…Therein also resides the lie of 24: that it is not only possible to retain human dignity in performing acts of terror, but that if an honest person performs such an act as a grave duty, it confers on him a tragic-ethical grandeur. The parallel between the agents’ and the terrorists’ behaviour serves this lie.

But what if such a distance is possible? What if people do commit terrible acts as part of their job while being loving husbands, good parents and close friends? As Arendt says, the fact that they are able to retain any normality while committing such acts is the ultimate confirmation of moral depravity.
guardian.co.uk

…Therein also resides the lie of 24: that it is not only possible to retain human dignity in performing acts of terror, but that if an honest person performs such an act as a grave duty, it confers on him a tragic-ethical grandeur. The parallel between the agents’ and the terrorists’ behaviour serves this lie.

But what if such a distance is possible? What if people do commit terrible acts as part of their job while being loving husbands, good parents and close friends? As Arendt says, the fact that they are able to retain any normality while committing such acts is the ultimate confirmation of moral depravity.
guardian.co.uk

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Gold rallied to hit a new 25-year peak on Monday as fund managers shifted more money into the metal on bullishness for 2006 and uncertainty about economic growth and the dollar, analysts said.

Trading was volatile in Europe, with some speculative profit-taking emerging earlier, but a late flurry of fund buying in New York pushed bullion to a new high to reach above $550 an ounce for the first time since January 1981.

Spot gold was last quoted at $548.50/549.25, compared with its intraday peak at $550.75 touched late in New York and against Friday’s late quote of $538.30/9.00.

The day’s rally in gold — an asset seen as an alternative to more common investments — was unusual in that it coincided with the Dow Jones industrial average’s first rise above 11,000 in 4-1/2 years, and with a firmer dollar in the afternoon.
news.yahoo.com

…Perhaps something atavistic lurks in the way in which we see cetaceans. Whales and whaling are part of British heritage: in the 18th and 19th centuries, ports such as London, Hull and Whitby conducted massive culls of common or bowhead whales. From 1785 to 1826, Britain’s greatest whaler, William Scoresby Sr, killed 533.

Before the discovery of petroleum in 1859, London, Paris and New York were lit and lubricated by leviathans. Whaling – worth $120m a year by 1850 – was America’s first global industry, the germ of its empire. And unlike modern hunters, who at least claim whales for sustenance, the one part of the whale not used by the Victorians was its meat. Strips of fingernail-like baleen, with which whales strain their food, were used for umbrellas and corsets. Ambergris, produced by the sperm whale in reaction to indigestible squid beaks, was precious as a perfume fixative. Equally prized was oil from the animal’s block-like head. Even in the late 20th century, Nasa used this oil in its equipment.

We cannot be excused our culpability. Almost anyone born before 1960 ate whale – in margarine or ice cream – wore it as a cosmetic or fed it to their pets. The peak of whaling was not the brutal days of Melville’s Moby-Dick, but the 1960s when, in one season alone, floating factories “processed” 6,158 blue whales, 17,989 finback whales, 2,108 humpback whales and 2,566 sperm whales – not including the thousands killed by the Russians, unreported to the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The whale, too, was a victim of the Cold War.

Now, the greatest danger that it faces is not a harpoon, but fishing nets and shipping routes. The North Atlantic right whale, reduced to just 300 individuals by the legacy of whaling, has a gene pool so compromised that it is unlikely to survive the century.
commondreams.org

Toxic waste creates hermaphrodite Arctic polar bears

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The American singer and activist Harry Belafonte called President Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world” on Sunday and said millions of Americans support the socialist revolution of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

Belafonte led a delegation of Americans including the actor Danny Glover and the Princeton University scholar Cornel West that met the Venezuelan president for more than six hours late Saturday. Some in the group attended Chavez’s television and radio broadcast Sunday.

“No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we’re here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people … support your revolution,” Belafonte told Chavez during the broadcast.

The 78-year-old Belafonte, famous for his calypso-inspired music, including the “Day-O” song, was a close collaborator of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and is now a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. He also has been outspoken in criticizing the U.S. embargo of Cuba.
burlingtonfreepress.com

It was also announced that Vermont will be the next recipient of Chavez’s cheap heating oil.

…Latin America’s growing “leftward shift” reflects , beyond the election of some left and center-left Presidents, the radicalization of the citizens who voted for them. Nonetheless, there is a wider gulf between this radicalized citizenry and their elected leaders in some countries than in others. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has stated that the US has “good relations with people across the political spectrum in Latin America,” (At the right end of Rice’s spectrum is Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe Velez, at the left end Chile’s Ricardo Lagos, and Brazil’s Lula da Silva).

