Tuesday, January 27, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/syria-border-town-kobani-taken-back-from-isis-kurdish-fighters-say/

ISIS handed huge symbolic defeat in Kobani
CBS/AP
January 26, 2015

BEIRUT -- Kurdish fighters backed by intense U.S.-led airstrikes pushed the Islamic State of Iraq and Syira (ISIS) entirely out of the Syrian town of Kobani on Monday, marking a major loss for extremists whose hopes for easy victory dissolved into a bloody, costly siege that ended in defeat.

Fighters raised a Kurdish flag on a hill in the border town near Turkey that once flew the black banner of ISIS. It represents a key conquest both for the embattled Kurds and the U.S.-led coalition, whose American coordinator had predicted that ISIS would "impale itself" on Kobani.

The battlefield success is a major conquest both for Syria's embattled Kurds and the U.S.-led coalition, whose American coordinator had predicted that ISIS would "impale itself" on Kobani.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and senior Kurdish official Idriss Nassan said ISIS had been nearly expelled, with some sporadic fighting on the eastern edges of the town.

"The Islamic State is on the verge of defeat," said Nassan, speaking from Turkey near the Syrian border and using the name by which the group identifies itself. "Their defenses have collapsed and its fighters have fled."

U.S. military officials told CBS News correspondent David Martin that Kurds now control "the vast majority" of Kobani with just a few remaining pockets of ISIS resistance - a turnaround from the fall when ISIS controlled nearly two-thirds of the city.

In September, ISIS fighters began capturing some 300 Kurdish villages near Kobani and thrust into the town itself, occupying nearly half of it. Tens of thousands of refugees spilled across the border into Turkey.

By October, ISIS control of Kobani was so widespread that it even made a propaganda video from the town featuring a captive British photojournalist, John Cantlie, to convey its message that ISIS fighters had pushed deep inside despite U.S.-led airstrikes.

The town, whose capture would have given the jihadi group control of a border crossing with Turkey and open direct lines between its positions along the border, quickly became a centerpiece of the U.S.-led air campaign in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared it would be "morally very difficult" not to help Kobani.

The U.S.-led air assault began Sept. 23, with Kobani the target of about a half-dozen airstrikes on average each day, and often more. More than 80 percent of all coalition airstrikes in Syria have been in or around the town. At one point in October, the U.S. air dropped bundles of weapons and medical supplies for Kurdish fighters -- a first in the Syrian conflict.

Analysts, as well as Syrian and Kurdish activists, credit the air campaign and the arrival in October of heavily armed Kurdish peshmerga fighters from Iraq, who neutralized ISIS' artillery advantage, for bringing key areas of Kobani under Kurdish control.

Nassan said U.S.-led coalition strikes became more intense in the past few days, helping Kurdish fighters in their final push toward ISIS positions on the southern and eastern edges of the town.

The U.S. Central Command said Monday that it had carried out 17 airstrikes near Kobani over the last 24 hours that struck ISIS infrastructure and fighting positions.

Nevertheless, a U.S. military spokeswoman told CBS News that the Pentagon was "unable confirm Kurdish claims" that the militants had been completely forced out of the city.

Nassan said he was preparing to head into Kobani on Tuesday and expected the town to be fully free by then.

Gharib Hassou, a representative of Syria's powerful Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, based in Southern Kurdistan, said fighting was still going in "two or three streets," adding that most of the militants withdrew to the town of Tal Abyad to the east.

"There are a lot of dead bodies ... and they left some of the weapons," he said. Kurdish fighters also suffered high casualties, he said, adding that more reinforcements will be sent to reinforce control over the town.

Rami Abdurrahman, director of the Observatory, said the Kurdish force was led by Mohammed Barkhadan, the Kobani commander of the main Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG.

Barkhadan is a well-known militia leader among Kurds and in 2013 he led an offensive that ousted Islamic militants out of the northern Syrian town of Ras Ayn, Aburrahman said.

Since mid-September, the battle for Kobani has killed some 1,600 people, including 1,075 ISIS members, 459 Kurdish fighters and 32 civilians, the Observatory reported earlier this month. ISIS, increasingly under pressure, has carried out more than 35 suicide attacks in Kobani in recent weeks, activists say.

Retired Marine Gen. John Allen, the U.S. envoy for the international coalition fighting ISIS militants, in November predicted Kobani would be a defeat for the extremists.

ISIS "has, in so many ways, impaled itself on Kobani," he said in an interview in Ankara with the Turkish daily Milliyet.




“The battlefield success is a major conquest both for Syria's embattled Kurds and the U.S.-led coalition, whose American coordinator had predicted that ISIS would "impale itself" on Kobani. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and senior Kurdish official Idriss Nassan said ISIS had been nearly expelled, with some sporadic fighting on the eastern edges of the town. "The Islamic State is on the verge of defeat," said Nassan, speaking from Turkey near the Syrian border and using the name by which the group identifies itself. "Their defenses have collapsed and its fighters have fled."... Kurds now control "the vast majority" of Kobani with just a few remaining pockets of ISIS resistance - a turnaround from the fall when ISIS controlled nearly two-thirds of the city. In September, ISIS fighters began capturing some 300 Kurdish villages near Kobani and thrust into the town itself, occupying nearly half of it. Tens of thousands of refugees spilled across the border into Turkey.... The town, whose capture would have given the jihadi group control of a border crossing with Turkey and open direct lines between its positions along the border, quickly became a centerpiece of the U.S.-led air campaign in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared it would be "morally very difficult" not to help Kobani. The U.S.-led air assault began Sept. 23, with Kobani the target of about a half-dozen airstrikes on average each day, and often more. More than 80 percent of all coalition airstrikes in Syria have been in or around the town. At one point in October, the U.S. air dropped bundles of weapons and medical supplies for Kurdish fighters -- a first in the Syrian conflict. Analysts, as well as Syrian and Kurdish activists, credit the air campaign and the arrival in October of heavily armed Kurdish peshmerga fighters from Iraq, who neutralized ISIS' artillery advantage, for bringing key areas of Kobani under Kurdish control....Nassan said he was preparing to head into Kobani on Tuesday and expected the town to be fully free by then. Gharib Hassou, a representative of Syria's powerful Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, based in Southern Kurdistan, said fighting was still going in "two or three streets," adding that most of the militants withdrew to the town of Tal Abyad to the east. "There are a lot of dead bodies ... and they left some of the weapons," he said. Kurdish fighters also suffered high casualties, he said, adding that more reinforcements will be sent to reinforce control over the town.... Since mid-September, the battle for Kobani has killed some 1,600 people, including 1,075 ISIS members, 459 Kurdish fighters and 32 civilians, the Observatory reported earlier this month. ISIS, increasingly under pressure, has carried out more than 35 suicide attacks in Kobani in recent weeks, activists say.”

