement"
Gringo is the same age as me, has revolted against nearly every President since Marcos. I feel a kinship with him, especially since he was hiding out around the corner from my hotel in 1988 (After Cory?)

theage ..
News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has labelled broadband services in Australia a "disgrace"

"I think it is a disgrace, I think we should be spending - the government with Telstra should be spending - $10 billion or $12 billion on it (so it gets to) every town in Australia - they do it in Japan, they do it in South Korea, we should be able to do it here," he said.

"We are being left behind and we will pay for it."
Imagine the scene in an Asian or American company office, where the board is considering opening a regional office in Australia.
A junior executive who has just returned from studying in Sydney, and a Senior executive who has visited Brisbane, both comment: "That wouldnt be wise, there is no effective broadband there, we'd better choose another country"

A society which places the highest value on the 'humanity' of man and honors the noble 'human' characteristics is truly civilized.

If a society is based on 'human values' and 'human morals' and these remain dominant in it, then that society will be civilized.

Thus, the development of the civilization, according to the method and manner of Islam, does not depend on any particular level of industrial, economic or scientific progress. Wherever this civilization is established, it will use all the resources, will develop them, and if in a certain place these resources are non-existent, then it will supply them and will provide the means for their growth and progress. But in all situations it will be based on its immutable and eternal principles, and wherever such an Islamic society comes into existence, its particular character and its particular movement will also come into existence, and will make it distinguished and distinct from all jahili societies.
Islam is the Real Civilization

Milestones
Al Shaheed Syed Qutb

It is better to be red than expert

little red book

So where have experts got us?
Indian farmers get burned legs from the industrial urea they are forced to buy on credit.

Australian children are refused entrance into school unless they take dexadrine. After they leave school, they are thrown into prison for using dexadrine.

Western men must buy huge cars to impress women, then attempt to convince those same women that they are deeply eco-sensitive. Knowing that any grandchildren will inherit a blasted world, blasted by that very burning behaviour.

Western civilization seems successful, but at the core it is weak and full of doubt. Such is the unease, that tens of thousands of young men are entering ideologies of Devotion, which are proving more robust even then Mao's ideology of Dedication.

Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has visited his Venezuelan counterpart to inaugurate a new bridge over the River Orinoco that will link the two countries.

Da Silva, making his first foreign trip since winning another four-year term last month, praised Hugo Chavez. He said that Chavez's heart was in the right place.


"For many years here in Venezuela there wasn't a government that worried about the poor people as you have," the Brazilian leader said on Monday.

niet107
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15 November 2006

Evil Religion, MegaTsunamis, Peak Oil

Religion is Evil
“CrossNational Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies,” Journal of Religion and Society creighton
.. higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion ..
.. highly religious societies can be dysfunctional, whereas by comparison secular societies in which evolution is largely accepted display real social cohesion and societal well-being.

Nov. 4, 2006
The past two decades have seen a “substantial” and unexplained decrease in ..testosterone levels.. levels dropped by 1 percent a year..1,532 men from the greater Boston area..

Mega Tsunamis in the Holocene
nytimes
Holocene Impact Working Group..
..the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface.

The explanation is obvious to some scientists. A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world’s population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high


energybulletin
12 Nov 2006 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 13 Nov 2006.
Peak oil on the agenda: Notes from the Australian Institute of Energy annual forum

Chatter about energy in Australia.. nattering about 4 cylinder imported cars vs 6-8 cylinder locally made behemoths.
Car companies losing money may be the 'driving force' for change.
But so called "small" cars are absurdly greedy:
Consider the Nissan 'small car' Tiida 93kW 174Nm torque 7.6 litres/100km 1100kg
is still way too fat.
(note the Nissan page has a big lineup of much bigger vehicles)

We need 30kW 30kph 300kg cars, and we need city & suburban streets clear of giant trucks and busses so people can drive small cars in confidence.
Distant commuters can use bus lanes. George Monbiot likes bus lanes, I like rail, but our fractal dead-end suburbs will never see total rail. We need total information instead. A range of micro-electric u-drive hire cars to bus depots. If your cellphone has a constant display of accurate bus-departures the agony of waiting at a bus stop will be eliminated.
Make buses and bus-stops pleasant to the point of luxurious. It will be a net saving. The busses must stay in their special lanes, and not venture onto the 300kg/30kph roads

