BILD, der bottomfeeder des Schmuddeljournalismus lotet neue Tiefen aus: Deutsche Geisel – Wird sie geköpft?

Schluss, der Irrsinn dieses Blattes und seine millionenfache Ruchlosigkeit sind ansteckend wie Aids und haben in Wirklichkeit schon längst die Abdankung von Takt und Mitleid im weiten Kreis seiner Leser zur Folge gehabt. Warum sonst würden sie sich täglich gemein machen mit solcher abgründigen journalistischen Gemeinheit?

Es sei, so heißt es in Berliner politischen Kreisen, BILD das neue Leitmedium der Republik. Das wollen wir gerne glauben.
Deutschland : Ruchlosigkeit, millionenfach, Michael Naumann, Herausgeber, Die Zeit, Nov. 30, 2005

Leitmedium der Republik – vielleicht. Ganz sicher aber ist BILD das Leitmedium der Leitkultur-mentalität in der Republik. Und immer mal wieder das Leitmedium der Kultur die sich am Leid der “Anderen” aufgeilt.

[Update] Jawoll – die Sau wird durch Kleinbloggersdorf getrieben! Überall werden die Mistforken gewetzt … auch bei der taz … den Katholiken … und im Presserat.
(via BILDblog)
Treibt die Sau!

What an extraordinary hurricane season! I wonder if this is the first tropical storm recorded to have hit Africa?

Tropical Storm Delta slammed into Spain’s Canary Islands last night at near hurricane strength, killing at least seven people. One man died when he was blown off the roof he was trying to repair, and six African illegal immigrants drowned after winds caused their boat to capsize while attempting to reach Gran Canaria Island. Twelve of the immigrants remained missing while 32 were rescued. Each year, thousands of migrants try to reach the Canary Islands from Africa and many die in the attempt, but usually not in a tropical storm!
Wunder Blog : Weather Underground

And tropical storm Epsilon may yet turn into a Hurricane (of sorts).

Worried yet about the bird flu? At least the Feds are on the job, now, right? There are competent public-health experts hammering out plans for a response to a flu pandemic, right?

Meet Stewart Simonson. He’s the official charged by Bush with “the protection of the civilian population from acts of bioterrorism and other public health emergencies”–a well-connected, ideological, ambitious Republican with zero public health management or medical expertise, whose previous job was as a corporate lawyer for Amtrak. When Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, recently speculated, “If something comes along that is truly serious…like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence,” many of those professionally concerned with such scenarios couldn’t help thinking of Simonson. They recalled his own unsettling words at a recent Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on government response to a chemical or biological attack: “We’re learning as we go.”
Germ Boys and Yes Men – The Nation – November 28, 2005 issue

A lawyer? A former Amtrak lawyer? And he is learning as he goes???

I dread the day the president announces that “Simonson, you’re doing a heckuva job!”

The Council on Foreign Relations held a conference on Nov. 16 in New York where a number of high-powered panelists discussed the threat of a flu pandemic and the status of avian flu preparedness in the U.S. and around the world. The intensity and complexity of the problem, as laid out in the discussions, is truly mind-boggling. The experts seem to mostly agree that we don’t know when the pandemic is going to begin, and we don’t know how bad it’s going to be. Most also agree that we are pretty sure it’s going to be bad, but just how bad is a matter of debate.

“Hope for the best and prepare for the worst” is the operating mode for folks involved in crisis preparation and contingency planning. Some of the scenarios kicked around in the discussions talk about a massive pandemic, a horror scenario where millions die, 1 in 2 are sick, critical infrastructure breaks down, hospitals are totally overwhelmed. Hundreds of millions have no power, no fuel, no medicines, little food or water. I have not seen any predictions as to the real probability of this worst-case scenario, but it is clearly out there as a possibility. The factors that will determine the scale of the pandemic are either unknown or variable. What we don’t know is how soon the H5N1 virus will be able to start jumping easily from human to human and the pathogenicity of that virus. And one of the changing variables we control is our level of preparedness.

The effects of the next flu pandemic are difficult to predict, because these major variables are unknown or changing. Preparedness is a major factor, and there is now momentum on a global scale to get ready. However, preparations are only in the beginning stages, and we need a lot more time to be able to cope with a major pandemic.

