Heart Of Darkness  

The BBC reports there has been a massacre of chinese oil workers in Ethiopia near the Somali border.

Rebel gunmen have killed at least 74 people in an attack on an oil field in Ethiopia's remote Somali region, the Ethiopian government says. Sixty-five Ethiopians and nine Chinese oil workers were killed, while seven Chinese were also taken captive in the incident, an official said. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi called it a cold-blooded "massacre".

A spokesman for a separatist group, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, said it had launched the attack. The clashes took place at an oil field in Abole, a small town about 120km (75 miles) from the regional capital, Jijiga. ...

In recent years, China has been working to increase its influence and investment in Africa as it looks to secure energy supplies for the future. The Somali region - known locally as the Ogaden - is known for its often violent clan politics, the BBC's Amber Henshaw reports from Addis Ababa.

The ONLF has in the past made threats against foreign companies working with the Ethiopian government to exploit the region's natural resources. The ONLF has been waging a low-level insurgency with the aim of breaking away from Ethiopia. The incident will also step up tensions in the region, which borders Somalia - where there are often clashes between Ethiopian troops and Islamists, our correspondent adds.

Grist has some comments:

A story unfolding at press time gives a taste of that global energy-security issue everyone's worried about: according to news reports, gunmen attacked an oil field in eastern Ethiopia run by a Chinese company, killing 65 local workers and nine Chinese workers, and taking seven Chinese hostages. Xu Shuang, acting manager of the Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, reported that the gunmen took control of the oil field after a 50-minute shootout with 100 soldiers guarding the area. The conflict is apparently tied to Ethiopia's military presence in neighboring Somalia, where the Ethiopian government has backed the effort to quell Islamic insurgents. But it is resource-related too: China's growing presence in Africa on a hunt for oil and other resources is highly controversial. Last year, an Ethiopian rebel group said foreign investment in the area attacked today "would not be tolerated." Eleven Chinese oil workers were also kidnapped in Nigeria in recent months; two remain in captivity.

Grist also notes that the mountain gorilla is making a comeback.

Good news, ape fans: thanks to conservation efforts, East Africa's mountain gorillas are eking their way toward not-endangeredness, at least in one national park. While still threatened by war, poaching, and habitat loss, an encouraging 340 mountain gorillas have found Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park at least penetrable enough to live in, according to a World Wildlife Fund analysis of fecal samples. (If we ever tire of green journalism, we're gonna become gorilla poop analysts.) The census is good news, as it shows the Ugandan population of Gorilla beringei beringei has increased 12 percent in the last decade and 6 percent since 2002. WWF's Marc Languy declares it a "healthy and well-protected population." There are about 720 mountain gorillas on the planet, with some 380 living in the Virunga volcanoes area on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. With any luck, they'll soon grow to monstrous sizes and ravage buildings in New York like normal.

The gorillas should probably be thankful no one has found significant quantities of oil in Uganda or eastern Zaire - "Black Star News" has a report on "Africa: Next US Oil War Venue" looking at the set up of Africom and the encirclement of Africa's oil producing areas (well - except for the ones the Chinese have managed to grab).

The Pentagon does not admit that a ring of permanent US military bases is operating or under construction throughout Africa. But nobody doubts the American military buildup on the African continent is well underway.

From oil rich northern Angola up to Nigeria, from the Gulf of Guinea to Morocco and Algeria, from the Horn of Africa down to Kenya and Uganda, and over the pipeline routes from Chad to Cameroon in the west, and from Sudan to the Red Sea in the east, US admirals and generals have been landing and taking off, meeting with local officials.

They've conducted feasibility studies, concluded secret agreements, and spent billions from their secret budgets. Their new bases are not bases at all, according to US military officials. They are instead "forward staging depots", and "seaborne truck stops" for the equipment which American land forces need to operate on the African continent. They are "protected anchorages" and offshore "lily pads" from which they intend to fight the next round of oil and resource wars, and lock down Africa's oil and mineral wealth for decades to come. BAR caught up with Chicago's Prexy Nesbitt, one of the architects of the US anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s and ‘80s. We asked Dr. Nesbitt about the importance to Africans and African Americans of George Bush's Feb. 7 announcement of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon command for the African continent.

"It means a tremendous amount to Africans, because African people, from working people to university elites all follow very closely everything that the US government does wherever it does it in the world. ...More and more African Americans in the US are following carefully what's the US is doing in Africa, but not enough... What we're seeing (is) ...a US military penetration of the African continent and that this penetration is...motivated by the US quest...for new sources of oil and other minerals."

