It should never have even come up. Same-sex debate may end quickly
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Thursday, November 30, 2006
Reconstructing The Taliban
Reconstruction funds in Southern Afghanistan are making there way to the Taliban. Now why would that be?
“American money is haram [unlawful in Islam],” said Abdul Jalil, an elder in one village. “We could not use it to improve our lives. So we decided to give it to the Taleban. The most important thing we could do with this money was help the Taleban to pursue the jihad.”
At a gathering in the local mosque, mullahs exhorted the faithful to reject foreign blandishments and contribute to the insurgency, said Jalil. The elders agreed, so the Taleban were summoned and the money handed over.
An elder in another village called Lashko, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told IWPR that the villagers were well aware that they could not use the funds without Taleban consent.
“It’s the Taleban who are with us in the night-time,” he said. “They are powerful: they can enforce their rules and punish those who violate them. One day, the US troops gave us 50,000 afghani [1,000 US dollars] for a construction project, but the Taleban came to us that evening and asked us what we were going to do with it. We told them it was their decision. They took the money and left.”
According to this man, US troops arrived a few days later to see what had been accomplished with their donation. At a loss to reply, villagers told them that the Taleban had taken the money by force.
“The soldiers were angry and threatened that they would not help us against the Taleban,” he said.
Cash disbursements and distribution of goods were part of a special drive carried out in the course of military operations in areas where support for the Taleban has been strong. The fact that the aid was distributed by soldiers from an “occupying force” seems to have particularly angered the militants.
Other reconstruction projects administered by donors and carried out by contractors have had more success, although in places like Ghazni, implementing partners are becoming increasingly scarce, leaving assistance money and projects vulnerable to pressure from insurgents.
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“American money is haram [unlawful in Islam],” said Abdul Jalil, an elder in one village. “We could not use it to improve our lives. So we decided to give it to the Taleban. The most important thing we could do with this money was help the Taleban to pursue the jihad.”
At a gathering in the local mosque, mullahs exhorted the faithful to reject foreign blandishments and contribute to the insurgency, said Jalil. The elders agreed, so the Taleban were summoned and the money handed over.
An elder in another village called Lashko, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told IWPR that the villagers were well aware that they could not use the funds without Taleban consent.
“It’s the Taleban who are with us in the night-time,” he said. “They are powerful: they can enforce their rules and punish those who violate them. One day, the US troops gave us 50,000 afghani [1,000 US dollars] for a construction project, but the Taleban came to us that evening and asked us what we were going to do with it. We told them it was their decision. They took the money and left.”
According to this man, US troops arrived a few days later to see what had been accomplished with their donation. At a loss to reply, villagers told them that the Taleban had taken the money by force.
“The soldiers were angry and threatened that they would not help us against the Taleban,” he said.
Cash disbursements and distribution of goods were part of a special drive carried out in the course of military operations in areas where support for the Taleban has been strong. The fact that the aid was distributed by soldiers from an “occupying force” seems to have particularly angered the militants.
Other reconstruction projects administered by donors and carried out by contractors have had more success, although in places like Ghazni, implementing partners are becoming increasingly scarce, leaving assistance money and projects vulnerable to pressure from insurgents.
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Afghanistan
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Oil the New Silk Road
Interesting article in the Globalist on the far east oil cartels being created by Russia, China and the Islamic Conference, in the hotly contested region of the Caspian. It is the region of geo-political power brokering as America used its war in Afghanistan to offset the Russian Chinese dominance in the region. It is all about energy security. It is the real face of Imperialist conflict amongst competing hegemons.
Caspian oil field to produce 25% more
Japan Strives to Balance Energy Needs with World Politics
Oil Pipelines Fuel Balkan Dreams of Overnight Riches
China wants to develop Darkhan field in Kazakhstan area of Caspian
In 2005, it admitted Iran as an observer, along with India, Pakistan and Mongolia.
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Caspian oil field to produce 25% more
Japan Strives to Balance Energy Needs with World Politics
Oil Pipelines Fuel Balkan Dreams of Overnight Riches
China wants to develop Darkhan field in Kazakhstan area of Caspian
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Same road, new trade. |
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| Globalist Perspective > Global Economy The New Silk Road | |
By George Magnus | Thursday, November 30, 2006 |
Asia and oil exporters, especially those in the Gulf, have a long history of commerce. The ancient and continental Silk Road was once a major conduit of goods, technology and even religion. As George Magnus — UBS's Senior Economic Advisor — argues, a new silk road has emerged through the trade of hydrocarbons, petrodollars and, like its ancient counterpart, consumer goods.
