The miniaturized battlefield

Combat suits that can change colour for camouflage, change from flexible to rigid and impenetrable in a split second and contain artificial muscles to augment the soldier's own strength and biosensors and drug delivery systems to diagnose and treat wounds; vehicles that are undetectable by radar; insects fitted with microelectromechanical systems to carry out remote-controlled reconnaissance missions; and 'intelligent dust' which gathers then transmits information about weather conditions or the presence of chemical and biological agents.

This may sound like a futuristic science fiction film, but these technologies may well be available in our lifetimes.

Read more about the military applications of nanotechnology here.

Visions of Science 2005 (1)

"To see the world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower,

To hold the world in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour".

William Blake, "The Augaries of Innocence".

The image above is a scanning electron micrograph of a grain of salt (left) and a peppercorn. It was taken by David McCarthy and was the winner of the 2005 Visions of Science Photographic Awards.

Intelligence & brain development

Image courtesy of NIMH, Child Psychiatry Branch, and MIT Technology Review.

The above image comes from a 15 year study, conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, into the links between intelligence and development of the brain.

The findings suggest that brighter children have a thinner cerebral cortex in their early years, but that their cortex then undergoes rapid thickening during the mid-teen years (shown in red, yellow and green).

The neurophilosopher discusses the experiments and the controversies surrounding intelligence testing.

The solar eclipse

The solar eclipse from the space station.

An image of the beginning of the eclipse, taken in Pakistan, with the crescent moon, or hilal, of a mosque in the foreground. The Muslim calender is based on the lunar cycle; the appearance of the hilal marks the beginning and the end of the Muslim month.

An image of the eclipse taken from Greece by the Williams College Eclipse Expedition, superimposed on an image from the SOHO satellite. The sun's corona is visible in the image.

Yesterday's total solar eclipse was visible in Turkey, Central Asia and parts of Africa. It was caused by the moon passing between the Earth and the Sun, which was totally eclipsed for approximately 4 minutes.

A solar eclipse gives scientists a chance to investigate the Sun's atmosphere, the solar corona (a luminous plasma 'atmosphere' emanating millions of miles into space) and prominences (dense clouds of gas).

This image shows the trajectory taken by the moon's umbra (dark shadow) across the earth's surface. The umbra was about 100 miles wide.

Two more similar events will occur this year. A partial lunar eclipse, during which the full moon falls within the shadow of the earth, will occur on September 7th and an annular solar eclipse September 22nd. During an annular solar eclipse, the moon is too small to completely eclipse the sun. The next total solar eclipse will not take place until August 2008.

The origins of Judaeo-Christianity

This papyrus from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (circa 1240 BCE) is the earliest depiction of the idea of a 'final judgement', which is common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A recently deceased man (left, in white) is asked about the good and bad deeds of his life, which are recorded by Thoth, the god of wisdom and knowledge (on the right). Anubis, the god of the dead (centre) then weighs the heart of the deceased against the feather of righteousness. If the heart balances with the feather, the deceased is deemed to have been a good man and enters the kingdom of Osiris. If his heart is heavier than the feather, he lived a bad life, and goes to hell after his heart is devoured by the crocodile-headed god Sobek.

There are remarkable similarities between ancient Egyptian mythology and aspects of the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. The parallels are too striking to be a coincidence.

It is agreed that Judaism was born in ancient Egypt around 1800 BCE, but the influence of ancient Egyptian mythology on the formation of Judaeo-Christianity has yet to be acknowledged.

The myth of Osiris, Isis & Seth

The ancient Egyptians worshipped a pantheon of thousands of Gods, Osiris being the supreme deity. The myth of Osiris, Isis and Seth is one of Egypt's oldest, and probably forms the basis of several ideas which are central to Judaeo-Christianity.

Osiris, Isis and Seth were siblings. Osiris was married to Isis; Seth was extremely jealous and conspired with Aso, the Ethiopian queen, and others, in a plot to kill Osiris, so that he could take Isis for his wife and rule the kingdom of Egypt.

Seth killed his brother and dismembered the body into twelve or thirteen pieces, which he scattered across Egypt. A grief-stricken Isis roamed the country searching for the parts of her murdered husband's body.

There are several versions of the myth. According to one of them, Isis becomes pregnant with Osiris' child while she is searching for the body parts. Another version states that Isis finds Osiris' penis and resurrects it to impregnate herself. There is no doubt that this part of the myth forms the basis of the idea of the immaculate conception.

In the ancient Egyptian tradition, the soul of the deceased cannot pass into the afterlife if a proper burial is not performed. Having gathered Osiris' body parts, Isis enlists Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead, who wraps the parts up to resemble a whole body so that a burial can be carried out. (This is the legend of how the first mummification took place.)

Anubis mummifies Osiris for burial. The ancient Egyptians buried their dead in mountains surrounding their cities. Often jackals would be seen roaming around the graves; from very early on, jackals came to be associated with the dead and, hence, Anubis, the god of the dead, is represented as having the head of a jackal.

Isis knew that her unborn child, Horus, would be heir to the throne, and that Seth would try to murder him as well. Upon his birth, therefore, Isis hid Horus by placing him in a basket, which was left to float among the reeds on the Nile. This part of the myth is probably the basis of the story of Moses.

The neuro-chip

European neuroscientists and biochemists have developed a neuron-semiconductor interface consisting of rat brain cells growing on a silicon chip.

The device displays two-way electrical coupling - that is, the cells and the chip can communicate with each other.

Sharon: The "warrior's" legacy

Jews have characterized themselves as one of two things - as victims or as resilient, tough individuals. Ariel Sharon, the eleventh Israeli Prime Minister, who has been incapacitated since suffering a stroke on January 4, is the epitome of the tough Jew.

Sharon is a warrior and has been all his life. He even named his autobiography Warrior. All his life, Sharon's personal war has involved the very destruction of the Palestinian entity.

He has been given several other nicknames in his military and political career. As Housing Minister, Sharon was responsible for the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. This inevitably involved the demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes, and Sharon became known as "The Bulldozer." As Defence Minister, the Kahan Commission found him personally responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres, earning him the label "The Butcher of Beirut."

Sharon has always been aware of Israel's demographic problem - that Israel's large Palestinian minority may soon become a majority. There are only two solutions to this problem. One is complete ethnic cleansing; the other is brutal oppression.

In his time as Prime Minister, Sharon's main policy has been to crush the Palestinians as brutally as possible so that they might desert their land of their own accord.

