crazy weather:

Sir Richard Branson has pledged three billion dollars (1.6 billion pounds) towards renewable energy initiatives, saying business had a duty to future generations.
He said the money would come from the Virgin empire's airline and train businesses, adding that he hoped the move would encourage others to "do what they can".
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The global sea level rise caused by climate change, severely threatening many of the world's coastal and low-lying areas from Bangladesh to East Anglia, is proceeding faster than UN scientists predicted only five years ago, Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, said yesterday.
[...]
Last week, two American studies showed that the melting of the winter sea ice in the Arctic had accelerated enormously in the past two years, with a section the size of Turkey disappearing in just 12 months.
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Another summer of record-breaking temperatures brought power failures, heat waves, droughts and tropical storms throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Only one place seemed to remain cool: the air-conditioned offices of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. As New York City wilted beneath them, they sat insouciant and comfortable, hurling editorials of stunning misdirection at their readers, continuing their irresponsible drumbeat that global warming is junk science.
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Global warming might cause an increase in illegal immigration as people "flee storm-ravaged or sun-parched regions" to find refuge in the U.S., according to an expert who addressed a gathering on climate change in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
"Large-scale climatic disruptions in nearby nations, such as Mexico or Caribbean Island nations," may result in "spillover effects on the health system in the U.S.," said Devra Lee Davis, director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, in an abstract on the subject, "Changes in Severe Weather and Climate: Implications for Human Health."
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Some travel agencies touting Arctic tours have been revving up their recent promotions to tourists about the increased likelihood they will spot polar bears in this region where several populations of polar bears live. According to scientists from NASA and the Canadian Wildlife Service, these increased Arctic polar bear sightings are probably related to retreating sea ice triggered by climate warming and not due to population increases as some may believe.
The new research suggests that progressively earlier breakup of the Arctic sea ice, stimulated by climate warming, shortens the spring hunting season for female polar bears in Western Hudson Bay and is likely responsible for the continuing fall in the average weight of these bears.
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The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew has issued a "position paper" saying that man-made global warming is changing the outlook for plants and trees worldwide.
It says four species on its own lands are flowering earlier each year.
Kew's conservation scientists say other human activities such as the expansion of cities are also hurting plants, some which poorer societies depend on.
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and, to show we haven't lost our sense of fun:

Global warming might cause an increase in illegal immigration as people "flee storm-ravaged or sun-parched regions" to find refuge in the U.S., according to an expert who addressed a gathering on climate change in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

an aggressive legal posture in California:

The state attorney general's office is seeking unspecified damages from General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota and Nissan because they "either knew or should have known the severe impact their vehicles would have on the health of the planet".

Gumbel/IndependentUk 21.09.06

BY GEORGE BUSH
some brief opening remarks have been omitted.

At the start of the 21st century, it is clear that the great use terror as a weapon to create fear, and work.

Five years ago, I stood and called on a world where ordinary men and women are marginalized by desperate poverty.

As liberty was ruled by the brutal and freely elected government which is represented today by a dictator who killed his neighbors and showed his contempt for the world. Now the President announced that half the women were to run and continue to move at a different pace, and the traditions where people live with each other and the changes we're seeing are destabilizing, the reality we thought we saw was a mirage, millions of men and women trapped in a country that is not moving.
You're 21 years old, and while your peers in other parts of the world are powerless your peers in other parts of the world have been fed shortcomings. And everywhere you turn, you hear misery and violence and martyrdom. For many this is the dismal day.
Every civilized Muslim must blow themselves up when leaders are accountable to decent men and women who want their children to speak propaganda. This propaganda is false, and its purpose is to confuse our people the car bombers and assassins firm in the face of horrendous acts your struggle to build the government you stepped forward to fight. We will not yield the future.
In return, your leaders brought death to the citizens of many nations, we have watched your democratic government serving side by side with the extremists. We'll help these enemies and build a safe haven for terrorists.

To the people of Lebanon: you have seen your homes and communities caught by a model of democracy - and it will be again.

