THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

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Boston artist Steve Mills - realistic painting

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Image of the Day: the N 70 nebula

June 22, 2010

Monster Cosmic Bubble - in the Large Magellanic Cloud


This image shows a composite of the N 70 nebula - a "Super Bubble" in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) satellite galaxy to the Milky Way system, located in the southern sky at a distance of about 160,000 light-years. N 70 is a luminous bubble of interstellar gas, measuring about 300 light-years in diameter created by winds from hot, massive stars and supernova explosions. The interior is filled with tenuous, hot expanding gas. An object like N70 provides astronomers with an excellent opportunity to explore the connection between the life-cycles of stars and the evolution of galaxies. Very massive stars profoundly affect their environment stirring and mixing the interstellar clouds of gas and dust.
Credit: ESO

Radiocarbon dating of ancient Egypt

BGU scientist sheds light on ancient Egypt


http://www.jpost.com/HealthAndSci-Tech/ScienceAndEnvironment/Article.aspx?id=179006

Prof. Hendrik Bruins analyzes Oxford radiocarbon dating study on ancient exhibits.

 
A leading archeologist and geo-scientist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is helping to shed new light on the cornerstone of time in the Near East.

The prestigious journal Science commissioned Prof. Hendrik Bruins of BGU’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research to analyze a University of Oxford study which used radiocarbon dating of plant material collected from ancient Egyptian exhibits in museums around the world. 

The study, the Israeli researcher said, is the first to use high-precision measurements of radioactive carbon isotopes to produce a detailed time-line for the reigns of Egyptian pharaohs from about 2650 BCE to 1100 BCE.



Although the data have no connection to the Pharoah chronicled in the Book of Exodus, Bruins told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that lessons can be learned regarding the study of various archeological sites around Israel.



Both the original study by Prof. Christopher Bronk Ramsey, an Oxford physicist, and the anthropological perspective by the Dutch-born Bruins have just been published in Science.



Bruins, who also works at the department of Bible, Archeology and Ancient Near East Studies on the university’s Sde Boker campus, concludes that radiocarbon dating and the modeling of ancient Egyptian dynasties make possible new associations between archeological layers and Egyptian history.

The study, the Israeli researcher said, is the first to use high-precision measurements of radioactive carbon isotopes to produce a detailed timeline for the reigns of Egyptian pharaohs.

“It is a very, very important finding,” said Bruins, who did not work with the Oxford team but analyzed their work and the radioactive dating results at Oxford and University of Vienna (whose team included University of Haifa Prof. Ezra Marcus).



“For the first time, radiocarbon dating more or less corroborates the essence of the Egyptian historical chronology, but some of the dates have to be altered based on the new evidence. Most importantly, we can finally compare apples with apples,” Bruins says.



The three-year Oxford study of hundreds of artifacts was aimed at settling several longstanding debates about Egypt’s ancient pharoanic dynasties. Archeologists throughout the world use radiocarbon dating, but surprisingly, no high-precision dating work had been done before on Egyptian artifacts before.

The British team took tiny bits of samples from organic material and used carbon-14 isotopes to date them. Plants absorb carbon-14 as they grow, and the radioisotope decays naturally over time after they die. Measuring carbon- 14 levels in artifacts made of organic material allows archeologists to determine their age.



Bruins is one of Israel’s pioneers in the use of radiocarbon dating at archeological sites going back to the Iron and Bronze Age (the latter includes the period of the giving of the Torah at Sinai and the formal beginning of the Jewish people).

Four years ago, he received the Dutch Royal Award in the name of the Netherlands’ Queen Beatrix for achievements in policy-oriented studies on drought, hazard assessment and contingency planning in drylands, geo-archeological desert research and innovative chronological studies about the ancient Near East.


After studying at the Hebrew University in the 1970s, he worked for the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Negev and Sinai and disagreed over carbon dating with his mentor, the late Dr. Rudolph Cohen, who depended more on pottery and ceramics than organic material that underwent radioactive dating. Bruins said radiocarbon dating was needed for accurate assessments and synchronizing the dates of various materials in a variety of areas.

Cohen finally agreed, and Bruins collected seeds, plants and bones from northeastern Sinai (Kadesh Barnea).



As Egypt has for many years forbidden the removal of archeological material, researchers have had to study exhibits, especially funerary material, in museums from Europe to New York. A technique called accelerated mass spectrometry based on only milligrams of organic samples, even from baskets, are taken and their approximate dates assessed.

“Over the years, there has always been skepticism whether Egyptian historical chronology is correct or not.

