Doomsday Clock Advances We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices. North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed U.S. emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth.

As in past deliberations, we have examined other human-made threats to civilization. We have concluded that the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause drastic harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival.

This deteriorating state of global affairs leads the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists--in consultation with a Board of Sponsors that includes 18 Nobel laureates--to move the minute hand of the “Doomsday Clock” from seven to five minutes to midnight. The Bulletin

Where's the outrage? A real antiwar movement would end our Iraq disaster. But the middle class doesn't care enough to protest, so the kids who go to community college will keep dying.

So now we wait for the end. The man who led America into the most disastrous war in its history has run out of tricks, out of troops and out of time. It is no longer a question of whether George W. Bush's presidency will officially die, but when -- and how many more Americans will have to die before it does.

We find ourselves, almost four years into the Iraq war, in a very strange situation. What do you do when it has become obvious that the leader of your country is -- there is no kinder way to put this -- a delusional fool? And that his weird fantasy war is hopelessly and irretrievably lost? Apparently, you just wait.

... there is no significant antiwar movement. And there isn't going to be one unless Bush completely loses it and decides to attack Iran. (Insane as this idea is, Bush might see it as the only way to simultaneously destroy what he regards as a Nazi-like threat and save his shattered presidency.) This isn't Vietnam, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest. This is the new, post-draft America, where a subclass of poorly paid professional warriors does the bidding of a power elite. With some notable exceptions, Cindy Sheehan being the most famous, the warriors and their families, those who pay the price, do not protest. And the rest of the country, not facing death or the death of immediate family members, doesn't care enough to.

The sad truth is that America is not one nation. We may not be Iraq, breaking up in hatred and a primeval battle for power, but the fissures are deep. There is one America that fights, and another America that doesn't. The elites talk and the kids who go to community college get blown up. .. Salon

Writings show King as liberal Christian, rejecting literalism ... King was not a conformist Christian. He not only eschewed literalism, he was a strident critic of how the Christian church perpetuated injustices such as slavery and segregation.

"Too often has the church talked about a future good 'over yonder,' totally forgetting the present evil over here," King wrote in 1952 to Coretta Scott, his future wife. SF Gate

The many faces of American Muslims American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion," by Paul Barrett, is the ideal book to enlighten a whole host of people who don't realize they need it. That includes everyone who claims that moderate Muslims haven't spoken up against fundamentalist militants or that all Muslim women go around veiled or that the religion is inherently warlike. It also includes everyone whose only response to Islamist terrorism is to talk about the sins of Israel, those who claim that Islam doesn't have a growing problem with violent fanatics or the role of women, and those who insist that it is purely a religion of peace. Salon

Archaeologists find ancient stone tools What appear to be crude stone tools may provide evidence that people lived in Minnesota 13,000 to 15,000 years ago, which if confirmed would make them among the oldest human artifacts ever found in North America, archaeologists said Friday.
Archaeologists in the northern Minnesota town of Walker dug up the items, which appear to be beveled scrapers, choppers, a crude knife and several flakes that could have been used for cutting, said Colleen Wells, field director for the Leech Lake Heritage Sites Program. Spokesman Review

Top 10 Discoveries of 2006
How do you know it's been an extraordinary year in archaeology? When the discovery of the earliest Maya writing and a 2,500-year-old sarcophagus decorated with scenes from the Iliad don't crack ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 list:

1. Valley of the Kings Tomb
KV63 was the first tomb to be excavated in the Valley of the Kings since Tutankhamun's in 1922. The chamber held seven 18th Dynasty coffins.

2. 3-Million-Year-Old Child
After years of chiseling tiny bones out of sandstone blocks from Ethiopia's Rift Valley, paleontologists announced the discovery of a nearly complete Australopithecus afarensis child (see "The New Face of Evolution").

3. Olmec Script
A stone block uncovered in the 1990s in Veracruz, Mexico, was shown to bear the first definitive proof that the ancient Olmec had a writing system, the oldest in the New World (see "What We Learn").

4. Irish Bog Psalms
In a peat bog near Dublin, bulldozer operator Eddie Fogarty found a book of Pslams, the first early medieval manuscript discovered in Ireland in 200 years.

5. Peru's Temple of the Fox Dating to 2200 B.C., an Andean templ
e was found with unprecedented astronomical alignments, including a facelike disk that frowns at the sunset on the first day of the harvest.

6. China's "Guest Worker"
DNA analysis of bones found near the tomb of Emperor Qin Shihuangdi (r. 247-221 B.C.) shows the remains belonged to a Persian man, likely a captive forced to work on the emperor's tomb (see "Worker from the West").

7. Tomb of the Roaring Lions
Grave robbers led Italian authorities to the oldest tomb paintings in the western Mediterranean. The seventh-century B.C. Etruscan scenes feature fanciful lions (see "Flights of Fancy").

8. Lost Kingdom of Tambora
The discovery of a modest house buried by an 1815 volcanic eruption in Indonesia presented the first evidence of the Kingdom of Tambora.

