The final solution . . .

GENOCIDE CAN BE CULTURAL, and NativeWritesNow is grateful to Christie Blatchford for the explanation, with a post, "Christie Blatchford is telling the truth".  Take a minute and check out how this is so.

Allied efforts . . .

IDLE NO MORE: Idle No More calls on all people to join in a revolution which honors and fulfills Indigenous sovereignty which protects the land and water. Colonization continues through attacks to Indigenous rights and damage to the land and water. We must repair these violations, live the spirit and intent of the treaty relationship, work towards justice in action, and protect Mother Earth.

Re: Chief Theresa Spence. Here's an idea: get the UK newspapers involved. "Canadian GuvGen won't meet dying Hunger Strike Indian Chief". The publicity will put pressure on Buck House, which dumps on the GuvGen, who dumps on Stevie. Remember, Stevie reacts to publicity like a cockroach to light. International publicity that makes him look bad, that leaks back to Canada, especially as the election is coming up might have a lot of power.

Odious and disgusting . . .

KUDOS TO MONTREAL SIMON: his post, "When the Cons Try to Cover Up Murder" is something you must read. Stevie will have much to answer for.

A present . . .

MACROPHAGES AND VIRUSES can kill cancer: According to George Dvorsky's article in io9, "Researchers create a ‘trojan-horse’ virus to eliminate cancer in mice".


clinical trials on humans could start as early as next year

Stevie does Gangnam . . .

ACCORDING TO HUFFINGTON, the Air Farce has nailed it. Delightful!

Stevie needs a reading . . .

THE HR GIGER TAROT SET. Awesome.

The Epigenetic Key . . .

HOW HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR arises has been a mystery. According to an article by George Dvorsky in io9, "Scientists claim that homosexuality is not genetic — but it arises in the womb", as the endocrine system copes with operational life. Fascinating, click on the link to find out more.

A team of international researchers has completed a study that suggests we will probably never find a ‘gay gene.' Sexual orientation is not about genetics, say the researchers, it's about epigenetics. This is the process where DNA expression is influenced by any number of external factors in the environment. And in the case of homosexuality, the researchers argue, the environment is the womb itself.

Human behavior . . .

HUMAN MOTIVATION is incredibly complex. Attempts to tweek with it are invariably mis-directed. Esther Inglis-Arkell's article at io9, "The lasting mystery of the Hawthorne Effect" is worthy of  attention.

The Hawthorne Effect is cited by both business experts and psychology experts, but rarely in the same way. Some say it's real, some that it's real but misinterpreted, and then others that it doesn't exist and never has. It all started with an attempt to increase productivity at a factory in the 1920s, and we've been arguing about it ever since. 

The story of the Hawthorne Effect begins in the 1920s, when productivity studies began at the Hawthorne Works electrical equipment factory in Illinois. They continued for the better part of a decade, with investigators tweaking nearly every aspect of working life.

— The Home Office —

Right to work . . .

RIGHT TO WORK got its start in Texas in the early 1940's. It's the malignant creation of a particularly odious American, Vance Muse. According to Mark Ames at Not Safe For Work Corporation, in an article "You Hate "Right To Work" Laws More Than You Know. Here's Why", Vance Muse was quite a piece of work. Click on the link to get a fascinating explanation of the rise of the fascist Right in America.

Vance Muse was a racist political operative and lobbyist from the state of Texas — the native habitat for all America’s vermin —as Satanically vile as "Turd Blossom" Rove, a racist smear-peddler like Andrew Breitbart, only without Breitbart’s degenerate heart and fondness for blow.

Here is a description of Vance Muse, creator of the "right to work" movement, from a book by an old celebrated journalist, Stetson Kennedy, the reporter who famously went undercover inside the KKK and wrote a tell-all in the 40’s:

"The man Muse is quite a character. He is six foot four, wears a ten-gallon hat, but generally reserves his cowboy boots for trips Nawth. Now over fifty [this is published in 1946—M.A.], Muse has been professionally engaged in reactionary enterprises for more than a quarter of a century."