Baruch Kimmerling, a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University, describes Prime Minister Sharon's policies towards the Palestinians:

"Murders, localized massacres, the elimination of leadership and elite groups, the physical destruction of public institutions and infrastructure, land colonization, starvation, social and political isolation, re-education, and partial ethnic cleansing."

The Israeli election

Today's Israeli election will involve 31 political parties contesting 120 seats in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament). There are approximately 5 million eligible voters but a low turnout is predicted due to apathy. (According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, only 9.9% of voters had cast their ballots as of 10 am today, the lowest ever turnout in an Israeli election.)

Opinion polls suggest that the newly formed Kadima party is set to win 35-40 Knesset seats. Since Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke in early January, Ehud Olmert has been acting as leader of the Kadima party and as Israel's Prime Minister. A victory for Kadima would be historic - Israel has always been governed by either the Labour or the Likud parties.

Security is a key election issue, and Olmert seems to have secured a Kadima victory by stating that as Prime Minister he would determine Israel's final borders within four years without negotiating with the Palestinians, and by raiding a Jericho prison, within hours of the withdrawl of Western jail monitors, to apprehend Palestinian 'militants'.

The Israeli centre-left, which favours peace talks has all but disappeared, and the Zionist parties which will gain most of the Knesset seats have all campaigned on a platform of unilateral withdrawal from the smaller, more isolated settlements from the West Bank.

Whatever the outcome of the election, and whatever the structure of the coalition formed by Olmert, the chances of Palestinian self-determination and any kind of satisfactory Palestinian state will continue to get smaller.

Lord Bushiva

The organization Indiacause has taken offense to this cartoon, which depicts President Bush as the Hindu deity Shiva. It was published in the March 3 edition of the International Herald Tribune, which is owned by the Sulzberger family, who also own the New York Times.

The cartoon shows President Bush in a traditional Nataraja pose, holding a club and placards saying 'Stop Iran Nukes' and 'India Nukes Deal'.

In Hinduism, Lord Shiva is the destroyer of evil and sorrow.

Shape-changing materials

Researchers at MIT have developed a material which can change shape when a small electric current is passed through it.

The photograph shows Professors Yet-Ming Chiang and Stephen Hall with a prototype of their electrochemically-powered morphing rotor, made from the new material.

The neurophilosopher has more on the morphing material.

The double helix nebula

This false-colour image from NASA's Spitzer Space telescope reveals a cloud of gas, or nebula, shaped like a DNA molecule.

It is believed that magnetic field lines from our galaxy gave the nebula its shape.

Good dictator, bad dictator

Aleksander Lukashenko won 82.6% of the votes in the Belarussian election on March 19th, overwhelming opposition leader Aleksander Milinkevic, who won just 6%.

The elections were criticised by the U.S. and the E.U. as having been rigged. Lukashenko has in the past been accused of making political opponents "disappear," and, earlier this week, supporters of Milinkevich who took part in demonstrations against the election result were arrested and intimidated.

The U.S. backed the post-Communist "colour revolutions" which took place in neighbouring countries - the "rose revolution" in Georgia (November 2003-January 2004), the "orange revolution" in Ukraine (January 2005) and the "tulip revolution" in Kyrgyzstan (April 2005). These revolutions brought about a transition from a Communist economy to the neo-liberal economic policies favoured by the U.S. The economies of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan were opened up to foreign investors. This was of benefit to the U.S. but was detrimental to those countries' economies. One consequence for Ukraine was a significant decrease in economic growth, from 14% in 2003 to 3% in 2004. Projections for Ukraine predict negative economic growth and high inflation rates in 2006.

There has been no colour revolution in Belarus; its economy is internationally isolated and remains outside of the U.S. sphere of influence. Nevertheless, according to the World Bank's 2005 Country Economic Memorandum for Belarus, "economic growth...has been genuine and robust, especially in recent years. . . [It] has been broad-based and has been driven primarily by improvements in labour productivity, increase in energy efficiency and capacity utilization. In contrast to some other [former Soviet] countries, where growth and exports remain concentrated in the extracting sectors with limited employment opportunities, the growth structure in Belarus has been much more beneficial for labour. Growth in labour-intensive sectors coupled with wage and income policies have helped to ensure that the benefits from recent growth were rather broadly shared by the population".

The U.S. has, in the past, supported many dictators around the world and still does so today. Examples include Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and numerous dictators in Central and South America during the Reagan years. These are "good" dictators because they co-operate with the U.S. on economic matters.

Lukashenko was democratically elected for the first time in 1994 but has become increasingly authoritarian since then. Political opposition groups face repression from the state and there is no independent media.

The U.S. foreign policy establishment refers to Lukashenko as "Europe's last dictator," and the State Department calls Belarus "the last outpost of tyranny in Europe". Because he has not opened up the Belarussian economy to the ravages of the free market, Lukashenko is a "bad" dictator.

Regardless of how the recent election was conducted, Lukashenko's victory could have international repercussions. Russian President Vladimir Putin sees Lukashenko as a key ally and as such he is fully supported by the Kremlin. The close ties between Moscow and Minsk could lead to the further deterioration of Russia's relationship with the U.S.

Archbishop: don't teach creationism

In an interview published in yesterday's Guardian, Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sided with science, saying that he was "not very comfortable" with the teaching of creationism in schools:

"I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories. Whatever the biblical account of creation is, it's not a theory alongside other theories. It's not as if the writer of Genesis or whatever sat down and said, 'Well, how am I going to explain all this...I know: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.' So if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories, I think there's been a jarring of categories...I don't think it should, actually [be taught]. No, no. And that's different from saying - different from discussing, teaching about what creation means. For that matter, it's not even the same as saying that Darwinism is - is the only thing
that ought to be taught. My worry is creationism could end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it."

The brain in a vat

Our perception of the world is different from how the world actually is. The 'reality' that we perceive is a mental construct, a product of the brain's interpretation of the stimuli it receives through the senses. These stimuli are converted by the sense organs into patterns of electrical impulses which are sent ultimately to the cerebral cortex, which then translates those impulses into perceptions of sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings.

The 'brain in a vat' conundrum is a philosophical thought experiment, often evoked in science fiction films (e.g. The Matrix and The Man with Two Brains). Imagine a person having their brain removed and placed in a vat containing a liquid which kept it alive. If a computer could be wired to the brain and feed it the patterns of electrical impulses which would normally be elicited by sensory stimuli from the outside world (in other words, if the computer could simulate a virtual reality very similar or identical to the 'reality' normally perceived), the disembodied person's brain would have conscious experiences indistinguishable from those it would normally have, even though the only contact with the world is via the computer connection. The brain would not know whether it was in a person's head receiving those stimuli or in a vat being fed the corresponding electrical impulses.

