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The camouflage art of Liu Bolin

Now you see me, now you don't: The artist who turns himself into the Invisible Man

More images here; gallery here.

Afghanistan: torture for a pipeline

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be 'raped with broken bottles'

Raw Story: The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan... says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country. Craig Murray, the rector at the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

'I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles,' he said... 'I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.'...

Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.

Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan's natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline. 'The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan,' Murray noted.

Murray said part of the motive in hyping up the threat of Islamic terrorism in Uzbekistan through forced confessions was to ensure the country remained on-side in the war on terror, so that the pipeline could be built. 'There are designs of this pipeline, and if you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you'll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It's what it's about. It's about money, it's about oil, it's not about democracy.'

The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline is slated to be completed in 2014, with $7.6 billion in funding from the Asian Development Bank. Murray was dismissed from his position as ambassador in 2004, following his first public allegations that the British government relied on torture in Uzbekistan for intelligence.

Image source here.

Graph of the day: CO2 emissions per capita

Image source here.

Tar sands: Canada 'betraying its promises'

It's a dirty business -- the new gold rush that is blackening Canada's name

The Times (UK): Canada faces a dilemma as it prepares for next month's UN climate summit in Copenhagen. It wants to present itself as environmentally responsible but also wants the profits from the tar sands, which cover an area of Alberta's natural coniferous forest larger than England...

A Co-operative Bank study calculated that, even if all other carbon dioxide emissions stopped, fully exploiting the tar sands would still tip the world into catastrophic climate change by raising global temperatures more than 2C above pre-industrial levels. Extracting each barrel of crude from the sticky mass of sand, clay and bitumen produces two to three times as much CO2 as drilling for a barrel of conventional oil.

Most of the crude is exported to the United States, where several states are considering banning it because it is so carbon-intensive. America's dependence on tar sands is a sensitive issue in Washington, and Barack Obama's ambassador to Canada toured the mines last month and questioned the companies about their carbon emissions...

Peter Lee, director of the environmental group Global Forest Watch Canada, said: 'There is no place for oil sands in a low-carbon future. Canada is ignoring its global responsibility and betraying its promises. If we can't get it right in Canada, one of the world's richest countries, how can we expect developing countries to reduce their emissions?'

Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at Victoria University, British Columbia, and contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: 'If we burn the tar sands, we are effectively saying we don't owe anything to future generations.'

Image source here.

Africa and Arabia splitting, new sea on the way

Giant crack in Africa may create a new ocean

Study: Volcanic boundaries in Ethiopia may break apart in large sections

LiveScience.com: A 35-mile [56km] rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm. The crack, 20 feet [6m] wide in spots, opened in 2005... A new study involving an international team of scientists and reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds the processes creating the rift are nearly identical to what goes on at the bottom of oceans, further indication a sea is in the region's future. The same rift activity is slowly parting the Red Sea...

The rift tore open along its entire length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began 'unzipping' the rift in both directions...

The result shows that highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of in bits, as the leading theory held. And such sudden large-scale events on land pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events...

The African and Arabian plates meet in the remote Afar desert of Northern Ethiopia and have been spreading apart in a rifting process -- at a speed of less than 1 inch [2.5cm] per year -- for the past 30 million years. This rifting formed the 186-mile [300km] Afar depression and the Red Sea. The thinking is that the Red Sea will eventually pour into the new sea in a million years or so. The new ocean would connect to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, an arm of the Arabian Sea between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia in eastern Africa.

Image source here and here.

'It doesn't matter who the president is'

Canadians still 'distrust' United States

Canadian Press: Canadians are no more loving of the United States under its current leadership than during George W. Bush's presidency... But they do like President Barack Obama a whole lot more than his predecessor, said the Historica Dominion Institute survey... Obama was viewed favourably by 86 percent of respondents, compared to only 21 percent for Bush in 2005.

'What's striking about these findings is how Canadians have detached their personal view of Barack Obama, whom they quite like and respect, from the United States, which they still view with skepticism, even distrust,' said Andrew Cohen, president of the Institute.

Compared to results of a similar poll taken four years ago, Canadians have a marginally improved view of Americans as individual people, with 71 percent expressing a favourable view in 2009 versus 68 percent in 2005...

Canadians were split as to whether the United States is now 'a force for good in the world.' Forty-four percent agreed while 46 percent disagreed. This question was not asked in 2005.

Obama or not, Canadians' opinion of the United States remains low

National Post: Despite US President Barack Obama's continued international popularity, Canadian perceptions of our southern neighbours have changed little since the decidedly less popular George W. Bush occupied the White House...

The Historica-Dominion Institute findings, made public ahead of the first anniversary of Obama's election, suggest that Canadians' views on how welcome they feel in the US, as well as their opinions of American health care and foreign policy, are still less than favourable, particularly in Quebec...

When asked how comfortable respondents felt while in the US, only 48% said they 'feel at home.' In Quebec, that number was 33%. Those figures remained virtually unchanged from the results of a poll in 2005... Likewise, a solid majority (69%) of respondents said the difference between Canadian and American values remained the same as in 2005 or had diverged further.