Among Vance Muse’s "reactionary enterprises": He lobbied against women’s suffrage, against the child-labor amendment, against the 8-hour workday, and in 1936, Muse engineered the first split in the South’s Democratic Party by peeling off the segregationists and racists from the New Deal party, a political maneuver that eventually led to Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and at last a Republican right-wing takeover of the South, and with it, the collapse of the old New Deal coalition. Which worked out fine for Vance Muse, since he was a covert Republican himself, serving "for years" as the Republican Party state treasurer in Texas.

• • •

To understand why Fred Koch and the Bircher libertarians hated Ike so much, imagine today a Republican like Eisenhower who raised the top marginal tax rate to 91%, who poured massive government investments into building roads and schools, who publicly declared his support for Social Security and denounced any Republican who opposed it. 

Is it any wonder that the Right has a problem with Obama?

Old, old, OLD growth . . .

THE ARCHANGEL ANCIENT TREE ARCHIVE is preserving the genetics of the Earth's oldest trees.

Land of the free . . .

ACCORDING TO ZERO HEDGE'S George Washington, "Americans Have Less Access to Justice than Botswanans … And Are More Abused By Police than Kazakhstanis", America is now Amerika with State Security.

Genetic patents . . .

MONSANTO'S MONSTROSITIES? Seems that Monsanto has been really pushy about patents, with the result that WIRED reports "Supreme Court to Rule on Patents for Self-Replicating Products", as people have resisted Monsanto's demands for payment because some of their patented seeds have spread to their crops.

The Supreme Court is weighing in on the soybean patents, agreeing to hear an appeal by a Knox County, Indiana soybean farmer who was ordered to pay $84,456 in damages and costs to Monsanto in 2009 for infringing those patents.

Farmer Vernon Bowman’s dirty deed? The 74-year-old bought soybean seed from a local grain elevator that was contaminated with the patented seed, which he used to produce beans on his 299 acres.

There's a lot at stake here, for Monsanto and other corporations, including Big Pharma.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE:

And maybe even more important, because according to WIRED, "Supreme Court to Decide if Human Genes Are Patentable". That could mean that you might not own some part of what makes you you.  Given Monsanto's track record, that's not impossible to imagine. Could be worse, though, like Orson Scott Card's "I Put My Blue Genes On" or the genetic slavery envisioned by SF authors like Frank Herbert or Eric Weber.

Cybercrime . . .

BANK ROBBERS FOR HIRE. According to KrebsonSecurity, "Online Service Offers Bank Robbers for Hire", these are North American operations.

The service, advertised on exclusive, Russian-language forums that cater to cybercrooks, claims to have willing and ready foot soldiers for hire in California, Florida, Illinois and New York. 

Yes, please . . .

From Occupy Canada.

The spark . . .

FABIUS MAXIMUS has a thoughtful site, worthy of your perusal. "Attention Americans: the Revolution has begun. You must choose a side." is a post that discusses how important WikiLeaks has been to the resistance to America's fascists.

The first sparks of Revolution are invisible to the Proles and considered insignificant by the Outer Party. Only the fierce reaction by the government reveals their importance. The combination of power and ambition gives senior government officials a clarity of vision we lack. Watch these sparks. The opportunity to take sides might not last long, before they get snuffed out. 

• • •

You might sneer and laugh at Wikileaks and Anonymous as quixotic — foolish and vain efforts. But the government knows better, and devotes great effort to stamp out these sparks. Without wider support our ruling elites will successfully suppress these movements. With our support these can mature into powerful engines of reform.

Fabius also has another post you should check out: "On Counterinsurgency: How We Got to Where We Are", which looks at the history of repression and suppression.

The greatness of a nation depends as much on its ability to learn as much as its power. Failure to learn can prove fatal. As with German’s refusal to learn from its defeat in WWI, substituting resentment for wisdom. As with America’s refusal to learn from its defeat in Vietnam, and belief that the doctrines of counterinsurgency could win if tried again. This required ignoring clear analysis showing the folly of this, explaining the inherent flaws of foreign armies fighting entrenched local insurgencies.

