h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'Lifelong anti-logging and human rights campaigner Sister Dorothy Stang was assassinated today in the Amazon-region town of Anupu, Brazil with two people believed to be in custody over the murder. Loggers in the area had previously accused the nun of ‘inciting violence’, a claim her family rejected.'

http://www.guerrillanews.com/H01141

Murderous corporate interests? Murderous poverty driving murderous acts? Is there really a difference?

Bad news indeed!!!!! That is terrible, and reminds me of the three nuns murdered in the 1980s.

I would have thought that this would be a big story:

'Although scientists continue work on simulating nuclear bomb tests by computer, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Tuesday that the Nevada Test Site's ability to resume actual underground warhead detonations must be enhanced.
The Bush administration's commitment to step up preparations for a potential resumption of nuclear bomb testing in southern Nevada comes less than a week after the Utah Senate unanimously approved a House-passed resolution that urged the federal government not to "return to the mistakes and miscalculations of the past which have marred many Utahns" and that would create "a new generation of downwinders."'

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2569845

Nice that it made it as a local story. The rest of the world doesn't seem to have noticed it. I just did a google news search for "nuclear tests" and it's all Iran and Korea, two countries who have never actually tested nuclear weapons.

Scary stuff, anhaga! Have they completely lost their little glass gaming spheres?

I just got a truthout story about that, but it certainly didn't make the mainstream news media here!

' A UN team of 10 emergency health experts left for a remote area of northeast Congo Saturday to investigate an outbreak of pneumonic plague'

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/02/19/congo-plague050219.html

'A 30-foot-tall heap of garbage collapsed onto a neighborhood Monday, killing 19 people and crushing dozens of houses, officials said.

More than 100 people were missing in the collapse near the West Java town of Bandung, which came after days of torrential rains, said police chief Capt. Suciati Rahni.'

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/02/21/garbage.slide.ap/index.html

'The voice of science is being stifled in the Bush administration, with fewer scientists heard in policy discussions and money for research and advanced training being cut, according to panelists at a national science meeting.'

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/02/21/bush.science.ap/index.html

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That is so horrible!

'The word "Zimbabwean" gets Motswana traditional leader Jackson Ofentse hot under the collar.

"Please don't ever mention to me the criminals from across the border," he told IRIN. His village of Changate in northern Botswana is only 5 km from the frontier, and he has nothing good to say about his neighbours.

"Our women can no longer gather firewood in the bush for fear of being raped; our houses are not safe any more, and even our livestock find their way across the border," he complained.

Ofentse is looking forward to the day when the Botswana government flicks the switch on a four-metre high electrified border fence that snakes across the scrubland, ostensibly to control the spread of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) from Zimbabwe.

Two outbreaks of FMD in two years, which hit Botswana's lucrative beef exports to the European Union, were sourced to Zimbabwe. Jobs were lost and thousands of cattle slaughtered.

While the 500-km long fence officially aims to block the mixing of herds on common pasture, Ofentse and many other Batswana hope it will also keep out the thousands of Zimbabweans escaping poverty at home, who sneak cross the border looking for work in more prosperous Botswana.'

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=45744&SelectRegion=Southern_Africa&SelectCountry=botswana


Short-term good news for one side; long-term bad news for all.

'The family of an elderly woman who was moved to accommodate Michael Jackson threatened Friday to sue the pop star and the hospital.

The hospital's focus on accommodating a flu-stricken Michael Jackson contributed to the death of Manuela Gomez Ruiz, 74,a heart patient, according to members of the woman's family.

The family told ABC's "Good Morning America" that Ruiz was relocated from Marian Medical Center's primary trauma room to a smaller room so that Jackson could have the larger room.

Ruiz was being treated Feb. 15 for a heart attack, the family said, and died the same day after two more heart attacks following her move.'

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/050225/w022562.html

Good gravy!

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Indeed! The glories of the private enterprise health system, and for-profit medicine...

'PAUL Wolfowitz, the deputy US defence secretary and a chief architect of the Iraq war, was being mooted last night as a leading candidate to become the 10th president of the World Bank.'

Wolf among the sheep, Fox in the hen-house, the end of the world.

perhaps I should have included this: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/34480.html

Isn't it odd the way we just don't hear about Latin America (the Africa of the Western Hemisphere)? Of course, I've put a few things about Venezuela on here, and it is getting a bit of coverage in the First World (mainly because Hugo is standing up to Bush.) But there's a lot going on over there, a lot we don't hear about, a lot that can have quite an impact on the First World. Here's a little from Mexico about the potential revolution on the horizon (and it's nice to here from my old friend Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos).

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/3/2/153027/2942




(I have fond memories of napping on that bench in Ocosingo while Subcomandante Marcos puffed his pipe: http://public.fotki.com/azahar/h2g2_friends/anhaga_.html)

Interesting...

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

'"World oil peaking is going to happen," the report says. Only the "timing is uncertain".

The effects of any oil peak are similarly not ignored. Specifically, the impact on the economy of the United States. "The development of the US economy and lifestyle has been fundamentally shaped by the availability of abundant, low-cost oil. Oil scarcity and several-fold oil price increases due to world oil production peaking could have dramatic impacts ... the economic loss to the United States could be measured on a trillion-dollar scale," the report says.

The authors of the report also dismiss the power of the markets to solve any oil peak. They call for the intervention of governments. But also they rather worryingly point to a need to exclude public debate and environmental concerns from the process. They say this is needed to speed up decision-making.'

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5EF86883-8CDB-49B5-9A07-5759205A9DBE.htm

'Nazi scientists trying to build an atomic bomb set off a test explosion two months before the end of the Second World War, killing hundreds of people in eastern Germany, a German researcher claims in a book published Monday.'

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/050314/w031464.html

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That is worrying indeed...

Where have we heard this before?

'to crush someone anywhere in world on 30 minutes' notice'



I'll give you a hint:

'could be with military units and ready for firing within 45 minutes.'

The second is from MI6 and it helped get Iraq invaded. http://www.time.com/time/europe/html/030908/blair/timeline.html

The first is from the U.S. and is a description of a programme the U.S. military is working on to attain the capability to strike anyone anywhere within thirty minutes from U.S. soil.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/031605C.shtml

'Eastern Congo is suffering the world's worst current humanitarian crisis, with a death toll outstripping that in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, a top United Nations official said on Wednesday.

U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said that over the last six years the toll in the Democratic Republic of Congo's amounted to "one tsunami every six months" -- a reference to the December disaster which left about 300,000 people dead or missing in Asia.

"In terms of the human lives lost ... this is the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today and it is beyond belief that the world is not paying more attention," he told a news conference.'

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L16114229.htm