This is philosophical skepticism; it is an argument against any claim to knowledge. How can one 'know' that one's thoughts, feelings and experiences are real?

The brain in a vat is a contemporary version of the argument Rene Descartes put forward in his Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes knew that he could not fully trust his senses as sometimes they were fooled. How then could he really believe anything? Descartes could not be absolutely certain that an evil demon was not feeding him false perceptions and experiences; but the demon could not fool him about his very existence, which led to the cogito ergo sum ('I think, therefore I am') that Descartes is most famous for.

The world's most powerful supercomputer could not process the visual stimuli entering the eye of the millimetre-long fruit fly in one second, let alone simulate the myriad sensory stimuli entering the human brain through all sensory modalities or the trillions of electrical impulses generated by the brain every second. The brain in a vat, therefore, will always remain a thought experiment.

Iraq's missing billions

Dispatches, just shown on Channel 4, showed how corruption, bribery, monetary mismanagement and incompetence led to some $20bn of Iraq's own money (from the oil-for-food program and other reparatory costs) were squandered by the coalition instead of being used to actually rebuild the country. Hundreds of tonnes of dollar bills were flown into Baghdad airport and distributed to coalition officials.

In the documentary, an Iraqi doctor investigated conditions in Iraqi hospitals which had apparently received hundreds of millions of dollars but were still in a state of gross disrepair and lacked basic equipment.

That Iraqi hospitals are in such a poor state comes as no surprise - basic medical equipment has been denied the Iraqi people since the economic sanctions imposed on the country over fifteen years ago. The occupation only made matters worse for an already devestated country, and this film merely provided some details of what we knew was already happening in Iraq.

By strange coincidence, the doctor conducting the investigation had his home raided by U.S. soldiers who beat up his father and another male relative before taking him away for questioning.

Supercomputer models virus

Computer image of the satellite tobacco mosaic virus.

The simplest forms of life on earth are infinitely complex.

Researchers at the University of Illinois have used one of the world's most powerful supercomputers to simulate the interactions of the one million atoms which make up the satellite tobacco mosaic virus.

The latest version of a program called NAMD enabled the supercomputer's several hundred microprocessors to run in parallel to carry out the task of simultaneously modelling all the molecular interactions in the virus every femtosecond - a millionth of a billionth of a second - for 50 billionths of a second. The task would take an average desktop computer 35 years to complete.

The model gives insights into the functioning of the virus. It shows, for example, that the protein coat collapses without the genetic material inside it, suggesting that, during replication, the coat is built around the genetic material rather than the genetic material being inserted into the coat.

Jimmy Carter on Israel

"The preeminent obstacle to peace is Israel's colonization of Palestine," writes former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in Friday's Ha'aretz.

The thought-controlled computer

The neurophilosopher's blog has something about the "mental typewriter".

Probing into the birth of the universe

A NASA satellite looking at electromagnetic radiation from nearly 14 billion light years away has provided scientists with evidence that the universe underwent most of its expansion within one trillionth of a second after the big bang, and that the first stars were formed around 400 million years later.

The data, obtained after 3 years of continuous observations of cosmic background radiation by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), also reveals the composition of the visible universe: 4% is made of matter, 22% of dark matter and the remaining 76% of dark energy.

Bush's National Security Strategy

The White House has released President George W. Bush's second term National Security Strategy, which stresses that the priorities of the U.S. are "fighting and winning the war on terror and promoting freedom as the alternative to tyranny and despair".

The tone of the strategy, released yesterday, is softer and more diplomatic than Bush's first term strategy, which was released soon after the attacks on the World Trade Centre. However, "the place of pre-emption in our national security strategy remains the same...[and] we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur...even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack".

The "grave challenge...[is] the rise of terrorism fueled by an aggressive ideology of hatred and murder". It continues: "the struggle against this enemy...has been difficult. And our work is far from over."

The document reiterates recent remarks by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice that "[the U.S.] may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," which is an "ally of terror...[and] enemy of freedom".

The Bush administration's "most solemn obligation...[is] to protect the security of the American people...this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats...[and to] act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense."

Although the U.S. is committed to "countering proliferation of WMD," it has "begun fielding ballistic missile defenses...[and is] developing a New Triad composed of offensive strike systems," in the hope that this will act as a deterrent.

The economic policies outlined in the National Security Strategy are no different from those that the U.S. has pursued in the last 50 years. It will continue "pressing for open markets, financial stability, and deeper integration of the world economy...to shape the world." This will be done by pushing more countries to open up their economies to U.S. investment and by strengthening existing free trade agreements.

The document concludes by stressing the enormity of the "challenges" faced, but declares that the "enormous power and influence" of the U.S. will be used to address those challenges.

"America cannot know peace, security, and prosperity by retreating from the world." Can the rest of the world know peace, security and prosperity with the U.S. continuing on its present course?

Bone cells grown on carbon nanotubes

Computer-generated images of carbon nanotubes and a buckminsterfullerene molecule, or 'buckyball'. Carbon nanotubes are 100,000 times finer than a human hair.

A research team led by Laura Zanello, an associate professor of biochemistry at the University of California, Riverside, has successfully grown osteocytes on a scaffold of carbon nanotubes.

The group's work shows for the first time that bone cells can adhere to, and proliferate on, a carbon nanotube scaffold.

Like diamond, single-walled nanotubes are a form of carbon and are among the strongest materials in the world. They consist of a rolled up sheet of hexagonally-arranged carbon atoms.

Artificial bone scaffolds made from polymers and peptide fibres are not strong and can be rejected by the immune system. These new findings may help in producing stronger, more flexible artificial bone scaffolds to aid in the repair of broken bones. They may also be used in bone grafting and in the treatment of bone diseases such as osteoporosis.

A clump of osteocytes on the left, next to carbon nanotubes. Scale = 20 thousandths of a millimetre.

Growth of bone crystals on a carbon nanotube substrate. Scale = 5 thousandths of a millimetre.

Self-assembling nanofibre scaffolds restore vision in blinded hamsters

A team led by Rutledge Ellis-Behnke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Brain and Cognitive Science have used self-assembling peptide nanofibre scaffolds to partially restore the sight of hamsters blinded by damage to a nerve tract in their brains' visual systems. The findings are published in this week's online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Peptides are fragments of proteins which occur naturally. The peptides used in these experiments are synthetic and assemble themselves into a mesh on which the damaged nerve fibres could regrow. This fabricated biological nanomaterial has been nick-named 'molecular cement' by the research team and is modelled on a yeast protein which also forms scaffolds.

