…Dark matter does not give off any light, hence its name. Scientists had always assumed that because it couldn’t be seen it was “cold” – a sort of dead, sluggish cosmic sludge. But there were two further unexpected findings from the Cambridge research. The first showed that dark matter actually has a “temperature” higher than that of the surface of the Sun.

If it was made of hydrogen atoms, dark matter would be 10,000C and appear as a blinding light. Yet, confusingly, it does not give off any heat.

The second surprise was that particles of dark matter zip about at 9km per second and are loosely packed.

They are transparent to light, and unlike most particles of ordinary matter, have no electric charge. But they are weighty enough to exert a gravitational pull that prevents the stars in galaxies from flying apart.
independent.co.uk

Patrick Elie is a long-time poltical and human rights activist in Haiti. While he is a chemist by trade, he is also someone who is passionate about his people and their history.

We spoke with Patrick Elie in Port au Prince about Haiti’s history and the slave revolt in the context of Black History Month. Elie asserts that the Haitian revolution was not only a momentous event for Haitians, but for people all over the world in demonstrating that freedom, not slavery, was the natural state of humankind.

Elie elloquently makes the links between Haiti’s distant past, and the current political situation, as imperialist forces are once again meddling in the country’s affairs. Just like in 1791, Haitians are today embroiled in a struggle against racist imperialism and colonization. The characters and terms have changed, but the game largely remains the same.
zmag.org

Does black have a sound?

James Robinson thinks it does. He says his recent inquiry over the telephone about an apartment was rebuffed because of his voice. It made him sound like the black man that he is.

To test his theory, he asked two friends to call about the same two-bedroom apartment. One is African-American, the other white. Only the white person was told about the vacancy.

Discrimination based on someone’s voice, or linguistic profiling, happens more often than people realize because of its subtle nature. Most victims don’t even know it has happened.

“People understood, under Jim Crow, that was wrong because it was overt,” said national linguistic expert John Baugh. “You had a sign that said, `Coloreds don’t eat here. Coloreds don’t sit here.’ But when it’s covert, when it’s gone underground, that’s the point it can escape detection.”
kansascity.com

…As the world’s leading democracy, it’s ironic that we have been so afraid of it elsewhere, supporting reactionary royal families and dictatorships in country after country, although capriciously our support of a Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Duvalier, Aristide, Assad, Musharaf, etc. can suddenly sour. We should welcome democracy for the same reason that India learned to accept the rise of the untouchables to power.

Historically, it was unthinkable that the most despised and dispossessed people in the country should share in its rule. But no horrors have come to pass, and India’s democracy has been strengthened. The factions rising to power in South America and the Middle East are similarly dispossessed and despised. Much as we dislike the religious Shiites who are about to rule Iraq, weren’t they the same rebels who tried to rise against Saddam in 1991 and were massacred by the thousands when the U.S failed to help them?
commondreams.org

Gee I think all the democracy and power-sharing in India would be news to the Dalit people.

The mineral-rich country has been riven by tribal warfare in which three million died. But now there is hope that war crimes trials will bring those responsible to justice.

…National elections are due in April which could pave the way for long-term peace. The International Criminal Court has made the crimes committed in Congo the subject of its first investigation. Those who bear ultimate responsibility for the killings of Nyakunde and elsewhere may yet face justice.
independent.co.uk

Tribal warfare indeed. Heart of darkness indeed. But justice will be restored, not by the Congolese people of course.

If you’ve read Conrad, you know he found the heart of darkness not in Africa, but in the heart and soul of Europe. And it’s funny how all the ‘tribal war’ dovetails with others’ interest in all those minerals.

No serious American newspaper would commission images of Jesus that were solely designed to offend Christians. And if one did, the reaction would be swift and certain. Politicians would take to the floors of Congress and call down thunder on the malefactors. Some Christians would react with fury and boycotts and flaming e-mails that couldn’t be printed in a family newspaper; others would react with sadness, prayer and earnest letters to the editor. There would be mayhem, though it is unlikely that semiautomatic weapons would be brandished in the streets. Fortunately, it’s not likely to happen, because good newspapers are governed, in their use of images, by the basic principle of news value.

When those now-infamous 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad were first published in Denmark, they had virtually no news value at all. They were created as a provocation — Islam generally forbids the making of images of its highest prophet — in a conservative newspaper, which wanted to make a point about freedom of speech in liberal, secular Western democracy. Depending on your point of view, it was a stick in the eye meant to provoke debate, or just a stick in the eye.
washingtonpost.com

Robert Fisk: Don’t Be Fooled This Isn’t an Issue of Islam versus Secularism
…In any event, it’s not about whether the Prophet should be pictured. The Koran does not forbid images of the Prophet even though millions of Muslims do. The problem is that these cartoons portrayed Mohamed as a bin Laden-type image of violence. They portrayed Islam as a violent religion. It is not. Or do we want to make it so?

