Ulster Sorry For ‘Ethiopia Photo’

Ulster Rugby has apologised over a photograph posted on Twitter which showed two of the team apparently dressed up as Olympians from Ethiopia – with black make-up on their faces and arms.

 

Ulster players and Irish internationals Chris Henry and Paddy Jackson are pictured alongside three other men, all wearing Ethiopia’s colours and carrying a flag of the African country.

 

While the picture has since been removed from Twitter, it was recently used as a banner image at the top of Jackson’s profile on the social networking site.

 

In a statement, Ulster Rugby said: “Ulster Rugby would like to apologise unreservedly for any offence caused by a photograph posted on Twitter of some players at an Olympic-themed fancy dress party held two years ago.

 

“It was not the intention of the players to cause upset and the photograph has since been removed.”

 

Source

 

• Students Accused of Racism For Blackening Their Faces

• Italian Club Rioveggio Paint Faces Black to Protest Racism

• History of Blackface 

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The Troubling Truth Behind the Ebola Outbreak

„When Western policy makers regard “forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes” as “politically useful tools,” and with their proven track record of using chemical and biological agents on populations in both experiments and during protracted conflicts, it is not mere “panic” that creates the anger that led to violence aimed at MSF workers in Guinea.“

 

In the Guardian’s article, “Panic as deadly Ebola virus spreads across West Africa,” it reports:

 

Since the outbreak of the deadly strain of Zaire Ebola in Guinea in February, around 90 people have died as the disease has travelled to neighbouring Sierra Leone, Liberia and Mali. The outbreak has sent shock waves through communities who know little of the disease or how it is transmitted. The cases in Mali have added to fears that it is spreading through West Africa.

 

The Guardian also reported that  Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known in English as Doctors Without Borders, had established treatment centers in Guinea, one of which came under attack as locals accused the foreign aid group of bringing the disease into the country. Also under fire is the government of Guinea itself, which has proved incapable of handling the crisis.

 

This latest outbreak, which has yet to be contained and is being considered by Doctors Without Borders as an “unprecedented epidemic,” illustrates several troubling truths about global health care, emergency response to outbreaks, and the perception many have of a West subjecting the developing world to a “medical tyranny.”

 

Failure to Prepare

 

In 2012, when Doctors Without Borders concluded its response to an Ebola outbreak in Uganda, it claimed in its post, “MSF Concludes Emergency Ebola Response in Uganda,” that:

 

The Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency response to an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda has come to an end. The MSF team handed over the Ebola treatment center it set up in Uganda’s western Kibaale district to the Ugandan Ministry of Health (MoH).

 

The statement also claimed:

 

As part of a preparation plan for future outbreaks, MSF also restored a treatment unit in Mulago hospital, located in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. “Uganda has developed the capacity to respond to Ebola emergencies,” said MSF emergency coordinator Olimpia de la Rosa. “We can rely on the capability of Ministry of Health staff to take over and manage Ebola cases with all safety guarantees.”

 

One must wonder then, if MSF and other global health agencies can train Ugandan medical staff and hand over responsibilities to prevent a future outbreak to the government of Uganda, why haven’t similar provisions been undertaken in nations like Guinea, Liberia, Mali, and Sierra Leone. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Ebola outbreaks occur “primarily in remote villages in Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests.” Why then have nations in Central and West Africa not been prepared for such outbreaks – particularly when the many of the nations that back MSF are already heavily involved in the internal affairs of many of these nations?

France alone has expended hundreds of millions of euros during its ongoing military operations in Mali, reported by France 24 in 2013 to be costing the European nation approximately 2.7 million euros a day. Money spent on costly military operations designed to project Western hegemony across Northern and Western Africa, an extension of the West’s intervention in Libya, would lead one to believe that funds should also be available to prevent “unprecedented epidemics” of deadly diseases like Ebola, but apparently the same preparations made in Uganda have been neglected in French-occupied Mali, as well as other Ebola-prone nations.

 

While the West poses as chief arbiter of humanity and through its international organizations, intervening when crises strike, its failure to prepare other nations prone to Ebola outbreaks with a management formula already perfected in Uganda at the very least shakes public confidence and trust. When it intervenes in these very nations for geopolitical ambitions under the pretenses of “democracy,” “development,” and “human rights” but utterly fails to address the dire needs of the very people it claims to be rushing to the aid of, such confidence and trust is only further shaken.

