Three Muslim would-be terrorists, trained in Pakistan’s death (to others) camps, have been arrested by German authorities for plotting to attack Ramstein Air Base and Frankfurt International Airport with explosives.

Bombs more powerful than Madrid, London: “Monika Harms, the German federal prosecutor, said the three had trained at camps in Pakistan and obtained some 680kg (1,500lb) of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives.

‘This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,’ Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany’s federal crime office, said at a joint news conference with Ms Harms.” (Guardian)

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a bleaching agent with common household uses. I’ve used it as a wound disinfectant and it’s particualrly effective at removing blood stains, though it tends to remove fabric color as well as the blood.

The the stuff you buy in a drug store is only about three percent strength, far too weak to use as an explosive. In more concentrated forms it can be used alone as a rocket fuel or as a rocket fuel component. The famed Bell Rocket Belt, for example, used H2O2 as a monofuel. H2O2 is still used for thrusters in spacecraft.

Used alone, H2O2 needs a catalyst to ignite. But it can be combined with acetone to produce a highly volatile liquid explosive. Acetone is also a commonly available household chemical, used in nail polish for example. Larger and purer quantities are commercially obtainable without much difficulty. Acetone plus H2O2 is called triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, an explosive. It is very easy to ignite (hence dangerous to handle). But obtaining H2O2 in the high concentration required to make a powerful TATP bomb is not easy; even chemical-supply companies rarely offer H2O2 in greater concentration than 30-35 percent, and for a big bang from TATP, 70 percent or higher is needed.

Thirty-percent H2O2 can be distilled into higher concentrations. Since the three men were arrested with 1,500 pounds of the stuff, I’m guessing that is what they wanted to do. That amount would distill down to about 650 pounds of 70-percent strength stuff. CNN reported that German sources said the bomb attack, just days from being carried out, would have produced an explosion equivalent to more than half a ton of TNT.

Der Spiegel reports that the three men had legally obtained 730 kilograms (>1,600 pounds) of chemicals, which raised the attention level of the authorities.

A few days ago, police experts secretly swapped the 35-percent solution of hydrogen peroxide contained in 12 barrels for a diluted liquid that only contained 3 percent of the chemical. …

[T]he men had all the necessary components ready — they had even already procured a military ignition mechanism for the explosive device. “An attack was imminent — it was only a question of time,” said one high-ranking security expert. Probably the men wanted to place the bombs in one or more cars and explode them in front of the target.

TATP was said by British authorities to have been used in the London bus bombings and apparently is favored by such attackers because it is free of nitrogen, a common component of explosives. TATP is thus undetectable by nitrogenous-compound sniffing scanners.

Even had an actual high-explosive bomb not been intended, a weaker form of TATP could cause considerable damage if used as an arson agent. It burns very hot and will burn right through aluminum. This was apparently the plan of the 2006 al Qaeda scheme to down 10 airliners over the mid-Atlantic in one day.

Though the planned attacks were intended to take place on airports, authorities said that the actual targets were not aviation facilities or aircraft, but against crowded facilities such as restaurants, bars or clubs at or near the airports. If so, then the 35-percent solution of H2O2 probably would have been sufficient to make a potent flame weapon, basically a low-order explosive (with luck) that spread burning TATP through the targets.

Der Spiegel says that this barely-thwarted attack is a wakeup call for Germany that it is definitely a target of Islamist terrorists. This may be difficult for the German people to accept, since they consider themselves as having good relations with the Middle East. That doesn’t matter to Islamists, of course, who mainly despise the Arab governments with whom Germany gets along so well. The Germans are learning what I’ve said before - you may not be interested in terrorists, but terrorists are definitely interested in you.

That’s the bright idea of a Tory panel in Britain.

Patients who refuse to change their unhealthy lifestyles should not be treated by the NHS, the Conservatives said today.

In a bid to ease spiralling levels of obesity and other health concerns, a Tory panel said certain treatments should be denied to patients who refuse to co-operate with health professionals and live healthier lifestyles.

