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Iraq oil pipeline to Israel called ‘bonus’ 2007-08-01 19:51:12 You want the perfect headline that will inflame every terrorist wannabe in the Arab world?
Here it is: U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq
to Haifa
I’m not making this up. Haaretz reports:
The United States has asked Israel
to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.
The Prime Minister’s Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a “bonus” the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.
The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use p Read more:lsquo
Can the US ever feel humility? 2007-08-01 19:09:02 What is it about the psyche of the ‘American people’ that require politicians to be ultra-militant when running for office?
In the Democratic presidential debates, Hillary Clinton, to show how tough she is, said she wouldn’t talk to other leaders (on the wrong side) unless the way had been prepared. Obama, on the other hand, sensing his vulnerability at saying he would speak to all foreign leaders, came out two days later saying he would send forces into Pakistan to deal with the terrorists — even without Pakistan’s approval. (One can only imagine the consequences.)
As for the Republicans, they constantly compete with each other to see who can be the biggest bully on the block; the very worst thing for a Republican is to appear wimpish, that’s the kiss of death to all conservatives.
The only candidates in the current presidential field who are at all at peace in their outlook to the world are the minor and marginalised guys like like Gravel and Kucin
And the 176th reason to have sex? To burn calories 2007-08-01 16:11:29 In fact, there are 237 reasons why we do the deed as this Globe and Mail explains, some of them are pretty imaginative.
Some highlights from the article:
The reasons range from the obvious (”it feels good”) and the devious (”I wanted to get a raise”) to the romantic (”I was in love”) and the mundane (”I was bored”) to the religious (”I wanted to feel closer to God”) and the counterintuitive (”I wanted to get rid of a headache”).
Others were disturbingly manipulative, including “to give someone a sexually transmitted disease,” and “to gain access to that person’s friend.”
Men were more likely to say they had sex “to change the topic of conversation” and “to get a favour from someone” and “to be popular.” Women were also less likely to have sex as a way of keeping their partner satisfied.
Almost all of the 25 most common reasons each gender gave for ha
Five dirty truths about clean technology 2007-08-01 15:43:35 How are we going to get from the status quo to status green?
Here are the bare-bones five truths as perceived by Kirk Washington, a founder of Vancouver-based Yaletown Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in seed and early-stage technology companies. His article is here: Five dirty
truths about clean technology.
#1 — There is no magic energy elixir; clean tech is a puzzle that is not easily solved. There are a number of complex pieces that have to fit together, including cost, efficiency, emissions and, ultimately, sustainability.
#2 — Clean technology isn’t going to reverse rampant globalization. Indeed, as the cost of transporting certain forms of energy across vast distances becomes prohibitive, energy use will undoubtedly become more local and make better use of indigenous sources.
# 3 — There won’t be another generation of Edisons and Hewletts working in garages around America to fix our unprecedented environmental problems. In
Dubai — air-conditioning its beaches 2007-08-01 14:35:55 from Guardian Unlimited: How long can Dubai
’s boom last?
By Vicky Baker
It’s big, brash and it’s all about cash. Is there any stopping Dubai? The emirate may have a couple of newly-arrived boutique hotels on the scene, but these are very much out on a limb. Essentially Dubai is still all about trying to out do everything else on the planet. Vegas, once unrivalled as the world’s most absurd place, needs to up its game if it wants to compete.
Appearing in the desert soon: Dubai Mall, the world’s largest shopping mall; the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building; and Dubailand, the world’s largest theme park. That’s not forgetting the Palm project, containing man-made islands visible from the moon, and Dubai China Town, set to be the largest outside China, complete with its own Great Wall.
With oil supplies running low, Dubai has decided tourism is the way forward and it’s clearly not doing things by halves. When oil revenues fell to Read more:mdash
Is green the new sexy? 2007-08-01 14:28:56 Is green the new sexy? from the Ethical Living section of Guardian Unlimited
Alison Benjamin questions whether recycling makes a man sexy.