 

Distrust Leads to Suspicion

 

While MSF and the government of Guinea claim mobs that attacked MSF workers were simply panicking, there exists troubling truths regarding the West and their use of chemical and biological agents for both experiments and as part of advancing their geopolitical ambitions that may have led to real genuine fears among locals that the Ebola outbreak was intentional.

 

The devastation left in the wake of Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War, and the ongoing tragedy unfolding as a result from America’s use of depleted uranium in Iraq are two extreme examples of how the West subjected entire populations to mutagenic agents that have sown horrific birth defects, fatal degenerative conditions, and maladies that will reverberate down through generations to come. Of particular concern is the role that supposedly neutral international agencies played in attempting to cover up these atrocities.

 

The Guardian’s article, “How the World Health Organisation covered up Iraq’s nuclear nightmare,” illustrates how the WHO’s conclusions were manipulated by politicized science, and offers the world a cautionary tale of how organizations like the UN and WHO cannot be entrusted to oversee issues of human health, our environment, or anything else upon which humanity’s existence hinges.

 

Beyond Agent Orange and depleted uranium, the UN and US stand accused of hundreds of thousands of forced sterilizations in Peru from 1995 to 1997.  There was also the NBC News report titled, “U.S. apologizes for Guatemala STD experiments,” that stated:

 

U.S. government medical researchers intentionally infected hundreds of people in Guatemala, including institutionalized mental patients, with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or permission more than 60 years ago.

 

Many of those infected were encouraged to pass the infection onto others as part of the study.

 

About one third of those who were infected never got adequate treatment.

More troubling still are the words from Western policy makers and politicians themselves. The prospect of using genospecific bioweapons was mentioned in the Neo-Conservative Project for a New American Century’s (PNAC) 2000 report titled, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (.pdf) which stated:

 

The proliferation of ballistic and cruise missiles and long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will make it much easier to project military power around the globe.  Munitions themselves will become increasingly accurate, while new methods of attack – electronic, “non-lethal,” biological – will be more widely available. (p.71 of .pdf)

Although it may take several decade for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and  “combat” likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes.  (p.72 of .pdf)

 

And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool. (p.72 of .pdf)

 

When Western policy makers regard “forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes” as “politically useful tools,” and with their proven track record of using chemical and biological agents on populations in both experiments and during protracted conflicts, it is not mere “panic” that creates the anger that led to violence aimed at MSF workers in Guinea.

 

Those None Can Trust, Can Help No One

 

Whether the latest outbreak of Ebola is part of some conspiracy or not may never be known. The central issue is the lack of trust Western agencies have when they attempt to respond to a crisis. Wrought not from irrational fears but from decades of abuse, atrocities, and exploitation, this lack of trust has rendered much of what the West does beyond its borders today increasingly impotent, and even at times counterproductive.

 

Those in the MSF that are truly attempting to help are unable to because of the misdeeds of those in the Western governments that back the organization. When MSF played a central role in aiding and abetting terrorists operating in Syria, including propping up fabrications regarding the August 2013 chemical weapons attack in Damascus, it only further undermined the trust and confidence required to allow genuine members and affiliates of their organization to do their jobs elsewhere around the world.

 

And if the West fails in its function as sole arbiter of humanity, what then should nations around the world do? That answer is quite simple.They must subscribe to a multipolar world with multipolar agencies that collaborate and cooperate rather than exist in constant and precarious dependence on the West and their “international organizations.” For the nations of North and Western Africa that face potential Ebola outbreaks – or for nations across Asia facing similar fears regarding severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), they themselves must find international partners, not to depend on in a time of crisis, but to train and prepare them nations’ health workers to be self-sufficient and capable of handling outbreaks before they occur.

 

Part of what some perceive as the West’s “medical tyranny,” is its creation of circumstances in which subject nations constantly rely on them for aid, expertise, and assistance. Such dependence is contrary to national sovereignty and endangers the freedom and security of individuals within that nation. In Guinea, the government’s inability to handle the crisis has allowed it to grow to dangerous proportions, while necessitating the inclusion of foreign agencies the public simply doesn’t trust. It is an indictment against so-called “international health” organizations, including WHO, and the many Western-backed agencies that work in the field on its behalf.

 

Nations must begin taking responsibility themselves for dealing with outbreaks, and partner nations should guide them in doing so, not holding their hand each time a crisis develops. The latest outbreak of Ebola across Western Africa illustrates how sorely ill-suited the West’s “international” agencies are in protecting the global population, and how the global population would be better served by finding ways to protect themselves.

