"It was a coordinated raid"
"I stared down at a newspaper at my feet and tried to read the upside-down headlines"
-
"absolutely right move at this point in time."
-
"disregard for human rights and global security is a defiance that should not be tolerated"
-
"it's also problematic because it doesn't seem to work"
-
"good health, and his plan to help America pay for it, for an hour"
-
"they expect the 25 homes to be demolished very soon"
-
"to conform with the repressive requirements of the government"
-
"The dominoes are beginning to fall."

"For Lord Monboddo, the lower boundary of humanity may be crossed by a well-trained orangutan"

"God smiles at those he sees denouncing evils of which they are the cause"

The superiority of Western culture is sustained only by the desire of the rest of the world to join it. When there is the least sign of refusal, the slightest ebbing of that desire, the West loses its seductive appeal in its own eyes.

Jean Baudrillard
New Left Review 37, January-February 2006
-
link ::: wood s lot :::

Elfriede Jelinek: Provocation as the Breath of Life

Sport is, for her, equivalent to contempt for artistic and intellectual achievement, a kind of war, and a mass phenomenon which sanctions violence and despises the weak. Fitness and the body culture are also a metaphor for all the exaggerated exertions which we humans in the rich part of the world devote ourselves to in order to keep ourselves strong and beautiful:

Legs break, sinews are torn, veins burst, ligaments are stretched too far, but manage somehow to survive. Human bodies engaged in sport are like pizza boxes or disposable mugs, at first they are beautiful and then they are second-hand: yes all used up! But at any rate they are washable and easy to take care of thanks to the modern fibres which the Creator has used to make them...

Sture Packalen
Nobelprize.org
-
link ::: wood s lot :::

"hurl your thunderbolt even unto death"

1. To determine whether extraterrestrial intelligence existed in our galaxy.
2. Determine what the relationship of this UFO phenomena might be to extraterrestrial intelligence.

Regina Jose Galindo:

In a group show on the theme of what it means to be a Guatemalan, she repeatedly injected herself with valium. In another performance, she put herself inside a garbage bag and was deposited at the municipal dump; crawled into the ring to fight with a professional wrestler; made a five-day journey from Guatemala to Lima, Peru, and back–blindfolded.

Francisco Goldman/Bomb
interview
-

"and went for a walk through the city"
-
Si fuera Jose y mas poemas
-
"I think the crowd here is not too familiar with the provocative nature of some contemporary trends."
-
"A single, queasy glance was enough to get the point."

Suela Qoshja:

"of herself just after her neighbour was trafficked to Germany"
-

-
link path Morgan Meis/3QuarksDaily

"Yew kids stay 'way from that damned dead snake, ya hear me?"

gleaned from the update below:

Filming of Water, which brought together Indian actors Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das and Akshay Kumar, and a talented crew of international technicians, was first stopped in February last year. The production was initially scheduled to begin in the city of Varanasi, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, on January 30, 2000. Hindu chauvinist organisations, which had attempted to stop screenings of Fire and Earth when these films were released in 1996 and 1999, denounced the film and, without having read the script, declared it "anti-Hindu" and "anti-India".

WSWS 10.Apr.01

"I stood on a hill and laughed out loud."
The Greater Common Good
Arundhati Roy
Friends of River Narmada
-
link dropping knowledge
"questions can change the world"

also:

Erykah Badu

BeautifulLoveIncorporatedNonProfitDevelopment
taking out the demons in my range
-

Geri Halliwell

South Asian democracy files:

"Pregnant woman burnt to death"
"Times of India 19.Aug.05
-
" a million little Indian girls"
Dilip D.Sousa/Rediff 09.Aug.04
-
"this terrible and murderous vulnerability"
Martha Nussbaum/BostonReview/CounterCurrents 29.Jul.04

link path A Time To Reflect > Known Turf
(though really it went something like - Kiran Desai at 3QuarksDaily > search > 15 tabs of various hits from that dovetailing with a link from bloggy to Art Asia Pacific Magazine setting a South Asian tone from which a search for Tyeb Mehta led to M.F. Hussain and that led to A Time To Reflect but also to Gagagamini which led to Shabana Azmi which led eventually to Shabana Azmi at dropping knowledge and if Tom hadn't called that broken link to my attention I wouldn't have had the chance to honor the inspiration Shabana Azmi's beauty and integrity became, again, when I encountered them, again.

"Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding [Hurricane Katrina] from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight."

"For war billions more"
-
"...he pledged to bring government control over all levels of oil and gas exploitation.
And if that doesn't provide enough leverage, Morales said he'll send Bolivians into the streets to defend his government's plans..."
-
Japanese whale-in-a-bun
"a glut of the controversial dish"

Chikungunya spreads
-
Grippe Aviaire au Nigeria
-
a deep anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism in Europe
-
Mother Nature helps fire crews
Fire chief responds:

"The Tragedy Springs burn on Cleveland National Forest helped save the community of Pine Valley from the Cedar fire, but because we had to leave a portion unburned, for the toad. There would have been better results if that had not been a barrier."

-
more numinous recension

Either the Arctic (or more technically the northern polar ice cap, since the Arctic is a region and will still be there no matter what happens) is melting, or it isn't. Either last year was the warmest in recorded history or it wasn't.
These aren't things I personally am able to verify. It's very hot today where I am, and the hills in the Cleveland National Forest outside Los Angeles a little to the south are on fire, and the smoke from that is in the air here.
Still that's anecdotal - this is central California, where people complain when the temperature gets below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. So even though current conditions make it easier to accept, I don't know these things. They exist as assertions made by what seems to be a consensus of professionals.
I can't verify the credentials of the scientists making the assertions, or even if they themselves exist as real people with real lives.
So somewhere in there I take it all on faith, a relatively blind faith.
We can reduce that to a set of geometric shapes if we want - me a little dot here, the Arctic a toroidal thing over there, the climatologists and their public representatives other little dots scattered across a grid of latitude and longitude.
Getting something to represent the temperature increase forces us to append graphs and other visual displays.
But what we have at the end is trust, not facts. The interconnections of integrity and human willingness to believe; out of necessity, yes, but there's an optimism in that as well. An innocence too.
By itself that complex of assertion and trust would be a stressful thing, considering the subject and its implications, but adding in the immense campaign of disinformation and political obstruction, and recognizing the responsibilities of cause and the need for the culpable to keep that causative linkage obscure and diffuse - to keep the fact of the change in doubt, and then as it becomes unavoidable to shift the causative blame onto the victims and away from the responsible, which is pretty much where we are at this moment - that places the faith and trust of the individual - on the graph, me; in the world, me and you, us - in a context of near-combat, a kind of war of trust and faith, with the body count measuring those fallen to doubt and cynicism.
So I sent a link to that "cell phone egg-cooker" story, from a link I got somewhere, to a friend who's got a certain amount of faith in me as a source of credible information.
And then yesterday I sent her a link to an interview with the original perpetrator of the hoax that story actually is. Being a responsible friend.
OK. So, against a background of stability, and the expectation that barring unforeseen circumstances tomorrow will be much like today - in other words the world as it was, but not as it is - that kind of hoaxing can be a healthy reminder that your biases will convince you of things for which the evidence alone is not sufficient. Knee-jerk reactions. Prejudice.
This is not a background of stability.
This is a world where soft lambs are carried into the tender gaze of children, Frankenstein creatures grown in open-air laboratories linked directly and complicitly to the hell-cages of primate research.
Prejudice as recognition.
I could go on. I will a little. The genetic vandalism that has defaced human agriculture forever, the still unremarked-on fact that automobile crashes kill more children in the US than anything else does, the complete devaluing of the aged in a culture that purports to revere life - you get the idea.
Not trusting technology in that environment is at worst a forgivable reaction, and steadily gains purpose as healthy mistrust.
Believing that the processes of invention and delivery of new technologies no longer have goals in common with, or any interest in the well-being of those who receive them - that's not Luddite hysteria, that's coming out of the data.
Crafting that cell-phone hoax in the year 2000 is one thing; disseminating it now - with fire and great anxiety present and growing all around - isn't the neutral fun thing sophisticated rational skeptics wish it were.
It's this contextual shift that's so hard to get, that refutes the hard and fast letter of the law, though it does honor the spirit.
Tricking people who don't know what to believe or who to trust and making them even more anxious - that's aggression, intellectual assault.
It's why "fire in a crowded theater" is so accessible and popular as a term of discourse.
It's why those Danish cartoons that everyone wants to place in some universal and eternal box of either right or wrong won't fit there.
Laughing at someone's obvious and irritating superstitious absurdities - when they aren't being beaten to their knees in front of you - that's one thing.
Laughing at them when they're weeping and digging in the rubble of their homes for their relatives is another.
People can understand that. It means freedom has responsibilities, it means what you do isn't happening in a vacuum. Even now.