After hamsters had the neural pathway in their visual systems severed, a clear solution containing the self-assembling nanofibres was injected into their brains up to 45 minutes later. The synthetic peptides assembled themselves into an interwoven mesh similar to the extracellular matrix which holds tissues together. The mesh proved to be permissive to the regrowth of the damaged nerve fibres, with up to 20% of the damaged cells in both young and adult hamsters regrowing. The cells also re-established connections with each other so that the hamsters' vision was partially restored within about six weeks.

Although more animal experiments are needed, nanofibre scaffolds could eventually be used to treat other forms of brain damage, such as stroke, and spinal injuries.

The complexity of the human brain makes it extremely inaccessible. Scar tissue which forms around damaged areas of the brain makes surgery difficult. The nanofibre solution was shown to fill the gaps around the injured area, preventing the formation of scar tissue. Because the scaffold is made of natural molecules it can be broken down into amino acids and is not recognized by the immune system.

Associate Director of the department, Shuguang Zhang, discovered self-assembling peptides by accident 15 years ago and has been working on them ever since. He and Ellis-Behnke have been using the scaffolds for tissue engineering - growing lines of embyronic stem cells and letting them differentiate into a particular type of cell, which then grows to form a specific type of tissue.

RRW to supersede Trident

While Prime Minister Blair insists that no decision has been reached over a replacement for the Trident ballistic missile system, it emerges that Britain has been secretly working with the U.S. on a replacement for over a year.

Blair's government has been pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into the Atomic Weapons Establishment near Aldermaston in Berkshire to develop a new generation weapons system to replace the Trident ballistic missiles.

Trident-armed submarines are the ultimate weapons of mass destruction and the most sophisticated nuclear weapons in the world. Superheated steam can eject a missile from a vertical launch tube, thrusting it at 2,750mph so that it reaches 18 miles above the Earth's surface within 30 seconds. Onboard computers and internal guidance systems can adjust the trajectory of the missile and aim it at a target. Each missile is armed with a 100-kilotonne Trident warhead whose radiation would kill nearly every person within a mile of the blast and 50% of people and most buildings between one and one-and-a-half miles.

Trident missiles do, however, contain some components, such as plastic seals, the plutonium trigger and the berrylium that surrounds it, which deteriorate with age. While the U.S. Navy is planning to extend the life of its Trident missiles to 2042, Britain's fleet of four trident submarines, each armed with 48 nuclear warheads, will come out of service in 2024.

Under the nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty Britain is committed to preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and pursuing disarmament. The testing of nuclear weapons is also banned.

The British government will attempt to bypass international law by developing the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), a Trident upgrade which will be powerful and flexible. The RRW will require less maintenance and can be manufactured quickly and easily on a production line. It will not require full-scale testing - the research facility developing the RRW has just invested £20m in a Cray XT3, one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, which will be used to model nuclear explosions.

Development of the RRW will contravene the Non-Proliferation Treaty and will encourage other states to develop nuclear weapons rather than act as a deterrent.

The Coptic Orthodox church

Mid-13th century Coptic manuscript showing Jesus in the garden of Gethsemene; the kiss of Judas; the arrest of Christ; his appearance before Caiphas; Peter's denial at Cockrow; Christ before Pontius Pilate; and the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan. Scholars are only beginning to acknowledge the huge influence of Coptic art on Western religious art. Note the use of both Coptic and Arabic on the right-hand page.

The word 'Copt' is derived from the Greek Aegyptus, meaning 'Egypt'. Copts were the indiginous peoples of Egypt when the Muslim army conquered the country in 642 AD and today comprise a large minority of the Egyptian population (10-15%).

The Coptic Orthodox church was established in Egypt by Saint Mark during the 1st Century AD and is therefore the oldest form of Christianity. Coptic was the language of the pharaohs, from whom modern Copts are directly descended. Copts are considered to be among the most anthropologically pure races in the world.

The monastic tradition was also born in Egypt and was instrumental in the formation of the Coptic church. Saint Anthony, a Copt from Upper (southern) Egypt, is regarded as the first Christian monk.

The Coptic church split from the Western church after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, in which the two branches disagreed on the nature of Christ. Whereas the Western church believed that Christ had two natures, one divine and one human, the leaders of the Coptic church maintained that Christ had only one divine nature (a position referred to as monophysitism).

Comet particles mystify scientists

Comet Wild 2

Scale = one two thousandth of a millimetre

Scale = one thousandth of a millimetre

NASA's $212m Stardust Mission landed in the Utah desert in January after a 7-year mission, during which it completed a 2.88 billion mile round trip. Stardust flew to within 150 miles of comet Wild 2, collecting cometary and interstellar dust particles which researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California are examining the particles to try to answer questions about how comets and the solar system were formed.

The discovery of microscopic particles found in fragments of comet Wild 2 that could only have been formed at high temperatures challenges the conventional view of comet formation. These materials have previously been found in meteorites formed near the sun at temperatures greater than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Astronomers believed that comets are the oldest bodies in the Milky Way, formed at the edges of our solar system at very low temperatures by the effects of gravity on swirling clouds of gas and dust and containing remnants of the materials from which stars and planets are made.

There are now two hypotheses about how these materials could have ended up in the outer limits of the solar system. Materials formed near the sun could have been ejected billions of miles by jet-like currents called X-winds, or they could have formed around other stars before drifting into comet-making areas of the solar system.

Welcome to Mars

Images of the surface of the Red Planet obtained by the Odyssey Orbiter and Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity (NASA).

The spoils of war

Independent watchdog Corporate Watch has conducted the first investigation into British corporate investment in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime was ousted 3 years ago.

The investigation reveals that British businesses have profited by at least £1.1 billion from contracts awarded by the British government to 'rebuild' Iraq. This is just a fraction of the profits made by U.S. firms and a small proportion of the profits expected to be earnt in the long run.

Some of the companies and the value of their contracts are listed below.

• Adam Smith International, Consultancy, £4.1m
• Aegis Defence Services, Private Security, £246.5m
• AMEC, Power & water, £500m
• ArmorGroup, Private Security, £11.47m
• BBC World Service Trust, Media, £6.7m
• Bell-Pottinger, Public Relations, £3m
• BP, Energy, £2.86m
• B-Plan Information Systems, Software, £4.6m
• British Council, Teaching & Consultancy, £3.1m
• Control Risks, Private Security, £23.5m
• Costain, Construction, £15m
• Cummins UK, Power, £25.8m
• Enterplan Ltd., Consultancy, £4.5m
• Erinys, Private Security, £86m
• Foster Wheeler UK, Construction & power, £3.5m (approx.)
• Halcrow, Construction & consultancy, £6.8m
• HSBC, Finance, £36.9m
• Inclarity Plc, Telecommunications, £10m (approx.)
• Llewelyn Davies Yeang, Architecture, £1.6m
• Maxwell Stamp, Consultancy, £3.2m
• Mowlem, Construction, £3m
• Nottingham University, Education, £0.6m
• Oxford University, Education, £4.1m
• PA Consulting Group, Consultancy, £0.4m
• Parsons Brinckerhoff UK, Power, £24.9m
• Serco, Services, £7.5m
• TQ Education & Training, Education, £4m (approx.)

