The Dead Dead Sea

Now why does this headline strike me as darkly ironic in a Lovecraftian fashion......The Dead Sea is Dying. Perhaps because I thought it was already Dead.

As Lovecraft wrote; "That is not dead, which can eternal lie. Yet with strange eons, even death may die".

And the reaon is as usual the use of water for irrigation in an area that should not be irrigated, sort of like the area around Lethbridge in Southern Alberta. And as usual having created an environmental disaster the solution is itself a disaster in the making!

Irrigation has lowered water level

Rescue plan 'will make things worse'

Only a minute’s walk from the fast-receding coastline of the Dead Sea is the starkest evidence of what environmentalists have feared for years. Decades of a policy to drain water from the Sea of Galilee and Jordan River to turn the deserts green have inflicted a heavy cost — the shrinking of the Dead Sea, and the alarming appearance of fissures and sinkholes on its shores.

See

Environment

Lovecraft


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Dion Miracle Man

Man with no pulse considered medical breakthrough

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CIA,Conspiracy,Princess Di

Diana report set to dismiss conspiracy theories

Sure alright there was no conspiracy.

Except for this ....Report: CIA Tapped Princess Diana's Phones

and this.....Di's Driver Said To Have Been Spy, Reports: Henri Paul,

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CIA

Conspiracy

Conspiracy Theories

Psudeo Science vs Real Science

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China Dolphin Free

World's Tallest Man Saves China Dolphins

The ones he saved were captives at an Aguarium. While China's fresh water river dolphins have slipped away up the river of extinction

Scientist: Rare Chinese White Dolphin Declared Extinct; 'We Lost the Race'


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Dolphins

Extinction

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Green Latern and Doughboy

One of my favorite DC comics characters was the Green Latern. Perhaps because he reminded me of Marvel's Doctor Strange, since both characters shared mystical powers and magickal objects.

But I never thought of the connection between Green Lantern and the fat white doughboy that giggles when you poke him in the stomache.

How the mighty have fallen seems apt here.

Martin Nodell, the creator of Green Lantern, the comic book superhero who uses his magical ring to help him fight crime, has died. He was 91.

The first Green Lantern appearance came in July 1940, an eight-page story in a comic book also featuring other characters. The character then got his own series, and Nodell drew it until 1947 under the name Mart Dellon.

After its cancellation in 1949, the series was reborn in 1959 with a revised story line, and it has been revived several times.

Meanwhile, Nodell left the comics field for an advertising career. In the 1960s, he was on a design team that helped develop the Pillsbury Doughboy.

See

Chuck Jones Explains It all

One Down Thousands to Go

Comics

Obituary

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Primate Torture Ok

Once again academics expose themselves as apologists for torturing our relatives; primates. Report backs use of monkeys in research

"There is a scientific case for careful, meticulously regulated non-human primate research, at least for the foreseeable future, provided it is the only way of solving important scientific or medical questions," says inquiry chairman David Weatherall of the University of Oxford.

Hmm wonder what would happen if we replaced non-human primate with human in this statement.

"There is a scientific case for careful, meticulously regulated human research, at least for the foreseeable future, provided it is the only way of solving important scientific or medical questions,"

Yep seems justifiable to me to continue to experiment on humans, after all there are more of us than there are dwindling species of endangered primates. However despite the reports glossing over the issue of torture, its not like they are only experimenting on just a few of our cousins.

Who are imprisoned in cages for the rest of their short lives.

Captive rhesus macaques are not naturally aggressive, but poor husbandry and handling practices can trigger their aggression toward conspecifics and toward the human handler. The myth of the aggressive monkey probably is based on often not taking into account basic ethological principles when managing rhesus macaques in the research laboratory setting.

Macaca mulatta is the most common nonhuman primate species found in biomedical research facilities in the United States. Of the 57,000 or so primates (United States Department of Agriculture, 2000), approximately 33,000 (58%) animals are rhesus macaques (National Center for Research Resources, 2002) of whom an estimated 16,500 (50%) are living in cages.