Many of the Middle Eastern Islamic groups, while warlike in their temperament, are not necessarily excellent and even courageous fighters. These Kurds, who according to the Wikipedia article below, are not necessarily Islamic in their religion, having a mixture of other faiths including Christian. They are more of an ethnic group who, like the Jews, are spread over much of the Middle East today. They are not trusted by Iraq and Turkey and other Islamic nations, being known for have a strong nationalistic tendency, and therefore a threat. They are, however, clearly good fighters and with a group like ISIS trying to take over massive amounts of territory, their strong defense of the lands which they have occupied in Iraq and Syria should, it seems to me, be grounds for those governments to give in to their nationalistic claims, and perhaps reward them with their own territories there. That, of course, probably won't happen.


Kurds
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Kurds (Kurdish: کورد Kurd) are an ethnic group in the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a contiguous area spanning adjacent parts of modern-day Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, a geo-cultural region often referred to as "Kurdistan". The Kurds speak the Kurdish languages, which form a subgroup of the Northwestern Iranian branch of Iranian languages.[32] The Kurds number about 40 million, the majority living in West Asia, including significant Kurdish diaspora communities in the cities of western Turkey outside of Kurdistan. A recent Kurdish diaspora has developed in Western countries, primarily in Germany. The Kurds are in the majority in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan and are a significant minority group in the neighboring countries Turkey, Syria and Iran, where Kurdish nationalist movements continue to pursue (greater) autonomy.

Regardless of its possible roots in ancient toponymy, the ethnonym Kurd might be derived from a term kwrt- used inMiddle Persian as a common noun to refer to "nomads" or "tent-dwellers", which could be applied as an attribute to anyIranian group with such a lifestyle.[37] The term gained the characteristic of an ethnonym following the Muslim conquest of Persia, as it was adopted into Arabic and gradually became associated with an amalgamation of Iranian and Iranicised tribes and groups in the region.[38][39][40]

Sherefxan Bidlisi in the 16th century states that there are four division of "Kurds": Kurmanj, Lur, Kalhor and Guran, each of which speak a different dialect or language variation. Paul (2008) notes that the 16th-century usage of the termKurd as recorded by Bidlisi, regardless of linguistic grouping, might still reflect an incipient Northwestern Iranian "Kurdish" ethnic identity uniting the Kurmanj, Kalhur, and Guran.[41]

Most Kurds are either bilingual or multilingual, speaking the language of their respective nation of origin, such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkish as a second language alongside their native Kurdish, while those in diaspora communities often speak 3 or more languages. Kurdish Jews and some Kurdish Christians (not to be confused with ethnicAssyrians) usually speak Aramaic (for example: Lishana Deni) as their first language. Aramaic is a Semitic languagerelated to Hebrew and Arabic rather than Kurdish.[44]
20th century

Photograph – Kurdish Cavalry in the passes of the Caucasus mountains (The New York Times, January 24, 1915).


Kurdish nationalism emerged after World War I with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire which had historically successfully integrated (but not assimilated) the Kurds, through use of forced repression of Kurdish movements to gain independence. Revolts did occur sporadically but only in 1880 with the uprising led by Sheik Ubeydullah were demands as an ethnic group or nation made. Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid responded by a campaign of integration by co-opting prominent Kurdish opponents to strong Ottoman power with prestigious positions in his government. This strategy appears successful given the loyalty displayed by the Kurdish Hamidiye regiments during World War I.[97]

The Kurdish ethnonationalist movement that emerged following World War I and end of the Ottoman Empire was largely reactionary to the changes taking place in mainstream Turkey, primarily radical secularization which the strongly MuslimKurds abhorred, centralization of authority which threatened the power of local chieftains and Kurdish autonomy, and rampant Turkish nationalism in the new Turkish Republic which obviously threatened to marginalize them.[98]

Jakob Künzler, head of a missionary hospital in Urfa, has documented the large scale ethnic cleansing of both Armenians and Kurds by the Young Turks.[99] He has given a detailed account of deportation of Kurds from Erzurum and Bitlis in winter of 1916. The Kurds were perceived to be subversive elements that would take the Russian side in the war.
By the end of World War I, up to 700,000 Kurds were forcibly deported and almost half of the displaced perished.[100]

Some of the Kurdish groups sought self-determination and the championing in the Treaty of Sèvres of Kurdish autonomy in the aftermath of World War I, Kemal Atatürk prevented such a result. Kurds backed by the United Kingdom declared independence in 1927 and established so-called Republic of Ararat. Turkey suppressed Kurdist revolts in 1925, 1930, and 1937–1938, while Iran did the same in the 1920s to Simko Shikak at Lake Urmia and Jaafar Sultan of Hewraman region who controlled the region between Marivan and north of Halabja. A short-lived Soviet-sponsored Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in Iran did not long outlast World War II.

From 1922–1924 in Iraq a Kingdom of Kurdistan existed. When Ba'athistadministrators thwarted Kurdish nationalist ambitions in Iraq, war broke out in the 1960s. In 1970 the Kurds rejected limited territorial self-rule within Iraq, demanding larger areas including the oil-rich Kirkuk region.

