Support for euro in doubt as Germans reject Latin bloc notes

Notes printed in Berlin have more currency for bank customers who fear a 'value crisis'

Ordinary Germans have begun to reject euro bank notes with serial numbers from Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal, raising concerns that public support for monetary union may be waning in the eurozone's anchor country.

 

Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper says bankers have detected a curious pattern where customers are withdrawing cash directly from branches, screening the notes to determine the origin of issue. They ask for paper from the southern states to be exchanged for German notes.

Each country prints its own notes according to its economic weight, under strict guidelines from the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. The German notes have an "X"' at the start of the serial numbers, showing that they come from the Bundesdruckerei in Berlin.

 

Italian notes have an "S" from the Instituto Poligrafico in Rome, and Spanish notes have a "V" from the Fabrica Nacional de Moneda in Madrid. The notes are entirely interchangeable and circulate freely through the eurozone and, indeed, beyond.

People clearly suspect that southern notes may lose value in a crisis, or if the eurozone breaks apart. This is what happened in the US in the Jackson era of the 1840s when dollar notes from different regions traded at different values.

"The scurrilous idea behind this is that if the eurozone should succumb to growing divergences, then it is best to cling to most stable countries," said the Handelsblatt.

"There are no grounds for panic. The Italian state is not Bear Stearns," it said.

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George W. Guilty of murder?

The Legal Framework for the Prosecution
By Vincent Bugliosi

"That the king can do no wrong is a necessary and
fundamental principle of the English constitution."
—Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765

"No living Homo sapiens is above the law."
—(Notwithstanding our good friends and legal ancestors across the water,
this is a fact that requires no citation.)

With respect to the positionI take about the crimes of George Bush, I want to state at the outset that my motivation is not political. Although I've been a longtime Democrat (primarily because, unless there is some very compelling reason to be otherwise, I am always for "the little guy"), my political orientation is not rigid. For instance, I supported John McCain's run for the presidency in 2000. More to the point, whether I'm giving a final summation to the jury or writing one of my true crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. Therefore, my only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. This is why I can give you, thereader, a 100 percent guarantee that if a Democratic president had done what Bush did, I would be writing the same, identical piece you are about to read.

Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the belief of many that George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns. Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That's almost too self-evident to state. But he deserves much more than impeachment. I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That's just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.

Let's look at the way some of the leading liberal lights (and, of course, the rest of the entire nation with the exception of those few recommending impeachment) have treated the issue of punishment for Bush's cardinal sins. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about "the false selling of the Iraq War. We were railroaded into an unnecessary war." Fine, I agree. Now what? Krugman just goes on to the next paragraph. But if Bush falsely railroaded the nation into a war where over 100,000 people died, including 4,000 American soldiers, how can you go on to the next paragraph as if you had been writing that Bush spent the weekend at Camp David with his wife? For doing what Krugman believes Bush did, doesn't Bush have to be punished commensurately in some way? Are there no consequences for committing a crime of colossal proportions?

http://www.prosecutionofbush.com/

Is Italy going fascist? A letter from Rome

Bertinotti's view is that it is impossible to understand the shellacking the left took without analyzing the nature of the New Right, whose strength and vitality demonstrated that, more than any other political parties, they were the first in Italy to grasp the sea change consequent to the belated modernization of Italy. Italian society has been "de-ideologized" by modernization, resulting in "a new kind of crisis" for the Italian institutions. Ably exploiting this crisis, the New Right is "not Fascist, even as it uses elements of that culture and its vestiges, while exploiting an aggressive aversion to every kind of diversity when insecurity is transformed into fear—and then the figure of the scapegoat re-emerges from the shadows as a shield from fear."

Bertinotti calls this "a-fascism," as in apolitical, or without fascism. And from this he deduces that if you don't have fascism you are also "a-anti-Fascism, in a Republic without roots and without history," meaning you can't be anti-Fascist if you don't have Fascism to oppose. Parliament itself is weaker, for governability matters more than honest confrontation in a debate, he concluded.

Put more simply, the tragedies Mussolini meant for Italy have been forgotten, but so have the values of the Resistance—the roots and history Bertinotti mentions—which have been a guarantee for a democracy born in 1947 and functioning, however imperfectly, for the past sixty years.

There can be no doubt that this third round of Berlusconi government, in which Berlusconi himself seems puzzled, is different from those that went before.

It foreshadows a different Italy for the future—an Italy that is ill prepared: by its schools that do not train young people for work, by cynicism in the professional classes, by a collapse of the political parties that held the country together for over half a century, and by a collapse in values.

Whether this is or is not re-emergent Fascism, we are witnessing the re-emergence of the scapegoat. Just as it was for Hitler, fear of the outsider is a useful political glue for building what political scientists call a negative coalition.

It is far harder to rally people toward a common goal than to rally them against a commonly perceived enemy, be he Jew or Gypsy. For this reason the perceived wave of terror, which ordinary people here are accepting as real in their fear of petty crime, is of deep concern, even as the same people overlook the blatant misdeeds on the grand scale of Italian governments -- national, regional, local -- which have made and continue to make common cause with businessmen and organized crime bosses.

Ironically, at the same time that Italians are blaming petty crime on Foreign and Other Devils, Premier Silvio Berlusconi is promoting legislation that would shield corruption in business and politics, by making it illegal for police to have wiretaps unless for crimes that command a minimum of a ten-year sentence; significantly, a conviction for corruption means only eight years in the jug, if and when such a trial is held at all.

If Berlusconi has his way, phone taps cannot legally be authorized when corruption is suspected, according to former magistrate Giuseppe D'Avanzo.

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'Long march' reaches Islamabad with call for Musharraf to go

Thousands of protesters gathered in Islamabad yesterday to demand the reinstatement of judges deposed by President Musharraf under emergency rule last year.

A highly charged crowd gathered in the Pakistan capital, including lawyers who thronged the main parade ground in front of the Parliament in sweltering heat chanting: "Go Musharraf, go." The protesters cautioned the Government against any further delay in ousting the embattled leader and reversing his decision.

The rally, on the final leg of the "long march", arrived in Islamabad late in the evening, in several hundred vehicles carrying lawyers and political activists holding party flags. The march began this week in the central city of Multan. Hundreds of retired army officers and soldiers also joined the march calling for Mr Musharraf to be tried for sedition.

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European conference of the anti-capitalist left

A conference full of hope

François Sabado

On the 31st May and 1st June a Paris conference called by the LCR on "May 68- May 2008" brought together the European anticapitalist left.

They all came and were all there from the north and the south of Europe. There were about a hundred representatives of about thirty organisations from sixteen countries present. Among them were the principal organisations of the revolutionary left in Europe which represent thousands of activists and sympathisers. Also present was an observer from the ISO ((International Socialist Organization) in the United States. Among them were the main organisations of the revolutionary left in Europe representing thousands of activistis and sympathisers.

This international conference of the radical, anti-capitalist and revolutionary European left was undoubtedly a big success. For the first time since May 68 nearly all the anti-capitalist left was brought together in St-Denis (in the Seine St Denis department to the north of Paris). It was remarkable that this first meeting took place. The fact that it decided to continue and meet for a second conference in 2009 shows that something new is happening for Europe's radical left.

This success is first of all connected with both the support for and the curiosity about the LCR's initiative, building a new anti-capitalist party. But there is something else. A change in the historic period has been unsettling the workers' movement and organisations for several years, a process which is perhaps coming to maturity in a number of countries. The combination, in the framework of capitalist globalisation, of the current financial, banking and food crises of capitalism, of the redoubling of attacks against social and democratic rights, and the social-liberal evolution of the traditional left opens a space for the radical left.

