Titan is ranting loud and clear

Titan has much to rant about.   First, however, he would like to show you some nice lakes or oceans near his North Pole.  You can have a nice swim in liquid nitrogen but beware of bumping into a methane iceberg

Image of Titan lakes from Cassini credit NASA

RANTS OF THE WEEK
Titan is very sad and angry this week.  This was a bad week for human rights around the  world.  The death penalty was implemented in the United States, China and Belarus.  The time has come for enlightened people around the world to speak  up and let these benighted nations see how isolated they are in killing their own citizens by means of the judicial system.
JUDICIAL MURDERS
Troy Davis, 42, who had been on death row since 1991, was executed by lethal injection at the Georgia state prison in Jackson on Wednesday, despite serious doubts surrounding his conviction.

On the same day, Iran publicly hanged a 17-year old boy convicted of killing a popular athlete despite international prohibitions against executing juveniles, while China executed a Pakistani national convicted of drug smuggling even though drug offences do not meet the threshold for “most serious” crimes in international law.
Iranian teenager Alireza Molla-Soltani was hanged Wednesday morning in front of a large crowd in the city of Karaj.
Zahid Husain Shah, who was arrested in 2008 for drug smuggling, was executed in China by lethal injection on Wednesday.
On the same day, Lawrence Brewer was also executed in Huntsville, Texas. He was sentenced to death for his role in the killing of James Byrd, Jr. in June 1998.

Titan along with Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, without exception.  Indeed, there are heinous crimes committed, but the resources invested in executions could be better spent on law enforcement and community protection.

“The death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it,” said Guadalupe Marengo, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Americas.
“Hopefully the harrowing executions that have been carried out today will spur Amnesty International members, and other activists on to continue the fight against the death penalty,” she added.
The full Amnesty press release gives more detail.

ERITREA: PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE
The government in Eritrea has been holding 11 prominent politicians, including three former cabinet ministers,  incommunicado without charge for 10 years.  Their "crime"  was to call for democratic reforms.   This situation is intolerable and the governments of the democracies of the world should take action.

Aster Fissehatsion has been held incommunicado for ten years

© Private

Amnesty International has issued this call for action: People who want to take action are encouraged to mark the 10th anniversary of Aster Fissehatsion's and the other G15 prisoners' arrest by urging their Ministry of Foreign Affairs to write to the Eritrean embassy in their country and call for their immediate and unconditional release, or at the very least, to provide information on their health status and whereabouts.

This week we listened to Obama's speech at the UN.  I would like to have my vote back, although the  alternative was worse.  Titan and I will discuss his pandering to Jewish money (the votes are not significant) over our region, but we wanted to vomit when he mentioned Bahrain  The brutal repression of the popular uprising by the Saudi Army with tacit approval from Washington did not count for a tinker's damn compared to the logistics of the US Navy in the Persian Gulf.  To give you an idea of what the repression  involved, here is a link to the blog  of a female activist who was imprisoned and abused in custody. 

After the demolition of the Pearl Roundabout, many activists were targeted for arrest © Amnesty International

HAITI AND JUSTICE
The people of Haiti were subject for decades to the corrupt and autocratic role of the Duvaliers, father and son.   The son "Baby Doc" Jean-Claude Duvalier has returned to Haiti after 25 years of exile.  The time and opportunity have come to put him on trial for his many crimes against the Haitian people.

Jean-Claude Duvalier returned to Haiti in January after 25 years in exile in France

© APGraphicsBank

ACTION FOR WORKERS
The old USSR seems to be alive and kicking, at least as far as oppression of workers is concerned.  Of course it was billed as the workers' paradise, but we know what that meant.  Here is an action call  for workers in Georgia and Kazakhstan.  Please help out with a few clicks.

LIBERIAN PRISONS
Liberia is struggling to come out of a long civil war, but it must take steps to improve conditions in its prisons.  Amnesty International has issued a report on these appalling conditions which constitute a violation of basic human rights.  The human rights organization has submitted a detailed report with recommendations to the Liberian government.

There is a lack of adequate food and water

© Glenna Gordon

 ITALY

It is incredible  that seismologists are being held responsible for failing to predict the earthquake that devastated the town of L'Aquila and killed more than 300 people.  They are actually being put on trial and could go to jail.  It is well known that nobody can predict earthquakes and the entire process is a disgrace to a civilized nation. 

