George Galloway, a British MP, blasts a major propaganda machine to oblivion

Its no secret how conveniently western media channels, like CNN, twist the facts in news reporting. Unfortunately few are aware of the fact that the major news channels in the United States are explicitly owned by just a handful of major corporations[1, 2, 3]; what this means is that the news that is reported from these channels is subject to unchecked manipulation, as befits the interests of the board of directors, who hold great influence and power over western policy makers, and who are inexplicably linked to the AIPAC. This is clearly evident from the utter bias in reporting on the Middle East conflicts. Take away the major cities, like New York Los Angeles Atlanta etc, and what you get is a 'Middle America' or what is called the 'Christian belt' which is generally oblivious to and ignorant of what is going on in the world and in Washington (most Americans can’t even find Iraq on a world map 4), and what little they know is what is fed to them from Channels like FOX.

These channels are what Dubya Bush and the AIPAC use to sell their lies to the wider, peace loving American public, to justify their 'wars on terror' and their campaigns to supposedly 'topple despotic regimes’. Their oil interests in the Middle East, expansion of the Jewish state and its security, illegal contracts to Halliburton, the fact that Dick Cheney is one of its major shareholders, the fact that Bush Sr. was and is still active in the oil Industry with shares in major oil corporations, these facts are never on the news except rarely and never subject to deep scrutiny, and that too almost never on a major channel. In fact almost every senior figure in the Bush administration is knee deep in oil [5,6,7,8]

On August 6th, 2006, in an interview with Sky News, Galloway , reiterated his support for Hezbollah, asserting that its actions in taking two Israeli soldiers were justified on the grounds of Israel's "24 year long illegal occupation of South Lebanon" and Israel's capturing of "many thousands of their compatriots as kidnapped hostages in their dungeons”. In response to the interviewer's claim that " Hezbollah is a terrorist organization", he said "that is not true" and that "Hezbollah is a Lebanese national resistance respected by the entire Arab nations, Muslims and Christians". He also stated that it was Rupert Murdoch's [9] media empire, which labelled them as terrorists. Additionally, Galloway affirmed, "In most people's eyes Israel is a terrorist state". He blamed the media for being biased towards Israel and portraying "the Israeli blood as more valuable than the blood of Lebanese or Palestinians" whether they realised or not.

He's a rare breed indeed..

SpiralFrog Looks to Leap Over iTunes

SpiralFrog,a new online music company, plans to offer free music downloads to consumers. Not just streaming media, mind you, but downloadable, storable music files that can be tranferred to a portable player. Free. The plan is for advertising revenue to pay for it all. What SpiralFrog has to offer right now is millions of songs from the Universal Music Group catalog, but the company is in talks with EMI and Warner Music Groups as well. For downloaders, quite a few strings are attached. Users will have to sit through advertisements, will be prevented from sharing files, and will have to revisit the SpiralFrog Web site once a month to keep their music. Biggest drawback: The music files will be available in WMA format--meaning they won't be playable on an iPod. That hurts. But still, it's free music. The service is expected to begin in December.

Superman's Brandon Routh Engaged

Brandon Routh is engaged to his girlfriend, actress Courtney Ford, according to his publicist.

"They are very happy," says Kacey Spies, who represents the Superman Returns star.

The couple, who have been dating for three years, will costar in the upcoming short film Denial. They plan to wed next fall.

Routh, 26, proposed earlier this month with a ring from Los Angeles-based jeweler Neil Lane.

The couple met "not through acting. I used to work at Lucky Strike," Routh said recently at the Golden Globes in January, referring to the hip bowling alley in Hollywood. "I was a bartender. And her brother was having his (wedding) rehearsal dinner party there."

Added Ford, 28, "He met my whole family the day he met me."

The pair, who say they like to watch DVDs – particularly the special features – together, were apart for five months while Routh was shooting Superman Returns in Australia, but Ford says they relied on "nightly phone calls."

Speaking earlier in June, Routh called Ford his personal kryptonite. "She brings me to my knees," he said.

sweet.

A Thankyou To All Starbucks Customers

Dear Starbucks Customer,

First and foremost I want to thank you for making Starbucks the $6.4 billion global company it is today, with more than 90,000 employees, 9,700 stores, and 33 million weekly customers. Every latte and macchiato you drink at Starbucks is a contribution to the close alliance between the United States and Israel, in fact it is - as I was assured when being honored with the “Israel 50th Anniversary Friend of Zion Tribute Award” - key to Israel’s long-term PR success. Your daily Chocolate Chips Frappucino helps paying for student projects in North America and Israel, presenting them with the badly needed Israeli perspective of the Intifada.

Starbucks, through the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah, an international network of Jewish education centres, sponsors Israeli military arms fairs in an effort to strengthen the special connection between the American, European and Israeli defense industries and to showcase the newest Israeli innovations in defense. As my contribution to the fight against the global rise of anti-Semitism, the reason behind the current conflict in the Middle-East, I help Aish HaTorah sponsoring the website "honestreporting.com” and produce material informing of Israel’s side of the story.