Hanging Insurgents at Cavite,
from the Philippines War circa 1900

As the first phase (Iraq, Af-Pak) winds down of our 21st century mad foreign wars — and the second phase expands — we can still learn and turn from this path. So today we look at one such analysis, by Martin van Creveld — one of the West’s greatest living military historians.

The most astonishing aspect of this paper is that after 60 years of failed counterinsurgencies by foreign armies, ten years into our second wave of failed counterinsurgency, it lists simple facts that remain unknown to so many Americans — including a large fraction of our geopolitical gurus.

Get angry . . .

KUDOS TO THE SIXTH ESTATE, for going to all the cerebral effort to post "Inside Elections Canada’s Whitewash Report on Election Fraud: Armwaving, Cynicism, Red Herrings". If you missed it, you must read it — and get very, very angry.

Stay tuned . . .

THE MARS SCIENCE LABORATORY believes it has discovered something "earthshaking". Exactly what that something is, they're not saying right now. Check out Nancy Atkinson's account on io9, "Scientists claim to have discovered something “earthshaking” on Mars".

In an interview on NPR today, MSL Principal Investigator John Grotzinger said a recent soil sample test in the SAM instrument (Sample Analysis at Mars) shows something "earthshaking."

Apparently, after an initial discovery of methane was found to be Earth atmosphere that had been trapped within the rover, the scientists are being extra cautious. Religious fundamentalists are probably going to freak out, which is good.

Gaza ghastliness . . .

SAD IRONY: children who were abused have a propensity to become abusers, and thus the misery proceeds into the future. Similarly, the survivors of the Holocaust have been working over the poor Palestinians in Gaza. The Israelis have been mendacious, to say the least, and today's web allows spin creation that's never been seen before.

The Iron Dome defense system fires
to intercept incoming missiles
from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod.

Juan Cole has a site, Informed Comment, where he lists the Top Ten Myths about Israeli Attack on Gaza, which sums up the state of things. The Israeli response to the Palestinian rocket attacks will fail in the long term, if only because the Israelis are seen as oppressors, because the Palestinian rocket attacks seem puny in comparison to the Godzilla-level Israeli response. Sorta like the Kaiser's feldgrau going through Belgium in 1914 got bad press. It's a 2GW solution to a 4GW problem, which means it's no solution.

Perhaps Egypt can make something happen within the next 72 hours, in the way of a cease-fire. Hamas might be ready to deal, as the imminent demise of the Syrian régime might result in a severe reduction in the supply of money and arms.

Res Ipsa Loquitor

Actual screen capture. To say anything further would be superfluous.

(an actual crossposting from the actual Woodshed, actually.)

Tweet

The turnaways . . .

WOMEN AS SLAVES: a woman who is denied freedom of choice is as much a slave as those unfortunates in the slaver holding pens of 200 years ago, who were bred at the whims of their owners. And as we have seen, the GOP likes it that way, and American conservatives have made every effort to make abortion illegal.

Their efforts mean that, in the US, way too many women are denied access to abortion. These unfortunates, known as "Turnaways" have been the subject of a medical study, according to Annalee Newitz' article in io9, "What happens to women denied abortions? This is the first scientific study to find out."

Public health researchers with the UC San Francisco group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) used data from 956 women who sought abortions at 30 different abortion clinics around the U.S. 182 of them were turned away. The researchers, led by Diana Greene Foster, followed and did intensive interviews with these women, who ran the gamut of abortion experiences. Some obtained abortions easily, for some it was a struggle to get them, and some were denied abortions because their pregnancies had lasted a few days beyond the gestational limits of their local clinics. Two weeks ago, the research group presented what they'd learned after two years of the planned five-year, longitudinal "Turnaway Study" at the recent American Public Health Association conference in San Francisco.

We have found that there are no mental health consequences of abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. There are other interesting findings: even later abortion is safer than childbirth and women who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term are three times more likely than women who receive an abortion to be below the poverty level two years later.

There are many other consequences of denial of access; click on the link to find out more.

Stevie's gonna freak . . .

