+ Intressant från Ran Prieur:

Before I finished Fall Down Six Times, I had to ask for reader help on plankton. They are definitely dying (...) The oceans have absorbed half of human CO2 emissions since the Industrial Revolution, and in the water it becomes carbonic acid, which dissolves the shells of the plankton. What we don't know, and what no scientists are talking about directly, is how far the plankton are going to die, and what it will do to life on land. (...)

Plankton produce about 50% of Earth's oxygen and they also play a role in cloud formation. Over the last 20 years, oceanic plankton has decreased by close to 30%. There are coastlines that have measured a 70% drop in plankton over the last 50 years. With industry and human demands increasing, in ten years the oceanic plankton will exceed 50% mortality. By that time, the oxygen content of Earth's atmosphere will dip to 75% of its current presence. With deforestation continuing too, the actual number could be lower. In 20 years, accounting for all factors, oxygen could dip to 33% of current levels.

That's a guess, but it's the best guess we've got, so I'm going to accept it as true. Atmospheric oxygen is now (supposedly) at 21%. Can we survive if it drops to 7%?

(...)

By analyzing air bubbles trapped in fossils, scientists have recently proven that the earth's atmosphere used to have 40% oxygen. By comparison, today's air only contains 16% to 19% oxygen... Even more startling, analysis of the air in different parts of the world shows that this number is continuing to decline and many large cities now have oxygen levels as low as 12%. Medical researchers say that if falls below 7% the human race will perish.

+ Tänkvärt om fildelning: 1110100101000011

+ Angry Arab: "the Dalai Lama said he considers himself a "friend" of Israel (he has visited the country three times and was a 1994 honorary fellow of Hebrew University"" (The Dalai Lama is of course noted for his wisdom. Among his profound sayings is this: "As free human beings we can use our unique intelligence to try to understand ourselves and our world.") OK. Good night, Dalai Lama.

+ Och Juan Cole skriver ett sanningens ord om tragedin i Afghanistan, där en man som konverterat till kristendomen hotades med döden, men som nu lyckligtvis släppts: Afghan Convert Released.

"Man is both the fruit of the universe and its elite, a king who must rule wisely, competently and fairly. God, in His grace, has permitted man to be his Viceregent and He is preparing him for that viceregency by education and wise guidance. Man's ignorance caused him to imagine that he was the object ot more or less constant hostility, so he began to fight pointless battles and develop antagonisms needlessly. He cannot achieve his viceregency until he outgrows these animositities, see that he is above antagonism, and rid his heart of all but love and compassion. God loves all creation: gases, liquids, stones and metals, plants, animals, man, angels and demons. He created all through the Will, which is love. Man cannot be God's viceregent over His creation until his heart is large enought to love all creation, in all its forms, and dispose of it wisely and constructively."

- Mahmoud Mohamed Taha

+ CBC game show with a paranormal twist. Weird shit!

+ Apocalyptic Times, en intressant sammanställning av apokalyptiska nyheter.

+ Iraqis killed by US troops ‘on rampage’.

+ Troops accused of mosque massacre.

+ The miracle and challenge of the Qur'an. Om modern vetenskap och Koranen.

+ Kolla in detta inslag från holländsk TV: 911 Attack Or Gift From Heaven? De f.d. toppolitikerna Michael Meacher och Andreas von Bülow intervjuas.

+ Michael Meacher: This war on terrorism is bogus.

+ Become a republican!

+ US turns attention to al-Qaeda in Iran. :D :D :D

+ The recent killing of an unarmed Virginia doctor has raised concerns about what some say is an explosion in the use of military-style police Swat teams in the United States.

+ AP Erases Video of Israeli Soldier Shooting Palestinian Boy.

+ Fixade den trasiga länken till filmen om Similarities between hinduism and Islam.

+ In the period before the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister Naji Sabri, was a secret paid source of the CIA, "NBC Nightly News" reported on Monday.

+ Actor Charlie Sheen Questions Official 9/11 Story.

+ Iraqi police have accused American soldiers of executing 11 Iraqi civilians, including four children and a six-month-old baby, in a raid on Wednesday near the city of Balad, it was reported yesterday. (...) The report emerged at a time when a US navy criminal investigation is under way into a previous incident, in November, in which marines are accused of killing 15 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in reprisal for a bomb attack on a US patrol.

+ British Crown Prince Charles Tuesday, March 21, harped on the fact that Islam, Christianity and Judaism share the same origin, urging wise men and women to help restore mutual respect between faiths and criticizing Danish cartoons lampooning Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and the ensuing violence.

+ Minns inte var jag hittade denna video, kanske hos Michael Muhammad Knight, men den är väldigt sevärd för den som är intresserad av hinduism och/eller Islam: Similarities between Hinduism and Islam. Om inte annat är det fascinerande att se Dr Zakir Naiks övermänskliga minne vad gäller ordagranna citat ur allehanda heliga skrifter. [UPDATE: BROKEN LINK FIXED]

+ Iranian police have arrested around 1,000 people in the central seminary city of Qom after violent clashes over the closure of a house of worship used by mystical Sufi Muslims, city officials said on Wednesday.

Officials and a Qom resident said the police had fired teargas to disperse a crowd of dervishes, or mystics, and those who had gathered to support them. They said the dervishes were armed with knives and stones. (En månad gammal, men nytt för mig)

+ Här hittar du en halvtimmes mix med den utmärkte politiske rapparen Paris.

+ God's scientist receives supreme award.

Cambridge University cosmologist and mathematician John Barrow was awarded $1.6-million yesterday to do research into whether God is sitting at the control panel behind the Theory of Everything about the universe.

He won the 2006 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities, the world's richest individual scholarly research grant. Its initiator, mutual-fund investor Sir John Templeton, specified that it be worth more than the Nobel Prize (which is worth about $1.5-million) so the media would take it seriously.

Dr. Barrow, 53, author of 17 books and one play (about infinity), believes that monotheistic religious thought about God and creation offers a better explanation than anything else, including most science, of how the universe works.

+ The Herald skriver om Visions of the Dying.

+ More than 50 US warplanes were today involved in the biggest air offensive launched by the Americans in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, the US military said. A huge air and land offensive was launched this morning against insurgents in an area north-east of the volatile town of Samarra, which is 60 miles north of Baghdad.

+ Britain was accused of colluding with an Israeli military assault on a Palestinian jail yesterday that prompted the widespread kidnapping of foreigners in the occupied territories and the sacking of UK and EU offices.

+ UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called Tuesday for an immediate end to all violence in the Gaza Strip, following the Israeli raid. Annan's spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said the UN chief was "deeply concerned" by the death of several Palestinian police officers and the kidnapping of a number of international personnel. Israeli troops had pounded the compound with tank and missile fire through the day in a bid to force Saadat's surrender. Two Palestinian security officers were killed and 23 other people were wounded in the Israeli operation.

+ Ny bok om William Blake ute nu. Verkar intressant.

+ The Sadr City Massacre ... A Black Operation by the American Intelligence?

+ Och så en deja vu från Irak: An American described as a security contractor arrested by police in a northern Iraqi town was carrying weapons in his car, a provincial official said. (...) The Joint Coordination Center between the U.S. and Iraqi military in Tikrit said the man, whom it described as a security contractor working for a private company, possessed explosives which were found in his car.

Som några kanske minns hände något liknande i Basra för ett par månader sedan.

1. Sheikh Hassan al-Zarqani, a spokesperson for rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, told Socialist Worker that the two undercover soldiers seized by Iraqi police last Monday were armed with explosives and a remote control detonator. The soldiers were disguised as members of Sadr’s militia, the Mehdi Army.

2. Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives.

3. The kit of the captured soldiers included an anti-tank weapon (and who is the only force with tanks in Basra?) ...

+ Long-term marijuana use may fog the brain.

+ Nytt nummer av SubRosa ute nu!

+ Rigorous Intuition tar itu med Milosevic: Leprosy treatment.

+ US Military Plans To Make Insect Cyborgs.

+ The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that Israeli soldiers killed seven residents of the Gaza Strip, five of whom were children. Of the five children who were killed this week, three were killed during an extra-judicial execution gone wrong. The Israeli military also wounded eighteen civilians, including eight children in the reported period.

+ Purim 5766 - And Still Going Strong.

+ Sea ice in the Arctic has failed to re-form for the second consecutive winter, raising fears that global warming may have tipped the polar regions in to irreversible climate change far sooner than predicted.

+ Abu Ghraib - is it torture or is it art?

+ POT SENDS YOU TO HELL.

+ Kan verkligen rekommendera ett besök på Michael Muhammad Knights blog, för de som är intresserade av oortodox islam, punk, Nation of Islam, 5%ers, anarkism och liknande. Läs också hans artiklar på Muslim Wakeup!

+ Disaster warning from UN as investigation reveals half of the planet's 500 biggest rivers are seriously depleted or polluted.

+ Juan Cole har några fina artiklar uppe nu om Islam och jihad: Quran Quote of the Day on Peace. Här är en till, och här hittar du en tredje.

+ Och som en händelse snubblade jag över ett stycke från Bibeln där Jesus använder den muslimska hälsningen Salaam aleikum (fast på sitt språk då): Jesus said to them again, "Peace be upon you" (Joh 20:21). Där ser man.