In a discussion with David Nabarro, UN system senior coordinator for avian and human influenza, and David Fedson of Aventis-Pasteur, Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at University of Minnesota lays out this picture in Session 2 of the CFR conference:

OSTERHOLM: (…) I mean, when you think about the fact that this if a pandemic were to occur today, there’s a very high likelihood we would begin to shut borders around the world. We live in a global, just-in-time economy today where this country, in particular, absolutely lives on the goods and services of much of the rest of the world. Many of our critical medical supplies, our pharmaceutical products, our food supply everything you can name that would come to a screeching and crashing halt if, in fact, pandemic began today.

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Both are depressing:
Kanzlerin Sauerkraut climbs behind the wheel of that stalling, choking, smoking dumptruck that Germany is these days. Good luck, you’ll need it. 53 members of the Bundestag from her own “coalition” voted against her. I give this arrangement no more than 2 years. This government will probably fail not so much over SPD-CDU tensions as over power struggles inside the two parties. Too bad, because Germany really could use some bold, smart leadership.

History: President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on this day in 1963 in Dallas, Texas.

We woke up this morning at 5:30 because Julia was not feeling well, and noticed the woods behind our house were burning. Across an area of about an acre (roughly a third of a hectare) the leaf litter on the ground was burning and the fire was rapidly spreading in a wide swath across the forest. So I called 911 (emergency) and within 5 minutes the first fireman arrived, and now we have the driveway in front and in the back of the house full of firetrucks and about a dozen firemen hosing down smoldering logs.

It looks like the neighbor was burning leaves yesterday and did not fully extinguish the fire. Over night is restarted and spread across their back yard and into ours and another neighbor’s. I am glad that I cleaned our foot/bike path from leaves yesterday, because the fire did not get across the path. That prevented it from getting near our wood shed, which is full of … you guessed it … dry fire wood! That might have made this morning even more interesting. As it is, it does not look like any damage was done, but I bet the guy who caused the fire feels pretty stupid!
[UPDATE: added some pictures – see below the fold]

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Interesting new technology developed in Japan: a sugar-based catalyst to replace the commonly used lye in the transesterification reaction that turns veg-oil into biodiesel:

Michikazu Hara, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Yokohama, Japan, and his colleagues have used common, inexpensive sugars to form a recyclable solid acid that does the job on the cheap. Their research is reported in last week’s issue of the journal Nature.

“We estimate the cost of the catalyst to be one-tenth to one-fiftieth that of conventional catalysts,” Hara said.

The breakthrough could provide cost savings on a massive scale, he said, because the technique could fairly easily make the transition from the lab to the refinery—if interest warrants.
Cheaper Veggie Diesel May Change the Way We Drive National Geographic – 11/14/05

(thanks, Rachel)
Production cost is one major problem holding back biodiesel from large-scale adoption in the US. We need more researchers to contribute in such a productive way to solving the problems of renewable energy, instead of sniping at this technology from the ivory tower.

After apparently reasonably fair elections, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is about to take charge of battered Liberia as the first second female African head of state. This is a very hopeful turn of events for this war-torn, exploited country.

On the other side of the continent, Uganda’s strongman Yoweri Museveni had his main opposition candidate Kizza Besigye arrested for treason, sparking riots in Kampala. The arrest comes as the country is gearing up for a general election. Museveni also had the Ugandan constitution amended, in order to be able to run again in the election. And this is playing out as a regular genocide is in progress in Northern Uganda …

The recent Sony rootkit scandal takes all that’s wrong with our “brave, new world” of networked computing: spam, viruses, spyware, malware, sloppyware (=Windows) and adds a major technology and entertainment corporation’s bad attitude about consumer’s rights.

Earlier this year, Sony sold music CDs with copyright protection software that installs a rootkit on Windows machines, making these machines vulnerable to hackers and trojan attacks. Apparently, this software also calls home – to the Sony offices in Cary, NC.

Sony is apologetic and working hard to fix what they broke, right? Hell no! They have a smart-ass attitude about this. Here is what the president of Sony BMG’s global digital business division Thomas Hesse has to say:

“Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”
Sony executive Thomas Hesse on NPR’s Morning Edition, November 4, 2005

Well, fuck you too, Mr. Hesse! Let’s boycott Sony this season.

[UPDATE: EFF shows that the EULA is just as bad as the software. For example, if your house gets burgled, or if you declare bankruptcy, you have to delete all your music. Oh and I forgot to mention that the EFF also reports that the rootkit “uninstaller” from Sony creates yet new security holes. WOW! And these guys don’t even work for the Bush administration!]