 

Source

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Europeans Returned to Africa 3,000 Years Ago

“DNA sequences in the Khoisan people most closely resemble some found in people who today live in southern Europe.”

Call it humanity’s unexpected U-turn. One of the biggest events in the history of our species is the exodus out of Africa some 65,000 years ago, the start of Homo sapiens’ long march across the world. Now a study of southern African genes shows that, unexpectedly, another migration took western Eurasian DNA back to the very southern tip of the continent 3000 years ago.

According to conventional thinking, the Khoisan tribes of southern Africa, have lived in near-isolation from the rest of humanity for thousands of years. In fact, the study shows that some of their DNA matches most closely people from modern-day southern Europe, including Spain and Italy.

Because Eurasian people also carry traces of Neanderthal DNA, the finding also shows – for the first time – that genetic material from our extinct cousin may be widespread in African populations.

The Khoisan tribes of southern Africa are hunter-gatherers and pastoralists who speak unique click languages. Their extraordinarily diverse gene pool split from everyone else’s before the African exodus.

Ancient lineages

“These are very special, isolated populations, carrying what are probably the most ancient lineages in human populations today,” says David Reich of Harvard University. “For a lot of our genetic studies we had treated them as groups that had split from all other present-day humans before they had split from each other.”

So he and his colleagues were not expecting to find signs of western Eurasian genes in 32 individuals belonging to a variety of Khoisan tribes. “I think we were shocked,” says Reich.

The unexpected snippets of DNA most resembled sequences from southern Europeans, including Sardinians, Italians and people from the Basque region (see “Back to Africa – but from where?”). Dating methods suggested they made their way into the Khoisan DNA sometime between 900 and 1800 years ago – well before known European contact with southern Africa (see map).

Archaeological and linguistic studies of the region can make sense of the discovery. They suggest that a subset of the Khoisan, known as the Khoe-Kwadi speakers, arrived in southern Africa from east Africa around 2200 years ago. Khoe-Kwadi speakers were – and remain – pastoralists who make their living from herding cows and sheep. The suggestion is that they introduced herding to a region that was otherwise dominated by hunter-gatherers.

Khoe-Kwadi tribes

Reich and his team found that the proportion of Eurasian DNA was highest in Khoe-Kwadi tribes, who have up to 14 per cent of western Eurasian ancestry. What is more, when they looked at the east African tribes from which the Khoe-Kwadi descended, they found a much stronger proportion of Eurasian DNA – up to 50 per cent.

That result confirms a 2012 study by Luca Pagani of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, which found non-African genes in people living in Ethiopia. Both the 2012 study and this week’s new results show that the Eurasian genes made their way into east African genomes around 3000 years ago. About a millennium later, the ancestors of the Khoe-Kwadi headed south, carrying a weaker signal of the Eurasian DNA into southern Africa.

Continue reading…

• Ethiopians and Khoisan Share the Deepest Clades of the Human Y-Chromosome Phylogeny
• Paleoanthropologist John Hawks’ recent travels in Ethiopia

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A new Species of Horse Found in Ethiopia

“Eurygnathohippus woldegabrieli = Giday WoldeGabriel”, I like this latinised form too…but, why do new scientific terms have to be created using the dead latin language?

Two teams of researchers, including a scientist from Case Western Reserve University, have announced the discovery of a new species of fossil horse from 4.4 million-year-old fossil-rich deposits in Ethiopia.

About the size of a small zebra, Eurygnathohippus woldegabrieli—named for geologist Giday WoldeGabriel, who earned his PhD at Case Western Reserve in 1987—had three-toed hooves and grazed the grasslands and shrubby woods in the Afar Region, the scientists say.

They report their findings in the November issue of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The horse fills a gap in the evolutionary history of horses but is also important for documenting how old a fossil locality is and in reconstructing habitats of human forebears of the time, said Scott Simpson, professor of anatomy at Case Western Reserve’s School of Medicine, and coauthor of the research. “This horse is one piece of a very complex puzzle that has many, many pieces.”

The researchers found the first E. woldegabrieli teeth and bones in 2001, in the Gona area of the Afar Region. This fossil horse was among the diverse array of animals that lived in the same areas as the ancient human ancestor Ardipithecus ramidus, commonly called Ardi.

“The fossil search team spreads out to survey for fossils in the now arid badlands of the Ethiopian desert.,” Simpson said. “Among the many fossils we found are the two ends of the foreleg bone—the canon—brilliant white and well preserved in the red-tinted earth.”