The 1970s saw an evolution in Kurdish nationalism as Marxist political thought influenced a new generation of Kurdish nationalists opposed to the local feudal authorities who had been a traditional source of opposition to authority, eventually they would form the militant separatist PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, European Union, NATOand many states that includes United States), or Kurdistan Workers Party in English.

Kurds are often regarded as "the largest ethnic group without a state",[102][103][104][105][106][107] although larger stateless nations exist. Such periphrasis is rejected by leading Kurdologists like Martin van Bruinessen[108] and other scholars who agree that claim obscures Kurdish cultural, social, political and ideological heterogeneity.[109][110][111]Michael Radu argues such meaningless claims mostly come from Western human rights militants, leftists and Kurdish nationalists in Europe.[109]

Religion

As a whole, the Kurdish people are adherents to a large number of different religions and creeds, perhaps constituting the most religiously diverse people of West Asia. Traditionally, Kurds have been known to take great liberties with their practices. This sentiment is reflected in the saying "Compared to the unbeliever, the Kurd is a Muslim".[190]





http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/01/25/379634318/piece-by-piece-monks-scramble-to-preserve-iraqs-christian-history

Piece By Piece, Monks Scramble To Preserve Iraq's Christian History
Alice Fordham
January 25, 2015

Photograph – Father Najeeb Michaeel shows off one of the many Christian manuscripts he saved from Iraq's Christian libraries.

In an unfinished building in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, displaced Christian children sing a little song about returning to their village. "We're going back," they sing, "to our houses, our land, our church."

Right now, they're living in an open concrete structure. The self-styled Islamic State, or ISIS, took over their home village of Qaraqosh, and the Christians fled in fear, on foot.

They finish their song and applause breaks out from two unlikely figures. One is a beaming Iraqi in white robes, Father Najeeb Michaeel. The other is Father Columba Stewart, a tall, spare and pale Texan with black-rimmed glasses and black vestments. Both are Dominican monks.

Michaeel explains that the church and various NGOs have provided shelter, heaters, pots, pans and food. But Stewart's main reason for coming from his monastery in Minnesota is a parallel rescue project, located in a secret house nearby.

Michaeel is afraid to reveal the precise location, but in a cool, sunlit room there is a mass of books.

"It's a big collection of our archive, and the manuscripts there and the old books," he says proudly.

Father Michaeel has stashed a substantial part of what remains of the Christian libraries of Iraq.

There have been Dominican monks in the city of Mosul since about 1750. They amassed a library of thousands of ancient manuscripts and say they brought the printing press to Iraq in the early 1800s. Rattling around in a box, Michaeel brings out Aramaic typeset.

As an Islamist insurgency roiled Mosul in 2008, monks smuggled their library out, bit by bit, to the Christian village of Qaraqosh. Last summer, when ISIS was inching closer, Michaeel took action. He prepared everything and put the collection in a big truck at 5 a.m.

"We passed three checkpoints without any problem, and I think the Virgin Mary [had] a hand to protect us," he says.

Michaeel had to leave the library of more than 50,000 regular books. He knows other orders of monks have lost all their libraries, and he believes monasteries and churches have been looted and used as prisons or torture chambers by the extremists. But the manuscripts and antiquities in his care, he brought here.

"The father or mother try to save the first thing — the children," he says. "So these books [are] my children."

In Qaraqosh, he had been working on a digitizing project, headed by Stewart's Hill Museum & Manuscript Library in Minnesota. Father Michaeel had gathered manuscripts from all around Iraq and was photographing them so scholars worldwide could read them.

Stewart studies manuscripts in Syriac, a variant of the Aramaic language that dates back to the time of Jesus.

The monks explain there's actually two dialects: western Syriac and eastern Syriac. Michaeel sings the "Our Father" prayer in both to demonstrate the differences. Father Columba studies the way prayers shift across dialects and needs the manuscripts to do it. He's brought new equipment so the work can go on.

Every night in Erbil, in drafty, half-built structures, the displaced families huddle, sing the old prayers together and hope they'll go home.

In private, the monks say they think this upheaval will drive the last of Iraq's Christians out. They're trying to document as much of the heritage as they can before all this disappears.




“In an unfinished building in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, displaced Christian children sing a little song about returning to their village. "We're going back," they sing, "to our houses, our land, our church." Right now, they're living in an open concrete structure. The self-styled Islamic State, or ISIS, took over their home village of Qaraqosh, and the Christians fled in fear, on foot. They finish their song and applause breaks out from two unlikely figures. One is a beaming Iraqi in white robes, Father Najeeb Michaeel. The other is Father Columba Stewart, a tall, spare and pale Texan with black-rimmed glasses and black vestments. Both are Dominican monks.... But Stewart's main reason for coming from his monastery in Minnesota is a parallel rescue project, located in a secret house nearby. Michaeel is afraid to reveal the precise location, but in a cool, sunlit room there is a mass of books. "It's a big collection of our archive, and the manuscripts there and the old books," he says proudly. Father Michaeel has stashed a substantial part of what remains of the Christian libraries of Iraq.... They amassed a library of thousands of ancient manuscripts and say they brought the printing press to Iraq in the early 1800s. Rattling around in a box, Michaeel brings out Aramaic typeset. As an Islamist insurgency roiled Mosul in 2008, monks smuggled their library out, bit by bit, to the Christian village of Qaraqosh. Last summer, when ISIS was inching closer, Michaeel took action. He prepared everything and put the collection in a big truck at 5 a.m.... In Qaraqosh, he had been working on a digitizing project, headed by Stewart's Hill Museum & Manuscript Library in Minnesota. Father Michaeel had gathered manuscripts from all around Iraq and was photographing them so scholars worldwide could read them. Stewart studies manuscripts in Syriac, a variant of the Aramaic language that dates back to the time of Jesus. The monks explain there's actually two dialects: western Syriac and eastern Syriac. Michaeel sings the "Our Father" prayer in both to demonstrate the differences. Father Columba studies the way prayers shift across dialects and needs the manuscripts to do it. He's brought new equipment so the work can go on.... In private, the monks say they think this upheaval will drive the last of Iraq's Christians out. They're trying to document as much of the heritage as they can before all this disappears.”

