samadhisoft.com

- Here’s a fine story about Afghanistan - a nation our citizens are dying to defend.   But, sorry to say, their culture is in the stone-age with respect to women’s rights.

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Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned three men found guilty of gang-raping a woman in the northern province of Samangan.

The woman, Sara, and her family found out about the pardon only when they saw the rapists back in their village.

“Everyone was shocked,” said Sara’s husband, Dilawar, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. “These were men who had been sentenced by the Supreme Court, walking around freely.”

Sara’s case highlights concerns about the close relationship between the Afghan President and men accused of war crimes and human rights abuses.

The men were freed discreetly but the rape was public and brutal. It took place in September 2005, in the run-up to Afghanistan’s first democratic parliamentary elections.

The most powerful local commander, Mawlawi Islam, was running for office despite being accused of scores of murders committed during his time as a mujahideen commander in the 1980s, a Taleban governor in the 1990s, and after the fall of the Taleban in 2001. Sara said one of his subcommanders and bodyguards had been looking for young men to help in the election campaign.

“It was evening, around time for the last prayer, when armed men took my son, Islamuddin, by force. I have eyewitness statements from nine people that he was there. From that night until now, my son has never been seen.”

Dilawar said his wife publicly harangued the commander twice about their missing son.

After the second time, he said, they came for her. “The commander and three of his fighters came and took my wife out of our home and took her to their house about 200m away and, in front of these witnesses, raped her.”

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R.,

A few more thoughts along the same lines I talked about previously.

All of humanity’s history has been a series of incremental advances along multiple paths; business, social organization, military, agriculture, technological, etc. In all of this, the thought has primarily been to advance, empower and grow.

Now, for the first time in humanity’s history, we have filled the planet and have begun to hit various unyielding limits; water, food, oil, pollution, as well as limits having to do with how much impact we can have on the biosphere without causing huge shifts in the demographics of various species and even causing their extinctions.

It is clear, if humanity wants to continue to live indefinitely on this planet, that we are going to have to shift from a growth and advance strategy in all we do to one predicated on establishing a steady-state and sustainable balance with the biosphere around us.

We cannot use renewable resources faster than they can regenerate. We cannot occupy more of the planet’s surface than is consistent with allowing the rest of the planet’s biology to exist and flourish. These both imply that our population has to come down to some sustainable number and be held there. We have to come up with ways to govern ourselves that are consistent with establishing and maintaining these essential balances. Nation against nation, system against system is not compatible with long term survival. The ultimate goal and purpose of government in an enlightened world should be to secure all of our futures (we and all the rest of the planet’s biology) and maintain the balance.

We could, if we cut our population to sustainable levels and learned to live within a sustainable footprint on this planet, exist here for tens of thousands of years and maintain a decent quality of life for all those who are alive at any specific point in time. We do not have to give up comfort or technology - we just have to dial our impact on the planet back to sustainable levels and stay with in those levels.

Anything that the Gates Foundation or any other forward looking organization works on that does not include long term goals like these is likely in the big picture to just be a shuffling of our problems from one place to the other rather than a real indefinite-term planet-wide solution to how our species is going to solve the problem of learning to live here without fouling our nest for ourselves and all the other species that depend on this planet’s biosphere.

This worrisome research article has appeared in a peer reviewed journal. It’s not telling us anything that we didn’t already know, but it does catalogue the situation and help us steer clear of the hyperbole.

Environmental scepticism denies the seriousness of environmental problems, and self-professed ’sceptics’ claim to be unbiased analysts combating ‘junk science’. This study quantitatively analyses 141 English-language environmentally sceptical books published between 1972 and 2005. We find that over 92 per cent of these books, most published in the US since 1992, are linked to conservative think tanks (CTTs). Further, we analyse CTTs involved with environmental issues and find that 90 per cent of them espouse environmental scepticism. We conclude that scepticism is a tactic of an elite-driven counter-movement designed to combat environmentalism, and that the successful use of this tactic has contributed to the weakening of US commitment to environmental protection.

