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

25 April 2008

Anzac day, Armenian Genocide Day, Song of Roland, El Cid, Dolly Gray, Hojatoleslam Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, Hayaniya

Anzac Day 2008
Why glorify those young men who followed Churchill's Anatolian adventurist folley? For that matter why are we now so chummy with Turkey, no mentioning of April 24,Armenian Genocide Day
Why glorify those thugs who volunteered for USA's invasion of Vietnam?

Did the 39-45 affair produce freedom?
The two men who did most to win it were hounded to death. Without the code-breaking of Alan Turing, Rommel would have swept over the desert rats to Cairo. Turing Saved 2 years of European war, was hounded to suicide aged 42, because of his sexual orientation. Robert Oppenheimer managed the A-Bomb, saved 2 years of the Pacific War. Hounded out of Govt service because of pinko friends. Smoked 40 cigs a day, throat cancer at 62.
More Freedoms were won in the Cultural Rev. 67-76 Paris, Berkely, Shanghai, etc by dint of dropping out, than by lead and steel.

Says Oliver: "Companion, I beliee,
Sarrazins now in battle must we meet."
Answers Rollanz :"God grant us then the fee!
Song of Roland 1098 aaa
__________________________________________________
How we are weary of heroes, Roland
or Ruy Díaz de Vivar (El Cid) (the honourific, if derived from Sayyid is surely unwarranted)

"In 1081, El Cid, now a mercenary, offered his services to the Moorish king of the northeast Al-Andaluz city of Zaragoza, Yusuf al-Mutamin, and served both him and his successor, Al-Mustain II."

[Yusuf al-Mutamin wrote a treatise on the measurement of the parabola. He wrote Kitab al-Istikmal ( Book of Perfection) on mathematics.
Beat that Charlton Heston.
Yusuf al-Mutamin was the son of the previous ruler, Ahmad ibn Sulayman al-Muqtadir, name ring a bell?]

[El Cid's sword Tizona, on display in La Real Armería Madrid, tested positive for Damascus steel]
_____
Roland


from
llizo
a blog favouring Charlton Heston anf the Tridentine Rite

__________________________________________________

While weary of Anzac day, lets not forget.
Especially my grandfather Lewis, who went off to fight the Boers, and 60 years later called his wife Anastasia by the pet name "Dolly"

I have come to say goodbye, Dolly Gray,
It's no use to ask me why, Dolly Gray,
There's a murmur in the air, you can hear it everywhere,
It's the time to do and dare, Dolly Gray.


_____

As of last Saturday 20Apr the USACoalition seems to be in Ayaaniya, Basra

air and artillery strikes by American and British forces cleared the way for Iraqi troops to move into the Hayaniya district
nytimes
"It was a hard day for us. The sounds of the bombs were terrifying the children and women, from morning until this afternoon," said Radhi Daraji, a Hayaniya resident. By late Saturday, he said, the situation was calm, but most Mahdi Army members had fled the previous night after getting wind of the offensive. "All of them escaped to outside Hayaniya."
nytimes

Hojatoleslam Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, has threatened an uprising, The Iranians may prefer him to stay in Qom. However they dont like the wall the USA are building in Sadr City, so the Mahdi Army may rise again
rferl

, , , , , ,

24 April 2008

Wind, Nuclear, Jellyfish, Autism, Planning

Somebody set us up the Olympics.

All your torch are belong to us, for great justice.
_____
Wind

Globally, wind-power capacity rose 27 in 2007 to 94,100 mW, according to the report from the Washington D.C.-based Worldwatch Insti%tute.
The U.S. led the charge with a record-breaking 5,244-megawatt increase for a total of 16,818 mW—enough to power 4.5 million U.S. homes. ...
Germany currently leads the world in installed capacity—22,247 mW, or about 24% of global capacity—but added just 1,667 mW in 2007.
nationalgeographic
_____
Killer jellyfish population explosion warning
08/02/2008

A perfect toxin-loaded killing machine, there is no creature on earth that can dispatch a human being so easily or so quickly. The box jellyfish is so packed with venom that the briefest of touches can bring agonising death within 180 seconds.
...populations are exploding and will pose a monumental problem unless they are stopped.
_____

The warning comes in a film Nature Shock: Jellyfish Invasion .. It focuses on the change in behaviour patterns of jellyfish in the Pacific Ocean off Japan and Australia due to depleted food resources as humans fish the world seas.