In other words, it's about the oil. And the diamonds, and the uranium, and the coltan. But mostly about the oil. West Africa alone sits atop 15% of the world's oil, and by 2015 is projected to supply a up to a quarter of US domestic consumption. Most oil from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East winds up in Europe, Japan, China or India. Increasingly it's African oil that keeps the US running. ...

Past peak points to a great rant from Bill Maher on Earth Day and disappearing bees.

Here's a quote from Albert Einstein: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Well, guess what? The bees are disappearing. In massive numbers. All around the world. And if you think I'm being alarmist and that, "Oh, they'll figure out some way to pollinate the plants..." No, they've tried. For a lot of what we eat, only bees work. And they're not working. They're gone. It's called Colony Collapse Disorder, when the hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, and all that's left are a few queens and some immature workers...

But I think we're the ones suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder. Because although nobody really knows for sure what's killing the bees, it's not al-Qaeda, and it's not God doing some of his Old Testament shtick, and it's not Winnie the Pooh. It's us. It could be from pesticides, or genetically modified food, or global warming, or the high-fructose corn syrup we started to feed them. Recently it was discovered that bees won't fly near cell phones — the electromagnetic signals they emit might screw up the bees navigation system, knocking them out of the sky. So thanks guy in line at Starbucks, you just killed us. It's nature's way of saying, "Can you hear me now?"

Last week I asked: If it solved global warming, would you give up the TV remote and go back to carting your fat ass over to the television set every time you wanted to change the channel. If that was the case in America, I think Americans would watch one channel forever. If it comes down to the cell phone vs. the bee, will we choose to literally blather ourselves to death? Will we continue to tell ourselves that we don't have to solve environmental problems — we can just adapt: build sea walls instead of stopping the ice caps from melting. Don't save the creatures of the earth and oceans, just learn to eat the slime and jellyfish that nothing can kill, like Chinese restaurants are already doing.

Maybe you don't need to talk on your cell phone all the time. Maybe you don't need a bag when you buy a keychain. Americans throw out 100 billion plastic bags a year, and they all take a thousand years to decompose. Your children's children's children's children will never know you but they'll know you once bought batteries at the 99 cent store because the bag will still be caught in the tree. Except there won't be trees. Sunday is Earth Day. Please educate someone about the birds and the bees, because without bees, humans become the canary in the coal mine, and we make bad canaries because we're already such sheep.

Even though that was an enjoyable rant, it does seem to be one based on bad science. The International Herald Tribune has mocked claims that mobile phones are responsible for bee colony collapse disorder - "Wireless: Case of the disappearing bees creates a buzz about cellphones". I was always a bit dubious about that story in The Independent - it seemed too much like getting a favourite hobby horse out and delivering a good beating to it - which was a shame as I generally like their environmental journalism.

The article notes that electromagnetic radiation in general may be harming the bees (which lends some credence to tinfoil theories blaming ELF and HAARP) but that pesticides and GM crops are a more likely cause. I notice I have a reader at Monsanto nowadays - would you care to comment on theories about the GM crop - disappearing bees link Mr Monsanto ?

I had theorised to myself at the time that the mobile phone story was a PR job, which seems quite likely in light of the German researcher's comments about not even being contacted...

The headlines were catchy, the subject compelling and, in some cases, the newspapers well respected.

"Cellphones linked to honeybee deaths." "To bee or not to be near mobile phones." "German study links cellphones to drop in honey bee population; Radiation said to interfere with homing ability." "Are mobile phones wiping out our bees? Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees."

All rather dire if you try to imagine a world without honey and especially if you happen to have read a quote that has been attributed to Albert Einstein saying that if bees were to disappear, the human race would follow suit four years later because of the important role bees play in pollinating plants.

The bee story had an extra appeal for those people who use their cellphones rather tentatively because they think the privilege to speak on the move may be frying their brain cells one by one. So now, if the headlines are to be believed, we learn that our cellphone and those long calls from mom where she refuses every attempt to cut short the conversation not only are going to lead to our demise, they are killing millions of bees.

Good story for sure, except that the study in question had nothing to do with mobile phones and was actually investigating the influence of electromagnetic fields, especially those used by cordless phones that work on fixed-line networks, on the learning ability of bees. The small study, according to the researchers who carried it out too small for the results to be considered significant, found that the electromagnetic fields similar to those used by cordless phones may interrupt the innate ability of bees to find the way back to their hive.

Those searching for answers for the recent disappearance of millions of bees in the United States - what researchers are calling colony collapse disorder - jumped on the possible explanation though there was one particular, cellphones and cordless phones emit different types of radiation and what you learn studying one type is not necessarily significant to the other, according to the researchers.