9. Scythian Mummy
A burial mound in the Mongolian Altai Mountains yielded the 2,500-year-old frozen remains of a blond Scythian warrior in full regalia.

10. Brazilian Stonehenge
A circle of some 130 granite blocks in the Brazilian state of Amapa was hailed as a possible 2,000-year-old winter solstice marker. Archaeology

Greece hunts new generation of militants Greek police spent nearly 30 years hunting far-left terror groups, whose aging members were captured before the 2004 Olympics. Now authorities say they are dealing with copycat militants -- styled on those 1970s radicals -- who were blamed for Friday's attack on the U.S. Embassy in Athens.
The pre-dawn rocket attack, which was aimed at the embassy seal and caused no injuries, bore similarities to strikes by deadly groups such as November 17 and Revolutionary Popular Struggle, or ELA, many of whose members are serving life sentences in prison near Athens. CNN

Warlords agree to disarm Nairobi: Key Somali warlords have agreed to disarm their fighters and join the transitional government, an official said on Friday.
The announcement followed a meeting on Friday between Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf and clan leaders that proceeded even as - just outside the presidential residence - clan gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade and exchanged gunfire with government troops. Gulf News

German Comedy About Hitler Criticized ..."Mein Fuehrer," which opens in Germany Thursday, could generate empathy for the former Nazi dictator by its portrayal of him as a comic figure who had a bad childhood.
"It gets people to suffer with him, to say `this poor guy," said Kramer,.. SF Gate

A speech that ignored the real disaster ... George W. Bush told Americans last night that failure in Iraq would be a disaster. The disaster is Bush's war, and he has already failed. Wednesday night was his chance to stop offering more fog and be honest with the nation, and he did not take it.
Americans and the world needed to hear a clear plan to extricate U.S. troops from the disaster that Bush created. What they got was more gauzy talk of victory in the war on terrorism and of creating a "young democracy" in Iraq. In other words, a way for this president to run out the clock and leave his mess for the next one. the International Herald Tribune

Al-Majid admits ordering executions Ali Hassan al-Majid, the former head of the Iraqi military's northern command, has said that he ordered troops to execute villagers who refused to leave their homes during an operation against the Kurds in 1988.... "Yes, I gave my instructions to consider these villages as prohibited areas and I gave orders to the troops to catch anyone they find there and execute them after investigating them," al-Majid said. English Aljazeera

HOW TO CLOSE GUANTÁNAMO
Enough is enough!
Join activists worldwide TODAY in showing solidarity with the detainees and their families, demanding once more, and louder than ever, that the US government close Guantánamo! Ammesty International

Peace activists target Guantanamo ... Protests will be held in several cities around the world, including Rome, London, Tokyo and New York.
Critics say the detention centre should close because it has damaged US credibility. They believe momentum is growing towards closing it.... BBC News

MySpace Refused Common Cause Ad

By Dawn Holian Iype
Posted on Wed Jan 10, 2007 at 10:32:19 AM EST

With just one week left to send messages to the FCC about media ownership, we thought we'd try to reach out to the next generation of media activists by posting an ad on MySpace.

But they said 'no'.

MySpace told us that they "won't allow that to be shown."

And that's exactly the problem: Big Media (MySpace was bought by NewsCorp in 2005) has too much control over what the public hears, sees and watches.

We still have time to get the word out -- if we act fast. Tell us where you think we should be advertising. Vote in the poll or leave a comment.

Or, help us do an end-run around the censors at MySpace. Post our ad on your MySpace page, or on any blog or website you're involved with.


Comon Cause

Contemporary Islamic Terrorism The roots of international Islamic terrorism can be found at first glance in the war in Afghanistan in the 1980's, a proxy war fought during the height of the Cold War. The Afghan mujahideen fought their holy war — jihad — with the help of the Wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia and with the help of Pakistan. U.S. support was crucial during the war where the American services and most importantly the C.I.A. managed to promote the fighting capabilities of the "holy warriors" by transferring via Pakistan the necessary logistical and armament support. Over 40,000 mujahideen, gathered from Muslim states around the globe, fought in this war and some of them ultimately provided the human resources base for the terrorist organizations of the 1990's. World Press Org

Iraq 'Fatally Weakened': Report Iraq today is "hollowed out and fatally weakened" and "prey to armed militias, sectarian forces and a [self-serving] political class," according to a study released this week by the Brussels-based independent think-tank the International Crisis Group (I.C.G.). World Press Org

The Turkish train crash MELANCHOLY is Istanbul's defining characteristic, writes Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's Nobel prize-winning novelist. And melancholy has now descended on the country's relationship with Europe. “Almost everyone I know has lost heart,” says Soli Ozel, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bilgi University who wants Turkey to join the European Union.
... It was always going to be difficult to get Turkey into the EU. On top of complications arising from its poverty, its mostly Muslim culture and its mistreatment of the Kurds, it would be the largest member, with the most votes in the Council of Ministers and the most seats in the European Parliament. Even so, the accession talks have been unnecessarily fraught.
... All this suggests that the quarrel is to do as much with the Europeans as with the Turks. In 2005 European political leaders agreed to negotiate Turkish accession in good faith, but it is not clear that all are doing so. Unwilling to admit that they want to keep Turkey out, France, Austria and Cyprus are making demands that seem designed to induce the Turks to walk away.
... For the EU, a rejection of Turkish membership would represent a huge lost opportunity. Europe's foreign policy, and its hopes of global significance, would suffer a catastrophic loss of credibility if it were seen to be blackballing a moderate Muslim country that has NATO's second-largest army. The EU's reputation in the Muslim world, which is watching the membership talks with Turkey closely, would sink, perhaps even below America's. Economist

