Author: Mick Hartley

That Mr Ahmadinejad’s been speaking at a rally in support of the Palestinians:

Mr Ahmadinejad called Israel’s leaders a “group of terrorists” and appeared to threaten any country that supports it.

“You imposed a group of terrorists… on the region. It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals… This is an ultimatum. Don’t complain tomorrow.”

The “ultimatum” was directed at European states in particular.

“We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbours of the nations in this region,” Mr Ahmadinejad said.

“We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt.”

Mr Ahmadinejad said Israel no longer had any reason to exist and would soon disappear. “This regime, thanks to God, has lost the reason for its existence. Efforts to stabilise this fake regime, by the grace of God, have completely failed.”

Mr Ahmadinejad said: “Even if we assume the Holocaust is true, then why should the Palestinians pay the price for it.”

He said millions of Israelis should go back to their countries of origin.

Now he’s saying sorry (via):

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed regret about his country’s nuclear test to a Chinese delegation and said Pyongyang would return to international nuclear talks if Washington backs off a campaign to financially isolate the country, a South Korean newspaper reported Friday.

“If the U.S. makes a concession to some degree, we will also make a concession to some degree, whether it be bilateral talks or six-party talks,” Kim was quoted as telling a Chinese envoy, the mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo reported, citing a diplomatic source in China.

Kim told the Chinese delegation that “he is sorry about the nuclear test,” the newspaper reported.

It’s a neat piece of footwork by Kim. It may serve to mollify the Chinese somewhat, and it puts the pressure back on Washington. It’s the same old game though – nuclear blackmail.

The Times’ Peter Brookes was named Political Cartoonist of the Year last night – and shows why he’s such a deserving winner with today’s typically incisive and original effort: Blair as Bush’s poodle.

Brilliant!

Here’s a new argument against Darwin (via):

Poland’s deputy education minister called for the influential evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin not to be taught in the country’s schools, branding them as lies in comments published on Saturday.

“The theory of evolution is a lie, an error that we have legalised as a common truth,” Miroslaw Orzechowski, the deputy minister in the country’s right-wing coalition government, was quoted as saying.

Orzechowski said that the theory was a feeble idea of an aged non-believer, who had come up with it perhaps because he was a vegetarian and lacked fire inside him.

Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, will apparently announce today that he plans to make faith schools take a quarter of their intake from non-faith backgrounds:

In remarks likely to alarm supporters of faith schools, Mr Johnson will say in his speech: “Young minds are free from prejudice and discrimination, so schools are in a unique position to prevent social division. Schools should cross ethnic and religious boundaries, and certainly not increase them, or exacerbate difficulties in sensitive areas.”

Well said. In which case, why is the government supporting faith schools at all?

d you attack villages, kill people, displace them and kill them in their thousands?”

And from a member of The African Union peace-keeping force:

“We are a laughing stock here,” groaned a senior officer to accompanying newsmen. “We are completely blind to what is really going on.”

The AU force — 5,000 soldiers and 2,000 civilian police and administrators drawn from more than a dozen of the AU’s 53 member states — was sent to Darfur to monitor last May’s “peace agreement” — a British-backed deal which split the rebel movement and allowed the Sudanese regime to renew efforts to settle the three-year conflict militarily.

The undermanned and underequipped force trying to police an area larger than France rarely has enough petrol for its vehicles or aviation fuel for its helicopters to respond quickly. Instead, hours of form-filling take place before it can leave base to investigate reports of a violation of the peace deal it was sent to monitor, gaining it a reputation only for bureaucracy and incompetence.

“They are seen as Keystone cops, nothing more than a token force designed to show Africa is taking the crisis seriously when everyone knows it is not. It is disgraceful to think people’s lives depend on such a force,” an aid worker recently told The Times.

Senior officers say they have orders to report violations, not to intervene. “If there is fighting going on, we could get harmed . . . That is against the mandate,” Major Namara Gabriel, a Ugandan, declared.

r brains.”

Scientists are stunned that a monkey can visually recognise its own species? And what’s this got to do with “pre-existing concepts in their brains”? If a monkey picks out red cards from a bunch of colours, does this mean it has a pre-existing concept of red in its brain? And out foraging for food – if it grabs a banana, does it mean it has a pre-existing concept of a banana?

Sadly I’ve been unable to find further details of this amazing breakthrough, but I did find this, from three years ago, showing that the contribution of these busy little Paignton macaques to the advancement of knowledge is nothing new:

Lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth wanted to test the theory that an infinite number of monkeys given typewriters would create the works of Shakespeare.

A single computer was placed in a monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo to monitor the literary output of six primates.