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By now we can too readily imagine the horror of terrorists exploding a nuclear weapon in a major American city: the gutted skyscrapers, the melted cars, the charred bodies. For Sam Nunn, however, a new terror begins the day after. That’s when the world asks whether another bomb is out there. “If a nuclear bomb went off in Moscow or New York City or Jerusalem, any number of groups would claim they have another”, Nunn told me recently. These groups would make steep demands as intelligence officials scrambled to determine which claims were real. Panic would prevail. Even after the detonation of a small, crude weapon that inflicted less damage than the bomb at Hiroshima, Nunn suggested, “The psychological damage would be incalculable. It would be a slow, step-by-step process to regain confidence. And the question will be, Why didn’t we take steps to prevent this? We will have a whole list of things we wish we’d done.“

Nunn thinks of those things every time he picks up a newspaper. When, for instance, he reads about the arrest of a Russian man who, in a sting operation, tried to sell weapons-grade uranium - a reminder of a possible black market in nuclear materials and of the poor security at facilities in the former Soviet Union. Or when he sees news about Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb, which could set off a wave of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and thus significantly raise the possibility that terrorists will someday acquire a bomb. And despite the apparent diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea earlier this month, in which the North Koreans agreed to begin dismantling their nuclear facilities in return for fuel and other aid, Nunn, who finds the deal encouraging, remains concerned since North Korea’s unpredictable, cash-starved dictatorship still retains perhaps half a dozen nuclear bombs, and the ingredients to make more.

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- This article is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, recently, a friend of mine suggested the website bugmenot.com as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

- Research thx to Tony B.

- The second most powerful member of the Texas House, Warren Chisum, is pushing an anti-enviromental agenda and making wild claims that teaching evolution is equivalent to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect’s beliefs. And he refers to a web site, www.fixedearth.com , which, in addition to being anti-evolutionary, believes that the Earth doesn’t move, but that everything goes around it. Jeez, and to think I used to be worried about Kansas.

- I put this one under Politics - The Wrong Way and The Perfect Storm. I put it under the latter category because it is just such immense ignorance as this in our political leaders which delays us from acting in our own best interests. Truly, as long as we elect people like this to represent us, what do we expect?

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By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN - The second most powerful member of the Texas House has circulated a Georgia lawmaker’s call for a broad assault on teaching of evolution.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, used House operations Tuesday to deliver a memo from Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges.

The memo assails what it calls “the evolution monopoly in the schools.”

Mr. Bridges’ memo claims that teaching evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect’s beliefs.

“Indisputable evidence long hidden but now available to everyone  demonstrates conclusively that so-called ’secular evolution science’ is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” writes Mr. Bridges, a Republican from Cleveland, Ga. He has argued against teaching of evolution in Georgia schools for several years.

He then refers to a Web site, www.fixedearth.com, that contains a model bill for state Legislatures to pass to attack instruction on evolution as an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

Mr. Bridges also supplies a link to a document that describes scientists Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein as “Kabbalists” and laments “Hollywood’s unrelenting role in flooding the movie theaters with explicit or implicit endorsement of evolutionism.”

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National Journal has released a new “Congressional Insiders Poll,” which surveyed 113 members of Congress — 10 Senate Democrats, 48 House Democrats, 10 Senate Republicans, and 45 House Republicans — about their positions on global warming.

The results were startling. Only 13 percent of congressional Republicans say they believe that human activity is causing global warming, compared to 95 percent of congressional Democrats. Moreover, the number of Republicans who believe in human-induced global warming has actually dropped since April 2006, when the number was 23 percent.

To the original piece:

- Both the US and Israel have said that Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons and Iran has said, essentially, that it will do as it pleases. Unless something significant changes in this equation, things are not going to turn out well.

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Iran has set up more than 300 centrifuges at two uranium enrichment sites at its underground Natanz complex, Western diplomats have said.

If confirmed, the centrifuges would be the first of 3,000 that Iran says it is planning to install at the site in the coming months.

The centrifuges could pave the way for work to create enough fissile material for a nuclear warhead.

Iran has repeatedly denied that it plans to develop nuclear weapons.

Two “cascades” of 164 centrifuges each have been installed at Natanz, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity.

Centrifuges spin uranium gas to enrich it to low levels for fuel and much higher levels for nuclear weapons.

Iran has said it eventually plans to install 54,000 centrifuges at Natanz.

Former UN nuclear inspector David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security tracks Iran’s nuclear activities, said Iran should be able to reach its goal of 3,000 centrifuges by the end of the year.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London (IISS) has said that once Iran has 3,000 centrifuges operating smoothly, it could produce enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb in nine to 11 months.

