Actually if you LOVE ANIMALS, you indeed should “kill your pets”.

End animal slavery. There’s a moral reason to do so, not just an environmental one. My reason is stronger actually. Let the horses free, let the blindperson slave dogs free–let all animals just live according to nature again…and NOT have them be dependan…t on us in any way, or have them imprint on us, or have there destinies be controlled by us. How blind are we as a species, that we can claim to give a shit, when in actuality, our ‘caring’ perpetuates a moral wrong? Thanks to Anwar for that conversation we had almost 10 years ago, for opening my eyes to this.

Save the planet — kill your pets

Posted: December 18, 2009

Terry O’Neill

As the Copenhagen melodrama reaches its weepy climax, many fretful Canadians might believe the only way to save the world from catastrophic climate change is to take matters into their own hands by severely reducing their personal carbon footprints. For guidance, some might look to the likes of this newspaper’s Diane Francis who, in a notorious column published last week, called for a “planetary law” to restrict couples to a single child.

Too extreme for you? Then allow me to suggest a more-immediate, less disturbing alternative to radical human de-population: radical pet de-population.

According to a recent Ipsos Reid study, an estimated 56% of all Canadian households have at least one dog or cat. Similarly, a federal government report found that Canadians own eight million of the critters — the vast majority of which, it must be stated, serve little practical purpose.

US diplomat ‘forced out’ over stance on Afghan election fraud | World news | guardian.co.uk

ballless fuckin minions. we blew up that country, regime-changed the fuck out of it, and now we can’t even control the level of blatant corruption throughout the government due to ‘sovereignty’ policies of the UN? fuck off! another reason i hate the UN and it’s pointless, functionless, incompetent existence.

US diplomat ‘forced out’ over stance on Afghan election fraud

Peter Galbraith removed from UN post after pressing for inquiry into results heavily favouring Karzai

• Peter Beaumont in London and Jon Boone in Kabul
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 September 200

The most senior American diplomat at the UN mission in Afghanistan has been fired after he failed to secure support for a full and robust investigation into widespread fraud favouring President Hamid Karzai in the August presidential elections.
Peter Galbraith, the top American UN diplomat in Afghanistan, was apparently forced out after the country’s ministers refused to work with him. Photograph: Toby Talbot/Associated Press
Peter Galbraith, the deputy UN special envoy responsible for electoral matters, was removed after a dispute with his Norwegian boss, Kai Eide, after Galbraith had taken an outspoken line over alleged vote-rigging in the 20 August election, a position that reportedly angered Karzai.

The spokeswoman for UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon, Michele Montas, said in a statement yesterday that Ban had decided to recall Peter Galbraith and end his appointment as the UN’s deputy special representative. Montas said the secretary-general reaffirmed his full support for Eide.

Arsala Jamal, a Karzai campaign official, said todayhe was aware of Galbraith’s removal but called it an internal UN matter.

UN officials had previously acknowledged the dispute between Eide and Galbraith, who left the Afghan capital in mid-September. UN sources said Ban was persuaded to end Galbraith’s mission after ministers in Karzai’s government said they could no longer work with him. Confimation in New York of Galbraith’s removal followed his emailed denial earlier in the day that he had been sacked.

Within hours of the news, a member of the UN’s political affairs unit had resigned. Others are likely to follow among the diplomats who liked Galbraith personally and backed his tough approach to officials of the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC), who many believe are complicit in attempts to rubber-stamp a Karzai first round victory.

Sources say Galbraith was furious that the IEC first voted to apply a set of standards to its count that would have excluded tens of thousands of fraudulent votes, only to reverse the decision the next day, apparently following political pressure.

The recall of Galbraith would have required the agreement of the Obama administration and has come as a surprise following the earlier demand by Obama’s own envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, that Karzai respect the proper election process.

Further damning US criticism of the Karzai administration emerged in the leaked confidential report prepared by the US commander in the country, General Stanley McChrystal, which warned that corruption within the Karzai government was as big a threat as the Taliban.

The exit of Galbraith would appear to further reduce Obama’s scope for manoeuvre in Afghanistan at a time when he is facing calls from his military commander, General Stanley McChrystal, for up to 40,000 more soldiers.