Le torchon brûle
"...if I do business with you, no-one else has the right to interfere."

Chinese ambassador to Israel Chen Yonglong has condemned the efforts by the US to choke off trade in arms between Israel and China. He said the two countries had joined together in a strategic partnership that would break into a more glorious dawn. This is one of the most enthusiastic statements about Israel ever made by China.

October 2001:

At first sight, it is difficult to imagine two nations more different to each other than China and Israel. China is four hundred times Israel's size and two hundred times its population. One is the heart of Asia; the other a bridge between West and East. However, China and Israel have many characteristics in common. Here follow seven similarities.
The principal trait is their long history. Both nations span at least four millennia, being the nations on earth who claim such continuous national identity.
Secondly, these long national identities were recently redefined, almost simultaneously: modern Israel in 1948, modern China in 1949. In both countries national minorities constitute roughly 10% of the population.
Thirdly, their national religions (Confucianism and Judaism) are more based upon deed than dogma, much more evolved around behaviour than belief. The maxim "Don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you" is essential to both civilizations, Jewish and Chinese, as well as the principle that human nature is basically good. In neither civilization does theology play a major role. One century ago, Wu Ting Fang, a Chinese stateman, stated: "There is a resemblance between Confucius and Moses –in their doctrines and in their way of teaching and of moulding the character of their two respective peoples. The most striking agreement is the importance of honoring one's parents." Moreover both religions are strictly non-missionary and tolerant towards the outside world. They do not have as a practical aim to convert the world to Confucianism or Judaism.
In the fourth place, in a world that favors Western languages, both China and Israel are proudly loyal to their respective ancient tongues and their unique alphabets. The renovation of biblical Hebrew in modern times has a parallel in China's simplification of ancient Mandarin.
The fifth similarity: both Jews and Chinese have a long history of suffering and persecution. Their losses during the Second World War brought their tragedy to a nadir, and both the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanjing remain as a blemish in mankind's consciousness. During the war, Liu Shih-Shun, a Chinese academician and Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated: "Like the Jews, the Chinese have a cultural heritage of thousands of years. Like the children of Israel, my countrymen are scattered over the four corners of earth. Like your people, my people know the meaning of hardship and, for this reason, they are able to carry on a prolonged war of resistance without the material things that are considered essential in other parts of the world." It should be noted that China is frequently mentioned as the only country in the world where there was never any expression of Judeophobia, that was so characteristic of European history. In March 2001 there was a ceremony at Yad Vashem, to honor Feng Shan Ho, the Chinese Consul in Vienna between 1938 and 1940, who distributed hundreds of Chinese visas to save Jews from the Nazi regime.
In the sixth place, they both had a major influence in human civilization, in its culture, literature, and sciences. World history is inimaginable without either the Chinese or the Jews.
There is a further common trait that is more modern. Both China and Israel started a process of modernization of their economy. The models upon which Mao Zedong and Ben-Gurion conceived the economy was state-oriented, while the more recent leaders of both countries launched a campaign to open their economies to the free market. Having all these in mind, one can conclude that bridges between China and Israel are natural and desirable, and should be built for their mutual benefit. While they do not share a regional group, they belong to the tiny group of Ancient Civilizations recently revived, of hard-working creative peoples who have made major contributions to mankind.
As Wu Ting Fang put it: "The Chinese and the Jews have always been friends and not enemies. Both have been persecuted and despised… The Jews and Chinese are despised not on account of their vices… but on account of their virtues, on account of their industry, economy, perseverance, thrift".