Continue reading…

Ethiopian Pegasus (Pegasoi Aithiopes)

This was a winged horse from Ethiopia documented by the ancient Greeks. It had the wings of a bird on a horse that had one great horn protruding from its head. It was born from an island in the Red Sea off the coasts of Ethiopia.

Pegasos was tamed by Bellerophon, a Korinthian hero, who rode him into battle against the fire-breathing Khimaira. Later, after the hero attempted to fly to heaven, the gods caused the horse to buck, throwing him back down to earth. Pegasos continued to wing its way to heaven where it took a place in the stables of Zeus.

The horse was also placed amongst the stars as a constellation, whose rising marked the arrival of the warmer weather of spring and seasonal rainstorms. As such he was often named thunderbolt-bearer of Zeus. In the constellation myths, Pegasos (“Springing Forth”) may have represented the blooming of spring whilst Khimaira (“Frosty Air” ?) (perhaps winter-rising Capricorn) was the cold chill of winter.

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*ፈረስ*

እህህህህህ!

ይህ ድንቅ የክቡር ያሬድ ገብረ ሚካኤል ግጥም የወቅቱን ያገራችንን እና የስደተኛውን ሕዝባችንን ተፈታታኝ ሁኔታ ያንጸባርቅልናል።

የጀግና ባለሟል እኔ አቶ ፈረስ፡

ከተፋፋመው ጦር ወስጄ እማደርስ፡

እዘኑልኝ በጣም ሳልለይ አንድ ቀን፡

ወሪሳ ስመታ ስማርክ ጠላትን፡

ይህ ብቻ ነበረ የኔ ሙያ እስካሁን።

ሐሴትም እንደሆን ይጠየቅ ጐበና፤

ምንም እሱ ቢሞት ሥራው ሁሉ አለና።

መቼም በዚህ ዓለም ሁሉ ሲያልቅ አያምር፤

ጋሪ በወገቤ ያናጥር ጀመር።

በጣታቸው እንኳ የማይነኩትን፡

ሸክም አሸከሙኝ የማልችለውን።

ወንዶች እያወቁ የፈረስን ጥቅም፡

ምጣድ አከንባሎ እንደምን ልሸከም።

በተከበርኩበት ወርቅ ተሸልሜ፡

ይኽው እዞራለሁ በርሜል ተሸክሜ።

እንዲህ ወደ ጓላ ይወለዳል ጉድ፡

የወንዶች ባለሟል ሲሸከም ምጣድ።

ጀግና የሆነ ሰው የፈረስ ስም አለው፡

በዛሬውስ ጊዜ ስሜ ጠፋ ምነው።

ወገቤ ተቆርጧል ጋሪ በመጎተት፡

በወንድ ልጅ አምላክ አሳርፉኝ ጥቂት።

ረረስ ሠረገላ ይስባል ቢሏችሁ፡

ትገርፉት ጀመር ወይ ግንድ አሸክማችሁ፡

ጣልያን እስከ መቼም ነፍስህ አይማር፡

እኔ እሰቃያለሁ በተከልከው ግብር፡

የኔማ የፈረስ ሙያዬ አይነገር፡

የወርቅ የበር ዋንጫ የማስገኘውን ክብር፡

ይኸው ዛሬ ጋሪ ስጐትት በምድር፡

ተገጥቧል ጀርባዬ አልሰማም ወይ እግዜር።

ተመክቼ ነበር በጐበዛዝት፡

አሳልፈው ሰጡኝ ጋሪ እንድጐትት፡

እየገፉኝ ያልፋል በኔ ትዳር ገብቶ።

መቼም በኔ ትዳር ምቀኛዬ በዝቷል፡

በምድር በሰማይ ላይ መንገዱን ዘርግቷል።

ክብረት መታገል መቼም አይቀጣ፡

የሚያስታግሥ ነገር ፈጣሪዬ ያምጣ።

ወርቅ መጣብር ነበር የፈረሱ ጌጥ፡

እዩት የዛሬውን በጋሪ ስጐብጥ።

አንድ ሰው ሲቀመጥ ወትሮ በጀርባዬ፡

እቍነጠነጥ ነበር ልሸምጥ ብዬ።

የዚያን ጊዜ ግፉ እንዳይቀር ብድሩ፡

ሦስቱ በኔ ላይ መሳፈር ጀመሩ።

መቼ ይኽ ብቻ ኧረ አያልቅም ጉዱ፡

ጋሪውና ጎማው አይጣል መካበዱ።

በዚያም በዚያም ሆነ ዛሬ የኔ ሸክም፡

ከስድስት ሰዎች ቢበልጥ እንጂ አያንስም።

እነ ኦቶመቢል ሠልጥነው ዛሬም፡

ሊያስወጡኝ ፈለጉ ከዋናው ከተማ።

ዘመናዊው አውቶ ሉክሱ ኦፔልማ፡

እንደ ውሀ ሲፈስ በመላው ከተማ።

የወሩን ጐዳና ባንድ ቀን ገሥግሦ፡

ደከመኝ አይልም የልቡን አድርሶ።

ሲሔድ አይነቀንቅ ድካም አይሰማ፡

ዓለም አይደለም ወይ በሱ መጓዝማ።

ጐማው ሲፈነዳ ቢነዚኑ ዕልቅ ሲል፡

መቼም አይቀርልኝ ፈረስ ጥሩ መባል።

ምንም አራት እግር ቢኖራት መኪና፡

እንደኔም አትፈጥን መንገዱ ካልቀና

ጐማው እስኪነፋ ቤንዚኑ እስኪገኝ፡

ከኔ ራስ አይወርድም ችግር ገፊ ነኝ።

አትጨክንምና አንተ በፈረስ፡

ከዚህ ጭንቅ አድነኝ ቅዱስ ጊዮርጊስ።

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Hitchhiking Virus Confirms Saga of Ancient Human Migration

A study of the full genetic code of a common human virus offers a dramatic confirmation of the “out-of-Africa” pattern of human migration, which had previously been documented by anthropologists and studies of the human genome.

The virus under study, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), usually causes nothing more severe than cold sores around the mouth, says Curtis Brandt, a professor of medical microbiology and ophthalmology at UW-Madison. Brandt is senior author of the study, now online in the journal PLOS ONE.