And those who do manage to improve their general health by losing weight and quitting smoking, for example, would receive “Health Miles” cards.

Points earned could then be used to pay for health-related products such as gym membership and fresh vegetables.

That’s the inevitable end of socialized medicine. As a Canadian wrote recently (I’ll try to find the link again), the main object of a free-market, insurance-based medical system is curing disease or injury, but the main object of government-run medical system is controlling costs, for which cures are secondary. Hence, said the new head of Canada’s medical association, you can get a hip replacement for your dog there is a week, but it will take a year for you to get one for yourself.

So who in Britain will get to say whether you are leading a healthy lifestyle worthy of medical care? Oh, just guess. No doubt the Toruies would create a new Department of Lifestyle and Health Benefit Qualification Assessment.

In 1976, MLB player Rick Monday made one of the greatest plays ever. He still gets letters every week from fans about it.

In the last two days, the three major Israeli MSM online sites have been carrying stories on the evaporation of the Syrian threat. First, Barak said there was not enough ammunition and more money was needed for defense and IDF preparedness; then the IDF said there was not a problem-we have enough; yesterday Ha’aretz, the Jerusalem Post, and today YNET carried stories (in this order) that there was not a threat and the IDF was pulling back; the IDF was not pulling back; and the IDF is staying but there is no threat.

YNET’s piece is most interesting in light of the entire range of disinformation during the last several days. They say the threat is gone while over at the Jerusalem Post, they say the whole thing was due to the Russians wanting to sell Assad new toys thereby expanding Terrible Putin’s influence (great picture by Ariel Jerozolimski on the front page of the Post of the tanks).

But everyone within earshot of the Golan knows what’s up. The Syrian side, pool-table flat, is down hill and in the last week or two has been crystal clear and silent except for mechanical beasts and big guns firing non-stop from 2 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. except on Shabbat. They are Israeli guns. When we were in Yonatan for Shabbat, our hosts were relieved when I told them about my astronomy camping trip around the corner. The guns were loud.

Well, a couple of weeks of gunnery practice with live rounds, downhill, at night, is enough to rattle anyone’s cage. Sometimes the old methods are the best. When the armies of the Caliph crossed North Africa and into the Iberian penisula and similarly when the Great Khan crossed the Steppes, the armies would surround cities and beat on their drums and shields all night long. In the morning the gates would open. No combat!

Not far from the Golan, another great general fit the battle of Jericho with trumpets. Well, if you look at the picture of these tanks, think of them as trumpets turned around. God Willing, the Battle of the Golan 2007 was “fit” by the fanfare of these instruments.

My site host, ANHosting.com, has been having severe server problems this week. I think they’ve got them straightened out.

There is a great deal of talk in the last month about peace with Syria, warwith Syria, and yet another American president wants to be the peacemaker before riding into the sunset. Ha’aretz (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/883052.html) revealed that the Syrians and Israelis have been talking. OpinionJournal.com carried an editorial by Michael Orens, insisting that Bush is not going to follow Clinton and Carter with another force-fed peace deal. Today, the Jerusalem Post carried a warning from President Peres not to upset the King of Syria (either because he lacks a sense of humor or may cry, or both):

President Shimon Peres reiterated concerns on Thursday expressed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert a day earlier that a misunderstanding with Syria could lead to war.

The head of state spoke in a meeting with visiting Republican Congressmen.

“The government and security establishment must strengthen the existing trust with Damascus - and this should be done through statements and proper deployment in the field,” Peres said.

In a country with two fronts—the Beach on the west and Asia on the east, these are the views from the Beach. Surf’s up and all the western oriented experts are paddling out to catch the next wave. Up in the Galilee and the Golan, no one is whooping with joy. Nowhere is the disconnect between the cultural worlds of Israel more apparent than the way the Galileans and the Golanians look at the continued noise of the same old story - some suit from beach will give up the moon with nothing secure in return except more violence and more billions to the violators.

