Murtha’s plan to legislate a mandatory amount of time between deployments will help end the war: NYT
he Pentagon is planning to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, shortening their time between deployments to meet the demands of President Bush’s buildup, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.
National Guard officials told state commanders in Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma and Ohio last month that while a final decision had not been made, units from their states that had done previous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan could be designated to return to Iraq next year between January and June, the officials said.
The unit from Oklahoma, a combat brigade with one battalion currently in Afghanistan, had not been scheduled to go back to Iraq until 2010, and brigades from the other three states not until 2009. Each brigade has about 3,500 soldiers.
If they can’t keep abusing the military they have by barely letting them come home and sending them with no training or equipment, they (the Bush administration) either have to declare victory and leave or institute a draft, which I think they have no intention of doing. And since we don’t have enough votes in the Senate to deauthorize the war today…
A fishing crew has caught a colossal squid that could weigh a half-ton and prove to be the biggest specimen ever landed, a fisheries official said Thursday.
The squid, weighing an estimated 990 lbs and about 39 feet long, took two hours to land in Antarctic waters, New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said.
That reminds me of how (before I went veggie) I used to gross my husband out by eating pickled calamari and slurping in the tentacles good and slow so he could get a real good look at the suckers. Eww. I’m grossing myself out.
This is a rout, there should be no mistake. The fractious Shiite militias and tribes of Iraq’s South have made it impossible for the British to stay. They already left Sadr-controlled Maysan province, as well as sleepy Muthanna. They moved the British consulate to the airport because they couldn’t protect it in Basra. They are taking mortar and rocket fire at their bases every night. Raiding militia HQs has not resulted in any permanent change in the situation. Basra is dominated by 4 paramilitaries, who are fighting turf wars with one another and with the Iraqi government over oil smuggling rights.
Blair is not leaving Basra because the British mission has been accomplished. He is leaving because he has concluded that it cannot be, and that if he tries any further it will completely sink the Labor Party, perhaps for decades to come.
An Iraqi security source said Thursday that two British military
bases in Basra, which has a predominantly Shiite population, had been
bombarded with rocket-propelled grenades in the past 24 hours.
The two British bases, located in downtown Basra and in the city’s
Shat al-Arab hotel, were bombed Wednesday night and early Thursday
morning, the source added.
What is the elephant in all our rooms? It is the global triumph of capitalism. Democracy is fiercely disputed. Freedom is under threat even in old-established democracies such as Britain. Western supremacy is on the skids. But everyone does capitalism. Americans and Europeans do it. Indians do it. Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes do it. Even Chinese communists do it. And now the members of Israel’s oldest kibbutz, that last best hope of egalitarian socialism, have voted to introduce variable salaries based on individual performance.
(snip)
Above all, though, there is the inescapable dilemma that this planet cannot sustain six-and-a-half billion people living like today’s middle-class consumers in its rich north. In just a few decades, we would use up the fossil fuels that took some 400 million years to accrete – and change the earth’s climate as a result. Sustainability may be a grey and boring word, but it is the biggest single challenge to global capitalism today. However ingenious modern capitalists are at finding alternative technologies – and they will be very ingenious – somewhere down the line this is going to mean richer consumers settling for less rather than more.
Bacteria Can Stabilize Buildings Against Earthquakes
DAVIS, California, February 21, 2007 (ENS) – Soil bacteria could be used to help steady buildings against earthquakes, according to researchers at the University of California-Davis. The microbes can literally convert loose, sandy soil into rock, the scientists say.
Jason DeJong, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, says that when a major earthquake strikes, deep, sandy soils can turn to liquid, with disastrous consequences for buildings sitting on them.
Currently, civil engineers can inject chemicals into the soil to bind loose grains together. But these epoxy chemicals may have toxic effects on soil and water, DeJong said.
The new process, so far tested only at a laboratory scale, takes advantage of a natural soil bacterium, Bacillus pasteurii. The microbe causes calcite, or calcium carbonate, to be deposited around sand grains, cementing them together.
An Egyptian court has sentenced a blogger to four years’ prison for insulting Islam and the president.
Abdel Kareem Soliman’s trial was the first time that a blogger had been prosecuted in Egypt.
He had used his web log to criticise the country’s top Islamic institution, al-Azhar university and President Hosni Mubarak, whom he called a dictator.
A human rights group called the verdict “very tough” and a “strong message” to Egypt’s thousands of bloggers.
What would “The Sanctimonious Women’s Study Set” (wasn’t that “the phrase that launched a thousand pies?”) say about this story?
Chimpanzees have been seen using spears to huntbush babies, [not to be confused with this Bush baby] U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that demonstrates a whole new level of tool use and planning by our closest living relatives.
Pruetz noted that male chimps never used the spears. She believes the males use their greater strength and size to grab food and kill prey more easily, so the females must come up with other methods.
“That to me was just as intriguing if not even more so,” Pruetz said.
The spear-hunting occurred when the group was foraging together, again unchimplike behavior that might produce more competition between males and females, she said.
Maybe females invented weapons for hunting, Pruetz said.
“The observation that individuals hunting with tools include females and immature chimpanzees suggests that we should rethink traditional explanations for the evolution of such behavior in our own lineage,” she concluded in her paper.
“The multiple steps taken by Fongoli chimpanzees in making tools to dispatch mammalian prey involve the kind of foresight and intellectual complexity that most likely typified early human relatives.”
Murtha’s plan to legislate a mandatory amount of time between deployments will help end the war: NYT
If they can’t keep abusing the military they have by barely letting them come home and sending them with no training or equipment, they (the Bush administration) either have to declare victory and leave or institute a draft, which I think they have no intention of doing. And since we don’t have enough votes in the Senate to deauthorize the war today…
That’s some squid: Yahoo
That reminds me of how (before I went veggie) I used to gross my husband out by eating pickled calamari and slurping in the tentacles good and slow so he could get a real good look at the suckers. Eww. I’m grossing myself out.
Ewww. I like calamari, and that would gross me out too. 🙂
Let’s not forget that Bin Laden attacked us and Bush and Cheney let him get away with it.
“The Price of Distraction” by Dwayne Powell.
Juan Cole calls bullshit on the UK withdrawl:
Blair is not leaving Basra because the British mission has been accomplished. He is leaving because he has concluded that it cannot be, and that if he tries any further it will completely sink the Labor Party, perhaps for decades to come.
From Raw:
bases in Basra, which has a predominantly Shiite population, had been
bombarded with rocket-propelled grenades in the past 24 hours.
The two British bases, located in downtown Basra and in the city’s
Shat al-Arab hotel, were bombed Wednesday night and early Thursday
morning, the source added.
Oh yeah, Tony, “mission accomplished” my ass.
Look at that. The Poodle is smarter than his master, W.
Global capitalism now has no serious rivals. But it could destroy itself
ENS Link
Egypt blogger jailed for ‘insult’
…but I just had to come back to post this one!
What would “The Sanctimonious Women’s Study Set” (wasn’t that “the phrase that launched a thousand pies?”) say about this story?
Dick Cheney’s reception in Sidney, Australia turns violent… 10 protesters arrested after breaking through police barriers.