Recycling and turning off the standby are apparently the new ways to a woman’s heart according to a poll for men’s magazine Nuts. Women quizzed for the survey on the personality traits they found most attractive in men, put caring about the environment top of their list, surprisingly ahead of a good sense of humour.
Call me cynical, but I find it hard to believe that most women would really base their decision on whether to go out without someone on how often they pop to the bottle bank. As a woman who rides a bike and eats organic, I should have been on the look out for a eco-friendly man when I met my boyfriend. But I never once checked to see if he was dimming energy efficient light bulbs, or recycling those bottles of wine we consumed over dinner.
Yet according to Nuts relationship expert Louise Prior “There is something sexy a
Laugh? These TV anchors take it to a whole new level 2007-08-01 14:10:04 If you’ve got a spare hour, check out the links in this article TV anchors subjected to ridicule online. And keep the Kleenex handy, they are that funny.
Read more:level
A noise polluting iPod? 2007-08-01 13:44:58 iPod noise pollution irks those nearby.
Who knew? I thought the buds privatised the sound. If an iPodder is pissing you off, how loud must it be? And what is it doing to the guy’s ear drums?
But live and learn. I’ve been wondering at the lack of wildlife ever since I’ve been iPodding my way through the Yukon bush. Now I know.
Still,
Amped to its highest volume, the iPod is not nearly as invasive the classic loud cell phone conversation. But it can have its moments. Like when you’re standing in an elevator at 9 a.m. and a co-worker cranks up Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.” (Too early for that song.) Or when an ear-budded subway rider belts what sounds like a Whitney Houston tune with careless abandon, causing other riders to inch away or flee into another car altogether. (True story.)
“I’ve heard that problem quite a lot, people singing along,” said Leander Kahney, managing editor of Wired magazine’s Web site. “And, of co Read more:iPod
Hebron tries to deal with its Israeli occupation 2007-08-01 13:37:16 To claw back from Israel some of control over its land and cities in the West Bank, the new Palestinian leadership in the West Bank is instituting a directive of “steadfastness” to replace its earlier action of “resistance” which has taken on a military connotation.
“Steadfastness is a form of resistance,” said Riyad Maliki, Fayyad’s minister of information. “When kids go to school despite the roadblocks, that’s resistance. When people brave the soldiers to open their shops, that’s resistance: peaceful, civic resistance. We have opted to take that path: resistance with results. We believe that approach can deliver the end of occupation
.”
Why is this “steadfastness” necessary? This article at the LA Times entitled Shopkeepers to join W. Bank struggle answers the question: “For 13 years, Hebron’s Old City has been so carved up by fences, concrete barriers and Israeli
army checkpoints that most of it Read more:tries
Trying to understand Big Oil — an amateur’s take 2007-08-01 12:48:36 “Oil price rises to all-time high,” shouts the BBC banner and below it this:
Oil prices have climbed to a record high of $78.71 a barrel amid worries about whether oil supplies can meet global demand.
It is time for amateurs to take stock of this situation because who the hell trusts the oil industry? And who the hell trusts governments to tell us the truth any more?
When Bush invaded Iraq he did so with a promise that oil prices would come down: ‘as the Iraqis build up their production capacity, prices will drop.’ The reviled Wolfowitz is still occasionally visited on the screen telling us that increased Iraqi oil production would pay for its reconstruction &mdash
; after the horrific shock and awe of US bombing.
Not quite, not quite by a long shot. Not only have oil prices rocketed ever since the start of that illegal war, but Iraq production capacity to deal with an increasingly world demand for an increasingly shorter supply … has dropped to lower than
Polluted Beijing: the breathless Olympics? 2007-08-04 14:14:05 The yin and yang of the BeijingOlympics
: $40 billion invested in a phenomenal infrastructure … that because of the air pollution no one can endure.
Beijing has always been one of the world’s most polluted cities and that was before it found western capitalism with its obligator traffic snarl: the city already has 3 million vehicles on the city streets, and is adding a further 1,000 new vehicles every day.