This story is making me think of the beginning of the Dark Ages in Britain and Europe when the Romans decided to retrench from the areas that they had controlled since 100 AD, leaving many thousands of Romanized Europeans to defend themselves. It wasn't long before the Germanic tribes came South for plunder, conquest and their own farm land. They decimated the more highly developed Roman culture that the Britons, etc., were trying to hold onto and forced them into servitude. Eventually the warlords set up their own governments and the former inhabitants became part of the feudal system. Christianity continued and grew through this period, however, with the monasteries housing the few educated men and women who lived there. The overlords, most often, couldn't read, so legal documents and diplomacy were furnished by monks, and conducted in Latin. The Church became then the immensely powerful entity that it was up until the Reformation, when many Protestant sects sprang up, and feudalism fell to the rising Middle Class. Then emerged the Renaissance, the industrial revolution, and democracy.

I do hope the Christian religion will not disappear from the Middle East. Though I am not a religious person but an Ethical Humanist, the legal and cultural system that Christianity founded is the basis for free democracies and the ethical treatment of women worldwide. If that is conquered by ISIS and similar groups, the West will have very little in common with Iraq, Pakistan, etc. and we will be nothing more than another nation trying to grab deals for oil and strategically placed American bases. I hate to see advanced human culture die out and radical tyranny take over. It's like a new Dark Age to me – one that I am forced to live through.





http://www.npr.org/2015/01/24/379628464/study-says-creativity-can-flow-from-political-correctness

Study Says Creativity Can Flow From Political Correctness
NPR Staff
JANUARY 24, 2015

There is a common belief that requiring the use of "politically correct" language in the workplace stifles creativity.

Michelle Duguid, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, tells NPR's Arun Rath that, intuitively, that assumption makes sense.

"People should be able to freely think, throw any crazy ideas, and any constraint would actually dampen creativity," Duguid says.

But instead of relying on intuition, Duguid decided to test the idea empirically. As the U.S. workforce continues to become more diverse, and organizations add more female employees, people of color, gay people and transgender people, researchers are more than ever examining diversity and bias in the work place.

Duguid and her co-authors set up an experiment to see if the notion that politically correctness impedes creativity held up to scientific scrutiny.

They sat down students in groups of three to brainstorm ideas on how to use a vacant space on campus. Some of the groups were all men, some all women, others mixed. Control groups got to start right away on the brainstorming, but the test groups were primed with a script.

The research team told those groups that they were interested in gathering examples from college undergraduates of politically correct behavior on campus. They were instructed to, as a group, list examples of political correctness that they had either heard of or directly experienced on this campus.

"They did that for 10 minutes," Duguid says.

In the same-sex groups, the old notion held true. Groups of three men or three women who were instructed to think about political correctness were less creative than the control group. But in the mixed-gender groups that got the politically correct instructions, creativity went up.

"They generated more ideas, and those ideas were more novel," Duguid says. "Whether it was two men and one woman or two women and one man, the results were consistent."

Duguid interprets those results to show that men might be uncertain about what may be seen as sexist or inappropriate, while women might be uncertain about speaking up at all and if their ideas will be valued.

"But in both cases, by reducing this uncertainty, people were much more open — both men and women — to share more ideas," she says.

Duguid and her colleagues started another experiment, one that looked at stereotypes. They tested whether educating people about stereotypes would in turn reduce stereotypes. What they found was that by publicizing the fact that the vast majority of people stereotype, it actually creates a norm for stereotyping.

"People feel more comfortable expressing stereotypes or acting in ways that would be seen as inappropriate because it has set up this norm where everyone does it, so I might not be punished," she says.

Duguid and her co-author tinkered with their message. Rather than telling the group that everyone was guilty of stereotyping, they simply told them that the vast majority of people put effort into not stereotyping.

"[It] actually had great effects," she says. "It was the same as telling people that few people stereotyped. So that actually reduced stereotyping, and it was better, significantly better, than telling them nothing at all."

For Duguid's study, this was good news.

"I think most people want to be unbiased, and there are ways we can try to make that happen," she says.




“There is a common belief that requiring the use of "politically correct" language in the workplace stifles creativity. Michelle Duguid, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, tells NPR's Arun Rath that, intuitively, that assumption makes sense. "People should be able to freely think, throw any crazy ideas, and any constraint would actually dampen creativity," Duguid says. But instead of relying on intuition, Duguid decided to test the idea empirically. As the U.S. workforce continues to become more diverse, and organizations add more female employees, people of color, gay people and transgender people, researchers are more than ever examining diversity and bias in the work place.... They sat down students in groups of three to brainstorm ideas on how to use a vacant space on campus. Some of the groups were all men, some all women, others mixed. Control groups got to start right away on the brainstorming, but the test groups were primed with a script. The research team told those groups that they were interested in gathering examples from college undergraduates of politically correct behavior on campus. They were instructed to, as a group, list examples of political correctness that they had either heard of or directly experienced on this campus. "They did that for 10 minutes," Duguid says. In the same-sex groups, the old notion held true. Groups of three men or three women who were instructed to think about political correctness were less creative than the control group. But in the mixed-gender groups that got the politically correct instructions, creativity went up.... "But in both cases, by reducing this uncertainty, people were much more open — both men and women — to share more ideas," she says.... Duguid and her colleagues started another experiment, one that looked at stereotypes. They tested whether educating people about stereotypes would in turn reduce stereotypes. What they found was that by publicizing the fact that the vast majority of people stereotype, it actually creates a norm for stereotyping. "People feel more comfortable expressing stereotypes or acting in ways that would be seen as inappropriate because it has set up this norm where everyone does it, so I might not be punished," she says. Duguid and her co-author tinkered with their message. Rather than telling the group that everyone was guilty of stereotyping, they simply told them that the vast majority of people put effort into not stereotyping. "[It] actually had great effects," she says. "It was the same as telling people that few people stereotyped. So that actually reduced stereotyping, and it was better, significantly better, than telling them nothing at all."...