Obama was expected to meet his top advisers on Afghanistan yesterday, including Vice President Joe Biden, secretary of defence Robert Gates, secretary of state Hillary Clinton, national security adviser General James Jones, Chairman of the joint chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen, and the CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus. The meeting was to include a discussion via video conference with McChrystal, whose grim assessment of the war was leaked last month. The meeting is the first of five scheduled for the coming weeks.

Galbraith’s removal comes just days after reports that the US and its allies would accept Karzai remaining as president even if the investigation into voter fraud meant his share of the vote fals below 50%, which election rules had stipulated Karzai was required to win to avoid a run off with his closest rival foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.

Speaking yesterday Abdullah, who alleges fraud took place on a massive scale, expressed concern that Galbraith had been pushed out for campaigning to prevent electoral fraud. “If the firing of Mr Galbraith was on some technical issue, I have no say in it,” he said. “If the issue was based on the fact that he was for a vigorous look into the issue of fraud, in that case, I would say that he has been talking on behalf of the people of Afghanistan.”

Galbraith was formerly the US ambassador to Croatia and helped negotiate the end of the war in that country. He also served as director of political, constitutional and electoral affairs for the UN transitional administration in East Timor from 2000 to 2001. Outspoken in his criticism of the conduct of the US war in Iraq during the Bush administration, he resigned from government to write The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End.// //

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

UN envoy at centre of Afghan election row to leave post

Kai Eide will not be renewing his contract as head of mission in Kabul but says it has nothing to do with recent poll controversy

• Haroon Siddique and agencies
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 December 2009

Kai Eide said he always planned to stay in Afghanistan for just two years Photograph: Omar Sobhani/Reuters

Kai Eide, the top United Nations official in Afghanistan who was criticised for his handling of allegations of fraud in the country’s presidential election, will not be renewing his contract, he said today.

Eide, a career diplomat with the Norwegian foreign office, was appointed as the UN special representative to Afghanistan and head of the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan in March last year.

“I’m not resigning,” Eide told The Associated Press. “It’s a question of telling New York that I’m not renewing my contact.”

Eide was accused of downplaying the level of cheating in the August election by Peter Galbraith, the former deputy head of the UN mission in Afghanistan who was sacked in September after their disagreement became public.

Galbraith subsequently said that Eide had deliberately played down the level of fraud in an election where, in one region, “10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast”.

Eide said the controversy over the election was not linked to his decision not to renew his contract and his plan had always been to stay two years, like his predecessors. His two-year contract expires in March.

“The election controversy was between Peter Galbraith and the rest of the international community,” said Eide.

Dan McNorton, a UN spokesman in Kabul, said: “Kai Eide is sticking to the timetable that he outlined when he took the job in March 2008.”

Abdullah Abdullah, who was challenging the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, in the presidential poll, accused Eide of “giving a green card for fraud to determine the outcome of the election”.

Galbraith said Eide told him to stop lobbying for the elimination of “ghost polling stations” — voting centres too dangerous to actually open, but which nonetheless received ballot papers that could be filled out by corrupt officials.

President Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, also held a dim view of Eide, according to reports. When Galbraith’s appointment was revealed in March, a US diplomatic source reportedly told the Times that Holbrooke viewed Eide as “useless and ineffective”.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Ken Livingstone rocks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nhmcc

Free Thinking – Ken Livingstone

Listen:

Listen now (45 minutes)

Availability:

Available to listen.

Last broadcast on Mon, 26 Oct 2009, 21:15 on BBC Radio 3.

Synopsis

As part of Radio 3’s 2009 Free Thinking festival of ideas, Ken Livingstone goes to the North East of England to meet an audience at the Sage in Gateshead. What does the former Mayor of London have to say to a region which often feels itself sidelined and overlooked by the capital city and by the South East as a whole? In the past, Livingstone has said that ‘the divide within cities is vaster than the divide between them’. But is that really true? Has the North-South divide faded?

In conversation with Night Waves presenter Anne McElvoy – who was born in County Durham and is a columnist on the London Evening Standard – Ken Livingstone has a chance to assert to a northern audience what he believes to be the challenges facing the modern metropolis. Is it possible that there are actually lessons that cities on the banks of the Tyne and Wear could learn from the big one by the Thames?