But it isn’t just exhaust pollution creating the smog that is obliterating the city’s impressive and elaborate Olympic-inspired skyline. As this article in the Globe and Mail entitled Triumphs amid the haze points out, dust is also a dandy:
Yet the hazards of the Beijing Olympics are revealed by the smog of the sky and the dust of the construction site. Pollution is one of the biggest threats to the Games, and the city is failing to get a grip on the problem.
In a curiously old-fashioned attempt to suppress the dust, a small army of cleaning women are patroll Read more:breathless
In defense of the Spy Bill 2007-08-04 13:45:11 This is a comment sent in by Bob Wittkower to criticise our blog The terrorists are winning
The mail system where you post a letter, allowed for the 24 hours to 3 days to get a warrant.
Email messages occur at just less than the speed of light and then evaporate. A warrant system is impossible unless it is a blanket warrant issued in advance such as all email messages in the United States, etc, etc. By the time a message with a threat was detected, a warrant issued and then acted upon the terrorist could already be here!
Please think this through. You are a terrorist elsewhere in the world. You send a email. The email alerts Homeland Security. They go find a judge. The judge reviews it and agrees to it. During this time 1 billion other emails have come through the system.
Please realize that horse and buggy days are gone. Things move too fast.
The process would have to be authorization for a period of time such as a year or two, to monitor all emails, messages, etc. Those which are det
Matt Drudge — sanitized 2007-08-04 13:37:24 The man everyone loved to hate is now the toast of cyberspace:
Every day, journalists and media executives in newsrooms across the land hope they’ll have something that catches Drudge’s fancy &mdash
; or, as he has put it, “raises my whiskers.” Most keep their fingers crossed that he’ll discover their articles on his own and link to them. Others are more proactive, sending anonymous e-mails or placing calls to him or his behind-the-scenes assistant.
Drudge’s following is so large and loyal that he routinely can drive hundreds of thousands of readers to a single story, photo or video through a link on his lively compendium of the news. With media organizations competing fiercely for online audiences, the whims of Matt Drudge can make a measurable difference.
The LA Times article entitled Hot links served up daily explains the grudging rehabilitation of “the idiot with a modem’s” rep.
It also explains that Drudge has made vast amounts
Marine Given 15 Year Sentence For Murder Of Iraqi Civilian 2007-08-04 12:26:55 What’s the message here?
Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III was sentenced to 15 years in prison, dishonorably discharged, reduced in rank to private and given a written reprimand for his participation with eight others in the murder of an Iraqi
civilian during a supposed search for an insurgent.
As this Huffinton Post article explains “the Iraqi civilian was pulled from his Hamdania home in April 2006 and shot in a hole. An AK-47 and shovel were placed nearby to make him look like an insurgent planting a bomb, according to the prosecution. Unlike several of his squad mates, Hutchins never expressed remorse, saying he believed he was doing what his superiors wanted.
While the evidence appears obvious, the this action was premeditated, as had been the charge, the jurors struck premeditation from the verdict, meaning Hutchins no longer faced a mandatory life sentence.
But 15 years for murder? And how long will he serve? One wonders if the Iraqis will find this justice.
Read more:Marine
, Given
, Sentence
, Civilian
Electronics: blowing you from the room, not from the sound but with the heat 2007-08-04 11:54:46 A case study:
Gary McLane of McLane Builders Inc. in Trabuco Canyon got an unexpected lesson in thermal dynamics when he tried to accommodate a client’s interest in home media.
The 20,000-square-foot house he built in Irvine’s Shady Canyon featured a separate room to house all the electronics that controlled the audio, video, Internet and security systems.
McLane thought he had adequately ventilated the room, but the components sent the temperature inside soaring to 110 degrees.
The builder worried that the intense heat might trigger the sprinkler system or start a fire. So he installed a dedicated cooling system to keep the room at 72 degrees — at a cost of nearly $50,000.
That, apparently, is an increasing problem: stacked home entertainment components together can blow you out of the room — from the heat.
This article in the LA Times entitled Cool electronic gear may be emitting too much heat explains that:
Game consoles, digital video recorders, cable box
Alaska: where “you can’t be too fat or too drunk” 2007-08-04 11:34:20 That is, apparently, a quote from the new Simpson Movie which, as this USA Today article Questions raised about Alaska
lawmakers explains, &ldquo
;depicts Alaska almost as a separate country.
