'The Culprit!'

Unggun Bersih oleh A. Samad Said

Semakin lara kita didera bara—
kita laungkan juga pesan merdeka:
Demokrasi sebenderang mentari
sehasrat hajat semurni harga diri.

Lama resah kita—demokrasi luka;
lama duka kita—demokrasi lara.
Demokrasi yang angkuh, kita cemuhi;
suara bebas yang utuh, kita idami!

Dua abad lalu Sam Adams berseru:
(di Boston dijirus teh ke laut biru):
Tak diperlu gempita sorak yang gebu,
diperlu hanya unggun api yang syahdu.

Kini menyalalah unggun sakti itu;
kini merebaklah nyala unggun itu.

24—25, 6.11. A. SAMAD SAID

Dr Hafidzi Mohd Noor: Memperingati Nakba

Unlocking the human brain

by studying the brain of worms ...     [NYT]

Scientists have engineered two worm neurons to glow bright green if a neuron 
responds when the worm is exposed to certain chemicals.

By NICHOLAS WADE

In an eighth-floor laboratory overlooking New York’s East River, Cornelia I. Bargmann watches two colleagues manipulate a microscopic roundworm. They have trapped it in a tiny groove on a clear plastic chip, with just its nose sticking into a channel. Pheromones — signaling chemicals produced by other worms — are being pumped through the channel, and the researchers have genetically engineered two neurons in the worm’s head to glow bright green if a neuron responds.

How the West is haunted by Erdogan

An article from the Newsweek magazine:

The Mideast’s Next Dilemma With Turkey flexing its muscles, we may soon face a revived Ottoman Empire. by Niall Ferguson Newsweek  June 19, 2011 Tolga Bozoglu / EPA-Landov On one issue the Republican contenders and the president they wish to replace are in agreement: the United States should reduce its military presence in the Greater Middle East. The preferred arguments are that America cannot afford to be engaged in combat operations in far-flung countries and that such operations are futile anyway. The question no one wants to answer is what will come after the United States departs. The “happily ever after” scenario is that one country after another will embrace Western democracy. The nightmare scenario is either civil war or Islamist revolution. But a third possible outcome is a revived Ottoman Empire.

Gaza: Cradle of Killing — Americans Too

Published on Sunday, June 19, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Ray McGovern

Stuffing my backpack before setting out to board “The Audacity of Hope,” the U.S. boat to Gaza, I got a familiar-sounding call from yet another puzzled friend, who said as gently as the words allow, “You know you can get killed, don’t you?” 

I recognize this caution as an expression of genuine concern from friends. From some others — who don’t much care about Gaza’s plight and/or who do not wish us well — the words are phrased somewhat differently: “Aren’t you just asking for it?”

That was the obligatory question/accusation at the end of a recent interview of me that was taped for a BBC-TV special scheduled to air this coming week as we try to break — or at least draw attention to — Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza and the suffering it inflicts on the people there.

BERSIH 2.0

Selamat menjalankan tugas

The story of the Prophet Muhammad pbuh

A Tale of Three Plumes

A tornado makes its way across Baca county, Colorado, in May 2010.
There are more in store for year 2011. 

A volcano in Eritrea erupted for a third day on Tuesday
 but with reduced intensity,  its ash cloud spreading out 
over Sudan and forcing the cancellation 
of some regional flights.


 

Trees burn in a burnout fire as firefighters battle the Wallow Fire 

in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, 

Arizona's worst wild fire in history,

 Sunday, June 12, 2011.

The deadly bean sprout

Germany has confirmed that it is the beansprout from a farm in northwest Germany 

which is responsible for the E Coli outbreak that has killed 31 people 

and sickened another 3100.

Gurgaon: City without a local government

Famous Indian Painter MF Hussain dies today

The Cost of Revolution

[Newsweek]

Egypt’s stock market is tanking and its rich are taking their money to Zurich. Will an economic plunge ruin the Arab Spring?

Miguel Medina / AFP-Getty Images

Egypt incurred an estimated $1.7 billion

 in economic losses when crowds 

thronged Tahrir Square.

I recently sat at the desk where John Maynard Keynes wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace, his coruscating 1919 polemic against the Versailles Treaty. I asked myself what Keynes would be writing if he were with us today. I think the answer is The Economic Consequences of the Arab Spring.

The point of Keynes’s original tract was that the victors of the First World War were bungling the peace. The punitive reparations they were demanding of Germany, he argued, would plunge that country into an economic crisis. After that would come the political backlash.