Bridges Between China and Israel
Gustavo Perednik/Hagshama

-

January 2006:

King Abdullah has begun the first ever state visit to China by a Saudi leader, expected to focus on boosting co-operation to fuel China's soaring energy needs.
The visit marks the first part of an Asian tour that will take him on to India, Malaysia and Pakistan.
During his three-day stay in China, Abdullah is scheduled to meet President Hu Jintao on Monday and Wu Bangguo, the No 2 Communist Party leader, and Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, on Tuesday.
Kong Quan, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, said on Thursday that the two sides were expected to discuss energy co-operation, anti-terrorism, politics, economics, culture, health and telecommunications.
He gave no information about possible energy deals to be signed.
[..]
Some observers believe that the Chinese need for new oil supplies could lead to a stand-off with the United States over access to Middle Eastern oil.

Al Jazeera/Liberty Post 22.Jan.06

-

December 2004:

Israel's Channel Two television reported on 15 December that Feith had demanded the resignation of retired Maj. Gen. Amos Yaron, the widely respected and longtime director-general of Israel's MoD. According to the reports, Feith was 'outraged' that he was not informed the UAV sale to China few years ago, and demanded the resignation of retired Maj. Gen. Amos Yaron, the widely respected and long-time director-general of Israel's MoD.
This is also the first time that the existence of such a deal between China and Israel is confirmed. China reportedly acquired some unknown number of the Israeli Aerospace Industry (IAI)'s Harpy Attack UAV in 1994. In summer 2004 some of these UAVs were sent back to Israel to be upgraded for better performance. The Pentagon has already demanded that Israel not to deliver these UAVs to China, even though they are properties of the PRC.
Harpy is the armed UAV developed by IAI in the 1990s. It is a unique weapon system with features of both UAV and cruise missile. Launched from a ground vehicle or surface warship far away from the battle zone, the Harpy UAV can detect, attack and destroy radar emitters in all-weather conditions, day/night over a distance of 500kg. Once an enemy radar is detected and verified, the UAV transitions into a near vertical dive and destroy the target with its high explosive warhead.

Chinese Defence Today 25.Dec.04

-

May 2002:

The real danger comes in Israel's habit of reverse engineering U.S. technology and selling to nations hostile to U.S. interests. Israel's client list includes Cambodia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the South Lebanon Army, India, China, Burma and Zambia. The U.S. has most recently warmed up to India and is now in fact competing with Israel for arms sales there, but the other Israeli customers remain dubious at best.
Perhaps the most troubling of all is the Israeli/Chinese arms relationship. Israel is China's second largest supplier of arms. Coincidentally, the newest addition to the Chinese air force, the F-10 multi-role fighter, is an almost identical version of the Lavi (Lion). The Lavi was a joint Israeli-American design based upon the F-16 for manufacture in Israel, but financed mostly with American aid. Plagued by cost overruns, it was canceled in 1987, but not before the U.S. spent $1.5 billion on the project.
Last April, when the Navy EP-3E surveillance plane was forced to land in China after a Chinese F-8 fighter flew into its propeller, photos show Israeli built Python 3 missiles under the fighter's wings.
If Israeli weapons sales to China induce misgivings, including the most recent U.S. blocked sale of Israel's Phalcon airborne radar, the beneficiaries of Chinese arms transfers of Israeli-American technology are even more disturbing. In 1996, as disclosed in the UN Register of Conventional Arms, China sold over 100 missiles and launchers to Iran, along with a handful of combat aircraft and warships. Even worse, in 1997 the New York Daily News reported that Iraq had deployed Israeli-developed, Chinese PL-8 missiles in the no-fly zones, endangering American pilots.
Americans deserve to know where their money is being spent, and how money allocated for friends and technology shared with friends can all too easily end up in the wrong hands, threatening all parties involved.

Jonathan Reingold/CommonDreams 09.May.02

-

April 2005:

China hopes to double its trade with Israel over the next three years, from nearly $2.5 billion registered in 2004 to $5 billion or more by 2008, according to Beijing's top diplomat here, who declined to discuss specifics of the two countries' defense trade.
In an April 7 lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ambassador Chen Yonglong noted that Sino-Israeli trade is growing at an annual rate of some 40 percent.
When asked specifically about bilateral defense trade ties, however — and about U.S. claims that Israel is Beijing's second largest supplier of arms and military technology after Russia — Chen demurred from providing additional data. He insisted, however, that China does not constitute a military threat to the United States, and that pressure from Washington to trample Sino-Israeli defense trade is unjustified.
"In principle, if I do business with you, I don't think others should interfere," Chen said.
Intense U.S. government pressure — coupled with veiled threats to curtail the more than $2 billion that Israel receives each year in U.S. military aid — forced Israel to cancel in May 2000 a signed and legally binding contract with China for the sale of aerial early warning aircraft. Israel suffered heavy monetary and political penalties as a result of the contract violation.