The debate over health care in the US... spurred an increase to 77% from 71% in 2005, of those who thought they would receive better treatment in Canada than in the US.

Andrew Cohen, the institute's president, said the survey surprised him. 'You could not have a more popular president in Canada than Barack Obama is now, so I thought -- mistakenly -- that our numbers would show... a similar improvement. [The results] show that it doesn't matter who the president is.'

Image source here.

'Gaza may not even be habitable'

Six Questions for Desmond Travers on the Goldstone Report

Ken Silverstein, Harper's: Desmond Travers was one of the four members of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which produced the controversial Goldstone Report. Travers is a retired Colonel of the Army of the Irish Defence Forces. His last appointment was as Commandant of its Military College. He also served in command of troops with various UN and EU peace support missions. I recently spoke to Travers by phone about the report...

4. Critics have also said that Hamas deliberately inserted its fighters among civilians and that doing so increased the civilian toll. Did you find that to be the case?

We found no evidence that Hamas used civilians as hostages. I had expected to find such evidence but did not. We also found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions. Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion. Gaza is densely populated and has a labyrinth of makeshift shanties and a system of tunnels and bunkers. If I were a Hamas operative the last place I'd store munitions would be in a mosque. It's not secure, is very visible, and would probably be pre-targeted by Israeli surveillance. There are many better places to store munitions. We investigated two destroyed mosques -- one where worshippers were killed -- and we found no evidence that either was used as anything but a place of worship...

6. What other issues do you think need to be addressed?

We were disturbed by the lethality and toxicity of weapons used in Gaza, some of which have been in Western arsenals since the Cold War, such as white phosphorus, which incinerated 14 people, including several children in one attack; flechettes, small darts that are designed to tumble upon entering human flesh in order to cause maximum damage, strictly in breach of the Geneva Convention; and highly carcinogenic tungsten shrapnel and dime munitions, which contain tungsten in powder form. There is also a whole cocktail of other problematic munitions suspected to have been used.

There are a number of other post-conflict issues in Gaza that need to be addressed. The land is dying. There are toxic deposits from all the munitions that have been dropped. There are serious issues with water -- its depletion and its contamination. There is a high instance of nitrates in the soil that is especially dangerous to children. If these issues are not addressed, Gaza may not even be habitable by World Health Organization norms.

Image source here.

The world's most (and least) peaceful nations

Top 10 most peaceful nations: 1 New Zealand, 2 Denmark, 3 Norway, 4 Iceland, 5 Austria, 6 Sweden, 7 Japan, 8 Canada, 9=Finland, 9=Slovenia.

Ten least peaceful: 1 Iraq, 2 Afghanistan, 3 Somalia, 4 Israel, 5 Sudan, 6 Democratic Republic of the Congo, 7 Chad, 8 Pakistan, 9 Russia, 10 Zimbabwe.

New Zealand named world's most peaceful nation

The Telegraph: The Global Peace Index, a report prepared for the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranks 144 countries in a league table of peacefulness. The index defines peace as 'the absence of violence.'

Twenty-three criteria on which the league table is compiled include political stability, risk of terrorism, murder rate, likelihood of violent demonstrations, respect for human rights, internal conflicts, arms imports and involvement in foreign wars...

Nordic countries Denmark and Norway took their accustomed positions near the top of the table. Britain, by comparison, was 35th. The United States came 83rd...

The report says the global economic recession and an increase in violent conflict and political instability around the planet took a toll on world peacefulness in 2008. Clyde McConaghy of the Institute for Economics and Peace said: 'Peace is a concrete aim that can be measured and valued, not just in social terms but in economic terms. There is a clear correlation between the economic crisis and the decline in peace.'...

Professor Kevin Clements, of Otago University in Dunedin, said: 'The index is a pretty good reflection of countries people want to live in... If you look at the top 20, they are all small nations based on strong welfare principles, all with good and relatively uncorrupt governance.'

Image source here.

Oíche Shamhna Shona!

Image source here.

'We now know that their deaths were pointless'

Afghanistan sacrifices may have been in vain

Thomas Walkom, The Toronto Star: Where does the war in Afghanistan go? My sense is that it is finally beginning the long and drawn-out process toward an inglorious end. For Canada, this would mark the finish of the longest -- and the least considered -- war that this country has ever fought...

It is clear that America is losing its stomach for this war. Public opinion polls point to this, as does the president's decision to revisit and revise war plans that he announced just seven months ago. Still, don't expect a dramatic about-face. Obama is not likely to announce that he has begun a process of ignominious retreat. That would be too embarrassing...

More civilians and soldiers (including Canadians) are likely to die in the name of preserving what the politicians like to call Western credibility...

For NATO countries like Canada, this has not been a glorious time. They joined the conflict in 2001 because, as military allies of a country that claimed to be under attack from Afghanistan (even though, in any real sense, this wasn't true), they had little choice. Yet this ill-thought-out war quickly became an opportunity.

Bureaucrats at Brussels' NATO headquarters saw Afghanistan as a war that could make the old anti-Communist alliance, largely meaningless since the Soviet collapse, relevant again.