BR spacecraft plans found

Plans for a spacecraft powered by a "controlled thermonuclear fusion reaction...ignited by one or more pulsed laser beams" have been found on the European Patent Office website.

The patent document reads: "The present invention...relates to a power supply for a space vehicle which offers a source of sustained thrust for the loss of a very small mass of fuel. Thus it would enable very high velocities to be attained in a space vehicle and in fact the prolonged acceleration of the vehicle may in some circumstances be used to simulate gravity."

The craft was invented by Charles Osmond Frederick and an application for the patent was made on behalf of the British Railways Board. The patent was granted in March 1973 but later lapsed because of non-payment of renewal fees.

The Met's "Shoot to Kill" guidelines

Documents obtained by The Sunday Times give details of Operations Clydesdale and Kratos People, which constitute the secret guidelines on how poilce officers should deal with suicide bombers.

The documents provide legal justification for the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes last July and reveal that the Metropolitan Police is assured by top government lawyers that officers involved in shooting innocent people will not be liable for damages.

The guidelines, which are stricter than those for Israeli police, recommend a "critical head shot" to "neutralise" a suspected suicide bomber, adding that "immediate incapacitation is essential as our objective is to prevent detonation."

Police are told that suicide bombers are likely to exhibit the following signs and suspicious behaviours:

• sweating
• agitation
• being in a trance
• tunnel vision
• mumbling, possibly praying
• recently clean shaven
• short hair
• looking anxious
• wearing bulky clothing not in keeping with the weather
• holding something in the hand/ clenched fist
  
• having a wire or toggle protruding from a bag
  

Desecrating Darwin

Evangelical Christianity (Christianism) continues to gain influence in the U.K. The Christianists now have a foothold in education, with their agenda set to be pushed in state schools later this year. Creationism will be taught alongside evolutionary theory when the revised National Science Curriculum is introduced in September. Oxford Cambridge and RSA (OCR) Examinations, one of the three main exam boards in England, has included the subject in it's new ‘Gateway to Science’ syllabus.

The syllabus requires teachers to "explain that the fossil record has been interpreted differently over time (e.g. creationist interpretation)."

According to the OCR website, "candidates need to understand the social and historical context to scientific ideas both pre and post Darwin...[and are] asked to discuss why the opponents of Darwinism thought the way they did and how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence."

Although "creationism and 'intelligent design' are not regarded by OCR as scientific theories...[but are] beliefs that do not lie within scientific understanding," both evolution and creationism will be given the same weight in science lessons.

Creationism is already being taught in a small number of academies in the northeast of the country. Academies are privately-run, state-funded schools which Prime Minister Tony Blair hopes will replace failing comprehensives. Blair's aim is to have 200 such schools built by the year 2010.

An academy requires an initial investment of £2 million from the private sector before the government will provide up to £25 million of additional funding. In return for their funding, the private investor has a major say in how the school is run.

One such private investor is evangelical Christian Sir Peter Vardy, multimillionaire owner of one of Europe's largest car franchises. Sir Peter effectively owns Emmanuel College, Gateshead, King's Academy, Middlesborough and Trinity Academy, Doncaster.

Sir Peter believes that the Earth was created in 6 days, exactly as described in the Book of Genesis, and the headteachers of his schools share those beliefs. Creationism is taught in all of Sir Peter's schools. According to ex-pupils, their science teachers taught them about Darwin's theory, dismissed it as false and then quoted the Book of Genesis as the true explanation.

Sir Peter's schools are situated in highly deprived areas of the country and are over-subscribed. They enforce strict discipline among their pupils. Emmanuel College has an excellent academic record, with over 95% of pupils achieving five or more A*- C GCSE grades. Emmanuel Foundation Schools have, however, been accused of excluding lower-achieving pupils to bolster their exam results.

What is Creationism?

Creationism is a term referring to a broad spectrum of religious belief systems. Many of them are mutually exclusive, conflicting with each other just as much as they do with with evolutionary theory, while some do not conflict with the scientific view of how the universe was formed. All creationist belief systems are centered around the idea that Earth was created by a supreme being. Some take a literal interpretation of the Bible, such that the Earth was created exactly as described in the Book of Genesis.

Below are several strands of Creationism, each of which can be further sub-divided into groups with differing beliefs. Young-Earth creationists believe that the Earth was created by God less than 10,000 years ago, in the space of a week, exactly as described in the Book of Genesis. Young-Earth creationists dismiss the idea that all living things are evolved from a common ancestor, and dispute data obtained by methods such as radio-carbon dating, ice-core dating and dendrochronology. Many American Protestants and Haredi Jews are of this view.

Old-Earth creationists do not take the creation event described in Genesis literally, and therefore do not dispute data from geology and cosmology about the age of the Earth and universe. Old-Earth creationists do, however, question the details of evolutionary theory. Day-age creationists take the view that each of the six days of creation described in Genesis could have lasted millenia, while Progressive creationists are of the belief that living things evolved under the guidance of God.

Evolutionary creationism is compatible with the Big Bang and evolution theories; it's adherents believe that the universe was formed in the way most scientists describe, but that God put into motion these events.

Neo-creationists distance themselves from other creationists and aim to reframe the debate on the origins of life without reference to scripture, thus making creationism more accessible to the general public. Intelligent Design (ID) is the most prominent form of neo-creationism, and takes the view that life is too complex to be explained solely by science. ID purports to use scientific methodology to deconstruct evolutionary theory.

Is this Noah's Arc?

These declassified CIA images, obtained by intelligence-gathering satellites and remote-sensing spacecraft, show an anomaly on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey.

The anomaly, found in the northwestern corner of Mt. Ararat at an altitude of 15,300 feet (4,663 meters) is almost completely submerged in glacial ice, and could be a geological formation or a man-made object.

National security analyst Porcher Taylor, who is also an associate professor in paralegal studies at the University of Richmond's School of Continuing Studies in Virginia, believes that the 'Ararat Anomaly' could be the remains of Noah's Arc.