To me this experiment simply means that when bias is allowed to grow and bloom – like a stinking black fungus in a damp basement – there will be more numerous and more egregious examples of it that occur. It will simply be considered the norm. Luckily, Middle Class society has become more “politically correct” – which to me simply means decent and polite – and also better educated. More Middle Class people have at least a two year degree from a college, or at the very least have finished high school, than when I was young. We are, as a result, more likely to be basically polite to people who are of a different race, religion or sex, and in most modern job situations it is possible to be fired for abusing anyone on such issues. I think that's a very good thing, just as prison for armed robber and rape is a good thing.

I have never worked in an environment which was abusive in this way. Of course I haven't worked in a factory or a particularly competitive group of people, such as a football team, in which politeness is not considered very important and rough interactions sometimes occur in the locker room. Several racist events have come into the news over the last 15 years or so in fire departments, police departments, and sports teams. The more macho, aggressive or undisciplined a group is (i.e. competitive), the more bad events are likely to occur. I believe it is of the utmost importance if we want a civilized America that we continue to inform group members that these things are not acceptable. Telling people that “everybody is doing it” is a sure way to get a bad habit started. That's the excuse teenagers give for getting caught shoplifting or smoking pot. People who think that everybody steals will be much more likely to steal themselves; and physically or emotionally bullying a member who is considered a little weak or “gay” or otherwise disadvantaged will cause an increase in such things, which I personally consider to be sinful at the very least and criminal in nature in extreme cases.

Several years ago there was sexual abuse going on at an oil rig, I remember, where the man abused was considered not quite macho enough. We are a sick society in this way, and I believe this is due to a lack of training of our young people when they are growing up. Parents are teaching their children to be racist in too many cases. Schoolyard bullying is only recently making the news bigtime in the last decade or so, but it is far from new. In the past kids have simply had to fight to gain respect. My father when he was ten or eleven was spit on by a boy in the bus where he was passing. Daddy “crooked his finger” at the boy, inviting him down to fight. Daddy said that they fought until neither one could stand up, but after that they became best friends. Interesting psychology, but logical enough – the strong seek out the strong. Fighting comes naturally unless kids are trained specifically to be generous and gentle, and if we train our kids that way we will have to train them also to defend themselves effectively, hopefully verbally. Being timid and submissive is not the way to go. I didn't have to fight as a kid but I did have a strong way of speaking out when I was angry, and I stopped a bullying incident that way on two different occasions by stepping forward and confronting the bully. Having no viable defense is not a good thing, but neither is being a bully.

Many, many US (“conservative”) adults believe that bullying is natural and even good. As a society, if we don't outgrow this stage, we will become more and more ruled by criminality and hate. Hate begets hate. Many Christians in our country espouse the Virgin Birth, but not “turn the other cheek” or “love thy neighbor as thyself” or the parable of the Good Samaritan. Our churches sometimes, rather than teaching young people not to do that kind of thing, are simply teaching them who to subject to that treatment – Jews, Hispanics, and blacks, for instance. The “culture wars” that we hear about on the news are indeed a war, and there are victims of assault, social abuse or shunning who are being damaged emotionally and even physically by these things every day. I must say, it pays to be one of the strong ones.

I think what happens in deeply sexist, religionist and racist environments is that the elders (teacher, parent, preacher) exhibit racism, religionism, and sexism freely and without being punished for it. They even espouse it as their philosophy – a positive good. Especially under stress, but even simply due to a lack of scrutiny of the matter, the pattern of abusing the perceived outsider emerges and grows until leaders begin to speak against this and punish the behavior.

The South is, unfortunately, a classic case of an area that has been “under stress” since the Civil War. Hatred of “the other” is therefore on the rise again as it was in the Jim Crow period and before. The ordinary man, woman or child therefore tends to abuse blacks, Hispanics, women, Catholics and Jews and nowadays the gay minority. When individuals who do things like drag a black man behind their pickup truck with a rope until he is dead – and lesser offenses such as using the N word – begin to be hunted down, caught, and put into prison or given the death penalty, those cases of egregious assault or worse will start to disappear. We are still in the stage of denying that those things are deeply evil in some Southern states, so they are occurring more lately, largely due to the Tea Party and Patriot effect. “Conservatism” is nothing but biased, radical, unfair and uneducated thinking. That's why I fight for liberalism in all of its aspects. To me that is the side of goodness, not the right wing viewpoints.





http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/01/27/381631684/threats-from-russia-underscores-europes-need-to-boost-military

Russian Threats Expose Europe's Military Cutbacks
Ari Shapiro
JANUARY 27, 2015

An international cat-and-mouse game played out in the waters of Stockholm a few months ago.

The "mouse" was a foreign submarine — Russia is the main suspect — that got away.

And as Russia's military becomes more aggressive, European leaders fear they do not have the military power to deal with this new threat.

Take Sweden, for instance. Its days of military might are long gone.

The numbers tell the story, says Karlis Neretnieks, who used to run Sweden's National Defense College and has had a long career in the military.

"The army has been reduced by 90 percent, from approximately half a million men to, today, 50,000 [troops] including the home guard, 25,000 if you just count the regulars," he says.

The story is similarly dramatic with the navy — which has been scaled back by some 80 percent — and the air force, which has slimmed down by 70 percent, according to Neretnieks.

After the Cold War, Sweden and the rest of the continent believed they had entered an era of European peace and unity. Lately, Russia has proven them wrong — and not only by seizing part of Ukraine.