A rescuer looks for survivors in the remains of a collapsed building on April 8, 2009 in the Abruzzo capital L'Aquila. (Getty Images)

SEX STRIKE--LYSISTRATA LIVES!
A group of women in a violence-plagued area of the Philippines came up with their own weapon to end the fighting -- a sex strike.  It appears to have had an effect in Mindanao where violence has ruled for far too long.  So let's hear it for the smart ladies of the Phillipines.   This technique should be used elsewhere in this strife-ridden world of ours.

HOME SWEET HOME
Titan, Pollyanna and YandA all watched Obama's speech at the UN.  It was the only important one because we all knew what Abbass and Natanyahu would say.  The speech was a great disappointment and it tells us that there will be no real help forthcoming from the US in bringing about a real settlement here.  Obama has his own fish to fry including the support of wealthy and influential Jews in the United States.  Natanyahu is in the clutches of several forces that will not let him take the steps needed to create a viable Palestinian state in the 1967 borders.  His family, his radical wife and fanatic 100 year old father, will not tolerate giving up an inch of land.  The coalition of oddly matched right wing components has outflanked him from the right.  They are held together by a desire to keep all the land and a hatred for the values of liberal democracy.  The coalition and its ideology are very well analyzed by Carlo Strenger;   I recommend his article for your perusal and thoughts.  In the past few weeks, we have blogged about the issue of liberal democracy and the attacks upon it from the fascist component of the Israeli body politic.  The public in Israel has been inculcated with irrational fears, racism and distrust of all the world and they will probably continue to reelect the right wing.  The election of a right winger to head the nominally leftist Labor Party makes the situation every more dire.  Israel is becoming isolated and a siege mentality has developed.  Thomas Friedman in the NYTimes has given us a cogent analysis of the situation.  His article was published in Hebrew in Haaretz, but I suspect it will have little or no impact.   Friedman says that our foreign policy makers are inept.  He is too charitable.  They know what they are doing and that is even more frightening.
BET JALLA 
The four bloggers, Titan, Pollyanna and YandA went to Bet Jalla this week to participate in a celebration of Palestinian statehood.  There were many Jewish Israelis there and our presence was appreciated.  Yossi Sarid, a former MK and Minister, 
 
gave an excellent speech.   Besides the speeches, we were regaled with song and dance by the locals and in general we are glad that we went. 

WEIRD PHYSICS

As if we did not have enough trouble with retrocausality and entanglement we now seem to have neutrinos moving faster than light. Scientists at CERN sent neutrinos to Italy and came up with a superluminous velocity. Of course extraordinary results require extraordinary proof and the people involved are asking their colleagues to try to replicate. The results have been published online.

THE BOOK REVIEW OF THE WEEK is of a collection of essays by Oliver Sacks 

Oliver Sacks in 2009. Chris McGrath/Getty Images

that deal with the frailties and difficulties of ordinary people.  The book is entitled The Mind's Eye, reviewed in the New York Times by Anne Murphy Paul.
FALLEN SPACECRAFT
As you all know, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, long past its operating lifetime, finally fell to Earth and landed in the Pacific.  If any of you wondered why UARS fell, the Reverend Pat Roberston  has an explanation.
LECHERY TEST FOR PURE SOULS
Our guardian of morality Gene Weingarten has come up with a test of human lechery.  You are invited to take the test, in accordance with your age and gender to see how you stack up against the population at large.
Click as appropriate:
Females under 32 
Females 32 or older
Males under 32
Males 32 or over
Our friends from XKCD also know something of age and the stages of life(click on comic strip to enlarge)

 

Last Titan before terrestrial Autumnal Equinox

Cassini captured this image of a dimly lit Titan as Saturn's largest moon was eclipsed by the planet on May 7, 2009. Lit terrain seen here is on the Saturn-facing side of Titan. In Saturn's shadow, the southern hemisphere of Titan is lit by two sources: sunlight scattered through the planet's rings and refracted sunlight passing through the edge of Saturn's atmosphere. Stars in this image are smeared by the long camera exposure time of 560 seconds needed to capture the faint light on Titan. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) #

Titan has had a busy week as have his blogger friends YandA and sister Pollyanna.  In honor of our equinox he is showing us a picture of himself at Saturn's equinox when he was captured in eclipse by Cassini's cameras.  The equinox at Saturn happens every 15 earth years or so.  If I were wont to make such statements, I would say that he is like a shadow of himself.