However, Farouk El-Baz, the director of the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing who earlier this month discovered an enormous crater in the Sahara desert, is skeptical:

"Very slight changes in slope modify shadow shapes that affect the interpretations. Up to this time, all the images I have seen can be interpreted as natural landforms. The feature that has been interpreted as the 'Ararat Anomaly' is to me a ledge of rock in partial shadow, with varied thickness of snow and ice cover."

Water found on Saturn's moon

Enhanced colour image of Enceladus (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has obtained evidence of water on Enceladus, a cold and icy moon orbiting Saturn approximately 1.3 billion km from Earth. Encedalus is the sixth largest saturnian moon. The discovery makes it the third body in the solar system, apart from Earth, that could possibly sustain life, the others being Titan, which also orbits Saturn, and Jupiter's moon Europa.

According to a NASA press release, "High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting large quantities of particles at high speed...the jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water about 0 degrees Celsius."

Water is essential for all forms of life; the discovery has therefore given astrobiologists more hope that there is, or has been, life in other parts of our solar system. However, NASA's proposed budget for fiscal year 2007 calls for a 50% cut in its astrobiology program.

Bush, science & the religious right

President Bush listens to those scientific advisors who share his evangelical Christian beliefs, while ignoring those who don't.

When it comes to reducing the transmission of HIV/AIDS, the Bush administration favours promoting sexual abstinence over providing condoms. The mass production of a vaccine for Human papillomavirus (HPV) is opposed by the religious right, despite the links between the microbe and cervical cancer. It follows, then, that Bush et al would rather have millions more be infected with HIV or HPV than for them to have pre-marital sex.

Michael Specter writes in this week's New Yorker:

"Religious conservatives are unapologetic; not only do they believe that mass use of an HPV vaccine or the availability of emergency contraception will encourage adolescents to engage in unacceptable sexual behavior; some have even stated that they would feel similarly about an H.I.V. vaccine, if one became available. 'We would have to look at that closely,' Reginald Finger, an evangelical Christian and a former medical adviser to the conservative political organization Focus on the Family, said. 'With any vaccine for H.I.V., disinhibition' - a medical term for the absence of fear - 'would certainly be a factor, and it is something we will have to pay attention to with a great deal of care.' Finger sits on the Centers for Disease Control's Immunization Committee, which makes those recommendations."

Foreign Office appoints biased legal head

One wonders what kind of legal advice Daniel Bethlehem QC will give Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

45-year-old Mr. Bethlehem, an international law specialist at Cambridge University, has just been appointed as head of the Foreign Office legal team.

As Israel's external legal adviser, Bethlehem advised Prime Minister Sharon to block a United Nations inquiry into Israeli war crimes during the siege of Jenin. He also led the team which defended the West Bank barrier being built by Israel, a case which was lost.

Bethlehem will advise Jack Straw on the legal aspects of issues such as Guantanamo Bay, Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"We are appalled that the Foreign Office is employing someone who has a very distinct bias," said Betty Hunter, spokeswoman for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Divide & rule

Since the bombing of the Al Askariyah shrine on February 22 we have been told that sectarianism has brought Iraq to the brink of civil war. A Washington Post/ ABC News poll published yesterday showed that 80% of Amercicans thought civil war in Iraq was likely.

Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. envoy to Iraq, said yesterday that the invasion of Iraq had opened a Pandora's box of sectarian conflict.

Throughout Iraq's history, Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen have lived together peacefully, and the sectarian violence is a result of the occupation. This sectarianism is being inflamed by U.S. special forces and U.S.-backed Iraqi militias and politicians.

The U.S. has adopted the colonial method of divide and rule to rip Iraq apart. The hyperpower has a long history of inflaming sectarian violence and manipulating elections to gain control of states.

The list of countries in which the U.S. has used these methods is very long. In the early 1970s, Chile democratically elected the popular leftist Salvador Allende as it's leader. The Nixon administration did not approve of Allende's economic policies and planned to topple his government. On September 11, 1973, the CIA entered Chile to remove Allende from office, killing at least 3,000 innocent Chileans in the process, and installing their preferred leader, Augusto Pinochet.

In the early 1980s the Reagan administration opposed the left-wing Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The controversial Iran-Contra affair involved providing financial aid and military training to the Contras, a militia which intimidated and brutalized the Nicaraguan populace. Funds for the Contras were obtained by selling arms to Iran during it's 9-year war with Iraq, which was also armed by the U.S.

The U.S. has indeed opened a Pandora's box in Iraq, and it has done so deliberately. When American and British troops are eventually withdrawn from the country, covert operations will continue, so that Iraq's future pans out in the way America would like.

U.S. to develop 'stealth shark'

Remote-controlled: the spiny dogfish, Squalus acanthias

Biologists have developed a neural implant which can be used to 'steer' spiny dogfish, a technique which the U.S. military now hopes to build on to produce 'stealth sharks.'

The implant, consisting of a series of electrodes embedded in the olfactory (smell) region of the dogfish brain, is the work of Jelle Atema and his team at Boston University. Radio signals from a laptop can stimulate the brain of the dogfish, fooling it into believing that there is an attractive odour in a particular direction, which it then turns towards.

Atema is using the implants to try and determine how the shark brain interprets chemical signals to obtain information about the environment. Sharks have sophisticated nervous systems which allow them to detect not just odours but also electrical impulses generated by other organisms, enabling them to locate prey. It is also believed that sharks use their electroreceptors to detect the earth's magnetic field, so that they can navigate through the water over long distances.

With funding from the Pentagon, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Virginia, is now developing a similar implant to remotely guide sharks so that they can stealthily follow enemy vessels and provide information on their position and movements.

The implant developed by DARPA researchers contains wires which sink into the shark brain to record the activity from many nerve cells, or neurons, simultaneously. It is hoped that the implant can help them to determine the patterns of neural activity when the shark detects an odour, current or electrical field. The team also plans to program a microchip which can recognize these patterns.

Researchers at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center described the implant in the abstract for their presentation at the 2006 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Ahmadinejad's eschatology

Yesterday's Newsnight suggested that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has an eschatology equivalent to that of the Dispensationalists (see 'Apocalypse soon?' below).

That is, his confrontational attitude towards the U.S. may be (mis) guided by a belief in the imminent return of the twelfth imam, or Mahdi. The idea of the Mahdi's return originated in Islam's early years and has come to be associated with Shiism. The Mahdi is "the restorer of religion and justice who will rule before the end of the world."

Newsnight also interviewed Iran's chief negotiator Ali Larijani, who referred to the Bush administration as 'Zionist-Orientalists,' adding that the U.S. was making idle threats of military action which it is to able to start but would not be able to finish.

