News for February 7, 2006

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Total Immersion: Virtual Reality on a Whole New Level (February 7, 2006) - Watch this video of “augmented reality!” Technology is moving at incredible rates. There is more videos from this company here. The computer gaming applications are limitless!

Washington digs in for a ‘long war’ as Rumsfeld issues global call to arms (February 7, 2006) - The Bush administration’s re-characterisation of its “global war on terror” as the “long war” will be seen by critics as an admission that the US has started something it cannot finish. But from the Pentagon’s perspective, the change reflects a significant upgrading of the “generational” threat posed by worldwide Islamist militancy which it believes to have been seriously underestimated. The reassessment, contained in the Pentagon’s quadrennial defence review presented to Congress yesterday, presages a new US drive to rally international allies for an ongoing conflict unlimited by time and space. That presents a problematic political, financial and military prospect for many European Nato members including Britain, as well as Middle Eastern governments. According to the review, a “large-scale, potentially long duration, irregular warfare campaign including counter-insurgency and security, stability, transition and reconstruction operations” is necessary and unavoidable. Gone is the talk of swift victories that preceded the 2003 Iraq invasion. This will be a war of attrition, it says, fought on many fronts. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, suggested at the weekend that western democracies must acknowledge they are locked in a life or death struggle comparable to those against fascism and communism. “The enemy have designed and distributed a map where national borders are erased and replaced by a global extremist Islamic empire.” more...

Iran presents: Holocaust cartoon contest (February 2, 2006) - Iran’s most popular daily newspaper, Hamshahri, is set to initiate a Holocaust cartoon contest in what it says is a response to cartoons disparaging Islam’s prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper. “This will be an international cartoon competition on the topic of the Holocaust,” said Farid Mortazawi, the paper’s graphic editor. The editor added the newspaper intends to fight back by claiming the publication of Holocaust cartoons is done in the name of freedom of expression. “Western newspapers published these caricatures, which constitute desecration, under the pretense of freedom of expression,” he said. “Let’s see if they mean what they say once we publish Holocaust caricatures.” Meanwhile, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a leading Muslim Brotherhood cleric, has condemned the harsh reactions to the cartoons among Muslim communities around the world. Speaking on al-Jazeera’s Sharia program, Qaradawi said: “The acts of destruction carried out by a minority of people in capitals around the world are unacceptable as a response to what European newspaper published. We never called on people to burn cars. We call on you to show the fury in an intelligent way as to avoid unthinkable damage.” more...

Rare Chlamydia Strain Infecting Gay Men (February 7, 2006) - A particularly bad strain of chlamydia not usually seen in this country appears to be slowly spreading among gay and bisexual men, an infection that can increase their chances of getting or spreading the AIDS virus. Called LGV chlamydia, this sexually transmitted disease has caused a worrisome outbreak in Europe, where some countries have confirmed dozens of cases. Diagnoses confirmed by U.S. health officials still are low, just 27 since they warned a year ago that the strain was headed here. But specialists say that’s undoubtedly a fraction of the infections, because this illness is incredibly hard to diagnose: Few U.S. clinics and laboratories can test for it. Painful symptoms can be mistaken for other illnesses, such as irritable bowel syndrome. And because LGV chlamydia doesn’t always cause noticeable symptoms - right away, at least - an unknown number of people may silently harbor and spread it, along with an increased risk of HIV transmission. “My feeling is that what we’re seeing now is still the tip of the iceberg,” says Dr. Philippe Chiliade of the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, D.C., which diagnosed its first few cases of LGV last month and is beginning to push for asymptomatic men to be screened. more...

Russia Warns Against Conflict With Iran (February 6, 2006) - Russia’s foreign minister warned against threatening Iran over its nuclear program Monday after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reportedly agreed with a German interviewer that all options, including military response, remained on the table. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for talks to continue with Tehran, which was reported to the U.N. Security Council on Saturday by the International Atomic Energy Agency. “I think that at the current stage, it is important not to make guesses about what will happen and even more important not to make threats,” Lavrov said during a visit to Athens, Greece. Rumsfeld, in an interview with the German daily newspaper Handelsblatt, was asked if all options, including the military one, were on the table with Iran. “That’s right,” Rumsfeld responded, according to Handelsblatt’s print edition Monday. Lavrov said the use of force would be possible only if the United Nations consented. The IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors voted to report Iran to the Security Council, which has the power to impose economic and political sanctions. Tehran responded by saying it would start full-scale uranium enrichment and bar surprise inspections of its facilities. Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak said Monday a proposed joint venture to enrich Iranian uranium in Russia would be possible only if Tehran resumed its moratorium on enrichment activities, Interfax reported. more...