IN MEMORIAM
Salvatore Licitra  died nine days after the 43-year-old suffered severe head and chest injuries in a scooter accident in Sicily. As is common in southern Italy, he was not wearing a helmet. He was considered the heir of Pavarotti and will be missed in the world of opera. We append an  obituary from the NYTimes.

Opera singer Salvatore Licitra in La Forza del Destino at the Royal  Opera House,  Covent Garden. Photograph: Mark Ellidge/ArenaPal

Ayala Zacks Abramov, a collector of modern and Israeli art who gave scores of works to museums in Israel and Canada, died Aug. 29 at 99 in Tel Aviv.

She collected works by Delacroix, Corot, Pissarro, Gauguin, Rodin, Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky, Chagall, Paul Klee and Giacometti, and the works of Israeli artists such as classic painters Marcel Janco, Mordecai Ardon, Reuven Rubin and Anna Ticho, as well as contemporary Israelis Ofer Lalush, Liliane Klapisch, Yigal Tumarkin and Joseph Zaritsky. She was certainly Israel's greatest collector of art and patroness of living artists. We append an  obituary.

AROUND THE WORLD WITH HUMAN RIGHTS OR THE VIOLATION THEREOF
EGYPT:
A blogger has been in prison since March for "insulting the Army" on Facebook.  Obviously, any protest from us in Israel would do him more harm than good, but we are posting the Amnesty call for letters in the hope that our readers outside of Israel will make their displeasure known to the Egyptian authorities.

PAKISTAN: Many people have been "disappeared" since the beginning of the so-called "war on terror" in which Pakistan has become an ally of sorts of the United States.  We in Israel are again unable to help, but the rest of you, please act on this terrible matter.

UNITED STATES: It is incredible that people will kill one another just because of racism and skin color. We have a case from Mississippi in which teen agers were filmed beating up a black man and then running a vehicle over him.  They had the bad luck to commit their crime in the field of view of a security surveillance camera.   Here is a video of the story from CNN.
  
The difference between this story and the past is that the alleged killers are being prosecuted by a black District Attorney. It is a reversion to the dark past of the American South. We would like again to refer you to Cornell West  who points out the pernicious nature of racism in society. Titan discussed this in detail in his last blog two weeks ago and you are invited to revisit it.

LIBYA: The war in Libya seems to be winding down and many embarrassing things are coming out that should cause the great Western Democracies to blush violently. The  collaboration with Gaddafi predated his so-called rehabilitation in the wake of his pledge to help in the war on terror and his renouncing of nuclear-weapons in 2004. Kudos to the good people of  Human Rights Watch who got on the ground quickly and made sure that nothing was destroyed. There will have to be an accounting for this although the establishments are already fighting their defensive battles. We fear that a whitewash will ensue. Another aspect of the barbarity of the Gaddafi regime has come out in reports of the arrest and abuse of women.

CHINA The persecution of dissidents in China is particularly harsh in the so-called autonomous regions, Tibet and Xinjiang, which are really conquered regions where ethnic Chinese rule the indigenous populations with an iron hand.  Please join this protest for prisoners in Tibet. 

BURMA Despite the release of Aung Saung Suu Kyi, the repression goes on.    Please lend your voice to the protest.

Nwanaokwo Edet killed as a "witch"

CHILD WITCHES IN AFRICA  A frightful combination of superstition and Christian evangelism has led to the abuse of children denounced as "witches" in Africa.   The phenomenon is widespread and it is incumbent on the governments of Africa to put a stop to it.

POLLUTION IN AUSTRALIA : Please sign the petition to support the bill that would make polluters pay. You may be sure that if Murdoch is against it, it must be a good idea.


FINALLY A BIGOT GETS HIS DUE
You will all recall the case of John Galliano who shot his filthy mouth off in Paris vilifying Jews and expressing his love and admiration for Hitler.  The courts have dealt with him, possibly a bit leniently.