Without you, my valued customer, I wouldn’t be able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars each year to protect Israeli citizens from terrorist attacks and keep reminding every Jew in America, to defend Israel at any cost. $5 billion per year from the US government are no way near enough to pay for all the weaponry, bulldozers and security fences needed to protect innocent Israeli citizens from anti-Semitic Muslim terrorism. Corporate sponsorships are essential.

Having the bigger picture in mind, Starbucks have donated a store to the US army to help in the “War on Terror”. I cannot emphasize enough, how vital the “War on Terror” is for the continued viability and prospering of the Jewish State.

So next time you feel like chilling out at a Starbucks store, please remember that with every cup you drink at Starbucks you are helping with a noble cause.

Howard Schultz
Chairman & Chief Global Strategist
Starbucks Coffee Stores

bACK TO THE sEA

Life ,say the experts, began in the sea. And if the way we spend our vacations is an accurate indicator, there are few things we enjoy more than revisiting our submerged roots. Cavorting with dolphins, badgering sharks from the safety of steel cages and photographing exotic fish through the portholes of tourist submarines fascinates landlubbers from Prague to Peoria. For those who find these forays into Neptune's realm too brief, Italian naval architect Giancarlo Zema has the perfect dream home, the Trilobis 65. Part yacht and part submarine, it could convince Capt. Nemo to hang a "for sale" sign on the Nautilus.

"The main aim of the project is to allow anyone to live in a unique environment through a self-sufficient, nonpolluting dwelling that exists in unison with their ocean surrounding," tells Zema . At first glance, the Trilobis looks as if it would be more at home soaring into the sky than plying the waters of atolls, bays and maritime parks. Looking at a computer image of the bow conjures up visions of the flying saucers in 1950s science fiction films. The Trilobis's blueprints, however, reveal a nautical heritage that reaches back to the humble dugout while simultaneously embracing 21st century technologies that include high-strength composites and nonpolluting hydrogen fuels.

British scientists have found that enzymes cheat time and space by quantum tunnelling - a much faster way of travelling than the classical way - but whether or not perplexing quantum theories can be applied to the biological world is still hotly debated.

Until now, no one knew just how the enzymes speed up the reactions, which in some cases are up to a staggering million times faster.

"Our research has shown at an atomic level how enzymes act as catalysts," said Nigel Scrutton, lead researcher at the University of Manchester.

Just how these enzymes speed up reaction rates compared with uncatalysed reactions remain controversial among scientists, but such insights of the underpinnings of enzyme behaviour have begun.

"Enzymes are central to the existence of life because most chemical reactions in our cells would take place too slowly or produce a difference outcome without their involvement," he said.

Without enzymes, we'd wither away or be riddled with disease.

As biological molecules, the enzymes work to lower the energy needed for a reaction to occur. Although enzymes act as catalysts, they are often affected by other molecules. Therefore, when drugs are made, they are designed to act as enzymes inhibitors to stop the reactions from occurring.

"The findings are a radical departure from the traditional view of how they work and might explain why attempts to make artificial enzymes have so far been disappointing," he said.

But now that researchers know enzymes can quantum tunnel, better drugs can be designed leveraging this knowledge.

The scientists used a widespread neurotransmitter, called tryptamine, in their experiments. This compound is stable because it has nitrogen and two hydrogen atoms attached to a ring of carbons.

The quantum tunnelling was seen when the otherwise tightly-bound hydrogen atom was set free. In this case, if the hydrogen is given the choice to climb the mountain or walk through the tunnel, it chose the one that required less energy: the tunnel. But this quantum leap only happens when the nearby motions allow it to traverse this easier, less-exhausting path.

"The work suggests that tunnelling in this enzyme, which we find to be central to the reaction it catalyses, is driven by subtle changes of conformation confined to the active site - and that longer-range dynamics changes of the protein apparently play no part in the process," said collaborator Adrian Mullholland of University of Bristol.

"The findings have sparked a keen debate among biologists about the fundamental nature of enzymes," Mullholland said, with the results published in the June issue of Science.

However in the same issue of Science Stephen Benkovic and Sharon Hammes-Schiffer of Pennsylvania State University contest that the long-range motions need to be considered because the whole process is more complex than the theory considers.

"This paradigm shift away from standard 'over the barrier' textbook models of enzyme catalysis to a 'through the barrier' model provides new experimental challenges to the field," Scrutton said.

A critical and perplexing question is at what point does the bizarre world of quantum theory give way to the everyday world of large objects.

Any object from the size of an atom to even the size of a human has a wave function according to quantum mechanics. But smaller objects (often nanoscale sized) have a more noticeable wave function, detectable only by experimental means.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the scientists used X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance, computational chemistry, protein engineering, and sophisticated kinetic and spectroscopic methods, to observe the waves of the hydrogen.

Either way, the findings are a step closer towards "improving our fundamental knowledge of how enzymes work," he said.

But sometimes the laws that govern the physical world cannot be cheated, and understanding rarely happens in quantum leaps.