The United Nations said today it would launch an appeal for emergency flood aid in Sri Lanka as rescue efforts were mounted to reach those marooned. As many as 390,000 people have been driven from their homes and at least 3,744 houses have been destroyed, according to the country's disaster management centre.

The death toll continued to rise as flooding swamped areas in the east of the country, leaving hundreds of people homeless. At least 37 people had been confirmed dead by this afternoon, and the cost of the floods has been estimated at £315m.

Medical units have been sent to the area to help those who have sought shelter in crowded relief camps. The government sent military helicopters to distribute aid and used transport aircraft to move aid from the capital, Colombo. However, only six tonnes of aid was moved yesterday, according to the country's Daily Mirror newspaper.

Four camps have been set up to help flood victims and reports said troops had been deployed to distribute food and medical supplies. India sent a plane loaded with food supplies as well as blankets and water purification tablets. The US said it was sending aid and has supplied boats to rescue the stranded and distribute bottled water, cooking materials and tarpaulins. The floods followed heavy rainfall in the east of the country.

The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal. Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own.

Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.

“To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”

PressTV: Stuxnet, US-Israeli bid against Iran

NO ….. I don’t mean Jonathan Pollard! I’m talking about Jonathan Pollak, one of the first (Jewish) victims of Israeli fascism. Riding a bike through the streets of Tel Aviv in protest against the atrocities being committed in Gaza is the ‘crime’ he is guilty of…. see

BIKE RIDE AGAINST GAZA WAR ENDS IN PRISON.

Early last week Jonathan began serving his three month sentence. Let him know he is in your thoughts. Let him know he acted for all men of conscience and is not alone. Snail mail is the only way to reach him ….. he will be more than happy to hear from you. His address:

Jonathan Pollak
Hermon Prison, NS Wing
P.O Box 4011
Maghar 14930
Israel

He will disclose the details of 'massive potential tax evasion' before he flies home to stand trial over his actions. The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion – will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland. British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London. Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians". Elmer, who after his press conference will return to Switzerland from exile in Mauritius to face trial, is a former chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands and employee of the powerful Julius Baer bank, which accuses him of stealing the information.

Back in the days of the Shoah, one of the slogans of the Jew haters was: “Jews to the Ovens.” Now, it causes me anguish to say, we have Israeli Orthodox rabbis saying the same about the Palestinians.

Thanks to Cicero for pointing me to a shocking passage in an Israeli Orthodox “family magazine,” Fountains of Salvation, which suggests that Israel will create death camps for Palestinians in order to wipe them out like Amalek. The article attacks Israeli rabbis who dispute the letter recently circulated from pro-settler extremist rabbis which urged that no Israeli Jew rent apartments or homes to Israeli Palestinians. It chided them for being “politically correct” and refusing to do their jobs and educate the populace in the true path of Torah (which is presumably to hate Palestinians).

The last paragraph (page 4 of the original) though is the whopper:

It will be interesting to see whether they leave the assembly of the Amalekites [Palestinians] in extermination camps to others, or whether they will declare that wiping out Amalek is no longer [historically] relevant. Only time will tell…

A few words of explanation. There is a Biblical command for Jews to wipe out Amalek because of the viciousness with which that people attacked Israelites. Essentially, this is a Jewish call to commit genocide against Amalek. We should note that the Bible records such Jewish campaigns against other tribes as well (Moabites, Jebusites) and no doubt others did the same to their enemies. Rabbis throughout the ages have allegorized the reference to Amalek to connote any sworn enemy of the Jewish people from Hitler to Barack Obama (yes, prominent American Orthodox Jews wrote such garbage before the last election). But this is the first time I’ve ever read any Orthodox publication calling for committing genocide against Palestinians.

Pro-Palestinian groups want Kadima leader arrested for her role in the Gaza war two years ago, South African media outlets report; Livni due to visit South Africa next week. The Media Review Network and the Palestine Solidarity Alliance are seeking to secure an arrest warrant in South Africa for Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni, who is due to visit that country next week, Channel 10 reported citing South African media outlets. The South African groups allege that Livni is guilty of war crimes due to her role in Israel's three-week offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-09, when Livni was foreign minister in the government of Ehud Olmert.