THE WASHINGTON POST SAYS: "The president can start by rejecting the Keystone pipeline." (Actually, those words are not, as written, in the editorial, "What Obama should do now: Tackle climate change", they exist in the html file header that describes the page. Just so's ya know.) Check it out.

It will be painfully easy to tell if President Obama is going to take a serious stab at doing something about climate change in his second term: The purest, starkest test he faces will be the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from the tar sands of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

The politics of food . . .

FAMINE CAN BE A WEAPON, or it can be the consequence of systemic bungle, but either way, the results are catastrophic. THE Nation. is a thoughtful site, with an article by Samuel Moyn, "Totalitarianism, Famine and Us" that is worth pondering. The Chinese debacle is truly disturbing. With climate change in Africa and its droughts, the future has challenge.

After studying the Bengali famine during World War II, Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen famously concluded that democracy is an antidote to famine, because it breaks the information control and accountability vacuum that often impede getting available food to those who desperately need it. Of course, the great Chinese famine provides a vivid illustration of how ruinous and deadly policies occur as much because closed regimes correct their policies too slowly as because they target their populations for terror.

Lest we forget . . .

Greed vs. Green . . .

Copy copy copy . . .

MICHAEL GEIST has been trying to keep Canada as free as possible, as a place where we can enjoy our digital entertainment. According to him, as of today, we have new copyright laws in effect. Check out his post, "Canadian Copyright Reform In Force: Expanded User Rights Now the Law".

This morning, the majority of Bill C-11, the copyright reform bill, took effect, marking the most significant changes to Canadian copyright law in decades. While there are still some further changes to come (the Internet provider notice-and-notice rules await a consultation and their own regulations, various provisions related to the WIPO Internet treaties await formal ratification of those treaties), all the consumer oriented provisions are now active.

IMHO, one positive aspect is the limitation on penalties for "piracy": if it's non-commercial "piracy", the max penalty is $5,000, unlike those horrific American judgments where some teenager gets a gigantic penalty, often over hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Choices . . .

PRISON POLITICS: on Nov. 2, 1920, Eugene V. Debs received one million votes in the U.S. presidential election while in prison. He was serving a 10 year sentence for his speech in Canton, Ohio against the war. Listen to an excerpt from the speech from Voices of a People's History of the United States. Besides the Wiki, the Debs Foundation has a great site about the man.

He's just . . .

WHITE AMERICAN MEN over forty are the core of Rmoney's support. So, Chris Rock offers this piece of reassurance:

The ghastly Gopper returns . . .

DUBYA IN THE CAYMANS, giving a secret speech. Can't get the boston.com link to happen, but here's Andrew Leonard's report in  Salon, "George Bush's secret Cayman vacation".

George W. Bush gave the keynote address at an “investment conference” in the Cayman Islands on Thursday night. But we don’t know what he said, reports NBC News, because Bush’s own team required a complete “blackout” on any details about the speech.

Fee-fi-fo-FIPA . . .

STOP! STOP! STOP! Stop the Canada-China FIPA! E-mail or phone your MP TODAY!

Get yours . . .

GET A FLU SHOT. Besides helping to fight the flu, there are strong indications that it is an effective way of lowering the incidence of major cardio problems. That's what a report from the American Council on Science and Health proclaims in a post, "Flu vaccine’s unexpected heart benefits":

Flu shots can stop you from getting the flu. Can they also stop you from having a heart attack?

That’s the intriguing suggestion by Dr. Jacob Udell of the University of Toronto and colleagues, who gave a recent presentation at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress, demonstrating a surprising 48 percent reduction in major adverse cardiovascular events (heart attack or sudden death, or stroke) among over 3000 patients culled from 4 separate trials, conducted from 1994 to 2008.

Down to the wire . . .

— Elizabeth Warren, Democrat populist —

“The Republican vision is clear — ‘I got mine. The rest of you are on your own.’ Republicans say they don’t believe in government. Sure, they do. They believe in government to help themselves and their powerful friends. After all, Mitt Romney is the guy who said corporations are people. No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people.

“People have hearts. They have kids. They get jobs. They get sick. They cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die, and that matters. That matters because we do not run this country for corporations. We run it for people, and that is why I support Barack Obama.”