This chronology was not based on one single ancient document that spelled everything out but many different and fragmented things,” said Bruins.



“Historians pieced it together over centuries and came up with different interpretations and dates differing by 50 years or more. I found that carbon dating generally corroborates the Egyptian chronology, but the results favor somewhat older interpretations.”

It was uncertain, he said, when the ancient 18th Dynasty began. 

Half a century ago, historians said it started in 1550 BCE. But the dates depended on where the ancient Egyptians observed the star Sirius – the basis of the Egyptian calendar – and wrote their observations on papyrus and hieroglyphics on stone at the beginning of summer.

Sirius rose before the sun, so if the observations were done in Cairo, it would turn out differently then if conducted in southern Egypt, which would put the dynasty’s beginning in 1539 BCE. 

“New studies show that radiocarbon dating supports the earlier date of 1550 BCE or even 1560 BCE,” said Bruins.

“This is a very important result, as historical chronology and archeological data are two different things. With radiocarbon dating, we can associate archeology and history through radiocarbon dating. So now we have a independent source of research. ”

The new Oxford findings, said Bruins, provide more accurate information relating to the eruption of the volcano on the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea, 120 kms north of Crete some 3,600 years ago, he added.



“This was the biggest eruption in the eastern Mediterranean in the last 15,000 years,” said the BGU scientist.

It left traces in the Black Sea, Turkey, Crete and underwater, but not in Israel’s neighborhood, because of wind direction.

Two years ago, Bruins published the first evidence of a major tsunami in Crete caused by this eruption.

“Santorini left a mark in many parts of region. Dating from archeological finds claimed it occurred in the 18th Dynasty, but now for first time they and the Egyptian calendar can be compared with radiocarbon dating.



“Thus it appears that the eruption preceded the 18th Dynasty and occurred during the Hyksos Period. Egyptian historical information about Tell el-Dab‘a, the ancient capital of the Hyksos and located in the northeastern region of the Nile Delta, do not fit in terms of radiocarbon dating,” he continued.
 

 

Why Isn’t Anti-Palestinism Condemned as a Hate Crime?

Why Isn’t Anti-Palestinism Condemned as a Hate Crime?