“As Homer crosses the state lines, he’s greeted by a customs agent who says, ‘Welcome to Alaska,’ then hands Homer $1,000 cash, saying every Alaskan gets a stack of bills so oil companies can exploit the environment.&rdquo
;
And that is what the article is about, how oil has bought Alaskan politicians to such an extent that “if things progress, the state’s reputation for political corruption could become akin to that of New Jersey or Louisiana.”
How does the oil industry continuing to get away with its slight-of-hand shell games when everyone knows they are rigged?
Read more:drunk
The terrorists are winning 2007-08-04 11:12:18 What else can you conclude after learning that the US Senate passed a bill yesterday (Senate passes Bush-backed spy bill) that, in the words of Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, “authorizes warrantless searches and surveillance of American phone calls, e-mails, homes, offices and personal records for however long (it takes for) an appeal to a court of review.”
And here is why the bill was passed:
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said he needed the legislation “in order to protect the nation from attacks that are being planned today to inflict mass casualties on the United States.”
Of course, the evidence of those ‘planned attacks’ is ‘eyes only.’ The lawmakers must take it on blind faith that the Bush Administration has the security of the American population in mind when it limits their rights and not a more sinister Cheney-esque ploy to keep the people scared so the corporations can continue to run roughshod over the
Why probe Mars if live began here 6,000 years ago? 2007-08-04 10:16:55 Nasa has launched a spacecraft on a nine-month journey to Mars, where it will dig below the surface for clues to the existence of past or present life — from BBC’s Lift off for Nasa’s Mars probe
The Bush Administrations continues to send out highly confusing messages:
How could there be life on Mars, if life was created here on earth 6,000 years ago? Bush’s announcement made a few State of the Nations speeches ago (and promptly forgotten) that the US would put a Man on Mars seems more consistent with his philosophy than trying to find life there.
And, why is the Administration spending $420 million on a probe into another planet when it won’t even authorize investigative stem cell research here on earth? Seems somewhat inconsistent.
It’s as if Bush’s science policy has been created by those who brought the world the US foreign policy.
Is Michael Ware the last honest TV journalist or does he have an agenda? 2007-08-04 00:14:59
You can tell by looking at him that CNN’s Iraq reporter Michael
Ware has been banged about a bit. But was it because he was cocking a snoot or was he defending his principles? Looking at the guy, it’s hard to tell; it could easily be either.
And that’s the problem with Ware as a TV reporter. You’re never quite sure if he’s hot on the trail of truth, or simply taking the mickey out of a situation, milking it for all its drama.
Thus, the headline: Is Michael Ware the last honest
TV journalist or does he have an agenda
?
What Ware does better than all the others, certainly all others at CNN, is to include the larger picture in all his reporting. Just because the sun peeked through for an hour today doesn’t alter the fact that it has been overcast all week.
To show how much the big picture matters, let’s look at his compatriots at CNN.
King, Henry, Star, McIntyre, Bash — all of them reporting from the White House, from State, from the Pentago
One guy’s twisting search for God 2007-08-03 23:01:38 Kamalla Rose Kaur is a frequent contributor to this site and committed adherent to the Sikh religion, determined to become a Khalsa Knight. Her husband, husband, Ken Whitley, doesn’t share her belief. So what does he believe?
It’s an interesting journey and we thank him for sharing it …
Q: Did you get involved in any of the 1970s cult scene here in the USA? Enroll in any consciousness trainings? Join any ashrams?
No. In the 1970’s I was more anti-cult than anything. As a teenager I was really unsocial and really unhappy and the whole positive tone of anything New-Age, let alone cult like, was unpleasant for me. I was in the position W.C. Fields described regarding social clubs, i.e. “I wouldn’t join any club that would have me for a member”. Also, by the mid to late seventies, a number of famous cults had already gone belly up, or been exposed as frauds, and things were changing in other ways.