Hamas’s new doctrine: talk to the Jews (February 2, 2006) - In the Hamas mosques of Gaza, a new message is being preached, which underscores a creeping, critical shift in thinking. Friday prayers in the downtown militant stronghold bothered little with the outrage that has consumed the Muslim world over cartoons published in Europe depicting the prophet Mohammed. Instead, the sermons broadcast from speakers to crowds laying prayer mats on dusty streets addressed a more sensitive issue -- negotiating with Israel. For the first time since the dramatic ascension to power of their radical Islamic group, Hamas’s spiritual leaders are daring to tread where their political figureheads will not. “It is not a crime to hold discussions with the Jews,” said the imam of the al-Ghabi mosque, Abu Khalid. “The prophet has dealt with them in the past on many matters.” With the head of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, listening inside, the imam continued: “There is nothing wrong with talking to the Jewish when we have to. Outcomes have been negotiated with them throughout the history of Islam and, if need be, we will talk to them again.” The message was a far cry from the implacable hostility Hamas has shown towards Israel in the 15 years it has been a militant force in the Holy Land. It seems to signal a strategic shift in the approach of its leadership that has subtly moderated its rhetoric since Hamas was thrust to power 12 days ago. more...

KGB Ran Secret Laboratories to Study Extraterrestrial Civilizations (February 7, 2006) - Russian TV stations recently aired two documentaries about UFO’s, a real treat for the Russian ufologists, a community of enthusiasts studying unidentified flying objects. The films are particularly notable for the UFO accounts by high-raking Soviet and Russian Navy and Air Force officers. Information relating to UFO’s was strictly classified in the USSR. Some of the enthusiasts who spread samizdat booklets with articles on the subject compiled from the foreign media were at times taken to the KGB for questioning. The funniest thing is that the KGB has allegedly had a special unit designed to gather and monitor all pieces of information regarding mystical and unexplained phenomena reported inside and outside the Soviet Union. An article published some time ago by a Madrid magazine Mas Alla probably indicates that the above allegations hold water. The magazine also published several stills from a film by U.S. TV station TNT affiliated with CNN. Both the magazine and film say that in 1968 the KGB supposedly took possession of an UFO, which had either crashed or been shot down by the Soviet air defense. The Soviet secret police were alleged to have obtained the body of a humanoid in the cockpit. The body was thoroughly examined in an anatomy department of the Semashko Medical Institute in Moscow. The TV station claims that the film was based on a footage of the incident provided by one Pavel Klimchenkov, a former KGB officer. According to TNT officials, the documents are a deliberate “leak” to the media. more...

Forget the Da Vinci Code … Carvings at Rosslyn Reveal Symphony for the Devil (February 7, 2006) - IT has been the stuff of speculation, and even a Hollywood blockbuster, but one Scottish man believes he has uncovered the true secret of carvings in Rosslyn Chapel. Brian Allan, co-director of Scotland’s Paranormal Encounters Group (PEG), thinks researchers into the 15th-century chapel may have been working on the wrong frequency for years. Last year, Scottish composer Stuart Mitchell was hailed a “genius” when his research led to the unraveling of musical codes embodied in 213 stone cubes in the ceiling of the Midlothian chapel. The music, since transcribed and dubbed by Mitchell as The Rosslyn Canon Of Proportions, contained notation designed to be performed by mediaeval players and was described as “sounding like a nursery rhyme”. While admitting the cubes contained “a lot of symbolism and decoys to throw people off”, Mitchell has so far kept details of these close to his chest. But Allan, who has been researching the chapel with his wife Ann since 1992, now believes the devil is in the detail. “I’ve no doubt [Mitchell] is a very knowledgeable man who knows what he’s talking about but some of the cubes were missing,” he said. “I think the true secret is not the musical score. I think what the cubes represent is something called the Devil’s chord, which is in fact an augmented fourth.” The Devil’s chord – a low frequency sound in the range of 80 to 110 hertz – was proscribed by the Catholic Church in the middle ages. It was believed that people exposed to the chord for prolonged periods of time would start to achieve altered states of consciousness. more...