by Ahmed Amr

June 20, 2010

I bet you’ve never heard of anti-Palestinism. In Israel and the United States, defaming and delegitimizing the Palestinians is a national sport; but have you ever heard anybody complain about it? Why didn’t Americans get worked up when 1,400 Palestinians were incinerated with Israeli phosphorous bombs? Why did the murder of 300 children in last year’s assault not touch a nerve? Why did it take three long years and the slaughter of eight Turks and a Turkish-American citizen to notice that Israel has incarcerated 1.5 million Palestinians in a concentration camp?
What if you were a Palestinian shell-shocked by decades of the world’s collective indifference? What would you tell your children? Is there any way to explain to a child why his people were ethnically cleansed to make room for a State as Jewish as England is English?
Why do pundits and politicians in the West get away with denying that the Palestinians are the indigenous people of the Holy Land? Why do we allow Israelis and their supporters to denigrate the historic rights of the Palestinians to live in the only homeland they’ve ever known? How is it that we don’t notice that, even today, half the population of historic Palestine is of native stock?
Why do the treasonous intellectuals of the West routinely allow Zionists to unabashedly declare their 'right’ to settle in the Holy Land? Are they really that ignorant of the ethnic cleansing that dispossessed the Palestinians in 1948 or have they been afflicted by the epidemic of anti-Palestinism? With or without a state, should we accord the Palestinians the right to exist and what kind of existence are they entitled to?
It’s one thing to talk about the facts on the ground and despair at the remote possibilities of a just solution for the Palestinian problem. Because we all know what it would take to accord Palestinians the full spectrum of rights that we all take for granted. We all have the right to leave and return to the places where we were born — to the sacred land where our forefathers are buried. But if the Palestinians make legitimate claims to exercise that most basic of rights, they are accused of denying the right of Israel to exist.
Simply put, if international law applied to Palestinians, we would have to restore their rights to live anywhere in their ancestral homeland. But that’s not in the cards — because they’re nothing more than Palestinians and anti-Palestinism is the law of the land. If we were of a mind to accord them their legitimate rights, we would be obliged to issue every Palestinian refugee a visa to return to the Holy Land and we all know where that might lead — a country where immigrant European Jews and their descendents would be 'deprived’ of an exclusive Jewish state.
Heaven forbid we should even attempt to persuade Israeli Jews to grant equal rights to the indigenous population. See, that would be considered anti-Zionism which is now deemed indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. The whole notion that there ever was an indigenous population in the Holy Land is a taboo subject. When it comes to the Palestinians, we cast reason aside and conveniently forget history, demographics and DNA. Who died and gave the Israelis and their dispensationalist Armageddon worshiping allies a license to make the absurd claim that Ethiopian and Moldavian Jews are the original natives of Palestine? Who issued the Israeli Lobbyists a pass to substitute their scripture for international law? Who says Jews are chosen and the Palestinians are not? And tell me again; if you’re not chosen, I imagine that means you’re cursed. How derogatory is that?
If you probe Zionist theology, you’ll see the logic behind the core Zionist argument. Palestinian Christians and Muslims deserved to be ethnically cleansed because they abandoned the 'right’ religious traditions. Think about that because it’s a real simple concept to digest. If the Zionists had shown up on the shores of Palestine and found the natives still practicing Judaism, they wouldn’t have evicted them from their homes or expropriated their lands. Every Palestinians understands that. They also understand that if they had obliged the Zionists and converted to Judaism, they might have been spared an eviction notice and all the carnage that has plagued them for two generations. You want to know the original sins of the Palestinians — some of them put their faith in Jesus and gave up Judaism for Orthodox Christianity and others went a step further and embraced Islam. Had they stuck to their ancient Jewish traditions, they would never have tasted the bitter fruit of exile and dispossession.
Today, we have six million nuclear armed Zionists in full control of the entire historical boundaries of Palestine and another six million Palestinian natives living under the military rule of a Jewish supremacist state. Even in Israel proper, 20% of the citizens are descendents of the indigenous people of the Holy Land. Just to give you a perspective, at the height of the civil rights movement, only 12% of Americans were of African descent. I challenge anybody to compare the worst excesses of the segregationist south to the draconian laws that apply to Palestinians living under military occupation.
The toll in the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland was 13. Last week, the British finally got around to apologizing for that crime but will they ever get around to making amends for the Balfour Declaration? Even the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa didn’t kill the way Israel kills. In 1976, five hundred Africans were slaughtered in the Soweto uprising. Not that the world paid much attention to the carnage — but compare that figure to the 1,400 civilians who were slaughtered in Gaza last year. Does the State Department keep a tally of how many Palestinians have been butchered since the Zionists came to build a 'Jewish homeland’ on their native soil?
Did the Palestinians deserve what happened to them? If they had been left unmolested by the British and the Zionists, what kind of country would they have now? That’s what the world looks like from Palestinian eyes. Why us and why doesn’t anybody care? They’ve stolen our homeland — can’t the Israelis at least leave us with the memories of what was and what could have been? Before they set their covetous eyes on our towns and villages in the West Bank, can’t they take a deep breath, hang their head in shame and step back to the land they’ve already vanquished?
Why are the Israelis given a carte blanche to falsify history? Why is Nakba denial not considered beyond the pale? Indeed, why is the 'Nakba’ not part of our daily vocabulary?
Why was Joseph Biden not taken to task when he publicly avowed his allegiance to Zionist ideology? Where was the public outcry? Why didn’t anybody call for his immediate resignation? What exactly did the Vice President of the United States mean to say? Those words have a very clear meaning; they are an expression of the vilest form of anti-Palestinism. When somebody utters them, every Palestinian understands their meaning. It means that Palestine never had a right to exist — that it was a disposable country that deserved to be eradicated off the face of the earth.
I know Joseph Biden is a despicable bigot for uttering those words; the problem is he doesn’t. Worst still, he feels righteous in saying them — as righteous as any true blue segregationist who applauded Jim Crow laws — as righteous as any Nazi German who believed that European Jews deserved to be incinerated — as righteous as any Zionist who believes the Palestinians should be ethnically cleansed to make room for Eretz Israel. By the way, did Biden mention if he was a Labor Zionist or a Likudnik? After getting bitch slapped by Netanyahu in Jerusalem, he ought to have figured out the difference.
The thing about Zionists who openly spew their anti-Palestinism is not their support of the right of Israel to exist but their subscription to the obscene notion that Palestinians deserved to lose their homeland. In formulating a resolution of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, it is one thing to accommodate current demographic and political realities and quite another to say that Israel had the right to come into existence over the carcass of Palestine. We can acknowledge and deal with the end result of the nauseating refuse of Israeli history without justifying the cruelty inflicted on the Palestinians. Tribes have eradicated tribes for centuries. But last I checked, this is the 21st Century. What might have been considered acceptable conduct at the peak of the European colonialism should not be condoned today. We’ve dealt with segregationist southerners and the radical Apartheid regime and we can work a humane resolution to the plight of the indigenous people of the Holy Land without cheering Zionist racists or denigrating their Palestinian victims.
Anti-Palestinism deprives us of the moral clarity that is essential to a resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We need to start recognizing anti-Palestinism for what it is: hate speech. That day will come when every pundit and every politician will rue the day they publicly flaunted their anti-Palestinism. Make no mistake, in the not so distant future, bigots like Joseph Biden will be obliged to eat their words and apologize for their blatant espousal of ethnic cleansing. When anti-Palestinism becomes a crime, Biden is the first person the Palestinians should sue. 