November 27 off the Northern Ireland coast when a 10 mile wide, 13 metre deep swarm of jellyfish swam attacked the country's only salmon farm, wiping out over £1million worth of stock.
... tracking devices on the jellyfish in the Pacific proved that they were not drifting on the ocean currents but heading determinedly - and at the speed of an Olympic swimmer - towards the coast.


# Four brains that operate competitively in the search for food.
# A highly complex sensory capacity and the ability to distinguish colour.
# The ability to live in inhospitable waters at a depth of up to 10,900 metres.
# A total of 24 eyes with moveable pupils giving them 360-degree visibility.
# Box jellyfish have 6-8ft long tentacles. Just 5-6ft across the boda href="y is enough to kill a human in 180 seconds.
# Venom is released on contact - even after it is dead - and each creature has 4000,000,000 venomous fibres.
# Humans who have been stung and survived have needed 30-40 milligrams of morphine. A broken leg requires between 5-10 milligrams.
# Despite decades of study scientists have been unable to unravel the mysteries of its complex venom but it is known to contain 20 different proteins.

The swarms of jellyfish are multiplying in the Western extent of the Pacific ocean and threatening 20,000 miles of coastline off Japan, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea and Australia.
...
Advanced oceanic life forms are struggling for survival while primitive life forms -- such as algae, bacteria and jellyfish -- are starting to spread unchecked. This regression of evolution is "the rise of slime," according to Jeremy B.C. Jackson, Scripps
Institution of Oceanography

Over-fishing has started an evolutionary regression that has spun into a vicious circle. There has been a dramatic reduction in the numbers of turtles that prey on jellyfish and an overabundance of the plankton they love to eat, and this has lead some fishermen to become jellyfishermen.
...
The historic fishing industry of California has also taken a dramatic turn. Three of the top five commercial catches are not fish, but squid, crab and sea urchins, and the still-surging numbers of jellyfish may catapult them to Western plates sooner rather than later.

University of British Columbia fisheries Scientist Daniel Pauly fears that one day "My kids will tell their children: Eat your jellyfish."i
____

brightcove
this video is more Tin-Tin then Herge
_________________________________________________
Fernando Lugo wins in Paraguay. What does this mean to the Bush family who bought a ranch there. Other USAOligarchs have bought bolt-hole ranches there. They must be feeling less secure now.
____

com
“I mean, who could possibly think that any sort of tyranny could fall upon a country like this one? Obviously, that is a ridiculous proposition. If we were falling under the yoke of tyranny, there would be warning signs. The state would be building torture chambers, dragging people away without trial, and instituting massive programs of indiscriminate surveillance of citizens. There would be wars of aggression, built upon lies for the purpose of lashing out at the world and seizing territory. Until such things happen, what do we have to fear?”

Thoreau
_____
European Nuke


With a series of 10 units ,,, cost totals 2.6 billions € per unit, ... 1,628 € / kW. ... generating costs would reach 33 € /.MWh, matching those of a gas combined cycle, while being far less sensitive to fuel cost increases.
...

Sep 2007 TVO reported the construction delay as "at least two years" and costs more than 25% over budget.[17] Cost estimates...to € 1.5 B
April 2008 the French nuclear safety agency (ASN) reported that a quarter of the welds inspected in the secondary containment steel liner are not in accordance with norms, and that cracks have been found it the concrete base. ...
...the Finnish reactor, on the island of Olkiluoto in the Gulf of Bothnia, two years behind schedule, three years after construction began. It is also believed to have helped increase its cost by more than 50 per cent

French utility EDF its first 1,650-megawatt new generation reactor in Flamanville. Work .. expected to last for another four and a half years with the E$3.6 billion plant...
... E$2,182 per Kw. E$1=US$1.47= US$3,215 per kW.

* That's US$1,200/Kw higher than NRG's estimate in their COL filing to the NRC last September.

* two new NRG units ... 2,700 MWe. .. will cost $5.5 billion ... $2,000 per kW. The NRG plants will be GE-Hitachi ABWRs.

Earlier this year Westinghouse contracted with the Chinese to build 4 AP-1000 reactors for $5.3 billion.
4,4 GW of powerm for $1,200 per-kW. The French sold the Chinese two rather larger reactors for $11.9. Thus the French reactors cost the Chinese $3,500 per-kW, or 3 times the westing house price.