By 1980, when I entered college, mainstrea
The end of Unilaterialism is the beginning … of what? 2007-08-06 18:55:59 Just as an intelligent person seeks the council of others before acting precipitously, so a nation is well advised to seek the council of other respected countries before acting with a show of force.
That would seem to be little more than common sense, for a number of reasons: with the participation of others there are useful vantage points from disparate places about the globe; there is safety in numbers; there is augmented justification and when things don’t quite work out as planned, there is shared blame and more opportunity for bail-outs.
This is a lesson the US is just now learning and while that may seem incredible, it is true.
Take for instance this article in the Washington Post today entitled The Next Intervention by two respected foreign policy intellectuals, Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan. Amazingly, this is the very point they are making:
To forge a renewed political consensus on the use of force, we first need to recognize that international legitimacy does matter. I Read more:hellip
The Koz Convention: a Sea of Middle-Aged White Men 2007-08-06 13:16:05 A Diversity of Opinion, if Not Opinionators — that’s the head of Washington Post report on the Koz Convention
(of bloggers) this past weekend in Chicago.
If you’re in too much of a hurry to read it, read this subhead: A Sea of Middle-Aged White
Males
It’s not that women don’t blog, they do but they face hurdles that men don’t. We touched on this in an earlier blog entitled Cyber sexism and the female blogger but this story adds more texture to the problem and extends it: the subhead, after all, doesn’t just refer to men, but also middle-aged men and white men.
The internet and blogging has been touted as the great equalizing medium where we are all faceless, colourless and genderless. Apparently not so and the Koz Convention sort of proved it with relatively few female attendees, never mind minorities.
Here’s the main point:
It’s hard to think of another movement that has affected politics in such a short period of time, and
Nanaimo to the world: look at me 2007-08-06 12:44:53 Nanaimo, BC, Canada? Who knew?
Well, maybe a billion or so people because Nanimo, that mid-Vancouver Island hot-spot named after a 2,880 calorie candy bar, is the most cyberly inspected city … in the world!
No kidding.
“Everything you could imagine that the city government would want to tell people, they seem to have found a way to tell that using Google Earth,” said Michael Jones, chief technical officer at Google Earth. “We see other cities around the world doing this, but none with the degree and zeal of Nanaimo.”
Hey, it’s a neat story:
Nanaimo’s achievement is due to the efforts of a team of computer technicians at city hall who have spent the past two years uploading data, aerial photos and computer code to Google Earth.
The high-tech project has the blessing of the department’s superiors, who hope the abundance of geographic information will make Nanaimo a destination for tourists and developers and help residents find what they
The workplace titillation with … breasts 2007-08-06 12:31:05 Newspapers seems to have been titillated with breasts in the past week.
The New York Times had a piece that we blogged on (Gen Y in the workplace: braless, belly rings, looking for fun and to make an impact); it was joined by the Globe and Mail last week with Don’t be the office boob.
You have to be between genders not to have an opinion of bralessness in the work place. And if there is anyone between genders s/he often appears in the ‘Comments’ section after a story — with every other wing-nut ever moved to write.
In fact, the Comments section can often be far more interesting and convincing and compelling than the article they comment on, but as you read through the comments you wouldn’t always want to actually get to know some of these people.
Take the Commentors (Our readers bare all) on the Globe’s Braless story, for instance.
Which of these two guys would you most like to sit down and have a cool one with — you know, shoot the breeze, a Read more:hellip
Moving from surburbia to urburbia 2007-08-06 11:33:10 “We need to start changing our approach from a suburban model to an urban model.” — Southern California planner
The LA Times has a fascinating piece on population growth in southern California. The move away from single family dwellings (where the median price of a home is around $750,000) to apartments and condos is expected to dramatically increase population density in the years to come.
This is no big deal if people can live and work in communities within communities in a sort of bohemian-style, latte over here, Prosciutto over there cornucopia. But what happens if the suburban model doesn’t become an urban model and the connectors between one’s personal and professional life are snarled in the same grid-lock for which the state is already famous?
Frankly, reading this piece induced two physical sensations: the adrenaline rush of schadenfreude and the adrenaline rush of road rage.