Later Than We Think (February 6, 2006) - The man in charge of hoodwinking the Western powers about Iran’s now 18-year-old secret nuclear program believes the apocalypse will happen in his own lifetime. He’ll be 50 in October. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Shi’ite creed has convinced him lesser mortals can not only influence but hasten the awaited return of the 12th Imam, known as the Mahdi. Iran’s dominant “Twelver” sect holds this will be Muhammad ibn Hasan, the righteous descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. He is said to have gone into “occlusion” in the 9th century, at age 5. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war, bloodshed and pestilence. After this cataclysmic confrontation between the forces of good and evil, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace. “The ultimate promise of all Divine religions,” says Ahmadinejad, “will be fulfilled with the emergence of a perfect human being [the 12th Imam], who is heir to all prophets. He will lead the world to justice and absolute peace. Oh mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one.” He reckons the return of the Imam, AWOL for 11 centuries, is only two years away. Mr. Ahmadinejad is close to the messianic Hojjatieh Society, which is governed by the conviction the 12th Imam’s return will be hastened by “the creation of chaos on Earth.” He has fired Iran’s most experienced diplomats and scores of other officials, presumably those who don’t share his belief in apocalyptic conflagration. more...

Researchers Unlock Mystery of Layer Encircling the Earth's Core (February 1, 2006) - University of Minnesota associate professor of chemical engineering Renata Wentzcovitch, and her team of researchers, have confirmed the properties of a mineral (post-perovskite) that may form near the Earth’s core in a layer called the “D” region. The work offers new insight for interpreting properties of this region. The “D” (Dee double prime) layer surrounds Earth’s core and is between 0 and 186 miles thick. It is at the interface between two chemically distinct regions, the rocky mantle and the metallic core. The article, “MgSiO3 post-perovskite at ‘D’ conditions,” was published on Jan. 17 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The research “tells us how to better model Earth's internal processes,” said Wentzcovitch. “Proper geodynamical modeling of the Earth is necessary to get a better grasp of the dynamics of the surface. You can’t fully understand Earth’s surface motion without understanding how it moves inside. What’s unbelievable is how well we can model Earth on a big scale. At this scale, small details don’t matter.” In 2004, Japanese researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology found that high temperatures and pressures transform perovskite, the major mineral in Earth’s mantle, into a new mineral called post-perovskite. Wentzcovitch’s group contributed to this discovery by determining the structure of post-perovskite and by calculating the pressure and temperature conditions for its existence. They matched the conditions in the “D” layer. more...

Iran Already Has the Bomb (February 3, 2006) - Rafi Eitan suspects that Iran already has enough enriched uranium fissionable material to manufacture at least one or two atom bombs of the Hiroshima type. “Otherwise Iranian President Ahmadinejad would not have dared come out with his declaration that Israel should be wiped off the map,” repeating it in various versions. His efforts at denying the Holocaust in which six million Jews were slaughtered prove that there is method in Ahmadinejad's madness. “Don’t treat him like a madman,” Chief of General Staff Dan Halutz recently cautioned. Eitan’s assessment of the situation is especially important because of his extensive intelligence experience in Israel’s struggle for its existence, even before its establishment in 1948. Eitan was among those that laid the operational foundations for the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the Mossad. He is credited with numerous successes above and beyond the fact that he headed the team that apprehended Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires in May 1960 and brought him to justice in Jerusalem. He served as Menachem Begin’s special adviser on the war on terror. He was involved in the secret planning and implementation of the attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in June 1981. Eitan failed in 1985 when the United States arrested Jonathan Pollard, an American navy intelligence analyst, for spying for Israel. Eitan was forced to resign after taking responsibility for running Pollard as an Israeli agent in the United States. It emerged at that time that Eitan had stood at the head of an Israeli intelligence agency known as the Office of Scientific Relations, LAKAM by its Hebrew acronym. more...