Areva SA ... 8 billion euro ($11.9 billion) nuclear reactor agreement from China,... includes two reactors, uranium enrichment, and separate work, which is potentially larger than the reactor deal itself, for nuclear fuel reprocessing. ... The reactors will each have capacity of 1,600 MWe.

...to study building a E$15 billion spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in China, Lauvergeon said.

[note Widely varying costs, large overruns, 4+ years to build...
Wind turbines dont require 'enrichment, reprocessing, nor fuel mining, nor radioactive decomissioning of 1.5m blast resistant thick concrete]
_____
University of Kansas in the US grain belt - has found that GM soya produces about 10% less food than its conventional equivalent,
_____
abc
Arsenic, strychnine, cocaine and caffeine.
just another morning in the race game for our Pharlap
_____
gov't admits Vaccine Autism link

At a July 19, 2000 pediatric visit, the pediatrician observed that CHILD “spoke well” and was “alert and active.” ... At the July 19, 2000 examination, CHILD received five vaccinations – DTaP, Hib, MMR, Varivax, and IPV. Id. at 2, 11.
... In sum, DVIC has concluded that the facts of this case meet the statutory criteria for demonstrating that the vaccinations CHILD received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder. Therefore, respondent recommends that compensation be awarded to petitioners in accordance with 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-11(c)(1)(C)(ii).
ageofautism
....
mitochondrial diseases may be more prevalent in children with autism or ASDs (the highest estimate of which is here),
Five of 11 patients studied were classified with definite mitochondrial respiratory chain disorder, suggesting that this might be one of the most common disorders associated with autism
cambridge

maybe its Al not Hg...
The reason aluminum hydroxide is used in vaccines is because it produces a stronger immune response so that less antigen needs to be used
sciencebasedmedicine
_____
Hickman crater 260 metres wide 10-15metres acress metero 300kt TNT 10,000 - 100,000 ybp
google earth co-ords:
-23.0371, 119.68311129
sciencealert
_____
Tasman Glacier retreating
Martin Brook says the 29 kilometre-long glacier,...has retreated rapidly during the past decade, forming a large lake.
... 2 million-year-old glacier lies 730 metres above sea level, and temperatures are too warm to sustain the ice. He says at its current rate, the glacier will soon be retreating by about half a kilometre each year.

1973 there was no lake in front... the lake at its foot is now 7km long, 2km wide and 245m deep.
nzherald
[cf Fox & Franz Josef glaciers below]
_____
guardian
the price of rice has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices.

But I bet that you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1bn tonnes, the global grain harvest broke all records last year - it beat the previous year's by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change
_____
Brendan O’Neill
spiked

Somalia: killed by ‘kindness’
The east African state is a case study in how today's humanitarian intervention can be even more lethal than the old White Man's Burden.
brendanoneill
_____
CPE vs Capital
Centrally Planned Economy has a very bad rap since Mao in the 'great leap forward' said to have decreed that wheat could grow in THE South,Rice could grow in the North.
The ensuing famine is said to have caused a 30M population dip.

Vietnam opened farms to 'market' in 88, became a rice exporter very quickly

Cuba post USSR has 10,000 bullocks, urban gardens, but still imports most of its food?
Is this true?
I like Castro and his beard, but Cuba may need 'markets'

Post USSR: 'collective' farms split into family farms, these are now seen as too small and 'co-operatives' are being encouraged. The farmers are very suspicious. They hated the 'collectives' or have been convinced that they did.

USA: small farms rapidly vanishing to huge agri-business.

Sadly the best solution today appears to be 'central' planning from huge corporations.

Industrial farming 'yields' must factor in Natural Gas/Urea and Tractor/Truck diesel, and all those super-bright Supermarket lights.

Permaculture probably has the best yields. But despite being designed for minimum maintenance, theres still a lot of person-hours required
to squash caterpillars and guard the ducks.

'Rational' planning cannot ignore biology ( see GLF above)

Up to now Urea, Intensive tractor tilled, long distance trucked big corporate farms seem the best producers.