I WONDER WHAT THE CONNECTION BE:

Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born	1922 Najafabad, Iran
Died	19 December 2009 (aged 87) Qom, Iran

Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri (1922 – 19 December 2009) (Persian: حسینعلی منتظری) styled His Honourable Eminence was a prominent Iranian Islamic theologian, democracy advocate, writer and human rights activist. He was one of the leaders of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. He was once the designated successor to the revolution’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, with whom he had a falling out in 1989 over government policies that Montazeri said infringed on people’s freedom and denied them their rights. Montazeri spent his later years in the holy city of Qom, and remained politically influential in Iran, especially to the reformist movement.^[1] He was widely known as the most knowledgeable senior Islamic scholar in Iran.^[2] and a Grand Marja (religious authority) of Shi’ite Islam.

For almost three decades, Hussein Ali Montazeri had been one of the main critics of the Islamic Republic’s domestic and foreign policy. He had also been an active advocate of civil rights and women’s rights in Iran. Montazeri was a prolific writer of books and articles. He was a staunch proponent of an Islamic state, and he argued that post-revolutionary Iran was not being ruled as an Islamic state.

versus

Maria Montessori

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born	August 31, 1870(1870-08-31) Chiaravalle (Ancona), Italy
Died	May 6, 1952 (aged 81) Noordwijk, Netherlands

Maria Montessori (August 31, 1870 – May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician, educator, philosopher, humanitarian and devout Catholic; she is best known for her philosophy and the Montessori method of education of children from birth to adolescence. Her educational method is in use today in a number of public as well as private schools throughout the world.

Plan would put drug in food to fight cancer

C’mon Health Canada…

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

French Fries, Chips

Tom Blackwell,  National Post

Francois Nascimbeni, AFP, Getty Images

Health Canada is proposing an unorthodox way of combatting a food ingredient suspected in some cancers: It wants to let manufacturers put small amounts of a cancer-fighting drug into potato chips and similar foods to curb production of the harmful chemical.

Ever since acrylamide was discovered seven years ago in such foods as french fries and chips cooked at high temperatures, scientists have struggled for a way to get it out. The chemical is not added deliberately; it is an unintentional byproduct of cooking.

Though the evidence is far from definitive, acrylamide has been connected to cancer in animals and possibly people.

As a partial answer, Health Canada is suggesting removing the requirement for a prescription to administer the enzyme asparaginase, except when it is injected into leukemia patients as a treatment.

That way, food companies could include small amounts of the drug in their products, the department says in a “notice of intent” document published on Saturday. Evidence suggests asparaginase lessens the production of acrylamide by as much as 90%.

The enzyme is destroyed in cooking so would have no impact on people consuming the food, said Varoujan Yaylayan, associate professor with McGill University’s food-science department. “It has been used quite effectively on an experimental basis,” he said. “It appears to work.”

The acrylamide issue has preoccupied food manufacturers as they brace for the possibility of regulations that could limit levels of the chemical or ban it outright. California actually sued french-fry and chip makers over the question, with several agreeing last year to reduce the volume of acrylamide in their goods.

“It’s been a big, big problem,” Prof. Yaylayan said. “Not so much in the public eye, but behind doors, the companies keep having meetings, having scientific symposia and seminars. I have attended many of them, here, in the U.S., in Europe.”

Manufacturers “fully support” the move suggested by Health Canada, Derek Nighbor of Food and Consumer Products of Canada said in a statement provided by the industry group yesterday.

Health Canada is accepting feedback on the idea for 75 days, and could implement it in six to eight months, the government document said.

Swedish scientists discovered in 2002 that acrylamide, used in making various industrial and consumer products, also occurred in foods ranging from breakfast cereals to bread cooked at over 120-degrees celsius. A by-product of heating certain sugars, levels are particularly elevated in carbohydrate-heavy food heated to high temperatures like chips and fries.

Tests have found consuming the chemical increases the risk of some cancers in rodents. Evidence of its effect on humans who eat it in food is less clear, though, with some research linking it to cancer but most studies finding the levels people eat would have no carcinogenic effect, said Lorelei Mucci, a Harvard medical school assistant professor who studies the issue.

In fact, Dr. Mucci questions devoting much energy or money to the substance.

