Daily Report

Iran: "surge" is "vicious cycle"

Words of wisdom from an Iranian diplomat. Imagine. From the Chicago Tribune, March 11 (emphasis added):

BAGHDAD -- The United States and Iran traded blame for the violence engulfing Iraq at a conference of Iraq's neighbors Saturday that was hailed as a first step toward resolving the building tensions between the decades-old rivals.

Dalai Lama: continue struggle for Tibet autonomy

Via Save Tibet, dated March 10:

The Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the Forty-Eighth Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising
On the occasion of the forty-eighth anniversary of the Tibetan people’s peaceful uprising in Lhasa in 1959, I offer my prayers and tribute to all those Tibetans who have suffered and sacrificed their lives for the cause of the Tibetan people. I also express my solidarity with those who are presently suffering repression and imprisonment.

Tibetans march in NYC

From Phayul.com, March 11 (links added):

NEW YORK - As the Tibetans all over the world commemorate the 48th Tibetan National Uprising day hundreds of Tibetans walked with pro-independence banners, placards and Tibetan national flags in the heart of New York city. Students for a Free Tibet, regional Tibetan Youth Congress chapters of New York and New Jersey led the rally which began from Brooklyn this morning.

Russia: anti-"black" pogrom —again

From Ria Novosti, March 9:

PETROZAVODSK — One man was killed in a brawl between locals and migrants from the Caucasus in northwestern Russia in the early hours of Friday, local police said.

Algeria: Islamist insurgency back on?

Abu Abduallah Ahmad, financial officer of the so-called "al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb," confirmed to AlJazeera's Morocco office that his group was responsible for two attacks in Algeria over the March 3-4 weekend that killed seven police and four Russian gas pipeline workers. Said Ahmad: "We, al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, claim responsibility for the bombing of the bus of the Russians, who fight Islam and its followers and our brothers in Chechnya. We ask the Muslim Algerian people, to keep away from the infidels and tyrant posts to avoid future attacks."

New coalition bridges Iraq war, climate change

From No War, No Warming:

Fight Climate Change, Not Wars for Oil!
It’s time to bridge the divide between the peace movement and the climate action movement. For far too long, our groups have been working on one or the other of these issues, but now is the time to acknowledge the ways in which these issues are linked and the need for people throughout the world to take action to end both war and climate change!

New technology outsmarting "peak oil"?

Three weeks ago, the New York Times told us in a front-page story that there is more oil in Iraq than we ever dreamed of. Now comes another front-page story telling us that reserve estimates for the United States—and everywhere else—have been dramatically upwards revised, due to new advances in extraction technology. Exxon and Chevron are already using the technology to pump thousands of barrels a day out of fields that had pretty much been considered spent a few years ago from Texas to Indonesia. This is a clear blow aimed at the "peak oil" theorists. Oil prices have been falling modestly in recent days (almost down to $60/barrel at the moment, Bloomberg says), and the Times might want to help that trend along. But the development of the new technology was itself spurred by high prices (so much for "objective" science), which were in part driven by "peak oil" fears. Which deepens our suspicions that the "peak oil" hysteria was instrumented by the oil industry all along.... Here are the relevant excerpts from the story, "Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells" by Jad Mouawad, New York Times, March 5 (links added):

NYC: real sentence in "fictitious" terror plot

Now they are openly calling some of these increasingly specious terror conspiracies "fictitious," which they certainly are. Two guys are getting sent up the river for a plot hatched by an FBI informant, which had no independent basis in reality. Can anyone explain to us why this does not constitute entrapment? Does anyone else out there grasp how far down the slippery slope we have slid towards the Orwellian concept of "thought crime"? From the New York Times, March 8:

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