+ His raging hatred for the West, in a video justifying the London suicide bombings, has made him seem the most transparent of the four men who detonated bombs in rucksacks and killed 52 others on 7 July. But Mohammad Sidique Khan's extraordinary and rapid transition from law-abiding citizen to terrorist is revealed in documents showing he used to work for the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), helping promote British firms overseas. He also helped Leeds police deal with confrontations between rival gangs of youths. Ett offerlamm för makten..

+ Jewish settlers are terrorizing Palestinians with impunity, attacking children on their way to school and destroying farmers' trees and crops, a U.N. expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict said in a report.

+ Israel's mobsters grow more daring. A travel advisory issued by the State Department last week cited an October 2005 incident in which a bomb destroyed a Tel Aviv apartment building, killing three people and wounding five. "Such incidents in the past have involved the use of bombs, grenades, anti-tank missiles, and small arms fire," the statement said. (!)

+ Oh, big surprise. Dick Cheney, according to a CBS poll, is less popular than the wife-beating murderer O.J. Simpson, convicted in civil court in 1997. In fact, Cheney is several times more murderous and infinitely more dangerous than Simpson, although Dick is careful to not get any blood spattered on his expensive suit. “Michael Jackson, who was alleged of sexually harassing an underage boy, and American football player O.J. Simpson, who caused a huge clamor for being suspected of murdering his wife in 1994, each maintained 25 percent and 29 percent favorable impression rates, respectively,” while Cheney came in at 18 percent. :D :D :D

+ An al-Qaeda leader as important as overall terror chief Osama bin Laden and the group's Iraq leader Abu Musab Zarqawi will soon reveal himself in the Palestinian territories and orchestrate local and global jihad from the area, according to a pamphlet distributed in the Gaza Strip. Mike Rivero slår huvudet på spiken när han kommenterar: This is an obvious set-up. Why the Palestinian territories? Why not the more easily accessible Lebanon, Syria, or Egypt? Why would anyone announce ahead of time they are going to set up shop in Palestine? In order to give Israel the excuse they need to carry out the assassinations they have been threatening?

+ Could the universe be a giant computer? A new book argues just that, and unlocks some great scientific mysteries along the way.

+ Monkey see, monkey help: Is it altruism?

+ Intressant intervju med Robert Fisk, the Guardians mellanösternkorrespondent: Robert Fisk shares his Middle East knowledge

Somebody at the moment is trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq. Someone wants a civil war. Some form of militias and death squads want a civil war. There never has been a civil war in Iraq. The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities. I'd like to know what the Americans are doing to get at the people who are trying to provoke the civil war. It seems to me not very much. We don't hear of any suicide bombers being stopped before they blow themselves up. We don't hear of anybody stopping a mosque getting blown up. We're not hearing of death squads all being arrested. Something is going very, very wrong in Baghdad.

+ Decades later, Marines hunt Vietnam-era deserters.

+ Skulle vilja rekommendera alla läsare att sätta av en timme och tjugo minuter och kolla in Loose Change (2nd Edition), den kanske bästa dokumentären om 11 september jag sett på länge. Tack till Fred för tipset.

+ Hahaha! Land of the free etc.. They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522. And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges’ behavior was found questionable. And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn’t call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn’t try to sneak a machine gun through customs. They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast..

+ US envoy hints at strike to stop Iran.

+ Israel and Hamas united on ditching road map.

+ Tall tales and fast cars add to mystery of LA Ferrari wipeout.

+ The Sunni clans in Al-Anbar province have ordered protection for Shiite families in the predominantly Sunni cities from potential tit-for-tat reprisals in view of anti-Sunni attacks and killings by Shiite militants after the bombing of a celebrated Shiite shrine.

+ Pipes: Mass Murdering Muslims a Good Thing.

"Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition’s responsibility nor its burden," Pipes told New York Sun on February 28. "Civil war in Iraq … would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one," Pipes continued, allowing us commoners a glimpse of the way the Straussian neocon mind works.

According to Pipes, a “civil war” in Iraq would be a good thing since it would invite “Syrian and Iranian participation, hastening the possibility of an American confrontation with those two states,” an objective at the very core of the Straussian plan to unleash society and culture destroying chaos and violence in the Middle East and thus breaking the region up into more easily controllable Bantustans. More sectarian violence would also put an end to the "dream of Iraq serving as a model for other Middle Eastern countries, thus delaying the push toward elections. This will have the effect of keeping Islamists from being legitimated by the popular vote, as Hamas was just a month ago."

+ Only on Fox: "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?"

+ Fascinerande studie av Bushs uppväxt och psyke här: So George, how do you feel about your mom and dad? GB Senior och Barbara verkar ju också vara riktigt charmiga typer. Dagen efter att deras sjuåriga dotter dött i leukemi var de ute och golfade.. Själv verkar han också ha glömt bort sin syster. Vid ett möte med Cindy Sheehan, som förlorat sin son i Irak, sa han: "I can’t even imagine losing a loved one, a mother or a father or a sister or a brother."