Volumes of the chemical can be reduced by cooking at lower temperatures or soaking the product in water first to extract some sugar, but such techniques can affect the pleasant odour, crispiness or colour of some food.

Asparaginase is injected in leukemia patients, where it breaks down asparagine, an amino acid, killing the cancer cells. When it is applied to potatoes or other food before cooking, it similarly reduces the amount of asparagine, the key ingredient in the inadvertent production of acrylamide.

The “downstream effects” of using asparaginase to counter the chemical should be studied carefully, advised Dr. Mucci.

Man pleads guilty to second-degree murder in Creba case – The Globe and Mail

Something’s wrong with a philosophy of justice where a dude who raped tortured and brutalized women to death with things like dildoed guns, and pig farming equipment, gets charged with 2nd degree murder and these fools who shot up the street at each other get the same charge.

Jane Creba in my view was manslaughter. There was NO intention. If you build a dildoed gun at home and then go out and hunt for prey in the Downtown Eastside? That’s intention. Premeditation even. That should be murder 1.

If you shoot into a crowd–arguably even defend yourself from oncoming fire…and kill a 3rd party, how are you responsable for that inadvertant death the SAME as raping and murdering someone?

What the heck IS manslaughter then? If this is not it?

There are situations where three people beat a fourth to death but the 2nd dude only throws one punch and one kick, therefore he gets manslaughter, because his contribution ‘did not lead to the ultimate outcome’. But shouldn’t his intention be considered as murderous? I’d say so. Everyone involved in a beating should get 2nd degree murder charges, not just the ‘ultimate killer’.
That’s like giving credit to a guy who opens a can of pickles after 2 guys before helped loosen the lid. They all opened it, and they all intended for the lid to come off.

This Jane Creba thing should create a new charge, like ‘negligent discharge of a firearm’–that’s what it really was. There was absolutely no intention. She could have been a stray dog walking into the volley of shots. So obviously this is messed up.

Is it cuz she’s well-to-do and white? A lot of not-so-well-to-do, not-so-white folk are getting shot (intentionally even) and killed in the streets of Toronto. The response, both media as well as judicial doesn’t seem so hyped.

[MUSIC] [AUDIO] a manifestation of the transcendence of tribalism: JEFF BUCKLEY’S RENDITION OF NUSRAT FATEH ALI KHAN’S ‘Yeh jo Halka Halka Suroor Hai’

Jeff Buckley’s rendition of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s famous ‘Yeh jo Halka Halka Suroor Hai’, live at Sine in 1993. Excerpts are taken from an interview conducted by Jeff with Nusrat in January 1996 as well as from a dedication written by Jeff on his hero in 1997.

The original Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan version, who died in 1997:

Also check out the 1996  soundtrack for the film ‘Dead Man Walking’, if new to Qawwali-esque fusion. Khan helped popularize Qawwali outside of South Asia to mainstream Western audiences in the 1990s.

___________________

Qawwali – SUFI DEVOTIONAL MUSIC; THE OPERA OF THE EAST

Qawwali (Nastaʿlīq: قوٌالی; Gurmukhī: ਕ਼ੱਵਾਲੀ; Devanāgarī: क़व्वाली; Bengali: কাওয়ালী) is a form of Sufi devotional music popular in South Asia, particularly in the Punjab and Sindh regions of Pakistan, Hyderabad, Delhi, and other parts of northern India. It is a musical tradition that stretches back more than 700 years.

Originally performed mainly at Sufi shrines or dargahs throughout South Asia, it has also gained mainstream popularity. Qawwali music received international exposure through the work of the late Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, largely due to several releases on theReal World label, followed by live appearances at WOMAD festivals

The roots of Qawwali can be traced back to 8th century Persia (today’s Iran and Afghanistan). During the first major migration from Persia, in the 11th century, the musical tradition of Sema migrated to South Asia, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Amir Khusro Dehelvi of the Chisti orderof Sufis is credited with fusing the Persian and Indian musical traditions to create Qawwali as we know it today in the late 13th century inIndia. The word Sama is often still used in Central Asia and Turkey to refer to forms very similar to Qawwali, and in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the formal name used for a session of Qawwali is Mehfil-e-Sama.

