Friday, October 14, 2022

Neanderthals, humans and MOONFALL

Isaiah's latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "House Reject, House Mess and House Dunce" is brand new tonight. 

crazy

I love it.  


Now for some science, AFP reports:

Neanderthals and humans lived alongside each other in France and northern Spain for up to 2,900 years, modeling research suggested Thursday, giving them plenty of time to potentially learn from or even breed with each other.

While the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, did not provide evidence that humans directly interacted with Neanderthals around 42,000 years ago, previous genetic research has shown that they must have at some point.

Research by Swedish paleogeneticist Svante Paabo, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine last week, helped reveal that people of European descent— and almost everyone worldwide — have a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA.


What would that have been like?  I can't even imagine.  Michael Price (SCIENCE) notes:

Modern humans and Neanderthals met—and made love, or at least babies—at some point in prehistory. But how long and exactly where the two species intermingled has been a mystery. Now, a reevaluation of radiocarbon dating at archaeological sites in France and northern Spain indicates that some 40,000 years ago, our ancestors overlapped with Neanderthals in the region for up to 2800 years, sharing not just genes with each other, but potentially culture as well.

“The time span is insignificant on a geological scale,” says Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo, an archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution who was not involved with the study. “But on a human scale, there is enough time for very interesting things to happen.”

Other scientists, however, say the wide margins of error for many of the dates analyzed in the study undercut strong claims about the identities of the inhabitants and whether they indeed overlapped. It’s “a good starting point,” but the conclusions could change based on more accurate dating, says Sahra Talamo, a chemist who directs a radiocarbon laboratory at the University of Bologna.

Radiocarbon dating estimates the age of organic objects such as bones and charcoal based on the steady radioactive decay of their carbon-14 isotopes. Scientists have used the method for decades—and they’ve been refining it for just as long.

A major revision came in 2020, when radiocarbon scientists announced that a brief reversal of Earth’s magnetic field about 42,000 years ago, known as the Laschamp event, had temporarily supercharged the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere. Anything living at the time incorporated extra amounts of the isotope as a result, throwing off modern efforts to radiocarbon date their remains.

“It pushed dates that were around 40,000 years further back in time and made things that were older than 43,000 or 44,000 years appear younger in time,” says Igor Djakovic, an archaeology Ph.D. student at Leiden University.


So that's mind blowing.  And if you're needing to relax, perfect film for you: MOONFALL.  


Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson star.  It's on HBO MAX.  I saw it at the movies but never had time to write about it.  Now that it's on HBO MAX, I'll note it and tell you that I loved it.


It got some bad reviews.  I don't think it was for the film itself.  I think the reviews were based around the fact that the moon is occupied by aliens and the government is covering it up.  I think that made some reviewers nervous because it was just too much for them.


It's a movie, people.  It's not saying, "This is a documentary and there was a coverup of the moon landing and what the astronauts encountered."


Take it for an exciting movie with great shots of space and you're in for a thrill ride.  The actors all do a great job and it's an exciting film.  


So if you have  a second, make a point to check it out.  Then you too can sing "I miss the rain down in Africa" (Patrick Wilson's character gets the lyrics wrong.)

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Friday, October 14, 2022.  The political stalemate in Iraq appears to be over as a president is elected and a prime minister-designate is named.



Abdul Latif Rashidf.  Who? 







It took a year and three days after the election, but Ira finally announced a new president yesterday.  The moment was not without drama.  ALJAZEERA reports, "Rashid replaced fellow Iraqi Kurd Barham Saleh as head of state after the two-round vote in parliament on Thursday, winning more than 160 votes against 99 for Saleh, an assembly official said. Saleh reportedly walked out of the parliament building as the votes were tallied."  Saleh finally leaves.  He wasn't content to be president of Iraq, he tried to ignore the Constitution during his tenure and elevate the position of president to that of prime minister.  A complicit foreign media helped him out -- in part to make it appear Iraq was more stable than it actually was.  

Saleh's hissy fit might make some believe that Abdul is from a different political party.  Nope.  PUK.  They performed dismally in the 2021 elections -- a pattern they've had since the party lied to the Kurds about the health of Jalal Talabani but they got to hold on to the presidency.

War turned Iraq into a land of widows and orphans.  The median age in Iraq is 21-years-old.  But the leadership never reflects the country which is how 78-year-old Abdul is now president.

78.

You'd think that would bother them after Jalal.  78 is how old Jalal was when he had his stroke and the Talabani's began deceiving Iraq.


As 2012 drew to a close, Jalal, then president of Iraq, had a stroke.  The incident took place late on December 17, 2012 (see the December 18, 2012 snapshot) and resulted in Jalal being admitted to Baghdad's Medical Center Hospital.    Thursday, December 20th, he was moved to Germany.  He remained in Germany for over a year and a half.  The Talabani family refused to allow people to visit him in while he was in the hospital for that entire time --  including Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi.