These questions were dealt with in a first discussion introduced by François Sabado, a member of the LCR leadership. He indicated a series of points of convergence on the nature of the capitalist offensive, on the evolution of the social-democratic and communist parties and on the dynamic of the class struggle. This debate also confirmed the points of agreement about the principal anti-capitalist measures in the face of neo-liberal capitalism and the need for a clear independence from social democracy.

All the organisations present reaffirmed the necessity of rejecting the politics of parliamentary or governmental coalitions with the social liberalism of social democracy or the centre left. These main reference points for rebuilding a new workers' movement and an anti-capitalist alternative don't exhaust all the indispensable debates for rebuilding a socialist project, debates which we must have on the different experiences in Europe, questions such as the formulation of an European anti-capitalist programme, the war, an ecosocialist response to the ecological crisis and of course about the content and forms of socialism in the 21st century.

So we have to work and debate. The next conference in 2009 will be focused on the struggle against the war, NATO and military politics in Europe .

There was something else positive about this conference. It is not only a question of discussing but also of acting. There were three discussions after the main discussion. The first, which was introduced by LCR leadership member Yvan Lemaitre, about the war, in which considering the warmongering policies of the ruling classes and the role of Nato, the conference participants decided to organise a large international demonstration in Strasbourg and Kehl next spring on the 60th anniversary of Nato.

For the first time a conference of this type looked at the question of global warming. It was introduced by Laurent Menghini. This second debate showed that all the anti capitalist organisations are developing an ecological dimension.

There was a third debate, introduced by Emmanuel Siegelman, on the importance of the struggle against racism and xenophobia. Following the example of the Lega Nord in Italy, which is waging a real campaign against foreigners, the attacks against immigrants are a central element of the attack of reactionary governments against social and democratic rights. Anticapitalists must make this a central axis of their activity in Europe .

After a short summary of the proceedings by Galia Trépère for the LCR, all the participants have decided to have a joint intervention at the next social forum in Malmo in Sweden, and especially to consider common activities at the time of the next European elections in 2009. What is at stake at a time when the far right, the socialist and communist parties all have European structures is to begin to build a European anti capitalist pole of attraction. This is one of the most difficult questions for each organisation has a different history, there are specific relationships of forces in each country. Some organisations have already responded positively. Others are going to discuss it, and some, without taking part in a European campaign, are open to common initiatives.

In short – the new anti-capitalist party is getting things moving in Europe !

The organisations represented were:

Austria : SOAL

Belgium: LCR-SAP

Britain : Respect, Socialist Resistance, Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party

Denmark : Red Green Alliance

France : LCR

Germany : Anticapitalist Left, BASG, Interventionist Left, ISL, Marx21, RSB,

Greece : Alternative Ecologists, AKOA, ARAN, ARAS, DEA, KOE, Kokkino, NAR (New Left Current), OKDE-Spartakos, SEK, Syriza, Synaspismos

Italy : Sinistra Critica

Netherlands : SAP

Norway : Socialist Unity

Poland : Polish Labour Party

Portugal : Left Bloc

Spanish state : Espacio Alternativo

Sweden : Socialist Party

Switzerland : Gauche anticapitaliste, Mouvement pour le socialisme, Solidarités,

Turkey : ODP

United States : ISO

 

François Sabado is a member of the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International and of the National Leadership of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR, French section of the Fourth International).

[ also: Introduction to the European Conference ]

 

Interrogation for profit

Congress is finally moving to ban one of the Bush administration's most blatant evasions of accountability in Iraq — the outsourcing of war detainees' interrogation to mercenary private contractors.

Operating free of the restraints of military rule and ethics, some of these corporate thugs turned up in the torture scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison and walked away with impunity. Others are now believed to be in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency at secret prisons that remain outside the rule of law, exempted even from the weak 2006 rules on interrogating prisoners.

Civilian interrogators are part of the broader pool of hired guns that the administration has deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and other spots around the world. Their actions regularly enrage Iraqis, most notably last September, when a phalanx of trigger-happy contractors assigned to protect American diplomats sprayed a crowd and killed 17 civilians.

These depredations continue to undermine the United States in the eyes of both citizens of war zones and the watching world. Their use as interrogators are a symptom of the administration's ducking accountability under international law by concocting ersatz redefinitions of civilized behavior and undermining legitimate intelligence operations.

In the current military budget debate, both houses are proposing an outright ban on the use of contractors as prisoner interrogators. They also would order the Pentagon to finally rein in its use of tens of thousands of contract guards as laissez-faire warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon would have to write rules specifying which security operations are military missions that cannot be outsourced.

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Review - The Metaphysics of Science

Dilworth's main aim is to propose and defend a metaphysics of science based on three ontological principles, uniformity of nature, substance, and causality. Dilworth does not call these ontological entities of modern science, i.e. post-Galilean mainstream Western science; rather they are the ontological presuppositions of the epistemic practice of modern science. Dilworth considers these the "core" rather than "foundational" principle, avoiding thereby questions about foundations and coherence in the epistemology of science.

The core principles of causation is given a non-supernaturalist but not necessarily physicalist interpretation at one point (p. 57) but it is unclear what non-physicalist interpretations Dilworth think the principles imply, as I discuss below. These core principles are relatively a priori and not necessarily true. They are assumed to be true though they might not be true (p. 71).

The core principles are the basis for "refined" principles that are the ontological presuppositions of particular disciplines. Thus, physics has energy as a core refined principle; chemistry has matter and economics has the economy as refined principles. The practitioners of particular disciplines assume their refined principles make up a hierarchy, so that sociologists are justified in thinking of 'society' as a substance. The extent of this justification is not entirely clear.

Change in substances according to regular patterns make up the facts discovered by empirical research, according to Dilworth. If a social scientist is justified in thinking of their discipline as investigating change in a substance, then a social scientist discovers social facts. But when considering the case of economics, Dilworth asserts that economic facts are quantitative expressions of non-quantitative data, so that economic facts are "stylized facts" (p. 135).

 

Economic change is distinguished further from the change in physics because economic facts change by means of intentional or final causation while physical facts change only by means of efficient causations. While I find Dilworth's account of the scientific basis of social science interesting I have the sense that he has named the difference between change and causation in social sciences and physical sciences rather than explaining why both are scientific in anything but a nominal sense. To call economic facts "stylized" connotes that their factual status is a courtesy or manner of speaking 
This book has valuable things to say about the discovery of empirical laws as the regularities of in the date and the function of scientific theory as attempts to explain the discovered regularities by means of a model. Empirical laws involve measurable regularities and can be detected by multiple observers in controlled experiments. Theories serve a different function and satisfy a different intellectual question. The goal of modern science, per Dilworth, is to identify actually operating causes of change underlying phenomenal appearances of change. Theories are models that depict causes when causes are unavailable to measurement and observation (p. 102). Scientific explanation consists in "showing by means of a theory how the empirical laws or regularities of a discipline are but the manifestation of the discipline's principles on a deeper level." Theories explain laws by "depicting" states of affairs that (a) can be conceived as underlying them" and (b) obey the contiguity [principle] and other principles of the discipline" (p. 109). Theories then are models that cannot themselves be tested but can suggest further experimental tests.

 

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Shura member calls for oil production curbs in Saudi

Saudi Arabia's Shura council (parliament) will hold a series of meetings over the next two weeks to discuss a controversial proposal by a key member to curb oil production to save reserves for better prices, Saudi media reported. The council will listen to a report by deputy chairman of the Shura water and public utilities committee, Salim bin Rashid Al Marri, who will argue for cutting crude supplies to maintain the Kingdom's underground reserves.