Kanzlerin Pestbeule is ready to lead Germany … in circles probably. On the surface a national consensus government may seem like a good idea to accomplish needed but painful social reforms in the next four years. That would be the case if this was 1) a government with a mandate, and 2) a government with real leadership.

1) despite fact that this “coalition” occupies 448 of 614 seats in parliament, it does not represent the will of 70 percent of the population. In fact, a poll last week shows that 75 percent of German voters see the arrangement as a “Notlösung” – a solution of last resort. Better than – uh – no government. A the same time, 54 percent are optimistic about the coalition. That’s not much of a mandate for such an arrangement.

2) Both SPD and CDU have serious leadership problems. The CSU (the Bavarian flavor and Siamese twin of the CDU) has no leadership problems. They have no leadeship. The Social Democrats have just dealt with their leadership problems and put a new generation of leadership in charge. We’ll see how that plays out.

This weird coalition represents quite well the state of mind of the German electorate. They want things to change – but not really. The fact is that Germany has been governed by a hidden “grand coalition” for a while. None of the reforms and changes Schröder’s government did, would have been possible without help from the opposition. These deals were hammered out in bi-and tri-partisan committees. If the Merkel gang had any complaint, it was that the entitlement reforms did not go far enough. The German electorate became frustrated with increasing cost of health care and disappearing entitlements, and voted for a conservative government – but not really.

Germany is entering an interesting transition phase. Several things can happen:

• Nothing much
• New leadership emerges and takes charge
• This “coalition” becomes gridlocked and no one is in charge – which will likely lead to
• New elections

Or any combination of the above.

I doubt that any of this will bring about the much-needed smart reforms of the social network and the entitlement programs.

Remember those paper-and-ink-based information storage devices with the multi-page user interface? Yeah – books! I just read Richard Clarke’s Scorpion’s Gate – the first novel I read in years – and I could not put it down for two nights. The man sure knows how to spin a yarn, but the way the story comments on current events is also quite enthralling. In his story, he basically overlays a global worst-case scenario with a post-Saud Arabian state, Shia-Sunni rivalries and Chinese nukes onto the political constellation right before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and weaves it all together with a classical spy-novel yarn. Very nice.

And also very “not nice.” His underlying commentary on the US leadership clique is rather biting, as he paints his fictional Secretary of Defense as a corrupt, scheming warmonger. Yet, he also does not shy away from letting his idealism show, as his heroes are painted in rather simple strokes, more or less as the “smart good guys who just want to do what’s right.” His characters are not terribly complex, but credible, partly, I think, because their language is so authentic. Like when he has the Secretary of Defense toss a dry “Fuck you” at one of his underlings, echoing Cheney’s insightful advice to Leahy. Also, as a former insider, Clarke is able to paint a vivid tableau full of remarkable detail of the inside of the White House and the Pentagon and various locations around the Middle East, something most authors in this genre have to research painstakingly.

Clarke’s story maintains a tremendous momentum, weaving its threads tighter and tighter across 300 pages, to a dramatic climax. The book turns a bit preachy on last pages, but then, he is making a point here and that gets a bit in the way of literary style. The Scorpion’s Gate is not the “Great American Novel” but it’s a great novel about American foreign policy and the effects of American leadership blindly meddling in other cultures with no understanding or regard for those cultures. The Scorpion’s Gate is also a fun read, a great spy novel, made even greater by its relevance and insight, and precisely by the point it makes.

Last week I picked up 10 gallons of used fryer oil from a local restaurant, and on Sunday I made my first one-liter test batch of biodiesel. I got a nice separation but the biodiesel is a bit cloudy, so there is probably some soap. Now I have to wash the stuff thoroughly, dry it and filter it, and then it should be ready to go in the car …

This is really fun – I showed the kids how to do the titration and they liked the color change “trick.” Now I need to find a plumber who will give me a used, clean water heater, so I can build an appleseed reactor.

On October 13, the International Criminal Court (ICC) unsealed arrest warrants for five leaders of the Ugandan cult-like gang the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA has for many years brutalized the civilian population of Northern Uganda, and abducted thousands of children, sometimes forcing the children to kill their own parents.

Yet, these indictments have the potential to derail peace negotiations and to give the Ugandan military another excuse to escalate the 19-year brute-force effort to eradicate the LRA. In the past, the LRA has responded to such stepped-up efforts with bloody, violent vengeance. Some see the recent killings of aid workers in Northern Uganda as a indication that an escalation is imminent. One of the immediate effects will be that the work of the aid agencies will be much harder and much more dangerous. That will make it very difficult to get aid to the 1.6 million Ugandans living in camps, due to the war.