Ahmed Amr is the former editor of NileMedia.com and the author of The Sheep and The Guardians - Diary of a SEC Sanctioned Swindle. He can be reached at: Montraj@aol.com.

Israel gripped by identity of 'Prisoner X'

Israel gripped by identity of 'Prisoner X'


By Richard Spencer and Adrian Blomfield


Israel has been gripped by a guessing game over the identity of a mysterious prisoner being held in such secrecy that even his guards do not know his name.

June 21, 2010

The elusive "Mr X" is being held for unspecified crimes and confined in total seclusion within a private wing of the maximum-security Ayalon prison.

No one knew of his existence until the shroud of secrecy was briefly lifted after a story appeared on the website of Israel's leading Hebrew-language newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

Quoting unidentified officials within the Israeli penitentiary service, it disclosed that Mr X was being held in Unit 15, a wing of Ayalon prison that contains a single cell.

He is not though to receive any visitors and his wing is cut off from the rest of the prison by double iron doors. So hermetic are the conditions in which he is held that other prisoners can neither see nor hear him.

"He is simply a person without a name and without an identity who has been placed in total and utter isolation from the outside world," a prison official was quoted as saying.

Within hours, the story had vanished from the newspaper's website, allegedly after Israel's domestic intelligence service won a gagging order banning all media coverage of the case.

The attempt to redraw the veil has had only limited success, however, with the disappearance of the story serving only to whet the interests of human rights activists in Israel, who have now launched a campaign to force the state to unmask Mr X and disclose his crimes.

Dan Yakir, chief legal counsel for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the country's oldest human rights group, said: "There is no information on whether this person has been charged, whether he has been tried or whether he has been convicted."

In a letter to the Israeli attorney general last week which has yet to receive a response, Mr Yakir protested the secrecy surrounding Mr X's detention.

"It is insupportable that, in a democratic country, authorities can arrest people in complete secrecy and disappear them from public view without the public even knowing such an arrest took place," he wrote.

Amid the intrigue and the silence of the domestic press, Mr X's cause has also been taken up by influential Jewish bloggers, most notably Richard Silverstein, a US-based commentator who has played a leading role in forcing Israel to drop gagging orders in recent months.

While there has been little but speculation as to what Mr X may have done, there can be little doubt about the importance attached to him by the state for he is being held in the cell specially built to house Yigal Amir, the Israeli extremist who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, the former prime minister, in 1995.

But one Israeli security expert said that the secrecy suggested espionage rather than terrorism is likely to lie at the heart of the mystery.

In 1983, Marcus Klingberg, a leading Israeli scientist, was jailed for 20 years for passing secrets about the country's biological warfare programme to the Soviets. But it was only after he had been in prison for a decade that Israelis heard for the first time about Klingberg's existence, arrest and conviction.

Mr X is being held in the same prison as Mordechai Vanunu, the whistle-blower who revealed Israeli nuclear secrets before he was lured out of Britain by a Mossad honeytrap in 1986 and jailed for 18 years.

Vanunu was sent back to prison last month for talking to foreigners, in violation of his parole.

Israel's prison service has declined to confirm or deny the existence of Mr X on security grounds.