When Brandt and co-authors Aaron Kolb and Cécile Ané compared 31 strains of HSV-1 collected in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia, “the result was fairly stunning,” says Brandt.

“The viral strains sort exactly as you would predict based on sequencing of human genomes. We found that all of the African isolates cluster together, all the virus from the Far East, Korea, Japan, China clustered together, all the viruses in Europe and America, with one exception, clustered together,” he says.

“What we found follows exactly what the anthropologists have told us, and the molecular geneticists who have analyzed the human genome have told us, about where humans originated and how they spread across the planet,” said Curtis Brandt

Continue Reading…

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Is The Term “Sub-Saharan Africa” Racist?

My note: A tragic news is reported today about the death of Six East African migrants off the Italian island of Sicily. The six emigrants who died are East Africans, and the 120 rescued migrants were Egyptians and Syrians. The official report states “the Six drowned were apparently unable to swim” Ethnic cleansing on the boat? Were the Six, so-called, ‘sub-Saharan Africans’ thrown overboard? Back in 2011, 47 Ethiopians, seven Nigerians, seven Eritreans, six Ghanians and five Sudanese migrants were left to die on a boat by NATO and European authorities who spotted their vessel drifting in the Mediterranean but made no effort to rescue them. They prefer rescuing tuxedos wearing penguins to fellow humans. They let those who terrorize them from the Middle East into their countries, and they are forced to close their embassies out of fear – but they give bad names, like ‘sub-Saharan Africa’, to those who don’t try to hurt them. Isn’t this map a perfect example of madness?

The following brilliant post is reblogged from

Sub-Saharan Africa (1955), or sSA for short, means Africa south of the Sahara. In practice it means all of Africa except for the countries in the very north – Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Western Sahara. It is a way to say “Black Africa” and talk about black Africans without sounding racist.

The term is beloved by the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, The Economist, CNN, American think tanks, anthropologists and others. It goes back to the 1950s but did not drive out “Black Africa” and “tropical Africa” and come into its own till the 1980s.

From what I have read sub-Saharan Africa is:

• A place of Aids – above all else.
• A place of dying mothers, economic outlooks and weak governments.
• A place of poverty – with most of the world’s reserves of gold, platinum, chromium and cobalt.
• A place of hunger – that grows flowers for India, wheat for South Korea, bad-tasting tea for Lipton and biofuels for machines in China.
• A place in constant need of foreign aid, American strategies, population control, sad comparisons with other parts of the world and endless statistics.
• A place where outsiders think they know best.

The term “sub-Saharan Africa” is Eurocentric and racist:

“Sub” means below the Sahara. But “below” from whose point of view? Like “Middle East” and “Far East” the word is Eurocentric.