In Canada, then prime minister Paul Martin's Liberal government viewed robust Canadian participation in this war as a chance to mend fences with a US administration still angered by Ottawa's earlier decision to avoid the Iraq conflict.

As well, Ottawa hoped that its decision to play a serious military role in Afghanistan's dangerous south would convince security-conscious Washington to keep the Canada-US border wide open for trade.

For Canada's generals, the war was a chance to winkle more money and equipment from their tight-fisted political masters -- as well as an opportunity to burnish the image of the military.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives, who inherited the war, saw it as a chance to further their overall strategy of shifting the federal government away from social policy toward more traditional 19th-century functions like defence.

And the media saw it as a chance to reinvent the simple but powerful narrative of heroes (us) and villains (them). Indeed, at times the glee with which the media embraced the war bordered on the unwholesome...

Soldiers continued to die, usually in ones and twos...There was no national debate as to what, if anything, these deaths accomplished. The answer, it now seems, is very little... As the long countdown to final withdrawal begins, we now know that their deaths were pointless... The war we never should have waged is effectively lost. We have only to admit it.

Image source: National Post.

Provinces, First Nations save boreal forest

Canada sets aside its boreal forest as giant carbon vault

By banning logging, mining and oil drilling in an area twice the size of California, Canada is ensuring its boreal forests continue to soak up carbon

The Guardian: In the far north latitudes, buried within a seemingly endless expanse of evergreen forests, the authorities of Canada are building up one of the world's best natural defences against global warming. In a series of initiatives, Canadian provincial governments and aboriginal leaders have set aside vast tracts of coniferous woods, wetlands, and peat. The conservation drive bans logging, mining and oil drilling on some 250m acres...

In the latest addition to the carbon storehouse, the provincial premier of Manitoba, Gary Doer, announced a $10m Canadian fund to protect a 10.8m acre expanse of boreal or evergreen forest. It was one of Doer's last acts as premier; he took over as Canada's ambassador to Washington this month.

The $10m will go towards efforts by indigenous leaders to designate boreal forest lands in eastern Manitoba as a Unesco world heritage site. The Pimachiowin Aki world heritage project, which straddles the Manitoba-Ontario border, extends efforts by Canadian provincial leaders to protect the wide swaths of pristine forests in the north. It also ensures the survival of one of the best natural defences against global warming after the world's oceans, environmentalists say.

A report by the International Boreal Conservation Campaign said the forests, with their rich mix of trees, wetlands, peat and tundra, were a far bigger carbon store than scientists had realised, soaking up 22% of the total carbon stores on the Earth's land surface...

Canada's cold temperatures slow decomposition, allowing the build-up of organic soil and peat. The forest floors beneath its evergreens hold twice as much carbon per acre as tropical forests, such as the Amazon...

Canada's 1.3bn acres of boreal forest store the equivalent of 27 years' worth of current global greenhouse gas emissions, a Greenpeace study found. The destruction of those forests, scientists warn, would be like setting off a massive 'carbon bomb' because of the sudden release of emissions.

Image source here.

Portrait of a redwood

Biggest, Tallest Tree Photo Ever

At least 1,500 years old, this 300-foot giant in California's Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park has the most complex crown ever mapped (Michael Nichols/National Geographic)

Here's a video (also here) about the making of the photo; it took three cameras, a team of scientists, a robotic dolly, a gyroscope, an 83-photo composite and a lot of patience.

More photos here:

Redwoods: The Super Trees

Interactive page on range and lifespan here:

Redwoods: Living Giants

Two destinations: peace or failure

Obama's Choice

Failed War President or the Prince of Peace?

Nick Turse, TomDispatch: The US military is unquestionably powerful and has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to mete out tremendous amounts of destruction and death. From Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia to Iraq and Afghanistan, enemy fighters and unfortunate civilians, military base camps and people's homes have been laid waste by US forces in decade after decade of conflict.

Yet sealing the deal has been another matter entirely. Victory has repeatedly slipped through the fingers of American presidents, no matter how much technology and ordnance has been unleashed on the poor, sometimes pre-industrial populations of America's war zones...

More than 100 years after their early counterinsurgency efforts on two tiny islands in the Philippines, US troops are still dying there at the hands of Muslim guerillas. More than 50 years later, the US still garrisons the southern part of the Korean peninsula as a result of a stalemate war and a peace as yet unmade. More recently, the American experience has included outright defeat in Vietnam, failures in Laos and Cambodia; debacles in Lebanon and Somalia; a never-ending four-president-long war in Iraq; and almost a decade of wheel-spinning in Afghanistan without any sign of success, no less victory. What could make the limits of American power any clearer?

The record should be as sobering as it is dismal, while the costs to the peoples in those countries are as appalling as they are unfathomable to Americans. The blood and futility of this American past ought to be apparent to Nobel Peace Prize-winner Obama, even if his predecessors have been incredibly resistant to clear-eyed assessments of American power or the real consequences of US wars.

Two paths stretch out before this first-year president. Two destinations beckon: peace or failure.

Image source here.