From ths at psalience.org Mon Jan 9 00:19:45 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:19:45 +0100 Subject: [THS] Michel Chossudovsky: Deployment of Thousands of US Troops to Israel... Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120109001720.06dabd58@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28503 THE WAR ON IRAN: The Deployment of Thousands of US Troops to Israel, The Integration of US-Israeli Command Structures by Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, January 4, 2012 The Islamic Republic of Iran has been threatened with military action by the US and its allies for the last eight years. Iran has been involved in war games in the Persian Gulf. The US Navy is deployed. Iran's naval exercises which commenced on December 24th were conducted in an area which is patrolled by the US Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain. Meanwhile, a new round of economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran has been unleashed, largely targeting Iran's Central Bank, leading to a dramatic plunge of Iran's currency. Reacting to US threats, Iran declared that it would consider blocking the shipment of oil through the Strait of Hormuz: "Roughly 40 percent of the world's oil tanker shipments transit the strait daily, carrying 15.5 million barrels of Saudi, Iraqi, Iranian, Kuwaiti, Bahraini, Qatari and United Arab Emirates crude oil, leading the United States Energy Information Administration to label the Strait of Hormuz "the world's most important oil chokepoint." (John C.K. Daly, War Imminent in Strait of Hormuz? $200 a Barrel Oil? Global Research, January 3, 2012) The Globalization of War and the Demise of the American Republic There is a symbiotic relationship between War and the Economic Crisis. The planning of the Iran war is being carried out at the crossroads of a worldwide economic depression, which is conducive to widening social inequalities, mass unemployment and the impoverishment of large sectors of the world population. Crushing social movements on the domestic front --including all forms of resistance to America's military agenda and its neoliberal economic policies-- is an integral part of the United States' hegemonic role Worldwide. Does Constitutional Government in the eyes of the Obama Administration constitute an encroachment to "The Globalization of War"? History tells us that an Empire cannot be built on the political foundations of a Republic. In this regard, it should come as no surprise that the new Iran sanctions regime adopted by the US Congress became law on New Year's Eve, December 31st, on the same day Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA 2012), which suspends civil liberties and allows for the "Indefinite Detention of Americans". (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Inauguration of Police State USA 2012. Obama Signs the ?National Defense Authorization Act ", Global Research, January 1, 2012) The Obama administration is intent upon crushing both social dissent as well as antiwar protest. The American Republic is incompatible with America's "long war". What is required is the instatement of a "democratic dictatorship", a de facto military rule in civilian cloths. Thousands of Troops to Israel Advanced war preparations are ongoing. Barely mentioned by the Western media, although confirmed by Israeli press reports, the Pentagon is preparing to send several thousand US troops to Israel. In the context of ongoing war preparations, these troops are slated to participate in joint US-Israeli military maneuvers in Spring 2012, described by the Jerusalem Post as "the largest-ever missile defense exercise in [Israel's] history." (emphasis added) Last week [11-18 December], Lt.-Gen. Frank Gorenc, commander of the US?s Third Air Force based in Germany, visited Israel to finalize plans for the upcoming drill, expected to see the deployment of several thousand American soldiers in Israel. (US commander visits Israel to finalize missile... Jerusalem Post December 21, 2011 emphasis added) These war games involve the testing of Israel's air defense system, which is now fully integrated into the US global missile detection system, following the installation (December 2008) of a new sophisticated X-band early warning radar system. (See www.defense.gov/news/, December 30, 2011, .See also Sen. Joseph Azzolina, Protecting Israel from Iran's missiles, Bayshore News, December 26, 2008). The US global missile detection system includes satellites, Aegis ships in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Red Sea as well as land-based Patriot radars and interceptors. In the context of planning the US-Israel Spring war games: "The US will also bring its THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) and shipbased Aegis ballistic missile defense systems to Israel to simulate the interception of missile salvos against Israel. The American systems will work in conjunction with Israel?s missile defense systems ? the Arrow, Patriot and Iron Dome. Gorenc came to Israel for talks with Brig.-Gen. Doron Gavish, commander of the Air Force?s Air Defense Division. He toured one of the Iron Dome batteries in the South and the Israel Test Bed lab in Holon where the IAF holds its interception simulation exercises. The IAF is planning to deploy a fourth battery of the Iron Dome counter-rocket system in the coming months and is mulling the possibility of stationing it in Haifa to protect oil refineries located there. The Defense Ministry has allocated a budget to manufacture an additional three Iron Dome batteries by the end of 2012. IAF operational requirements call for the deployment of about a dozen batteries along Israel?s northern and southern borders. The IAF is also moving forward with plans to deploy Rafael?s David?s Sling missile defense system, which is designed to defend against medium-range rockets and cruise missiles. Rafael recently completed a series of successful navigation and flight tests of the David?s Sling?s interceptor and plans to hold the first interception test by mid-2012. US commander visits Israel to finalize missile... Jerusalem Post December 21, 2011) Integrated US-NATO-Israel Command Structures Pursuant to these joint US-Israel games, there are indications that the US is also planning to increase the number of American troops stationed in Israel. Moreover, these military exercises planned for next Spring are accompanied by a fundamental shift in US-NATO-Israel command structures. What is now unfolding at Washington's behest is an integration of US-Israel military command structures. Washington is not a reluctant partner, as some observers have suggested, "with the Obama administration attempting to distance itself" from an Israeli sponsored war on Iran. Quite the opposite! Given the integration of Israel's air defense system into that of the US, Israel cannot, under any circumstances, wage a war on Iran without the US. Moreover, since mid-2005, following the signing of a protacol between NATO and Tel Aviv, Israel has beocme a de facto member of the Atlantic Alliance. The Pentagon calls the shots. The planned deployment of US troops in Israel is part and parcel of a US sponsored war. In the context of the Spring 2012 military drills, the United States military will establish Command Posts in Israel. In turn, Israel's IDF will establish Command Posts at United States European Command headquarters (EUCOM), in Stuttgart, Germany. (Ibid). The ultimate objective of these command posts is to establish "joint [US-Israeli] task forces in the event of a large-scale conflict in the Middle East", (Ibid). In other words, these task forces will be involved in planning the deployment of troops and weapons systems directed against Iran, with Israel playing an important role as a launchpad for military action. What these developments suggest is that the war on Iran --which has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since 2003-- will involve the direct participation of Israel under a unified US military command. The people of Israel are the unspoken victims of America's global military agenda as well their own government's war plans directed against Iran. They are led to believe that Iran possesses nuclear weapons when in fact Israel possesses an advanced nuclear arsenal, which is directed against Iran. The people of Israel as well as Western public opinion, more generally, are also led to believe that Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants "to Wipe Israel off the Map", when in fact this statement was concocted by the Western media, as a means of demonizing the Iranian head of state as well as presenting Iran as a threat to the security of Israel: "Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran's President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, "Israel must be wiped off the map". Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made" (See Arash Norouzi, Israel: "Wiped off The Map". The Rumor of the Century, Fabricated by the US Media to Justify An All out War on Iran, Global Research, January 20, 2007) Who wants to "wipe Israel off the Map"? Tehran or Washington? Ahmadinejad or Obama? In actual fact, the Obama administration as well as the Netanyahu government indelibly constitute a threat to the people of Israel. Tehran has since 2005 warned that it will retaliate if attacked, in the form of ballistic missile strikes directed against Israel as well as against US military facilities in the Persian Gulf, which would immediately lead us into a scenario of military escalation. This war would engulf a region extending from the Mediterranean to the heartland of Central Asia. It would have devastating consequences, resulting in a massive loss of life. It would precipitate humanity into a World War III scenario. From ths at psalience.org Mon Jan 9 13:56:19 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:56:19 +0100 Subject: [THS] The Geo-Politics of the Strait of Hormuz Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120109135010.04b5b040@mail.messagingengine.com> The Geo-Politics of the Strait of Hormuz: Could the U.S. Navy be defeated by Iran in the Persian Gulf? By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28516 Global Research, January 8, 2012 After years of U.S. threats, Iran is taking steps which suggest that is both willing and capable of closing the Strait of Hormuz. On December 24, 2011 Iran started its Velayat-90 naval drills in and around the Strait of Hormuz and extending from the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman (Oman Sea) to the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Since the conduct of these drills, there has been a growing war of words between Washington and Tehran. Nothing the Obama Administration or the Pentagon have done or said so far, however, has deterred Tehran from continuing its naval drills. The Geo-Political Nature of the Strait of Hormuz Besides the fact that it is a vital transit point for global energy resources and a strategic chokepoint, two additional issues should be addressed in regards to the Strait of Hormuz and its relationship to Iran. The first concerns the geography of the Strait of Hormuz. The second pertains to the role of Iran in co-managing the strategic strait in accordance with international law and its sovereign national rights. The maritime traffic that goes through the Strait of Hormuz has always been in contact with Iranian naval forces, which are predominantly composed of the Iranian Regular Force Navy and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy. In fact, Iranian naval forces monitor and police the Strait of Hormuz along with the Sultanate of Oman via the Omani enclave of Musandam. More importantly, to transit through the Strait of Hormuz all maritime traffic, including the U.S. Navy, must sail through Iranian territorial waters. Almost all entrances into the Persian Gulf are made through Iranian waters and most exits are through Omani waters. Iran allows foreign ships to use its territorial waters in good faith and on the basis of Part III of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea?s maritime transit passage provisions that stipulate that vessels are free to sail through the Strait of Hormuz and similar bodies of water on the basis of speedy and continuous navigation between an open port and the high seas. Although Tehran in custom follows the navigation practices of the Law of the Sea, Tehran is not legally bound by them. Like Washington, Tehran signed this international treaty, but never ratified it. American-Iranian Tensions in the Persian Gulf In recent developments, the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) is re-evaluating the use of Iranian waters at the Strait of Hormuz by foreign vessels. Legislation is being proposed to block any foreign warships from being able to use Iranian territorial waters to navigate through the Strait of Hormuz without Iranian permission; the Iranian Parliament?s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee is currently studying legislation which would establish an official Iranian posture. The latter would hinge upon Iranian strategic interests and national security. [1] On December 30, 2011, the U.S.S. John C. Stennis carrier passed through the area where Iran was conducting its naval drills. The Commander of the Iranian Regular Forces, Major-General Ataollah Salehi, advised the U.S.S. John C. Stennis and other U.S. Navy vessels not to return to the Persian Gulf while Iran was doing its drills, saying that Iran is not in the habit of repeating a warning twice. [2] Shortly after the stern Iranian warning to Washington, the Pentagon?s press secretary responded by making a statement saying: ?No one in this government seeks confrontation [with Iran] over the Strait of Hormuz. It?s important to lower the temperature.? [3] In an actual scenario of military conflict with Iran, it is very likely that U.S. aircraft carriers would actually operate from outside of the Persian Gulf and from the southern Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. Unless the missile systems that Washington is developing in the petro-sheikhdoms of the southern Persian Gulf are operational, the deployment of large U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf would be unlikely. The reasons for this are tied to geographic realities and the defensive capabilities of Iran. Geography is against the Pentagon: U.S. Naval Strength has limits in the Persian Gulf U.S. naval strength, which includes the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard, has primacy over all the other navies and maritime forces in the world. Its deep sea or oceanic capabilities are unparalleled and unmatched by any other naval power. Primacy does not mean invincibility. U.S. naval forces in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf are nonetheless vulnerable. Despite its might and shear strength, geography literally works against U.S. naval power in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. The relative narrowness of the Persian Gulf makes it like a channel, at least in a strategic and military context. Figuratively speaking, the aircraft carriers and warships of the U.S. are confined to narrow waters or are closed in within the coastal waters of the Persian Gulf. [See map above] This is where the Iranian military?s advanced missile capabilities come into play. The Iranian missile and torpedo arsenal would make short work of U.S. naval assets in the waters of the Persian Gulf where U.S. vessels are constricted. This is why the U.S. has been busily erecting a missile shield system in the Persian Gulf amongst the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the last few years. Even the small Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf, which appear pitiable and insignificant against a U.S. aircraft carrier or destroyer, threaten U.S. warships. Looks can be deceiving; these Iranian patrol boats can easily launch a barrage of missiles that could significantly damage and effectively sink large U.S. warships. Iranian small patrol boats are also hardly detectable and hard to target. Iranian forces could also attack U.S. naval capabilities merely by launching missile attacks from the Iranian mainland on the northern shores of the Persian Gulf. Even in 2008 the Washington Institute for Near East Policy acknowledged the threat from Iran?s mobile coastal missile batteries, anti-ship missiles, and missile-armed small ships. [4] Other Iranian naval assets like aerial drones, hovercraft, mines, diver teams, and mini-submarines could also be used in asymmetrical naval warfare against the U.S. Fifth Fleet. Even the Pentagon?s own war simulations have shown that a war in the Persian Gulf with Iran would spell disaster for the United States and its military. One key example is the Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) war game in the Persian Gulf, which was conducted from July 24, 2002 to August 15, 2002 and took almost two years to prepare. This mammoth drill was amongst the largest and most expensive war games ever held by the Pentagon. Millennium Challenge 2002 was held shortly after the Pentagon had decided that it would continue the momentum of the war in Afghanistan by targeting Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, and finishing off with the big prize of Iran in a broad military campaign to ensure U.S. primacy in the new millennium. After Millennium Challenge 2002 was finished, the war game was ?officially? presented as a simulation of a war against Iraq under the rule of President Saddam Hussein, but in actuality these war games pertained to Iran.