On the same program, Mohammed Shaqeel, an Iran analyst, questioned the double standards by which India and Pakistan could retain their nuclear weapons while not joining the nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT) and still strike deals with the U.S, and compared this to the situation in Iran. Jeremy Greenstock, former British ambassador to the United Nations, responded that "the West trusts them" [India and Pakistan], because their nuclear weapons are "pointing at each other," whereas if Iran were to develop nuclear weapons it would certainly point them westwards.

Meteorite crater found in Egypt

Landsat image of the Kebira crater in Egypt

Farouk El-Baz and Eman Ghoneim of the Center for Remote Sensing of Boston University have discovered a huge crater in the Sahara desert in western Egypt.

The crater, named 'Kebira,' (meaning 'big' in Arabic) is 31km wide and was discovered while the Boston University team were studying satellite images of the Sahara. It was probably created by the impact of a meteorite approximately 0.75km wide and is more than twice the size of the next largest Saharan crater.

In comparison, the 65 million-year-old Chicxulub crater in Mexico is between 160-240km wide; the impact which created it is widely believed to have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Sex in the abyss

The angler fish uses bio-luminescence to lure prey towards it's mouth. Light is produced by a chemical reaction carried out by bacteria.

The sea floor is a hostile and mysterious habitat which scientists know very little about. At least half of all the species collected from deeper than 3,000 meters (1.86 miles) are unknown.

Because sunlight does not reach the bottom of the sea, temperatures are near freezing and many organisms rely on bio-luminescence.

Now, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge Ecosystems (MAR-ECO) team has undertaken a huge marine biology expedition to investigate life at 1.25 miles beneath the surface of the Atlantic ocean.

Using acoustic survey instruments, massive trawling nets and remotely operated submersible vehicles, the team has collected 30 previously unknown species and 270 poorly known ones.

It was previously thought that deep-sea (or pelagic) fish wandered the vast expanses of the oceans until they encountered a mate by chance. It has now been discovered that at least some species of pelagic fish gather at underwater mountain ranges, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, to spawn.

This discovery raises some questions. For example, how do these species of fish know when to gather, and by what mechanisms do they navigate to the meeting points?

Stats from Iraq

Statistics on casualties in Iraq from the Brookings Institution

U.S. soldiers killed (Key: IED, Improvised Explosive Device; VBIED, Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device; RPG, Rocket-Propelled Grenade)

U.S. soldiers wounded

Iraqi civilians killed (highest & lowest estimates)

Iraqi civilians wounded & killed

Iraqi policemen killed

Israel & the Palestinians

Ehud Olmert, acting Israeli Prime Minister

Ehud Olmert, acting Israeli Prime Minister, has announced that he plans to evacuate up to 17 illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank if the Kadima Party wins the general election on March 28th.

The policy has been confirmed by Avi Dichter, a Kadima party member and former head of the Israeli internal security agency Shin Bet. He told Israeli radio yesterday:

"It will be only a civilian disengagement, not a military disengagement. In the abscence of a Palestinian partner, Israel will have to determine its final borders by itself, and that will involve the consolidation of smaller settlements into settlement blocs."

As predicted, Israel's stance towards the Palestinians has not changed since the victory of Hamas in the elections last month. The Jewish State has refused to negotiate with the new Palestinian leaders, just as it did with Arafat, and will continue to act unilaterally.

The planned evacuation of these settlements, for which Olmert seeks international support, will consolidate the larger ones in the West Bank, including those in Jerusalem. The status of Jerusalem, which Israel regards as it's capital, is crucial to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The settlements which Olmert plans to evacuate are home to less than 17,000 of the 250,000 illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Those residents, many of whom are Jewish extremists, will be transferred to larger existing West Bank settlements, situated in four large areas of the occupied West Bank which Israel plans to keep. Palestinians justifiably believe that this move would cripple the chances of a Palestinian state.

A warning to Iran

Speaking at an American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference yesterday, John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warned of "painful consequences" if Iran "continued along the path of international isolation."

His speech was a thinly disguised threat that the U.S. would take military action against Iran if diplomacy failed, something which the U.K. has ruled out.

He added: "The longer we wait to confront the threat Iran poses, the harder and more intractable it will become to solve...we must be prepared to rely on comprehensive solutions and use all the tools at our disposal to stop the threat that the Iranian regime poses."

Bolton's speech comes ahead of today's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting, in which a report of Iran's nuclear program will be given to the UN Security Council.

The U.S. is also expected to provide the Security Council with evidence that Iran has been planning to build a "crude" nuclear bomb, like the one dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. Evidence for this is said to be contained on a laptop belonging to an Iranian nuclear engineer which the CIA obtained in 2004.

Recall how, three years ago, the U.S. insisted that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and how these claims turned out to be false.

Blair: God will judge me

In an interview with Michael Parkinson, aired on BBC1 on Saturday, Prime Minister Tony Blair said that his decision to invade Iraq had been based on his Christian faith.

Read the previous post, and pray that Mr. Blair doesn't take his faith too literally!

Apocalypse soon?

Religion & Politics in the U.S.

In recent years, the influence of religion on American politics has increased. The Christian right, in particular, is a powerful voting bloc, which cast 15 million votes in the 2000 presidential election and was instrumental in Bush's re-election in 2004.

These Christian extremists have a literal interpretation of the Bible, and are opposed to abortion, homosexuality and stem cell research. Their doctrine has numerous adherents in both Congress and the Bush administration.

50 million Americans claim to belong to evangelical Protestant churches, with approximately 30 million of those supporting the Republican party. A sub-set of evangelical Protestants, estimated to number 10-15 million, subscribe to a theology called Dispensationalism and have come to be popularly known as Christian Zionists.

The End is Nigh

Dispensationalism is an eschatology-based theology which first appeared during the early 19th Century. It divides the history of the world into seven eras, or dispensations. According to this theology, we have just entered the seventh and final dispensation and are therefore approaching the 'End Times'.

Dispensationalists are awaiting the second coming of Christ. Before the messiah can return, however, all the world's Jews must be restored to Israel, after which a third of them will be converted to Christianity. The third Jewish temple will then be rebuilt on the Temple Mount, where Islam's third holiest shrine, the Dome of the Rock, is now situated. Only after these events will the Dispensationalists, who are the only true believers, be taken to Heaven in the Rapture. The rest of the world's population are doomed to be tormented during a long reign of the anti-Christ which will follow.