Katrina vanden Heuvel is an opinion writer for the Washington Post, with an article that sums up how bereft the Gopper mind-set is, "Warfare waged by the upper class", with that exquisite quote from  Elizabeth Warren, who may be a powerful force in the Democratic party's future.

It's a quote that Stevie and his carpetbaggers need to have pounded into their reptilian skulls: "We do not run this country for corporations. We run it for people."

Beat the CHAMP . . .

CHAMP: Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project. According to a report on THE VERGE, by Amar Toor, "Boeing's CHAMP missile uses radio waves to remotely disable PCs", Boeing's Phantom Works and the US Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate and Raytheon Ktech have successfully tested this EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapon. Check out the video, the sumbitch really works.

It appears to be a power technology breakthrough, in that up until CHAMP, generating intense EMP required explosives, which makes it a single-use item, an explosively-pumped flux generator, whereas the CHAMP shown in the video makes sequential "fries".

CHAMP gives the weapons people a frisson, because it's science fiction, sorta like Star Wars, and it's non-destructive of people and real estate.

So, why should you care?

Because it's non-destructive of people and real estate, it offers great potential to the Surveillance State for controlling domestic urban unrest.

If the Surveillance State continues with institutionalized violations of citizens' rights in the name of security, this could be used if the hoi poloi aren't being appropriately respectful, essentially frying out everybody's electronics — yours too, if you happen to live and/or work there — so that without information, resistance is ineffective. Do you think Stevie or Vickie would hesitate to use it? Right now, it's too expensive for domestic use, but that will change.

Wiping out neighborhood electronics could be a useful tool in paralyzing opposition, because nothing works in the targeted area — unless you have EMP shielding. Maybe even carry a spare phone in a Faraday Bag? Makes an ideal Xmas gift for people with passports and RFID chipped credit cards, come to think about it, keeps the unauthorized from pinging the chips.

Induced psychopathy . . .

HOW DOES IT FEEL to think like a psychopath? Really. 

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (or TMS) was developed by Anthony Barker and his colleagues at the University of Sheffield in 1985.  TMS has widespread practical uses, in both diagnostic and therapeutic capacities, across a variety of neurological and psychiatric conditions, from depression and migraine to strokes and Parkinson's disease.

The Chronicle Review is a thoughtful site, with a fascinating article by Kevin Dutton, "Psychopathy's Double Edge", where he gets a TMS treatment to become psychopathic. Where it gets really interesting is that he gets a baseline of his normal brain along with Andy McNab, an S.A.S. combat veteran.

"Think of TMS as an electromagnetic comb, and brain cells—neurons—as hairs. All TMS does is comb those hairs in a particular direction, creating a temporary neural hairstyle. Which, like any new hairstyle, if you don't maintain it, quickly goes back to normal of its own accord."

Wonder what they'll be able to do with it in another 45 years or so?

TransCanada in Texas . . .

TRUTHOUT is a fine site for concerned citizens, and Candice Bernd has an account you should check out, "SLAPPed, Arrested, Deemed Eco-Terrorists: TransCanada Blockaders Persevere". It seems that there are concerned Americans, that don't want Stevie's Tar.  Sure seems to have fallen in a black hole as far as the news media are concerned, but I could be mistaken.

The Midwestern leg of TransCanada's pipeline is up and running after a five-day shut-down to repair areas where required integrity tests identified possible safety issues, according to the federal agency that oversees the existing 2,100-mile link.

Meanwhile, in East Texas, a contingent of Tar Sands Blockaders maintains their vigil - now in its fifth week - to stop construction on the Gulf Coast extension of the controversial project.

The nonviolent blockaders have been met with pain compliance tactics, felony charges, a SLAPP suit which uses the language of "eco-terrorism" and what amounts to a police state surrounding their tree village in Winnsboro, Texas.

DIRTY OIL SANDS has an account of an August encounter with the Man. Interesting site, check it out.

Simple is good . . .

The war on women . . .