Last month a Russian military aircraft flying in stealth nearly crashed into a commercial passenger plane taking off from Copenhagen. In April, Russian fighter jets carried out a simulated bombing raid on Stockholm. And nobody seems able to do anything about it.

Adm. Jan Thornquist, chief of staff for the Swedish navy, worries that with tensions this high, a small slip-up could turn into an international crisis.

"The situation around us has dramatically changed in a very negative way," he says.

"If you're doing an exercise close to a border of another country, you could easily pass that border by mistake," he says. "You point out another ship with a radar system, that could easily be interpreted as a threat."

A soldier from the Swedish army participates in a military exercise at Hagshult Airbase in Sweden in November.

Suddenly, armed conflict in northern Europe seems plausible, and the region is not prepared. Sweden, for instance, is trying to find foreign submarines in its waters even though the country retired its last submarine-hunting helicopter in 2008.

And as Jan Solesund, the secretary of state for Sweden's Ministry of Defense, notes, it's not just his country.

"Europe as a whole, of course, downsized their forces," he says. "We tend to forget that things can change quicker than we thought."

Now, thanks to Russia, many European countries including Sweden are talking about rebuilding the military. Solesund says it's hard to overstate what a huge change that is.

"I've been in the armed forces since the early '70s, and I've only experienced reductions," he says.

But many analysts fear it won't be enough.

Keir Giles is a military expert at the Chatham House think tank in London.

"Right now, yes, most European leaders do appreciate the scale of the problem," Giles says. "But European leaders come and go. And Russia benefits from a continuity of leadership and also from strategic patience, which none of its adversaries can match."

Just look at Russia's latest budget: Even with the ruble at its lowest point in years, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last month that he is increasing the military's already-huge budget by one-third.




"The army has been reduced by 90 percent, from approximately half a million men to, today, 50,000 [troops] including the home guard, 25,000 if you just count the regulars," he says. The story is similarly dramatic with the navy — which has been scaled back by some 80 percent — and the air force, which has slimmed down by 70 percent, according to Neretnieks. After the Cold War, Sweden and the rest of the continent believed they had entered an era of European peace and unity. Lately, Russia has proven them wrong — and not only by seizing part of Ukraine.... Adm. Jan Thornquist, chief of staff for the Swedish navy, worries that with tensions this high, a small slip-up could turn into an international crisis. "The situation around us has dramatically changed in a very negative way," he says. "If you're doing an exercise close to a border of another country, you could easily pass that border by mistake," he says. "You point out another ship with a radar system, that could easily be interpreted as a threat."... And as Jan Solesund, the secretary of state for Sweden's Ministry of Defense, notes, it's not just his country. "Europe as a whole, of course, downsized their forces," he says. "We tend to forget that things can change quicker than we thought." Now, thanks to Russia, many European countries including Sweden are talking about rebuilding the military. Solesund says it's hard to overstate what a huge change that is.... Keir Giles is a military expert at the Chatham House think tank in London. "Right now, yes, most European leaders do appreciate the scale of the problem," Giles says. "But European leaders come and go. And Russia benefits from a continuity of leadership and also from strategic patience, which none of its adversaries can match." Just look at Russia's latest budget: Even with the ruble at its lowest point in years, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last month that he is increasing the military's already-huge budget by one-third.”

I haven't noticed anything in the news about this from the United States side of things, but I expect there will be upgrades of our military as a result. I hope there will be in fact, in that I'm not a pacifist nor do I trust our safety if Russia, China or North Korea decide to make an assault, especially a nuclear attack. It would give young people jobs if the draft were reinstituted, unless a new anti-war movement were to come forward as a result. I personally don't like the idea of a professional military of the type we have now. It draws too many people who are there because they want to kill. There also simply aren't enough soldiers in our army at this time. Adding more soldiers means more expenditures, of course, so many conservatives won't be willing to do that. I do think we need to be preparing for a potential armed conflict with a nation the size of Russia rather than doing nothing until an emergency occurs.





http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/01/22/379091257/finding-crime-clues-in-what-insects-had-for-dinner

Finding Crime Clues In What Insects Had For Dinner
PONCIE RUTSCH
JANUARY 22, 2015

As any CSI enthusiast understands, the tiniest details can help forensic scientists figure out how and when people died. These days, investigators are taking advantage of information about microbes that live on human bodies and the insects that come to feed on corpses to crack cases.

Entomologist Natalie Lindgren spent a year watching human remains decompose at the Southeast Texas Applied Forensic Science Facility, just outside Huntsville, Texas. She set up a lawn chair and monitored corpses for insects that would feed on the tissue. Several times a day, she would visit the bodies, collect any insects she saw and document the decomposition with photographs.

Lindgren specializes in forensic entomology — using insects and their arthropod relatives (think spiders and ticks) to uncover the truth at crime scenes.

The field is actually much broader than human decay. For example, a forensic entomologist might investigate how furniture got damaged and find a warehouse infested with wood-eating beetles.

As far as corpses go, researchers recognize a few common visitors. There are maggots, the larval forms of blowflies. And dermestid beetles, sometimes called skin beetles, are the same family of bugs that taxidermists use to scour flesh from bones.

Yet much of the field still focuses on two basic questions. What kinds of insects visit bodies, and what kind of evidence do the bugs leave behind? While working on her master's thesis, Lindgren tied a few more species of insects to human decomposition and showed the marks they might leave behind.

First to the scene were scorpion flies, which Lindgren said she didn't think had ever been associated with human remains. "We really care about who shows up first," Lindgren told Shots. The order of arrival for different insects can help establish how long a person has been dead. Lindgren said she was surprised when the scorpion flies hung around for at least a day and a half, outnumbering the flies she had expected to find. Now, if a forensic scientist sees scorpion flies at a crime scene, they know that the body is fresh.