Half the world is now in shanty towns/barrio/favelas, where little land is left for gardens - this is a big problem brewing. Within rioting distance of city centers.
Why? Possibility of cash incomes, access to schools, stimulation (TV, neighbors) , access to clinics, Security: The urban barrio/favelas is surprisingly safer than the isolated hamlet. Lots of eyes on the alley mean that thieves are spotted.
People just prefer city to Village, more to do, less elders telling you what not to do. The barrio with extended family nearby is a fun place, always someone to chat with, look after the kids... But even the few chickens scratching around may go as people aspire to be wage earners. My Barrio has a few ducks and pigs, but very little vegetables. Tilapia are found flapping in the market. Most fowl are cocks, lovingly tended for wagers in fights.


I still believe in planning, but CPE has been just bad systems design... no feedback.

Allende planned to have socialism with feedback - in pre computer days he had Stafford Beer plan a network of teletypes. I heard Beer talk about the system at the OU in 1979. He said the messages back to central would be of 'departures' from the planned targets. Still not the true flexibility of the 'market'
I suppose my ideal is 'Glastnost/Perestroika' - openness and restructuring.. The corporation as a person is a dangerous entity. I reckon 'Business confidentiality' should be largely scrapped. Every input and output should be public & monitored. Including 'waste' gases and liquids.

Case study: 'trainers' ie flash lightweight shoes, famously Nike. These lightweight glue/polymer/rubber shoes are a revolution, enabling easy walking over miles of rough ground.
Could CPE have ever produced a Nike Trainer? Unlikely: Under CPE the commissar of shoes would decree a shoe factory, which would produce boring heavy old leather shoes, and lie about production and pollution to the Centre. No feedback, no delightful shoes.
No way for the Shoe factory ever to close, or even improve, since the Party had decreed it.
Capital takes SportStar/TV Stars basketball shoes and mass markets them, with extensive research and re-design.
The assembly is done by teenage girls in Indonesia. Paid A dollar a day and locked into firetrap dormitories. Trade Union leaders shot and thrown in a Ditch. The product shipped to the West and sold for $185. Obviously some negatives, but the shoes are great. The Indonesian girls feel themselves to be better of than back in the village. In Indonesia you can get excellent knock-off Diesels for $5. Thats the real delight, great shoes for $5. Ideal planning would have fewer yearly design changes, fire-escapes on dorms. But its just unlikely that 'Soviet' trainers would have been as nifty. Now 'Communist' China is the new factory site. So 'Central Planning' has obviously matured. The air around the factory is almost unbreathable. Eco=Sustainable planning evidently required, but that is too sophisticated for Industrial-Capital-Market, Or has been so far (check Factor-4 for green carpets)

Industrial society is in thrall to the energy in fossil fuel... the speed, the warmth, the air con. This thralldom may come to negate the Industrial farm advantage.
_____
From 1981 to 2000, the area of land devoted to grain fell from 732million hectares to 656million hectares
Green Capitalism, by James Heartfield, 2008
....
(from 2003)on average crop yields in Mt/Ha for different countries:
World Maize 3.41
USA Maize 8.92
Spain Maize 9.11
Iran Maize 8.57
France Maize 7.14

World Wheat 2.75
USA Wheat 2.97
China Wheat 3.91
UK Wheat 7.78
[
..................
.macwilm äpril 15, 2008 9:24 AM comment from
In New Zealand, a North Island hill country farm of 1500 acres would produce around 40 tonnes of boned meat/year. ... Farmers in the hill country are not applying phosphate fertiliser at the moment as it is too dear so the meat from these grazing animals could be classed as organic.
_____
aaa
The Geometry of Western Music
sciam
_____________________________________________________________
purloined pics

aaa

aaa

aaa


aaa
________________________________________________________________-
, , , ,

21 April 2008

Another human being to be elected in SouthAm
Mr. Lugo shrugs off easy comparisons to populists like Mr. Chávez or Evo Morales of Bolivia and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa.
“Chávez is a soldier, I am holy man,” he said in an interview Thursday at his home. “Evo is an Indian, I am not an Indian. Correa is an intellectual, I am not an intellectual. I am simply an individual that feels for the people, that feels their pain, their hopes.”

___
Another Play about Alan Turing
Pure. A. Rey Pamatmat,
___\
Art Daily has half-way decent imjage sizes (click to see actual size)
aaa
goya
aaa
?
aaa
Frida Kahlo, Self-portrait with Monkey, 1945, Museo Dolores Olmedo Collection.