A range of 2 to 10 seater taxi-cabs with cell-phone negotiated pickups and routing can fill the gaps.
There is a potential conflict between the 8-10 passenger taxi-vans and the micro-cars. 10 seaters are common now in dense or poor situations, from Hong-King to Soweto. Restrictions on torque and maximum speed can make them compatible with micro cars.
Maybe they can speed-up on the freeway.
Every vehicle off the freeway limited to 30kph. Even Ambulances and firetrucks. If you dont like that, then lets go fort Hydrogen blimps. OK, hydrogen may not be appropriate for fire scenes....


30kW may be too much, particularly if electric motors give high torque. Acceleration is energy. We need slow traffic and slow starts.
It sounds shocking to a generation that has seen its fathers earn the respect of their family and peers by piloting their broods in flash cars.
My Grandfather had the first car in his village, Woodville. So my great-grandfather had none. Its not a centuries-old tradition, its a recent and toxic tide.
The entire village of Woodville used to go on picnics on a special train. Photos of a hundred or more folk on a river bank look like heaps of fun.
My non-Australian life is spent in places where no motors go. In the evening one can her the hiss of thongs on the path.
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14 November 2006

Bolton, Open Java, Hamas, Ganga, Trans-Afghan pipeline

10 November 2006, 23:31 GMT
..US envoy to the UN, John Bolton..
..the chances of JB being backed by the Senate are slim .. Bolton will probably be replaced in January.. appointed .. during a Congressional recess ..That procedure cannot be repeated..

How great to see Bolton gone. He's a lying bombastic danger to peace. However, despite being boss of UAID, he's been canny enough to not get directly linked to genocide and mass torture. So he deserves a clean shot through the head. Unlike that other UN ambassador Negroponte, who deserves to be flayed and salted and kept alive over a slow fire for a week, before quartering.

Needed: a tribunal to consider death penalties for all the PNAC war-hounds who signed this letter zfacts

minime
.. c/o billmon
_______________________________________________________
nytimes
All the Java source code is expected to be released by March 2007, Green said. The move covers all Java technology, which includes software that runs on handheld devices, personal computers and servers.

aljazeera
Palestinians, already subject to occupation by the Israeli military, have been killed at a rate of 26 Palestinians for every Israeli killed since Hamas took power on March 29, 2006.
Since July that ratio has risen to 76 Palestinians for every Israeli.
Though the mainstream media still reports on a "conflict" between "two sides", over the past seven months it has simply been a slaughter.
...under the much vilified Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, Palestinians have killed by far the fewest Israelis in any period during this six-year intifada: 19 Israelis over seven months.
Hamas has largely maintained a ceasefire since early 2005,

scarification
Surma: scarifications c/o foto_morgana
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counterpunch
Ganga a threat to Big Pharma:
patients reporting reduced reliance on pharmaceuticals.
Frank Lucido, MD: "Chronic pain patients report reduced use of opioids, NSAIDs, muscle relaxants, sleeping pills. Psychiatric and insomnia patients reduce use of tranquilizers, SSRI antidepressants, and sleeping pills. Neurologic patients reduce use of opioids, muscle relaxants, NSAIDS, triptans and other migraine headache remedies." Marian Fry, MD: "Medications discontinued or reduced include Oxycontin, Norco, Percoset, Vicodin, Flexerol, Soma, Valium, SSRI antidepressants, and blood-pressure medications Norvasic and Hydrochlorothiazide.
trans-afghan pipeline
trans-afghan pipeline: The horrible prospect that the entire Afghan war is about a pipeline.
The invaders dont care about Usama, nor Opium, nor Taliban, nor Democracy. (their puppet has recently made his 4th trip outside Kabul in 5 years). They care about a pipeline. ncf
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13 November 2006

