BBC Monitoring reports on a March 14 story on the website of the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat, "Libya hints at [possibility of] expelling the Palestinians under the pretext of combating settlement in the diaspora":

The Palestinians have expressed surprise at Libya's remarks of the possibility of expelling thousands of Palestinian residents under the pretext of combating settlement, and called on Col [Mu'ammar] al-Qadhafi to refrain from that [measure].

Talk about hideous historical ironies. Ammar Alwan writes for Reuters, March 16:

TANAF, Iraq - Hameda Um Firas has lived most of her 70-odd years as a refugee -- now she is stranded in a tent again at Iraq's border with Syria where hundreds of Palestinians have fled to escape violence in Baghdad.

From AP, March 16:

NORTHAMPTON - Maha Ghosananda, a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated monk who rebuilt Buddhism in Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, has died.

The Bush administration has announced a new $750 million aid package for development and security in Pakistan's northwest, where the tribal areas are thought to be a staging ground for Islamist militant attacks both into Afghanistan and increasingly within Pakistan. Islamabad will be pleased by the failure of a measure pushed by US senators Joe Biden and John Kerry, which would have made demonstrated progress on democratic reform and gains against the Islamists a criteria for future military aid. A similar measure is still pending in the House. (Madrid11.net, Dawn, March 16)

The Hungarians seem to be in something of a Cold War time-warp. It is good to see them protesting their corrupt, self-serving Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, but they seem to be so conditioned by two generations of Soviet domination that they are mis-reading what he represents. We have noted that in China, critics and dissidents too often employ anachronistic anti-communist rhetoric, even as the "People's Republic" embraces the most savage capitalism. Similarly, the Hungarian protesters call Gyurcsany a "communist pig" because he "became a millionaire courtesy of property deals struck in the early years of privatization"—in other words, for being a successful and unscrupulous capitalist!

More sinister propaganda on the New York Times op-ed page March 16, this time from Russell L. Schweickart, a former Apollo astronaut and chairman of the B612 Foundation, "which promotes efforts to alter the orbits of asteroids." Entitled "The Sky is Falling. Really.," the piece warns that there is a one-in-45,000 chance (gasp!) that an 850-foot asteroid called Apophis could collide with the Earth "with catastrophic consequences" on April 13, 2036. As we have noted before, these supposed efforts to save the Earth from rogue asteroids are really a transparent ploy to find a new rationale for nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era. It seems to us nuclear weapons have far greater potential to destroy the planet than a rogue asteroid. Talk about creating what you fear!

As we have argued before, the paradigmatic metaphor for the global struggle is jihad against the robots: equally anti-human, exterminationist forces battling for control of the Earth—one zealous to the point of insatiable bloodlust, the other sterile and devoid of all emotion. Who's side will you be on? Who will ultimately win? Will our grandchildren be living under the tyranny of fundamentalism or the tyranny of robots? Or is a human alternative still possible? The skepticism expressed by some scientists in this account is a little comforting. From the BBC, March 16, emphasis and link added:

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, purportedly the highest-ranking al-Qaeda operative in US custody, has now confessed to being "responsible for the 9-11 operation from A to Z," as well as being the mastermind of the 1993 WTC attack, Richard Reid's attempted shoe-bombing, the Daniel Pearl slaying, and a slew of planned attacks on such targets as Chicago's Sears Building—although given the notorious interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay, we are skeptical as to the veracity of these allegations. However, his statement sheds much light on al-Qaeda's worldview—and its appeal in the Third World. From the International Herald Tribune, March 14, emphasis and link added: