The NYT has confirmed that the pro-Qaddafi military in Misrata is using cluster bombs and other forms of indiscriminate anti-personnel weapon in the middle of a city full of non-combatants. Indiscriminate fire endangering civilian non-combatants is a war crime. Human Rights Watch has also confirmed the crime, saying in a press release: ‘ Government forces […]
Archives for April 2011
African Languages origins of the Rest?
Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, has done a computer analysis of certain sounds (phonemes) in about 500 languages, and concludes that all of them likely descended from African tongues. African languages, like African human genetic endowments, are the richest in diversity. A greater diversity of phonemes in African languages and less […]
Allies Insist on Qaddafi departure
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and US President Barack Obama are publishing a joint op-ed in three newspapers on Friday in which they make it clear that the UN allies will not permit Muammar Qaddafi to remain in power, after what he has done to his people. Muammar Qaddafi’s forces on […]
Free Libya plans Tripoli Uprising as Doha Conference Urges More Help to Civilians
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that the Transitional National Council in Benghazi says that it has a network of cells in Tripoli and plans to launch an uprising in the capital. A Tripoli resident who talked to the newspaper by phone said that most people in Tripoli feel as though they have been taken hostage […]
Mubaraks Arrested
Al-Ahram is reporting in Arabic that Gamal and Ala Mubarak, the sons of deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak, have been arrested and will be moved from Sharm El Sheikh to the maximum security Tura prison in the Muqattam hills above Cairo. They are said to have sat stunned and silent for some time on receiving the […]
Misrata’s People under Siege
Misrata, a city of several hundred thousand people about 150 mi. east of the capital of Tripoli, is under, and for weeks has been under siege. Qaddafi’s strategy is to starve it out, deprive it of essentials, and bomb it indiscriminately, as a way of defeating its esprit de corps an allowing a pro-Qaddafi takeover. […]
Sea Water for Honolulu Air Conditioning
Here’s a neat, practical idea: Honolulu is going to draw in sea water for air conditioning. The system “will reduce Hawaii’s consumption of oil by some 178,000 barrels a year and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 84,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.” These are small sums, but if lots of coastal cities did this all […]
Benghazi Rejects AU Plan to Leave Qaddafi in Power
Reuters reports that, as expected, the Transitional National Council in Benghazi has rejected the African Union proposal for a cease fire. Since Muammar Qaddafi’s forces are actively attacking civilian cities such as Misrata and Zintan for having dared protest his rule, using truck-mounted Grad rockets fired into civilian areas, the rebels argued, it is meaningless […]
Fukushima Core Failure a Level 7 (the Worst)
It’s official. The Fukushima nuclear core failure is now more like what happened in Chernobyl than what happened a Three Mile Island, and is being declared a Level 7 nuclear emergency– one that has wide effects on human health. I was in London during Chernobyl, and I remember them telling us that children or pregnant […]
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