“Sub” brings to mind “lesser than” – subhuman, subpar, substandard, etc. Maybe it is just my imagination, but given how heavily the word is used with the Broken Africa stereotype, probably not. Words catch on for a reason.

Mauritania: If it was truly about the Sahara and not race, Mauritania would never be counted as sub-Saharan: Its capital, like most of the country, is hardly south of the Sahara. A geographic Freudian slip.

It divides Africa according to white ideas of race – making North Africans white enough to count their achievements among the glories of white history but not white enough to, you know, respect the sovereignty of their nations.

It sees all black Africans as being somehow alike, even though:

• They speak a thousand different languages belonging to six different language families.
• They follow different religions – Islam, Christianity and countless smaller ones.
• They have more genetic diversity than an African offshoot known as “the rest of the world”.

The soft bigotry of the Saharan Barrier Thesis – the idea that, until white people came to save the day in the 1400s, the Sahara had cut off black people from the rest of the world, thus accounting for their sad-but-true “inferiority”. People believe this even though before the 1400s:

• Islam was found on both sides of the Sahara.
• Christianity was found on both sides.
• Female genital mutilation was found on both sides.
• Arabic and Afroasiatic languages were found on both sides.
• Type O blood was found equally on both sides.
• Trade and the Nile flowed right through the Sahara.

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Ethiopia Cancels 40,000 Visas to Work in Saudi Arabia

The Ethiopian government has cancelled 40,000 work visas for housemaids destined for Saudi Arabia in retaliation to the kingdom’s ban on the recruitment of domestic workers from the African country.

Saudi Arabia last week announced the temporary recruitment ban while it investigates the alleged murder of children by Ethiopian maids.

A six-year-old girl died at her home in a town near the capital Riyadh last month after her throat was apparently cut with a knife. Her family has accused their Ethiopian maid of murdering her.

Several similar incidents have led to discussion on social media websites about the apparent growing number of children dying while in the care of their maid.

A hashtag on Twitter calling for the deportation of all Ethiopian domestic workers has gained traction in recent weeks, although the father of the six-year-old girl has urged Saudis not to make generalisations about Ethiopians.

Saudi Arabia had been forced to increase its intake of Ethiopian domestic workers after other labour exporting countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines banned their citizens from working in the kingdom because of disputes over exploitation and workers’ rights.

Source

Sara Al Amoudi: I’m So Rich I Spent £1m on Perfume in Two Months

A supposed Saudi princess claimed yesterday that she is so wealthy she has splashed out almost £1million on perfume in the past two months.

Her spree has created an Aladdin’s cave-style display of opulence which has to be seen to be believed, the High Court heard.

Sara Al Amoudi is accused of being a one-time penniless Ethiopian prostitute who posed as a princess to swindle London property developers Amanda Clutterbuck and Ian Paton out of luxury flats worth £14million.

Continue reading…

Supplementary info

P.S: The first time I encounter, “Sorry we are unable to accept comments for legal reasons”, on MailOnline.

Archeology: Nubian Complex Site from Central Arabia

The palaeoclimatic record of Arabia indicates that three distinct wet phases occurred during MIS 5 [109]. The first of these wet phases occurred between 130 and 125 kya (MIS 5e) and precedes the presence of Nubian technology in Arabia. The two following wet phases, positioned around 100 kya (MIS 5c) and between 80 to 75 kya (MIS 5a) may be viewed as possible windows for the Nubian expansion into and across Arabia (Figure 11).

PLoS ONE 8(7): e69221. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069221

A Nubian Complex Site from Central Arabia: Implications for Levallois Taxonomy and Human Dispersals during the Upper Pleistocene

Archaeological survey undertaken in central Saudi Arabia has revealed 29 surface sites attributed to the Arabian Middle Paleolithic based on the presence of Levallois blank production methods. Technological analyses on cores retrieved from Al-Kharj 22 have revealed specific reduction modalities used to produce flakes with predetermined shapes. The identified modalities, which are anchored within the greater Levallois concept of core convexity preparation and exploitation, correspond with those utilized during the Middle Stone Age Nubian Complex of northeast Africa and southern Arabia. The discovery of Nubian technology at the Al-Kharj 22 site represents the first appearance of this blank production method in central Arabia. Here we demonstrate how a rigorous use of technological and taxonomic analysis may enable intra-regional comparisons across the Arabian Peninsula. The discovery of Al-Kharj 22 increases the complexity of the Arabian Middle Paleolithic archaeological record and suggests new dynamics of population movements between the southern and central regions of the Peninsula. This study also addresses the dichotomy within Nubian core typology (Types 1 and 2), which was originally defined for African assemblages.