"Marri will seek to persuade council members that the oil production must be linked to the country's actual development needs not the needs of foreign consumers," Alriyadh newspaper said in a report from the capital Riyadh. "He will tell the Council that keeping sufficient oil quantities underground is a good investment for the future as oil prices will then be higher…he will argue that this will be better than producing more oil and generating financial surpluses on the grounds these surpluses are causing inflation."

Saudi Arabia is the world's top oil exporter and its crude policy is normally determined by the King as the oil minister's job is mainly to implement that policy.

According to analysts, any major increase or decrease in the Gulf Kingdom's crude production must be approved by the Monarch, who was reported last week to have heeded a call by US president George Bush and agreed to lift output by nearly 300,000 barrels per day to cool down boiling crude prices. Saudi Arabia, which controls nearly a quarter of the world's total extractable oil deposits, has pumped an average of nine million bpd over the past year but its sustainable output capacity is almost two million bpd higher.

To face an expected increase in global demand, Riyadh is investing heavily in projects to boost its oil production capacity to 12.5 million bpd at the end of 2009 and maintain its traditional spare capacity of more than two million bpd.

"The price of oil under ground is actually higher than its current market price because it will become a unique commodity by time and demand will continue to rise because of a steady growth in the world's population," Marri told Alriyadh.

 

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Greece, Cyprus may have allowed secret CIA flights: European MPs

Greece and Cyprus are among 14 EU member-states suspected of turning a blind eye to secret CIA flights taking terror suspects to countries where they could face torture, according to a report approved by a majority of MEPs in the European Parliament on Wednesday.

The EU parliament voted to accept a resolution condemning member states who accepted or ignored the practice, according to Athens News Agency reports.

The EU report said the US had operated 1,200 flights, flying suspects on to states where they could face torture.

The report was adopted by a large majority, with 382 MEPs voting in favor, 256 against and 74 abstaining.

A paragraph referring to Greece said that aircraft used by the CIA had made 64 stops in Greek airports. It expressed grave concerns regarding the purpose of flights coming from or flying to countries linked to the CIA's "extraordinary renditions" circuit, as the prisoner transfers were termed.

In the case of Cyprus, the report pointed to 57 stops at Cyprus airports of CIA-operated planes.

It is unlikely, the report said, that European governments were unaware of rendition activities on their territory.

European Commission for Justice Franco Frattini said the message from the report was a need for "greater and closer EuroAtlantic cooperation," greater cooperation with the U.S. in the name of two principles -- "security and mutual respect".

~ People's Daily Online ~

[ via Telespy ]

Man is the ultimate cause of death due to starvation

Is Famine a Man-made or Natural Disaster?

In Asia, Africa and Latin America, well over 500 million people are living in "absolute poverty". over 9 million people die worldwide each year because of hunger and malnutrition. 5 million are children. Some 1.2 billion people suffer from obesity. For the price of one missle, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years. EVERY 3.6 SECONDS, SOMEONE DIES OF HUNGER. Famine is the last hurrah of long-term hunger. How does this persist in the 21st Century? Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Niger, Ethiopia...the list keeps growing of countries that are currently or will soon be experiencing famine. How can this continue?

Below, see some perspectives from our guest blogger, Jamie P

Is Famine a Man Made Problem?

Famine can be traced back to the roots of civilization and seen throughout the annals of history. This empirical fact leaves one to conclude famine is inevitable, given the occurrence of natural disasters associated with the passage of time (http://library.thinkquest.org). And while environmental catastrophes have reigned supreme as the cause of famines for many years, is it still true today? In other words, economically and technologically speaking, does the world today possess a certain prowess that would allow man to circumvent the hardships inflicted by Mother Nature? One scholar laments that "Once we begin to see beyond the rather seductive and ironic depictions of the famine encounter, we will be in a position to recapture a glimpse of the real causes of famine and cautiously avoid the conflation of natural calamities with 'man made' famines"(Araia). Yet, other experts cling to environmental attributions, stating that natural disasters still lie at the root of all widespread hunger (FitzGibbon and Hennessy). I would argue, however, that while this second point, respectively, may initially be the culprit, pernicious famine is exacerbated largely by man. Thus, while Mother Nature may initiate hunger, man bears the onus for creating or at least not averting widespread famine.

Famine may be referred to as 'the regional failure of food production or distribution systems, leading to sharply increased mortality due to starvation and associated disease…' (FitzGibbon and Hennessy). Historically speaking, in a majority of the situations where this definition comes into play, natural disasters are the initial cause. Many possibilities exist within this realm including drought, earthquakes, flooding, tidal waves, and insects such as locusts (http://library.thinkquest.org/).

Pestilence is also an environmental condition which can lead to famine. It is commonly known that diseases of epidemic proportions such as AIDS and Malaria are highly prevalent in many of the African countries. These Sub Saharan territories, in which the threat of famine always exists, are crippled when entire chunks of the population fall prey to these infectious diseases which thus severely curtail a population's ability to produce or acquire food (http://news.bbc.co.uk). Yet, while all of these environmental issues, are certainly problems, countries internally and internationally should be able to circumvent these issues to prevent the wide spread famine that follows the initial hunger.

The natural disasters stated above do not necessarily result in a famine. A flood may wipe out the crops for an entire country which causes initial hunger; yet, famine happens later when many die of starvation due to poor governance. Colonialism is an example of this phenomenon.

The colonialization of the imperial powers in the African countries caused many problems. Their insistence on growing cash crops continues today so that "…the persistence of using good land to grow 'cash crops' such as coffee, tea or cashews for export, continues in many countries today. Often the best land is used in this way" (FitzGibbon and Hennessy). In addition, the problem is not exactly lack of rainfall "…but the vulnerability of a given society that wholly depends on a rain-fed agriculture" (Araia). Theories abound as to why exactly Africa remains underdeveloped today. Whatever the exact cause may be, exploitation of colonial powers certainly did not help Africa's long term development. This underdevelopment only perpetuated famine today.

Poor governmental planning is also a cause of famine. While a natural disaster may devastate the crops in a region, a sound government should have stored enough food or resources to acquire sufficient provisions to prevent widespread death from starvation. Also, the world community should step in to remedy the problem. Poverty is also rampant in Africa, and many situations occur in Sub Saharan countries today where food exists but the people are simply to poor to buy it. Obviously, fixing these solutions are easier said then done; yet, it demonstrates how in these circumstances, famine is caused by man and not the environment.

In addition to man exacerbating the hunger that stems from a natural disaster, certain famine occurs completely void of environmental problems. War, including internal strife, which persistently has ravaged the African continent for decades, often involves pillaging, looting, and burning. This has caused thousands to go hungry and die as a result of this man made famine (FitzGibbon and Hennessy).

Another example of man made famine is genocide. Often, dictators in power will suppress food from their enemies in order to eliminate them. Hunger is also used as a tool in order to cause certain sects of the population to comply. Sometimes, it can be harnessed as a means of punishment. Examples include Ethiopia and the Sudan where internal strife and the government's suppression of food for factions of their populations occurred. Graft can also produce famine in a population. In corrupt governments, which are pervasive in Africa, food and aid from other countries is sometimes confiscated by corrupt officials who then sell the resources for their own profit preventing the aid from getting to the people it was intended for (FitzGibbon and Hennessy).

Sudan serves as an example of a direct link between government and famine. In this case, in 1997, the northern government decided it would not allow international planes to land in the South to administer aid because of the civil war that was occurring. In essence, they thought that by stopping the aid, they could eliminate their enemy by starving them to death and also illicit support by placing blame for the food shortage on their enemy (FitzGibbon and Hennessy).

