+ Många bra inlägg i bloggosfären idag. Kolla in Fantastic Planet för en gnostisk grundkurs. Rigorous Intuition är som vanligt konstigast i stan, återigen med intressanta kommentarer från hans aktiva läsekrets.

+ The Real Story of John Walker Lindh.

+ Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts than previously believed, a major new scientific report has said.

+ US plans to 'fight the net' revealed.

...And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".

US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".

Consider that for a moment.

The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.

+ Svalbard, den norska ögruppen långt norr om Nordnorges kust, upplever sin varmaste januarimånad hittills. Medeltemperaturen i Longyearbyen har hittills i januari varit minus 1,8 grader. Det är 13,1 grader över det normala för denna period.

+ One of Britain's leading environmentalists will today sound a doomsday warning to the world: humanity's very existence is under threat from climate change and, even if we survive, the population will crash to about a third of its current level.

+ The Primate Police: Monkey Cops Keep Groups in Line.

+ Om den verkliga anledningen till krigshetsen mot Iran: Iran's other weapon.

Tehran is preparing to open a bourse, a mercantile exchange and potentially a futures market, where traders can buy and sell oil and gas, along the lines of the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) in London and the NYTMEX in New York.

The differences are first, that this one would price its energy in euros, not dollars, and second, that it would not use West Texas Intermediate or Brent Crude (from the North Sea) as its standard oil for pricing. It would use a Persian Gulf-produced oil instead.

(...)
This could be a far more profoundly punishing blow to American interests than Iran's ability to manufacture a crude atom bomb that would have little credibility until it became small and stable and reliable enough to be delivered on some putative target.

+ Why European women are turning to Islam.

+ Den brittiska polisens särskilda spaningsenhet "Special Branch" fejkade en rapport för att klara sig undan skuld för dödsskjutningen av den oskyldige Charles de Menezes på Stockwells tunnelbanestation i London den 22 juli förra året.

+ Sverige kräver att en Hamas-ledd regering tar avstånd från våld och accepterar Israels rätt att existera. Om inte kan förbindelserna med palestinierna komma att brytas.
- Det är ett absolut krav att man tar avstånd från allt våld och accepterar Israels rätt att existera för att fortsätta vårt samarbete, säger utrikesminister Laila Freivalds.

Haaretz för ett par dagar sedan:

Hamas published its official platform for the upcoming Palestinian elections, which proved to be more moderate than either its 1988 charter or public statements made by its leaders throughout the ensuing years. The document makes no mention of the principle that has been Hamas' raison d'etre since its founding: the destruction of Israel and establishment of a Palestinian state on all territory west of the Jordan River in its place.

+ Ja ja, palestinierna ska lägga ner motståndet mot den illegala ockupationen, men Israel får fortsätta slakta? Israel svarade naturligtvis på valutgången som väntat med att mörda ett oskyldigt barn: En nioårig palestinsk flicka sköts på torsdagen ihjäl av israeliska soldater i Gaza, nära gränsen till Israel, enligt palestinsk sjukvårdspersonal.

+ Use an iPod, go to jail?

+ DN: Vita huset visste i förväg att flodvallarna kring New Orleans "sannolikt" skulle brista under "Katrina"-orkanen. Nu försinkar Bushregeringen medvetet utredningen av de usla hjälpinsatserna under "Katrina"-orkanen. En rad viktiga departement har uppmanats att inte samarbeta.

+ En rätt intressant intervju med USA:s tidigare president Jimmy Carter. Han berättar bland annat om att han sett ett UFO och om fjärrskådning.

+ Russian General: 9/11 a Globalist Inside Job. Ivashov tells us so-called international terrorism "is not something independent of world politics but simply an instrument, a means to install a unipolar world with a sole world headquarters, a pretext to erase national borders and to establish the rule of a new world elite" and "is a phenomenon that combines the use of terror by state and non-state political structures as a means to attain their political objectives through people’s intimidation, psychological and social destabilization, the elimination of resistance from power organizations and the creation of appropriate conditions for the manipulation of the countries’ policies and the behavior of people."

+ General Ivashov: "International terrorism does not exist".

