Wow. I loved the news today about the Neanderthals:
Put yourself in the
distant past, 65,000 years ago, and imagine entering a cave in Spain.
Keep in mind this was the era of megafauna, animals like
saber-toothed cats and
cave hyenas and cave bears that were
50 percent larger than modern
grizzlies. “[Humans] would’ve used small torches and their field of view
would’ve been so small, and the light would’ve been flickering,” says
archaeologist
Chris Standish, of the
University of Southampton. “You have all these fantastic speleothems
[formations like stalactites] in the cave and sometimes calcite crystals
that sparkle. So it must’ve been quite amazing, but also
very daunting.”
Yet humans entered
the caves again and again, armed with their flickering torches and red
or black pigments, all so they could leave their mark on the walls. For
decades,
these abstract artistic renderings have been a meager glimpse of life
in the Ice Age, and evidence of the cognitive abilities of our ancient
ancestors. Or so we thought.
And now? BBC explains:
Contrary to the traditional view of them as brutes, it turns out that Neanderthals were artists.
A study in Science journal suggests they made cave drawings in Spain that pre-date the arrival of modern
humans in Europe by 20,000 years.
They also appear to have used painted sea shells as jewellery.
Art was previously thought to be a behaviour unique to our species (Homo sapiens) and far beyond
our evolutionary cousins.
The cave paintings include stencilled impressions of Neanderthal hands, geometric patterns and red circles.
They occupy three sites at La Pasiega, Maltravieso and Ardales - situated up to 700km apart in different
parts of Spain.
And from DISCOVER:
The
international team of researchers took more than 60 samples of
carbonate from three cave sites in Spain: La Pasiega, Maltravieso
and Ardales. All of these caves contained ochre or black paintings of
animals, geometric shapes, engravings and hand stencils. It was thought
that modern humans tagged all the caves in Europe some 35,000 years, a
point in time that marked a “creative
explosion”—sometimes attributed to a brain mutation—that gave rise to art, spirituality and more complex social interactions.
Recent
technological advancements have made it easier to date cave art using
the uranium-thorium method. It’s a technique that’s typically
used to date calcium carbonate materials without damaging the
target—although a small sample of the rock is required. Using this
method, scientists can obtain a minimum or maximum age for the art they
are testing. The date is determined by measuring the ratio
of uranium to thorium, which changes over time as a result of
radioactive decay.
To
get a minimum age, archaeologists scrape samples of calcite
crusts—known as cave popcorn—that form over the top of drawings. If you
get the age of the crusts, anything
underneath them has got to be older. Their samples revealed that these
paintings in Spain had to be at least 64,000 years old—roughly 20,000
years before modern humans arrived in Europe. This stretches back the
timeline even further back than a similar
study from 2011.
Is that not amazing?
I always wonder if someday there is time travel, will people be able to go back and just view history as it happened?
To be present but maybe in a bubble or something where they aren’t seen but they can watch everything.
If that happened in my lifetime?
I’d want to see MLK’s assassination to
see who did it, the same with JFK and I’d also want to see what
happened on the fatal night Marilyn Monroe died.
After that?
I’d like to see – in a safe bubble – the early cave drawings being drawn.
I’d also like to observe events like maybe the Dutch Revolt and how it wrapped up in 1648.
Again, not take part. Not change. Just be there in like an invisible bubble and able to see it for myself.
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
“The power establishment which lied about Iraq, lied about Libya, lied about Vietnam, & is currently lying about Syria is not entitled to the benefit of the doubt that it is telling the truth about Russia & its new cold war escalations with that country.”
The Russia Scare, many have noted, involves some of the same liars who provided us with the Iraq War. It does more than that.
It offers us some of the great fakes of the Iraq War.
John Feffer?
Oh, how we know that little bitch.
A stream of rude and nasty e-mails to this site -- only one of which was noted publicly and noting it publicly resulted in even more of his nasty e-mails.
FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS, you may remember, in a desperate bid to try to ride the Iraq War created a tracker. They did that with a big to-do and endless announcements. The Iraqi civilians were not being counted accurately in death, so thank goodness we had FPIF to do it for us, right?
Except they quickly lost interest.
They weren't updating it.
After several months of this, we pointed it out publicly resulting in our initial contact with War Bitch John Feffer. He had better things to do.