A multi-polar Asia and Middle East, incorporating China, Russia, India, Japan, Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia, could hardly have remained passive as the significance and price of hydrocarbons increased
and as the economies of Asia continued to grow absolutely and in importance. Although the Silk Road remained active for another 300 years, political instability and upheavals in Asia and the Middle East consigned the Silk Road to disuse.
A new strategic tapestry is in the process of being formed, its threads being hydrocarbons, petrodollars, consumer products and technologies, military ties, labor migration — even religion.
The hydrocarbon part of this is self explanatory, and a shift in the Middle East to prioritise shipments towards Asia is evident in both crude oil and natural gas as Asian demand rises and as it switches steadily away from coal.
Flow of capital
The other economic linkages are rather newer and warrant attention, not least because Middle Eastern countries may now be much more sensitive to Asian business cycles. Further, Asia is becoming more sensitive to Middle Eastern energy developments.
For 30 years, East and South Asian investors have been significant investors in the Middle East, competing for management and investment contracts while capital has gone in the other direction.
Islamic finance
But these flows of expertise and capital have gathered considerable momentum in very recent years and, of course, the increase in interest in Islamic finance and banking has provided new links between not only the Middle East and South East Asia, but also with China, India and Pakistan.
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Indeed, the emphasis on infrastructure and project finance in the Gulf and in Asia is ideal for Islamic finance, especially bonds (sukuk), the outstandings of which have soared since 2002 when pioneered by Malaysia to reach over $40 billion currently.
It is still fair to point out that the institutional structures underpinning Asian and Middle Eastern ties are relatively weak or embryonic. Bilateral relationships are most common, but the wider institutional structures necessary for deeper and broader interactions are starting to change.
The OIC
The Organisation of Islamic Conferences, founded in 1969 and comprising 57 countries, is the only major body with complete coverage of the GCC states and certain Asian countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and India. Russia has observer status in this organisation.
However, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, founded in 2001 by Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to deal with disputes, terrorism and separatist threats now has a new raison d’etre.
Beyond OPEC
The function of the OIC is, essentially, to foster energy and economic cooperation and to deter or contain U.S. presence and influence in central Asia (which is seen as destabilising for a variety of reasons).
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As a group, it now represents about half the world’s population. Moreover, since June 2005, several structures have evolved to further the networks of economic and political interactions.
These networks include the Asia-Middle East Dialogue, the China-OPEC Energy Dialogue, the Asia Cooperation Dialogue, the China-Arab Cooperation Forum, the Indo-Gulf Summit, the Arab-Asian Financial Forum, the UAE-Asia Investment Forum and, at the end of this year, the India-Arab World CEO Summit.
A diplomatic briefing on Caspian energy took place in London
Leading experts in sphere of energy economics are known to be involved in participation of such an event. Its ultimate goal is to stimulate debates and studies on a wide range of power energy issues.
Among the invited main speakers were acknowledged analysts like Dr Jennifer Coolidge, counselor of the US State Department, Christof van Agt (International Energy Agency), John Roberts (Platts economic agency).
The key conclusion of the briefing is an ever-growing role of the Caspian region in providing global energy security. Thereat the growth of the region’s significance will further directly depend on the actions of the Caspian littoral states in guaranteeing efficient and secure routes of the Caspian oil and gas export to the world market, including Europe, development of alternate export routes, new oil and gas fields, ensuring safety of the existent oil and gas infrastructure.
Israel’s new plans on Caspian oil transit
Speaking at an international energy conference in Haifa, he said Israel plans to both consume and act as a transit country for the transportation of Caspian oil and gas.
“We are not looking only to buy energy resources. We are also offering our territory to be used for delivering Caspian oil to Asian markets, namely, China, India and Japan. As a result, this will lead to a reduction in transit fees,” Ben-Eliezer said. The minister added that he would like to see Israel as an energy giant.
It is indicative that Ben-Eliezer did not touch on Israel’s energy cooperation with Russia. He did not mention transportation of Russian gas to the Mediterranean Sea ports either.
The conference was attended by officials from a number of countries, including Georgian and Turkish energy ministers, German environment minister, Kazakh deputy prime minister and an official of Azeri state oil company SOCAR. Speakers described Azerbaijan as an oil-rich country playing an important role in regional energy security.
Russia to boost crude oil thru pipelines
Russia has agreed to boost supplies of its crude via Ukrainian oil pipelines next year in a move that may further strengthen its position as the dominant energy supplier to European markets.
The agreement, reached Thursday by the countries’ top energy officials in Moscow, may hamper Ukraine’s earlier commitments to start shipments of alternative Caspian Sea crude via the same pipelines to Europe.
Russia agreed to boost oil shipments via Brody-to-Odessa to about 9 million metric tons in 2007, up from about 3.7 million metric tons in 2006, the Energy and Fuel Ministry reported. Russia also pledged to boost its oil shipments to Europe via Druzhba, another major oil pipeline crossing Ukraine.