___ size="480" _______________________________________________

aaa
Halle Berry in orange bikini. © 2002 Danjaq, LLC and United Artsts Corporation. All rights reserved.
aaa



enigma

aaa
Ian Fleming’s Jamaican home Goldeneye. © Reproduced by kind permission of Goldeneye.

aaa


aaa

aaa

aaa
koons baloon
________________________________________

20 April 2008

Rice, Wheat, UG99, Olympic Torch, Elephant self portrait

April 17, 2008. NYT
The Deniliquin mill, the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to meet the needs of 20 million people around the world. But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia’s rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.
..The collapse of Australia’s rice production is one of several factors contributing to a doubling of rice prices in the last three months — ... violent protests in countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
Senegal and Haiti each import four-fifths of their rice....
.Moderate warming could benefit crop and pasture yields in countries far from the Equator, like Canada and Russia. In fact, the net effect of moderate warming is likely to be higher total global food production in the next several decades.
.
But the scientists said the effect would be uneven, and enormous quantities of food would need to be shipped from areas farther from the
.
Paul Lamine N’Dong, an elder in Joal, Senegal, worries that hot weather and failing rains have already crippled his village’s crop of millet, a coarse grain eaten locally and traded for rice.
[but note flooding rains across West Africa earlier in 07?? ]
...
[like I said, the first 1.5° is good for rather a lot of places, so not much will be done about GCC, and the late century 6° will be a civilization killer...]
_____
Paris, April 15, 2008 -- The meetings last weekend of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, both under new leaders – Dominique Strauss-Kahn of France and the American Robert Zollick – made news principally on the question of world food price rises and shortages, ...
The food crisis is a real one, with rice –...rising in price by 75% in two months, and the rise in wheat, ... rising by 120% over the year.
...
williampfaff
newscientist
eurekalert
_____
A virulent rust (a type of fungus) called UG99 is reducing wheat crop yields in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. ..The infection is expected to reduce wheat yields by 80% over the next 2 years as there aren’t any commercial wheat strains (that I know of) resistant to UG99;
_____
The FAO says that some 65 million hectares of wheat, which produce about a quarter of the global wheat harvest, are now directly under threat. It gets worse. Over two-thirds of the wheat strains in North America are vulnerable to this disease.

And this comes at a time when world wheat reserves are at their lowest level since records were first kept, and when there are global shortages of other staple foods like rice.

This thing has immense potential for social and human destruction," says Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, now 93 and known as the father of the Green Revolution in agriculture.
metimes

Biologists at Monsanto and at the various GMO laboratories around the world are working to patent such strains. ...The spreading alarm over the Ug99 fungus is being used by Monsanto and other GMO agribusiness companies to demand that the current ban on GMO wheat be lifted to allow spread of GMO patented wheat seeds
financialsense
_____
Torch Guards
Chinese guards protecting the torch in other cities have been picked from special police units chosen for skills in martial arts, marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat according to British-based website sinodefence.com, which specialises in Chinese military affairs.

Thailand's leg of the Olympic torch run got under way earlier on Saturday, with the flame guarded by more than 2,000 police and security officials.

K Rudd has apparently said that the 'blue chinese security' will not be welcome in Aus... Interesting to see if he follows through on that..

Mr Rudd said today he had been advised all the officials would remain in the bus unless they were required to relight the torch.

"My understanding is that the Chinese torch attendants will play zero role ... in the provision of any security," he said on Fairfax radio.

"We are providing security here. This is our country, we provide the security - end of story."

theaustralian
_____
April 19, 2008
OTTAWA — The Canadian government moved Friday to ban polycarbonate infant bottles, the most popular variety on the market, after it officially declared one of their chemical ingredients toxic.
..
Nalgene brand water bottles had used bisphenol-a, which some studies in animals linked to hormonal changes.
..
____
tamino

aaa
Southern Lands Warming?
Tamino does a detailed analysis of Climate-Warming
__________________________________________________
Elephant paints self portrait, with flower
youtube
bbc
aaa
"So far only Paya, the elephant, has mastered the art of self-portrait, while the others each have their own speciality."

I tend to think that these elephant self portraits are some how faked. Or else I must drastically revise my ideas of homo vs other mammalian intelligence
__________________________________________________
, , , , ,