[5] The U.S. had already made assessments for the upcoming Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Moreover, Iraq had no naval capabilities that would merit such large-scale use of the U.S. Navy. Millennium Challenge 2002 was conducted to simulate a war with Iran, which was codenamed ?Red? and referred to an unknown Middle Eastern rogue enemy state in the Persian Gulf. Other than Iran, no other country could meet the perimeters and characteristics of ?Red? and its military forces, from the patrol boats to the motorcycle units. The war simulation took place because Washington was planning on attacking Iran soon after invading Iraq in 2003. The scenario in the 2002 war game started with the U.S., codenamed ?Blue,? giving Iran a one-day ultimatum to surrender in the year 2007. The war game?s date of 2007 would chronologically correspond to U.S. plans to attack Iran after the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006, which was to extend, according to military plans, into a broader war against Syria. The war against Lebanon, however, did not go as planned and the U.S. and Israel realized that if Hezbollah could challenge them in Lebanon then an expanded war with Syria and Iran would be a disaster. In Millennium Challenge 2002?s war scenario, Iran would react to U.S. aggression by launching a massive barrage of missiles that would overwhelm the U.S. and destroy sixteen U.S. naval vessels ? an aircraft carrier, ten cruisers, and five amphibious ships. It is estimated that if this had happened in real war theatre context, more than 20,000 U.S. servicemen would have been killed in the first day following the attack. [6] Next, Iran would send its small patrol boats ? the ones that look insignificant in comparison to the U.S.S. John C. Stennis and other large U.S. warships ? to overwhelm the remainder of the Pentagon?s naval forces in the Persian Gulf, which would result in the damaging and sinking of most of the U.S. Fifth Fleet and the defeat of the United States. After the U.S. defeat, the war games were started over again, but ?Red? (Iran) had to operate under the assumption of handicaps and shortcomings, so that U.S. forces would be allowed to emerge victorious from the drill. [7] This outcome of the war games obviated the fact that the U.S. would have been overwhelmed in the context of a real conventional war with Iran in the Persian Gulf. Hence, the formidable naval power of Washington is handicapped both by geography as well as Iranian military capabilities when it comes to fighting in the Persian Gulf or even in much of the Gulf of Oman. Without open waters, like in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. will have to fight under significantly reduced response times and, more importantly, will not be able to fight from a stand-off (militarily safe) distance. Thus, entire tool boxes of U.S. naval defensive systems, which were designed for combat in open waters using stand-off ranges, are rendered unpractical in the Persian Gulf. Making the Strait of Hormuz Redundant to Weaken Iran? The entire world knows the importance of the Strait of Hormuz and Washington and its allies are very well aware that the Iranians can militarily close it for a significant period of time. This is why the U.S. has been working with the GCC countries ? Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the U.A.E. ? to re-route their oil through pipelines bypassing the Strait of Hormuz and channelling GCC oil directly to the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, or Mediterranean Sea. Washington has also been pushing Iraq to seek alternative routes in talks with Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Both Israel and Turkey have also been very interested in this strategic project. Ankara has had discussions with Qatar about setting up an oil terminal that would reach Turkey via Iraq. The Turkish government has attempted to get Iraq to link its southern oil fields, like Iraq?s northern oil fields, to the transit routes running through Turkey. This is all tied to Turkey?s visions of being an energy corridor and important lynchpin of transit. The aims of re-routing oil away from the Persian Gulf would remove an important element of strategic leverage Iran has against Washington and its allies. It would effectively reduce the importance of the Strait of Hormuz. It could very well be a prerequisite to war preparations and a war led by the United States against Tehran and its allies. It is within this framework that the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline or the Hashan-Fujairah Oil Pipeline is being fostered by the United Arab Emirates to bypass the maritime route in the Persian Gulf going through the Strait of Hormuz. The project design was put together in 2006, the contract was issued in 2007, and construction was started in 2008. [8] This pipeline goes straight from Abdu Dhabi to the port of Fujairah on the shore of the Gulf of Oman in the Arabian Sea. In other words, it will give oil exports from the U.A.E. direct access to the Indian Ocean. It has openly been presented as a means to ensure energy security by bypassing Hormuz and attempting to avoid the Iranian military. Along with the construction of this pipeline, the erection of a strategic oil reservoir at Fujairah was also envisaged to also maintain the flow of oil to the international market should the Persian Gulf be closed off. [9] Aside from the Petroline (East-West Saudi Pipeline), Saudi Arabia has also been looking at alternative transit routes and examining the ports of it southern neighbours in the Arabian Peninsula, Oman and Yemen. The Yemenite port of Mukalla on the shores of the Gulf of Aden has been of particular interest to Riyadh. In 2007, Israeli sources reported with some fanfare that a pipeline project was in the works that would connect the Saudi oil fields with Fujairah in the U.A.E., Muscat in Oman, and finally to Mukalla in Yemen. The reopening of the Iraq-Saudi Arabia Pipeline (IPSA), which was ironically built by Saddam Hussein to avoid the Strait of Hormuz and Iran, has also been a subject of discussion for the Saudis with the Iraqi government in Baghdad. If Syria and Lebanon were converted into Washington?s clients, then the defunct Trans-Arabian Pipeline (Tapline) could also be reactivated, along with other alternative routes going from the Arabian Peninsula to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea via the Levant. Chronologically, this would also fit into Washington?s efforts to overrun Lebanon and Syria in an attempt to isolate Iran before any possible showdown with Tehran. The Iranian Velayat-90 naval drills, which extended in close proximity to the entrance of the Red Sea in the Gulf of Aden off the territorial waters of Yemen, also took place in the Gulf of Oman facing the coast of Oman and the eastern shores of the United Arab Emirates. Amongst other things, Velayat-90 should be understood as a signal that Tehran is ready to operate outside of the Persian Gulf and can even strike or block the pipelines trying to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Geography again is on Iran?s side in this case too. Bypassing the Strait of Hormuz still does not change the fact that most of the oil fields belonging to GCC countries are located in the Persian Gulf or near its shores, which means they are all situated within close proximity to Iran and therefore within Iranian striking distance. Like in the case of the Hashan-Fujairah Pipeline, the Iranians could easily disable the flow of oil from the point of origin. Tehran could launch missile and aerial attacks or deploy its ground, sea, air, and amphibious forces into these areas as well. It does not necessarily need to block the Strait of Hormuz; after all preventing the flow of energy is the main purpose of the Iranian threats. The American-Iranian Cold War Washington has been on the offensive against Iran using all means at its disposal. The tensions over the Strait of Hormuz and in the Persian Gulf are just one front in a dangerous multi-front regional cold war between Tehran and Washington in the broader Middle East. Since 2001, the Pentagon has also been restructuring its military to wage unconventional wars with enemies like Iran. [10] Nonetheless, geography has always worked against the Pentagon and the U.S. has not found a solution for its naval dilemma in the Persian Gulf. Instead of a conventional war, Washington has had to resort to waging a covert, economic, and diplomatic war against Iran. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Sociologist and award-winning author. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal. He specializes on the Middle East and Central Asia. He has been a contributor and guest discussing the broader Middle East on numerous programs and international networks such as Al Jazeera, Press TV and Russia Today. Nazemroaya was also a witness to the "Arab Spring" in action in North Africa. While on the ground in Libya during the NATO bombing campaign, he reported out of Tripoli for several media outlets. He sent key field dispatches from Libya for Global Research and was Special Correspondent for Pacifica's syndicated investigative program Flashpoints, broadcast out of Berkeley, California. His writings have been published in more than ten languages. He also writes for the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF) in Moscow, Russia. Notes [1] Fars News Agency, ?Foreign Warships Will Need Iran?s Permission to Pass through Strait of Hormuz,? January 4, 2011. [2] Fars News Agency, ?Iran Warns US against Sending Back Aircraft Carrier to Persian Gulf,? January 4, 2011. [3] Parisa Hafezi, ?Iran threatens U.S Navy as sanctions hit economy,? Reuters, January 4, 2012. [4] Fariborz Haghshenass, ?Iran?s Asymmetric Naval Warfare,? Policy Focus, no.87 (Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, September 2010). [5] Julian Borger, ?Wake-up call,? The Guardian, September 6, 2002. [6] Neil R. McCown, Developing Intuitive Decision-Making In Modern Military Leadership (Newport, R.I.: Naval War College, October 27, 2010), p.9. [7] Sean D. Naylor, ?War games rigged? General says Millennium Challenge ?02 ?was almost entirely scripted,?? Army Times, April 6, 2002. [8] Himendra Mohan Kumar, ?Fujairah poised to be become oil export hub,? Gulf News, June 12, 2011. [9] Ibid. [10] John Arquilla, ?The New Rules of War,? Foreign Policy, 178 (March-April, 2010): pp.60-67. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW RELEASE: GLOBAL RESEARCH E-BOOK Towards a World War III Scenario by Michel Chossudovsky -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. From ths at psalience.org Thu Jan 12 00:04:25 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:04:25 +0100 Subject: [THS] Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies. Never forget. Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120112000343.0676e558@mail.messagingengine.com> http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer101.html The Anti-Empire Report January 3rd, 2012 by William Blum www.killinghope.org Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies. Never forget. "Most people don't understand what they have been part of here," said Command Sgt. Major Ron Kelley as he and other American troops prepared to leave Iraq in mid-December. "We have done a great thing as a nation. We freed a people and gave their country back to them." "It is pretty exciting," said another young American soldier in Iraq. "We are going down in the history books, you might say." (Washington Post, December 18, 2011) Ah yes, the history books, the multi-volume leather-bound set of "The Greatest Destructions of One Country by Another." The newest volume can relate, with numerous graphic photos, how the modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state; how the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly, ... how the people of that unhappy land lost everything ? their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lying anywhere in wait for children to pick them up ... a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again. "It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003," reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007. No matter ... drum roll, please ... Stand tall American GI hero! And don't even think of ever apologizing or paying any reparations. Iraq is forced by Washington to continue paying reparations to Kuwait for Iraq's invasion in 1990 (an invasion instigated in no small measure by the United States). And ? deep breath here! ? Vietnam has been compensating the United States. Since 1997 Hanoi has been paying off about $145 million in debts left by the defeated South Vietnamese government for American food and infrastructure aid. Thus, Hanoi is reimbursing the United States for part of the cost of the war waged against it. (William Blum, Rogue State, p.304) How much will the United States pay the people of Iraq? On December 14, at the Fort Bragg, North Carolina military base, Barack Obama stood before an audience of soldiers to speak about the Iraq war. It was a moment in which the president of the United States found it within his heart and soul ? as well as within his oft-praised (supposed) intellect ? to proclaim: This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making. And today, we remember everything that you did to make it possible. ... Years from now, your legacy will endure. In the names of your fallen comrades etched on headstones at Arlington, and the quiet memorials across our country. In the whispered words of admiration as you march in parades, and in the freedom of our children and grandchildren. ... So God bless you all, God bless your families, and God bless the United States of America. ... You have earned your place in history because you sacrificed so much for people you have never met. Does Mr. Obama, the Peace Laureate, believe the words that come out of his mouth? Barack H. Obama believes only in being the President of the United States. It is the only strong belief the man holds. Items of interest from a journal I've kept for 40 years, part VI * If the US really believed in 2002-3 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction why did they send in more than 100,000 troops, who were certain to be annihilated? * In a letter released August 17, 2006, 21 former generals and high ranking national security officials called on President George W. Bush to reverse course and embrace a new area of negotiation with Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The group told reporters Bush's "hard line" policies had undermined national security and made America less safe. * Throughout most of the 20th century, the Catholic Church in Latin America taught its flocks of the poor that there was no need to do battle with the ruling elite because the poor would get their just rewards in the afterlife. * The US overthrew the Sandinistas in Nicaragua because the Sandinistas "intended to create a country where there was only a colony before." ? Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer * "[George W.] Bush said last week that part of the purpose of the Indonesia trip 'is to make sure that the people who are suspicious of our country understand our motives are pure'." (Washington Post, October 22, 2003) * "Wars may be aberrant experiences in the lives of most human individuals, but some nations are serial aggressors. American society is unique in having been formed almost wholly by processes of aggression against external and internal Others." ? The Black Commentator, June 8, 2006 * President Obama should accompany the military people when they inform parents that their child has died in the latest of America's never-ending wars. And maybe ask George W. to come along as well. * During the Vietnam War some University of Michigan students created a brouhaha when they threatened to napalm a puppy dog on the steps of a campus building. The uproar of indignation at their cruelty was heard nationwide. Of course, when the time came they didn't do it, having successfully made the point that people cared more about napalming a dog than they did about napalming people. * "It's a lie and an illusion that we have an inefficient government. This government is only inefficient if you think its job is, as stated in the Constitution, 'to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.' These objectives are beyond our government's talents only because they are beyond its intentions." ? Michael Ventura * "Get some new lawyers" - US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook when he told her he was informed that the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 (which Albright championed) was illegal under international law. * The two countries of the world, along with the United States, which have the greatest national obsession with baseball are two of the main targets of US foreign policy: Venezuela and Cuba. * The Cuban Five case: This is the first case in American history of alleged spying and espionage without a single page from a secret document. The government never presented any evidence of a stolen official document or any attempt to steal an official document. This is the first spy case without secrets from the government. (Read more) * "If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a 'suspected terrorist' is inside, the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is 'inevitable'. So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians." ? Howard Zinn * "The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to impose limited sanctions on North Korea for its recent missile tests, and demanded that the reclusive communist nation suspend its ballistic missile program." (Associated Press, July 15, 2006) ... Internet commentator: "Test some missiles that land harmlessly in the ocean? Unanimous condemnation. Fire some missiles at targets on land, kill hundreds of people, and destroy hundreds of civilian targets including power plants, airports, roads, bridges, TV stations, etc., all in violation of the Geneva Convention? Hey, no problem." * For some nine years, American B-52 bombers relentlessly dropped tons of ordnance on a southeast Asian country (Vietnam) that still cultivated rice fields using draft animals. * "The messianism of American foreign policy is a remarkable thing. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks it seems like Khrushchev reporting to the party congress: 'The whole world is marching triumphantly toward democracy but some rogue states prefer to stay aside from that road, etc. etc'." ? Natalia Narochnitskaya, vice chairman of the international affairs committee in the State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament. (Washington Post, April 3, 2006) * Washington ... Propagandistan * The bulldozer, driven by an Israeli army soldier on assignment to demolish a home, rolled over Rachel Corrie, who was 23 years old. She had taken a nonviolent position for human rights; she lost her life as a result. But she was rarely praised in the same US media outlets that had gone into raptures over the image of a solitary unarmed man standing in front of Chinese tanks at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. ? Norman Solomon * American sovereignty hasn't faced a legitimate foreign threat to its existence since the British in 1812. * There are two major patterns in foreign policy: the rule of force or the rule of law. On February 8, 1819 the US decided, after a very long debate in the House, to reject the rule of law in foreign policy. The vote was 100 to 70 against requiring the Congress to approve illegal invasions of other countries or peoples. This pertained to the "Seminole War", actually the invasion of Florida. Since then every president has had the right to "defend America", code words for the use of force against whomever he chooses. ? Kelly Gelgering Happy New Year. Here's what to look forward to. JANUARY 22: Congress passes a law requiring that all persons arrested in anti-war demonstrations be sterilized. House Speaker John Boehner declares it is "God's will". House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she supports the law but that she has some reservation because there's no provision for a right of appeal. FEBRUARY 15: Ron Paul assassinated by man named Oswald Harvey. FEBRUARY 18: Oswald Harvey, while in solitary confinement and guarded round the clock by 1200 policemen and the entire 3rd Army Brigade, is killed by man named Ruby Jackson. FEBRUARY 26: Ruby Jackson suddenly dies in prison of a rare Asian disease heretofore unknown in the Western Hemisphere. MARCH 6: US President Hopey Changey announces new draconian sanctions against Iran, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba, declaring that they all possess weapons of mass destruction, are an imminent threat to the United States, have close ties to al Qaeda and the Taliban, are aiding Islamic terrorists in Somalia, were involved in 9-11, played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the attack on Pearl Harbor, do not believe in God or American Exceptionalism, and are all "really bad guys". APRIL 1: Military forces overthrow Evo Morales in Bolivia. US State Department decries the loss of democracy. APRIL 2: US recognizes the new Bolivian military junta, sells it 100 jet fighters and 200 tanks. APRIL 3: Revolution breaks out in Bolivia endangering the military junta; 40,000 American marines are sent to La Paz to quell the uprising. APRIL 8: Dick Cheney announces from his hospital bed that the United States has finally discovered caches of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ? "So all those doubters can now just go 'F' themselves." The former vice-president, however, refuses to provide any details of the find because, he says, to do so might reveal intelligence sources or methods. APRIL 10: ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, General Electric, General Motors, AT&T, Ford, and IBM merge to form "Free Enterprise, Inc." APRIL 16: Free Enterprise, Inc. seeks to purchase Guatemala and Haiti. Citigroup refuses to sell. APRIL 18: Free Enterprise, Inc. purchases Citigroup. MAY 5: The Democratic Party changes its name to the Republican Lite Party, and announces the opening of a joint bank account with the Republicans so that corporate lobbyists need make out only one check. In celebration of the change the new party calls for eliminating the sales tax on yachts. MAY 11: China claims to have shot down an American spy plane over the center of China. State Department categorically denies the story. MAY 12: State Department admits that an American plane may have "inadvertently" strayed 2,000 miles into China, but denies that it was a spy plane. MAY 13: State Department admits that the plane may have been a spy plane but denies that it was piloted by a US government employee. MAY 14: State Department admits that the pilot was a civilian employee of a Defense Department contractor but denies that China exists. JUNE 11: Homeland Security announces plan to collect the DNA at birth of every child born in the United States. JULY 1: The air in Los Angeles reaches so bad a pollution level that the rich begin to hire undocumented workers to breathe for them. AUGUST 6: The Justice Department announces that six people have been arrested in New York in connection with a plan to bomb the United Nations, the Empire State Building, the Times Square subway station, Madison Square Garden, and Lincoln Center. AUGUST 7: Charges are dropped against four of "The New York Six" when it is determined that they are FBI agents. AUGUST 16: At a major demonstration in Washington, the Tea Party demands an end to all government expenditures. They also warn Congress not to touch Social Security or Medicare. AUGUST 26: Texas executes a 16-year-old girl for having an abortion and a 12-year-old boy for possession of marijuana. SEPTEMBER 3: The Labor Department announces that Labor Day will become a celebration of America's gratitude to its corporations, a day dedicated to the memory of J.P. Morgan and Pinkerton strike breakers killed in the line of duty. SEPTEMBER 12: The draft is reinstated for males and females, ages 16 to 45. Those who are missing a limb or are blind can apply for non-combat roles. SEPTEMBER 14: Riots breaks out in 24 American cities in protest of the new draft. 200,000 American troops are brought home from Afghanistan, Iraq, and 25 other countries to put down the riots. SEPTEMBER 28: The Tea Party calls for giving embryos the vote. OCTOBER 19: Cops the world over form a new association, Policemen's International Governing Society. PIGS announces that its first goal will be to mount a campaign against the notion that a person is innocent until proven guilty, in those countries where the quaint notion still dwells. NOVEMBER 8: The turnout for the US presidential election is 9.6%. The voting ballots are all imprinted: "From one person, one vote, to one dollar, one vote." The winner is "None of the above". NOVEMBER 11: US prison population reaches 2.5 million. It is determined that at least 70 percent of the prisoners would not have been incarcerated a century ago, for the acts they committed were then not criminal violations. DECEMBER 3: Supreme Court rules that police may search anyone if they have reasonable grounds for believing that the person has pockets. DECEMBER 16: The Occupy Movement sets up a tent on the White House lawn. An hour later a missile fired from a drone leaves but a thin wisp of smoke. ? William Blum is the author of: * Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 * Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower * West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir * Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website. To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area. (Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.) Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned. From ths at psalience.org Fri Jan 13 01:43:33 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:43:33 +0100 Subject: [THS] Experts debate whether yoga is really good for you. Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120112132323.06d1f958@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153744/should_you_give_up_yoga_experts_respond_to_the_new_york_times%27_%22yoga-can-wreck-you%22_controversy?page=entire AlterNet / By Alison Pace Should You Give Up Yoga? Experts Respond to the New York Times' "Yoga-Can-Wreck-You" Controversy Experts debate whether yoga is really good for you. January 11, 2012 | [NYTimes article follows] I first heard about William Broad?s debate-sparking New York Times Magazine article, ?How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body,? in yoga class on Saturday afternoon. As the class inhaled in an extended downward dog, the teacher, a willowy woman with a husky voice, asked if anyone had read the article. Unlike the more usual grunts heard in yoga class -- ones indicating physical exertion -- there were grunts of agreement. And because it?s rare that any student would willingly take the spotlight from the yoga teacher to opine on matters of great or small importance, the class waited for further enlightenment. As we were guided into pigeon pose ?a deep hip-opener in which one leg is bent in front of you and then over it, you lie prostrate on the floor?the teacher offered this: ?The thing is,? she told us, ?if you?re mindful, you won?t get hurt.? Is that really true? As I said ?Namaste? to my classmates, I thought of how the teacher?s response seemed very ?yogic? to me, very Zen, very ?don?t you worry, everything will be fine if you live in the moment.? I?ve been practicing yoga for 11 years. And though I have suffered back pain as a result of what I self-diagnosed as ?too much practice? and once, pulled a hamstring as I maneuvered into triangle pose, I still believe that yoga makes me happier, more centered, more productive, more at peace. I can oft be found proselytizing to my non-yoga-practicing friends that yes, really, they should try it. Then I went home and read the article in which Glenn Black, a highly trained yoga teacher, was quoted as saying that he thinks the majority of people should give up yoga altogether as it?s simply too likely to damage their bodies. Alarmed, I continued reading through a litany of yoga-related injuries, and a cited growing body of medical evidence supporting Black?s contention that "for many people, a number of commonly taught yoga poses are inherently risky.? Phrases such as ?potential to inflict blinding pain? jumped out at me. I had not so much a crisis of confidence, but a feeling that ?if you?re mindful, you won?t get hurt? was very possibly an inadequate answer. The part of me that is not a blind yoga devotee is an inherent researcher. So I consulted four different health professionals -- a chiropractor, a clinical psychologist, a movement coach, and my favorite yoga teacher-- to see if I could unearth a better response, a better solution, or at the very least, a bit more detail. Herewith, my findings, and some further thoughts on yoga and injuries. 1. Daryl Gioffre of the Gioffre Chiropractic Wellness Center in Manhattan wrote to me that he loves yoga and thinks it is very healing but not without risk -- a risk that can be found in many places. ?I think it has helped so many people break through personal barriers,? he explained. ?Sometimes people do have underlying health problems that haven?t surfaced as a symptom yet. So whether it be yoga, running, walking, sleeping or sitting, something will bring that person to a threshold that will activate their symptoms.? Gioffre agrees with Glenn Black that injuries are most prevalent when a student (of anything) is not paying attention. When your mind wanders, injuries happen. ?To take it one step further,? Gioffre offered, ?those that recognize something is off should make sure they take the proper steps to see the right professional, such as a chiropractor, to see if there is anything specific that needs to be addressed.? 2. Sherry Breslau, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Manhattan, found the article disturbing and felt that Glenn Black was on the right track. Approaching this debate with a mind more toward the mental and emotional than the physical, Breslau had insights as to why we push ourselves so hard in yoga classes. ?For many women,? she explains, ?the image of the centered, graceful, swan-like creature has such a powerful pull that it is hard to resist. Add the potential for public humiliation and a desire to please their teacher, who often becomes an idealized role model, and you have a recipe for obsessive overdoing. Men are not immune to any of these motivations, and we can add a desire to impress the women or other men in the room.? Like Gioffre, Breslau points out the unmentioned repressed wounds that could come to the surface, adding, ?A good psychologist knows what Black has intuited: that being mindful of how to stretch oneself, physically or emotionally, is crucial. And often the mind-body stretch is one and the same.? 3. Patti and Gibby Cohen, body coaches who primarily teach strength and help people understand habitual patterns and how to change them found the article troubling as well, but on the other end of spectrum. While they don?t teach yoga, they do practice several types including wall yoga and aerial yoga. Gibby Cohen felt that the article was a scare tactic, pointing out that it only covered the bad things about yoga, none of the good, and focused almost exclusively on the extreme, worst-case scenarios. Both Cohens felt that if the article had just been about how yoga can help you, it wouldn?t have been printed. ?Unless you have no indication of your body you?re not going to go into a position that?s going to injure,? Gibby Cohen explained, adding that a teacher?s most important thing are his eyes: a teacher, and a student, need to pay attention to how a student is moving in space. Along those lines, the only danger Patti Cohen cited was ?a teacher who just read through a script and didn?t notice individuals.? As for students, the Cohens advise common sense. ?As you know, when you learn to ride a bike, you begin with training wheels. As you become more advanced and begin learning tricks, going faster, the risk/reward ratio increases -- same with yoga or with anything we venture to train our bodies to do.? 4. Adrian Molina, a yoga instructor, who teaches Warrior Flow yoga classes privately and at Equinox in New York City, told me that he read the article twice and both times he got upset, for many reasons. Molina was the first to mention the pictures that accompanied the article -- the cast of the Broadway play Godspell doing their ?flexible best.? He acknowledged that though the pictures of actors struggling through poses were likely intended to be funny, he found them disrespectful to the physical aspects of yoga. Molina felt the article was negative and too subjective, along the lines of, ?OK, I am frustrated about how yoga ?didn?t help me? so now I?m going to complain about it and put everything in the same bag.? Molina believes that the yoga he teaches should be fun, keep students happy, healthy and flexible. He acknowledges that injuries happen. ?I wish I could say that you will never hurt your body doing yoga. But that is not true. But I can?t say that either for spinning, jogging, dancing, walking.? Molina, whose class I take weekly and enjoy tremendously, always includes an "easy posture" option to promote awareness and steer his students away from pushing too hard. And while he knows that sometimes students and teachers can do a little too much, he thinks the rewards outweigh the risks. In talking to people who have given the New York Times article a great deal of thought, and having given it a great deal of thought myself, I still believe in the healing qualities of yoga, in its ability to calm, center, cure, energize and strengthen (facts the Times article mentioned as well). I also think it?s important to acknowledge that worst-case scenarios, and even bad-case scenarios, do indeed exist: neck injuries can happen and in rare cases, much more serious injuries have happened. And grave accidents likely can?t be prevented by just being mindful and having a watchful teacher. It?s possible that some poses may be too dangerous to do, and it?s up to each yoga-practicing individual to use caution and judgment and know that with reward comes risk. I find that I do still agree with the initial concept of ?being mindful,? as I feel everyone I spoke with does, too. But it?s more of a mindful-plus: be responsible to yourself, for yourself, and be aware of both your teacher?s and your own limitations. In yoga class, and everywhere else. And this yogi will be mindfully unrolling her mat again shortly. *Read more heated responses to the NYT story from the yoga community. Alison Pace is the author of five novels, including 'If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend' and 'Pug Hill.' She lives in New York City. Follow her on twitter @alisonpace, at facebook.com/alisonpacebooks and www.alisonpace.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body Danielle Levitt for The New York Times Members of the Broadway cast of ?Godspell? do their flexible best. From left: Uzo Aduba (doing the wheel), George Salazar (extended-hand-to-big-toe pose) and Nick Blaemire (headstand). By WILLIAM J. BROAD Published: January 5, 2012 On a cold Saturday in early 2009, Glenn Black, a yoga teacher of nearly four decades, whose devoted clientele includes a number of celebrities and prominent gurus, was giving a master class at Sankalpah Yoga in Manhattan. Black is, in many ways, a classic yogi: he studied in Pune, India, at the institute founded by the legendary B. K. S. Iyengar, and spent years in solitude and meditation. He now lives in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and often teaches at the nearby Omega Institute, a New Age emporium spread over nearly 200 acres of woods and gardens. He is known for his rigor and his down-to-earth style. But this was not why I sought him out: Black, I?d been told, was the person to speak with if you wanted to know not about the virtues of yoga but rather about the damage it could do. Many of his regular clients came to him for bodywork or rehabilitation following yoga injuries. This was the situation I found myself in. In my 30s, I had somehow managed to rupture a disk in my lower back and found I could prevent bouts of pain with a selection of yoga postures and abdominal exercises. Then, in 2007, while doing the extended-side-angle pose, a posture hailed as a cure for many diseases, my back gave way. With it went my belief, na?ve in retrospect, that yoga was a source only of healing and never harm. More in the Magazine ? Enlarge This Image Danielle Levitt for The New York Times Salazar: I would say I?m a 7 out of 10 on the flexibility scale. Enlarge This Image Danielle Levitt for The New York Times Aduba: You know when people jump up into those crazy positions, like they stand on their eyeballs or something, while you?re sitting there just trying to figure out which side of the mat you used the last time? I envy them. Enlarge This Image Danielle Levitt for The New York Times Blaemire: The plow was the easiest position of the day ? though it is quite a strange feeling having your face that close to your knees. Readers? Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. * Read All Comments (737) ? At Sankalpah Yoga, the room was packed; roughly half the students were said to be teachers themselves. Black walked around the room, joking and talking. ?Is this yoga?? he asked as we sweated through a pose that seemed to demand superhuman endurance. ?It is if you?re paying attention.? His approach was almost free-form: he made us hold poses for a long time but taught no inversions and few classical postures. Throughout the class, he urged us to pay attention to the thresholds of pain. ?I make it as hard as possible,? he told the group. ?It?s up to you to make it easy on yourself.? He drove his point home with a cautionary tale. In India, he recalled, a yogi came to study at Iyengar?s school and threw himself into a spinal twist. Black said he watched in disbelief as three of the man?s ribs gave way ? pop, pop, pop. After class, I asked Black about his approach to teaching yoga ? the emphasis on holding only a few simple poses, the absence of common inversions like headstands and shoulder stands. He gave me the kind of answer you?d expect from any yoga teacher: that awareness is more important than rushing through a series of postures just to say you?d done them. But then he said something more radical. Black has come to believe that ?the vast majority of people? should give up yoga altogether. It?s simply too likely to cause harm. Not just students but celebrated teachers too, Black said, injure themselves in droves because most have underlying physical weaknesses or problems that make serious injury all but inevitable. Instead of doing yoga, ?they need to be doing a specific range of motions for articulation, for organ condition,? he said, to strengthen weak parts of the body. ?Yoga is for people in good physical condition. Or it can be used therapeutically. It?s controversial to say, but it really shouldn?t be used for a general class.? Black seemingly reconciles the dangers of yoga with his own teaching of it by working hard at knowing when a student ?shouldn?t do something ? the shoulder stand, the headstand or putting any weight on the cervical vertebrae.? Though he studied with Shmuel Tatz, a legendary Manhattan-based physical therapist who devised a method of massage and alignment for actors and dancers, he acknowledges that he has no formal training for determining which poses are good for a student and which may be problematic. What he does have, he says, is ?a ton of experience.? ?To come to New York and do a class with people who have many problems and say, ?O.K., we?re going to do this sequence of poses today? ? it just doesn?t work.? According to Black, a number of factors have converged to heighten the risk of practicing yoga. The biggest is the demographic shift in those who study it. Indian practitioners of yoga typically squatted and sat cross-legged in daily life, and yoga poses, or asanas, were an outgrowth of these postures. Now urbanites who sit in chairs all day walk into a studio a couple of times a week and strain to twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures despite their lack of flexibility and other physical problems. Many come to yoga as a gentle alternative to vigorous sports or for rehabilitation for injuries. But yoga?s exploding popularity ? the number of Americans doing yoga has risen from about 4 million in 2001 to what some estimate to be as many as 20 million in 2011 ? means that there is now an abundance of studios where many teachers lack the deeper training necessary to recognize when students are headed toward injury. ?Today many schools of yoga are just about pushing people,? Black said. ?You can?t believe what?s going on ? teachers jumping on people, pushing and pulling and saying, ?You should be able to do this by now.? It has to do with their egos.? When yoga teachers come to him for bodywork after suffering major traumas, Black tells them, ?Don?t do yoga.? ?They look at me like I?m crazy,? he goes on to say. ?And I know if they continue, they won?t be able to take it.? I asked him about the worst injuries he?d seen. He spoke of well-known yoga teachers doing such basic poses as downward-facing dog, in which the body forms an inverted V, so strenuously that they tore Achilles tendons. ?It?s ego,? he said. ?The whole point of yoga is to get rid of ego.? He said he had seen some ?pretty gruesome hips.? ?One of the biggest teachers in America had zero movement in her hip joints,? Black told me. ?The sockets had become so degenerated that she had to have hip replacements.? I asked if she still taught. ?Oh, yeah,? Black replied. ?There are other yoga teachers that have such bad backs they have to lie down to teach. I?d be so embarrassed.? Among devotees, from gurus to acolytes forever carrying their rolled-up mats, yoga is described as a nearly miraculous agent of renewal and healing. They celebrate its abilities to calm, cure, energize and strengthen. And much of this appears to be true: yoga can lower your blood pressure, make chemicals that act as antidepressants, even improve your sex life. But the yoga community long remained silent about its potential to inflict blinding pain. Jagannath G. Gune, who helped revive yoga for the modern era, made no allusion to injuries in his journal Yoga Mimansa or his 1931 book ?Asanas.? Indra Devi avoided the issue in her 1953 best seller ?Forever Young, Forever Healthy,? as did B. K. S. Iyengar in his seminal ?Light on Yoga,? published in 1965. Reassurances about yoga?s safety also make regular appearances in the how-to books of such yogis as Swami Sivananda, K. Pattabhi Jois and Bikram Choudhury. ?Real yoga is as safe as mother?s milk,? declared Swami Gitananda, a guru who made 10 world tours and founded ashrams on several continents. But a growing body of medical evidence supports Black?s contention that, for many people, a number of commonly taught yoga poses are inherently risky. The first reports of yoga injuries appeared decades ago, published in some of the world?s most respected journals ? among them, Neurology, The British Medical Journal and The Journal of the American Medical Association. The problems ranged from relatively mild injuries to permanent disabilities. In one case, a male college student, after more than a year of doing yoga, decided to intensify his practice. He would sit upright on his heels in a kneeling position known as vajrasana for hours a day, chanting for world peace. Soon he was experiencing difficulty walking, running and climbing stairs. Doctors traced the problem to an unresponsive nerve, a peripheral branch of the sciatic, which runs from the lower spine through the buttocks and down the legs. Sitting in vajrasana deprived the branch that runs below the knee of oxygen, deadening the nerve. Once the student gave up the pose, he improved rapidly. Clinicians recorded a number of similar cases and the condition even got its own name: ?yoga foot drop.? More troubling reports followed. In 1972 a prominent Oxford neurophysiologist, W. Ritchie Russell, published an article in The British Medical Journal arguing that, while rare, some yoga postures threatened to cause strokes even in relatively young, healthy people. Russell found that brain injuries arose not only from direct trauma to the head but also from quick movements or excessive extensions of the neck, such as occur in whiplash ? or certain yoga poses. Normally, the neck can stretch backward 75 degrees, forward 40 degrees and sideways 45 degrees, and it can rotate on its axis about 50 degrees. Yoga practitioners typically move the vertebrae much farther. An intermediate student can easily turn his or her neck 90 degrees ? nearly twice the normal rotation. Hyperflexion of the neck was encouraged by experienced practitioners. Iyengar emphasized that in cobra pose, the head should arch ?as far back as possible? and insisted that in the shoulder stand, in which the chin is tucked deep in the chest, the trunk and head forming a right angle, ?the body should be in one straight line, perpendicular to the floor.? He called the pose, said to stimulate the thyroid, ?one of the greatest boons conferred on humanity by our ancient sages.? Extreme motions of the head and neck, Russell warned, could wound the vertebral arteries, producing clots, swelling and constriction, and eventually wreak havoc in the brain. The basilar artery, which arises from the union of the two vertebral arteries and forms a wide conduit at the base of the brain, was of particular concern. It feeds such structures as the pons (which plays a role in respiration), the cerebellum (which coordinates the muscles), the occipital lobe of the outer brain (which turns eye impulses into images) and the thalamus (which relays sensory messages to the outer brain). Reductions in blood flow to the basilar artery are known to produce a variety of strokes. These rarely affect language and conscious thinking (often said to be located in the frontal cortex) but can severely damage the body?s core machinery and sometimes be fatal. The majority of patients suffering such a stroke do recover most functions. But in some cases headaches, imbalance, dizziness and difficulty in making fine movements persist for years. Russell also worried that when strokes hit yoga practitioners, doctors might fail to trace their cause. The cerebral damage, he wrote, ?may be delayed, perhaps to appear during the night following, and this delay of some hours distracts attention from the earlier precipitating factor.? In 1973, a year after Russell?s paper was published, Willibald Nagler, a renowned authority on spinal rehabilitation at Cornell University Medical College, published a paper on a strange case. A healthy woman of 28 suffered a stroke while doing a yoga position known as the wheel or upward bow, in which the practitioner lies on her back, then lifts her body into a semicircular arc, balancing on hands and feet. An intermediate stage often involves raising the trunk and resting the crown of the head on the floor. While balanced on her head, her neck bent far backward, the woman ?suddenly felt a severe throbbing headache.? She had difficulty getting up, and when helped into a standing position, was unable to walk without assistance. The woman was rushed to the hospital. She had no sensation on the right side of her body; her left arm and leg responded poorly to her commands. Her eyes kept glancing involuntarily to the left. And the left side of her face showed a contracted pupil, a drooping upper eyelid and a rising lower lid ? a cluster of symptoms known as Horner?s syndrome. Nagler reported that the woman also had a tendency to fall to the left. Her doctors found that the woman?s left vertebral artery, which runs between the first two cervical vertebrae, had narrowed considerably and that the arteries feeding her cerebellum had undergone severe displacement. Given the lack of advanced imaging technologies at the time, an exploratory operation was conducted to get a clearer sense of her injuries. The surgeons who opened her skull found that the left hemisphere of her cerebellum suffered a major failure of blood supply that resulted in much dead tissue and that the site was seeped in secondary hemorrhages. The patient began an intensive program of rehabilitation. Two years later, she was able to walk, Nagler reported, ?with [a] broad-based gait.? But her left arm continued to wander and her left eye continued to show Horner?s syndrome. Nagler concluded that such injuries appeared to be rare but served as a warning about the hazards of ?forceful hyperextension of the neck.? He urged caution in recommending such postures, particularly to individuals of middle age. The experience of Nagler?s patient was not an isolated incident. A few years later, a 25-year-old man was rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in Chicago, complaining of blurred vision, difficulty swallowing and controlling the left side of his body. Steven H. Hanus, a medical student at the time, became interested in the case and worked with the chairman of the neurology department to determine the cause (he later published the results with several colleagues). The patient had been in excellent health, practicing yoga every morning for a year and a half. His routine included spinal twists in which he rotated his head far to the left and far to the right. Then he would do a shoulder stand with his neck ?maximally flexed against the bare floor,? just as Iyengar had instructed, remaining in the inversion for about five minutes. A series of bruises ran down the man?s lower neck, which, the team wrote in The Archives of Neurology, ?resulted from repeated contact with the hard floor surface on which he did yoga exercises.? These were a sign of neck trauma. Diagnostic tests revealed blockages of the left vertebral artery between the c2 and c3 vertebrae; the blood vessel there had suffered ?total or nearly complete occlusion? ? in other words, no blood could get through to the brain. Two months after his attack, and after much physical therapy, the man was able to walk with a cane. But, the team reported, he ?continued to have pronounced difficulty performing fine movements with his left hand.? Hanus and his colleagues concluded that the young man?s condition represented a new kind of danger. Healthy individuals could seriously damage their vertebral arteries, they warned, ?by neck movements that exceed physiological tolerance.? Yoga, they stressed, ?should be considered as a possible precipitating event.? In its report, the Northwestern team cited not only Nagler?s account of his female patient but also Russell?s early warning. Concern about yoga?s safety began to ripple through the medical establishment. These cases may seem exceedingly rare, but surveys by the Consumer Product Safety Commission showed that the number of emergency-room admissions related to yoga, after years of slow increases, was rising quickly. They went from 13 in 2000 to 20 in 2001. Then they more than doubled to 46 in 2002. These surveys rely on sampling rather than exhaustive reporting ? they reveal trends rather than totals ? but the spike was nonetheless statistically significant. Only a fraction of the injured visit hospital emergency rooms. Many of those suffering from less serious yoga injuries go to family doctors, chiropractors and various kinds of therapists. Around this time, stories of yoga-induced injuries began to appear in the media. The Times reported that health professionals found that the penetrating heat of Bikram yoga, for example, could raise the risk of overstretching, muscle damage and torn cartilage. One specialist noted that ligaments ? the tough bands of fiber that connect bones or cartilage at a joint ? failed to regain their shape once stretched out, raising the risk of strains, sprains and dislocations. In 2009, a New York City team based at Columbia University?s College of Physicians and Surgeons published an ambitious worldwide survey of yoga teachers, therapists and doctors. The answers to the survey?s central question ? What were the most serious yoga-related injuries (disabling and/or of long duration) they had seen? ? revealed that the largest number of injuries (231) centered on the lower back. The other main sites were, in declining order of prevalence: the shoulder (219), the knee (174) and the neck (110). Then came stroke. The respondents noted four cases in which yoga?s extreme bending and contortions resulted in some degree of brain damage. The numbers weren?t alarming but the acknowledgment of risk ? nearly four decades after Russell first issued his warning ? pointed to a decided shift in the perception of the dangers yoga posed. In recent years, reformers in the yoga community have begun to address the issue of yoga-induced damage. In a 2003 article in Yoga Journal, Carol Krucoff ? a yoga instructor and therapist who works at the Integrative Medicine center at Duke University in North Carolina ? revealed her own struggles. She told of being filmed one day for national television and after being urged to do more, lifting one foot, grabbing her big toe and stretching her leg into the extended-hand-to-big-toe pose. As her leg straightened, she felt a sickening pop in her hamstring. The next day, she could barely walk. Krucoff needed physical therapy and a year of recovery before she could fully extend her leg again. The editor of Yoga Journal, Kaitlin Quistgaard, described reinjuring a torn rotator cuff in a yoga class. ?I?ve experienced how yoga can heal,? she wrote. ?But I?ve also experienced how yoga can hurt ? and I?ve heard the same from plenty of other yogis.? One of the most vocal reformers is Roger Cole, an Iyengar teacher with degrees in psychology from Stanford and the University of California, San Francisco. Cole has written extensively for Yoga Journal and speaks on yoga safety to the American College of Sports Medicine. In one column, Cole discussed the practice of reducing neck bending in a shoulder stand by lifting the shoulders on a stack of folded blankets and letting the head fall below it. The modification eases the angle between the head and the torso, from 90 degrees to perhaps 110 degrees. Cole ticked off the dangers of doing an unmodified shoulder stand: muscle strains, overstretched ligaments and cervical-disk injuries. But modifications are not always the solution. Timothy McCall, a physician who is the medical editor of Yoga Journal, called the headstand too dangerous for general yoga classes. His warning was based partly on his own experience. He found that doing the headstand led to thoracic outlet syndrome, a condition that arises from the compression of nerves passing from the neck into the arms, causing tingling in his right hand as well as sporadic numbness. McCall stopped doing the pose, and his symptoms went away. Later, he noted that the inversion could produce other injuries, including degenerative arthritis of the cervical spine and retinal tears (a result of the increased eye pressure caused by the pose). ?Unfortunately,? McCall concluded, ?the negative effects of headstand can be insidious.? Almost a year after I first met Glenn Black at his master class in Manhattan, I received an e-mail from him telling me that he had undergone spinal surgery. ?It was a success,? he wrote. ?Recovery is slow and painful. Call if you like.? The injury, Black said, had its origins in four decades of extreme backbends and twists. He had developed spinal stenosis ? a serious condition in which the openings between vertebrae begin to narrow, compressing spinal nerves and causing excruciating pain. Black said that he felt the tenderness start 20 years ago when he was coming out of such poses as the plow and the shoulder stand. Two years ago, the pain became extreme. One surgeon said that without treatment, he would eventually be unable to walk. The surgery took five hours, fusing together several lumbar vertebrae. He would eventually be fine