A similar example occurred in Ethiopia in the mid 80's where the government halted the flow of food into Eritrea during a famine because of threatening rebel forces. "Through these actions, the government hoped to reduce the support for Eritrean rebels, and eventually to force them to surrender. However, these acts caused many thousands of deaths within Eritrea" (FitzGibbon and Hennessy)

Another example in which government is to blame is Niger. Nigerian leaders denied there was a food shortage and turned away 19 million dollars from the World Food Programme (WFP). The governmental leaders accused the WFP of exaggerating the problem and denying the mass starvation (http://news.bbc.co.uk).

Natural disasters certainly are a problem and they live up to their name, disaster. Today, however, it seems that man is the true disaster in regards to famine. Examples abound where famine after a natural disaster could have been prevented if there had been proper planning and support from the international community. If utilized properly, technology, production, and distribution could ensure that there are adequate resources to feed the entire world population.

Also, in today's day and age, famine is solely a man made problem with the persistence of poor governance, war and poverty. Despite natural disasters being the root of some hunger and loss of food, man is the ultimate cause of death due to starvation.

Helpful Websites:

http://chora.virtualave.net/ghelawdewos-famine2.htm
http://www.ucc.ie/famine/roots/pdfs/Roots%20of%20Famine2

'That U.S. farm and energy policy is abetting this artificial famine is unconscionable'

The facts of corn ethanol are otherwise. In exchange for what amounts to a whopping $0.51 per gallon subsidy for ethanol blenders (reduced to $0.45 per gallon in the recent Farm Bill), American farmers have produced record amounts of corn. This has resulted in making a fuel that takes more energy to produce than we get out of it, increased food prices around the world, increased use of fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides, and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

How did this happen? To grow more corn, farmers reduced soy bean production, much of which shifted to Brazil. To grow more soy beans, Brazilians cut down rain forest – this, of course, has ruinous implications for greenhouse gas emissions, one of the supposed benefits of turning corn into vehicle fuel.

In addition to being bad environmental policy, corn ethanol subsidies have added misery to the world's poor. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture, about one-fifth of the big run-up in world food prices has been caused by U.S. corn-ethanol subsidies. International organizations peg food price increases due to corn ethanol much higher, at 40 percent. With food riots in Mexico, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, and Haiti, our corn ethanol subsidies are dangerously immoral as well as foolish.

Less than a month ago, I had the chance to summarize my opposition to corn ethanol subsidies at an educational symposium. "Energy Alternatives: America's Challenge in the Global Economy" was sponsored by the University of California, Irvine, the Milken Institute, and the New Majority California Energy Task Force on May 13. Speaking on a panel immediately after former governor, and current California State Attorney General Jerry Brown spoke – surprisingly, Brown had favorable words for nuclear power – I boosted modern nuclear power as a way to reduce greenhouse gases and reduce our reliance on imported fossil fuels.

During my talk I warned that not every renewable energy source is helpful in the effort to address global warming, specifically singling out corn ethanol because it is, "…destroying Brazilian rainforest as soybean production has shifted from the U.S., it is also starving people in the third world and causing unrest."

My remarks caused a bit of a stir, causing another panelist, Anne Korin, an energy policy analyst and co-chair of the Set America Free coalition and a director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS), to strongly defend corn ethanol at the conclusion of the conference. Ms. Korin passionately stated that corn ethanol is not causing a rise in world food prices since American farmers are exporting more grain than ever. She also emphatically disputed the notion that corn ethanol was causing any destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, pointing out that sugar cane is grown outside of the rainforest region in Brazil.

As I previously cited, Anne Korin's first statement regarding food prices is flat wrong according to government officials who track such things. Further, to someone in the third world spending 80 percent of their income on food, any increase in the cost of food is devastating and can push their family into starvation. That U.S. farm and energy policy is abetting this artificial famine is unconscionable.

Ms. Korin's second assertion completely misses the mark. I never linked the destruction of the rainforest in Brazil to sugar cane; rather, I linked it to the U.S. appetite for corn ethanol which has displaced domestic soybean production to nations such as Brazil where they have cut down rainforest to put more land into production. According to a study by the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy published in Science in February, 2008, increased demand for corn ethanol is contributing to the conversion of the Brazilian Amazon into farmland as Brazilian farmers grow the soybeans U.S. farmers used to grow.

If we want more affordable ethanol, the best U.S. policy would be to drop our $0.54 per gallon tariff on ethanol imported from nations such as Brazil where they make ethanol from sugar cane. Sugar cane, by the way, is eight times more efficient at making fuel than corn and it is grown in the southern U.S.

~ From: Corn, Imported Oil, Nukes, and Global Warming ~

Remembering modern history's greatest crime

Canada will soon make an important contribution to the cause of historical accuracy, human rights, and justice. To coincide with last week's visit to Ottawa of Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, the Canadian government announced it planned to recognize the mostly forgotten 1932-1933 genocide in Ukraine.

Ottawa's decision was motivated as much by ethnic politics as historic justice: there are 1.1 million Canadians of Ukrainian descent. But Ottawa still deserves kudos for doing the right thing.

For eight decades, the greatest mass murder in modern history has been shamefully covered up or ignored. I have been repeatedly shocked to receive letters from young Americans and Canadians of Ukrainian descent saying they had known nothing about the 1930's genocide, or `Holdomor,' until reading about it in my columns. Hopefully, more will now know.

From 1932-33, Stalin and henchmen, Lazar Kaganovitch and Vyacheslav Molotov, conducted a merciless campaign to crush resistance by Ukrainian farmers to communism and collectivization. They isolated Ukraine, then cut off all food supplies and seeds. Six to nine million Ukrainians died from the ensuing man-made famine and mass shootings of `anti-State elements' by secret police execution squads. Cannibalism became common.

Large numbers of Ukrainians were also murdered during the Great Terror of 1936-38 in which an estimated 2 million Soviet citizens were shot and the same number died in Stalin's concentration camps.

In the late 1940's and early 1950's, the Soviet penal system reached its zenith: 5.4 million people were prisoners in the gulag. Some 300,000 more Ukrainians were sent to concentration camps under the supervision of Commissar Nikita Khrushchev, and 21,259 were killed in Soviet `pacification' campaigns and against independence fighters. Other Ukrainian nationalist leaders were assassinated in Western Europe by special Soviet hit teams.

During the same period, Moscow unleashed terror on the tiny Baltic states. From March to May, 1949, 95,000 Lithuanians, 27,000 of them children, were sent to concentration camps. In total, 120,000 Lithuanians, 50,000 Latvians and 30,000 Estonians went to the gulag where the death rate was 51% per annum.

While the Western world rightly commemorates genocide inflicted on Armenians, Europe's Jews, Cambodians, Rwandans, and Bosnians, it shamefully shut its eyes to the Ukrainian Holdomor because it was conducted by a key wartime ally whom President Franklin Roosevelt hailed as `Uncle Joe.'

Nor has the West ever acknowledged genocide against other peoples of the Soviet Union. In the Caucasus, Stalin sent most of the Chechen and Ingush peoples to the gulag, where 500,000 died. Yet when the children of the survivors fought for independence from Russia, the West branded them `Islamic terrorists.'

Up to three million Muslims of the Soviet Union died at Stalin's hands, including 1.5 million Kazakhs and Crimean Tatars. Yet no holocaust memorials exist for them.