"We cannot explain the CCD-phenomenon itself and want to keep from speculation in this case," Jochen Kuhn, a professor in the physics department at the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany who co-authored the bee study, wrote in an e-mail message. "Our studies cannot indicate that electromagnetic radiation is a cause of CCD."

While beekeepers consider it normal to lose about 20 percent of their bees in the off-season while the bees are hibernating, it has been reported that recent U.S. losses have ranged from 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast to as much as 70 percent in parts of the East Coast and Texas. The bees simply disappear from their hives, apparently having gone one last time in search of pollen and nectar, only never to return.

"If the Americans are looking for an explanation for colony collapse disorder, perhaps they should look at herbicides, pesticides and they should especially think about genetically modified crops," said Stefan Kimmel, a graduate student who co-authored the study last year with Kuhn and other professors.

The speculation about the bees and cellphones heightened when reports that colony collapse disorder had reached Britain and several other European countries. The British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs squashed speculation regarding Britain. The mortality rate among bees has been 22 percent so far this year in Britain, compared with 15 percent last year, though the results are not yet significant because only 2,000 colonies have been inspected out of about 25,000, said Abbie Sampson, a senior press officer with the DEFRA.

"It's not my fault if people misinterpret our data," said Kimmel. "Ever since The Independent wrote their article, for which they never called or wrote to us, none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this. Now we are trying to force things back to normal."

Technology Review has an article on "The Case for Burying Charcoal", noting that research shows that "pyrolysis is the most climate-friendly way to consume biomass". They don't once mention Terra Preta / Eprida / Black Earth, but this sounds like the same technique to me (they do mention the conference in Terrigal starting in a couple of days time though). Tech Review also has an update on OLED displays.

Several states in this country and a number of Scandinavian countries are trying to supplant some coal-burning by burning biomass such as wood pellets and agricultural residue. Unlike coal, biomass is carbon-neutral, releasing only the carbon dioxide that the plants had absorbed in the first place.

But a new research paper published online in the journal Biomass and Bioenergy argues that the battle against global warming may be better served by instead heating the biomass in an oxygen-starved process called pyrolysis, extracting methane, hydrogen, and other byproducts for combustion, and burying the resulting carbon-rich char.

Even if this approach would mean burning more coal--which emits more carbon dioxide than other fossil-fuel sources--it would yield a net reduction in carbon emissions, according to the analysis by Malcolm Fowles, a professor of technology management at the Open University, in the United Kingdom. Burning one ton of wood pellets emits 357 kilograms less carbon than burning coal with the same energy content. But turning those wood pellets into char would save 372 kilograms of carbon emissions. That is because 300 kilograms of carbon could be buried as char, and the burning of byproducts would produce 72 kilograms less carbon emissions than burning an equivalent amount of coal.

Such an approach could carry an extra benefit. Burying char--known as black-carbon sequestration--enhances soils, helping future crops and trees grow even faster, thus absorbing more carbon dioxide in the future. Researchers believe that the char, an inert and highly porous material, plays a key role in helping soil retain water and nutrients, and in sustaining microorganisms that maintain soil fertility.

Johannes Lehmann, an associate professor of crops and soil sciences at Cornell University and an expert on char sequestration, agrees in principle with Fowles's analysis but believes that much more research in this relatively new area of study is needed. "It heads in the right direction," he says.

Interest in the approach is gathering momentum. On April 29, more than 100 corporate and academic researchers will gather in New South Wales, Australia, to attend the first international conference on black-carbon sequestration and the role pyrolysis can play to offset greenhouse-gas emissions.

Lehmann estimates that as much as 9.5 billion tons of carbon--more than currently emitted globally through the burning of fossil fuels--could be sequestered annually by the end of this century through the sequestration of char. "Bioenergy through pyrolysis in combination with biochar sequestration is a technology to obtain energy and improve the environment in multiple ways at the same time," writes Lehmann in a research paper to be published soon in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

The Boston Globe has an interview with Lee Iacocca.

You have a new book out called Where Have All the Leaders Gone? Sounds like you think something in America is broken.

I'm deeply worried about this country. I think the first step to recovering our greatness is picking strong leaders. I want to get people talking and thinking and, I hope, voting in the next election.

What's the most important new technology auto buyers don't know about yet?