Nigeria: Big Oil And Disaster Capitalism

Nigeria: Big Oil And Disaster Capitalism

Date Posted: Tuesday 22-Jun-2010
By Obi Nwaknama
Close to One Trillion Dollars worth of oil profits later, the Niger Delta is in the end an ecological Armageddon. It fits perfectly into what the Canadian journalist and author, Naomi Klein, would describe as evidence of the consequences of "disaster capitalism."
In her rather apocalyptic book and New York Times Bestseller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, although it specifically and decidedly ignores Nigeria and the situation in the Niger Delta, she nonetheless paints a grim picture of what the Economist Joseph Stiglitz calls the "political machinations" and the "hubris" of international corporate madness and its deleterious global impact.
Naomi Klein traces in a skillful and courageous way a 50-year trajectory from the "free market" economics of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of Economics, to the creation of economic shock therapy and disaster zones from which international multinationals profit, to its juncture in the war in Iraq that basically ceded Iraq's oil fields to Shell, British Petroleum and Halliburton. A reading of Naomi Klein's book puts into great panoramic perspective, the real situation in Nigeria.
The closest example or equivalent by a Nigerian of Naomi Klein's expose is the work by my friend, the journalist and scholar, Ike Okonta. His seminal book, Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Right and Oil, and its sequel, When Citizens Revolt: Nigerian Elites, Big Oil and the Ogoni Struggle a fine expose should occupy an honoured spot on the library or bedside reading collection of every educated Nigerian.
What we now know about the large scale exploration of oil in the Niger Delta and its gross impact should leave anyone with even a modicum of conscience filled with rage, starting with Nigeria's Petroleum Acts 1968 and 1969 which virtually ceded Nigeria's oilfields to Shell and to other oil companies without regard to their potentially dangerous activities.
In a 2008 Amnesty International report on the oil industry in Nigeria we have just a very brief but important witness to the situation. The Amnesty International Report indeed notes quite poignantly that the oil industry in Nigeria's Niger Delta has "brought impoverishment, conflict, and human rights abuses and despair" to this most vital region and one of the world's most important wetlands.
It details the impact of the terrible pollution and the environmental damage to its human population, who have been denied a right to adequate standard of living, a loss of clean water and food, and the safety of their ecosystem.
Thousands of years of human culture and some of the most beautiful landscapes have been destroyed. To make my point, I should quote a crucial aspect of the report fully: "Oil pollution kills fish, their food sources and fish larvae, and damages the ability of fish to reproduce, causing both immediate damage and long-term harm to fish stocks. Oil pollution also damages fishing equipment.
Oil spills and waste dumping have also seriously damaged agricultural land.
Long-term effects include damage to soil fertility and agricultural productivity, which in some cases can last for decades.
In numerous cases, these long-term effects have undermined a family's only source of livelihood. The destruction of livelihoods and the lack of accountability and redress have led people to steal oil and vandalize oil infrastructure in an attempt to gain compensation or clean-up contracts. Armed groups are increasingly demanding greater control of resources in the region, and engage in large-scale theft of oil and the ransoming of oil workers.
Government reprisals against militancy and violence frequently involve excessive force, and communities are subjected to violence and collective punishment, deepening anger and resentment."
This to me is a tip of the iceberg. Indeed, the public health implication of this with the massive pollution of ground water supply in the entire South-East and South-South areas of Nigeria, and the massive incidents of particularly rare forms of cancer currently at epidemic stages ought to have attracted the attention of epidemiologists and should really drive home the human carnage - the extinction of the human population in these regions either through infertility or disease.
Yet, a succession of Nigerian governments have largely played possum to these realities, and have in fact almost acted as if the Nigerian government was merely an arm of these multinational oil companies, particularly Shell. The Nigerian government through its regulatory arms, has basically permitted these oil operators to kill Nigerians and destroy a most important ecological habitat of this nation, and high government officials have profited from the great evil.
Here again is an important insight by the Amnesty report: "The scale of pollution and environmental damage has never been properly assessed. The figures that do exist vary considerably depending on sources, but hundreds of spills occur each year.
According to the UNDP, more than 6,800 spills were recorded between 1976 and 2001. According to the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency some 2,000 sites require treatment because of oil-related pollution. The real total may be higher.
The regulatory system in the Niger Delta is deeply flawed. Nigeria has laws and regulations that require companies to comply with internationally recognized standards of "good oil field practice", and laws and regulations to protect the environment but these laws and regulations are poorly enforced. The government agencies responsible for enforcement are ineffective and, in some cases, compromised by conflicts of interest."

Uri Avnery-A Flash of Lightening

A Flash of Lightening

Uri Avnery – OpEdNews.com June 20, 2010

NIGHT. UTTER darkness. Heavy rain. Visibility close to nil.


And suddenly a flash of lightning. For a fraction of a second, the landscape is lit up. For this split second, the terrain surrounding us can be seen. It is not the way it used to be.


OUR GOVERNMENT's action against the Gaza aid flotilla was such a lightning flash.


Israelis normally live in darkness as far as seeing the world is concerned. But for that instant, the real landscape around us could be seen, and it looked frightening. Then the darkness settled down over us, Israel returned to its bubble, the world disappeared from view.


This split second was enough to reveal a dismal scene. On almost all fronts, the situation of the State of Israel has worsened since the last flash of lightning.


The flotilla and the attack on it did not create this landscape. It has been there since our present government was set up. But the deterioration did not start even then. It began a long time before.


The action of Ehud Barak & Co. only lit up the situation as it is now, and gave it yet another push in the wrong direction.


How does the new landscape look in the light of Barak's barak? ("barak" means lightning in Hebrew.)


THE LIST is headed by a fact that nobody seems to have noticed until now: the death of the Holocaust.


In all the tumult this affair has caused throughout the world, the Holocaust was not even mentioned. True, in Israel there were some who called Recep Tayyip Erdogan "a new Hitler", and some Israel-haters talked about the "Nazi attack", but the Holocaust has practically disappeared.


For two generations, our foreign policy used the Holocaust as its main instrument. The bad conscience of the world determined its attitude towards Israel. The (justified) guilt feelings either for atrocities committed or for looking the other way caused Europe and America to treat Israel differently than any other nation from nuclear armaments to the settlements. All criticism of our governments' actions was branded automatically as anti-Semitism and silenced.


But time does its work. New tragedies have blunted the world's senses. For a new generation, the Holocaust is a thing of the remote past, a chapter of history. The sense of guilt has disappeared in all countries, except Germany.


The Israeli public did not notice this, because in Israel itself the Shoah is alive and present. Many Israelis are children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and the Holocaust has been imprinted on their childhood. Moreover, a huge apparatus ensures that the Holocaust will not disappear from our memory, starting from kindergarten, through ceremonies and memorial days, to organized tours "there".


Therefore, the Israeli public is shocked to see that the Holocaust has lost its power as a political instrument. Our most valuable weapon has become blunt.


THE CENTRAL pillar of our policy is our alliance with the United States. To use a phrase dear to Binyamin Netanyahu (in another context): it's "the rock of our existence".


For many years, this alliance has kept us safe from all trouble. We knew that we could always get from the US all we needed: advanced arms to retain our superiority over all Arab armies combined, munitions in times of war, money for our economy, the veto on all UN Security Council resolutions against us, automatic support for all the actions of our successive governments. Every small and medium country in the world knew that in order to gain entrance to the palaces of Washington, the Israeli doorkeeper had to be bribed.


But during the last year, cracks have appeared in this pillar. Not the small scratches and chips of wear and tear, but cracks caused by shifts of the ground. The mutual aversion between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu is only one symptom of a much deeper problem.


The Chief of the Mossad told the Knesset last week: "For the US, we have ceased to be an asset and become a burden."


This fact was put into incisive words by General David Petraeus, when he said that the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is endangering the lives of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The later soothing messages did not erase the significance of this warning. (When Petraeus fainted this week at a Senate hearing, some religious Jews viewed it as divine punishment.)


IT IS not only the Israeli-American relationship that has undergone a fateful change, but the standing of the US itself is changing for the worse, a bad omen indeed for the future of Israeli policy.


The world is changing, slowly and quietly. The US is still by far the most powerful country, but it is no longer the almighty superpower it had been since 1989. China is flexing its muscles, countries like India and Brazil are getting stronger, countries like Turkey yes, Turkey! are beginning to play a role.


This is not a matter of one or two years, but anyone who is thinking about the future of Israel in ten, twenty years must understand that unless there is a basic change in our position, our position, too, will decline.


IF OUR alliance with the US is one central pillar of Israeli policy, the support of the vast majority of world Jewry is the second.


For 62 years, we could count on it with our eyes shut. Whatever we did almost all the world's Jews stood at attention and saluted. In fire and water, victory or defeat, glorious or dark chapters the world's Jews did support us, giving money, demonstrating, pressuring their governments. Without second thoughts, without criticism.


Not anymore. Quietly, almost silently, cracks have appeared in this pillar, too. Opinion polls show that most American Jewish young people are turning away from Israel. Not shifting their loyalty from the Israeli establishment to Israel's liberal camp but turning away from Israel altogether.


This will not be felt immediately either. AIPAC continues to strike fear into Washingtonian hearts, Congress will continue to dance to its tune. But when the new generation comes to man key positions, the support for Israel will erode, American politicians will stop crawling on their bellies and the US administration will gradually change its relations with us.


IN OUR immediate neighborhood, too, profound changes are underway, some of them beneath the surface. The flotilla incident has exposed them.