Nearly 100,000 Moldovans were murdered in a purge conducted by then Commissar Leonid Brezhnev, who would later lead the Soviet Union and be feted by Western leaders. Add to this butcher's bill Volga Germans, Greeks, Cossacks, Armenians and Poles.

[ ... ]

Neither Roosevelt nor Churchill cared to admit they had allied themselves with a greater criminal than Hitler to wage their `Crusade for Freedom,’ nor that the price of this compact with the devil was giving Eastern Europe to the Soviets. In the end, the Allies destroyed a lesser threat, Germany, and in doing so, created a greater one, the nuclear-armed Soviet Union.

Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s alliance with Stalin, whom they knew to be a mass murderer and tyrant, in my view denies the Allies any claim to have been waging a `just’ or `good war.’ When the lingering clouds of wartime propaganda finally dissipate, future historians will likely look back on the western Allies as not much morally superior to Germany or the USSR, though certainly less murderous.

~ more... ~

Book review: 9-11 contradictions: An open letter to Congress and the Press

The mind of David Ray Griffin is refreshingly clear and logical. With his exceptional gift for discerning significant distinctions he has, once again, produced a meticulous critical analysis of documentary evidence that is astute and compelling. In "9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press,"

Dr. Griffin presents a sequence of irrefutable facts drawn from documents and testimony that demonstrate twenty five internal contradictions in the official 9/11 story. As each contradiction is presented, the author juxtaposes documented timelines and official memos, eye-witness testimony, television broadcasts and news articles that are logically inconsistent with the narrative contrived by the 9/11 Commission.

Griffin objectively questions these contradictory narratives, some of them inherent within individual alibis, and observes that the Commission avoided confronting these inconsistencies by eliminating all mention of them in its report. Facts that could not be logically refuted were strategically omitted, thereby erasing from the historical record all evidence of possible perjury and complicity. Each chapter is devoted to one category of contradictions and ends with the request that Congress and the press investigate this inconsistency.

One of the most fascinating contradictions involves the whereabouts of principals on the morning of 9/11 during the critical hours between 9:00 -10:00 am. Public and internal records suggest that the timeline of events was adjusted by the Commission to place the principals at their command posts too late to protect the nation, too late to orchestrate a military response, too late to give stand-down orders, too late to give shootdown orders or to be otherwise guilty of collusion. The conflicting testimony of eye-witnesses such as Richard Clarke, Norman Mineta and FAA officials, who placed the principals and military liaisons at their command posts well before the Commission's timeline did, was simply omitted from the 9/11 Commission Report. The Commission's systematic timeline alteration and omission of incriminating evidence thereby suggest that its mission was damage control, a deliberate cover-up of government complicity in the crime. Griffin, however, does not make this charge; he simply presents the contradictions.

The Commission claimed that Vice President Cheney did not arrive in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center until 9:58. That claim was contradicted by the testimony of Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transportation, who arrived at the PEOC around 9:20 where shortly thereafter he witnessed Cheney confirm an order that is most logically interpreted as an order not to shoot down an incoming object shortly before the Pentagon was struck. Richard Clarke's account in his book, "Against All Enemies," corroborates Mineta's timeline, which was evidently so threatening to the official story that Mineta's testimony was deleted from the 9/11 Commission video archives.

General Richard Myers contradicted his own story in several incarnations of his alibi as did Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom claimed to be unaware of unfolding events when, according to Richard Clarke, they were both participating in a live video teleconference initiated by Clarke at about 9:10. Griffin skillfully analyzes these contradictory versions of events.

[ ... ]

Although Griffin refrains from making direct accusations, he methodically presents objective evidence that leads the reader to an inevitable conclusion ~ that the purpose of the 9/11 Commission was to assign guilt where it did not exist and to cover up guilt where it did, thereby obstructing criminal indictments for treason, mass murder, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against the earth.

~ read on... ~

Friday the 13th not so unlucky

Unlucky for some? Dutch statisticians have established that Friday 13th, a date regarded in many countries as inauspicious, is actually safer than an average Friday.

 

A study published today by the Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics (CVS) showed that fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays.

"I find it hard to believe that it is because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home, but statistically speaking, driving is a little bit safer on Friday 13th," CVS statistician Alex Hoen told the Verzekerd insurance magazine.

In the last two years, Dutch insurers received reports of an average 7800 traffic accidents each Friday, the CVS study said.

But the average figure when the 13th fell on a Friday was just 7500.

There were also fewer incidents of fire and theft, although the average value of losses on Fridays 13th was slightly higher.  

 

~ The Age ~

 

Unlike others, U.S. defends freedom to offend in speech

A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article's tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.

Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean's, Canada's leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their "dignity, feelings and self-respect."

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which held five days of hearings on those questions here last week, will soon rule on whether Maclean's violated the law. As spectators lined up for the afternoon session last week, an argument broke out.

"It's hate speech!" yelled one man.

"It's free speech!" yelled another.

In the United States, that debate has been settled. Under the First Amendment, newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minorities and religions — even false, provocative or hateful things — without legal consequence.

The Maclean's article, "The Future Belongs to Islam," was an excerpt from a book by Mark Steyn called "America Alone" (Regnery, 2006). The title was fitting: The United States, in its treatment of hate speech, as in so many other areas of the law, takes a distinctive legal path.

"In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one's legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk, and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment," Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in a recent essay called "The Exceptional First Amendment."

"But in the United States," Professor Schauer continued, "all such speech remains constitutionally protected."

Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.

Earlier this month, the actress Brigitte Bardot, an animal rights activist, was fined $23,000 in France for provoking racial hatred by criticizing a Muslim ceremony involving the slaughter of sheep.

By contrast, American courts would not stop a planned march by the American Nazi Party in Skokie, Ill., in 1977, though a march would have been deeply distressing to the many Holocaust survivors there.

 

~ more... ~

 

War deserter vows never to return stateside

The American war deserter is one of an estimated 700 U.S. military personnel currently residing in Canada seeking refuge from the long reach of the U.S. Navy. On June 3, MPs voted 137 to 110 in favour of a resolution that called on the federal government to allow U.S. war resisters to apply for permanent resident status in Canada and to cease all deportation and removal proceedings against them. However, the government is only morally obligated to follow the resolution, it's not legally binding.

After serving in the Kosovo War in 1999 and then in Iraq in 2006 aboard the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier, Chief Petty Officer Wiley - responsible for a crew of 70 nuclear technician personnel - took issue with the navy in terms of the treatment of its personnel and the air combat missions his vessel was running in both conflicts.

Fast-forward to May 2006 in the Persian Gulf, he became alarmed when he learned of the tactics the navy was deploying with its aircraft to flush out the enemy.

"The idea was if you had a small village where insurgents were suspected to be ... you take a couple of F-18s and fly them multiple times over that village as low and as fast as possible to scare the crap out of everyone and get them moving," he explained. "The logic (the military) was pushing was anybody who runs has a reason to run away from the U.S. forces. I think anybody who's gotten beyond the fifth grade can probably understand that anyone who runs maybe doesn't want a bomb dropped on their head."

He set about educating himself in international law and that lead to conclusions he didn't like. Following arguments with his superiors for "getting too friendly" with his charges for discussing, among other things, the military's Individual Augmentee program - the re-assigning of officers from non-combat roles in one branch of service to replace thinning ranks in a conflict zone - he was reprimanded.

"I was told what I was doing was contrary to the good order, discipline and command (of the ship), which in the military means they're about to drop a very big hammer on your head," he said. "I told (my superior officer) something my high school geography teacher once told me: 'The truth is never afraid of honest inquiry' ... that's when he started talking about mutiny ... but I never talked about taking command of the ship."