+ Britain 'ordered torture of 9/11 suspect'.

+ A Duke professor says he is doubtful about Thursday's audiotape from Osama bin Laden.

Bruce Lawrence has just published Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, a book translating bin Laden's writing. He is skeptical of Thursday's message.

It was like a voice from the grave, Lawrence said.

He thinks bin Laden is dead and has doubts about the tape. Lawrence recently analyzed more than 20 complete speeches and interviews of the al Qaida leader for his book. He says the new message is missing several key elements.

There's nothing in this from the Koran. He's, by his own standards, a faithful Muslim, Lawrence said. He quotes scripture in defense of his actions. There's no quotation from the Koran in the excerpts we got, no reference to specific events, no reference to past atrocities.

+ Giant task at Tate Modern for magic mushroom man. :)

+ Hahahaha! Nu får väl CIA ändå ta och klippa sig! Osama Bin Laden has seemingly propelled a book by an obscure historian into the US bestseller list, by endorsing it in an audio message aired on Thursday. The 320-page book is highly critical of US foreign policy, and says the War on Terror is doomed to failure. (...) But he also told Americans: "If Bush carries on with his lies and oppression it would be useful for you to read the book 'The Rogue State.'" Alltså, den amerikanska propagandan blir bara sämre och sämre för var dag. Helt obegripligt att inte europeisk media genomskådar det.

+ Fantastic Planet har en rätt kul post om ovanstående: Ladies and Gentlemen, OSAMA BIN LADEN!

+ Men men, i USA lär det ju gå hem... Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food. (...) More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks. That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

+ Åh det är Usama-säsong igen! Länge sen sist! Återigen är det ingen tvekan om att det är CIA-propaganda i farten igen. Fatta det här partiet: In the tape, bin Laden said he was directing his message to the American people after polls showed that "an overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq but (Bush) opposed that desire". Med andra ord, om du är emot Irak-kriget är du på Usamas sida! Kan tänka mig att det här verkligen hamras i amerikanska medier dagen lång.

+ Kurt Nimmo gör återigen en sammanfattning av USAmas och al-CIAdas historia: Phantom Osama Groomed for a Return.

+ Och i Ryssland är det fortfarande kallt.. Russians revel in their famously cold winters but the temperature in Moscow is currently 20 degrees below the seasonal norm and the mercury has not finished falling. Kallaste vintern på ett halvt sekel.

+ G. 23 BU$H = mkt lol!

+ Wired: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug? Intressant artikel.

+ Spiders on LSD.

+ America's Weather Went Wild In 2005 .

+ Two journalists working for Reuters in Iraq have been freed by the US military after being held without charge for several months.

+ Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted. Now, he believes mankind's abuse of the environment is making that mechanism work against us. His astonishing conclusion - that climate change is already insoluble, and life on Earth will never be the same again.

+ Stupid in America. For "Stupid in America," a special report ABC will air Friday, we gave identical tests to high school students in New Jersey and in Belgium. The Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks. The Belgian kids called the American students "stupid." (...) At age ten, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age fifteen, when students from forty countries are tested, the Americans place twenty-fifth. The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition.

+ Iran said it was "not scared" of being hauled before the UN Security Council and warned any sanctions over its disputed nuclear programme could cause an unexpected hike in oil prices.

+ The Israeli government gave the green light on Sunday for Palestinians in East Jerusalem to vote in next week's legislative elections, but then arrested four candidates from the Islamic group Hamas hours later.

+ Insurgents in Iraq have shot down an American military helicopter, killing the two pilots. Alhamdulillah!

+ Norway is to build a "doomsday vault" in a mountain close to the North Pole that will house a vast seed bank to ensure food supplies in the event of catastrophic climate change, nuclear war or rising sea levels, New Scientist says.

+ USA Today: Pentagon to families: Go ahead, laugh.

When the stress of the war in Iraq becomes too severe, the Pentagon has a suggestion for military families: Learn how to laugh.

With help from the Pentagon's chief laughter instructor, families of National Guard members are learning to walk like a penguin, laugh like a lion and blurt "ha, ha, hee, hee and ho, ho."

No joke.

Alltså, det där landet blir mer och mer bisarrt för varje minut som går.