After all how many humans would not voluteer for this experiment. What You can learn from drunk monkeys

And it is going to be 'meticulously regulated' research so it should be non leathal and perfectly safe. Not.

Of course most of us would not volunteer to really be put in this monkeys place no matter how meticulous the regulations......

Monkeys Tortured with Shocks Humans Found Unbearable

In the 50's and 60's, much work on "pain centers" and "pleasure centers" in the brain was carried out at Yale by José Delgado, a picaresque neuropsychologist who would like to see "human society 'psychocivilized' through brain stimulation and other influencing techniques." (Lausch, E.,1972, p. 121). Some of his experiments involved electroshocking monkeys in brain areas known to produce intense pain. (Delgado, J.,1966).

An idea of the pain suffered by these monkeys may be obtained by comparison with experiments in which the same brain areas were stimulated in man by B. Nashold and other neurosurgeons. The surgeons implanted electrodes in patients in the course of operations and recorded the sensations reported by the latter during electrical stimulation. In the area of the central gray matter at the level of the superior colliculus in the midbrain, stimulation produced bodily sensations of pain, burning, vibration and cold. In addition, a patient would experience feelings which were "described as 'fearful,' 'frightful,' or 'terrible,' and he would become apprehensive and not allow further stimulations." (Nashold, B., 1969).

Delgado implanted an electrode in the same place (the central gray area near the superior colliculus) in the brain of a rhesus monkey named "Harry." First, with the monkey in restraint, 1.2 milliampere shocks were given. Harry tried to grab anything in reach, bit the chair after every shock, then, released into a small cage, bit the swing as the shocks continued, attacked other monkeys, and finally climbed the wall and clung there.

Although humans, once they had experienced it, could not stand a second stimulation in this brain area, Harry was subjected to 40 minutes of intermittent shocks and 2 minutes of continuous shocks. Other monkeys shocked in the same area responded with screams, grimaces and "signs of aggressiveness directed against the investigator." Through multiple electrodes implanted in their brains, Delgado tested various areas known to cause offensive-defensive reaction when stimulated, and over a period of two days he subjected the monkeys to more than 120 stimulations at each cerebral point, after which they were killed and autopsied.

Although he proposes a hypothesis that brain mechanisms for perception of pain and aggressive behavior have different anatomical and physiological systems, he admits that the evoked aggression was often secondary to electrical excitation of the pain pathways, and that the monkeys demonstrated this by their screams ("high-pitched vocalizations"), dilated pupils, snarling expressions and efforts to escape.

Delgado's experiments were then used on humans to change behaviour, including their use on depressed women and homosexuals. It was used to torture political prisoners under the care of the CIA and their client states in Latin America. Of course under 'meticulous regulations'.



See

Primates

Monkeys

Great Apes

Organutan


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Another Anarchist Blog

Nice to find another Western Canadian anarchist/ libertarian socialist blogger. Shagya Blog.

Anyone up for creating a Canadian Libertarian/Anarchist blog aggregator?




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Anarchism

Anarchist

Libertarian

Libertarian Socialism

Libertarian Communism

Mutualism


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Our Allies In Afghanistan Oppress Women

Karzai turned his back on the hopes and expectations of our people and failed to fulfill his commitments. He betrayed the people's trust by relying on warlords. By compromising with infamous fundamentalist warlords, and appointing them to high governmental posts Karzai has failed to bring any radical positive change. Now we have a parliament full of warlords. The most disgusting faces include Jehadi criminal leaders, former Taliban commanders and some former puppets of the USSR. Those who ought to be prosecuted before anyone else for their crimes against our nation are going to legislate to the Afghan people! The rule of private armies of the warlords in different parts of the country and infighting between different groups of them has resulted in the loss of innocent lives.