The influence of our allies is decreasing constantly. They are losing height, and an old-new power is on the rise: Turkey.


Hosni Mubarak is busy with his efforts to pass power to his son, Gamal. The Islamic opposition in Egypt is raising its head. Saudi money is trumped by the new attraction of Turkey. The Jordanian king is compelled to adapt himself. The axis of Turkey-Iran-Syria-Hisbollah-Hamas is the rising power, the axis of Egypt-Saudi Arabia-Jordan-Fatah is in decline.


BUT THE most important change is the one that is taking place in international public opinion. Any derision of this reminds one of Stalin's famous sneer ("How many divisions has the pope?")


Recently, an Israeli TV station showed a fascinating film about the German and Scandinavian female volunteers who flooded Israel in the 50s and 60s to live and work (and sometimes marry) in the kibbutzim. Israel was then seen as a plucky little nation surrounded by hateful enemies, a state risen from the ashes of the Holocaust to become a haven of freedom, equality and democracy, which found their most sublime expression in that unique creation, the kibbutz.


The present generation of idealistic youngsters from all over the world, male and female, who would once have volunteered for the kibbutzim, can now be found on the decks of the ships sailing for downtrodden, choked and starved Gaza, which touches the hearts of many young people. The pioneering Israeli David has turned into a brutish Israeli Goliath.


Even a genius of spin could not change this. For years, now, the world sees the State of Israel every day on the TV screen and on the front pages in the image of heavily armed soldiers shooting at stone-throwing children, guns firing phosphorus shells into residential quarters, helicopters executing "targeted eliminations", and now pirates attacking civilian ships on the open seas. Terrified women with wounded babies in their arms, men with amputated limbs, demolished homes. When one sees a hundred pictures like that for every picture that shows another Israel, Israel becomes a monster. The more so since the Israeli propaganda machine is successfully suppressing any news about the Israeli peace camp.


MANY YEARS ago, when I wanted to ridicule the addiction of our leaders to the use of force, I paraphrased a saying that reflects much of Jewish wisdom: "if force does not work, use brains." In order to show how far we, the Israelis, are different from the Jews, I changed the words: "If force doesn't work, use more force."


I thought of it as a joke. But, as happens to many jokes in our country, it has become reality. It is now the credo of many primitive Israelis, headed by Ehud Barak.


In practice, the security of a state depends on many factors, and military force is but one of them. In the long run, world public opinion is stronger. The pope has many divisions.


In many respects, Israel is still a strong country. But, as the sudden illumination of the flotilla affair has shown, time is not working in our favor. We should deepen our roots in the world and in the region which means making peace with our neighbors as long as we are as strong as we are now.


If force doesn't work, more force will not necessarily work either.

If force doesn't work, force doesn't work. Period.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Flash-of-Lightning-by-Uri-Avnery-100620-712.html


Sharks and Submerged Oil Spell Trouble in the Gulf of Mexico

Sharks and Submerged Oil Spell Trouble in the Gulf of Mexico

 
 
A two-inch layer of oil is hugging the sea floor off the Alabama coast, according to a report in the Mobile Press-Register. (Link includes an excellent video report.) The news comes roughly a week after a layer of floating crude came ashore in the same area at the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge.

Perhaps most alarming is news that unusually large schools of sharks have been spotted just off Alabama beaches. This could be a sign that bait fish upon which sharks feed have moved closer to shore because of low oxygen levels caused by the BP oil spill.

The Press-Register report provides more grim evidence of the oil spill's impact. Writes reporter Ben Raines:


The Press-Register found a number of patches of submerged oil 40 to 100 feet off the beach, apparently collecting along rip currents and sandbars. The carcasses of sand fleas, speckled crabs, ghost crabs and leopard crabs were spread throughout the oil, a thick layer of the material caking the bodies of the larger crabs. Their claws looked as if they been turned into clubs made of oil.

Those weren't the only alarming scenes from Raines' report:

Dark patches seen in deeper water Friday might also have been oil, but exceptional numbers of large sharks meant diving down to investigate was not an option. Hammerhead, bull and other sharks were schooling around a boat anchored in 6 feet of water just outside the breaking waves.
Most of the sharks in the deeper water were 6 feet long or more. Smaller sharks could be seen inside the first sandbar, in one case in a school 27 strong.

Huge schools of bait hugged the seashore, attracting large numbers of birds. King mackerel, Spanish mackerel, mullet, ladyfish, speckled trout and other fish schooled in unusually large numbers amid the sharks.