+ Ännu ett exempel på hur sansat USA är: En tidigare ostraffad man dömdes till 55 års fängelse för att ha sålt cannabis.

+ Members of a top drug advisory panel who wrote a secret report to the home secretary on cannabis may resign if the government reclassifies the drug to class B, the Guardian has learned. They are concerned that Charles Clarke is considering upgrading cannabis and say this would be in direct contradiction to the findings of their unpublished report. They say such a move would set a "damaging precedent", and that their report - which the Guardian has seen - explicitly rules out reclassification.

Och mer om det här: Panel says link with mental illness is 'very small'.

+ Beam weapons almost ready for battle.

+ Enligt Vanunu Mordechai är Sharon död sedan en vecka tillbaks. Låt oss hålla tummarna att han har rätt, och att Sharon redan kokas i olja i helvetet.

+ US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threatened Norway with "serious political consequences" after Finance Minister and Socialist Left Party leader Kristin Halvorsen admitted to supporting a boycott of Israeli goods.

+ Idag säger vi grattis till Albert Hofmann, mästeralkemisten som upptäckte LSD och förändrade världshistorien. Må du leva i många år än!

Dr Albert Hofmann was an anonymous Swiss chemist - then he inadvertently created the mind-altering 'psychedelic' drug that would shape popular culture for generations. As he celebrates his 100th birthday, David McCandless hears about the trip of his lifetime.

+ American troops in Baghdad yesterday blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working for the Guardian and Channel 4, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children.

+ Läs dagens Rigorous Intuition, i alla fall slutet:

By the way, here is a provocative story for those who suspect weather manipulation during last year's hurricane season in the Gulf: "Hurricanes of 2005 were filled with mysterious lightning":

The boom of thunder and crackle of lightning generally mean one thing: a storm is coming. Curiously, though, the biggest storms of all, hurricanes, are notoriously lacking in lightning. Hurricanes blow, they rain, they flood, but seldom do they crackle.

Surprise: During the record-setting hurricane season of 2005 three of the most powerful storms - Rita, Katrina, and Emily - did have lightning, lots of it. And researchers would like to know why.

...

Indeed, the electric fields above Emily were among the strongest ever measured by the aircraft’s sensors over any storm. "We observed steady fields in excess of 8 kilovolts per meter," says Blakeslee. "That is huge - comparable to the strongest fields we would expect to find over a large land-based 'mesoscale' thunderstorm."

+ A
Belmont resident killed himself with a homemade guillotine after lining his walls with electronic Molotov cocktails so that his house would burn down, officials said. The fire-starting devices failed to work.

+ Som ni kanske märkt (om det fortfarande är någon som läser den här bloggen) så har mina inlägg blivit allt mer sporadiska senaste tiden, och jag tror rentav att slutet för det här lilla OMEGAPROJEKTET börjar närma sig. Jag kommer fortfarande använda bloggen för att komma ihåg olika mer eller mindre viktiga artiklar som jag vill ha koll på, så det kan ju löna sig att kolla in då och då om man är lagd åt det hållet, men annars så blir det nog inte roligare än så här. God fortsättning!

+ A Dozen Weird Weather Moments in 2005.

+ In an obscure corner of the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, lies one of Islam's most sacred relics - the world's oldest Koran.

+ Earth is Splitting in Half.

+ Det är mycket möjligt att det här är fejkade bilder, men om det inte är det är det jävligt märkligt: Sky Anomalies.

+ White House to withdraw funding for rebuilding Iraq. ... In future it will be up to other foreign donors and the Iraqi government to do what it can to complete even basic tasks such as supplying reliable electricity and water to the country's 26 million people.

+ Iraqi clerics are paid to spin for US.

+ God fortsättning på vilka ni nu är som eventuellt läser det här. Hoj!

+ Och här kommer de topp tio mest spelade artisterna i mitt hem under förra veckan:

01 Jeru the Damaja
02 The Mitchell Brothers
03 MF Doom
04 Tim Buckley
05 The Human Beinz
06 Kings of Convenience
07 Happy Mondays
08 Junior Murvin
09 Slowdive
10 Sam Gopal