Diplomacy awakens on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
International pressure and Armenia's growing isolation in the region may be the key reason why Armenia is opting for a fresh diplomatic drive on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, one of the most intricate disputes threatening stability in the southern Caucasus, home to considerable Caspian gas and oil resources. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced during a 1988-1994 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan.
Armenia, say diplomats familiar with the issue, is feeling increasingly isolated in the region as its rival Azerbaijan proceeds with regional energy and transportation projects with Turkey and Georgia.
Azerbaijan is sending part of its Caspian oil to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan via neighboring Georgia with the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which was officially launched in the summer of this year. A parallel pipeline to transport part of its natural gas to Turkey's eastern terminal of Erzurum is also drawing near for completion.
Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia are working on a regional integration project, as they proceed with plans to build a railway linking the three countries.
Armenia's position on Nagorno-Karabakh is costing the Yerevan administration dearly. Neighboring Turkey closed its border gates more than a decade ago and severed diplomatic ties to protest the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh by Armenian troops, bringing huge trade losses for the landlocked country.
Ankara says normalization of ties depends on Armenia's withdrawal from the enclave and whether Armenia drops its support for Armenian diaspora efforts to win international recognition for allegations of an Armenian genocide at the hands of the late Ottoman Empire.
Armenia's economic hardships have grown further recently due to a Russian transportation blockade on Georgia, the main route for Armenia to reach the outside world.
Azerbaijan, on the other hand, sits on a significant part of the Caspian energy wealth and has been channeling money to boost its defense structure. Oil and gas money has brought a record high economic growth to Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani President Aliyev has pledged to equal his country's defense budget to the entire budget of Armenia.
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The First Computer- Second Century B.C.
The New York Times is reporting this amazing discovery, which pre-dates the first modern computers of the Ninteenth Century by thousands of years.
A century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.
The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers was able to decipher many inscriptions and reconstruct the gear functions, revealing, they said, “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period.”
Historians of technology think the instrument is technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterward.
The mechanism, presumably used in preparing calendars for seasons of planting and harvesting and fixing religious festivals, had at least 30, possibly 37, hand-cut bronze gear-wheels, the researchers reported. An ingenious pin-and-slot device connecting two gear-wheels induced variations in the representation of lunar motions according to the Hipparchos model of the Moon’s elliptical orbit around Earth.
The Ancient Greeks also had steam power that they used to make toys with and other technological advancements so here is the question historians ponder;Why No Industrial Revolution in Ancient Greece?
Ancient civilizations were quiet advanced as antiquarians have known for hundred of years, hence the Atlantis Myth as a meme of this. And no we did not need aliens to help us with out technological development.
Rather ancient civilizations may have had a religious reason for not advancing technology. Being pagan civilizations they would have a different world view , that of magick ,than the the later Christian civilizations that would bring forth modern capitalism, science and the industrial revolution.
Despite their hierarchical social structures, ancient civilizations were based on use value rather than exchange value. The latter came into existence with the transition from the middle ages to the Rennisance.Modern capitalism and the industrial revolution in technology is the result of the change from use to exchange value.
It is also a change in world view, from one that sees science as a way to know god, gnosis, to one that has 'faith'. Thus by the end of the Rennisance a materialist science devoid of religious morality was begining to come into existence as the Rennisance humanitarians rediscovered gnosis and Hellenistic philosophy that truimphed in the Enlightenment.The decline of the Catholic church gave rise to civil society and a greater openess to ideas including science and technology.
The development of Protestantism allowed for a more flexible Christianity able to adapt to the technology of the industrial revolution and the advent of captialism. A Christianity of towns folk and merchants rather than of priests and peasants which had been the power of the Holy Roman Empire and its Church State. The creation of a non-Catholic Church in England, gave rise to protestantism and puritanism which embraced technology as it transformed its agriculutral economy into a capitalist one.
The conflict between science and Christianity that is still with us today is an ancient conflict between Hellenistic paganism, gnosis, and catholic faith.
Even relatively more recent civilizations have been amazing scientists with their technology such as the recent discovery of nano-tech used in the creation of the Damascus steel.
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Finally A BT Speaks About Chong
Joanne's Journey comments on the Chong resignation. But as I predicted she repeats Tory slanders now circulating about Michael Chong. "According to some insiders, ex-Minister Michael Chong was not completely above-board with the PM, and kept his cards close to his chest until the last minute. This contradicts Chong's story that he kept Harper well apprised of his concerns. There is also a dispute about how much the PM kept Chong in the loop ahead of time."