Returning stateside, Wiley exhausted efforts to have the navy reassign him anywhere and in any capacity other than near Iraq or on the Enterprise.

The real punch in the gut came when the 17-year military veteran was reassigned to another carrier, the USS George Washington, due to sail to Iraq in less than four months. He contacted U.S.-based military lawyers and support groups seeking help, but no one could.

"If I refused to be deployed to Iraq ... I'd have been sent to (the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at) Fort Leavenworth, Kansas."

~ more... ~

 

Greenpeace declares Peaceland at planned US radar base

Czech Greenpeace activists, who have been occupying spot height 718 in the military district in which the U.S. radar base is to stand for five weeks, Monday proclaimed the independent state Peaceland there, spokeswoman Lenka Borakova told CTK.

The state has its own flag, national anthem, a declaration of independence and border, Peaceland "citizen" Lenka Borakova said.

The citizens of Peaceland will not allow the presence of weapons on its territory and if the armed military police come, they will refuse to show their documents, Borakova said.

Military police spokesman Jan Cermak said the police had checked about 300 people in connection with unauthorised entry to the military district since April 28.

However, the real number of the people was smaller as some of them have committed the minor offence, punishable with up to 3,000 crowns, repeatedly, Cermak said.

The activists' proclamation changes nothing in the situation, Cermak said.

"The proclamation of a fictitious state by the persons who stay illegally in the military district and of its so-called rules will not influence the approach of the military police to them in any way," he added.

"Anyone roaming in the military area without a valid permit who refuses to show its identity card can be detained," Cermak said.

"This has happened in one case," he added.

However, "no forcible solution to the situation is on the order of the day," Cermak said.

The activists have marked the area around the site in question. They say the radar site was no longer part of the Czech Republic, but of their land. As a result, the U.S. administration will have to negotiate with the new state, not with the Czech Republic, they said.

The United States wants to build the radar base and a base for ten interceptor missiles in Poland within its missile shield. The Czech-U.S. treaties are to be signed by July.

The Central European elements are to protect the United States and a large part of the European continent against missiles that states like Iran might launch.

Two thirds of the Czech public are still opposed to the radar base, according to the latest public opinion polls.

~ Prague Daily Monitor ~

 

'It’s not on the network news programs, because, in fact – it’s kind of secret'

• June 4, 2008 – The UK Independent publishes an exposé headlined: Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control. The American MSM ignores the revelation.

According to the article, "A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November."

"The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to the Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country."

• June 4. 2008 - A majority of the Iraqi parliament writes to the US Congress rejecting a long-term security deal with Washington if it is not linked to a requirement that U.S. forces leave.

• June 7, 2008 - Prime Minister Maliki arrives in Iran for talks aimed at improving relations between the two countries. The following day he publicly assures Iran's President Ahmadinejad that Iraq will not allow its territory to be used to attack Iran.

• June 8, 2008 – The cat is out of the bag. A leading Iraqi Shiite cleric states that the status of forces agreement between Washington and Baghdad could lead to an uprising in Iraq. He says, "It is not to the benefit of the U.S. as a major power to lessen the sovereignty of Iraq. This treaty is humiliating to the Iraqi people, and might cause an uprising against it and those who support it,"

• June 9, 2008 – Bush tries to avert the total breakdown of the talks. He concedes for the first time that the United States may not finish a complex security agreement with Iraq before leaving office. US officials also try to soften the flashpoint phrase, 'permanent bases,' by stating that " the proposed agreement would allow U.S. troops or personnel to operate out of U.S., Iraqi or joint facilities through either short or long-term contracts." A rose by any other name is till a permanent base.

• June 10, 2008 – McClatchy News Services report that Iraqi lawmakers say the United States is demanding 58 bases as part of a proposed 'status of forces" agreement that will allow U.S. troops to remain in the country indefinitely. Leading members of the two ruling Shiite parties claim that "… the Iraqi government rejected this proposal along with another U.S. demand that would have effectively handed over to the United States the power to determine if a hostile act from another country is aggression against Iraq." They fear this power would drag Iraq into a war between the United States and Iran. Wonder why Iran objects so strongly to this pact.

• June 10, 2008 – Despite "a storm of rising' opposition from Iraqi lawmakers, David Satterfield, the State Department's top adviser on Iraq expresses 'confidence' that a deal will be finalized between the US and Iraq by July. As usual, US arrogance reigns supreme.

• June 11, 2008 – More opposition is voiced by Iraqi officials who denounce the intention of the US to maintain 60 US military bases in their country. They call for a radical reduction of the U.S. military's role here after the U.N. mandate authorizing its presence expires at the end of this year.

• June 13, 2008 – Prime Minister al-Maliki announces that talks with the United States on a new long-term security pact are deadlocked.. "We have reached a deadlock," Maliki says, "because when we started the talks, we found that the U.S. demands hugely infringe on the sovereignty of Iraq, and this we can never accept.

 

~ more... ~

 

Creating our own reality

Some physicists still find quantum mechanics unpalatable, if not unbelievable, because of what it implies about the world beyond our senses. The theory's mathematics is simple enough to be taught to undergraduates, but the physical implications of that mathematics give rise to deep philosophical questions that remain unresolved. Quantum mechanics fundamentally concerns the way in which we observers connect to the universe we observe. The theory implies that when we measure particles and atoms, at least one of two long-held physical principles is untenable: Distant events do not affect one other, and properties we wish to observe exist before our measurements. One of these, locality or realism, must be fundamentally incorrect.

For more than 70 years, innumerable physicists have tried to disentangle the meaning of quantum mechanics through debate. Now Zeilinger and his collaborators have performed a series of experiments that, while neatly agreeing with the theory's predictions, are reinvigorating these historical dialogues. In Vienna experiments are testing whether quantum mechanics permits a fundamental physical reality. A new way of understanding an already powerful theory is beginning to take shape, one that could change the way we understand the world around us. Do we create what we observe through the act of our observations?

Most of us would agree that there exists a world outside our minds. At the classical level of our perceptions, this belief is almost certainly correct. If your couch is blue, you will observe it as such whether drunk, in high spirits, or depressed; the color is surely independent of the majority of your mental states. If you discovered your couch were suddenly red, you could be sure there was a cause. The classical world is real, and not only in your head. Solipsism hasn't really been a viable philosophical doctrine for decades, if not centuries.

But none of us perceives the world as it exists fundamentally. We do not observe the tiniest bits of matter, nor the forces that move them, individually through our senses. We evolved to experience the world in bulk, our faculties registering the net effect of trillions upon trillions of particles or atoms moving in concert. We are crude measurers. So divorced are we from the activity beneath our experience that physicists became relatively assured of the existence of atoms only about a century ago.

Physicists attribute a fundamental reality to what they do not directly perceive. Particles and atoms have observable effects that are well described by theories like quantum mechanics. Single atoms have been "seen" in measurements and presumably exist whether or not we observe them individually. The properties that define particles—mass, spin, etc.—are also thought to exist before we measure them. In physics this is how reality is defined; particles and atoms have measurable properties that exist prior to measurement. This is nothing stranger than your blue couch.

As a physical example, light consists of particles known as photons that each have a property called polarization. Measuring polarization is usually something like telling time; the property can be thought of like the direction of a second hand on a clock. For unpolarized light, the second hand can face any direction as with a normal clock; for polarized light the hand will face in only one or a few directions, as if the clock were broken. That photons can be polarized is, in fact, what allows some sunglasses to eliminate glare—the glasses block certain polarizations and let others through. In Vienna the polarization of light is also being used to test reality.