Elsewhere in today’s Jerusalem Post, Shmuel Katz beseeched Olmert (or, “All Merde” as my French neighbors call him now) not to give up the Golan. Katz wrote that the King is being absolutely clear about where he stands on the issue and negotiation:

Whatever one may say about the Syrian President Bashar Assad he does not beat about the bush. In his recent speech in parliament he made it clear that peace with Israel is not his immediate concern. In evident response to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s offer to give him the Golan in exchange for peace, his haughty reply was that the Golan must be returned to Syria free, gratis and for nothing.

Then, with that achieved, he might, or he might not, be prepared to talk. This of course is in tune with the Pan-Arab policy of “phases” in the projected destruction of Israel. It was first propounded by president Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia in the 1950s, well before the Six Day War when Israel was locked into the 9-mile wide boundary of the 1949 Armistice Agreement. In more recent years, it became the mantra of the moderate Arab who will tell you gently over a cup of coffee, that a Palestinian state in the “occupied” territories will of course be only an interim step before they take the rest of the land.

Arafat consecrated this idea as the core of Arab strategy: take what you can, by diplomacy, by war, by whatever, and that will serve as a base for the next phase.

Assad is doing no more than recalling this principle and reminding us once more that handing over territory to the Arabs has never brought and will never bring peace. It would only accelerate and facilitate the coming of the final assault on the Jewish state.

A year ago, my wife and I took a how-to-do-business-in-Israel course offered by Israel’s equivalent of the Small Business Administration in the northern city of Haifa. The course ran for ten weeks, each week a different Anglo-Israeli lectured on the basic points of doing business with Israeli corporate and tax law always pitched to newcomers from the English-speaking world. The constant refrain of the course to people from the States, Canada, Great Britain, South Africa, and Australia was simple - this is not the world you came from.

On week eight, our instructor gave the course punch line in the following illustration. A mother comes into the kitchen to find her children fighting over an orange. The daughter says she needs the orange peel to make frosting for a cake. The son says he needs the orange to squeeze the pulp for juice. When the mother says stop, you can both share the orange getting both products, her children look at her as if she is from Mars. In unison they shout, “It’s my orange!”

The point, our instructor told us, is that the way of the Bazaar is to control the object the other wants. The Anglo world thinks like capitalists - business is something that benefits both parties to the exchange. Negotiations are for the purpose of approaching the price that the supplier and the buyer can both live with and feel that they have increased their individual and joint utility. Rather than a Market that sets an overall price, the Bazaar is made of an audience. Each transaction occurs in plain view and a win or loss not only reflects on price, but each party’s honor - how will all the others in the audience look at the deal. In the Bazaar, whenever a transaction occurs, there is increased risk that either the buyer or seller will lose in the deal. Was the buyer a sucker or was the seller a chump. Honor is the currency of the Bazaar.

So, out here in the Galilee, where the Arab, or Mizrachi, worldview is so evident, the rank and file just aren’t buying the new wave of talks. A wave, after all, is just a wave—not too different from the last wave and certainly no different than the one to follow. Any deal will be at Israel’s expense in the Bazaar as well as the Market. There will be no real concession from Israel’s neighbors, there will be more State Department influence purchased in the market for influence, and the inevitable result of more rockets, more terror, and more blood will be spilled.

Bush became a hero out here with the Galileans when he refused to talk with Arafat. Then, he strode the landscape like a real master of the Bazaar. He simply turned the tables in the influence market and followed Nancy Reagan’s advice to addiction—“Just say no!” Here, they said, is a man who understands how to bargain — say nothing until you hear what you want to hear. It was very refreshing.

However, the pitch has changed. No one in the Bazaar hears the part about recognizing Israel first; they only hear that more concessions and more withdrawals are required; they only hear that those prisoners in Israeli jails who murder and maim will go free.

Katz, who served in the Israeli Knesset years ago, continues: Olmert’s irresponsible proposal to reward Syria by giving it the Golan must be placed in a yet wider context, high in the scale of blunders committed and disasters generated by the prime minister in the past two years - first as adjunct to his mentor Ariel Sharon and then on his own account.They are inexplicably linked one to the other, from the Gaza “disengagement” of which was about to usher in the age of peace (remember Olmert’s messianic promise of such a “new morning” to a New York audience) down to the relaxed unpreparedness and then the amateurish handling of the Second Lebanon War. Thus one is able to reach an understanding of the state of disorientation in the nation. That is where Israel is today.