THE WAR ON WOMEN continues in the Middle East, and according to Roya Hakakian's article in the Washington Post, "How blaming the West hides a war on women", it developed to a fine art in Iran and has institutionalized misogyny in the Islamic fundies, and has put a killing frost in the Arab Spring.

The world cringed and turned away from Iran. Just then, the age of marriage was lowered to 9; the weight of a woman’s testimony in a criminal trial was halved against a man’s; divorce, abortion, inheritance and custody rights were slashed; several academic fields and careers were banned to women; and the Islamic dress code was reinstituted. Public spaces in Tehran, including buses, were segregated by gender, and the faithful’s fists pumped into the air, punctuating Friday prayers with “death to America” chants.

Bullies beware . . .

LOVE COMPETENT PEOPLE. Then again, there are those who will demand a National Long-Bow Registry.

Back to the Bates . . .

DALTON EXITS Ontario politics with a masterful stroke: proroguing the Ontario Legislature. As a result, there are no debates about the worst series of mistakes committed by an Ontario administration in one very long time. From E-Health, to Ornge, to the Oakville Power Station Stumble, to the battle with Ontario teachers. All of this becomes something for the next government to deal with.

But Dalton may still have some worries: the G20 violations of Canadian civil rights will be appearing in court next year. Did Dalton's amendment that was not Gazetted mean that hundreds were arrested illegally?

"This Is What Democracy Looks Like . . . ."

in the Excited States of America:




Pitiful, isn't it ? ? ? ?

Nasty, and ignored . . .

HEART OF DARKNESS 2012: Northern Myanmar, aka Burma, where people are being driven from their lands and exterminated, a kind of jungle genocide. And behind it, our inscrutable capitalists, the Chinese. According to the Aljazeera account by Jason Motlagh, "Blood and Gold: Inside Burma's Hidden War", the horror shows no signs of stopping.

So far, more than 75,000 ethnic Kachin civilians have been driven from their ancestral lands. Human rights groups allege the Burmese army is intentionally attacking civilian areas, with wide-spread evidence of torture, rape, forced conscription and summary executions. Both sides employ child soldiers and continue to sow the ground with land mines.

According to a June report by Human Rights Watch, at least 10,000 additional Kachin refugees are stranded in make-shift camps across the border in China, where authorities still refuse to grant the United Nations and relief agencies access. Thousands have reportedly been forced back across the border, into harm’s way.

Vastly outnumbered and outgunned,
the KIA depends on a steady
stream of recruits to fill its ranks [Jason Motlagh]

• • •

As western businesses beat a path to her homeland, Burma watchers are concerned that ongoing rights abuses against the Kachin and other ethnic minorities could be further marginalised.

"The international euphoria about the reform in Burma is definitely premature, especially with the crimes against humanity we're seeing in Kachin state," says Matthew Smith, a field investigator with Human Rights Watch.

Outmanned and outgunned, KIA guerillas have fought the Burmese military on and off for decades in their bid for greater political rights and control over lands rich in minerals, timber and, more recently, Chinese-funded hydropower projects that were brokered during the ceasefire period.

While other rebel movements in Karen and Chin states have inked deals with the government, KIA officials insist the Burmese used the truce as a cover to broker multi-billion dollar energy deals with China without their input. The current fighting was touched off when the Burmese Army advanced on KIA outposts near the Taping River.

And total silence from Western media and governments.

H/T — Daniel

The human cost of Stevie . . .

NO ONE IS ILLEGAL - TORONTO is a site you should visit. 

H/T — Scanner

Down the drain . . .

BAATHISM HAS BEEN a driving political force in the Middle East for decades, but according to an article on The New Republic, by Paul Berman, "Baathism: An Obituary", it seems that the movement is about to be nailed to its perch, so to speak, with the imminent collapse of its last adherents in Syria.

Baathism is one of the last of the grandiose revolutionary ideologies of the mid-twentieth century—an ideology like communism and fascism in Europe (both of which exercised a large influence on Baathist thinking), except in an Arab version suitable for the age of decolonization. Its champions came to power not only in Syria but in Iraq, in both cases in the 1960s; and the consequences were not of the sort that leave people unchanged.