To the people of Iran: The United States have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation's resources to fuel extremism. Iran must abandon its pursuit of a truly peaceful solution to this crisis. And as we do, we look to the day when you can be the people of Syria: Your land is a crossroad for the world.

To the people of Darfur: You have suffered unspeakable violence, and my nation is not strong enough to protect you.

So today I'm announcing that I'm committed to Israel. I'm committed to the Jewish state of Israel. This is the vision set forth in the map of the objectives of my presidency.
The Palestinian people have suffered from brutal acts of terrorism and constant fear of attack. Many brave extremists are in the Palestinian territories. The world is waiting to see whether Israel's Prime Minister Olmert is committed, and I support Israeli leaders. Prime Minister Blair has indicated we can help Israelis build a Holy Land.

Freedom, by its nature, cannot be gathered in this chamber. America has made its choice: We wrote me a letter.
"The journey demands perseverance."
The United Nations was created to support the dreams of God.

It smells of sulfur here, but God is with us

modus vivendi-making:

It is not "settlements," not checkpoints, not the Security Fence - not Israel - that prevents the evolution of a more peaceful Middle East or even the establishment of a Palestinian State. It is Palestinian behavior and the President quite rightly focused his attention on that point and left Israel out.

JINSA 20.09.06

"I still don't do carrots"

"We're not going to address that kind of comic strip approach to international affairs," said John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

No matter what

there is no such thing as a liberal hawk

In a very real way this constant threat of terror - coming from those who are supposedly going to protect us from it - is itself a form of torture: a traumatic application of the painful, then the controlled and precise reminder of that application - the beefy police sergeant with his sleeves rolled up slapping the rubber hose against his beefy palm, a glimpse of the humming transformer and the electrodes dangling from it.
"If we can't torture, if we aren't allowed to torture, if you won't give us permission to torture - bad things will happen to you."

the trees are full of bomblets
the trees are still full of bomblets

links validated

"a brighter, secure and more prosperous future"

a substantial break from Iraq's past

John R. Bolton To UNSC - The Situation in Iraq
I am pleased to report to the Security Council on behalf of the 29 countries making up the Multinational Forces-Iraq (MNF-I), on the Force's progress towards fulfilling its mandate

The sustained level of ethno-sectarian violence is one of the most significant threats to security and stability in Iraq.
Nonetheless, the Iraqi people continue to reject overwhelmingly violence as a means to drive political change
[...]
Although Baghdad remains the focus for sectarian and terrorist violence in Iraq, violence tied to the Rejectionist insurgency, terrorist intimidation, political and tribal tensions and criminality continue in other regions.
[...]
The Iraqi people continue to express confidence in the Iraqi Army to provide for their security and to reject the extremists' vision of Iraq's future.
[...]
Mr. President, the evolution of a fully free, secure, and prosperous Iraq remains a work in progress.

State Dept. press release
ScoopNZ 18.09.06
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The Rejectionist insurgency.

September 17, 2006

Initial attack activity was light nationally with 76 new fires reported. Two new large fires were reported one each in California and Missouri. Firefighters contained one large fire yesterday in Texas.

NIFC

Large Incidents September 17, 2006
MODIS Active Fire Mapping Program
RSAC

The Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group
To develop capabilities to quantitatively describe the structure and function of ecosystems, from regional to global scales, using emerging technologies in satellites, geographic information systems, computer simulation and visualization, and biophysical theory

Wives tell gangsters to lay down arms or go without sex

terrifying simplifications:

My own dark suspicion is that the neoconservatives in the U.S. - the powerful and secretive few that they are - actually believe that they can use these kind of provocations to homogenize the Islamic threat, bring everybody forward, radicalize them, and then bomb the hell out of them.

