Narsys Logic

amidabuddha.org's Daily Meditation: "Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play. - Heraclitus"

Global warming is here now

Industrial Ecologies: Modeled after the interconnection of ecological processes, industrial ecology redirects waste streams into usable materials by linking industries to one another...

Alliance for the New Humanity

Atkins diet: how stupid do you have to be?

Report: Poor People Pretty Much Fucked

Video: U.S. Marines execute an Iraqi to the cheers of fellow marines

The Empire Strikes Out: Scott Taylor Reports From Iraq: Americans have yet to provide anything close to a secure environment (even for their own troops). The basic utilities, such as electricity and phones remain worse than in pre-war times, and there is now something like eighty percent unemployment in Iraq, since the new US governing council's decision to disband the entire Iraqi bureaucracy as well as the army and police forces. The other bizarre development is that without the refineries restored to full production and due to the tremendous fuel consumption of the occupying coalition forces, Iraq is now almost out of gas.

U.S. Army Punishment of Iraqi Civilians, Israeli Style: Underlying the "new" Anglo-American strategy, which replicates Israeli methods in occupied Palestine, is a deeply racist ideology typified by Capt. Todd Brown's remarks about Arabs: "You have to understand the Arab mind. The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face." There is little doubt that the Anglo-American occupiers are not only adopting Israeli methods but are in the process of internalizing a racist ideology necessary to oppress Iraqis.

US, Israel prepare mass killings in Iraq: The Bush administration is about to launch a campaign of wholesale killings in Iraq with the assistance of the Israeli military, according to both US and Israeli sources quoted in several recent news reports. Frustrated over the growing popular resistance to the US military occupation and determined to reduce US casualties in Iraq before next November’s election, the administration has authorized a policy that could well resemble the infamous “Operation Phoenix” assassination program run by the CIA during the Vietnam War. That operation claimed the lives of as many as 41,000 Vietnamese over a four-year period beginning in 1968.

Corporate Media Ignores US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: The hypocrisy of US policy and corporate media complicity is evident in the coverage of Donald Rumsfeld's stop over in Mazar-e Sharif Afghanistan December 4 to meet with regional warlord and mass killer General Abdul Rashid Dostum and his rival General Ustad Atta Mohammed.

This is real Terrorism not Liberation: Why is the killing of any Westerner or an Israeli is automatically classified as “terrorism” but not the murder of civilians in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan? Why is it that those who resist and avenge for their loved ones are constantly maligned as “fanatics” or “extremists”? Why is it, that those trigger happy soldiers, sitting in their well shielded armoured vehicles, dispensing “over whelming force” indiscriminately upon civilians, portrayed as ‘heroes’ and ‘liberators’ rather then despicable illiterate cowards?

Oil-rich Iraq facing fuel crisis that has created shortages of gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and propane

Halliburton "inflating gasoline prices at a great cost to American taxpayers" -- charges more than twice what others are paying for fuel in Iraq

The Lynne Stewart Case Gets More Chilling: Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes

Journalists face jail under new terror laws

How Europe's hottest summer shows global warming is transforming our world

China facing oil supply crisis

U.S. House of Reps. Approves Bill to Censor American Citizens from Voicing Opposition to U.S. War on Drugs

17 students file suit over school drug raid

Sadly, a co-op goes stale

amidabuddha.org's Daily Meditation: Doctrines, scriptures, sutras, essays, are not to be regarded as systems to be followed. They merely contribute to understanding. They should be for us a source of stimulation, and nothing more... Adopted, rather than used as a stimulus, they are a hindrance. - Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei

Looting Planet Earth: "The winners after the mass extinction that finished off the dinosaurs are about to become the losers. One in four mammal species and one in eight bird species face a high risk of extinction in the near future: the population of each species is expected to fall by at least a fifth in the next 10 years. Almost all are endangered by human activity…"

A Killing Floor Chronicle: A down-and-out former poultry worker's online memoirs of his gruesome job have electrified animal-rights activists worldwide: In the chilled dark of a Tyson processing plant, Butler killed 80,000 birds a shift. He snapped their legs into shackles so they hung upside down. He slit their throats. Every two seconds, another chicken came at him down the line, squawking and flapping. It was not possible, then, to think much.

Invasion of the entryists: How did a cultish political network become the public face of the scientific establishment?

Consumer debt increases

How drug firms 'hoodwink' medical journals: Hundreds of articles in medical journals claiming to be written by academics or doctors have been penned by ghostwriters in the pay of drug companies, an Observer inquiry reveals. The journals, bibles of the profession, have huge influence on which drugs doctors prescribe and the treatment hospitals provide. But The Observer has uncovered evidence that many articles written by so-called independent academics may have been penned by writers working for agencies which receive huge sums from drug companies to plug their products.

Glaxo chief: Our drugs do not work on most patients: A senior executive with Britain's biggest drugs company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them. Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them. It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such a senior drugs boss has gone public.