For the first time in more than 20 years, U.S. nuclear-weapons scientists are designing a new H-bomb, the first of probably several new nuclear explosives on the drawing boards.

If they succeed, in perhaps 20 or 25 more years, the United States would have an entirely new nuclear arsenal, and a highly automated fac- tory capable of turning out more warheads as needed, as well as new kinds of warheads.

“We are on the verge of an exciting time,” the nation’s top nuclear weapons executive, Linton Brooks, said last week at Lawrence Livermore weapons design laboratory.
insidebayarea.com

…Mr Rumsfeld, who attended a weekend security conference in Munich, Germany, made no bones about the seriousness of the situation.

“All options – including the military one – are on the table,” he told a German newspaper. “Any government that says Israel has no right to exist is making a statement about its possible behaviour in the future.”

At the conference, Mr Rumsfeld accused Tehran of being behind international terrorism. “Iran is the main sponsor of terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” he said.

His belligerent tone was echoed by Abdolrahim Moussavi, the Iranian head of the joint chiefs of staff, who told Iranian troops yesterday: “We are not seeking a military confrontation, but if that happens we will give the enemy a lesson that will be remembered throughout history.”
news.scotsman.com

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Sunni Arabs have formed their own militia to counter Shi’ite and Kurdish forces as part of an attempt to regain influence they lost after Saddam Hussein was toppled.

The so-called “Anbar Revolutionaries” have emerged from a split in the anti-U.S. insurgency, which included al Qaeda.

They are a new addition to a network of militias that have thrived in Iraq’s bloody chaos and are tied to the country’s leading ethnic and political parties, now negotiating the formation of a coalition government after the December 15 election, the second such polls since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The newly-organized militia is made up mostly of Saddam loyalists leading an insurgency against U.S. and Iraqi government forces, Iraqi Islamists and other nationalists.
reuters.com

Iraq’s Sadr says US spreading strife among Arabs
DAMASCUS (Reuters) – Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim leader Moqtada al-Sadr met Syrian leaders on Monday and said the United States and Israel were trying to spread strife among Arab countries.

Sadr, who led two anti-U.S. uprisings in Iraq, expressed support for Syria, which is facing western pressure over its alleged support for rebels in Iraq and the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.

“Both Iraq and Syria are under U.S. pressure. We have good relations but our common enemies, Israel, the United States and Britain, are trying to spread strife among us. The people will not fall for this,” he told reporters.

“I will help Syria in every way. We are witnessing Islamic solidarity,” said Sadr, who met President Bashar al-Assad and Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara.

LOS ANGELES — God forbid critics of the war on Iraq should compare it with the war in Vietnam. But perhaps it is worth mentioning that the liberation of Iraq is now costing more each month than the preservation of the Republic of South Vietnam did more than 30 years ago.

As the admitted direct cost of the war reached $250 billion last week — and the White House asked for $120 billion more on Thursday — new analyses estimate that the invasion of Iraq could end up costing $2 trillion before it is over.
news.yahoo.com

Bush’s Budget Bolsters Pentagon
President Bush yesterday proposed a $2.77 trillion spending plan for the coming year that drains money from two-thirds of federal agencies, continues a large military buildup and predicts that the federal deficit this year will far eclipse the previous record, reaching $423 billion.

In the White House budget for the fiscal year ending in October 2007, Pentagon funding would increase by nearly 7 percent and, for the first time in Bush’s presidency, claim more than half the government’s expenditure on discretionary programs, those that get set each year. The $439.3 billion that the plan devotes to the military is 45 percent greater than the Pentagon budget when Bush took office five years ago.

The only other parts of the government to reap substantial increases under the proposal are the departments of State and Veterans Affairs and activities related to homeland security.

In comparison, the White House is recommending a reduction of $2.2 billion in government operations that are unrelated to the nation’s security — a 0.5 percent cut whose practical effect is magnified when inflation is taken into account. Eleven agencies would receive less money than they did this year, with the deepest cuts to the Transportation, Justice and Agriculture departments.

Taken together, the budget’s patchwork of generosity and austerity reflects the priorities of Bush, who has defined his administration’s central goal as combating terrorist threats in the United States and abroad ever since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. As a side effect, Bush sought in the early years of his administration to slow the growth of many domestic programs; last year and again in the budget released yesterday, he has sought to cut many of them outright.

The budget also makes it clear that the White House is mindful of twin political objectives: not forcing Congress to make too many hard spending choices in an election year, and taming the deficit to satisfy conservatives, who complain that Bush has presided over a rapid expansion of federal spending in the past several years.

White House officials assert that the new budget remains on a path to meet a goal the administration set two years ago to cut the deficit in half — as a percentage of the country’s economic output — by 2009. To accomplish that objective, the budget envisions that Congress annually will make politically difficult cuts in domestic programs after next year, while reducing spending on Medicare, Medicaid and agricultural programs. In addition, the budget includes no money beyond next year for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.