The warning is explicit. The Golan is not an empty no man’s land. It is a vital growing part of Israeli life with close to 30,000 residents — Israelis and Druze. Katz concludes: One must assume from Olmert’s callous behavior toward the expellees of Gush Katif, and since their expulsion, that he believes that the success of the operation at Gush Katif would be repeated on the Golan, that he will give the order to the army, and they will do the job. A few protests, a little violence here and there and nothing more.

He should be warned. He is dead wrong. The 20,000 [women and children] will not “go quietly.” There will be many more “Ya’alons” in the army to oppose such an evil move. Many, many more soldiers will refuse to accept the role of bullying the people into the victimhood of expulsion. Too many of the people bulldozed into supporting the Gaza adventure have realized how mistaken they were.

It is most unlikely that Olmert will succeed. Even the financial cost of such an operation, which must amount to tens of billions would be prohibitive. Who would pay the cost? The Israeli taxpayer? The US? Not a chance.

To much of us in the western world, a negotiation is a process where an agreement is reached that benefits, ultimately, both parties. If the root cause to the conflict was water, then some sort of market process and mutual treaty could be worked out - similar to the agreements reached between Jordan and Israel, or even between Jordan and Syria. So, why not with Syria and Israel? Because this would be mixing apples and oranges - that’s why. The boy-king, the spectacle maker, wants to be the only one to have the orange.

Give back the Golan or else. This is a peacemaker? And lone wolf Olmert? He’d gnaw off his arm to stay in power for another week.

… but the evil designs of Big Wind are horrifying!

A highly read-worthy article in Scientific American offers, “15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense” (printer version here). Part of the answer to the creationist claim, “Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created,” is this:

[E]volution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not-and does not-find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.

But a recent announcement by anthropologist Meave Leakey (the most famous and respected family name in the business) busts a hole in the evolutionary descent of modern humans as presently accepted. Until now, scientists thought that the ancient species Homo habilis (”man with ability”), was the evolutionary ancestor of Homo erectus (”Erect man,” and no juvenile snickering, either). Dr. Leakey’s research postively disproves that idea.

Two fossils found in Kenya have shaken the human family tree, possibly rearranging major branches thought to be in a straight ancestral line to Homo sapiens.

Scientists who dated and analyzed the specimens — a 1.44-million-year-old Homo habilis and a 1.55-million-year-old Homo erectus found in 2000 — said their findings challenged the conventional view that these species evolved one after the other. Instead, they apparently lived side by side in eastern Africa for almost half a million years.

If this interpretation is correct, the early evolution of the genus Homo is left even more shrouded in mystery than before. It means that both habilis and erectus must have originated from a common ancestor between two million and three million years ago, a time when fossil hunters had drawn a virtual blank. …

The challenge to the idea of a more linear succession of the three Homo species is being reported today in the journal Nature. The lead author is Fred Spoor, an evolutionary anatomist at University College London. …

Dr. Spoor, speaking by satellite phone from a field site near Lake Turkana, said the evidence clearly contradicted previous ideas of human evolution “as one strong, single line from early to us.” The new findings, he added, support the revised interpretations of “a lot of bushiness and experimentation in the fossil record.”

I amk not claiming that this discovery invalidates the theory of evolution, far from it. It just caught my eye how immediately SciAm’s defense of the existing theory of human evolution was knocked about. Who says? Not me. Here is what Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University, had to say about the Spoor-Leakey report (same link):

The new findings, Dr. Lieberman said, highlight the need for obtaining more fossils that are more than two million years old. In addition, he said, they show “just how interesting and complex the human genus was and how poorly we understand the transition from being something much more apelike to something more humanlike.”