Source

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A Fascinating Map of The World’s Most and Least Racially Tolerant Countries

My Note: Woow! If this is the harvested fruit of academic excellence, the world is braced for more immense confusion and trouble. By qualifying Somalia artificially as less homogeneous than European countries they attempt to prove, Homogeneity = Prosperity. Mind you, every European country is heterogeneous. Next, they speak of Pakistan as more tolerant than India or Germany. Does this make sense at all?! Even, racially more divided South Africa is bluer than, probably, the most tolerant state in history, Ethiopia. Yes! The world’s 20 most diverse countries are all African, but in their diversity lies their richness. All these diverse countries in Africa are more tolerant, and have more stability and peace than such relatively homogeneous and intolerant nations like Somalia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.

The world knows which populations of the planet have refused to grow up, hence remained intolerant to their fellow human beings – yet, some of these “academicians” perform fraud representation – make superficial and dishonest studies to manipulate the obvious reality. Either they are blind or simply cynical!

Now back to the study…

When two Swedish economists set out to examine whether economic freedom made people any more or less racist, they knew how they would gauge economic freedom, but they needed to find a way to measure a country’s level of racial tolerance. So they turned to something called the World Values Survey, which has been measuring global attitudes and opinions for decades.

Among the dozens of questions that World Values asks, the Swedish economists found one that, they believe, could be a pretty good indicator of tolerance for other races. The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors.

If we treat this data as indicative of racial tolerance, then we might conclude that people in the bluer countries are the least likely to express racist attitudes, while the people in red countries are the most likely.

Continue reading…

The Terrorism and Political Violence Map

The Aon 2013 Terrorism and Political Violence Map, released on Wednesday, looks at 200 countries and is used as a gauge for the overall intensity of the risk of terrorism and political violence to business in each country – based on three icons indicating the forms of political violence which are likely to be encountered:

• Terrorism and sabotage

• Strikes, riots, civil commotion and malicious damage

• Political insurrection, revolution, rebellion, mutiny, coup d’etat, war and civil war

Neil Henderson, head of Aon Risk Solutions’ Crisis Management Terrorism team, said, “Terrorism is having an increasing impact on today’s global organizations and terrorist attacks are now regarded as a foreseeable risk. An attack not only on, but near an organization’s premises can result in human casualties, property damage, business interruption, legal liability issues and long term damage to brand and reputation.”

On the terrorism front, 44% of countries measured have a real threat of on-going terrorism. Although the report did not specifically define terrorism as religious in motivation, as has been the case throughout major U.S. and European terrorist outbursts, emerging market giants Russia and India were high on the list. Russia had a risk rating of three. India was worse, ranked four out of five.

Overall, Europe had the most positive regional outlook, with 47% of the countries seeing a decline to their risk ratings this year. Limited incidents of terrorism outside of Greece and Northern Ireland also accounted for lowered risk scores.

Middle East most unstable

As expected, the Middle East and Africa are the most unstable by far when it comes to terrorist risk. A total of 64% of those countries are rated a severe political risk, while North Africa, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan in particular faced the obvious bouts of extreme terrorism on a daily basis.

The Middle East is the most unstable region, according to the map, with 64% of countries assigned high or severe risk ratings. The risk of terrorism and sabotage was most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa, with 85% of countries in that region at risk, according to the research.

Oil rich countries were the most risky. Nigeria was ranked a 5 on a scale of 1 to 5 for terrorist risk, while Tanzania and Mozambique were on par with the United States and Canada at a ranking of 2.

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‘Talking’ Monkeys: Gelada Baboons’ Social Lip-Smacking Hints at Human Language Evolution

My note: It won’t surprise us if they come up with the idea that Ethiopians owe their ‘evolutionary’ lineage to the Geladas, as other Africans to Gorillas, Asians to Orangutans and Europeans to Chimpanzees?

Well, scientists seem to be fascinated by the lip-smacking vocalizations of gelada baboons, as I once was fascinated by the funny observations of Xi, the African hero from the wonderful San tribe, in the hilarious South African slapstick movie, The God’s Must Be Crazy, Xi thinks whites talk like monkey. LOL!

 

Are these talking monkeys? Wild gelada baboons, native to Ethiopia, make lip-smacking sounds while socializing that sound surprisingly like human speech.

Geladas, sometimes called gelada baboons, are a highly social species of monkey from the high mountains of Ethiopia that make unique lip-smacking vocalizations to each other called “wobbles.” Wobbles are produced mainly by adult males seeking the attention of females, and are produced by inhaling and exhaling while lip-smacking, punctuated by grunts.