Now, while Bashar seems to be a rather unpleasant fellow, the collapse of the Baathist movement and its discreditation in the Middle East may have not-good consequences:

The political and cultural landscape of the Middle East, post-Baath, will be pockmarked by blighted zones that might otherwise have been a prosperous Iraq and Syria, if only the Baathist doctrine had not destroyed those countries. A cloud of intellectual bafflement and paranoia will hover overhead, consisting of the confused thoughts of everyone across the region who, in the past, talked themselves into supposing that Baathism was a good idea. And more than visible will be the triumphant zeal of Baathism’s principal rivals in the matter of grandiose revolutionary ideology—the champions of the single Middle Eastern millenarian doctrine still standing, once the Assad regime has finally gone. These will be the Islamists.

Yep, the Islamic Brotherhood and the Wahabbists may wind up being the real winners, in the near-term, the next 5 to 10 years. But as the 21st century passes and things like satellite dishes and the web have their influence, there will be changes — and surprises.

Bill Hicks . . .

ON THIS THANKSGIVING, give a listen to the late, great Bill Hicks. Thanks to Rusty Idols for drawing attention to this brilliant wit who died way too soon. Like Rusty says, "NSFW as fuck".

Unintended consequences . . .

THE ONE-CHILD policy of the Chinese government is 34 years old, and according to George Dvorsky's article on io9, "The Unintended Consequences Of China’s One-child Policy", the problems have multiplied as the country's citizens have lived with the legislation. And the problems will be continuing, as the Party is adamant that the one-child policy continue, so that by 2050, there may be big changes indeed.

Writing in her book, Unnatural Selection, Mara Hvistendahl notes that, in a natural state, there are 105 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, however, the male number has crept up to 121 — and as high as 150 in some districts.

• • •
In China, this practice has now resulted in a "surplus" of men who have little hope of marrying. Hvistendahl notes that these men tend to accumulate in the lower classes where the risk of violence is accentuated. Moreover, unmarried men who have low incomes tend to get restless — and in fact, areas with skewed gender balances tend to experience higher rates of crime.

And because it's harder to find a wife, men are having to literally buy or bid for them. This has contributed to China's elevated household savings rate where parents are having to squirrel away money in order to secure a bride for their son. It has also led to a boom in the mail order bride business — and prostitution.

And as a recent analysis by Wei Xing Zhu has shown, the imbalance is expected to worsen in the coming decades; the biggest gaps currently exist between the one to four-year old group — which means they'll be the ones having to deal with the fallout in about in 15 to 20 years.

The hits just keep on coming. Why? Because of this, China's population growth is falling, as intended, back in 1978. But today, China has a market economy, of sorts — and market capitalism requires market growth, and there are only so many Wal-Mart lumpen in North America.

A declining population means fewer productive workers (if not consumers). Some fear that the Chinese labor force has hit its peak and will start to decline in just a few years.

Then there's the effect of the only-child on the psychological aspects of inter-personal relations and expectations from society.

In essence, China has created an entire generation of exclusively first born children — this could be dramatically reducing the diversity of personality types in that country.

Time moves slowly; it can take decades for effects to show. For example, the sky-rocketing cost of college/university education in the last 30 years (unless you live in Québec) in North America has created an indentured legion of twenty-somethings entering the work force with crippling debt and a working environment gamed by the 1% to keep them in poverty. OWS? Duh.

Cinéma vérité . . .

DEBKAfile is a site that some love to hate, for its unabashedly pro-Israeli orientation. However, there is a report that is worthy of attention without reflexive knee-jerk: "Defecting Iranian cameraman brings CIA priceless film of secret nuclear sites". According to the report, dated October 5: 

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s personal cameraman, Hassan Golkhanban, who defected from his UN entourage in New York on Oct. 1, brought with him an intelligence treasure trove of up-to-date photographs and videos of top Iranian leaders visiting their most sensitive and secret nuclear and missile sites. 