but was under surgeon?s orders to reduce strain on his lower back. His range of motion would never be the same. Black is one of the most careful yoga practitioners I know. When I first spoke to him, he said he had never injured himself doing yoga or, as far as he knew, been responsible for harming any of his students. I asked him if his recent injury could have been congenital or related to aging. No, he said. It was yoga. ?You have to get a different perspective to see if what you?re doing is going to eventually be bad for you.? Black recently took that message to a conference at the Omega Institute, his feelings on the subject deepened by his recent operation. But his warnings seemed to fall on deaf ears. ?I was a little more emphatic than usual,? he recalled. ?My message was that ?Asana is not a panacea or a cure-all. In fact, if you do it with ego or obsession, you?ll end up causing problems.? A lot of people don?t like to hear that.? This article is adapted from ?The Science of Yoga: The Risks and Rewards,? by William J. Broad, to be published next month by Simon & Schuster. Broad is a senior science writer at The Times. Editor: Sheila Glaser A version of this article appeared in print on January 8, 2012, on page MM16 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: All Bent Out Of Shape. From ths at psalience.org Fri Jan 13 12:05:45 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:05:45 +0100 Subject: [THS] Revolving Door: From Top Futures Regulator to Top Futures Lobbyist Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120113120422.05ff0358@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/revolving-door-from-top-futures-regulator-to-top-futures-lobbyist-20120111 Revolving Door: From Top Futures Regulator to Top Futures Lobbyist by Matt Taibbi POSTED: January 11, 4:50 PM ET [photo]Walter Lukken returns to the witness table before the start of the Senate Appropriations Committee Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee and Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee joint hearing. Bill Clark/Roll Call/Getty Images While America focused on New Hampshire, a classic example of revolving-door politics took place in Washington, going almost completely unnoticed. It?s a move that ranks up there with the hire of Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin to head the pharmaceutical lobbying conglomerate PhRMA -- at a salary of over $2 million a year -- immediately after Tauzin helped ram through the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, a huge handout to the pharmaceutical industry. In this case, the hire involves Walter Lukken, who toward the end of the Bush years was the acting head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As the chief regulator of the commodities markets, it was Lukken?s job to spot and combat speculative abuses and manipulations that might have led to artificial price hikes and other disruptions. In 2008, the last full year of his tenure, Lukken presided over some of the worst chaos in the commodities markets in recent history, with major disruptions in the markets for food products like wheat, cotton, soybeans, and rice, and energy commodities like oil. Most notoriously, 2008 saw a historic spike in the price of oil futures, an enormously destructive speculative bubble that peaked in July of that year at the lunatic high price of $146 per barrel (Goldman, Sachs at the height of the mania was telling investors oil might go to $200 a barrel). It was Lukken?s job to spot the speculative abuses leading to disruptions like that bubble, but he didn?t do it. Instead, he repeatedly insisted that there was nothing untoward going on, most notoriously through testimony before the House and the Senate at the height of the oil boom. In testimony that summer, Lukken continually insisted that the price surge was due to normal supply-and-demand forces, ignoring the far more obvious explanation of a massive inflow of cash from commodity index speculators. Despite data showing that the amount of commodity index speculation had grown from $13 billion in 2003 to more than $260 billion as of March 2008 -- in other words, the amount of money betting on a rise in commodity prices had risen by a factor of twenty during that time -- Lukken on May 7, 2008 told the Senate that a more likely explanation for the surge could be found in the growth of industrial demand from places like China, and also, get this, in changes in the weather: These are extraordinary times for our markets with commodity futures prices at unprecedented levels. In the last three months, the agricultural staples of wheat, corn, soybeans, rice and oats have hit all-time highs. We have also witnessed record prices in crude oil, gasoline and other related energy products. Broadly speaking, the falling dollar, strong demand from the emerging world economies, global political unrest, detrimental weather and ethanol mandates have driven up commodity futures prices across-the-board. On top of these trends, the emergence of the sub-prime crisis last summer led investors to increasingly seek portfolio exposure in commodity futures. As the federal regulator of these products, the CFTC is closely monitoring these growing markets to ensure they are working properly for farmers, investors, and consumers. To date, CFTC staff analysis indicates that the current higher futures prices generally are not a result of manipulative forces. By insisting that the spike was ?not a result of manipulative forces,? Lukken helped Wall Street in its efforts to avoid reforms that might have prevented such abuses, like the closing of a series of loopholes and exemptions that allowed a handful of major speculators to play a lopsided role in the setting of commodity prices. So what was Lukken?s reward for helping the financial services industry avoid such reforms? Well, Lukken has just been named to head the Futures Industry Association, or FIA, the chief lobbying arm of futures investors. This follows the Tauzin pattern of revolving-door hires: a government official carries water for a powerful industry, then moves on to take the cushy job with the industry?s lobbying arm once he leaves office. Among people who follow these markets for a living, the Lukken hire had an embarrassingly over-the-top quality, like a CEO who goes the appearances-be-damned route and puts his 23 year-old secretary/mistress on the board of directors. Mike Masters is head of the Masters Capital Management hedge fund and also chairman of Better Markets, a new non-profit advocacy group that promotes the public interest in the labyrinthine vagaries of the financial markets, and especially the commodities markets. He describes the hiring of Lukken as an extreme example of revolving-door politics. ?It?s not the revolving door. It?s the express elevator,? he says. Masters remembers Lukken because the two men both testified before the Senate in that summer of 2008; he recalls watching the CFTC chief, aghast, when the latter continued to insist that there was nothing abnormal going on in the commodities world, despite a historic series of disruptions. ?And it wasn?t just oil,? Masters says. ?There was the debacle in the wheat markets, with cotton, with soybeans and corn, there were riots in the Phillipines over the rice markets. And Lukken was saying everything?s okay. It was crazy.? It was a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach to government oversight, which had far-reaching consequences in that crisis year. The CFTC, remember, also has purview over derivatives, meaning the failure to prevent the disastrous swap positions accumulated by the likes of AIG also falls, in part anyway, at the CFTC's doorstep. A Dow Jones news story contained a hilarious summary of Lukken?s blase administrative style, in which he was described as having downplayed the whole being-a-stickler-for-rules aspect of regulation: When Lukken headed the CFTC, he backed a more flexible, "principles-based" approach to regulation, different from what was seen as the prescriptive and "rule-based" methods employed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which polices stock markets. Obviously this kind of thing has been going on forever in Washington, but some revolving-door hires feel worse and more shameless than others, and this is one of those. But really it's the same old story: regulators keep falling down on the job, and keep getting rewarded for it by Wall Street, and nothing gets done about it. From ths at psalience.org Fri Jan 13 12:05:48 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:05:48 +0100 Subject: [THS] Major GOP Candidates All Pledge to Be Hard on Porn Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120113120239.06179358@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/761803/in_%22onion%22-worthy_news%2C_major_gop_candidates_all_pledge_to_be_hard_on_porn/#paragraph2 In "Onion"-Worthy News, Major GOP Candidates All Pledge to Be Hard on Porn A headline that is surely Onion-worthy, but sadly is all too true. In October, right as then Republican front runner Herman Cain was showing his superior morality by denying he had extra-marital affairs or sexually harassed women, Morality In Media (MIM), the ?leading national organization opposing pornography and indecency through public education and the application of the law (hateful, sanctimonious, self-loathing prudes who hate the idea of anyone being happy),? launched an effort to get presidential candidates in both major parties to commit to strict enforcement of obscenity laws. After all, what Jenna Jameson does with a banana trumps high unemployment, soaring college tuition costs, corruption, environmental apocalypse, outdated and crumbling infrastructure, external threats and foreign conflicts, Wall Street greed during a time of unprecedented income equality and in the worst economy since the great depression and is all Americans can think about. Well, it seems Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum all pledged their commitment to the MIMpledge. That?s right, the serial adulterist was among the three major GOP candidates to agree to proscribing the one last pleasure away from desperate and unemployed Americans. Former Senator Rick Santorum in a written statement: ?Federal obscenity laws should be vigorously enforced. If elected President, I will appoint an Attorney General who will do so.? Former Governor Mitt Romney in a written statement: ?(I)t is imperative that we cultivate the promotion of fundamental family values. This can be accomplished with increased parental involvement and enhanced supervision of our children. It includes strict enforcement of our nation?s obscenity laws, as well as the promotion of parental software controls that guard our children from Internet pornography.? Former Speaker Newt Gingrich in a face-to-face meeting: When MIM?s Executive Director Dawn Hawkins asked former Speaker Gingrich if he will enforce existing laws that make distribution of hard-core adult pornography illegal, he responded: ?Yes, I will appoint an Attorney General who will enforce these laws.? Just to be clear, they are all running on a platform of LESS government? Oh yeah, that Republican truism only applies to less economic opportunity for the middle class and poor. Evidently, Jesus was much more concerned with what consenting adults chose to do for a profession than such ludicrous and inhumane acts as staying faithful to your dying spouse, looking out for the neediest, and adopting better energy strategies that do not involve pillaging an already exhausted planet with reckless abandon. And lord knows the founding fathers intended elected leaders to inject their warped religious views into the secular sphere of government. And do I even have to mention the irony of vigorously opposing pornography by a group of men who appear readily willing to screw the American electorate in public. Instead of promoting social and economic polices that seek to strengthen struggling families, including mandating sick leave and parental leave, the GOP candidates would rather focus on ridiculously irrelevant issues that seek to appease a small but influential group of theocratic loons ahead of the South Carolina Primary. By Michael Hayne | Sourced from RH Reality Check Posted at January 12, 2012, 8:24 am From ths at psalience.org Sun Jan 15 01:44:46 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 01:44:46 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?F=2E_William_Engdahl=3A_Why_Washington_Wants?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_=91Finito=92_with_Vladimir_Putin?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120115014421.05909288@mail.messagingengine.com> Regime Change in the Russian Federation? Why Washington Wants ?Finito? with Vladimir Putin By F. William Engdahl URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28571 Global Research, January 10, 2012 Washington clearly wants ?finito? with Russia?s Putin as in basta! or as they said in Egypt last spring, Kefaya--enough!. Hillary Clinton and friends have apparently decided Russia?s prospective next president, Vladimir Putin, is a major obstacle to their plans. Few however understand why. Russia today, in tandem with China and to a significant degree Iran, form the spine, however shaky, of the only effective global axis of resistance to a world dominated by one sole superpower. On December 8 several days after election results for Russia?s parliamentary elections were announced, showing a sharp drop in popularity for Prime Minister Putin?s United Russia party, Putin accused the United States and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fuelling the Russian opposition protesters and their election protests. Putin stated, ?The (US) Secretary of State was quick to evaluate the elections, saying that they are unfair and unjust even before she received materials from the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the OSCE international election monitors-w.e.) observers.?[1] Putin went on to claim that Clinton?s premature comments were the necessary signal to the waiting opposition groups that the US Government would back their protests. Clinton?s comments, the seasoned Russian intelligence pro stated, became a ?signal for our activists who began active work with the US Department of State.? [2] Major western media chose either to downplay the Putin statement or to focus almost entirely on the claims of an emerging Russian opposition movement. A little research shows that, if anything, Putin was downplaying the degree of brazen US Government interference into the political processes of his country. In this case the country is not Tunisia or Yemen or even Egypt. It is the world?s second nuclear superpower, even if it might still be an economic lesser power. Hillary is playing with thermonuclear fire. Democracy or something else? No mistake, Putin is not a world champion practitioner of what most consider democracy. His announcement some months back that he and current President Medvedev had agreed to switch jobs after Russia?s March 4 Presidential vote struck even many Russians as crass power politics and backroom deal-making. That being said, what Washington is doing to interfere with that regime change is more than brazen and interventionist. The same Obama Administration which just signed into law measures effectively ripping to shreds the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution for American citizens[3] is posing as world supreme judge of others? adherence to what they define as democracy. Let?s examine closely Putin?s charge of US interference in the election process. If we look, we find openly stated in their August 2011 Annual Report that a Washington-based NGO with the innocuous name, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is all over the place inside Russia. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is financing an International Press Center in Moscow where some 80 international NGOs can hold press briefings on whatever they choose. They fund numerous ?youth advocacy? and leadership workshops to ?help youth engage in political activism.? In fact, officially they spent more than $2,783,000 in 2010 on dozens of such programs across Russia. Spending for 2011 won?t be published until later in 2012. [4] The NED is also financing key parts of the Russian ?independent? polling and election monitoring, a crucial part of being able to claim election fraud. They finance in part the Regional Civic Organization in Defense of Democratic Rights and Liberties ?GOLOS.? According to the NED Annual Report the funds went ?to carry out a detailed analysis of the autumn 2010 and spring 2011 election cycles in Russia, which will include press monitoring, monitoring of political agitation, activity of electoral commissions, and other aspects of the application of electoral legislation in the long-term run-up to the elections.?[5] In September, 2011, a few weeks before the December elections the NED financed a Washington invitation-only conference featuring the Russian ?independent? polling organization, the Levada Center. According to NED?s own website Levada, another recipient of NED money, [6] had done a series of opinion polls, a standard method used in the West to analyze the feelings of citizens. The polls profiled ?the mood of the electorate in the run up to the Duma and presidential elections, perceptions of candidates and parties, and voter confidence in the system of ?managed democracy? that has been established over the last decade.? One of the featured speakers at that Washington conference was Vladimir Kara-Murza, member of the federal council of Solidarnost (?Solidarity?), Russia?s democratic opposition movement. He is also ?advisor to Duma opposition leader Boris Nemtsov? according to NED. Another speaker came from the right-wing neo-conservative Hudson Institute. [7] Nemtsov, one of the most prominent figures of the Putin opposition today is also co-chairman of Solidarnost, a name curiously enough imitated from the Cold War days when the CIA financed the Polish Solidarnosc workers? opposition of Lech Walesa. More on Nemtsov later. And on December 15, 2011, again in Washington, just as the series of US-supported protests were being launched against Putin, led by Solidarnost and other organizations, the NED held another conference titled, Youth Activism in Russia: Can a New Generation Make a Difference? The featured speaker was Tamirlan Kurbanov, who according to the NED, ?most recently served as a program officer at the Moscow office of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, where he was involved in developing and expanding the capacities of political and civic organizations; promoting citizen participation in public life, youth engagement in particular.? [8] The National Democratic Institute is an arm of the NED. The Shady History of The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Helping youth engage in political activism is precisely what the same NED did in Egypt over the past several years in the lead up to the toppling of Mubarak. The same NED was instrumental by informed accounts in the US-backed ?Color Revolutions? in 2003-2004 in Ukraine and Georgia that brought US-backed pro-NATO surrogates to power. The same NED has been active in promoting ?human rights? in Myanmar, in Tibet, and China?s oil-rich Xinjiang province. [9] As careful analysts of the 2004 Ukraine ?Orange revolution? and the numerous other US-financed color revolutions discovered, control of polling and ability to dominate international media perceptions, especially major TV such as CNN or BBC is an essential component of the Washington destabilization agenda. The Levada Center would likely be in a crucial position in this regard to issue polls showing discontent with the regime. By their description, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a ?private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, with funding from the US Congress, NED supports more than 1,000 projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries.?