So it seems that the human family tree is much less clear than SciAm makes it out to be. While the new finding does not affect the present understanding that H. erectus was the ancestor of modern humans, it does knock a huge hole in SciAm’s claim that there is a, “succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern.” In fact, the fossil researchers said they were surprised at how much less like modern humans the H. erectus fossil was than they expected it to be (read the article for why). So there seems now to be a big gap in our understanding of our descendancy, for which researchers will doubtless start to intensify their quest for additional finds.

Anyway, the rest of the SciAm piece is worth your time.

Earlier this week, torrential rains in New York City flooded the subway system, causing it to be shut down. Outside one station, 1,000 people were reported to be lined up at the taxi stand. In an otherwise unrelated article, Scientific American gives some interesting background information about Manhattan island:

… “The name ‘Manhattan’ comes from an Indian term referring to hills. It used to be a very hilly island. Of course, the region was eventually flattened to have a grid of streets imposed on it. Around those hills there used to flow about 40 different streams, and there were numerous springs all over Manhattan island. What happened to all that water? There’s still just as much rainfall as ever on Manhattan, but the water has now been suppressed. It’s underground. Some of it runs through the sewage system, but a sewage system is never as efficient as nature in wicking away water. So there is a lot of groundwater rushing around underneath, trying to get out. Even on a clear, sunny day, the people who keep the subway going have to pump 13 million gallons of water away. Otherwise the tunnels will start to flood.

“There are places in Manhattan where they’re constantly fighting rising underground rivers that are corroding the tracks. You stand in these pump rooms, and you see an enormous amount of water gushing in. And down there in a little box are these pumps, pumping it away. …

Who knew?

This is the Jordan River south of the Sea of Galilee. Click on the image for a larger version.

In the wake of the botched reporting, then coverup, of the circumstances of Cpl. Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan in 2004, the Army has ordered that “a formal, independent investigation into the death of every American in a hostile area” be conducted.

For those of you who’ve been living on Mars the past few weeks, Cpl. Tillman was killed by gunfire shot by his own unit’s soldiers. His death was properly reported as killed in action (KIA) but erroneously reported as caused by hostile fire. By the time the truth was determined, some weeks had passed and the mistaken report was not corrrected. Instead, officers covered up the truth, finally leading to a formal investigation run by the Inspector General, which recently issued a harsh report.

Retired Col. Jack Jacobs says that the Army’s new “formal investigation” policy is stupid, though:

[I]f the regulation had existed in World War II, we would have conducted 400,000 investigations, requiring perhaps as many investigating officers as we now have troops in Iraq.

In theory, the rule sounds commendable. Life is precious, and if one is cut short in combat then we owe the soldier and his family as full a report as possible. Having experienced more than enough combat, I understand this sentiment. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s the motivating force behind the revised regulation. In my view, the provision is there for one reason and one reason alone: to put in place a protocol to prevent commanders from lying about the cause of their soldiers’ deaths.

What’s the problem with that? Well, it’s beyond insidious because it is an admission that the Army has determined it can’t trust anyone in the combat chain of command — that the actions of General Kensinger are the rule, not the exception, and that this kind of malfeasance among soldiers is expected to be so common that it requires regular policing. This is a catastrophic message to be sending our military, in large measure because it is wrong.

I agree that the new regulation is stupid. I agree that it sends a terrible message to staff sergeants and above in units deployed to combat theaters. And I agree that it is a solution in search of a problem. But I think Col. Jacobs misses the boat. He thinks that the Army’s high command has decided it can’t trust “anyone in the combat chain of command.” Sorry, no.

Having served in the five-sided puzzle palace, I am convinced that basis of the order is that the Army’s senior leadership - and I’d bet my next paycheck it is specifically the civilian leadership - have been cowed by the intensive media coverage, most of it quite unfriendly, that was turned on the Army because of the Tillman report and its preceding controversy.

Quite simply, this order does two things, and is intended to do only those two things: cover the tails of the Secretary and the Chief of Staff and keep them out of the media’s sights.

They issued the order not because they don’t trust the lower chain of command, but simply to protect themselves.

“Duty, honor, country.”

The protorosaur puzzle, solved!