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
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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

05 June 2009

David Carradine, pathrai, Debord

Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique
Kwai Chang Caine
aaa
Damn, I instantly realised that I had expected to end up garrotted in a Bangkok hotel
And now that the coolest guy around has done that, I need to do something else.
mirror
in Martin Scorsese "Boxcar Bertha" Ingmar Bergman's "The Serpent's Egg"
had a son with Barbara Hershey,
an OK round
Used to keep a single action colt in his desk drawer, take it out and consider it on occasion.
Something similar to Dorothy Brett, buddy of KM, kept a revolver in her desk for a year, after DHL left her at Kiowa ranch (might have been Rananim).
__________________________________________________
Debord.. devised a board game called Game of War). ‘...
The primary thing to know, Debord writes in late summer 1957, is that ‘Situationism, as a body of doctrine, does not exist and must not exist.’ In part this occlusion was protective: ‘Yesterday, the police questioned me at length,’ he writes a year later; they ‘want to regard the SI as an association in order to set about its dissolution in France. I protested then and there . . . Not being declared, the SI cannot be officially dissolved.’
...
‘What are you working on, exactly? I have no idea.’

‘Reification,’ he answered.

‘It’s an important job,’ I added.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said.

‘I see,’ Carole observed with admiration. ‘Serious work, at a huge desk cluttered with thick books and papers.’


‘No,’ said Gilles. ‘I walk. Mainly I walk.’
....................
‘Thesis on the Paris Commune’, published in 1962: : ‘Theoreticians who examine the history of this movement from a divinely omniscient viewpoint (like that found in classical novels) can easily prove that the Commune was objectively doomed to failure and could not have been successfully consummated. They forget that for those who really lived it, the consummation was already there.’
lrb


"chips" or "pathrai" (the Pashto word for a metal device), which have become a source of fear, intrigue and fascination.
"Everyone is talking about it," said Taj Muhammad Wazir, a student from south Waziristan. "People are scared that if a pathrai comes into your house, a drone will attack it."
According to residents and Taliban propaganda, the CIA pays tribesmen to plant the electronic devices near farmhouses sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban commanders.
Hours or days later, a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles. "There are body parts everywhere," said Wazir, who witnessed the aftermath of a strike.
...
For the tribesmen who plant the microchips and get it wrong, the consequences can be terrible. Last month the Taliban issued a video confession by Habib ur Rehman, 19. "They money was good," he said in a quavering voice, describing how he was paid 20,000 rupees (£166) to drop microchips hidden in a cigarette wrapper at the home of a target.
Rehman said his handler promised thousands of pounds if the strike was successful, and protection if he was caught. The end of the video showed Rehman being shot dead with three other alleged spies. Residents say such executions – there have been at least 100 – indicate how much the drone strikes have worried the Taliban.


The seeds are housed inside capsules made of artificial soil: they provide nourishment and moisture to the seed. As the sapling matures, the capsule degrades leaving only the new plant.
aaa
__________________________________________________
An electronic card reader mounted on a yellow post scans your car for the presence of any radio-frequency ID cards inside. If there is an enhanced driver's licence embedded with biometric information, its unique PIN number is read without you offering it.....A post-mounted scanner screens your vehicle for radioactive material that could be used to build a "dirty bomb" – a probe so sensitive it will detect if you've recently had a medical test that used isotopes.
thestar

04 June 2009

Tiananmen, Quantum computing, Nyoirin Kannon

Tiananmen Square,
Whats all the fuss? A crowd of students called for "normal" democracy-Capital. and they got it. As Gary Trudeaus cartoons had it - a protest demanding the right to open a small business
As the FT says "With most – but not all – of the casualties inflicted in the suburbs" It seems that well outside the square, some tank columns went berko. Muxidi intersection saw some crushed.
If I was driving a tank and a guy holding possible satchel bombs tried to climb on top, I would probably resist.
The famous video from the square usually shown with voice-overs about 'massacre' actually showed PLA troops in danger - an APC burning from molotov cocktails from the crowd.
A well-known English reporter reported people being mowed down - later she realised that at the sound of gunshots, smart people dive for the ground.
Well we are all inside Vaclav Havel and Mubarak Obomber's "Normal" Capital "There-is-no-such-thing-as-Society" now. Isnt it grand?
Shao Jiang "I knew tanks were used against our enemies but, naively, I never imagined the government could turn them on its own people." - Well a LAV was used against a dope dealer last month in Napier. - no senior Govt approval required, the cops just rang the army and ordered it up,


Scalable Quantum computing
“Our scheme is scalable in the sense that we do not need to carry out pairwise operations over the lattice to entangle two distant qubits,” Brickman Soderberg told PhysOrg.com. “Instead we can use the messenger atoms to directly carry the entanglement between the qubits.
The big hope is that Shor's algorithm to find the "order" of a composite could use quantum computers to break the RSA algorithm (that little padlock on your browser bar).
As a one-time expert on the Miller-Rabin probabilistic primality test, I reckon that a few K more bits should swamp any quantum array. Probably
aaa
physorg