[10] It couldn?t sound more noble or high-minded. However, they prefer to leave out their own true history. In the early 1980?s CIA director Bill Casey convinced President Ronald Reagan to create a plausibly private NGO, the NED, to advance Washington?s global agenda via other means than direct CIA action. It was a part of the process of ?privatizing? US intelligence to make their work more ?effective.? Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, said in a Washington Post interview in 1991, ?A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.?[11] Interesting. The majority of funds for NED come from US taxpayers through Congress. It is in every way, shape and form a US Government intelligence community asset. The NED was created during the Reagan Administration to function as a de facto CIA, privatized so as to allow it more freedom of action. NED board members are typically drawn from the Pentagon and US intelligence community. It has included retired NATO General Wesley Clark, the man who led the US bombing of Serbia in 1999. Key figures linked to clandestine CIA actions who served on NED?s board have included Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Henry Cisneros and Elliot Abrams. The Chairman of the NED Board of Directors in 2008 was Vin Weber, founder of the ultraconservative organization, Empower America, and campaign fundraiser for George W. Bush. Current NED chairman is John Bohn, former CEO of the controversial Moody?s rating agency which played a nefarious role in the still-unraveling US mortgage securities collapse. As well today?s NED board includes neo-conservative Bush-era ambassador to Iraq and to Afghanistan, Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad.[12] Putin?s well-rehearsed opposition It?s also instructive to look at the leading opposition figures who seem to have stepped forward in Russia in recent days. The current opposition ?poster boy? favorite of Russian youth and especially western media is Russian blogger Alexei Navalny whose blog is titled LiveJournal. Navalny has featured prominently as a quasi-martyr of the protest movement after spending 15 days in Putin?s jail for partaking in a banned protest. At a large protest rally on Christmas Day December 25 in Moscow, Navalny, perhaps intoxicated by seeing too many romantic Sergei Eisenstein films of the 1917 Russian Revolution, told the crowd, ?I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and the White House (Russia?s Presidential home-w.e.) right now...?[13] Western establishment media is infatuated with Navalny. England?s BBC described Navalny as "arguably the only major opposition figure to emerge in Russia in the past five years," and US Time magazine called him "Russia's Erin Brockovich," a curious reference to the Hollywood film starring Julie Roberts as a researcher and legal activist. However, more relevant is the fact that Navalny went to the elite American East Coast Yale University, also home to the Bush family, where he was a ?Yale World Fellow.? [14] The charismatic Navalny however is also or has been on the payroll of Washington?s regime-destabilizing National Endowment for Democracy (NED). According to a posting on Navalny?s own blog, LiveJournal, he was supported in 2007-2008 by the NED. [15] [16] Along with Navalny, key actors in the anti-Putin protest movement are centered around Solidarnost which was created in December 2008 by Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov and others. Nemtsov is hardly one to protest corruption. According to Business Week Russia of September 23, 2007, Nemtsov introduced Russian banker Boris Brevnov to Gretchen Wilson, a US citizen and an employee of the International Finance Corporation, a financing arm of the World Bank. Wilson and Brevnov married. With the help of Nemtsov Wilson managed to privatize Balakhna Pulp and Paper mill at the giveaway price of just $7 million. The enterprise was sucked dry and then sold to the Wall Street-Swiss investment bank, CS First Boston bank. The annual turnover of the mill was reportedly $250 million. [17] CS First Boston bank also paid for Nemtsov's trips to the very expensive Davos World Economic Forum. When Nemtsov became a member of the cabinet, his prot?g? Brevnov was appointed the chairman of the Unified Energy System of Russia JSC. Two years later in 2009 Boris Nemtsov, today?s ?Mr anti-corruption,? used his influence reportedly to get Brevnov off the hook for charges of embezzling billions from assets of Unified Energy System. [18] Nemtsov also took money from jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 1999 when the latter was using his billions to try to buy the Russian parliament or Duma. In 2004 Nemtsov met with exiled billionaire oligarch Boris Berezovsky in a secret gathering with other exiled Russian tycoons. When Nemtsov was detailed by Russian authorities for allegations of foreign funding of his new political party, ?For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption,? US Senators John McCain and Joe Liberman and Mike Hammer of the Obama National Security Council came to support of Nemtsov. [19] Nemtsov?s close crony, Vladimir Ryzhkov of Solidarnost is also closely tied to the Swiss Davos circles, even founding a Siberian Davos. According to Russian press accounts from April 2005, Ryzhkov formed a Committee 2008 in 2003 to ?draw? funds of the imprisoned Khodorkovsky along with soliciting funds from fugitive oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky and western foundations such as the Soros Foundation. The stated aim of the effort was to rally ?democratic? forces against Putin. On May 23, 2011 Ryzhkov, Nemtzov and several others filed to register a new Party of Peoples? Freedom to ostensibly field a presidential candidate against Putin in 2012.[20] Another prominent face in the recent anti-Putin rallies is former world chess champion turned right-wing politician, Garry Kasparov, another founder of Solidarnost. Kasparov was identified several years ago as being a board member of a Washington neo-conservative military think-tank. In April 2007, Kasparov admitted he was a board member of the National Security Advisory Council of Center for Security Policy, a "non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security." Inside Russia Kasparov is more infamous for his earlier financial ties to Leonid Nevzlin, former Yukos vice-president and partner of Michael Khodorokvsky. Nevzlin fled to Israel on being charged in Russia on charges of murder and hiring contract killers to eliminate ?objectionable people? while Yukos vice-president. [21] In 2009 Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov met with no less than Barack Obama to discuss Russia?s opposition to Putin at the US President?s personal invitation at Washington?s Ritz Carlton Hotel. Nemtsov had called for Obama to meet with opposition forces in Russia: ?If the White House agrees to Putin?s suggestion to speak only with pro-Putin organizations... this will mean that Putin has won, but not only that: Putin will become be assured that Obama is weak,? he said. During the same 2009 US trip Nemtsov was invited to speak at the New York Council on Foreign Relations, perhaps the most influential US foreign policy think-tank. Significantly, not only has the US State Department and US-backed political NGOs such as NED poured millions into building an anti-Putin coalition inside Russia. The President personally has intervened into the process.[22] Ryzhkov, Nemtzov, Navalty and Putin?s former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin were all involved in organizing the December 25th Moscow Christmas anti-Putin rally which drew an estimated 120,000.[23] Why Putin? The salient question is why Putin at this point? We need not look far for the answer. Washington and especially Barack Obama?s Administration don?t give a hoot about whether Russia is democratic or not. Their concern is the obstacle to Washington?s plans for Full Spectrum Dominance of the planet that a Putin Presidency will represent. According to the Russian Constitution, the President of the Russian Federation head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office in the Russian Federation. He will take direct control of defense and foreign policy. We must ask what policy? Clearly strong countermeasures against the blatant NATO encirclement of Russia with Washington?s dangerous ballistic missile installations around Russia will be high on Putin?s agenda. Hillary Clinton?s ?reset? will be in the dustbin if it is not already. We can also expect a more aggressive use of Russia?s energy card with pipeline diplomacy to deepen economic ties between European NATO members such as Germany, France and Italy, ultimately weakening the EU support for aggressive NATO measures against Russia. We can expect a deepening of Russia?s turn towards Eurasia, especially with China, Iran and perhaps India to firm up the shaky spine of resistance to Washington?s New World Order plans. It will take more than a few demonstrations in sub-freezing weather in Moscow and St. Petersburg by a gaggle of corrupt or shady opposition figures such as Nemtsov or Kasparov to derail Russia. What is clear is that Washington is pushing on all fronts?Iran and Syria, where Russia has a vital naval port, on China, now on Russia, and on the Eurozone countries led by Germany. It has the smell of an end-game attempt by a declining superpower. The United States today is a de facto bankrupt nuclear superpower. The reserve currency role of the dollar is being challenged as never since Bretton Woods in 1944. That role along with maintaining the United States as the world?s unchallenged military power have been the basis of the American Century hegemony since 1945. Weakening the role of the dollar in international trade and ultimately as reserve currency, China is now settling trade with Japan in bilateral currencies, side-stepping the dollar. Russia is implementing similar steps with her major trade partners. The primary reason Washington launched a full-scale currency war against the Euro in late 2009 was to preempt a growing threat that China and others would turn away from the dollar to the Euro as reserve currency. That is no small matter. In effect Washington finances its foreign wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere through the fact that China and other trade surplus nations invest their surplus trade dollars in US government Treasury debt. Were that to shift significantly, US interest rates would rise substantially and the financial pressures on Washington would become immense. Faced with growing erosion of her unchallenged global status as sole superpower, Washington appears now to be turning increasingly to raw military force to hold that. For that to succeed Russia must be neutralized along with China and Iran. This will be the prime agenda of whoever is next US President. F. William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, He may be reached via his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net Notes [1] Alexei Druzhinin, Putin says US encouraging Russian opposition, RIA Novosti, Moscow, December 8, 2011 [2] Ibid. [3] Jonathan Turley, The NDAA's historic assault on American liberty, guardian.co.uk, 2 January 2012, accessed in http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/02/ndaa-historic-assault-american-liberty. [4] National Endowment for Democracy, Russia, from NED Annual Report 2010, Washington, DC, published in August 2011, accessed in http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/eurasia/russia. [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid. [7] NED, Elections in Russia: Polling and Perspectives, September 14, 2011, accessed in http://ned.org/events/elections-in-russia-polling-and-perspectives. [8] NED, Youth Activism in Russia: Can a New Generation Make a Difference?, December 15, 2011, accessed in http://ned.org/events/youth-activism-in-russia-can-a-new-generation-make-a-difference. [9] F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, 2010, edition. Engdahl press. The book describes in detail the origins of the NED and various US-sponsored ?human rights? NGOs and how they have been used to topple regimes not friendly to a larger USA geopolitical agenda. [10] National Endowment for Democracy, About Us, accessed in www.ned.org. [11] David Ignatius, Openness is the Secret to Democracy, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 September-6 October,1991, 24-25. [12] F. William Engdahl, Op. Cit., p.50. [13] Yulia Ponomareva, Navalny and Kudrin boost giant opposition rally, RIA Novosti, Moscow, December 25, 2011. [14] Yale University, Yale World Fellows: Alexey Navalny, 2010, accessed in http://www.yale.edu/worldfellows/fellows/navalny.html. [15] Alexey Navalny, emails between Navalny and Conatser, accessed in Russian (English summary provided to the author by www.warandpeace.ru) on http://alansalbiev.livejournal.com/28124.html. [16] Ibid. [17] Business Week Russia, Boris Nemtsov: Co-chairman of Solidarnost political movement, Business Week Russia, September 23, 2007, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1648. [18] Ibid. [19] Ibid. [20] Russian Mafia.ru, Vladimir Ryzhkov: Co-chairman of the Party of People's Freedom, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1713. [21] Russian Mafia.ru, Garry Kasparov: The leader of United Civil Front, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1518. [22] The OtherRussia, Obama Will Meet With Russian Opposition, July 3, 2009, accessed in http://www.theotherrussia.org/2009/07/03/obama-will-meet-with-russian-opposition/. [23] Yulia Ponomareva, op. Cit. Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. From ths at psalience.org Fri Jan 13 11:51:07 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:51:07 +0100 Subject: [THS] Christopher Stringer: Rethinking "Out of Africa" Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120113114746.06179358@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.edge.org/conversation/rethinking-out-of-africa Rethinking "Out of Africa" Christopher Stringer [11.12.11] I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the "Out of Africa" model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin. Twenty years ago, I would have argued that our species evolved in one place, maybe in East Africa or South Africa. There was a period of time in just one place where a small population of humans became modern, physically and behaviourally. Isolated and perhaps stressed by climate change, this drove a rapid and punctuational origin for our species. Now I don?t think it was that simple, either within or outside of Africa. CHRISTOPHER STRINGER is one of the world's foremost paleoanthropologists. He is a founder and most powerful advocate of the leading theory concerning our evolution: Recent African Origin or "Out of Africa". He has worked at The Natural History Museum, London since 1973, is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and currently leads the large and successful Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (AHOB), His most recent book is The Origin of Our Species (titled Lone Survivors in the US). Christopher Stringer's Edge Bio Page Rethinking "Out of Africa" [CHRISTOPHER STRINGER:] At the moment, I'm looking again at the whole question of a recent African origin for modern humans?the leading idea over the last 20 years. This argues that we had a recent African origin, that we came out of Africa, and that we replaced all of the other human forms that were outside of Africa. But we're having to re-evaluate that now because genetic data suggest that the modern humans who came out of Africa about 60,000 years ago probably interbred with Neanderthals, first of all, and then some of them later on interbred with another group of people called the Denisovans, over in south eastern Asia. If this is so, then we are not purely of recent African origin. We're mostly of recent African origin, but there was contact with these other so-called species. We're having to re-evaluate the Out-of-Africa theory, and we're having to re-evaluate the species concepts we apply, because in one view of thinking, species should be self-contained units. They don't interbreed with other species. However, for me, the whole idea of Neanderthals as a different species is really a recognition of their separate evolutionary history?the fact that we can show that they evolved through time in a particular direction, distinct from modern humans, and they separated maybe 400,000 years ago from our lineage. And morphologically we can distinguish a relatively complete Neanderthal fossil from any recent human. You could argue that they're an extreme variant of Homo sapiens, but a very different 'race' from anyone alive today, or, as I prefer to argue, they're a separate species, with a separate evolutionary history. But I've never actually said that that meant they were completely reproductively isolated