"We have now been informed that Livni has been invited to this country and have therefore instructed our legal team to take all necessary measures to secure an arrest warrant," MRN chief Iqbal Jassat was quoted as saying. "Our decision is based on the fact that South Africa is a signatory to the Rome statutes which obligates all member states to honor their responsibility in the prosecution of war criminals."

Livni was invited to South Africa by the local Jewish community to give a number of speeches and hold meetings in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

To recap on Albright’s sociopathic admission:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it. –60 Minutes (5/12/96)

The disgraceful US sanctions and its successive wars of plunder and aggression against Iraq have been highlighted through Wikileaks’ publication of the relevant cable chronicling April Glaspie’s duplicitous ‘Green Light’ to Saddam. A year after the deranged Albright made her appalling statement, she was confirmed by the US Senate as Clinton’s Secretary of State.

"We want all the information to be above the table so the press is not restricted and the truth is reflected in the history books. These principles, are in essence, our philosophy." -Julian Assange (translated)

Today, the Dutch news organization NOS.nl posted a segment of their interview with Julian Assange. In this brief segment, Mr. Assange elaborates on the philosophy behind the release of several cables concerning Afghanistan troop deployment from the Netherlands. According to the website, the full interview will be posted later today, at which time we will provide an update.

Patrick O’Connor: WikiLeaks cables reveal secret ties between Rudd coup plotters and US embassy

"Stochastic Terrorism: Triggering the shooters." (via here; more on 'Becking'):

"Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. This is what occurs when Bin Laden releases a video that stirs random extremists halfway around the globe to commit a bombing or shooting. This is also the term for what Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, and others do. And this is what led directly and predictably to a number of cases of ideologically-motivated murder similar to the Tucson shootings.

Update: the mechanism spelled out. (This update is to resolve some ambiguity.) The person who actually plants the bomb or assassinates the public official is not the stochastic terrorist, they are the "missile" set in motion by the stochastic terrorist. The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media as their means of setting those "missiles" in motion.

Here's the mechanism spelled out concisely: The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to commit violent acts. One or more unstable people responds to the incitement by becoming a lone wolf and committing a violent act. While their action may have been statistically predictable (e.g. "given the provocation, someone will probably do such-and-such"), the specific person and the specific act are not predictable (yet). The stochastic terrorist then has plausible deniability: "Oh, it was just a lone nut, nobody could have predicted he would do that, and I'm not responsible for what people in my audience do." The lone wolf who was the "missile" gets captured and sentenced to life in prison, while the stochastic terrorist keeps his prime time slot and goes on to incite more lone wolves. Further, the stochastic terrorist may be acting either negligently or deliberately, or may be in complete denial of their impact, just like a drunk driver who runs over a pedestrian without even realizing it. Finally, there is no conspiracy here: merely the twisted acts of individuals who are promoting extremism, who get access to national media in which to do it, and the rest follows naturally just as an increase in violent storms follows from an increase in average global temperature."

There actually is a conspiracy - Murdoch and the Koch brothers know exactly what is going on, and what the consequences will be, and they seek those consequences.

A small predator that hunted in South America 230 million years ago represents one of the earliest-known dinosaurs and foreshadowed later meat-eating beasts like Tyrannosaurus rex, according to scientists from Argentina and the United States.

In findings published on Friday in the journal Science, they described the discovery of a dinosaur called Eodromaeus, meaning "dawn runner."

It was a modest creature -- measuring about 4 feet long and weighing only 10 to 15 pounds (4.5 to 6.8 kg) -- that walked on two legs and possessed a long neck and tail, sharp claws and saber-shaped teeth.

But the scientists said it paved the way for some true monsters like T. rex. Tyrannosaurus, which lived at the very end of the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, approached 50 feet in length and weighed about 6 tonnes. The scientists found the fossilized remains of Eodromaeus in Argentina's "Valley of the Moon," a region that has provided a glimpse into some of the earliest days of the dinosaurs during the Triassic period.