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- This was about 3.5 ounces of 90% enriched Uranium (bomb grade). Sources tell us that 33 to 40 pounds is enough for an atomic weapon. According to an IAEA database, there have been 16 previous confirmed cases that either highly enriched uranium or plutonium have been recovered by authorities since 1993. In most cases the recoveries have involved smaller quantities than the Tbilisi case. But in 1994, 6 pounds of highly enriched uranium intended for sale were seized by police in the Czech Republic.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republic of Georgia authorities, aided by the CIA, set up a sting operation last summer that led to the arrest of a Russian man who tried to sell a small amount of nuclear-bomb grade uranium in a plastic bag in his jacket pocket, U.S. and Georgian officials said.

The operation, which neither government has publicized, represents one of the most serious cases of smuggling of nuclear material in recent years, according to analysts and officials.

The arrest underscored concerns about the possibility of terrorists acquiring nuclear bomb-making material on the black market, although there was no suggestion that this particular case was terrorist-related.

“Given the serious consequences of the detonation of an improvised nuclear explosive device, even small numbers of incidents involving HEU (highly enriched uranium) or plutonium are of very high concern,” said Melissa Fleming of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

Details of the investigation, which also involved the FBI and Energy Department, were provided to The Associated Press by U.S. officials and Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili.

Authorities say they do not know how the man acquired the nuclear material or if his claims of access to much larger quantities were true. He and three Georgian accomplices are in Georgian custody and not cooperating with investigators.

Georgian attempts to trace the nuclear material since the arrest and confirm whether the man indeed had access to larger quantities have foundered from a lack of cooperation from Russia.

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- This 2nd link is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, recently, a friend of mine suggested the website bugmenot.com as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

DUBLIN, Ireland (CNN) — At a recent debate over the battle for Islamic ideals in England, a British-born Muslim stood before the crowd and said Prophet Mohammed’s message to nonbelievers is: “I come to slaughter all of you.”

“We are the Muslims,” said Omar Brooks, an extremist also known as Abu Izzadeen. “We drink the blood of the enemy, and we can face them anywhere. That is Islam and that is jihad.”

Anjem Choudary, the public face of Islamist extremism in Britain, added that Muslims have no choice but to take the fight to the West.

“What are Muslims supposed to do when they are being killed in the streets in Afghanistan and Baghdad and Palestine? Do they not have the same rights to defend themselves? In war, people die. People don’t make love; they kill each other,” he said. (Audio slide show: Preying on Britain’s young Muslims)

But in the same debate, held on the prestigious grounds of Dublin’s Trinity College in October, many people in the crowd objected.

“These people, ladies and gentleman, have a good look at them. They actually believe if you kill women and children, you will go to heaven,” said one young Muslim who waved his finger at the radicals.

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- Two stories out recently about radial statements being made by Muslim clerics point up a growing and critical problem. As we continue to fill the world, our cultures and religions are pressing against each other with ever more pressure. This is a volatile situation that grows ever more dangerous. Our cultures and religions need to be ever more tolerant of each other if we are to avoid disaster as we try to muddle our way through the coming historical bottlenecks.

- Stories, like the following, are clear calls for moderate Muslims to control the statements of their more radical brethren. Indeed, be it Muslim, Christian or any religion, I would advocate the same.

- To get the drift of why a story like this might incense Australians so badly, consider that they are 20 million and they are just south of Indonesia, which is the most populous Muslim country in the world - and a very poor one, besides. Consider a statement like the following: “Muslim Australians had more rights to the country than white Australians whose ancestors arrived as convicts. ”

- Below, is the first of the two stories. The next can be found in the next post here.

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The Australian government has condemned a Muslim cleric for making offensive comments in videotaped lectures.

Sheikh Feiz Mohammed, head of the Global Islamic Youth Centre in Sydney, urged children to become martyrs for Islam and mocked Jewish people as pigs.

Police are said to be investigating the tapes, which were exposed in a British TV documentary earlier this week.

Top Australian Islamic cleric Sheikh Hilali also sparked controversy, with remarks on women and white Australians.

Sheikh Feiz Mohammed, who has spent the past year living in Lebanon, talks on the controversial videotapes of his desire for children to be offered “as soldiers defending Islam”.

“Teach them this,” he says, “that there is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a Muhajid.

“Put in their soft, tender heart the zeal of jihad and the love of martyrdom.”

He also ridicules Jewish people as pigs and makes snorting noises, saying they will go to hell.

His comments were shown on a British television documentary called Undercover Mosque, which says it found children selling Islamic tapes in a car park behind a UK mosque.

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