Plug-in hybrids. They're being touted as the wave of the future, and I think they are. I can imagine a scene in the not too distant future when a wife will turn to her husband at bedtime and say, 'Honey, did you remember to turn off the lights, bring in the cat, and plug in the car?' How do you think the auto industry can and should face concerns about the environment and rising gas prices? I have to confess that like many business people – especially in the car industry – I came late to enlightenment on global warming and the energy crisis. But now I'm making up for lost time. Automakers have to get aggressive about building hybrids. Why is General Motors building Hummers? That doesn't make sense. I'll go a step further: I think we should raise the gas tax and spend the money on developing alternatives to oil. Let's face it, finding more oil does not constitute an energy policy.

You are the son of immigrants. How much has your outlook been shaped by being a first-generation American?

I grew up with two lessons. The first is that anything is possible in America. The second is that you can't just sit back and enjoy all the advantages and not lift a finger. Democracy is not a spectator sport.

James Hansen and P.A. Kharecha have released a paper on Implications of "peak oil" for atmospheric CO2 and climate.

Peaking of global oil production may have a large effect on future atmospheric CO2 amount and climate change, depending upon choices made for subsequent energy sources. We suggest that, if estimates of oil and gas reserves by the Energy Information Administration are realistic, it is feasible to keep atmospheric CO2 from exceeding approximately 450 ppm, provided that future exploitation of the huge reservoirs of coal and unconventional fossil fuels incorporates carbon capture and sequestration. Existing coal-fired power plants, without sequestration, must be phased out before mid-century to achieve this limit on atmospheric CO2. We also suggest that it is important to "stretch" oil reserves via energy efficiency, thus avoiding the need to extract liquid fuels from coal or unconventional fossil fuels. We argue that a rising price on carbon emissions is probably needed to keep CO2 beneath the 450 ppm ceiling.

The SMH has an article on some Peruvian Indians at risk from oil exploration - I wonder if they'll suffer the same fate as the people in that story about Chevron-Texaco's adventures in Ecuador ?

Oil exploration in Peru's remote Amazon jungle could threaten isolated Indians who have had almost no contact with the outside world, if the government does not protect their lands, rights groups say. Indigenous people who have shunned contact with the rest of society are believed to live within some of the 18 parcels the Peruvian government is auctioning for oil and natural gas exploration this year.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights last month urged the government to act swiftly to protect the Mashco Piro, Yora and Amahuaca tribes from "immediate and irreparable damage" by outsiders in their territory. Peru's ombudsman also called for caution in oil exploration in the Amazon.

Daniel Saba, president of state energy investment firm Perupetro, drew criticism when he questioned whether such tribes existed, saying "it is absurd to say there are un-contacted people but no one has seen them." The government has been backpedaling ever since, talking up its own study to identify and safeguard the groups. ...

I noticed this strange tale on Reddit today - the story of a 2000 year old battery, housed in Baghdad museum.

In 1936, while excavating ruins of a 2000-year-old village near Baghdad, workers discovered mysterious small vase. A 6-inch-high pot of bright yellow clay dating back two millennia contained a cylinder of sheet-copper 5 inches by 1.5 inches. The edge of the copper cylinder was soldered with a 60-40 lead-tin alloy comparable to today's solder. The bottom of the cylinder was capped with a crimped-in copper disk and sealed with bitumen or asphalt. Another insulating layer of asphalt sealed the top and also held in place an iron rod suspended into the center of the copper cylinder. The rod showed evidence of having been corroded with an acidic agent.

German archaeologist , Wilhelm Konig, examined the object and came to a surprising conclusion that the clay pot was nothing less than an ancient electric battery.

The ancient battery in the Baghdad Museum, as well as those others which were unearthed in Iraq, are all dated from the Parthian occupation between 248 BCE and 226 CE. However, Dr. Konig also found copper vases plated with silver in the Baghdad Museum, excavated from Sumerian sites in southern Iraq, dating back to at least 2500 BCE. When the vases were lightly tapped, a blue patina or film separated from the surface, which is characteristic of silver electroplated onto copper base. It would appear then that the Parthians inherited their batteries from one of the earliest known civilizations. ...

Glenn Greenwald has a jaundiced look at the media's role in disseminating the propaganda about Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch in support of our foolish oil war. I occasionally wonder if the Pentagon's media unit failed to study Goebbels' words as thoroughly as they should have - didn't he say that the best form of propaganda was the truth ? Presumably because once you get caught lying, no one believes a word you say any more...

It is difficult to watch these clips from yesterday's House hearings investigating the absolute, deliberate lies regarding Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch fed to the American public by the U.S. military -- with an eager and accommodating assist from our excellent and intrepid media -- and feel anything other than disgust (and this is just beyond comment). But as anger-inducing as it all is, there is really nothing remarkable about any of it.

