The Parlous State of Our World
The world staggers from one disaster to another. Staggered out of the year 2006 and on into 2007. We're still here, and so are our seemingly intractable problems. Year by year, month by month, week by week, day by day, their incremental effects destabilize, demoralize and bedevil us. Was it ever so, and we were less aware on a universal scale, or are matters, as they seem to be, simply accelerating beyond comprehension?Come to think of it, is homo sapiens sapiens not the silliest, stupidest, most hilarious send-up that could ever be imagined by a lunatic writing the most improbable script for a runaway best-seller play ever to be produced? Don't we manage to get ourselves into the most incredible situations, both individually and collectively? If we didn't exist for light comedy for some exalted creature on high, wouldn't we have to be invented?
Baghdad: Police said 47 tortured bodies were found dumped across Baghdad yesterday, up from 27 a day earlier. Twin car bombs killed 13 people yesterday in an upscale Baghdad neighbourhood, setting fire to a gas station and incinerating at least a half-dozen cars. In addition to the dead, police said at least 25 people were wounded.
Syria: German archeologist Clemns Reichel says he has found relics of "humanity's first war" in the northeast of Syria in the form of about 2,300 clay balls used as ammunition almost 6,000 years ago. "We have there the oldest example of an offensive war," said Mr. Reichel, who is leading a dig in the ancient city of Hamoukar, on the border with Iraq, for the University of Chicago. He said the city, whose fortifications were three metres thick, was besieged and reduced to ashes, probably by attackers from southern Mesopotamia.
Thailand: Connor Dean O'Keefe, a British 7-year-old, was killed after plugging his Game Boy into an electrical socket in a hotel room in Thailand. Connor was found slumped on the floor at the Sunset Beach Hotel in Patong Beach, Phuket. It is believed he was electrocuted when he touched the console charger while still wet after going swimming.
Pakistan: Provincial authorities yesterday lifted a ban on kite-flying imposed a year ago after several bystanders were fatally slashed by glass-coated strings used in the competitions. Basant, an annual festival that heralds spring is marked by boisterous parties and the flying of colourful kites in the eastern province of Punjab and its capital, Lahore.
Somalia: Somali government troops backed by Ethiopian soldiers battled about 600 Islamic militiamen yesterday on the southern tip of this Horn of Africa nation. The fighting came as U.S. navy warships stepped up patrols off Somalia, boarding fishing boats and oil tankers to search for al-Qaeda agents who fled after their Islamist allies were chased into hiding.
United States: The chief of the National Nuclear Security Administration was dismissed yesterday because of security breakdowns at the Los Alamos, New Mexico laboratory and other facilities. Linton Brooks said he would leave in a few weeks. He has held the post since July 2002. During a drug raid, classified documents were found at the home of a woman with top secret clearance who worked at the lab.
Atlanta: A million-dollar stone sculpture, intended to remind future generations of the Earth's fragility, made its point a bit early; just three months after its unveiling, it collapsed. The 175-tonne Spaceship Earth lay in ruins at Kennesaw State University after mysteriously falling to pieces last week. The engraved phrase "our fragile craft" was still visible in the debris.
Canada: Two crew members of CN Rail's train 355 miraculously escaped death early yesterday after their locomotive derailed and plunged close to 70 metres down a steep embankment just outside Lytton, British Columbia. Just after 1 a.m., about an hour after an earlier train had safely cleared the same Thomson Canyon tracks, the front of the west-bound freight train hit a pile of debris left by a rockslide from moments earlier.Exit left.
posted by Pieface @ Friday, January 05, 2007
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