As much as people suffering under the scourge of the LRA yearn for justice, the arrest warrants have the potential to make their lives a lot more miserable:

“This war has already lasted 19 years and an entire generation has never known peace. We are desperate for an end to this conflict. Many people dream of the day when the rebel leaders will have to stand trial for the crimes they have committed. We are really worried that this dream won’t become a reality,” said Emma Naylor, Oxfam’s Country Programme Manager in Uganda. “For two decades it has been impossible to apprehend the rebel leaders. The communities that we work with are already asking how the arrest warrants will be served. There is a lot of confusion and it’s fast turning to fear.”

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Northern Uganda has been a war zone or twenty years. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an apocalyptic christian cult, has waged a cruel war on the Acholi people, while the Ugandan military tried to crush the LRA with brute force. The situation is complicated, as the LRA abducts Acholi children, to turn them into child soldiers and sex slaves or their commanders. So, many Acholi prefer a negotiated peace with the LRA in order to possibly get their children back.

Children’s rights activist Olara Otunnu is waging a campaign to raise the international profile of this humanitarian crisis:

Otunnu in August resigned his post as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict to crusade against human rights abuses in northern Uganda.

In July, he had led the effort that culminated in Security Council resolution 1612, which establishes the first comprehensive monitoring and reporting system to protect children in conflict situations.

The resolution includes a “naming and shaming list” of 54 offending parties, rebel groups as well as governments, which are cited for grave violations against children. The Uganda government is on the list.

Otunnu said that the 20-year conflict in northern Uganda had led to massive atrocities, destruction, and infant mortality and produced an epidemic of HIV/Aids.
Otunnu Says There is Genocide in North, The Monitor, Kampala, 9/19/05

Recently, Otunnu has made a point of specifically calling the situation in Acholiland a genocide. On September 14 at Lehman College in new York, where he received a Doctor of Humane Letters degree, Mr. Olara Otunnu said that

the twenty-year conflict in northern Uganda had led to massive atrocities, destruction, rapes, abductions, and infant mortality and produced an epidemic of HIV/AIDS. More than 1.6 million people have been forcibly relocated to what were effectively concentration camps in “abominable conditions,” he said, while two generations of children have been deprived of education and basic health care. “An entire society,” he said, “is being systematically destroyed in full view of the international community.”
Lehman College Press release (PDF), 9/15/05

I think that the reason why it is so hard to focus international attention on this crisis has to do with the complexity of the situation. When a muslim majority terrorizes a christian minority, we have a scenario that is very compelling to many Europeans and Americans. But here in Uganda the victims are ground up between a christian cult and a government that is considered an ally in the War on Terror. This is much harder to explain an therefore does not lend itself to the simplistic black/white worldview so popular these days.

On my trip to the mountains, I filled up at the biodiesel pump in Asheville operated by Blue Ridge Biofuels. It’s a public pump, which is still pretty rare. Most pumps in North Carolina are coop-operated pumps that are not accessible to the public (like our Juicebox).

This pump seemed pretty busy – there were several guys filling up their pickup trucks and someone with a NewBeetle TDI getting the “good juice.” There was also a TV news team interviewing a guy about his grease car. Not bad for a Wednesday afternoon at the local biodiesel pump!
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This morning I went right back to Tsali to ride another trail. Over night the clouds had disappeared and just a low morning fog hovered in the valleys. The sky was clear, the air was crisp and chilly, just slightly above freezing. Last night, the higher peaks in the distance had received their first dusting of snow of the season (see pictures below).

I picked the Right Loop of the Tsali Trail, because it winds along the eastern side of the knoll that juts out into Fontana Lake. So when the sun peeked over the mountains around 7:45 I was on the sunny side of the trail. As I wound my way out to Windy Point, I had a great view of the lake and I watched how the sun slowly burned of the morning fog that hung over the water. It was very quiet, just a few birds were chirping in the chilly morning air and occasionally a squirrel ran up a tree, chattering anxiously. I met no other bikes but a couple of times shots in the distance broke the peace. It was so quiet that the noises from my bike’s gears seemed loud and obnoxious. I had an awesome time – this is a gorgeous trail! When I returned to the parking lot at around 9:30, there was just one other car – a guy with a bow and arrow who was heading out into the woods for some hunting.