Blood, tears and still no victory GEORGE BUSH returned to the Middle East this week a diminished figure. At home he has been thumped by the voters. In Iraq his dreams of an example-setting democracy have trickled away in blood. For all the brave words he exchanged with Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, in Amman at mid-week, it is widely assumed that his real aim now is simply to arrange a way for America to leave Iraq as soon as it decently can. Only then would the Republicans have a chance of retaining the White House in 2008. And only after it has left Iraq will America be able to restore its tattered influence in the wider Middle East.

Such, at any rate, is the conventional wisdom. But is it correct? And did anyone tell Mr Bush? The president certainly faces a daunting array of problems in the region. In this special section we look at four of them: actual civil war in Iraq, potential civil war in Lebanon, the stalemate in Palestine and the hostility of an Iran that seems intent on acquiring nuclear weapons. And yet despite all that has gone wrong in Iraq, America remains by far the strongest external power in the Middle East—and for the next two years Mr Bush will remain its president.

On his way to Amman, Mr Bush did not talk as if he felt like a weakling. He insisted at a NATO summit in Riga that American troops would not leave the battlefield until the mission in Iraq was complete. And after meeting Mr Maliki in Amman, he promised again that the troops would stay just as long as Iraq's government wanted them to. Liberty had to prevail in the Middle East, the president declaimed, “and that's why this business about graceful exit simply has no realism to it at all.”

Realism is in the eye of the beholder. The fact that Mr Bush met Mr Maliki in Jordan's capital rather than in Baghdad highlights how anarchic Iraq has become. Most of Iraq's politicians claim to want the same thing America wants: a united, non-sectarian state and an end to the violence that has killed tens of thousands in the past year alone. But with a diffuse network of Sunni guerrillas pitted against equally disorganised Shia militias, nobody has the authority to deliver. The governments that are party to the conflict, in Iraq and beyond, are several steps removed from the actual killing: all they can do is to cajole others to cajole the armed groups.

Mr Maliki succeeded in pressing Mr Bush to allow more Iraqi soldiers to come under his direct control. At present most of them answer to the American chain of command. But this will not have a huge impact on the ground. Building up the Iraqi army, which suffers badly from ill-discipline and sectarian tensions but still appears to respond, more or less, to the prime minister's orders, is taking time. “It's not easy for a military to evolve from ground zero,” Mr Bush conceded.

Another basic problem is the domestic political weakness of Mr Maliki. After their meeting, Mr Bush said that the Shia prime minister was “the right guy” for Iraq and that it was in America's interest to help him. Privately, however, the Americans are increasingly unhappy about supporting a government that does not appear to be making enough effort to restrain Shia militias and reach out to the Sunnis

Behind the scenes, Mr Bush probably tried to encourage Mr Maliki to detach himself from Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric whose followers are believed to be responsible for a large share of the sectarian killing. Mr Maliki, however, needs Mr Sadr, who is one of the few leaders to have any influence over the Shia sectarian gangs, most of which claim association with his Mahdi Army but in practice operate autonomously. The young firebrand does appear to be doing a bit to restrain his more out-of-control followers.

Before the summit, the New York Times published a leaked memo written by Stephen Hadley, Mr Bush's national security adviser, saying of Mr Maliki that he “wanted to be strong but was having difficulty figuring out how to do so”. The memo emphasised Mr Maliki's need to put some distance between himself and Mr Sadr. Mr Sadr is meanwhile putting pressure on Mr Maliki to distance himself from the Americans. After a triple car-bombing in the Mahdi Army's east Baghdad support base of Sadr City killed more than 200 people last week, Sadrist officials said that the Americans were primarily to blame for failing to provide security. They threatened to pull out of the government if Mr Maliki went through with his meeting with Mr Bush, though in the event, the Sadrists merely “suspended participation”, a good step short of a full walk-out.

In Washington, debate is transfixed on the report expected next week from the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan committee promising sagacious advice on how America can best extract itself from the quagmire (see article). One much-leaked idea is said to be for American talks with Iran and Syria about how they could help calm Iraq, perhaps in the context of a regional peace conference that would touch on Palestine too. But Iran and Syria do not feel they need America's invitation to become involved. Syria established formal ties with Baghdad last week after a break of 25 years. This week, Iraq's president visited Tehran (see article) while Mr Maliki was packing for Amman. Iraq's neighbours have their own interest in limiting the chaos. That does not make them eager to help America. And nor did Mr Bush say anything in Amman to suggest that he is in the market for that “graceful exit”. Economist