What these episodes actually do is illustrate how virtually every rotted and broken branch of our political and media culture operate:

First, it has been well-known for several years that the U.S. military outright invented lies regarding literally every aspect of the Jessica Lynch story. And the Tillman family for years has been vocally complaining about the lies they were told by the Pentagon regarding the circumstances surrounding Pat Tillman's death, the pressure on other soldiers to conceal the truth, and the crass and disgusting exploitation of those lies to serve the administration's political interests. None of this is new. So why is Congress holding hearings to investigate these matters only now?

The answer, of course, is because the Republicans who controlled Congress for the last four years absolutely suppressed any attempt whatsoever to exert oversight on the administration. They not only investigated nothing, they aggressively blocked every real investigation into allegations of wrongdoing and corruption on the part of the administration. Our government literally ceased to function the way it is designed to, because Congressional Republicans deliberately abdicated their duty of checks on the executive and actively helped to conceal every improper and deceitful act.

The only reason any of this is being aired now is because the American people removed the President's party from control of Congress and they are no longer able to keep concealed the Bush administration's misconduct.

Second, I defy anyone to go back and read the April and May, 2003 tongue-wagging, mindless American press accounts of Jessica Lynch's epic firefight against the Enemy; the severe gun shot and stabbing wounds she suffered; the torture to which she was subjected while in the Iraqi hospital; and the daring, gun-blazing rescue of her by our Special Forces, and then try to claim that we have a functioning, healthy political press in this country that serves as a check on government deceit and corruption. It is impossible for any minimally honest person to make that claim in light of those stories.

The seminal article "reporting" the Lynch Fraud was published on April 3, 2003, from The Washington Post's Sue Schmidt and Vernon Loeb, which mindlessly and uncritically passed on one false claim after the next, beginning with this paragraph: "Pfc. Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, U.S. officials said yesterday." If one's metric is accuracy, it goes downhill from there. ...

I'll close with some tinfoil from Cryptogon and the UK Daily Telegraph. I'm surprised he didn't mix in the news that another potentially life bearing planet has been found and, getting really creative, ponder the potential for someone to raise some 2012 hysteria amongst the new age crowd over imminent alien arrival...

They managed to convince people that al-Qaeda is real. Why not shoot for the stars?

How many billions of dollars would Lockheed Martin get to build space weapons to defend us from “the aliens”?

Blackwater USA Space Command?

Oh sure. Why not?

Via: Daily Telegraph:

WHEN the aliens finally invade Earth, you may wish you had listened to Travis Taylor and Bob Boan. And if the invasion follows the plot of a typical Hollywood blockbuster, they might also be the guys called in at the last minute to save the day. After all, they have written An Introduction to Planetary Defence, a primer on how humanity can defend itself if little green men wielding death rays show up at our cosmic doorstep. And, yes, they’re serious. “The probability is there that aliens exist and are old enough to have technology to enable them to come here,” Taylor said.

Taylor and Boan are hardly basement-dwelling paranoids obsessed with tinfoil hats and Area 51.

Taylor holds advanced degrees in astronomy and physics. He and Boan have done consulting work for the Defence Department and the US space agency NASA. Taylor acknowledges alien invasion is hardly a mainstream concern but says it is naive to assume that any beings advanced enough to master star travel will have evolved beyond war. “It’s a wonderful idea that has no basis in reality,” Taylor said.

Taylor and Boan plugged in what they felt were conservative estimates, such as that aliens cannot travel faster than 10 per cent of the speed of light. After crunching the numbers, they say it is possible that our Milky Way galaxy harbours thousands of intelligent alien species and that there is a “high probability” that one or two of them visit Earth every century.

But if there are so many aliens out there, why haven’t we heard from them already? That is the question famously posed by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950 to dismiss speculation by his colleagues that intelligent life should be routine.

Taylor and Boan are convinced Fermi got it wrong. Even if aliens used god-like technology to jump across thousands of light years in a single day, they would still need millions of years to explore all the star systems in the galaxy. They simply may not have stumbled across our neck of the woods yet.

Taylor and Boan started thinking about how to respond to an aggressive extraterrestrial attack during a 2001 discussion about defending against terrorist attacks. Failure to prepare may mean mankind will have to dig in and fight with improvised weapons and hit-and-run tactics, much the same way Islamic extremists have battled the US military in Iraq, Taylor says. “You’d have to create an insurgency, a mujahideen-type resistance,” Taylor said.