The destruction of the Dome of the Rock would inevitably escalate the Israeli-Palestinian to catastrophic levels. Dispensationalists not only want this scenario, they are actively promoting it. They will influence American politics to confound any attempts at resolving the conflict in the Middle East, so that an apocalyptic war ensues, making their vision a reality. In other words, Dispensationalists are not just waiting for the War of Armageddon, they are actually hoping to make it happen, to ensure their place in Heaven.

A poll conducted in 2002 by Time magazine and CNN found that 59% of Americans believe that the prophecies in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. There are even academic "experts," most notably Michael Drosnin, who claim to have deciphered encrypted biblical codes which tell us exactly when Armageddon will occur.

For these reasons, Dispensationalists are avid supporters of Israel (hence they are called the Christian Zionists), as are evangelical Protestants in general. The Dispensationalists support and champion Israel not out of love and kindness but because the Jewish state has a major part to play in bringing about the circumstances leading up to the Rapture. "A true Christian loves Israel, and anyone who doesn't is not a true Christian. We stand by you [Israel] no matter what," says Benny Hinn, a popular American televangelist. Hence the credo by Jerry Falwell that "the Bible belt is Israel's safety belt."

Furthermore, there is no room for a Palestinian state in the Christian Zionist world-view, with biblical Greater Israel, as promised to them in God's covenant with Abraham, consisting of the entire fertile crescent, from the Euphrates in the north to the Nile in the south. (These two rivers are represented by the horizontal blue lines of the Israeli flag.)

Testament to the popularity of Dispensationalism in the U.S. is the phenomenal success of the 'Left Behind' series of books by Tim LeHaye and Jerry Jenkins. In the last 10 years, more than 50 million copies of this series of books have been sold worldwide. The title of the first book in the series, Left Behind, refers to those who will remain on earth after the Rapture.

America's Theocracy

The influence of Christianism on U.S. politics cannot be underestimated. Earlier this month, Samuel Alito, the new Supreme Court Justice, sent a thank you note to James Dobson, the founder of the Christian right-wing group Focus on the Family. Alito admitted that he owed his job to Dobson, who had asked listeners of his radio broadcast to pray "that by the time that probition on abortion reaches the Supreme Court, there will be one more conservative justice sitting there."

The letter reads: "Dear Dr. Dobson: This is just a short note to express my heartfelt thanks to you and the entire staff of Focus on the Family for your help and support...I would also greatly appreciate it if you would convey my appreciation to the good people...who wrote to tell me that they were praying for me...the prayers of so many people from around the country were a palpable and powerful force. As long as I serve on the Supreme Court I will keep in mind the trust that has been placed in me."

In the context of the 'war on terrorism,' the Dispensationalists regard Muslims as their enemies and as enemies of God. The idea that there is a 'clash of civilizations' between Islam and the West fits perfectly with notion of End Times. President George W. Bush is himself a born-again Christian and evangelical Protestant. Although not a Dispensationalist, his beliefs are not incompatible with theirs. The Bush administration has a symbiotic relationship with the Christian Zionists, and they will continue to exert pressure on him so that the course of events in the Middle East goes the way they want.

Abu Ghraib witnesses threatened

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES BELOW

A declassified U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo reveals that two DIA agents who witnessed abuses of inmates at Abu Ghraib were threatened by interrogators. The document was released under the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties union (ACLU), which summarizes it as follows:

A June 25, 2004 memo from Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby,
Defense Intelligence Agency chief, entitled "alleged detainee abuse by TF 62-6,"
describing how DIA personnel who complained about abuses were threatened, had
their car keys confiscated and e-mails monitored, and were ordered "not to talk
to anyone in the U.S." or leave the base "even to get a haircut."

The June 25 memo also describes how the task force’s officers
punched a prisoner in the face "to the point he needed medical attention,"
failed to record the medical treatment, and confiscated DIA photos of the
injuries.

Bush was warned about Hurricane Katrina

The Associated Press has obtained confidential footage of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-White House conferences showing that President George W. Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff were emphatically warned about Hurricane Katrina the day before it struck America's Gulf Coast.

A hurricane expert expressed "grave concerns" about the levees during the sessions, but President Bush apparently was not paying attention, as he would later claim that he didn't "think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

FEMA chief Michael Brown also expressed concerns about the ability to respond to hurricane Katrina. The footage shows that Bush did not ask any questions during the briefings, and assured state officials that the U.S. was "fully prepared" for Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina

Apart from showing the complete incompetence of the Bush administration, the aftermath of Katrina made the world wake up to the fact that the U.S. has a massive underclass. Tens of millions of citizens in the world's most affluent country live on or below the poverty line, and the number is growing. Most of those worst affected by Katrina were desparately poor black people who had to walk from their destroyed homes because they don't own cars and couldn't afford bus tickets.

Pessimistic climate change report

The receding Triftgletscher glacier in Switzerland

A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to be sent to governments next month, will state that an increase in greenhouse gas emissions is the only explanation for changing weather conditions around the world.

The simultaneous observation of changes in the patterns of droughts, floods, ecosystems, ocean acidification, glaciers and sea ice must, according to the report, be caused by increases in the emission of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide.

According to an IPCC spokesman, "The measurements from the natural world on all parts of the globe have been anomalous over the past decade. If a few were out of kilter we wouldn't be too worried because the Earth changes naturally. But the fact that they are virtually all out of kilter makes us very concerned."

The report forecasts that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from pre-industrial levels, which is expected to occur in the middle of the 21st century, would increase global temperatures by 2-4 degrees Celcius. What concerns IPCC scientists is that there have already been major disruptions to the environment even though carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by only 30%.

The main proposal in the report will be the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by big businesses, which is likely to be fiercely contested by the Bush administration.

Bush in India

Steve Bell, The Guardian

What exactly is President Bush's agenda in India? On the face of it, the aim of the visit to New Delhi is to convince Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to separate India's civilian and military nuclear programs, to ensure the transparent and responsible use of the latter, and to guarantee the sharing of civilian nuclear technology.

In a preview of his trip to the sub-continent, which will also include a visit to Pakistan next month, President Bush stressed the growing ties between the U.S. and India on economics, energy and agriculture.

In the coming decades, India, like China, will continue to grow economically and militarily. Both countries will pose a threat to the current U.S.-led world order, and it is in the interests of the U.S. to ensure that they both remain, as much as possible, within the American sphere of influence.

U.S. exports to India increased by more than 30% last year, and the Bush administration would like India to remove barriers to foreign (i.e. American) investment, lower trade tariffs and open it's growing markets to American farming and industrial products.

"We must not allow mobs to dictate the future of South Asia," says Mr. Bush, presumably because it is preferable for the sub-continent's future to be dictated by the U.S.