Afghanistan the Bloodiest Field for Slaughtering Human Rights
RAWA communiqué on Universal Human Rights Day, Dec.10, 2006

Since the Northern Alliance criminals were installed into power, RAWA has been saying that it is impossible to bring peace, human rights, and stability with a gang of criminals in power. Today even the western media points out the jehadi warlords as a main problem in destabilizing Afghanistan which proves RAWA's analyzes. However, the fundamentalist Karzai's government, in order to cover up its own irresponsibility, corruption, and weaknesses, terms Pakistan's interference and support to the Taliban as the only main issue in Afghanistan and pretend that if this interference is stopped Afghanistan will become a heaven on the earth! Karzai's government raise hue and cry on Pakistani statement about the need of "coalition government" but everyone knows that a coalition government with all criminals such as Taliban, Jehadi, Gullbudin's and other is already in place.

Northern Alliance criminals, backed by the US have their own local and barbaric governments. Just the increasing amount of women who commit suicides by burning themselves can be the best example of a human rights violation in Afghanistan. According to UNICEF, 65% of 50000 widows in Kabul think that committing suicide is the only option they have. Northern Alliance crooks raped an 11 year old girl, Sanuber, and traded her with a dog. In Badakhshan a young woman was gang-raped by 13 Jehadies in front of her children, and one of the rapists urinated in the mouth of her children who were continuously crying. In Paghman, a suburb of Kabul, a criminal leader Rasol Sayyaf, who was the mentor and godfather of Khalid Shikh Mohammad, the mastermind of 9/11 attacks, plunders our peoples' territory and tortures his oppositions at his private prison. Despite many protest rallies of unfortunate people of Paghman in front of the Parliament House, no one hear their painful voice and the so-called police forces headed by infamous criminal warlords like Zahir Aghbar and Amanullah Guzar attack the protester and kill 2 of them. These are all just some examples of thousands crimes that are being carried out by fundamentalists of the Northern Alliance evil men who have high positions in executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the US-imposed government and some unprincipled intellectuals are dancing to their tune.

Establishment of state-run institutions such as the Independent Human Rights Commission and Ministry for Women Affairs are just a show-off to throw dust in the eye of our people and world community and to conceal the human rights catastrophe. Although these symbolic institutes spend a lot of money, they have never addressed the core issues regarding human rights in Afghanistan, which is the atrocities carried out by the Northern Alliance criminals. For instance, a woman named Zofanoon Natiq, the head of Women Affaires Ministry branch in Badakhshan Province in an interview with Pajhwak News Agency entirely refused the gang-rape saying "no such incident had been occurred in Badakhshan" while the Police chief in the same province contradicted her and said a warlord from the fundamentalist Jamiat-e-Islami party, named Mujtaba committed the crime. Another woman, Fahima Kakar, the head of Women department in Kunduz, didn't want to displeasure warlords by only saying, "I think it is not proper to behead a lady, in my view and in Islam it is not good to kill someone" regarding the crime in which a woman was beheaded and killed while her hands were tightened on her back. All of the women in official posts are selected among such showpiece women who compromise with the fundamentalists and keep silence against their crimes.

See:

Womens Oppression Continues In Afghanistan

Schools In Afghanistan

Sir Robert Bond Idiot

Afghan Woman Speaks Out

The War For Women's Rights

Democracy In Afghanistan

Where Are The Women?

Afghanistan

Women

Feminism





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Canadian Workers Poorer Today Than Yesterday

I said this the other day, somethings never change.....In Canada, the richest got richer and the poorest stayed poor.

Statistics Canada reports that between 1999 and 2005, the median net worth of families in the top fifth of the wealth distribution increased by 19 per cent, the study said, while the net worth of their counterparts in the bottom fifth remained virtually unchanged.

At the other end of the spectrum, the median net worth of the families in the bottom fifth stagnated between 1984 and 2005.

The value of their assets never exceeded the value of their debts during that period.

.... while the median wealth of families rose 26 per cent between 1984 and 2005, it fell among families where the major income earner was between 25 and 34. In 2005, these families had median wealth holdings of $13,400, much lower than $27,000 in 1984

The period of 1984-2005 saw an unprecidented attack on the trade union movement, cuts in jobs, reductions in wages, attacks on public sector workers and increasing expansion of the low paid service sector as manufacturing jobs were outsourced overseas.