When the first wave of rumors that Talabani had either died or was permanently  incapacitated, took hold in May of 2013, Jalal was posed for a series of photos that appear to indicate his body was present but that was all.

jalal



 The photos were compared to the film Weekend At Bernie's in Arabic social media.  (In the 1989 film, Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman play two men who drag the corpse of their boss, Bernie, around and pretend he's alive.)


When Jalal left Iraq the Talabani family was down playing his condition.  They were falling back on the 'knee surgery' nonsense.

In May of 2012, Jalal stabbed many Iraqi political leaders in the back and outraged many in the KRG by refusing to allow the no-confidence motion to be passed on.  As a result of the outrage directed at him, Jalal retreated to Germany where he remained for months.  He needed to have, his flunkies and family insisted, immediate surgery to take care of a life threatening condition.  This lie was repeated for weeks and weeks.  Jalal had knee surgery.

Karama bit him in his fat ass.  Jalal snuck back into Iraq July 19, 2014.  He couldn't speak, he couldn't move his own body.  He wasn't fit to be president and his family lied to the Iraqi people.  That destroyed confidence and its why the PUK continues to suffer each election.

Well suffer in that the voters don't want them.  The system is so corrupt that they continue to hold onto power.

Here's fat ass Jalal with Abdul.



That's right.  They were brother-in-laws. Shanaz  Ibrahim Ahmed has held many jobs -- currently she's the Executor at the Political Bureau of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).  She and Abdul have three children sons Azos (1982) and Zagros (1988) and daughter Sara (1987).  Shanaz and Hero are the daughters of Ibrahim Ahmed -- a Kurdish novelist who rose to be the Secretary General of the KDP in 1953 -- in other words, the same faces, the same family and why Iraqis feel betrayed over and over by the entrenched corruption in the system.


Ahmed has named Mohammed Shia Al Sudani as prime minister-designate.  









Mr Al Sudani, who was nominated for the post by the Iran-backed Co-ordination Framework, has 30 days to submit his Cabinet line-up to Iraq's Parliament for approval.
[. . .]

In his first statement, Mr Al Sudani thanked those who supported him and promised to submit his cabinet “as soon as possible”.

He also promised to form a “strong government" that was able to "build the country, to serve the citizens, to preserve security and stability and build balanced international relations”.

Mr Al Sudani started his political career as a member of the Shiite Dawa Party and then ran for election with the State of Law Coalition led by former prime minister Nouri Al Maliki. He has won three terms in parliament since 2014.


That's right, Nouri al-Maliki.  Former prime minister, forever thug and, you know this is biting Motada al-Sadr's ass, "kingmaker."  

That's Nouri, not his bitter rival Moqtada.

It was a year ago that a whorish western press was hailing sociopath and cult leader Moqtada as a "kingmaker."  He isn't.  He wasn't.  As Aretha and Whitney sang, "It ain't never gonna be."  





There's a thirty day period that Iraq's now in the midst of.  Per the Constitution, the prime minister-designate must form a complete cabinet -- nominees that the Parliament then votes to confirm.  Failure to do so means someone else gets named prime minister-designate.  

That's what is supposed to happen.

But it's not how it's ever gone.  Instead, the person can name an incomplete cabinet and still move to prime minister.  

So, per past history, this will probably be the prime minister.

In other news, US President Joe Biden continues his ongoing persecution of Julian Assange.   Julian's 'crime' was revealing the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian.  WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs.  And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own.  For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs.  Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:



A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death. 


And closer to my own work as a writer and editor, journalists and their sources are being targeted by governments, especially our own, for revealing inconvenient, embarrassing and criminal acts by those very same institutions. This censorious enterprise is entirely bipartisan. Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers than Bush or Trump. At this very moment, Julian Assange is confined in a bleak cell in Belmarsh Prison (now stricken with Covid) awaiting extradition to the US on charges that could lock him away in a super-max for the rest of his life. His crime? Disclosing documents leaked to him by Chelsea Manning and others revealing atrocities committed by US forces in Iraq.

If the Biden Justice succeeds in prosecuting and convicting Assange, all kinds of prosecutorial authorities will be emboldened to come after any of the rest of us who excavate and publish stories about official corruption and villainy or film cops films as they beat the crap black kids. As writers and readers, we must resist these moves to criminalize journalism and to enforce a suffocating stupidity upon the population.

The inconvenient truths about our own nation’s past­­–including the very recent past–are the truths it is the most urgent to hear, to learn from and work to rectify.

Thanks to the Before Columbus Foundation and the San Francisco Public Library for being at the forefront of this struggle and for honoring our work at CounterPunch.