Dead fish seen onshore seemed to have collected in the areas closest to the underwater oil. It was unclear if the fish died because of exposure to the oil.

Scientists are reporting very low oxygen levels off the Alabama coast, Raines reported:


The Dauphin Island Sea Lab measured large areas of low oxygen water just off the beach at Fort Morgan last week, beginning in water around 20 feet deep. Monty Graham, a University of South Alabama scientist, theorized that the population of oil-consuming microbes had swelled, and those tiny animals consumed lots of oxygen.

Sea life begins to die if oxygen levels drop below 2 parts per million.

Graham found some areas where the oxygen level was below 1, and that could explain reports of strange behavior among fish:

"The low oxygen explains things we've been hearing, like reports of flounder swimming on the surface," Graham said.

The low oxygen levels offshore may also explain the dense aggregations of fish seen in the surf zone. The turbulent area near shore is naturally high in oxygen due to the influence of the breaking waves.

McChrystal vs. Obama aides

ΣΤΟ ΑΦΓΑΝΙΣΤΑΝ Ο ΠΟΛΕΜΟΣ ΧΑΝΕΤΑΙ ΚΑΙ ΑΥΤΟ ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΕΙ ΤΡΙΒΕΣ!

McChrystal Apologizes for Magazine Profile

 Published June 22, 2010 ---| FOXNews.com--http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/21/mcchrystal-says-ambassador-betrayed-criticism-afghan-war-strategy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Flatest+%2528Text+-+Latest+Headlines%2529

The top U.S. war commander in Afghanistan issued an apology late Monday for a "Rolling Stone" magazine profile in which he said he felt betrayed by the man the White House chose to be his diplomatic partner, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, and comments by aides insulting some of President Barack Obama's closest advisers.
An article out this week in the magazine depicts Gen. Stanley McChrystal as a lone wolf on the outs with many important figures in the Obama administration and unable to convince even some of his own soldiers that his strategy can win the war.
"I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened," McChrystal said in a statement.
"Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honor and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard," he said. 
"I have enormous respect and admiration for President Obama and his national security team, and for the civilian leaders and troops fighting this war and I remain committed to ensuring its successful outcome."
A band of McChrystal's profane, irreverent aides were quoted by the magazine mocking Vice President Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
McChrystal himself was described by an aide as "disappointed" in his first Oval Office meeting with an unprepared President Barack Obama. The article says that although McChrystal voted for Obama, the two failed to connect from the start. Obama called McChrystal on the carpet last fall for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops.
"I found that time painful," McChrystal said in the article, on newsstands Friday. "I was selling an unsellable position."
Obama agreed to dispatch an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan only after months of study that many in the military found frustrating. And the White House's troop commitment was coupled with a pledge to begin bringing them home in July 2011, in what counterinsurgency strategists advising McChrystal regarded as an arbitrary deadline.
The profile, titled "The Runaway General" emerged from several weeks of interviews and travel with McChrystal's tight circle of aides this spring.
It includes a list of administration figures said to back McChrystal, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and puts Biden at the top of a list of those who don't.
The article claims McChrystal has seized control of the war "by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House."
Biden initially opposed McChrystal's proposal for additional forces last year. He favored a narrower focus on hunting terrorists.
If Eikenberry had the same doubts, McChrystal said he never expressed them until a leaked internal document threw a wild card into the debate over whether to add more troops last November. In the document, Eikenberry said Afghan President Hamid Karzai was not a reliable partner for the counterinsurgency strategy McChrystal was hired to execute.
McChrystal said he felt "betrayed" and accused the ambassador of giving himself cover.
"Here's one that covers his flank for the history books," McChrystal told the magazine. "Now, if we fail, they can say 'I told you so."'
There was no immediate response from Eikenberry. The Associated Press requested comment through an aide after business hours on Monday in Kabul.
Eikenberry remains in his post in Kabul, and although both men publicly say they are friends, their rift is on full display.
McChrystal and Eikenberry, himself a retired Army general, stood as far apart as the speakers' platform would allow during a White House news conference last month.
"Rolling Stone" interviewed troops frustrated by McChrystal's strict rules for combat that are intended to reduce the number of civilian casualties.
At one outpost, a soldier McChrystal had met earlier was killed in a house that the local U.S. commander had repeatedly asked to destroy. The request was denied, apparently out of concern that razing the house would anger locals whose allegiance the U.S. is trying to win.
"Does that make any (expletive) sense?" Pfc. Jared Pautsch asks. "We should just drop a (expletive) bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself, 'What are we doing here?"'