Water, Adoptions, Tourism, Gauguin

Water: there's a lot of loose talk here about recycled water. Australians dont like the idea of drinking something thats already been drunk.
In the real world, the poor world, water is not casually discussed as one thing
Rather there are at least 8 different kinds of water:
  1. For drinking unboiled
  2. Ice cubes
  3. Drinking boiled, cooking
  4. Cleaning teeth
  5. Showering
  6. Cleaning Clothes,floor
  7. Flushing toilet
  8. Watering garden
In our relatively wealthy hovel, we get 1,2&3 from plastic jerry cans, 4,5,6&7 from very long hoses that are carried into the house. Both door delivered cheap, its a low wage world.
We have downpipes from the roof, but there isnt much enthusiasm to set out the orocans and carry them downstairs, as long as there a few $. the 4-7 hose water only costs 70c per day for 2 adults & 5 or 6 children. Poorer times, may mean more roof.
Tabot (ladle) showering is water efficient. As is bucket flushing. The shower water runs out the side of the house, I worry that typhoons take our trees and the ground may get wet. Good to live on a slope. We have a septic tank, I have no idea when it might need emptying.
The poorer people get #6 from wells, that are dangerous to drink, but sun dried clothes are sterilised. #8 doesnt feature. Wish we had a garden, but townships dont feature vacant land. Our bananas at the bottom of the slope are self watered & fertilised from seepage & rain. I have no idea about when they may require replacement. Many hands are lightly lifted, so it aint a cash crop.

Australia is basically fucked with isotherms marching at 4km /year towards the poles, carrying cropland into the Southern Ocean. Tropical rain up north is accompanied by tropical pests. Indonesians can cope, its not clear why Aus cant.
The chattering classes are beginning to natter about Global Warming, but theres Buckly's chance that they will accept 30kph cars, busses to work, or banning airconditioners.
2.5kW Air con is ok, its said, the real worry is the McMansions with multiple 10kW units

Another topic that bothers the CC is InVitro fertilisation, and the morality of fiddling with discarded cells, as opposed to dumping them down the sewers. I know a lot about cell biology, enough to know that not much is known. Current stem cell research is tinkering, we have almost zilch understanding about DNA switches. So I reckon that scientists should stop talking about cures for snapped spinal cords, or implanted Islets of Langerhans. Get on with basic research. When we understand DNA switching, we probably wont need blastocysts.
I am opposed to most 'assisted' reproduction. If couples cant deliver, thats Gaia's way of saying 'youre inadequate'. Accept it. Does anyone except red-neck-economists say the world desperately needs more humans?
I'm also opposed to adoption, from living mothers. In the 50s & 60s the Roman Catholic establishment stole hundreds of thousands of babies from 'immoral' unmarried women. A unique and bizarre event in history. I dislike the sterile appropriating baby boys from Korea, or baby girls from Guatemala. A bit of cash would be better. In my street, once the kids can walk they are free to choose which house they sleep in. Walk back to mother if they want. Groups of kids look after each other. Peers are more important than parents in shaping culture. We feed them and check their homework. (12 year olds learning 'gerund phrases' in their 2nd language!) The lanes are safe for children to walk at night. There may be drunken armed gunmen returning from cockfights but they dont bother the kids.

Tourism under tyranny:
the Military Commissions Act of 2006
.. allows the President to seize a person who is in this country legally and detain that person indefinitely. ..airportbusiness
WTTC warned that in the past five years alone, tourist arrivals to the US have dropped 7% to 49m, while the rest of the world enjoyed a 17% rise in international arrivals during the same period.
.. The Economist Intelligence Unit projects total international tourist receipts for the US of nearly US$90bn in 2006,

I wondered what has happened to tourism numbers.
I know for damned sure I'll never return to the USA, although I had a green card.
Even with Democrats up the wazoo and both laws repealed, I'm never going back.
I've heard too many stories of tourists being frog-marched across airports to 24 hour detention without food, simply because of minor document disorders.
Even rich countries rely on tourism for a big chunk of foreign revenue.
So chalk up another damage done to Empire Central by neo-zion.
Looks like USA tourism is $100 Billion below trends since 2001. It aint fear of Al-Kinda, its fear of camp X-Ray.

startribune
Two years after U.S. assault on it, Fallujah returns to insurgent hands

christies
"Gauguin’s L’hômme à la hâche realizes a world auction record at $40,336,000"
I had thought it would be higher. Apparently the fashion is for Klimt
Christies turned over $491M - a fair nights trading.
Venus went for $15M
aaa
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