In the Capital of the Car, Nature Stakes a Claim: After decades of blight, large swathes of Detroit are being reclaimed by nature. Roughly a third of this 139-square-mile city consists of weed-choked lots and dilapidated buildings. Satellite images show an urban core giving way to an urban prairie. Rather than fight this return to nature, Mr. Weertz and other urban farmers have embraced it, gradually converting 15 acres of idle land into more than 40 community gardens and microfarms - some consuming entire blocks.

US Sodiers Becoming Drug Addicts In Afghanistan: It seems that in-between shooting up the Taliban and Al Qaeda, some of our troops in Afghanistan have found the time to start shooting up something else.

Oil, Power and Empire: Iraq and the US Global Agenda: Overthrowing Saddam Hussein, creating a client state in Iraq, and opening up Iraq's economy are key components of a much larger, multi-faceted global agenda in which energy resources play a crucial role.

Melting ice will submerge vast areas of land and key cities worldwide

The Smog Monsters vs. the ELF: Burning for a Better World: The communiqué following the second Romania fire announced: "Gas-guzzling SUVs are at the forefront of this imperialistic culture's caravan toward self-destruction. We can no longer allow the rich to parade around in their armored existence, leaving a wasteland behind in their tire tracks. We must strike out against what destroys us before we all choke on smog."

On the Border of Hyprocrisy: “The U.S.-Mexican border has been 10 times deadlier to Mexican immigrants in the last 10 years than was the whole 28-year history of the Berlin Wall [to East Germans],” says Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego. Over the entire history of the Berlin Wall, 287 people perished trying to cross it. Since the Clinton administration implemented the current U.S. border strategy, more than 2,500 Mexicans have died.

The Battle for Water: Along with population growth and increasing per capita water consumption, massive pollution of the world’s surface water systems has placed a great strain on remaining supplies of clean fresh water. Global deforestation, destruction of wetlands, dumping of pesticides and fertilizer into waterways, and global warming are all taking a terrible toll on the Earth’s fragile water systems. The world is running out of fresh water.

US military prevents mother from visiting soldier daughter in Iraq

Chicago high school will become the first in Illinois to require drug tests of ALL its students

Girl expelled one year from school for possession of Advil

Mother's milk: The benefits of breastfeeding are widely acknowledged, but few people see this as relevant to anyone but the parents of babies. In fact, there are advantages directly related to larger concerns, particularly food and the environment. Human breast milk is one of our most valuable natural resources.

GOING AWOL: As the Iraq war escalates, so does the desertion rate: now reservists are rebelling. Can the draft be far behind?

The BBC And Iraq: Myth and Reality: The second-worst case of denying access to anti-war voices was ABC in the United States, which allowed them a mere 7 per cent of its overall coverage. The worst case was the BBC, which gave just 2 per cent of its coverage to opposition views – views that represented those of the majority of the British people. A separate study by Cardiff University came to the same conclusion. The BBC, it said, had "displayed the most pro-war agenda of any [British] broadcaster."

A story that gives the lie to Donald Rumsfeld’s airy claim: The US military spokesman, who caused an excited ITV news desk to wake me at 1 a.m., claimed that they had defeated co-ordinated attacks by about 200 ‘terrorists’, some wearing the uniform of the feared Saddam fedayeen. We arrived half-expecting to see the bodies of dead insurgents littering the streets. Instead, at the town cemetery, we found that one of the first bodies to be buried under the speedy Muslim rite was that of a female employee of the town’s drugs factory, Ameera Salih, who had been shot dead while waiting for a bus near the factory gate. Surprisingly, only six fresh graves had been dug at the cemetery and hospital officials finally put the death toll not at 54 but at eight.

The Age of Oil Is Over: Ironically, neither book startles as much as one line in the preface to the revised edition of Hubbert's Peak, which states: "The year 2000 very likely will stand as the year of greatest oil production." Production fell in '01 and '02, and looks likely to fall again in '03. In other words, the zenith of the Oil Age may have already passed.

Eating Fossil Fuels: Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. It is damaging the land, draining water supplies and polluting the environment. And all of this requires more and more fossil fuel input to pump irrigation water, to replace nutrients, to provide pest protection, to remediate the environment and simply to hold crop production at a constant. Yet this necessary fossil fuel input is going to crash headlong into declining fossil fuel production.

Bush Ministry of Disinformation Editor Gets "Freedom" Medal: It was no big surprise when Bush awarded former War Street Journal editor and now editor emeritus Robert Bartley with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which should, for the sake of accuracy, be renamed the Dictator Medal of Mindfuck, since that's what Bartley, a far rightwing ideologue, has done to the American people, or those who read the War Street Journal, anyway.

Civil Disobedience on Trial: The government's action is unprecedented: prosecuting an entire organization for the free speech-related activities of its supporters. If the prosecution succeeds, peaceful public protest—an essential American tradition from colonial times to the civil rights movement and beyond—may become yet another casualty of Mr. Ashcroft’s attack on civil liberties.

Fear and loathing in Miami: This isn't a new use of the police, or a new method by the powerful. Captain Bonfield of 1886 Chicago or Chief Timoney of 2003 Miami, what's the difference? The elite and powerful along with their armed enforcers will beat, maim, imprison and kill any who stand in their way. That's a fact, but how these sons and daughters of working-class people can be manipulated into attacking fellow citizens continues to amaze me.