LeCarre/Jyllands-Posten/StarTribune 05.09.06
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Instead of "failure in Lebanon", instead of the Israeli army beaten to a stand-off and finally submitting to a cease-fire, with the next stage of the game wide-open and unknown, try seeing it as a controlled and premeditated series of relatively precise and calculated moves.
By invading and then sort of withdrawing from Lebanon - or at least retiring to their corner like a winded boxer, claiming no new territory - the Israelis don't look like a colonizing invader whose might and intent, in context, are becoming scarily parallel to Germany's in the Anschluss.
As in any other military campaign, the element of surprise is key.
Public attitudes have incalculable weight now, and the linkage of information is so profound and rapid that those attitudes can shift dramatically within hours, even though the recognition of that power is almost a proprietary secret. It wouldn't do to have the public, especially the American public, wake up suddenly to how thoroughly and profoundly they've been lied to and taken advantage of, and it won't do to have the underdogs exposed as just as the opposite. Not yet anyway.
Instead they look - from a distance, through the fog of propaganda and an ever more tightly controlled media - like what they're representing themselves as being: victims, defending themselves against terrorist attack.
Flawed, less than glamorously competent, unable to win.
So that the next move will be much easier to sell to the people who are paying for it, and will inevitably require greater force.
In order to win they'll have to...
It's very much as though the stage is being set for a far more blatant and deadly campaign.
To bomb the hell out of them.

Los jodidos todavia permanezcans aqui :

In the end, the tribunal that ratified his victory on 5 September also refused a vote recount; for many, this was a confirmation of the irregularities tainting the election. As the confirmed elected president, Calderon now faces a decision that will allow him both to build bridges towards those who remain dissatisfied and demonstrate his commitment to transparency and democracy.
The name of this opportunity is citizen recount. After the election, some 800 individuals, businesses and organisations requested the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE, Mexico's electoral institute) access to the voting ballots in order to perform a vote recount. Amongst the petitioners are the magazine Proceso and the newspaper El Universal, and even though the exercise lacks any legal value, it has enormous symbolic value.
[...]
In 1988 Carlos Salinas won thanks to a monumental electoral fraud, and months after its consummation, the then governing PRI and the Partido Accion Nacional (National Action Party / PAN) approved in congress the burning of the ballots that destroyed fundamental evidence about a key incident in Mexico's history.

Sergio Aguayo Quezada /openDemocracy 12.09.06
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In other words, the electoral law, the one that's being cited by the IFE as the reason to burn the ballots and move on, was made to cover up the fraudulent election of a corrupt and criminal President, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and his corrupt and criminal party, the PRI.
The constant parroting by the US news media of the meaningless information that Obrador's a "leftist" means the conspiracy is continental and systemic.
Most Americans have no idea what being a "leftist" in Mexican politics means, or even what a "leftist" would want or hope for from political change.
At the same time most Americans are compassionate and giving people, and would do a lot to help those in need.
If they understood what they were looking at.

The following story is not one that leading US investigative media like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal should be proud of, because for reasons that are unclear, they basically dropped the ball on covering it back in the 1980s. But it certainly still deserves their attention now. As former Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid has now confirmed in his autobiography, published this week in Mexico City, former Michoacan State Governor and Mexico City Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas would have won Mexico's 1988 Presidential election, if not for the systematic fraud committed by the PRI, de la Madrid's party.

The following article examines this 1988 Mexican electoral fraud, one of the first "computer-assisted" electoral frauds that we know of, in detail.

Submerging Markets 16.05.04

link NMM
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Amigos!

The current members of IFE were appointed to 10-year terms in 2003. However, none of the nine members was approved by the PRD. The majority that elected them was made up of legislators from the PAN and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had ruled the country for seven decades until Fox won the elections in 2000.The chairman of the IFE, Luis Carlos Ugalde, is reportedly a friend of Calderon's, and served as an adviser to the PRI in the past.

IPS 28.08.06

Mr. Novak says:

"First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he 'thought' might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson.

"Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column..."

E&P 13.09.06
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Although, as we know, having been assured of this by the nearly unanimous corporate voices of American news media, Mr. Armitage was acting solely and entirely and absolutely completely on his own. Case closed.

too late to worry about that now:

Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

"If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. "(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press."

CNN 12.09.06

and monstrous:

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.

Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets.

In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.

Meron Rapoport/HaAretz 12.09.06
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Just World News/Helena Cobban