__________________________________________________
CCHR
why are Scientology and Tom Szasz our only defense against psychiatry?
the DEA concluded: “Preliminary data indicated the medicated ADHD group had a higher lifetime frequency of cocaine use and a higher percentage that used cocaine more than 40 times…this preliminary data suggest that stimulant treatment of ADHD in childhood may be a risk factor for cocaine abuse in adults.”
A study in the Journal of Forensic Science in 1999, reported increasing evidence that methylphenidate is being diverted to illicit use by snorting or injection, with some fatalities, at least one from intranasal use.
A 1998 study of California adolescents diagnosed with ADHD found that, as adults, those treated with the stimulant were three times more likely to use cocaine.
Mary Ann Block reported that between 1992 and 1996 production of the main “ADHD” stimulant tripled for psychiatric use; at the same time, cocaine use among teenagers increased by 166%.

cchr


aaa
'The 15 most alien-looking Caterpillars on Earth'!
environmentalgraffiti
__________________________________________________
"In Khost, government officials need letters from Haqqani just to move about on the roads in the districts," said Hanif Shah Husseini, a parliamentarian from Khost.
..in March, the U.S. government raised the bounty on Sirajuddin from $200,000 to $5 million.


bottled water
Energy cost:
between ... 5.6 and 10.2 E6 J/l
tap water ... E3 J/l for treatment and distribution.
USA use 33 E9l = 32-54 E6 bbl oil

Transportation energy
..locally by truck within Los Angeles = 1.4 E6 J/l.
..shipped from Fiji to LA.. then ..locally by truck 4 E6 J/l ..
..by truck from French springs to French sea ports, then shipped across the Atlantic,..by train from the east coast to LA and then delivered locally by truck ... 5.8 E6 J/l.


physorg
NZ mud snails love bottled water, or at least the oestrogens in it.
By breeding the New Zealand mud snail in both plastic and glass water bottles, the researchers found more than double the number of embryos in plastic bottles compared with glass bottles
.


aaa
Barbie's Tramp Stamp
__________________________________________________
"Ask us about our Angry Burger."


aaa
As GM goes so goes America
__________________________________________________
NZ Forestry
lowest planting rate snce WWII
Massive clearcut of plantations for dairy (CH4 emitters)
must get some numbers on this


What is wrong with the Bibi option?
It requires permanent control of Gaza, with Israel holding its 1.5 million people in what amounts to a vast penal colony with no access to the outer world by land, sea or air, except by permission of the Israeli military.
On the West Bank, this means permanent control of the 2.4 million Arabs through confinement in enclaves bordered on the west by the Israeli wall, on the east by the Jordan, bisected by roads set aside for the exclusive use of Israelis and dotted with checkpoints. Travel inside and outside the West Bank would be by sufferance of the Israeli military.
It is this prospect that caused Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to blurt, "If the two-state solution collapses," Israel will "face a South African-style struggle." It is this prospect that caused President Carter to warn of Israel's becoming an "apartheid" state.
....according to Mearsheimer, since 2007, more Jews have left Israel than have come in. Some 700,000 to 1 million Israeli Jews live abroad, and a 2007 poll reportedly found that nearly one-half of all young people are considering leaving.
wnd


aaa
The six-armed Shingon representation of Nyoirin Kannon is another form of Avalokiteshvara.
digital
__________________________________________________

01 June 2009

Corals adapt, MIT climate model, Pipelineistan

Corals may be tougher than we thought," said Stephen Palumbi, .. Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment..
.. discovering live, healthy corals on reefs already as hot as the ocean is likely to get 100 years from now,..
partnerships with.. zooxanthellae... In the Caribbean in 2005, a heat surge caused more than 50 percent of corals to bleach, and many still have not recovered
...some corals ..swap out the heat-stressed algae for tougher, heat-resistant strains.
...Ofu Island in American Samoa. ... in hotter pools, he observed a direct increase in the proportion of heat-resistant symbionts,... Marine Ecology Progress Series in March 2009.
..Oliver then compiled dozens of coral reef studies from across the tropics ..In regions where annual maximum ocean temperatures were above 29 to 31 °C, corals were avoiding bleaching by hosting higher proportions of the heat-resistant symbionts.
..A 2007 report by the IPCC..Earth is likely to increase (2 to 4.5° C) by 2100. ..the symbiont switch alone may not be enough to help corals survive ..natural selection for heat-tolerant corals, there is still hope, Oliver said. (but see MIT report below)
.. corals worldwide are adapting to increases in acidity as well as heat...t's hard to imagine that these (sic) corals, which have existed for a quarter of a billion years, only have 50 years left,"
\May 19, 2009


[I'm not sure that current corals are the same species as 2.5E8 years ago. Some say that 'reefs' were built by quite different organisms.]
This claim about algae switching was mentioned in Singers Denialist book, which otherwise seemed a long list of local warm seasons around Europe.
Singer may have permanently muddied the waters re 2nd hand tobacco smoke, a risk which I pooh pooh until I learned of his links to Philip Morris and British American Tobacco.
Now I just dont know. Some research sinks traceless. One English report I saw said that lung cancer is associated with smoking and vehicle exhaust. No vehicles, no cancer. I guess that "Exxon, Texaco, Arco, Shell and the American Gas Association" trumped Philip Morris to squash that story. It has been claimed that diesel particulates are the great health crime of the century, but we need trucks so bad that we darent mention it. I'm not about to praise my brother's choice of a diesel Audi, although its likely that Audi have perfected injectors to minimise particulates. I know that 3ed world trucks and jeepneys render cities anti-refulgent (tenebrous?) and blacken handkerchiefs withal.
.