More pictures below the fold …
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A little on-the-road blogging from the mountains. I am in western NC for a couple of days, to install some new equipment at our lab in Sylva. When I come up here I always bring my bike along. This afternoon, after I finally got it all working, I strapped the bike to the car and headed over to Tsali Recreation Area to hit the trails.

It was 42 deg F, with a light drizzle, and a gusty breeze blowing across the mountains – what can I say – a perfect evening for a little ride through the woods. There were three other guys out there, a Welsh guy who lives in the area, a guy from Asheville and a guy from Berlin. I had a little trouble with the bike, and had to turn around after a few hundred meters.

When I finally hit the trail for real, I had an hour of – uh – “daylight” left. The Welsh guy had recommended the Thompson Loop Trail, so I rode seven miles along Fontana Lake and back across some the hills. Fantastic ride! I got back after 50 Minutes, and 15Minutes later it got dark, and I was on my way back to the hotel. I think I’ll go back tomorrow morning for another round, before I head back to Durham.

It is the year 2005 A.D. and a border dispute is brewing between Canada and Denmark over a 1.3 km² rock in the arctic. Both countries are members of NATO, but they had competing flag-raisings, flyovers by jets and even officials visiting Hans Island, an arctic island claimed by both countries. Hans Island is a barren rock in the center of the Kennedy Channel of Nares Strait, which is the strait that separates Ellesmere Island from northern Greenland and connects Baffin Bay with the Lincoln Sea. No one lives there, not even penguins.

Yet, this dispute is becoming a matter of national pride, and tempers flare:

For many years, the Canadian military has repeatedly invaded Danish territory, without any respect for international treaties or laws. Therefore, Canada must be excluded from NATO and the UN, and must be forced to give war reperations [sic] for the damages they have inflicted. Furthermore, the Canadian ministry of defence should be disbanded, and all Canadian military equipment should be handed over to Denmark.
Free Hans Island

Yeah, and check out Radio free Hans Island – they even post the “National Anthem” of an independent Hans Island.

The BBC carefully negotiates both points o view:

In 1984, a Danish minister, Tom Hoeyem, caused a stir when he visited the island and raised the Danish flag.

Mr Hoeyem also buried a bottle of brandy at the base of the flagpole and left a note saying welcome to Denmark.

The UPI news agency reported that Canadian troops landed on the island a week before Mr Graham’s visit, planted a Canadian flag and built an Inuit stone marker.

Reports say Canadian troops leave whiskey at the flagpole on their incursions.
Canada island visit angers Danes, BBC News, 25 July, 2005

Newsflash: the Danes now also claim the North Pole. They probably want to charge Santa Claus rent …

Europeans appear to take the bird-flu threat seriously: Germany now mandates that chicken be kept only inside. But although Bush said he read “The Great Influenza” his administration still slashes funding for public health preparedness by $129 million in next year’s budget.

“Critical funding is shrinking just as public health agencies are being required to expand their work in pandemic influenza preparation and response,” said Dr. Rex Archer, health director of Kansas City, Mo., and president of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).
The Bush administration, in its proposed 2006 HHS budget, slashed funding for public health preparedness by $129 million — from $926 million in 2005 to $797 million. The House version of the 2006 HHS bill appropriates $853 million while the Senate bill sticks with the$797 million requested by the administration.
Health directors say HHS flu cuts are for the birds Government Health IT, Oct. 18, 2005

All the while, more and more bird-flu reports across Asia.

Hurricane Wilma is another record-breaking phenomenon – let’s hope this monster stays away from land, or at least from densly populated areas. Meteorologist Jeff Masters is pretty excited about Wilma:

There has never been a hurricane like Wilma before. With an unbelievable round of intensification that saw the pressure drop 85 mb in just 12 hours, Wilma smashed the all-time record for lowest pressure in an Atlantic hurricane this morning. The 4 am hurricane hunter report put the pressure at 884 mb from a dropsonde, and the meteorologist reported an even lower 881 mb pressure extrapolated from 10,000 feet flight altitude. This easily bests the previous record of 888 mb set in Hurricane Gilbert of 1988. The eye of Wilma during this round of intense deepening oscillated between 2 and 4 nautical miles, and the area of hurricane force winds only covered an area up to 15 miles from the center. This is an incredibly compact, amazingly intense hurricane, the likes of which has never been seen. The Hurricane Season of 2005 keeps topping itself with new firsts, and now boasts three of the five most intense hurricanes of all time–Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.
Jeff Master’s Wunderground Blog, 12:04 PM GMT on October 19, 2005