+ 14,000 detained without trial in Iraq.

+ mid intense security some 3.000 Iraqis have attended a joint Shiite-Sunni prayer service in the Sunni Great Mosque of Basra.

+ Ice sheet really is shrinking, and fast. University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have used data from a pair of NASA satellites orbiting Earth in tandem to determine that the Antarctic ice sheet, which harbors 90 percent of Earth's ice, has lost significant mass in recent years.

+ Irakisk Oscarsgala. :)

+ USA och Storbritannien planerar att dra tillbaka alla sina trupper från Irak under våren 2007, uppger två brittiska tidningar i sina söndagsupplagor. Båda citerar högt uppsatta anonyma källor inom försvarsdepartementet. (...) Om ett inbördeskrig bryter ut i Irak så kommer troligen tidpunkten för ett tillbakadragande att skjutas upp, skriver The Sunday Telegraph, som citerar en tjänsteman inom försvaret. Då får man väl anta att ett inbördeskrig är på dagordningen då.

+ Jan Guillou skriver om Palmedokumentären: Beklämmande dårfinkeri om Palmemordet - varje år.

+ London is world's cocaine capital.

+ American "liberators": War, Never Been So Much Fun! (video)

+ There are now about 490 prisoners at Gitmo, and "55 percent of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or coalition allies."

"Only 8 percent of the detainees were characterized as Al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40 percent have no definitive connection with Al Qaeda at all and 18 percent have no definitive affiliation with either Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

"Only 5 percent of the detainees were captured by United States forces. [A total of] 86 percent of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86 percent of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were turned over to the United States at a time at which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies."

+ Svensk media idag: Uteslutet för Hamas erkänna Israel. Enligt Al Jazeera säger dock Hamas något helt annat: The Palestinian prime minister-designate says Hamas is ready to recognise Israel if it gives the Palestinian people their full rights and a state in lands occupied since 1967, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Undrar om det är Hamas eller media som är förvirrade?

+ Israel gives military free rein.

+ It is entirely and predictably within character. Avi Dichter, former Shin Bet boss, who will become defense minister of Israel when the “centrist” Kadima party (a collection of Likudite outcasts) wins Israel’s election later this month, has promised to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the Palestinian Authority, Ismail Haniyeh, according to the Jewish Telegraph.

+ Three Israeli Jews sowed panic at a church in the hometown of Jesus Christ Friday, March 3, when they desecrated the holy place and set off fireworks during a service.

+ Tony Blair has proclaimed that God will judge whether he was right to send British troops to Iraq, echoing statements from his ally George Bush. "And when it is said to them, Do not make mischief in the land, they say: We are but peace-makers. Now surely they themselves are the mischief makers, but they do not perceive." (Koranen 2:11-12)

+ Via WRH: Rumsfeld Sept 10, 2001: The Pentagon cannot account for $2.3 TRILLION. This should have been a huge scandal. $2.3 Trillion dollars amounts to almost $8000 for every man, woman, and child in the US. But look when this was announced. September 10th, 2001. Just 24 hours later, the events of 9-11 wiped this scandal from the newspapers. Rather interesting timing, don't you think?

+ Riverbend har nyheter från Baghdad att bjuda på: It does not feel like civil war because Sunnis and Shia have been showing solidarity these last few days in a big way. I don’t mean the clerics or the religious zealots or the politicians- but the average person. Our neighborhood is mixed and Sunnis and Shia alike have been outraged with the attacks on mosques and shrines. The telephones have been down, but we’ve agreed upon a very primitive communication arrangement. Should any house in the area come under siege, someone would fire in the air three times. If firing in the air isn’t an option, then someone inside the house would have to try to communicate trouble from the rooftop.

+ Pentagon develops brain implants to turn sharks into military spies. Military scientists in the United States are developing a way of manipulating sharks by remote control to turn them into underwater spies or weapons. WTF?!

+ Alltså, Petter är fan världens sämsta rappare, och så vill han tro att hans värdelösa försäljningssiffror beror på nerladdning. Säkert.

+ Is Iraq Civil War By Design?

+ Via Malung TV News: Wersta scratch!

+ Drug that spans the ages: The history of cocaine.

+ According to a soon to be released book written by Bill Sammon, Senior White House Correspondent for the Washington Examiner, Bush attributes his 2004 victory over John Kerry in part to a Osama bin Laden videotape released on the eve of the election. "I thought it was going to help," Bush decided. "I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush." Former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite went public to call the tape a set up orchestrated by Karl Rove.

+ Evidence of Children’s UFO and Extraterrestrial Encounters to be Presented at a United Nations Affiliated Conference in Montreal.