[ ... ]

Zeilinger's office is large and sparsely decorated. A few books lean on a lengthy, glass-fronted bookshelf. As he spoke, Zeilinger reclined in a black chair, and I leaned forward on a red couch. "Quantum mechanics is very fundamental, probably even more fundamental than we appreciate," he said, "But to give up on realism altogether is certainly wrong. Going back to Einstein, to give up realism about the moon, that's ridiculous. But on the quantum level we do have to give up realism."

With eerie precision, the results of Gröblacher's weekend experiments had followed the curve predicted by quantum mechanics. The data defied the predictions of Leggett's model by three orders of magnitude. Though they could never observe it, the polarizations truly did not exist before being measured. For so fundamental a result, Zeilinger and his group needed to test quantum mechanics again. In a room atop the IQOQI building, another PhD student, Alessandro Fedrizzi, recreated the experiment using a laser found in a Blu-ray disk player.

Leggett's theory was more powerful than Bell's because it required that light's polarization be measured not just like the second hand on a clock face, but over an entire sphere. In essence, there were an infinite number of clock faces on which the second hand could point. For the experimenters this meant that they had to account for an infinite number of possible measurement settings. So Zeilinger's group rederived Leggett's theory for a finite number of measurements. There were certain directions the polarization would more likely face in quantum mechanics. This test was more stringent. In mid-2007 Fedrizzi found that the new realism model was violated by 80 orders of magnitude; the group was even more assured that quantum mechanics was correct.

Leggett agrees with Zeilinger that realism is wrong in quantum mechanics, but when I asked him whether he now believes in the theory, he answered only "no" before demurring, "I'm in a small minority with that point of view and I wouldn't stake my life on it." For Leggett there are still enough loopholes to disbelieve. I asked him what could finally change his mind about quantum mechanics. Without hesitation, he said sending humans into space as detectors to test the theory. In space there is enough distance to exclude communication between the detectors (humans), and the lack of other particles should allow most entangled photons to reach the detectors unimpeded. Plus, each person can decide independently which photon polarizations to measure. If Leggett's model were contradicted in space, he might believe. When I mentioned this to Prof. Zeilinger he said, "That will happen someday. There is no doubt in my mind. It is just a question of technology." Alessandro Fedrizzi had already shown me a prototype of a realism experiment he is hoping to send up in a satellite. It's a heavy, metallic slab the size of a dinner plate.

~ From: The Reality Tests ~

 

Fun and games in Iraq

Fun with War Crimes

http://funwithwarcrimes.com/

Paranoid Linux

Paranoid Linux is an operating system that assumes that its operator is under assault from the government (it was intended for use by Chinese and Syrian dissidents), and it does everything it can to keep your communications and documents a secret. It even throws up a bunch of "chaff" communications that are supposed to disguise the fact that you're doing anything covert. So while you're receiving a political message one character at a time, ParanoidLinux is pretending to surf the Web and fill in questionnaires and flirt in chat-rooms. Meanwhile, one in every five hundred characters you receive is your real message, a needle buried in a huge haystack.
~Cory Doctorow (Little Brother, 2008)

When those words were written, ParanoidLinux was just a fiction. It is our goal to make this a reality. The project officially started on May 14th, and has been growing ever since. We welcome your ideas, contributions, designs, or code. You can find us on freenode's irc server in the #paranoidlinux channel. Hope to see you there!

--
ParanoidLinux Team

http://www.paranoidlinux.org/

 

Hints of 'time before Big Bang'

Although this microwave background is mostly smooth, the Cobe satellite in 1992 discovered small fluctuations that were believed to be the seeds from which the galaxy clusters we see in today's Universe grew.

Dr Adrienne Erickcek, from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and colleagues now believe these fluctuations contain hints that our Universe "bubbled off" from a previous one.

Their data comes from Nasa's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which has been studying the CMB since its launch in 2001.

Their model suggests that new universes could be created spontaneously from apparently empty space. From inside the parent universe, the event would be surprisingly unspectacular.

~ more... ~

 

Comedy stoners Harold and Kumar are blazing a trail for a new breed of Hollywood hero, says John Patterson

Stoners. What are they good for? Absolutely nothing! They spend years adrift on their couches, limbs splayed to all four points of the compass, staring slack-jawed at the TV or playing video games, which for them counts as strenuous exercise. Otherwise they're forever going down on their bongs, sucking up a chamberful of hot, sweet smoke, letting it cool as it bubbles up through the water before unthumbing that carburettor and letting a fat, mind-bending lungful rush down their throats. Cue much explosive coughing, bloodshot eyes, and several more hours of zoned-out stasis and heroic underachievement.

I ask you: Could these people ever run a revolution? Could they bring a society to its very knees and then remake it in their own bleary-eyed image? Fat chance, but the decades-long American paranoia about marijuana is predicated precisely on the notion that that is exactly what the potheads and the weirdos have in mind. The Straights and The Squares and The Narcs and The Man are so convinced that potheads constitute a threat to society that the potheads become rebels, insurgents and anarchists almost by default. And why? Because pot makes the people who don't smoke it even more paranoid than the people who do.

So where better to find Harold and Kumar, the most keen-eyed and satirical of all the pothead duos, than locked up in Guantánamo Bay in their latest film? Because wherever there is idiocy on the part of authority, there you shall you also find Harold and Kumar - stoned to the gills - and they're the only people making any sense.

Over the last few years, the wake-n-bake likes of Harold and Kumar, Bill and Ted, Jesse and Chester from Dude, Where's My Car?, Redman and Method Man in How High, the kids from Dazed And Confused, That 70s Show, the forthcoming Pineapple Express, and pretty much everyone in every Judd Apatow movie have come to resemble a new breed of hero. As harmless but enthusiastic potheads, they constitute an anarchic threat because, well, basically they don't give a shit, can't deal with schedules or squares or assholes or jobs, and wanna be left alone to smoke out.

This is just too much for law enforcement, fun-ophobes, ambitious politicians, bluenoses, and devotees of the Protestant work ethic, so a great pointless war on drugs, even on harmless weed, has been waged for five decades to no discernible deterrent effect. The war on terror draws inspiration from the same paranoid well, and the new Homeland Security infrastructure looks for all the world like a gigantic, hypertrophied version of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

If you want a subversive movie, consider this: Harold And Kumar Escape From Guantánamo Bay says more cogent and pertinent things about post-9/11 America than all the socially responsible and endlessly dreary war on terror movies combined. Sure, it has the usual gross-out moments and gay-panic alerts, shit-and-zit jokes and mucho smokage, dude, but, as with its predecessor (US title: Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle), it also carries an undercurrent of jokes about America's transformation into a "post-racial" society, where it becomes harder and harder to say what an "American" looks like.

Asian-American Harold and Indian-American Kumar fetch up at GitMo after Kumar produces his scary-looking "smokeless bong" on a flight to Amsterdam. An old white lady - who has already hallucinated an image of Kumar dressed like Bin-Laden - mistakes the word "bong" for "bomb" and all hell breaks loose. This brings them to the attention of the racist head of Homeland Security (Rob Corddry), who sees all non-whites as foreigners and who at one point proudly wipes his ass on the Bill of Rights. He thinks he's found in Harold and Kumar the wet dream of Homeland Security paranoids: a working alliance between Al Qaida and North Korea, and his racist outbursts soar high on wings of idiocy and extremism. It's easy to tell who the villains are, and most of them are white.