Well no one asked you to create a counter to begin with, John.
But if you're going to create one and then ride a few months publicity off it, you need to do a tracker.
Instead, he created it, got the publicity he wanted and WalkedOn.org -- a faker.
A War Bitch.
So it's the Hawks and the Bitches behind the Russia Scare, never forget it.
Glen Ford (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) notes of the Russia Scares attempt to blame third party candidates and those who chose not to vote:
Funny thing, though: the Democrats refused to cite the Republicans’ systematic, mass suppression of Black voters through the Cross Check scheme which, as Margaret Kimberley points out in this week’s Freedom Rider, caused 400,000 heavily Black votes to disappear in Michigan. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein called for a recount in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and found that Black voter suppression was a major factor, particularly in Detroit. “We are seeing again this evidence in Michigan that communities of color are systematically disenfranchised through the machinery that constitutes really another form of electoral Jim Crow,” Stein told The Guardian . “It’s pretty staggering. Eighty-seven optical scanners [in Detroit] broke on election day.”
The Democratic Party reluctantly added its name to the recount petition, while at the same time claiming it had seen no “actionable evidence ” of grounds for challenging Trump’s victory. But that’s par for the course. The Democrats have never confronted the GOP’s blatant theft of elections through massive suppression of Black votes. They are bound, apparently, by a gentleman’s agreement among the two parties. John Lewis, the Black congressman from Atlanta who wears his voting rights credentials like a robe of glory, abides by that agreement. The first thing out of Lewis’ mouth after Trump was declared the winner, in November, was a denunciation of “the Russians” – but not Black voter suppression by Republicans.
“The Democrats have never confronted the GOP’s blatant theft of elections through massive suppression of Black votes.”
Roughly one year later, Jill Stein -- who fought Black voter suppression harder than the Democrats -- was targeted for investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee as a possible collaborator with the Russians .
The suppression of the franchise of their Black base is not considered “treason” or any kind of “high crime” by the Democratic Party, but the siphoning of Black votes away from the corporate duopoly, through voluntary non-voting or support of third parties, is cause to bring out the pitchforks.
Margaret Kimberley (BAR) observes:
It is sad and terrifying to watch the reaction from media elites and Democratic politicians. They will allow no counter narrative to see the light of day. After all, they are the ones who made sure that any such questions were disappeared from public discourse. Now they are in full attack mode against the Russian government and anyone who won’t parrot their lies.
At least one Democratic congressman, Jerrold Nadler of New York, makes the claim that Facebook posts are akin to the attack on Pearl Harbor. When his questioner pushed back he persisted in making the comparison. That can only mean that he and others think that an actual war against Russia is a reasonable course of action.
Democrats, their pundits and think tanks are doubling down. They are accusing Bernie Sanders of doing Russia’s bidding, despite the fact that he was equally willing to blame that country for Trump’s triumph. All of his post sheep dog genuflecting has done him little good. He endorsed Hillary Clinton and campaigned with her. He told his people to stand down and most of them did just that. He shouldn’t have bothered though, because he is now getting the same treatment as Jill Stein.
The Dems taking part in the Russia Scare are the same Dems that gave us the Iraq War.
And they know what they are doing, they damn well know what they are doing.
Phyllis Bennis has a piece at THE NATION.
It's useless.
It's practically garbage.
Phyl's part of the whole FPIF network. And, remember, FPIF has defended the use of mass bombings and 'smart' bombs -- we called them out (here for one example) even if others looked the other way.
Phyl? Why do we not give up on her?
Because (a) she can be astute and (b) when called on her lies, when smacked across her lying mouth, as Elaine did to her over Phyl using an undercount on the number of civilians killed in Iraq, if you hit just right, Phyl can come to her senses.
Someone needs to slap Phyllis real hard.
It's a curious editorial -- one that leaves the impression that the Iraq War is over.
If it's over, Phyllis, why are US troops still on the ground in Iraq.
The editorial hits new lows of whorishness as it names various people -- all Republicans. I'm sorry, Phyllis, but it was the Democratically controlled Senate, in 2002, that voted for the Iraq War. Not only does she ignore that, she also ignores certain key others.
For example, Robert Mueller was part of the whole lie the country into Iraq effort, remember?