from us. We know that many closely related species in primates, for example, can interbreed. Various species of monkey can interbreed and have fertile offspring, and so can our closest living relatives, Bonobos and common chimpanzees. In my view the Neanderthals were closely related and probably potentially able to interbreed with modern humans, but until recently I considered that while there could have been interbreeding forty or fifty thousand years ago, it was on such a small scale that all trace of it vanished in the intervening years. But it now seems from Neanderthal genome studies that that was not so. We do have a bit of Neanderthal in us, you and I?it's a small amount, but certainly not negligible.. Does that mean Neanderthals are a different species or does it mean we should include them in Homo sapiens? Well, they are still only a small part of our makeup now, reflecting something like a 2.5% input of their DNA. Physically, however, they went extinct about 30,000 years ago. They had distinct behavior and they evolved under different conditions from us, so I still think it's useful to keep them as a separate species, even if we remember that that doesn't necessarily preclude interbreeding. Then there are these enigmatic people called the Denisovans, who we only know about because of DNA work that's gone on in the site of Denisova Cave in Siberia. The site has been known for a long time. There were some very fragmentary human fossils from there, a finger bone; a couple of teeth, a foot bone, and each of them have yielded significant DNA. The surprise was that while the foot bone DNA turned... You could argue that they're an extreme variant of Homo sapiens, but a very different 'race' from anyone alive today, or, as I prefer to argue, they're a separate species, with a separate evolutionary history. But I've never actually said that that meant they were completely reproductively isolated from us. We know that many closely related species in primates, for example, can interbreed. Various species of monkey can interbreed and have fertile offspring, and so can our closest living relatives, Bonobos and common chimpanzees. In my view the Neanderthals were closely related and probably potentially able to interbreed with modern humans, but until recently I considered that while there could have been interbreeding forty or fifty thousand years ago, it was on such a small scale that all trace of it vanished in the intervening years. But it now seems from Neanderthal genome studies that that was not so. We do have a bit of Neanderthal in us, you and I?it's a small amount, but certainly not negligible.. Does that mean Neanderthals are a different species or does it mean we should include them in Homo sapiens? Well, they are still only a small part of our makeup now, reflecting something like a 2.5% input of their DNA. Physically, however, they went extinct about 30,000 years ago. They had distinct behavior and they evolved under different conditions from us, so I still think it's useful to keep them as a separate species, even if we remember that that doesn't necessarily preclude interbreeding. Then there are these enigmatic people called the Denisovans, who we only know about because of DNA work that's gone on in the site of Denisova Cave in Siberia. The site has been known for a long time. There were some very fragmentary human fossils from there, a finger bone; a couple of teeth, a foot bone, and each of them have yielded significant DNA. The surprise was that while the foot bone DNA turned out to be Neanderthal, at the eastern limit of their known range, the other fossils had DNA that was quite distinct: it wasn't clearly Neanderthal, it wasn't modern human. It was something different. Svante P??bo and his colleagues have dubbed these people the Denisovans. So we have this site in Siberia with Denisovans, and it looks like it was occupied in quite a short period of time by the Denisovans, by Neanderthals, and finally by modern humans. It's a remarkable site with three different kinds of humans living there in close proximity in time and space. However, the exact dating of these different occupations is still unclear. Thus the Denisovans are only known from this one site, genetically. The fossils are too incomplete to tell us what these people were really like, except they've got big teeth. However, there are lots of ancient fossils from China, and one from India. We've known about the people in China for a long time, ones who didn't look Neanderthal, and didn't look modern human either. Fossils like from the ones from Dali, Jinniushan, Maba might well be Denisovans, but unfortunately we don't have DNA from them at the moment, and we have to hope that the DNA work will move on, and eventually we can unite the Denisovan DNA with more complete fossils, and say physically what these people looked like. A further big surprise was that not only were there distinct humans in Siberia maybe 50,000 years ago, but when whole genome scans were done against modern humans, it turned out that there was one group of living humans that seemed to be related to the Denisovans, that had Denisovan DNA in them, and these people are down in Australasia. They're in New Guinea, Australia, and some neighbouring islands, so that's also very unexpected. The Denisovans are only known from their DNA in Siberia. Down in New Guinea and Australia, there is Denisovan DNA in living people. The best way to explain this at the moment is that modern humans were dispersing through southern Asia towards Australia and New Guinea, and Denisovans must also have been living in that region. So they weren't just in Siberia, they were actually right across eastern Asia and down into Southeast Asia, where there was another interbreeding with people whose descendants ended up in New Guinea and Australia. So those people have got a double archaic dose, if you like: they've got a bit of Neanderthal DNA that their ancestors picked up maybe in western Asia from encounters with some Neanderthals, and then coming through southeast Asia, they picked up some Denisovan DNA, and that gets added to the mix. We end up with a pretty complicated story of the interweaving of these lineages, which were separate for hundreds of thousands of years, but then when they overlapped, they exchanged genes. We don't know the circumstances of the interbreeding?we don't know if these were groups that came together peacefully, or maybe some modern humans were lacking mates and decided to capture some from a neighboring group. It can't have been that common a behavior, or there would be a lot more DNA from these archaic people. And it can't even have been a common behavior with the Neanderthals, because of course, if modern humans came out of Africa and spread gradually across Europe, we would expect if there was continuing interbreeding with Neanderthals, then Europeans would actually have a lot more Neanderthal DNA than someone in China or someone in New Guinea. The extraordinary thing is the level of DNA is about the same in a modern European, a modern Chinese and a modern New Guinean. One possibility is that an interbreeding event happened early on in southwest Asia. As modern humans first emerged from Africa, they met some Neanderthals?maybe only 25 Neanderthals and 1,000 modern humans. That would be enough. And then that DNA gets carried with those modern humans as they spread out from that area and diversify. Another possibility, which Mathias Currat and Laurent Excoffier have recently argued, is that the low level of interbreeding between Neanderthals and moderns was actually due to the unsuccessful nature of most of the interbreeding events. That actually the level of interbreeding in separate events was a measure of the low viability of those interbreeding events? which is why there isn't more Neanderthal DNA in people outside of Africa. I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the "Out of Africa" model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin. Twenty years ago, I would have argued that our species evolved in one place, maybe in East Africa or South Africa. There was a period of time in just one place where a small population of humans became modern, physically and behaviourally. Isolated and perhaps stressed by climate change, this drove a rapid and punctuational origin for our species. Now I don?t think it was that simple, either within or outside of Africa. We can see the focus, the center of evolution, for modern humans in Africa apparently moving around from one place to another, driven by climate changes. 110,000 years ago the Sahara was not desert, it was well-watered, with extensive lakes and rivers. And we see evidence of human occupation in the form of stone tools right across the region. At other times those populations completely vanished, and we pick up the evidence of evolving modern humans in East Africa, or down in the south instead. And we have to remember that there are large parts of Africa where we have stone tools, but no fossil record to show us who was making those tools. We've got no ancient human fossils from central Africa or West Africa, none at all. So we have to bear in mind that our picture is still limited in terms of the sites that have been excavated and the information we've got from them. So for me, the exact processes involved in our African origin are still unclear. We don't know exactly when it happened, we don't know exactly where it happened. We have modern human fossils from Ethiopia at 160,000 years at Herto and 195,000 years from Omo Kibish. These do look physically like a more robust version of people today, but I think we're also learning that alongside those modern-looking people were surviving forms of more archaic humans, at sites like Omo Kibish, Ngaloba, Singa and Eyasi. And there were further surprises from a specimen that I and collaborators published on a few months ago. It's the oldest fossil from Nigeria, from a site called Iwo Eleru. It's about 13,000 years old, and yet if you look at it, you would say from its shape that it's more than 100,000 years old. This reminds us that we have a very biased picture of African evolution, with many unknown areas, and there could be relics of human evolution hanging on not only outside of Africa in the form of the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, and over in Flores, this strange creature nicknamed the 'Hobbit'. In Africa itself, archaic humans could have lingered in parts of the continent as well. From some recent genetic analyses, there is evidence of an input of archaic DNA into some modern African populations as recently as 35,000 years ago. So even in Africa, the process was more complicated than we thought. In terms of modern humans, this means that in a sense some modern humans have got more archaic genes than others. That does seem to be so. So it leads us on to ask again: what is a modern human? Some of the most fascinating ongoing research topics in the next year or two will be homing in on the DNA that some of us have acquired from Neanderthals, that some people have acquired from the Denisovans, and that some African people have acquired, perhaps even from Homo heidelbergensis. Scientists will look at that DNA and ask, is it functional? Is it actually doing something in the bodies of those people? Is it affecting brains, anatomy, physiology, and so on? That's going to be a huge focus of research for the next few years because on the one hand, looking at these genes will help to really tell us what makes a Neanderthal a Neanderthal, what makes a modern human a modern human, what makes a Denisovan a Denisovan. But it might possibly also show that, as multiregionalists have argued in the past, robust fossils in regions like Australia could be a reflection of archaic gene flow. We can say that the shared (specific) features of Homo sapiens (e.g. globular braincase, small brows, chin) evolved first, in Africa, while most of our regional ('racial') traits were added on to that modern template through the action of natural selection, sexual selection, founder effect and drift, as modern humans spread out to the regions where they are found today. But could archaic genes be responsible for some of them, at least? Darwin was puzzled, of course, by the evolution of those features. If we read The Descent of Man, his favoured view for the evolution of many of the regional features was that they were sexually selected or, we might say, culturally selected. I think he was probably right, in some cases at least. We can see that skin colour generally has a relationship with ultraviolet light, with getting a balance between having enough UV getting into your skin to produce Vitamin D, but not too much of it that it will damage the skin or destroy folic acid. So there's a balancing act in the amount of skin pigmentation, and there's no doubt natural selection is at work on this. But even here, sexual selection in terms of mating preferences for lighter or darker skin could be playing a part. And when we look at other features such as, say, oriental eyes or the kind of hair we've got, Darwin may be have been right, and sexual selection is at work there. As populations spread out in small numbers, cultural preferences for attractiveness might have driven some of those differences. Not much DNA is involved, and some striking-looking differences between populations could have evolved quite rapidly. There have been some remarkable advances in the time that I've been researching human evolution, which is 40-odd years now. When I began my PhD in 1970 and went on my doctoral research trip in 1971, the technology was very primitive. Basically, I went around Europe with a suitcase full of measuring instruments: calipers, tapes, protractors. I applied these to the fossil skulls of Neanderthals and modern humans that I was studying, spending four months doing that. It took half a day to study a single skull and collect that data, all put down by hand onto a paper sheet that couldn?t be backed up. There were not even any photocopy machines around so I could have lost all of my data quite easily. There were no pocket calculators, there were no photocopy machines?it was entirely non-digital recording. When I got back to Bristol, I had to laboriously transcribe all of those measurements by hand onto punch cards, which were then fed into the massive mainframe computer for the whole of Bristol University. It was probably about four times the size of this room, but with less processing power than the digital watch that I'm wearing now. A day later I would come back and get the results of that particular analysis. Or if it didn't work because of some minor error in one of cards, I'd have to put them all in again, which happened often. Things were laboriously slow. It took me four months on that trip to gather the data. It took me another 18 months to analyze those data, to get the results for my PhD. But my conclusions were clear enough. I had cranial samples of modern humans from different regions, and they grouped with each other in cranial shape, rather than with their local predecessors. And the Neanderthals rarely fell into an intermediate position between ancient fossils and recent humans?they seemed to be heading off in their own evolutionary direction through time, rather than gradually approaching a modern cranial shape. Now, of course, with the advent of scanning and digital technology, a good graduate student sitting at a computer console here or in Europe or the USA could conjure up an equivalent amount of data that I gathered, in fact probably more data than I gathered, on a series of skulls in a week or two, And they could do a more thorough computational analysis of that data than I managed, in a couple of weeks more. So what effectively took me nearly four years could be accomplished by a good student now in a few weeks! Advances like CT technology give you access to far more, and far richer, data. I was limited to the craniometric points on skulls where I could put my measuring instruments. But with CT, you can capture the whole shape of a specimen, of course. You can look at the internal cranial morphology, the sinuses, the inner ear bones of Neanderthals, which we now know are differently shaped from our own. We only learned that through CT technology, so all of that has made a huge difference to what we can get out of our fossils. In one way I'm jealous of the new generation that can come in and do all of this in such a short period of time. On the other hand, by going around Europe for four months, I actually held the Neanderthal skull from Germany in my hands, and the Cro-Magnon skulls from France, and it was wonderful to have a hands-on approach to these important relics. So with only virtual access to the fossils, I think the people doing the digital stuff on their consoles are missing that special and even emotional contact with the actual fossils. When I began my work in 1970, it's fair to say that people who believed in evolutionary continuity between Neanderthals and modern humans dominated the field. There was Loring Brace at Michigan, who certainly influenced me in my early studies. Loring firmly believed that human evolution passed through a Neanderthal stage all over the world. Everywhere we looked in the middle Pleistocene, there were 'Neanderthaloid' people, and these were the ancestors of modern humans in each region. Thus if we had a complete fossil record, we would see a gradual transition in each region through Neanderthal-like forms to modern humans. Around 1970, that was probably the dominant view. Milford Wolpoff was one of Loring Brace's students and he came out of that tradition, but with collaborators he developed his own variant by going back to the views of Franz Weidenreich, the German anatomist. Weidenreich had developed a theory which is now known as Multiregional Evolution. In 1984 Milford, Alan Thorne and Wu Xinzhi published a paper that argued for multiregional evolution from fossil, archaeological and genetic data. Homo erectus, when it spread out around the Old World, started to evolve towards modern humans in each region. But these lines didn't diverge?they were glued together by gene flow. The populations were breeding with each other across the whole range of humans at the time, and so there was no single place where modern humans evolved. Basically modern humans evolved everywhere where ancient humans lived. Thus every fossil could potentially be placed in a lineage leading through to