NOW BACK HOME
LEADERSHIP AND THE BANDITS
In this article in Haaretz, the question is raised whether our leadership that has over the years primarily come from the military will ever be able to break the mold and change  a paradigm. The article discusses some of the disasters caused by charismatic leaders in the past.     Indeed, we are in a rut and I hope that  new leadership comes out of the civilian revolt that is happening now. We were reminded of General Stanley McChrystal who was fired by Obama for a Rolling  Stones interview.   In his biography posted on Reuters we are told  
"By McChrystal’s account, at West Point Military Academy he was “a troublemaker” who endured hundreds of hours of punishment drills for violating the   drinking ban. Once he was nearly shot by police when he organized a mock attack on a school building,  using real guns and rolled-up socks as grenades. Yet he was made a battalion commander, one of only a   dozen. He graduated in 1976 and two years later enrolled in special forces, where he discovered his true metier."
Indeed, one would like a creative general like him in the field, but please not in the corridors of political power.   When we look at our leadership and the foolish decisions that they make, one is tempted to subscribe to the theory that they are suffering from decision making fatigue.  

The quality of the decision making ability of our government shows up on the political scene.  For example, the deterioration of our relations with Turkey which could have been anticipated under the Lieberman foreign policy doctrine has reached a pathetic stage. The idiotic handling of last  year's flotilla has come home to roost. As Akiva Eldar points out, the effects of this foreign policy  blunder (one of many) may well create a situation in which Israel will be up to its neck in financial  catastrophes associated with the collapse of our international position. Indeed, those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. There may be no source of money to implement any social changes. Of  course, we elected these characters, so presumably we deserve what is happening to us. Israel also will be in a state of political isolation from the world, as pointed out very cogently by Roger Cohen in the  NYTimes (thanks to Yosefa who pointed this article out to me.)

Social activist Anat Hoffman, pictured in Melbourne, is taking on what she calls Israel's ''holiest cow''. Photo: Rodger Cummin

Before getting on to the social protest movement, I would like to pay a tribute to a local human rights defender, an Israeli version of Erin Brokovich or Rosa Parks.  I refer to Anat Hoffman   who heads the legal arm of Reform Judaism in Israel and has fought relentlessly against social injustice and gender discrimination for many years.  She was arrested for wearing a prayer shawl and carrying a Torah scroll in public.  It shows what sort of country we are and how hard it is to bring about change.

PROTEST IN ISRAEL Last week, Pollyanna gave a full description of the big rally that took place in Tel Aviv last week. Titan and I would like, however, to expand the coverage a bit by linking you to the   Daily Kos which provides the full text of the main speech by Daphni Leef  in English. In a related article, Merav Michaeli calls on the female leadership of the protest not to succumb to the sexist  pressures exerted both by the establishment and their macho colleagues. She makes the valid point that the male leadership may cut a deal that will obtain a few paltry concessions, but a feminist voice is needed  to institute real change of the social system. Of course, we are being told that we must not break the budget. Nobody talks about increasing the budget by having employers chip in on health costs, levying corporate taxes and charging those who use and despoil the nation's resources such as the Dead Sea Corporation or the natural gas concerns. Tom Toles says it for us too:                                         
        

HOLY GRAIL
One of the many Holy Grails that physicists seek is the detection of gravitational waves.  These are perturbations in space-time, predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Gravitational waves are produced when massive objects in space move violently. The waves carry the imprint of the events that cause them. Scientists already have indirect evidence that gravitational waves exist, but have not directly detected them.  When I was a graduate student at the University of Maryland in the 1960's, the professor who taught me quantum mechanics Joseph Weber was one of the people who devoted their careers to devising a means of finding gravitational waves.  There have been many spurious "detections" including a claim by the late Dror Sadeh of Tel Aviv University to have fount them in seismic records.  The book review for this week Gravity's Ghost: Scientific Discovery in the Twenty-First Century, Harry Collins, 2010 University of Chicago Press £22.50/$35.00hb 200pp  describes the history of this search.  Collins has followed it for four decades.  The review is in Physics World  and we hope you find it interesting.

In the absence of Gene Weingarten we look elsewhere for humor

Of course, we could not let you go off without some pearls of new knowledge from Andy Borowitz on the Republican Party and politics in America and a few goodies from  Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal who give us a good take on Creationism

                                                                                                  
and on the Catholic Church:

                        
and on quantum mechanics