But after a month, the Sulawesi crested macaques had only succeeded in partially destroying the machine, using it as a lavatory, and mostly typing the letter “s”. […]

Paignton Zoo scientific officer Dr Amy Plowman said: “The work was interesting but had little scientific value, except to show that the ‘infinite monkey’ theory is flawed.”

Hmm. Sounds like this Dr Amy Plowman is a few pre-existing concepts short of having a clue.

According to this article in the Australian, the Chinese may be ready to wash their hands of the Dear Leader:

The Chinese are openly debating “regime change” in Pyongyang after last week’s nuclear test by their confrontational neighbour….

More than one Chinese academic agreed that China yearned for an uprising similar to the one that swept away the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 and replaced him with communist reformers and generals….

The Chinese have also permitted an astonishing range of vituperative internet comment about an ally with which Beijing maintains a treaty of friendship and co-operation. Academic Wu Jianguo published an article in a Singapore newspaper – available online in China – bluntly saying: “I suggest China should make an end of Kim’s Government.”

“The Chinese have given up on Kim Jong-il,” commented one diplomat. “The question is, what are they going to do about it?”

Hinting at the options, Chinese online military commentators have exposed plots and purges inside North Korea that were previously unknown or unconfirmed. They have described three attempted coups that ended in bloodshed. In 1996, the Sixth Field Army was planning to revolt but the scheme was betrayed by a new commander. One or two plotters got away but Kim Jong-il’s personal guards arrested senior officers and the Sixth Field Army’s political commissars.

On March 12, 1998, Kim suddenly announced a martial law “exercise” in Pyongyang and there was gunfire in the streets of the city. The Chinese later learned that two ministries were involved in a coup attempt, and that more than 20 ministerial-level officials were killed after it was crushed.

In October 1999, a company of the Third Field Army rebelled in dissatisfaction over grain distribution during the nation’s prolonged famine, which may have killed a million people….

Meanwhile, some of the North Korean elite are seeking their boltholes in China.

Xin Cheng, an estate agent in the high-rise district of Wang Jing, which is popular with resident South Korean businessmen, said many high-ranking North Koreans were buying property there.

Anjana Ahuja, in her weekly science column in the Times, quotes Steve Fuller, Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, on the subject of fraud in science:

Fuller, unsurprisingly, is a voice of dissent in a discussion of whether the race to publish encourages scientists to perpetrate fraud. The discussion appears in Science & Public Affairs, the quarterly magazine of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He does, though, make an exception for drug studies, where misreporting could cause physical harm.

Another contributor, Dr Philip Campbell, the editor of Nature, insists that the pressure to publish is no excuse for unethical behaviour.

Fuller offers a blunt assessment of Campbell’s view: “It’s bullshit. It’s not a case of a few bad eggs. I think most fraud goes undetected. And if it was detected, the pace of science would probably slow down.” Indeed, a recent survey by Nature found that a third of postdocs in the US admitted to research misconduct.

What matters, Fuller insists, is whether the research turns out to be any good, and whether it spurs other discoveries: “The validity of a work is proven by its consequences. If enough people get good results out of what you’ve done, then that you derived your results under false circumstances doesn’t matter.”

The notion of truth, interestingly, doesn’t feature in Fuller’s argument.

How seriously should we take this? Well, one clue is Fuller’s title: Professor of Sociology. Another is that he’s the guy who testified in the recent Kitzmiller trial in Dover Pennsylvania, arguing for the defence, ie for the teaching of Intelligent Design. On the grounds, as far as I can make sense of his reasons, that science is really all about power struggles (Foucault, you know), and the current domination of the Darwinist paradigm is a Bad Thing.

For more on Fuller, see this, at Butterflies and Wheels.

In the wake of General Sir Richard Dannatt’s call for British troops to start pulling out of Iraq, this seems fairly decisive to me:

The call by the head of the British Army to pull out of Iraq “some time soon” was backed yesterday by both the police chief and the governor of Basra, writes Hala Jaber.

Supporting General Sir Richard Dannatt’s claim that the presence of UK troops was only “exacerbating” the problem in southern Iraq, both men urged Britain to leave and let the Iraqis take control.

A spokesman for the governor, Mohammed al-Waili, said: “It’s true they saved us from Saddam Hussein, but that war is over.

“We believe their continuing presence makes the security situation worse. They must now either leave or stay put in their barracks and allow the Iraqi forces to take control.”

Mohammed Hamadi, the Basra police chief, said all trust between the British and local forces had now broken down. “We do not need the British in our streets and cities,” he said.

One British officer said in Basra that support for the army’s presence was “waning day by day”.