A chance discovery proved to be her most exciting finding. An unknown animal pulled off a cadaver's toenails, and blood had pooled where the toenails had been. "It looked like the cadaver had brightly painted toenails, and you couldn't help but look at the toes of this cadaver whenever you walked by," she said

One day, when she passed by this cadaver, she discovered that a caterpillar had moved in for a nibble. "It started chewing on the flakes of skin where the toenail once was," Lindgren said. Knowing that a cadaver might be missing a few bites is particularly important, because insect damage can start to look like a serious wound. Depending on how the body decomposes, Lindgren said, "these bite marks might not look anything like bite marks."

Mistaking something as small as insect bite marks for more serious evidence happens quite frequently. According to Jason Byrd, president-elect of the North American Forensic Entomology Association, it's very easy to confuse postmortem insect damage with an injury that could be crime-related. "A lot of the postmortem feeding of arthropods mimics abrasions," Byrd told Shots. "You may have a very small gunshot wound that starts to look like a very large gunshot wound." Byrd recalled one occasion when it appeared that a victim had been Tasered, and another occasion when law enforcement thought that the perpetrator had removed the victim's skin. In both cases, the damage had occurred after the victim was dead, and insects — not humans — were to blame.

For Lindgren, the toughest part of the research wasn't keeping company with corpses, but instead having to wait so long for the clues to develop. "I had so many questions," she said. "It was painful to be collecting so much data and to not have it be worked out at the time that I was collecting it."

There are plenty more questions to be answered. Every forensic entomology study is different because no two bodies are the same. "Every cadaver is an individual," Lindgren said, explaining that there are differences related to sex, fat content and cause of death. And after so much time around the dead, Lindgren is used to people who think what she studies is a bit revolting. "I think of the cadavers as people, and people aren't disgusting," she said. "We're all going to end up as cadavers one day."

Lindgren and her research colleagues wrote about their findings in the Journal of Medical Entomology.




“Entomologist Natalie Lindgren spent a year watching human remains decompose at the Southeast Texas Applied Forensic Science Facility, just outside Huntsville, Texas. She set up a lawn chair and monitored corpses for insects that would feed on the tissue. Several times a day, she would visit the bodies, collect any insects she saw and document the decomposition with photographs. Lindgren specializes in forensic entomology — using insects and their arthropod relatives (think spiders and ticks) to uncover the truth at crime scenes.... Yet much of the field still focuses on two basic questions. What kinds of insects visit bodies, and what kind of evidence do the bugs leave behind? While working on her master's thesis, Lindgren tied a few more species of insects to human decomposition and showed the marks they might leave behind. First to the scene were scorpion flies, which Lindgren said she didn't think had ever been associated with human remains. "We really care about who shows up first," Lindgren told Shots. The order of arrival for different insects can help establish how long a person has been dead. Lindgren said she was surprised when the scorpion flies hung around for at least a day and a half, outnumbering the flies she had expected to find. Now, if a forensic scientist sees scorpion flies at a crime scene, they know that the body is fresh.... Mistaking something as small as insect bite marks for more serious evidence happens quite frequently. According to Jason Byrd, president-elect of the North American Forensic Entomology Association, it's very easy to confuse postmortem insect damage with an injury that could be crime-related. "A lot of the postmortem feeding of arthropods mimics abrasions," Byrd told Shots. "You may have a very small gunshot wound that starts to look like a very large gunshot wound."... And after so much time around the dead, Lindgren is used to people who think what she studies is a bit revolting. "I think of the cadavers as people, and people aren't disgusting," she said. "We're all going to end up as cadavers one day."

Forensic studies is one of my favorite topics for a murder mystery, not because it's nasty but because it's interesting. This place where Lindgren is studying the bodies is probably the same one which was the subject of The Body Farm by Patricia Cornwell a couple of decades ago. At any rate it managed the same way. Bodies are simply left out in the open and scientists study them to improve the knowledge of the subject and to develop their expertise at analyzing corpses that are found. Until she changed her format from straight mysteries to the psychological and sexual life of the lead character, I read all her books avidly. Now they don't appeal to me, but I do watch the TV show Bones, which is also based on a mystery book series of the same forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. I'm interested in forensics because it is a better way to discover how a crime was committed and who did it than the all too frequently mistaken “eye witness” testimony. People who are convicted on eyewitness testimony are more likely to be put in prison or even on death row without being actually guilty. That's my main complaint about the death penalty, actually. There are people who are so dangerous that the smartest thing to do with them if they are in fact guilty is to put them to death.





http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/01/22/378915363/maybe-early-humans-werent-the-first-to-get-a-good-grip

Maybe Early Humans Weren't The First To Get A Good Grip
Nell Greenfieldboyce
JANUARY 22, 2015

The special tool-wielding power of human hands may go back farther in evolutionary history than scientists have thought.

That's according to a new study of hand bones from an early relative of humans called Australopithecus africanus. Researchers used a powerful X-ray technique to scan the interior of the bones, and they detected a telltale structure that's associated with a forceful precision grip.

"It's clear evidence that these australopiths were using their hands and using grips that are very consistent with what modern humans did and what our recent relatives like Neanderthals did," says Matthew Skinner, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Kent, in the United Kingdom. He was part of the team that published the new work online Thursday in Science.

The human hand is capable of fine manipulation that is way beyond the capabilities of our closest living relatives, the great apes. A chimpanzee, for example, would find it impossible to hold a pencil in the way that people do. That's because the human hand has short fingers and a relatively long thumb, letting us easily press our thumb against the pads of our fingers.

And while chimpanzees do use tools — they might use a twig to fish termites out of a mound, for example — the use of stone tools has long been seen as a uniquely human activity. The earliest known members of the human group were named Homo habilis, or "handy man." These early humans were thought to be the first stone toolmakers; their hand bones had external features similar to those seen in modern humans.

Scientists have clear evidence of stone tool use as early as 2.4 million years ago. Recently, though, researchers made the controversial claim that they'd found animal bones from about 3.4 million years ago that seemed to have cut marks made by stone tools. That find was associated with an ancient relative of humans called Australopithecus afarensis; the discovery suggested that the precursors to humans also might have been handy.