Other primates display non-vocal lip-smacks during social encounters, but geladas are the first nonhuman primates observed to vocalize while lip-smacking. Most other monkeys and apes make vocalizations without moving their lips, jaw, or tongue, and those sounds tend to be monosyllabic and without much variation in pitch and volume.

Geladas’ wobbles, on the other hand, have an undulating rhythm that sounds surprisingly like human speech. The new findings, published today in the journal Current Biology, suggest that lip-smacking vocalizations could have been an evolutionary step towards human speech.

comparing the geladas’ vocalizations to the rhythms of human speech. He recorded and analyzed the rhythm of the wobbles, and discovered that at 6-9 hertz (Hz), they do indeed have a similar frequency to human speech. Like that of human speech, the rhythm of geladas’ lip-smacking wobbles corresponds to the periodic movements of the mouth and allows complexity.

Bergman suggests that lip-smacking may serve the same basic purpose as human language: in addition to allowing the exchange of information, it enhances social interactions.

It is unclear what kind of meaning geladas’ wobbles might carry, but it’s clear from observations of the monkeys that they facilitate social behavior. Geladas live in family units that often combine to form larger foraging bands of hundreds of animals, and spend much of their time sitting, munching on grass, and socializing.

While Bergman’s findings indicate a possible evolutionary pathway for language development, he acknowledges that much more research must be done to flesh out how human speech developed from other forms of animal communication. Many species of animals make sounds structured like human speech, and a gene called FOXP2 has been identified as important to both human language and animal communication.

As Bergman concluded his paper: “There is much to be explored about the evolution of human speech, perhaps most importantly how the production of complex sounds came to represent complex meanings.”

Continue reading…

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The West’s Secret Pact to Get Mideast Oil

“British Petroleum and The Redline Agreement”

In this book, Edwin Black talked about the 1928 agreement signed by a consortium of oil companies that created a Western-controlled oil cartel in the Middle East which he argues is the root of decades-long struggle over power and energy supplies. He talked about the role of petroleum in the creation of Iran, Iraq, and other countries in the Middle East and in U.S. foreign policy.

BRITISH PETROLEUM and the REDLINE AGREEMENT is the third and latest entry in a series of books written by award-winning investigative journalist Edwin Black that tackles the issues surrounding automobiles, energy, and transportation. The previous two books are INTERNAL COMBUSTION and THE PLAN: HOW TO RESCUE SOCIETY THE DAY THE OIL STOPS. As with all of his other books (10 total), Black relies upon a crack research team to uncover and compile an exhaustive trove of heretofore unknown factual information and data.

The book opens with startling details of the most tragic global event to occur between the September 11th attacks and the Japanese Tsunami – the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. It then reaches back to mid 19th century America to explain the founding of the oil industry, before moving half a world away to the troubled oil-rich vastness that became known as the Middle East. For the first time, it is possible to clearly understand the transformation of Mesopotamia into Iraq, Persia into Iran, and how a Hashemite tribal leader came to be installed as the King of Iraq, a land he had no right to rule.

BRITISH PETROLEUM and the REDLINE AGREEMENT exposes the hidden truths that led to two world wars, countless regional conflicts, millions of dead servicemen and civilians, economic depression, wide-spread health hazards and rampant global terrorism. Although I’m reluctant to describe a book of this magnitude as entertaining, it is certainly that. But more importantly, it is an instructive, fascinating account that is even more relevant today since the subject is at the heart of the current “greatest” financial depression, and because the next oil-induced world war would probably conclude with a cataclysmic exchange of nuclear weapons.

Watch this video for relevant questions and responses with Edwin Black

In his earlier book, “The War Against the Weak,” Edwin Black documents the collaboration of American corporate philanthropic organizations with Nazi Germany researchers to create a white, Nordic master race. Black has also documented the forceful sterilization of 60,000 Americans in genetic-control campaigns taking place as recently as 1900.

The journalist is an international investigative author of 80 award-winning editions in 14 languages in 65 countries. With more than one million books in print, his work focuses on genocide and hate, corporate criminality and corruption, governmental misconduct, academic fraud, philanthropic abuse, oil addiction, alternative energy and historical investigation. He has been interviewed on “Oprah,” NBC’s “Today” show, CNN’s “Wolf Blitzer Reports” and NBC’s “Dateline,” as well as leading networks in Europe and Latin America.

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