Jacks Newswatch also covered the Chong affair for all of one day, with comments. But his site was not showing up on the BT problems with their aggregator, and with stupid Pingomatic, (problems I am having too so I recommend Jack use Blog Flux).
The rest of the BT, well as I said before Silence is Golden or was it Silence is Death. Nope thats AIDS and we know where these dweebs stand on that.
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Jacks Newswatch also covered the Chong affair for all of one day, with comments. But his site was not showing up on the BT problems with their aggregator, and with stupid Pingomatic, (problems I am having too so I recommend Jack use Blog Flux).
The rest of the BT, well as I said before Silence is Golden or was it Silence is Death. Nope thats AIDS and we know where these dweebs stand on that.
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Blogging Tories
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Class Biased Justice
Why do I find it outrageous that an Afro American mother who obviously is not a scion of some wealthy family is being held on $1 million dollars bail accused of killing her one month old daughter.
A year after the fact. So why the overkill. Could it be the headline nature of the case. Ohio mom held in microwave murder of baby
She is a classic case of teenage motherhood, she had her first child at 15, the next at 17. She lives in a housing complex and obviously is not wealthy, she is one of Americas underclass. She obviously poses no threat to her other children.Accused mom showed baby love, friend says But the court apparently did not take that into account. She is being judged guilty not innocent, with such an onorous bail she cannot possibly raise.
Could it be because of this...Mom in microwave baby case has record for crimes of poverty.
Heck even wealthy scions of the Kennedy family have faced less onorous bail commitments on murder charges.
And could this be a case of post partum depression in a State that has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the United States? Inquiring minds want to know.
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Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Stoned In Iran
I often see the right wing proclaiming their indignation over events like this, demanding feminists respond, as if feminists ignored the plight of their sisters oppressed by Islam. Well they don't as Maryam Namazie proves. She posted this on her website, which opposes Islamism. I expect all those Blogging Tories tosign this petition. Put up or shut up.7 women are at risk of imminent execution by stoning in Iran. Sign the petition against it by clicking here.
This outrage has to be stopped now!
A tip o' the blog to Renegade Eye
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Another MSM Live Blogger MIA
Edmonton Journal political affairs reporter Larry Johnsrude claims to have been live blogging from the Calgary Roundup Centre on Saturday during the PC Leadership vote. Really. Must have been doing it at the same time his pals at the Calgary Herald were.
And like them he wasn't showing up on Google in real time. I guess you have to be either a subscriber to one of these two Canwest papers to know they are "live blogging" or check them out online at the time. Their prescence was not noted by other bloggers checking out for results of the vote.
And if you check out Johnsrudes Journal blog you will find it less than awe inspiring as to the events of last Saturday. Pretty mundane reporting. And despite his biography extolling his web savvy he and his Calgary Herald pals seem to have been off in cyberspace by themselves.
With the Alberta PC convention unless you are a regular Journal or Herald reader you missed it. And there was no indication on Saturdays Journal web page that they were live blogging. And Johnsrude is the Journals website editor. Go figure.
Obviously he is not using the internet effectively or we would not have missed his live blogging on the weekend. Well there is always this coming Saturday, so I will check him out then.
So are they really bloggers? Let alone effective ones? I would say NOT. And unlike the rest of us, they get paid to do this. Which also disqualifies them as bloggers I would suggest.
And like them he wasn't showing up on Google in real time. I guess you have to be either a subscriber to one of these two Canwest papers to know they are "live blogging" or check them out online at the time. Their prescence was not noted by other bloggers checking out for results of the vote.
And if you check out Johnsrudes Journal blog you will find it less than awe inspiring as to the events of last Saturday. Pretty mundane reporting. And despite his biography extolling his web savvy he and his Calgary Herald pals seem to have been off in cyberspace by themselves.
Compare the blogging in the MSM and blogosphere that is covering the Liberal Convention and you can't miss it. Maybe Johnsonrude should join the Canadian Blog Exchange like Paul Wells has then the blogosphere would know he was live blogging.Larry Johnsrude
After 30 years in newspapers, Larry has found the Internet to be a new and better way of keeping in touch with our community and telling our stories. As website reporter-editor, he brings his experience as a political, features, post-secondary education and editorial writer. His blog looks at how the Internet is changing traditional journalism, and offers insight into a range of topics both serious and whimsical.
With the Alberta PC convention unless you are a regular Journal or Herald reader you missed it. And there was no indication on Saturdays Journal web page that they were live blogging. And Johnsrude is the Journals website editor. Go figure.
Obviously he is not using the internet effectively or we would not have missed his live blogging on the weekend. Well there is always this coming Saturday, so I will check him out then.
So are they really bloggers? Let alone effective ones? I would say NOT. And unlike the rest of us, they get paid to do this. Which also disqualifies them as bloggers I would suggest.
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