Now, this new study of hand bones adds another bit of evidence. Skinner and his colleagues knew that bone is a living tissue that responds to the forces and stresses exerted on it. And they found that humans, but not chimpanzees, have a distinctive structural pattern inside the hand bones; it seems to be created when you, for example, forcefully oppose your thumb with your fingers.

What's more, the humanlike pattern was found inside the hand bones of Australopithecus africanus, suggesting that this type of grip may have been commonly used as early as 3 million years ago.

"We were very excited," says Skinner. "There are aspects of our anatomy which are very interesting and very unique and define us of a species. And what we have shown here is that some of the aspects of the hand which are so unique to modern humans have a much deeper evolutionary history than we thought previously."

Photographs – (Top row) First metacarpals of the thumb in (from left to right) a chimpanzee, fossil hominins Australopithecus africanus, and two specimens belonging to either a robust australopith or early Homo, and a human. The bottom row shows 3D renderings from the microCT scans of the same specimens, showing a cross-section of the spongy trabecular bone inside.

He says it's not clear whether this species was actually using stone tools, or doing something else with their hands. But he thinks the new finding will probably prompt researchers to start looking for more evidence of stone tool use by these more remote ancestors to humans. "Because there's been a general feeling that one didn't even need to look for them, because they just didn't use them," Skinner says.

Brian Richmond, a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, agrees that the big question is what these folks were doing with their hands to create this internal bone pattern. "It's not direct evidence of tool use," he says. "It's direct evidence of handling objects in a fairly humanlike way."

He says Australopithecus walked upright and had more or less the same hand proportions as modern humans, so it makes sense that they would be capable of using their hands to manipulate lots of things.

"But this suggests that they were actually doing it, not just that they could. There's evidence of behavior," he says. "It gives us a really high-resolution glimpse into the kinds of joint stresses that were happening in the hands, some 2 to 3 million years ago."



Cancellous bone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cancellous bone, synonymous with trabecular bone orspongy bone, is one of two types of osseous tissue that form bones. The other osseous tissue type is cortical bonealso called compact bone.
Compared to compact bone, cancellous bone has a highersurface area to mass ratio because it is less dense. This gives it softer, weaker, and more flexible characteristics. The greater surface area in comparison with cortical bone makes cancellous bone suitable for metabolic activity e.g. exchange of calcium ions. Cancellous bone is typically found at the ends of long bones, proximal to joints and within the interior of vertebrae. Cancellous bone is highly vascularand frequently contains red bone marrow wherehaematopoiesis, the production of blood cells, occurs. The primary anatomical and functional unit of cancellous bone is the trabecula. 
It is commonly thought that the trabeculawithin the cancellous bone is aligned towards the mechanical load distribution that a bone experiences. Its Latin name is substantia spongiosa or substantia spongiosa ossium.[2] The words cancellous and trabecularrefer to the tiny lattice-shaped spicules that form the tissue.[2] It was first illustrated accurately in the engravings ofCrisóstomo Martinez.[3]




“The special tool-wielding power of human hands may go back farther in evolutionary history than scientists have thought. That's according to a new study of hand bones from an early relative of humans called Australopithecus africanus. Researchers used a powerful X-ray technique to scan the interior of the bones, and they detected a telltale structure that's associated with a forceful precision grip. "It's clear evidence that these australopiths were using their hands and using grips that are very consistent with what modern humans did and what our recent relatives like Neanderthals did," says Matthew Skinner, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Kent, in the United Kingdom. He was part of the team that published the new work online Thursday in Science.... Recently, though, researchers made the controversial claim that they'd found animal bones from about 3.4 million years ago that seemed to have cut marks made by stone tools. That find was associated with an ancient relative of humans called Australopithecus afarensis; the discovery suggested that the precursors to humans also might have been handy. Now, this new study of hand bones adds another bit of evidence. Skinner and his colleagues knew that bone is a living tissue that responds to the forces and stresses exerted on it. And they found that humans, but not chimpanzees, have a distinctive structural pattern inside the hand bones; it seems to be created when you, for example, forcefully oppose your thumb with your fingers.”

Chimps can pull a twig off a bush and strip the leaves, then hold it between their thumb and forefinger to fish termites out of their holes. Maybe they couldn't apply force on a stone in that same grip and use it as a tool, or hold it while chipping off flakes to make a sharp edge, however. I once had a medical device that fits into the palm of the hand to force the hand into the “neutral position” for use by data entry clerks who exert constant motion on their hand muscles, causing carpal tunnel syndrome. I suppose a chimp might have that same problem gripping the stone – it forces his hand into the “neutral position.” So, though chimps are our closest living relatives according to DNA studies, there were precursors of human forms who had bone structure like ours rather than like a chimp's and branched off the genetic tree partly as a result of that.

I once saw a drawing of “Lucy” the australopithecus whose footprints were found side by side in volcanic ash with those of another one, as though they were holding hands and walking on their “hind” limbs, which is also considered one of the early genetic changes as primates evolved into humans, or “hominin.” Judging by their bone structure, australopithecus was not previously thought to walk on two feet, but rather using their front limbs for balance like chimps. The Web article at the site below discusses the new term.

http://archaeology.about.com/od/hterms/g/hominin.htm – “Up until the 1980s, paleoanthropologists generally followed the taxonomic system followed by the 18th century scientist Carl Linnaeus, when they spoke of the various species of humans. The family of Hominoids included the subfamily of Hominids (humans and their ancestors) and Anthropoids (chimps, gorillas, and orangutans). The problem is, recent molecular studies show that humans, chimps and gorillas are closer to one another than orangutans. So, scientists split the Hominoids into two subfamilies: Ponginae (orangutans) and Homininae (humans and their ancestors, and chimps and gorillas). But, we still need a way to discuss humans and their ancestors as a separate group, so researchers have proposed a further breakdown of the Homininae subfamily, to include Hominini (humans and their ancestors), Panini (chimps), and Gorillini (gorillas).”