The Ladies of Dade: Many of these women (65%) have not been convicted of crimes. They are merely too poor to secure the funds necessary to free themselves with bail and obtain legal counsel other than a public defender. Ninety-two percent of these women have incomes of less then $10,000 per year with which they must support themselves as well as their families. They may spend more then five days in jail before a magistrate reviews their case. Then they are often given a difficult choice. They can plead guilty and go free on the spot with a mark on their record. This option leaves them less likely to get a job and more likely to get jailed again. Or they may "choose" to remain in jail, for weeks and sometimes months, if they can't raise their bail money, before their court date. For these women, innocent before proven guilty has become a joke.

Rumsfeld Aims to Privatize U.S. Military

Academic activists fear greater surveillance

U.S. OK'd 'Dirty War': Henry Kissinger gave Argentine military 'a green light'

1,700 US soldiers quit Iraq

Ft Bragg: Deserters on increase

Hint of draft blowing in the wind

Pentagon and Bogus News: All is Denied

US exporting ‘tools of torture’

Climate Change Report Warns There's 'No Doubt' Industry is Primary Cause

The Uncompassionate Conservative

Even though Bush II will lose the popular vote in the US presidential election of 2004, his electoral college victory seems assured.

Study links sugary foods to birth defect risk

White House mercury plan jeopardizes health

The Age of Oil Is Over

Beyond Bull: The US economy may look buoyant but sky-high balance of payments deficits point to a coming crisis

No Doubts Global Warming Is Real

A Year of Extremes Provides Evidence of Global Warming

US fires Guantanamo defense team for seeking fair trials

Is Our Constitution Doomed?: Preparations for a Draconian abandonment of U.S. democracy are probably in high gear, likely to be sprung upon us as quickly and devastatingly as wholesale concentration camp internment befell Japanese Americans in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. But it's not anything new. Permit me to relate a very troubling story.

"Free Speech" for Al-Fox and Al-CNN, but not for Al-Arabia and Al-Jazeera: Any independent media broadcasting materials that the US does not approve of faces threats of bombs, arrests its members, and outright prohibition of its operation like that has been experienced by the Arabic satellite channel of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia.

Massacre in Samarra: US lies and self-delusion: The US military’s initial account of Sunday’s firefight in the central Iraqi city of Samarra, uncritically relayed to the American people by a servile media, has proven to be a tissue of lies. It turns out that the “major victory” over the Iraqi resistance consisted of American forces blasting away indiscriminately in Samarra’s city center, killing innocent men, women and children, damaging property and buildings—including a mosque and a kindergarten—and further enraging the local population.

The Inside Skinny Of The Biggest Battle Since The War Ended: The reports of 54 enemy killed will sound great on the home front, but the greater story is much more disturbing and needs to be told to the American Public. ... Most of the casualties were civilians, not insurgents or criminals as being reported.

Eye Witness Report: The "Battle" At Samarra: "It appears that America is trying to cover up its ugly crime against the civilian residents by making out as if those killed were all from the Iraqi Resistance"

Chomsky Interview: 'Of course, it was all about Iraq's resources': The invasion of Iraq had a number of motives, and one was to illustrate the new National Security Strategy, which declares that the United States will control the world permanently by force if necessary and will eliminate any potential challenge to that domination. It is called pre-emptive war. It is not a new policy, it's just never been announced so brazenly, which is why it caused such uproar, including among the foreign policy elite in the United States. They're appalled by it. But having announced the doctrine, it needed an exemplary action, to show that the United States really meant it. But if the United States is going to attack somebody, the action has to meet several criteria. The first and crucial criterion is that they must be completely defenseless. It's stupid to attack anyone who can shoot back. Anyone knows this.

Chomsky: The Elvis Of Academia: Chomsky's latest book, Hegemony or Survival – a devastating history of American foreign policy since 1945 ('No president in that time, judged on the principles of Nuremberg, would have escaped hanging') as well as a sustained dissection of the motivation and disastrous consequence of the current 'war on terror' – is the newest chapter of this lifetime of compulsive dissent.

Stuffed on Thanksgiving: In Baghdad, the fourth estate buys the fake: It was a media event without precedent–an elaborately staged production in which a small group of journalists was literally kidnapped, flown into a war zone, stuffed headfirst into the ass of a Thanksgiving turkey and then made to flap its arms for the amusement of all humanity when the commander-in-chief blew into a kazoo. A more dramatic example of Stockholm Syndrome has probably never been shown on television.

New evidence to reject GM crops: a large-scale study by British scientists proves that GM crops have adverse effects on farmland wildlife.

The world is running out of oil: Every generation has its taboo, and ours is this: that the resource upon which our lives have been built is running out. We don't talk about it because we cannot imagine it. This is a civilisation in denial.

Two Million Customers = Good Business = Two Million Kids Drugged on Meds

we are entering a period of accelerated oil and gas depletion, unstoppable price rises for oil and gas, and increased conflict for remaining reserves.