Fear of blow holes, the educated, jellyfish and bees.

Being afraid of education, of the educated is a sign that what you are comfortable with is wrong.

Mysterious Siberian blow holes.

How about shopping for a new body when yours wears out?

Pork production, and the need of another book like The Jungle.

No word for blue until the modern times.

The warming of the oceans means more jellyfish.

Viking burial site has Islamic coins.

Recycling all types of plastic just became harder because China has cut back.

Chicago black site.

Bees in danger world wide.  (Thanks for the article link, Steve!)

Discussion on a college campus about the 'problem of whiteness' exposes the very problem as a white freakout occurs.

When good people see police brutality in action and respond accordingly.

What does the collapse of Libya mean to the rest of the world?

The enemy of my enemy is just another goddammed enemy

Via Bryan of Why Now?, Dr. Juan Cole shows us the stark reality of who we are actually fighting in the Eternal War on Terror.... our 'friends' and 'allies'.

The Guardian:

More than 40% of the foreign fighters who entered Iraq to join the insurgency in the past year were citizens of Saudi Arabia, America's key partner in the Middle East, according to detailed information seized from a camp used by them. Documents and computers found by the US army at Sinjar, on the Iraqi-Syrian border, revealed that the other single largest group came from Libya, which is now being rehabilitated as a reliable western ally.

Overall, US officials reported that the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq this year dropped from 80-110 a month in the first half of the year to around 40 in October, partly due to the Sinjar raid.

After the raid the number of suicide bombings in Iraq fell to 16 in October - half the number seen during the summer months and down from a peak of 59 in March. US military officials believe that 90% of such bombings are by foreigners.

The captured data has been described as an intelligence treasure trove that included biographical details and the hometowns of the more than 700 fighters who entered Iraq since August 2006. Of those 307, or 41%, were Saudis and 137, or 18%, Libyans, senior US military sources told the New York Times.

Saudi Arabia, former home of Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers, has cracked down hard on al-Qaida in recent years. Saudi intelligence works closely with its US counterparts, but there have long been suspicions that the country's most dangerous jihadis have gone to Iraq. "The border with Iraq is much more carefully controlled than it was 18 months ago," said one British official. The Saudis also run extensive programmes "re-educating" and rehabilitating fighters who have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan to see "the error of their ways".

The US, Britain and others have praised the Saudis for their efforts, pointing especially to a recent appeal by the kingdom's grand mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Asheik, who condemned "mischievous parties" who send young Saudis abroad to carry out "heinous acts which have no association with Islam whatsoever".

The presence of a large number of Libyans among the insurgents in Iraq suggests that the regime of Muammar Gadafy has pushed its violent Islamist enemies abroad, having cleaned up its own act by renouncing support for terrorism and surrendering its chemical and nuclear arsenal after the US invasion of Iraq.

I've said this before, the Saudis are no friends of ours.

What happens to those who speak the truth

How many stories are out there like Rich Barlow's?: (Via Kenosha Kid of The Kenosha Kid's Blog)

He was the CIA's expert on Pakistan's nuclear secrets, but Rich Barlow was thrown out and disgraced when he blew the whistle on a US cover-up. Now he's to have his day in court. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report.

[snip]

He prepared briefs for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was at the Pentagon, for the upper echelons of the CIA and even for the Oval Office. But when he uncovered a political scandal - a conspiracy to enable a rogue nation to get the nuclear bomb - he found himself a marked man.

[snip]

In the late 80s, in the course of tracking down smugglers of WMD components, Barlow uncovered reams of material that related to Pakistan. It was known the Islamic Republic had been covertly striving to acquire nuclear weapons since India's explosion of a device in 1974 and the prospect terrified the west - especially given the instability of a nation that had had three military coups in less than 30 years . Straddling deep ethnic, religious and political fault-lines, it was also a country regularly rocked by inter-communal violence. "Pakistan was the kind of place where technology could slip out of control," Barlow says.

[snip]

Barlow was relentless in exposing what he saw as US complicity, and in the end he was sacked and smeared as disloyal, mad, a drunk and a philanderer. If he had been listened to, many believe Pakistan might never have got its nuclear bomb; south Asia might not have been pitched into three near-nuclear conflagrations; and the nuclear weapons programmes of Iran, Libya and North Korea - which British and American intelligence now acknowledge were all secretly enabled by Pakistan - would never have got off the ground. "None of this need have happened," Robert Gallucci, special adviser on WMD to both Clinton and George W Bush, told us. "The vanquishing of Barlow and the erasing of his case kicked off a chain of events that led to all the nuclear-tinged stand-offs we face today. Pakistan is the number one threat to the world, and if it all goes off - a nuclear bomb in a US or European city- I'm sure we will find ourselves looking in Pakistan's direction."

[snip]

Even with Barlow out of the picture, there were still analysts in Washington - and in the Bush administration - who were wary of Pakistan. They warned that al-Qaida had a natural affinity with Pakistan, geographically and religiously, and that its affiliates were seeking nuclear weapons. Some elements of the Pakistan military were sympathetic and in place to help. But those arguing that Pakistan posed the highest risk were isolated. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were in the ascendant, and they returned to the old agenda, lobbying for a war in Iraq and, in a repeat of 1981 and the Reagan years, signed up Pakistan as the key ally in the war against terror.

Contrary advice was not welcome. And Bush's team set about dismantling the government agency that was giving the most trouble - the State Department's Nonproliferation Bureau. Norm Wulf, who recently retired as deputy assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, told us: "They met in secret, deciding who to employ, displacing career civil servants with more than 30 years on the job in favour of young, like-thinking people, rightwingers who would toe the administration line." And the administration line was to do away with any evidence that pointed to Pakistan as a threat to global stability, refocusing all attention on Iraq.

The same tactics used to disgrace Barlow and discredit his evidence were used again in 2003, this time against Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador whom the Bush administration had sent to Africa with a mission to substantiate the story that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material to manufacture WMD. When Wilson refused to comply, he found himself the subject of a smear campaign, while his wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA agent. Libby would subsequently be jailed for leaking Plame's identity (although released on a presidential pardon). Plame and Wilson's careers and marriage would survive. Barlow and his wife, Cindy's, would not - and no one would be held to account. Until now.

When the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress in 2006, Barlow's indefatigable lawyers sensed an opportunity, lodging a compensation claim on Capitol Hill that is to be heard later this month. This time, with supporters of the Iraq war in retreat and with Pakistan, too, having lost many friends in Washington, Barlow hopes he will receive what he is due. "But this final hearing cannot indict any of those who hounded me, or misshaped the intelligence product," he says. "And it is too late to contain the flow of doomsday technology that Pakistan unleashed on the world."

Just a heads up to Libya

Usually when we give you nuclear stuff it means we intend to invade later.

The US is to help Libya build its first-ever nuclear power plant according to the African nation's official news agency, Jana.

Jana said on Monday that the General People's Committee, the Libyan parliamentary body, had given approval for the foreign ministry to sign a deal with the US the day before.

There was no immediate confirmation of the deal from the US, but any such agreement would continue a considerable thawing of relations between the two countries.

I mean, Libya has oil, right?

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Normal diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Libya could result in more contracts for American oil companies, just when it's getting harder to do business in some Latin American countries.

While last week's move normalizing relations with Libya was expected and didn't have an immediate impact on crude prices in New York, experts say it's an added bonus to the lifting of economic sanctions against the country back in 2004.

"When it comes to oil, it's all politics," said Fadel Gheit, an energy analyst with Oppenheimer in New York. "If Gadhafi comes to the White House, count the number of days until a contract is landed by Halliburton or Exxon."

That's what I thought....