Yet, genuinely Left governments cannot possibly be on good terms with the empire, which demands that they sacrifice their sovereignty for the sake of multinational corporations, and even social democratic leaders are essentially hostages. Large economies such as Chile and Brazil are susceptible to US financial institutions, threats of sanctions, and other expressions of economic pressure. Poorer countries, like those of the Caribbean and Central America, are even more vulnerable. Absent from Rice’s spectrum are countries like Cuba and Venezuela, whose domestic and foreign policies challenge US hegemony.

This week’s Economist (December 17, 2005) expressed its own worries about the Bolivian election, noting: “Unlike Brazil’s Luiz Inαcio da Silva and Uruguay’s Tabare Vasquez, Mr Morales is not a leftist who has made peace with democracy and capitalism, offering change without upheaval.” Morales’ commanding electoral victory aside, the Economist reveals a widespread assumption: that democracy and capitalism are one and the same, or at least compatible. Morales’ support for decriminalization of coca leaf production, and for increased state control over the oil and gas industry has lead many in the establishment to conclude that he is anti-capitalist, and therefore-according to this logic-undemocratic. But, for those who believe democracy entails active participation in the decision-making process and people’s control over resources, democracy and capitalism are inherently antagonistic.
axisoflogic.com

The Islamic Hamas group has launched a TV station in the Gaza Strip, a first step toward setting up a satellite station like the one Hezbollah guerrillas run in Lebanon, Hamas officials said Monday.

The Al-Aqsa Television station is being set up just weeks before the Palestinians’ January 25 parliamentary election, and if up and running in time, could help Hamas in its campaign, analysts said. Hamas presents a serious challenge to the ruling Fatah party, which has led the Palestinian Authority since its establishment in 1994.
haaretz.com

Women who eat GM foods while pregnant risk endangering their unborn babies, startling new research suggests.

The study – carried out by a leading scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences – found that more than half of the offspring of rats fed on modified soya died in the first three weeks of life, six times as many as those born to mothers with normal diets. Six times as many were also severely underweight.

The research – which is being prepared for publication – is just one of a clutch of recent studies that are reviving fears that GM food damages human health. Italian research has found that modified soya affected the liver and pancreas of mice. Australia had to abandon a decade-long attempt to develop modified peas when an official study found they caused lung damage.

And last May this newspaper revealed a secret report by the biotech giant Monsanto, which showed that rats fed a diet rich in GM corn had smaller kidneys and higher blood cell counts, suggesting possible damage to their immune systems, than those that ate a similar conventional one.
independent.co.uk

Arrest of government critic Dr. Kamal Said Qadir

…Semi-official U.S. protests over his detainment are belied by the news that the Kurds are rounding up their internal political opponents – with the active assistance of U.S. military forces – and stashing them in secret jails. Qadir is now on a hunger strike, and his health is rapidly deteriorating.

The Kurdish authorities – who have launched an ethnic-cleansing campaign against Arabs and are now readying themselves to seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, in northern Iraq – were doubtless enraged when Radio Free Europe cited Qadir in this piece about Kurdish corruption:

“Kamal Berzenji wrote in an article published by kurdishmedia.com in December 2002: ‘The members of the [Kurdish] security services … try to make a business out of their powers by accusing and arresting anybody whom they think they could blackmail and extract money from.’ He says the practice has its roots in Hussein’s Ba’athist regime, but was also practiced during the Kurdish civil war in the 1990s. ‘One of the reasons [for that war is] business – and profit-making by some Kurdish warlords on both sides. Some of them grew [into] millionaires by confiscating and stealing the property of his fellow Kurdish brothers.'”

It’s as if reporters for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other major media outlets were arrested for reporting on the buying of the Republican congressional caucus by Jack Abramoff & Co. They don’t dare do that in America – quite yet – but in Kurdistan, to speak out against the corruption of empire is illegal: that’s “democracy,” Iraq-style.
antiwar.com

NEW DELHI – The Indian capital Sunday saw its first winter frost in 70 years as a cold wave sweeping in from the Himalayas killed more people in northern India overnight, officials said.

The capital city of 14 million people ordered schools shut for three days from Monday as the mercury for the first time since 1935 fell to 0.2 degrees Celsius (32.36 Fahrenheit), leaving mounds of ice on parked cars.

White-laced streets greeted early risers, but any novelty value brought by the cold soon died as frost on power cables sparked partial power cuts across large swathes of New Delhi, said the privately-run BSES utility provider.

On January 16, 1935, Delhi recorded minus 0.6 degrees Celsius.

“I was born in New Delhi and this is the first time we are seeing ice on grass,” said Supriya Singh, a fashion designer. “It’s just like snow … It’s heavenly.”

Her jubilation was not shared by the homeless thousands.
channelnewsasia.com

Japan Struggles to Cope With Record Snowfalls
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan was bracing for more snow on Friday after some of the heaviest snowfall on record that has left 57 people dead and paralysed transport.

Almost 4 metres (13 ft) of snow has piled up in the worst-hit areas of Niigata near the Japan Sea coast, though the snowiest season of the year is yet to come.