Barbara Opall-Rome/Defense News 08.Apr.05

Wragg is dead.

link fixed
On the day of the demolition, she had been working in Bethlehem

a tasty recipe for American business:

The President's domestic agenda was dominated by an "American Competitiveness Initiative" that's strongly supported by the vast majority of the business community, from large corporations to Main Street shops.
While only a few items on Bush's wish list were new to a State of the Union audience, it was significant that he focused on economic issues pushed hard by business, rather than on the social agenda of religious conservatives.
Facing tough economic competition from India and China, the President called for "a better path" on economic policy, "an agenda for a nation that competes with confidence.... Americans should not fear our economic future, because we intend to shape it."

- Richard Dunham/Business Week 01.Feb.06

We intend to shape it. Just as soon as we get through shaping the future of Iraq, I guess.
The language is important here. You need to see that he's saying "Americans" - that's us, you, me. And he's saying "we" - that's not us, not you, not me.
It is kind of, but it isn't really, not even in the context of the speech and its intentions.
In the real world the gulf of difference between what's meant by "Americans" when it's used by men like Bush - the people, the common people of the country - and what's really being carried in that third person plural "we" - the natural elect, the privileged by birthright - is wide enough it could be describing two separate species.

Pocketa-pocketa my oh my:

Industry experts say that if President George W. Bush wants to make a push to reduce oil consumption in the United States, there are some solutions at hand. But with names like carbon composites and new metal alloys, they may seem banal and do not create much buzz.
Perhaps the most significant step the country could take in reducing oil dependence is to change the way cars are produced, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy research organization that has consulted for the Department of Defense. Automobiles, for instance, use about 9 million barrels of the 20 million barrels or so of oil that the United States consumes each day. Trucks, heavy machinery and some power plants consume the rest.
Improving the efficiency of hybrid engines, and using advanced metal alloys and carbon composites instead of heavier steel to make cars could double or triple the fuel efficiency in these automobiles.
Bush's push to reduce what he calls America's "addiction" to oil comes at a time when China and India are scrambling to secure oil resources to fuel the needs of their roaring economies.
"We could reduce our consumption by 4 to 5 million barrels a day by going down this pathway," said Odd-Even Bustnes, a principal at the Rocky Mountain Institute. Referring Tuesday to the president's State of the Union address, Bustnes added, "What the president said yesterday is a step in the right direction, but I'm not sure it's a step of the right magnitude."

- Simon Romero/NYTimes-IHT 02.Feb.06

...the US consumes enough oil to cover a football field with a column of oil 2500 feet tall. That's 121 million cubic feet. 55-60% of US consumption is imported at a cost of $50 billion+ per year, amounting to the largest single element of our trade deficit. In summer 2004, thanks to higher prices, increased demand, and lower production, record trade deficits of more than $50 billion per month were recorded, with approximately 30% of that attributable to imported energy costs. In September 2004, the US reported its lowest montly oil production in 55 years, at an average of 4.85 million barrels per day.

- Dick Gibson/Popular Geology

Updated!
"roaring economies" is a good phrase.
Lots of things roar - fires, big waterfalls, hurricane winds, storm waves, large carnivores, angry drunken louts. Not many roaring things are what you'd want to have around the house.
Odd-Even Bustnes is good. Not touching that.
Something not good is the absolutely sacred taboo/prohibition against mentioning the possibility of reducing the demand for what it is the oil does - the actual drug "experience", to stick with the addiction metaphor.
The only talk is about reduction of consumption by the machines themselves - better mileage, better materials, etc. Robot demand, that's what's wrong.
This is exactly why junkies use needles - it's a more efficient way of using the drug.
It's exactly why crack cocaine is smoked in glass pipes.