Qaul (Arabic: قَوْل) is an “utterance (of the prophet)”, Qawwāl is someone who often repeats (sings) a Qaul, Qawwāli is what a Qawwāl sings.

–wikipedia

The Fourth Part of the World — Toby Lester

Peter Lewis, Special to The Chronicle

Sunday, December 27, 2009

The Fourth Part of the World The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name

By Toby Lester

(Free Press; 462 pages; $30)

It is the magic of maps that they lift us out of ourselves and deliver us to parts unknown. Fifty years ago, people gasped with delight when cartographers exposed the oceans’ floor by draining away the water. Five hundred years ago, another cartographer finagled with the oceans and turned the world on its head.

In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller and a few of his humanist friends from the Gymnasium Vosagense in Strassburg (now Strasbourg) published a short geographical work called “Introduction to Cosmography.” Accompanying the book was a world map drawn by Waldseemüller. The map had special mojo: For the first time, the New World was given a name – America; but more important, America was surrounded by water, making it a continent all its own.

This was a strange and stunning departure, because we know of no European who had an inkling of the Pacific until Vasco Núñez de Balboa scaled the peak in Darien, and that was years in the future.

So how did Waldseemüller’s map come to be? This is the mystery, and Toby Lester brings a sure, learned hand to its detection. He builds a cumulative tale of rich, diverse influences that he juggles with gathering speed and showmanship until the whir of detail coalesces into an inspired, imaginative piece of mapmaking.

Lester’s bridled enthusiasm motors the story enjoyably forth from the beginning. Europe has emerged from the Dark Ages. Culture, commerce and curiosity are rubbing the sand out of their eyes after years of slumber. Then who should come knocking but a horde of Mongols bent on serious mischief. Ecclesiastical envoys are sent to meet with the Great Khan somewhere in the Eastern vastness, thus detonating the medieval exploration of Asia.

More would follow: Marco Polo to the east, the Irish monk Brendan piloting a coracle to the North Atlantic, Prince Henry’s minions to the south, the crazy Vivaldi brothers due west out the Straits of Gibraltar and never to be heard from since.

The best of what drove these men in the sheer audacity of their progress, Lester sensibly suggests, was the spirit of Humanism, which mid-14th century Italy would distill into a philosophy that sought “to revive the learning and wisdom of antiquity,” and develop a new critical method for studying these works. Francesco Petrarch, the prime mover of Italian humanism, understood that to fully appreciate classical literature, “he needed to understand the geographical context.” (Florentine merchants also appreciated the geographical context as it served the accumulation of wealth.)

And maps would be the cornerstones of geography. In broad strokes, Lester traces cartographic evolution from so-called T-O maps, with their freight of Christian symbolism, to the more fully fleshed mappaemundi, to exquisite marine charts. Thanks to the classical revival, Claudius Ptolemy’s map work – mathematically crafted projections depicting “the known world as a single and continuous entity” – was given a lease on life.

Ptolemy’s projection was both palimpsest of an older, wiser time and the 15th century’s cartographic standard, on which could be placed all the information gleaned during explorations, helping to steer a way forward. For as the 16th century approached, “the expanding imperial ambitions of the Church, the Turkish capture of Constantinople, and the search for new ways to reach the East” would make the clarity of geographical vision all the more important.

Lester pulls on the threads of Waldseemüller’s map and finds an extraordinary braid of influences, stretching back to Aristotle’s system of concentric spheres; Pomponius Mela’s Description of the World, the oldest extant geographical treatise; the works of Strabo and Pliny the Elder. Prester John never makes an appearance, but the search for him yields geographical gold. Christopher Columbus adds prominent color to the story, but it is Amerigo Vespucci who may be the last knot, though his secrets – perhaps pivotal to Waldseemüller’s bold gesture – will not be unraveled.

The unknown is elemental here, and Lester plays it like a stringed instrument. The unknown gave impetus to the humanists. It drapes over all those explorers lost to time: How far did they go, what did they see, who did they tell, why did their news of a far country vanish and what impact did it have if it ever had currency? Did the Portuguese-sponsored Vespucci keep sailing south into forbidden Spanish waters? Don’t know, and with that the alchemy of Waldseemüller’s map remains safely, thankfully out of reach.

Peter Lewis is an editor at the American Geographical Society.