The rich got rich under Keynesianism, the rich got rich under neo-liberalism. The working class on the other hand while having their lot in life improved under Keynesianism have either stagnated or have become poorer under neo-liberalism/neo-conservative economic and political policies.

And NO tax cut is going to change that.

Unless it is the elimination of all taxes for working people who earn $100,000 or less anually. And the New Canadian Government ain't gonna do that.

See

Productivity

Taxes

Wealth

Plutocrats Rule

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Shameless

This is my reply to Netjin's blog attack; Eugene Plawiuk, the shame of the Canadian blogosphere

Netjin took issue with my criticisms of Dion, Elizabeth May , The Green Party and my critique of Catholic economic and political ideologies like corporatism and distributism.

Quite correctly he and others have pointed out that Elizabeth May is an Anglican. However last time I checked Anglicanism is simply another form of Catholicism, albeit based on the English Crown. My point about May wasn't whether or not she was Catholic but that she was influenced by Catholic theories of economic justice. Anyways here is my reply.

My my where to begin. Well lets begin with the wonderful book Bilingualism Today French Tomorrow, which as you correctly pointed out is the basis of the Western Canadian Seperatist Ideology.

It was published and circulated in the late seventies amongst the right wing rabble in Southern Alberta, home of the COR, WCC and Reform parties, as well as the old stomping grounds of Social Credit.

When I went to the University of Lethbridge and was on the student newspaper I exposed the right wing Birchite movement amongst the folks there that was quite active. This was several years before the Keegstra affair.

The anti-Cantolic bias of the right has existed in Alberta since the 1930's when the KKK was strong in the province. While attacking Jews and Blacks, though there were few of the latter around to focus on, the KKK focused its attacks on French Canadians and Catholicism.

Since these right wing movements in the West past and present are forms of militant Anglo Saxon Protestant Nationalism this should come as no surprize.

So am I biased because I point out that Mormonism and the right wing Dutch Reformed Church are strong in this region, hence their anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-gay, bias? I think not.

Nor should it come as any surprize that at the same time in Quebec the Right Wing Fascist movement of Arcand was anti-semitic anti-immigrant anti-English and Pro French, Pro Catholic and Pro Quebec Nationalism.

If Liz is an Anglican fine, however in the news article I linked to she credited Moses Coady as the source of her ecocnomic ideology, and then I went on to point out that Coady promoted Distributism a Catholic alternative to Socialism and Capitalism, the original Third Way.

Third Way politics of the Catholic social movements have always been both opposed to and a response to socialist workers movements. Thus they have been usually the basis for fascism. The Blair/Clinton Third Way was simply liberalized statism, on the other hand the Real Third Way movement is the Neo-Nazi's, who have embraced Green and Anti-Globalization politics.

So they can be progressive and they can be conservative, depending on whose promoting the ideology. This is also the problem that Liberation Theology faced, and its inherent contradiction, but that is a tale for another time.

In case you did not get it, and apparently you didn't I oppose all nationalism, and especially hypocrtical nationalism or the panderings to nationalism.

As in the case of the phoney bilingualism debate.

As for Quebec nationalism it is Catholic in origin, it is fascist in practice as we witness in the Quebec of Arcand and Duplessis, it is not the idelogy of liberalism, which is reflected in the great Canadian liberal Joseph Papineau, whom I have blogged about many times.

When it became left wing, it was the FLQ, while spouting left wing rhetoric its practice of misplaced urban guerrilla warfare placed it in the fascist camp.

I have criticized Trudeau for his inversion of classical anarchist theories of federalism and yet I have also praised his liberalism and even his libertarianism.

Political movements like the Green Party and the Social Credit party, are populist, pandering to a broad base, thus subject to no clear political philosophy, containing within themselves left wings and right. It is this contradition I try and point out.

I remember years ago meeting a left wing Social Creditor, who loved reading Lenin. Because Lenin exposed the financial cabal that ran capitalism. Which cabal, well the Rothchilds of course. Yoiks.

I guess I am a contrarian, and one that is shameless about it.

I will call a spade a spade even if everyone insists its a shovel.

The debate continues in the comments at Netjin.


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