Hamas - because Democracy matters, because Resistance matters
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Gaza
kawther
Zionist Entity war criminals. names and photos
just 1:
Colonel Yigal Slovik, commander of 401st Armored Corps Brigade convoy, entered Gaza in a Merkava tank from Netzarim and he did not stop until it reached the coast. He murdered the Palestinian civilians who raised the white flags, and he destroyed many houses over the head of the people. The brigade units also conducted numerous raids targeting public infrastructure.
redress
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sjlendman
Shortly after Sunday's announcement, an Israeli aircraft killed a Gaza City resident. IDF troops opened fire in Wadi al-Salqa village, southeast of Deir al-Balah. Homes in al-Qarara village were attacked. Helicopter gunships struck areas west of Khan Yunis, and F-16s bombed near the Science and Technology College in the same area. Israeli naval vessels shelled coastal areas and turned back ships with humanitarian aid. Agricultural land was raised. Arrests were made. Gaza continues to be terrorized.
net
Audio on Gaza 8Jan U Chicago
merip
Israel's "Dahiya Doctrine" comes to Gaza
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 20 January 2009
In the last days before Israel imposed a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza to avoid embarrassing the incoming Obama administration, it upped its assault, driving troops deeper into Gaza City, intensifying its artillery bombardment and creating thousands more displaced people.
... the air force exhausted what it called its "bank of Hamas targets" in the first few days of fighting..
The military sidestepped the problem by widening its definition of Hamas-affiliated buildings....
That included mosques, universities, most government buildings, the courts, 25 schools, 20 ambulances and several hospitals, as well as bridges, roads, 10 electricity generating stations, sewage lines, and 1,500 factories, workshops and shops.
...21,000 residential apartment buildings need repairing or rebuilding, forcing 100,000 Palestinians into refugeedom once again. In addition, 80 percent of all agricultural infrastructure and crops were destroyed.
The Dahiya doctrine means that any risks associated with Infantry incursions, .... ie snipers, booby traps, actual fighting, are not necessary... just bomb the place flat.
electronicintifada
Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, compared Gaza to a "concentration camp," reminiscent of Nazi-era atrocities.
"Why I Spend More of My Time in Beirut (My Birthplace)
Sight-seeing right after the cease-fire. There is something existential about the place"
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fooledbyrandomness
... alliances and the Platonicity of categorization in Chapter 1. We are suckers for simplifications and categories. There is something I am missing in the current map of alliances. Take the following. From what I understand, for a Shiite Moslem, a Sunniis not an infidel –he is a pure Moslem “of another tradition”. A Jew and a Christian are “people of the book”, therefore not infidels, but non-Moslem “under the protection” of the Moslem law. But for a fundamentalist Sunni Moslem, a Shiite is an infidel that you can kill with impunity. A Christian is not an infidel (except for some Sunni branches that only accept as monotheists Christian Iconoclasts who refuse representations of Saints). A Jew, for a Sunni, is never an infidel, given the Jews’ staunch monotheistic credentials (El is Allah, or Eloh). Ironically, for a Sunni, a Jew is always more Kosher than a Catholic (you can see that in numerous Medieval Andalusians debates). In other words, theologically speaking, AlQaida is far more anti-Shiite than it is anti-Western. You can see evidence of that in Iraq.
Now when I look more closely (and less naively) at Islamic fundamentalism, I seems obvious that the Wahabist regime of Saudi Arabia resembles far more closely my nightmare (as a Westerner): Saudi Arabia finances fundamentalism across the world –and the nastiest brand at that. They propose the worst possible society I can think of. Women cannot drive in Saudi Arabia. But they can run for office in Iran. The Shiites are far more a natural ally of the United States and the West –or at least something like the enemy of the enemy, that is terror-sponsoring Islamic fundamentalism. Furthermore, as a minority they own the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. To a Westerner, they are the lesser evil.
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Big Shoe Gone
The monument was reportedly taken down just a day after being unveiled in the late Saddam Hussein's home town.