In 2013, Coleen Rowley (MINNESOTA STAR TRIBUNE) wrote:
Ten years ago, I made the ultimately futile effort of writing to FBI Director Robert Mueller warning that he needed to tell the truth about the Bush administration’s unjustified decision to preemptively invade Iraq and the likelihood it would prove counterproductive. To its credit, the Star Tribune ran the story on March 6, 2003 (“Agent: War would unleash terror, and FBI not ready”), one of only a handful of such cautionary news stories in the war-fevered weeks before the United States launched its catastrophic invasion.
At the time, Mueller well knew of Vice President Dick Cheney’s lying about Saddam’s connection to 9 / 11 and other administration exaggerations to gin up the war.
My letter compared Bush-Cheney’s rush to war with the impatience and bravado that had led to the FBI’s disastrous 1993 assault at Waco, where “the children [the FBI] sought to liberate all died when [David] Koresh and his followers set fires.” On a much more tragic scale, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed and millions more were wounded or displaced. Iraq’s infrastructure was destroyed. Severe problems remain with lack of clean drinking water, electricity and a lack of professionals in Iraq to help rebuild.
Even worse, the flames of sectarian hatred were ignited, based on religious and ethnic differences, leading to violent civil strife, ethnic cleansing and terror bombings. Those fires continue to burn.
B-b-b-but Mueller was the hero of the fake left in 2013 the way he is today!!!!! Coleen would be just as silent as Phyllis is today!!!!
Uh, no.
Here's Coleen last summer:
Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.
All of those currently in bed with Mueller? Crabs are the least of your worries.
Phyllis has written an 'editorial' that needs to be called out because it's fakery and whoring.
If that seems harsh, please grasp that Phyllis writes that it's important for us to remember the truth of what happened . . . but?
If you think I'm harsh with Phyllis, she's the one saying it's important to remember what happened while lying and disguising what happened.
Two years before Howard Zinn died, I warned him that he was the one watering down his own legacy. He didn't listen. I warned Howard one on one. Creepy Tom Hayden? I warned him privately and publicly. Both men will have to answer for their lies that continued the Iraq War.
Phyllis better decide real quick if that's the boat she also wants to sink in.
Consider it "Hard Advice" (Stevie Nicks):
It is important to remember the real lessons of the ongoing Iraq War:
On The Iraq War’s 15th Anniversary, Make The World Remember Its Lessons
#Iraq #war #invasion #lies #propaganda
And it's important to remember the reality of what the ongoing war is producing:
Unfair ISIS Trial in Iraq Hands Women Harshest Sentences
Human Rights Watch notes:
Six months after about 1,400 foreign women and children surrendered with Islamic State (ISIS) fighters to Iraqi security forces, Iraq’s courts are sentencing the women to life in prison and even to death for non-violent crimes.
It’s just one indicator of how people viewed as colluding with ISIS are receiving unfair trials.
The women have been charged with illegally entering Iraq and, in some cases aiding, abetting or having membership in ISIS, which carries the penalty of life in prison or death under Iraq’s counterterrorism law.
In January, Baghdad’s Criminal Court sentenced a German woman to death. Two days ago, the same court convicted 11 Turkish women and an Azeri. One of the Turkish women was sentenced to death, and the rest to life in prison.
The chief justice said that in these cases, unlike earlier ones of ISIS suspects, the defendants had lawyers present during their interrogations, which would be a positive development.
A courtroom observer said that the women’s lawyers contended that the defendants’ husbands or others had tricked them into going to ISIS territory, but maintained that none of the women had been implicated in any violent acts. One woman said in court that her husband took their 2-year-old son and told her to follow him to Iraq or she wouldn’t see her son again.
The observer said the prosecution did not present evidence contesting the defense. Yet, the judges found all the women guilty of ISIS membership. The woman sentenced to death was found to have knowingly travelled to ISIS territory to join the group with her husband. Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as an irreversible, degrading, and cruel punishment.
The Iraqi authorities should develop a national strategy to prioritize the prosecution of those who committed the most serious crimes. For those suspected only of membership in ISIS without evidence of any other serious crime, the authorities should consider alternatives to criminal prosecution. In these cases, the women are getting the harshest possible sentences for what appears to be marriage to an ISIS member or a coerced border crossing. The Iraqi courts need to redirect their priorities.
The following community sites updated:
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Disappointing politicians
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NEWSWEEK gets caught again
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Again on Keto
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