5.2 ° C
MIT Integrated Global Systems Model,.. 400 runs ...the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities (really?)..unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity
...this month in the Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 ° C 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4°
cf 2003 study of just 2.4 ° C
measurements of deep ocean temperature rises.. imply lower transfer rates than previously estimated.
Prinn and the team produced a "roulette wheel" .
aaa

.the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks eg large-scale melting of permafrost .. release of large quantities of methane..
The lead author.. is Andrei Sokolov..
mit
This looks Permian-Extinction bad, but we might get lucky and have an economic crash (Japan steel production is down 44%, GM bankrupt today) And as Dmitry Orlov cluborlov
says, the last thing we need is more efficient automobiles, all we need to do is drive existing models very slowly. Just like Cuba.
What we could use is a large electronic display fitted to fuel-pumps/injectors, and txt linked to petrol prices. This display would show current consumption in $/hour and the cost of the last 10 minutes driving. Acceleration is a killer, somehow we need to fit cars with a low-acceleration mode. Even a Prius burns fuel fast if you pump those high-torque electrics.
.


Space Monkeys
aaa
some primates lived a long retirement 20+years,
__________________________________________________
books
not read: The Spirit in The Gene: Humanity's Proud Illusion and the Laws of Nature By Reg Morrison
. Beyond Civilization, by Daniel Quinn, - almost a cult
.



Detroit collapse began in the 1950s.
blogspot
Some now are saying that industry will become local again., tansport energy costs will kill globalisation.
As a Kiwi I have to believe that shipping costs can be arbitrarily low, just slow that ship down.

Otago saw the Union Steam Ship Company...
" the legendary trans-Tasman flier Rotomahana of 1879 (the first ship in the world built of mild steel"

nzshipmarine
Some chap on the radio also said something about USC having the first marine diesel? 1929 that cant be true?

We were taught at school that NZ invented frozen meat shipping. Assume thats energy efficient?
Anyway, the NZ story is that the trucks from the wharf use more fuel than the 20,000km around the world from NZ. I'd like to think so.
.


Steel

Jeanne d'Arc's armour in 1430 was said to be steel, French cavalry supposedly had steel armour in 1415. Probably of variable quality. A hand crafted product.
Henry's 400,000 arrows in 8 minutes were supposedly iron tipped. Tipped the day.
Wootz,, a rather high carbon steel, was made in India, possibly in Lanka, maybe some wind tunnel technique on hill crests. Its a mystery. But hammered Wootz and 'magical' forging and quenching could make good Damasc blades.
TamaHagane bloom was used to produce superior swords in Japan in C13 - Lady Nijo may have seen them, I guess Murasaki Shikibu did not.
Still steel was a craft, producing small objects.
Mass produced steel was only done by Bessemer in 1856. Engllish ore needed the P taken out. Sydney and Percy Gilchrist, found the way in 1875.
So Union Shipping Company was an early adopter.

I actually worked for Union Shipping in their last days in Aotea Quay Wellington in the 80s. IBM's grotesque screen character positioning, with their grotesque heirarichal database - ye gods it was hard to get anything done. sort of like hand forging code.
.


Pipelineistan goes Iran-Pak
By Pepe Escobar
Gas gas gas...
The earth has been shaking for a few days now all across Pipelineistan - with massive repercussions for all the big players in the New Great Game in Eurasia. United States President Barack Obama's AfPak strategists didn't even see it coming.

A silent, reptilian war had been going on for years between the US-favored Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline and its rival, the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline". This past weekend, a winner emerged. And it's none of the above: instead, it's the 2,100-kilometer, US$7.5 billion IP (the Iran-Pakistan pipeline), with no India attached
atimes

With IP in place, Gazprom reasons, Nabucco is deprived of a key supply source.
...........
For the Pentagon, the birth of IP is mega bad news. The ideal Pentagon scenario is the US controlling Gwadar - in yet one more prime confluence of Pipelineistan and the US Empire of Bases.

With Gwadar directly linked to Iran and developed virtually as a Chinese warehouse, the Pentagon also loses the mouth-watering opportunity of a long land route across Balochistan into Helmand, Nimruz, Kandahar or, better yet, all of these three provinces in southwest Afghanistan, where soon, not by accident, there will be another US mega-base in the "desert of death".
..............................................
, Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia win. The SCO wins. Washington and NATO lose, not to mention Afghanistan (no transit fees).
...................
Camp Leatherneck, a vast, brand new US air base in Dasht-e-Margo, the “desert of death” in Helmand province in Afghanistan. ... a cross-border, covert ops stone's throw from
southeast Iran and Pakistani Balochistan.
...
US virtually controls the Baloch air bases in Dalbandin and Panjgur.
.