modern humans. And in one of the clearest distinctions from a Recent African Origin model, the establishment of regional features would often have preceded, rather than succeeded, the appearance of shared modern ones. However there were also people who weren't part of the framework of regional continuity. For example there was William Howells from Harvard, who I spent a lot of time with in the 1970s. Bill was someone who didn't think the Neanderthals were our ancestors, and he exerted an increasing influence on my thinking. We didn't know where modern humans had evolved, but we both felt that it wasn't from the Neanderthals. But if not the Neanderthals, where were those ancestors? Were they in the Far East? Were they in Africa? In the 1970s, we couldn't say. However I followed Bill in arguing that there was probably a single center for modern human origins, given the similarities among humans all over the world, physically and genetically. During the 1980s, data started to build up that the African record was significant. In terms of both morphology and archaeology, Africa wasn't the rather backward place it was often thought to be. First, modern humans and advanced tools were shown to be there as early as anywhere else in the world. Then as the data grew, it seemed that modern humans were indeed there earlier than they were anywhere else. This was the beginning, in the 1980s, of what we call "Out of Africa". On the archeological side, Desmond Clark, was also very strong in that view. He had links with Tim White, and Desmond and Tim were people who went out in the field to find the fossils we needed to test our models. I haven't been so lucky on the excavations I've been on in places like Gibraltar, tending to find lots of archeology and fauna, but not the human fossils. But people like Desmond, Tim, Ofer Bar Yosef and Bernard Vandermeersch have invested many years in field work and were rewarded in finding those fossils. Clark Howell was another big influence on me, having written influential papers on Neanderthals during the 1950s and 1960s, and he was a pioneer of field work in many regions. He was someone who was meticulous in the anatomical details that he looked at in fossils and he taught me a lot about how to look at the morphology of fossils. And closer to home I learnt a lot from my Museum colleague Peter Andrews, who helped to sharpen my thoughts about an African origin for modern humans, co-authoring our influential 1988 paper in Science. The preceding year of 1987 was a real watershed, with the publication of the 'Mitochondrial Eve' paper in Nature by Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking and Allan Wilson. A few of us had been advocating a recent African origin for modern humans before then, but it wasn't until '87 that this topic suddenly made the front pages of journals and newspapers. Suddenly modern human origins became very sexy, and more money became available for research and for field work on recent human evolution. Before that, the sexy areas for human evolution were in the much older African record. People working in the Rift Valley and in South Africa were the focus of attention and funding. But after 1987, people started to pick up on the evolution of modern humans as a significant topic, and we started to get more conferences, more fieldwork, and more public interest in our own evolution. Of course I was delighted to ride on that wave of increasing public interest in modern human origins. Until 2004, we thought that only modern humans had got across the Wallace line. The Wallace line was named after the zoologist Alfred Russel Wallace, who recognised significant changes in the fauna and flora in Southeast Asia as we move from places like Java across into the islands leading to New Guinea and Australia. The view was that ancient humans like Homo erectus got as far as Java, but they didn't get any further?the assumption was that only modern humans with boats were able to get onto the islands leading to New Guinea and Australia. Then the find known as Homo floresiensis was made in Liang Bua Cave on the island of Flores, and was quickly nicknamed "The Hobbit," because the Lord of the Rings films were popular at that time. The excavators who described this material argued that they had found a new species of human, small-bodied at about a meter tall, with primitive features in the skeleton, and a brain the size of that of a chimpanzee. And this creature was living on the island of Flores, way over the Wallace Line, five-hundred kilometers beyond Java. Not only that, it was still around 17,000 years ago, long after the Neanderthals had died out. It was an extraordinary claim from a partial skeleton and some more fragmentary material dug up from just this one site on Flores. I was at the Nature press conference where these findings were announced, and commentated on the discovery, which did impress me. I took this seriously as a distinct human-like species, which had somehow got to Flores and had evolved separately in isolation for a long period of time. The leading view in 2004 was that this creature represented a dwarf form of Homo erectus. Homo erectus had somehow headed eastwards, arrived on Flores, and under the conditions of this relatively small island, the species had dwarfed down in size (a process called insular dwarfism, which happens to medium-to-large-sized mammals on islands with reduced resources, when evolution favors a reduced body size). The argument was that this was a dwarfed Homo erectus, explaining the smaller body and brain size. However, some researchers refused to accept that. They felt that this was such a bizarre find, under bizarre circumstances, and they actually favored the view that they were some kind of pathological modern human, perhaps suffering from cretinism, microcephaly or something called Laron Syndrome. These conditions can produce small brains and small bodies in modern humans, so some people have argued that these findings are not a distinct species at all. That view is a minority view, but it continues up to this day. However I'm not convinced by these counter-arguments. We've got now over 100 fossils from Liang Bua, not just that one skeleton?there are a number of other individuals. There's a second jaw bone, which to me looks every bit as primitive and archaic as the first jaw bone that's with the skeleton. And there are two sets of primitive-looking wrist bones. These finds were made in levels from about 17,000 right down to about 90,000 years in the cave, and there's archeology right through those levels, archaeology which in some respects resembles much older stone tools found elsewhere on the island. So for me, it remains a convincing distinct form of human, and one that may be even more primitive than was originally considered because recent research on the material, more detailed research, has found a number of features that seem to be more primitive than even the ones we find in Homo erectus. The suggestion is now that this might represent an even earlier stage of human evolution, one that's closer to Homo habilis or even to Australopithecus, creatures that lived two million years ago or more in Africa. Although we've got no evidence of it happening yet, the argument is that one of those more primitive forms got out of Africa more than two million years ago, somehow found its way over to southeast Asia, and survived in isolation on the island of Flores until 17,000 years ago, when it went extinct. That would be an even more extraordinary story than a Homo erectus getting there and dwarfing, that you've actually got a relic of an earlier stage of human evolution that got all the way over there. Lots of questions arise from this very challenging find in explaining where it came from and what happened to it. Did it die out because of the impact of modern humans, which is an argument that's been used for the extinction of Neanderthals? Well, according to the excavators on Flores, there's no evidence of modern humans there 17,000 years ago. Supposedly the modern humans came later. But there is evidence of a massive volcanic eruption about 17,000 years ago, which produced very thick ash in the Liang Bua cave and elsewhere on the island. It may well be that this eruption was so enormous that it devastated the vegetation on the island and led to the extinction of the hobbit, which would be a very sad end after maybe two million years of evolution in a remote region, at the edge of the inhabited world at that time. Where did it come from? Well, that's also still a mystery. On the one hand, was it from Homo erectus? Mike Morwood has recently argued that it's more likely that the ancestors of the Hobbits came from the north, because the currents of water in that region actually run from Sulawesi southwards, down to places like Timor, and then westwards. That's the opposite direction from a transit from Java to Flores. So Morwood argues that the Hobbit's ancestors will be found further north. Remarkably, he and his colleagues have found stone tools on Flores that are a million years old, which might have been made by the ancestors of the Hobbit. Reportedy he's even found tools which are a million years old on the island of Sulawesi, and that island is also over the Wallace Line. So there may actually be many more populations related to the hobbit waiting to be found on the islands of the region. We've got a whole unknown history there for the hobbit, just as we've got an unknown history for the Denisovans in East Asia. Changing topics, I think one of the most remarkable recent finds is the material from the site of Malapa in South Africa. This is material that's been found in the last few years, and we've seen a series of papers published in Science in the last few months. This is a species of Australopithecus called Australopithecus sediba, and it's clearly related to the previously known and possibly ancestral species Australopithecus africanus. The Taung specimen and the 'Mrs Ples' fossil are two famous examples of Australopithecus africanus, a species that lived in South Africa more than two million years ago. It's true to say that for most experts, the South African australopithecines have been side-lined from the mainstream of human evolution. The mainstream view has been that East Africa was where the first humans evolved, with Homo habilis coming out of a species like Lucy?s, Australopithecus afarensis. From there, in turn, the species Homo erectus supposedly evolved about 1.8 million years ago. What?s new is that sediba is close to two million years old and has many more human features than Australopithecus africanus. So we've got these strange fossil skeletons of sediba down in South Africa, on the one hand looking like Australopithecus africanus, but with more human features in the teeth, pelvis, legs and hands. This suggests for people like Lee Berger (the discoverer of sediba), that the transition to Homo occurred in South Africa, not east Africa. You could then turn things around and sideline all of those east African fossil. I tend to the view that it will be more complex than that. We know there were australopithecines living in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi, down into South Africa about 2.5 million years ago. Then if in a number of areas we get parallel evolution in adapting to environmental change, these different species start to use tools to an increasing extent, they start to eat meat to an increasing extent, they start to travel longer distances on two legs to get their food, this could have driven parallel human-like changes in the body, the hands, the brain, even. That is maybe what we're seeing in both East Africa and South Africa. And an even more radical possibility is that hybridization events which we can now map from ancient and modern DNA were also occurring in Africa two million years ago and might have produced some of the mosaic morphologies that we observe there. So which area will eventually turn out to be the place of origin of the genus Homo is still an open question, but sediba reminds us that South Africa could be part of that story, and that perhaps Australopithecus africanus didn't die out. Maybe it carried on evolving, and even started to evolve some human-like features. So this material is important in evolutionary terms, but also important because of the completeness of the several skeletons discovered so far. Published so far are two fairly complete skeletons of what are probably a boy, perhaps nine or ten when he died, and an adult female. Still unpublished are at least three more individuals, all from this one site. It looks like these individuals fell one after another into a death trap. They may have fallen into anoxic water, where there was very slow decay of the tissue, and they were mummified before they were fossilized, with even the possibility, according to Lee Berger, of soft tissue preservation. Between the bones and the sediments around them there could be layers of fossilized skin that might have preservation of skin, pores, hair and even pigments. Even more extraordinary if that's true. But just for their completeness, these are really important specimens. The impact of genetic work on our field is enormous, and growing. When you think back to 1997, a tiny bit of mitochondrial DNA was recovered from the original Neanderthal skeleton found in Germany. I was at the press conference with Svante P??bo, and it was undoubtedly a pioneering achievement, and a breakthrough. But no one could have believed that ten years later, we'd be talking about most of a genome of a Neanderthal being reconstructed. So the technical and computational advances have been huge. The ability to recover the DNA, massive computing power, huge databases of comparative DNA samples have allowed us to map most of the genome of a Neanderthal, in fact several Neanderthals, and also recover the DNA of these enigmatic people called the Denisovans. I think wherever there are suitably cold conditions, and just as importantly, where it was predominantly cold in the past there should be good DNA preservation. So in northern Asia and Europe and in sites at high altitude outside of those areas, there should be more DNA to come from the fossils, and we will see increasing amounts from modern human fossils as well, which has been slow to come through because of the problems of contamination. We may find there are other people than the Denisovans and the Neanderthals to be recognized from their DNA in these regions? there may well be more surprises to come. For example there is evidence both from fossils and recent DNA that even Africa had an overlap of modern and archaic humans, with the possibility in a continent so large that there were other descendants of heidelbergensis living there alongside Homo sapiens. These populations could have exchanged DNA too, evidence of which might be found in the genomes of living Africans. We will also get the first good look at functional DNA in the genomes of ancient individuals. For the first time, we can make a comparison, not just between the chimp genome and the modern human genome, but we can now add in the Neanderthal genome and the Denisovan genome. We can start to see what unites those three human genomes compared with the chimpanzees. What evolved along the modern human line to make us what we are? And then individually, what made the Neanderthals what they were? What made the Denisovans what they were? This will have an impact, of course, on our own nature, what makes a modern human a modern human. Already a number of bits of DNA have been identified that are distinct among humans, where the Neanderthals are like chimpanzees. Some of these are concerned with the brain, some are concerned with the skin and physiology, some are concerned with how the skeleton grows, and some are concerned with things like the motility of sperm. These things really are going to help us tell what makes a Neanderthal, what makes a Denisovan, and what makes a modern human. Equally we will see studies of the function of Neanderthal-derived and Denisovan-derived DNA in the modern populations that show this from previous interbreeding. So we will find out whether we picked up short or longer-term advantages from those interbreeding events in terms of local adaptation, resistance to new pathogens etc. Here's a somewhat simple representation of my current thinking now about human evolution over the last two million years: We've got the lineage of the hobbit, 'Homo floresiensis' (in quotation marks because its human status in not yet clear), perhaps diverging more than two million years ago, evolving in isolation in southeast Asia, and apparently going extinct about 17,000 years ago. We've got Homo erectus, most likely originating in Africa, giving rise to lineages which continue in the Far East in China and Java, but which eventually go extinct. In Europe, it perhaps gave rise to the species Homo antecessor, "Pioneer Man," known from the site of Atapuerca in Spain. Again, going extinct. In the western part of the Old World, we get the development of a new species, Homo heidelbergensis, present in Europe, Asia and Africa. We knew heidelbergensis had gone two ways, to modern humans and the Neanderthals. But we now know because of the Denisovans that actually heidelbergensis went three ways?in fact the Denisovans seem to represent an off-shoot of the Neanderthal lineage. North of the Mediterranean, heidelbergensis gave rise to the Neanderthals, over in the Far East, it gave rise to the Denisovans. In Africa heidelbergensis evolved into modern humans, who eventually spread from Africa about 60,000 years ago, but as I mentioned, there's evidence that heidelbergensis populations carried on in Africa for a period of time. But we now know that the Neanderthals and the Denisovans did not go genetically extinct. They went physically extinct, but their genes were input into modern humans, perhaps in western Asia in the case of the Neanderthals. And then a smaller group of modern humans picked up DNA from the Denisovans in south east Asia. We end up with quite a complex story, with even some of this ancient DNA coming back into modern humans within Africa. So our evolutionary story is mostly, but not absolutely, a Recent African Origin. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Stringer11.jpg Type: application/octet-stream Size: 89737 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.psalience.org/pipermail/ths/attachments/20120113/8acffdbd/attachment-0001.obj