But it's not just some spasm of reverse racism. Everybody's stereotype is up for display and for demolition. Harold accords with the perception of Asian-Americans as "the model minority" - hardworking, studious, and something of a control freak ("Don't fuck with my presets," he tells Kumar in White Castle when the latter fiddles with his car radio. To which the freewheeling Kumar replies, "Dude, your whole life is on preset!"). Kumar doesn't accord with any particular stereotype of equally industrious Americans of Indian ancestry, being eternally horny, party-hearty and in no hurry to take up the medical profession he's so gifted in. Their Jewish neighbours Goldstein and Rosenberg tell some of the sickest Jewish jokes I've ever heard. When asked how good Katie Holmes's breasts look in The Gift, Goldstein offers this: "You know the Holocaust? OK, the exact opposite of that!"

Elsewhere in both movies, other stereotypes are upended: the looming, scary-looking black guy turns out to be a sweet-natured dentist; the Klansman has a tastefully appointed, Architectural Digest-style home; and when Homeland Security pedantically question Harold's parents in Korean, they respond - surprise, surprise - in perfect, unaccented English.

Harold and Kumar are the latest in a long line of pothead-rebels that stretches all the way back to Cheech and Chong, and there is a broad similarity between all of these stoner duos. They're all hedonistic innocents, living before the Fall in the Garden of Weeden, but The Man won't leave them be. They're so puppyishly devoted to one another that you wouldn't be surprised if they slept innocently in the same bed, like Laurel and Hardy or Morecambe and Wise.

~ more... ~

PM to apologise for Canada's treatment of native Americans

The Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, was yesterday scheduled to apologise for one of the darkest episodes in the country's history: the inhumane treatment of native Americans spanning two centuries.

The Canadian government issued a general apology in 1998 but Harper's apology yesterday will be aimed at 150,000 students, many of whom were forcibly taken from their homes as part of a strategy aimed at destroying their culture and enforcing assimilation. Some were put in residential schools where mistreatment included sexual abuse.

One of them, Michael Cachagee, who spent 12 years in three different schools from 1944, told Associated Press: "I was beaten. I was put in tubs of hot water. I suffered great pains of hunger. I was force-fed rotten food." He added: "The intent was to destroy the Indian."

Normal business at the House of Commons in Ottawa was due to be suspended while Harper delivered the apology. About 200 representatives from the country's estimated 1 million native American population, comprising mainly the First Nations, Metis and Inuit, were invited.

Harper told the Commons on Tuesday: "I hope that we will begin the process of healing."

This year, the Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, issued a similar apology to the country's aborigines taken from their families as part of a similar assimilation programme.

The Canadian apology comes two years after the government and the churches that ran the schools settled a lawsuit brought by victims, offering C$2bn (£1bn) compensation. The forced removal of the children began in the 19th century and continued until the 1970s. At the schools, children were forbidden to use their own languages and discouraged from learning about their own cultures.

A senior official in the Indian affairs department, Duncan Campbell Scott, wrote in 1920 that the aim was to "kill the Indian in the child" until "there is not a single American Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed". About 90,000 of the 150,000 students who went through the system are still alive.

Phil Fontaine, chief of the Assembly of First Nations, described this as Canada's "dark history". Grand Chief Weaselhead, who was among those invited to attend the Commons, said the apology was "monumental".

The native population makes up about 4% of Canada's population though it remains among the poorest. Canada was one of the few nations that last year voted against the UN declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples, saying that it would create constitutional problems.

~ Source: The Guardian ~

 

"It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history"

A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.

The BBC's Panorama programme has used US and Iraqi government sources to research how much some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding.

A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.

The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies.

War profiteering

While Presdient George W Bush remains in the White House, it is unlikely the gagging orders will be lifted.

To date, no major US contractor faces trial for fraud or mismanagement in Iraq.

The president's Democratic opponents are keeping up the pressure over war profiteering in Iraq.

Henry Waxman, who chairs the House committee on oversight and government reform, said: "The money that's gone into waste, fraud and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous, it's egregious.

~ From: BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions ~

 

Ireland delivers stunning blow to Europe's leaders

The long campaign to forge a new dispensation for the European Union descended into panic and uncertainty yesterday when Ireland turned its back on its 26 EU partners and voted down the Lisbon Treaty.

EU leaders in Brussels and governments across the union, particularly Germany and France, were stunned by the Irish verdict, which amounted to a huge vote of no confidence in the way the EU is run.

The referendum in Ireland was the sole popular vote in the EU on the grand plan to give Europe a sitting president and foreign minister, and reconfigure the way the EU is governed. The result left the project severely wounded, perhaps fatally.

The Irish voted by a 7% margin, 53.6 to 46.4, against the treaty, which has already been ratified by 18 EU countries and is expected to be endorsed by the other eight.

The result left Europe's leaders with a giant dilemma over what to do next. A summit next week in Brussels was originally planned as a celebration. The Irish result is particularly painful for Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who masterminded the new treaty last year, and for the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was relishing the central role of ushering in a new European era over the next six months of France's EU presidency.

Berlin and Paris moved swiftly last night to try to limit the damage, pressing Downing Street, according to sources in Brussels, not to make matters worse by abandoning Britain's ratification of the treaty, now in its final stages in the Lords.

Merkel and Sarkozy issued a joint statement, urging all other EU countries to ratify the document and declaring that the reforms envisaged by the treaty remained essential. Gordon Brown was said to have reassured both governments that he had no intention of scrapping ratification.

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Why Is Bush Helping Saudi Arabia Build Nukes?

Last month, while the American people were becoming the personal ATMs of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Saudi Arabia signing away an even more valuable gift: nuclear technology. In a ceremony little-noticed in this country, Ms. Rice volunteered the U.S. to assist Saudi Arabia in developing nuclear reactors, training nuclear engineers, and constructing nuclear infrastructure. While oil breaks records at $130 per barrel or more, the American consumer is footing the bill for Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions.

Saudi Arabia has poured money into developing its vast reserves of natural gas for domestic electricity production. It continues to invest in a national gas transportation pipeline and stepped-up exploration, building a solid foundation for domestic energy production that could meet its electricity needs for many decades. Nuclear energy, on the other hand, would require enormous investments in new infrastructure by a country with zero expertise in this complex technology.

Have Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush or Saudi leaders looked skyward? The Saudi desert is under almost constant sunshine. If Mr. Bush wanted to help his friends in Riyadh diversify their energy portfolio, he should have offered solar panels, not nuclear plants.

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FDA issues precautionary note on silver fillings

Silver dental fillings contain mercury, and the government for the first time is warning that they may pose a safety concern for pregnant women and young children. The Food and Drug Administration posted the precaution on its Web site earlier this month, to settle a lawsuit — making the move a victory for anti-mercury activists.

The warning is not aimed at the general population, only at two groups already urged to limit mercury from another source — seafood — because too much can harm a developing brain.

The fillings, formally known as dental amalgams, "contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetuses," reads the FDA Web posting.

That doesn't mean it truly harms, and the FDA advises against removing existing fillings.

The agency still is studying whether the small amount of mercury vapor released by chewing and brushing is enough to cause neurologic disorders or other problems in youngsters. There have been only a handful of rigorous studies comparing children given either amalgam fillings or tooth-colored resin composite fillings that are mercury-free — and those studies haven't detected any brain problems.

Nor has that research settled the long-simmering scientific controversy. Two years ago, the FDA's own independent scientific advisers said that while amalgam fillings were safe for most people, more research was needed about potential effects on fetuses and children under 6.

And this spring, the FDA put dentists on notice that it is considering additional controls, including whether to require warnings that would advise consumers of the mercury in amalgams before they have a cavity filled, or perhaps even restrict use in small children and certain other patients. It is accepting public comments until July 28.

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