• • •

The Iranian cameraman has given US intelligence the most complete and updated footage it has ever obtained of the interiors of Iran’s top secret military facilities and various nuclear installations, including some never revealed to nuclear watchdog inspectors. Among them are exclusive interior shots of the Natanz nuclear complex, the Fordo underground enrichment plant, the Parchin military complex and the small Amir-Abad research reactor in Tehran.

Knowledge is power. Will this latest insight promote a US/Israeli strike, or not? Or does it just confirm what the CIA and Mossad already know?

As the world turns . . .

DISCOVER MAGAZINE calls Michael König's video, "Earth", a "JAW DROPPING Space Station time lapse!". They might be right. Check out the article for details.

Future considerations . . .

KURZWEIL ACCELERATING INTELLIGENCE is a thoughtful site, with a post by Amara D. Angelica, "Welcome to 2035…the Age of Surprise" that is worthy of perusal. Since its creation in 2001, Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence — 

explores the forecasts and insights on accelerating change articulated in Ray Kurzweil’s landmark books — notably The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near — and updates these books with key breakthroughs in science and technology.

The “AI” in KurzweilAI refers to “accelerating intelligence,” a core concept that underlies the exponential growth of the pervasive information-based technologies — both biological and machine — that are radically changing our world. These include biotechnology, nanotechnology & materials science, molecular electronics, computation, artificial intelligence, robotics, neuroscience, physics, Internet, energy, electronics, pattern recognition, virtual reality, human brain reverse engineering, and brain and body augmentation.

The article looks at a USAF study, Blue Horizons:

The U.S. Air Force just released today a jaw-droppingly impressive, fast-paced video on accelerating change, “Welcome to 2035…the Age of Surprise”.

Produced by the U.S. Air Force Center for Strategy and Technology at The Air University, the video was based on Blue Horizons, a multi-year future study being conducted for the Air Force Chief of Staff, a “meta-strategy for the age of surprise.”

Staring at the future is an important pastime for planning staffs, because the danger of being caught with obsolescent technology has governments world round trying to figure out what's coming. Thus, Blue Horizon considers many aspects of future conflicts that might not seem that relevant, to the technologically-unaware. Here's a partial list:

• 2035 Biodeterrence: Problems and Promises for Biodefense
• High Power Microwaves on the Future Battlefield: Implications for U.S. Defense
• Cyberdeterrence in 2035: Redefining the Framework for Success
• Toward Cyber Omniscience: Deterring Cyber Attacks by Hostile Individuals in 2035
• Harnessing Light: Laser/Satellite Relay Mirror Systems and Deterrence in 2035
• Taking a Quantum Leap in Cyber-Deterrence
• The Impact of Nanotechnology Energetics on the Department of Defense by 2035
• National Energy Security and Reliance on Foreign Oil
• Rising Dragon: Deterring China in 2035
• Disaster-Proofing Senior Leadership: Preventing Technological Failure in Future Nano-War
• The Air Staff of Tomorrow: Smarter, Faster, Better
• Biodefense and Deterrence: A Critical Element in the New Triad
• Officer Education: Preparing Leaders for the Air Force of 2035
• Net-Centric Warfare 2.0: Cloud Computing and the New Age of War

It's been said that general staffs always plan for the last war. Maybe this is changing, at least for the US armed forces.  The Impact of Nanotechnology Energetics on the Department of Defense by 2035 is a PDF file that you should read. If half of the nanotech developments come to pass, there are going to be big changes coming. Nanotech has been hyped over the last decade, and people are becoming inured to enthusiastic proclamations about future tech. However, this is nanotechnology applied to chemistry: from micro-size molecules to nano-size molecules. Why? Because they have discovered that chemistry behaves differently at nano-size.

It's early days yet, but it appears to be possible to boost chemical reaction efficiency anywhere from 2x to 10x, compared with traditional micro-size chemistry.

This allows all sorts of things that weren't possible, like Single-Stage-To-Orbit space planes, because fuel becomes a LOT more powerful. Less fuel, lighter spacecraft, higher performance. The dark side is that warheads and their delivery systems can become a LOT smaller and lighter for the same-size bang. It means that the battlefield in 2035 could be as different from the Iraq campaign as the Somme was from Waterloo, almost 100 years earlier.