The head of the Childhood organisation, which owns the orphanage, said she had been told to remove the monument immediately by the Salaheddin Provincial Joint Coordination Centre.
"I did take the shoe down immediately and destroyed it, and I did not ask why," Shahah Daham told the German news agency DPA.
blogspot
Sea Rise
sea levels - can we trust the 1m prediction?
realclimate
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Glaciers in NZ
realclimate
In 2005 there were 442 glaciers examined, 26 advancing, 18 stationary and 398 retreating - implying that "only" 90% are retreating. In 2005, for the first time ever, no observed Swiss glaciers advanced. Of the 26 advancing glaciers, 15 were in New Zealand. Overall there has been a substantial volume loss of 11% of New Zealand glaciers from 1975-2005 Salinger et al. ,but the number of advancing glacier is still significant.
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Worst escape ever
maruthecrankpot
youtube
escapistmagazine
Hastings achieves high ranking in international idiocy ...
Cheney stands
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NZ blogs
tumeke
nzblogosphere
Tulip Mania
financialsense
..tulip mania ... tulips with the right virus...mosaic,,, spread by aphids (the Dutch didnt know this)
"windhandel" wind trade - selling something you dont actually have yet ...mosaic infected tulips
Short selling was banned by an edict of 1610, which was reiterated or strengthened in 1621 and 1630, and again in 1636. Short sellers were not prosecuted under these edicts, but their contracts were deemed unenforceable…
1630.. Fredrick Henry held the office of Dutch Stadholder... "appeal to Fredrick" refers to a trader invoking the protection of the prohibition on short sales
ie the courts refused to enforce short contracts...
Or, as Karl Marx wrote in his DAS KAPITAL: "All nations with a capitalist mode of production are seized periodically by a feverish attempt to make money without the mediation of the process of production."
cnbc
Buckminster Fuller’s belief in “Universal Emergence Through Emergency”. It is increasingly clear that today’s crisis is rapidly approaching that of an emergency—the prerequisite for Universal Emergence.
pravda
The Senate Intelligence Committee voted Wednesday to send the nomination of retired Adm. Dennis Blair as the nation's chief intelligence officer to the full Senate for consideration.
..Hey, it's only genocide. It's only East Timor. It was only 200,000 people killed, and a third of the population. Why care?
amygdalagf
Wind
15 January: China more than doubled its wind power capacity in 2008, installing 4.66GW of additional capacity and passing the government’s 10GW target two years ahead of schedule.
environmental
org
Open Letter on Biofuels
theoildrum
Posted by Gail the Actuary on January 20, 2009 -
agrofuels made from inedible plant feedstocks (cellulosic fuels) will continue to exacerbate the food crisis by monopolizing additional agricultural lands
U.S. MILITARY WARNS THAT SUDDEN COLLAPSE OF MEXICO IS LIKELY
democraticunderground
Ben McGrath, American Chronicles, “The Dystopians,” The New Yorker, January 26, 2009, p. 41
January 26, 2009 Issue
Related Links
Audio: A discussion about doomsaying nd the predictions of economic and social collapse.
Celebrity worship a symptom of failed individuation?
Following on to Jaynes's theories on consciousness and the bicameral mind, I suggest that humans today have not (yet?) developed full consciousness.
The aristocat is envied, but also identified with, people feel that they are Angelina Jolie, or.. name a rich person. (drinking in AJ's favourite riverside bar in Battambang, I was scorned by the young French tourists, perhaps because I was not young, not French, or travelling with a Khymer woman? I had to wonder why youth travelled preferentially to former colonies. In Cambodia French language is no longer taught in schools...
"So I have just one wish for you -- , and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom." -- Richard Feynman
< href="http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html">pd
The Lord Howe Island tree lobster, Dryococelus australis, is the most famous of the group and w
Wikipedia fails to give a weight, so we assumeif the Weta retains the title of biggest insect\
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Methane
"After seven years [of zero growth] methane has started to rise again to growth rates of the early 1990s,
abc
- several sources suggest methane as the origin of ancient rapid temperature rises ... clathates?