Living in a geo-political cul de sac in the middle of nowhere can create Read more:Moving
Media, simplistic drivel 2007-08-06 10:45:25 Olmert says he hopes talks can lead to Palestinian state.
Does anyone believe that?
The Israelis don’t want the Palestinians to have a state because the Israelis, themselves, want those lands and to prove it, they are occupying those lands, building on them daily, as they pretend to want to negotiate a two-state deal with the Palestinians.
Why does the media continue with this charade?
Look, we know what the Israelis are doing, they’ve made that abundantly clear for 40 years. Great work if they can get away with it. And, so far, with American backing they have.
But why does the media offer up such sick pabulum as ‘Olmert hope talks can lead to Palestinian state.’ He doesn’t, and every sentient being outside of the main stream media knows it.
The main stream media has a problem: fewer and fewer people are tuning in and, increasingly, those who do are better informed and they expect far more than the simplistic appeals to conventional wisdom.
And here&rsq
Ignatieff would not have got Iraq wrong had he been living in Canada 2007-08-06 09:35:08 After 9/11, if Michael Ignatieff
had been living in Canada
and not in the United States, his gut would have warned him against an Iraq
war (Getting Iraq Wrong) and his head would have known better, too. Here’s why.
Iraq, like Yugoslavia and Canada, is composed of what we’ve come to call ’solitudes:’ peoples living together, willingly or not, with distinct cultural differences.
Every Canadian knows how fragile these interrelationship can be. When the UN was perennially choosing Canada as the best country in the world to live in almost half the population of the country’s second largest provinces wanted out. Why?
Well, the answer to that has as much to do with irrational emotionalism as it does intellectual pragmatism. And, anyway, there is no real way to answer that question. The leader of the federal separatist party, Gilles Duceppe, explains it with an oft-quoted marriage analogy: “As Quebecers, we love you, we just can no longer live with yo
The Middle Class can only be sustained by government support 2007-08-05 14:37:48 Finally, some vindication for the notion of using income tax as a way of fairly distributing economic resources. “Canada is a middle-class success story, especially compared with the slouching United States.”
Why has Canada got a rising Middle Class while every other country (except Norway) has a shrinking Middle Class?
That’s the question answered in this fascinating piece in the Globe and Mail by Doug Saunders entitled The secrets of Canada’s world-leading middle-class success.
It’s somewhat complex so read the article but the nut of it is this:
Then Mr. Pressman (Steven Pressman, an economist at Monmouth University in New Jersey. In his The Decline of the Middle Class: An International Perspective) took his data and subtracted everything except salary and wage earnings. That is, he looked at what would be happening if people lived off only the money paid by their employers.
Suddenly, everything changed. Canada’s great middle-class boom turned int Read more:sustained
The impeachment work-around 2007-08-05 14:07:28 The nation should be able to remove by an orderly constitutional process any president with an unyielding commitment to failed policies and an inability to renew the country’s hope.
That said, Robert Daliek suggests an amendment to the Constitution, Ouster By the People that would be a workable alternative to the awkward and lengthy impeachment procedure: a recall process that is now available in 18 States (remember Gray Davis in California?).
The political argument against Bush’s continuing tenure is not frivolous. There are good reasons to see him as a failed president whose remaining time in office will be unproductive at best and destructive to the country’s well-being at worst. But given the constitutional rules by which the presidency operates, there is no serious prospect of removing him from office.
The recall process Daliek proposes would require a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote in both Houses requiring 60% approval before a national referendum wo
Chris Kelly: The National Review Invades Canada 2007-08-05 13:47:36
How dated is this cover? Look at the top headline.
No, this story is about how the writers for the National
Review will be forced into Canada
on a cruise north to Alaska.
Chris
Kelley warns in the Huffington Post that The National Review Invades Canada.
This post is good fun and hey, we shouldn’t let Jonah Goldberg get to us, leave him with the French. He’s the one who coined the memorably stupid phrase: “the cheese-eating surrender monkeys” … to such fulsome praise from his fellow neadrathals on the far Right.
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