That's from his October 9th speech accepting the Before Columbus Foundation's Anti-Censorship award.  Also noting Julian is Will Lehman who is running to be the next president of the United Auto Workers:


Written By Will Lehman, candidate for UAW president

Dear brothers and sisters,

In less than one week, you will begin receiving ballots in the mail for the UAW elections. I have included information on how to vote and how to obtain a ballot if you don’t get one on my website. I urge all of you to vote, and to vote for me, Will Lehman, for UAW president. I am campaigning to build rank-and-file power on the shop floor in opposition to the entire UAW apparatus.

I am writing to you today, however, on another matter that is critical to the interests of all workers, in the US and throughout the world. That is the case of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Assange is currently imprisoned in the United Kingdom and faces extradition to the US, where he would be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. He could receive a 175-year sentence or even be executed.

Julian Assange (Photo by David G. Silvers, Cancillería del Ecuador / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Assange is being persecuted for one reason and one reason alone: He revealed the truth about the actions of the American government abroad, the same government that represents the corporations that exploit us here in the United States.

One of the most significant initial exposures by WikiLeaks was a video, released in 2010, depicting the US Army killing unarmed civilians and journalists in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The footage was filmed three years earlier, in 2007, in the early years of the US occupation of Iraq. I urge all of you to watch this video, which is titled “Collateral Murder.”

The video was followed by the release of the Iraq and Afghan war logs in 2010 and the Guantanamo files in 2011. These documents, which were made available to the public thanks to the heroic actions of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, exposed a lie that is central to the propaganda of the US government, Democrat and Republican alike: that the wars abroad are about defending democracy.

For this reason, Assange has been subjected to more than a decade of vicious and uninterrupted persecution. He is currently in London’s Belmarsh maximum-security prison, where he recently contracted COVID-19. The UK High Court ruled late last year that he could be extradited to the US, even though the trial itself revealed that the CIA had plotted to kidnap and murder him.

Beyond his personal fate, there are two critical issues for workers in the defense of Assange.

First, the persecution of Assange is an attack on basic democratic rights, including the First Amendment right to free speech and a free press. Assange is guilty of telling us the truth, of exposing lies that the government does not want exposed.

The corporations and the wealthy in this country depend on a bought-and-paid-for media, which parrots whatever the government tells them. We experience this every day, when workers are denounced in the media for our efforts to secure a decent wage and a future for ourselves and our families. If an individual can be jailed and prosecuted for revealing true information, it sets a dangerous precedent that will be used against any worker who speaks out and opposes the demands of the corporations, aided and abetted by the union apparatus.

Second, Assange has helped to expose the reality of American militarism. How much money has been spent and how many lives lost, including of US soldiers, to wage endless war abroad? And for what? They throw around words like “democracy” and “freedom” to convince workers that these wars are worth the cost, but the reality is that they are about securing the domination of American corporations over the entire globe. More than 1 million Iraqis and Afghans have died to achieve this end.

The consequences of these wars are felt by all of us. More than $1 trillion is expended on the US military every year, while they claim that no money is available to provide decent living conditions for workers. One veteran kills him or herself every 80 minutes in the US, the consequence of post-traumatic stress disorder from what they saw and experienced at war. As soon as their bodies are no longer useful to the ruling class, veterans are essentially discarded by the government.

Now, the Biden administration is escalating a conflict with Russia that Biden himself said last week could lead to “Armageddon”—that is, the annihilation of the entire planet in nuclear war. And what is this all about? The government of Vladimir Putin represents the oligarchs in Russia, and the invasion of Ukraine must be opposed by all workers. However, this invasion was a response to the expansion of the US-led NATO military alliance up to Russia’s borders and the massive armament of Ukraine by the US.

Everything that the media tells us about this war is a lie. It is not a war about “democracy.” Ukraine’s government is comprised of neo-Nazis who praise people who helped carry out the Holocaust during World War Two. The oligarchs who run Ukraine recently passed a labor law eliminating the right of millions of workers to collectively bargain. You won’t hear that on the nightly news.

The same military-industrial complex that provoked the war in Iraq is escalating war against Russia today, but on an even larger and more dangerous scale. The US banks and corporations are fighting to control Eastern Europe at the expense of their Russian rivals. The US ruling elite is prepared to make the working class suffer greatly, and even sacrifice millions of lives, to expand the domination of American corporations.

Workers in the US and throughout the world have no interest in the war. We have the same interests as workers in Russia, Ukraine and in every country. We are exploited by the same corporations. We confront the same problems. We will suffer the same consequences if the catastrophe of nuclear war is not prevented.

Workers should know that the labor movement has a long and proud tradition of defending democratic rights, as these rights are critical for all workers. It should also be recalled that the UAW withdrew from the AFL-CIO in 1968 in opposition to the Vietnam War. The fact that the trade unions no longer even raise these critical issues is part of the same process that has led to their domination by a privileged apparatus that serves the interests of the companies.

For these reasons, it is critical that all workers take a stand in defense of Julian Assange. It will not be through appeals to the ruling elite and their politicians that his freedom will be secured, but only through our intervention. We must connect the fight to defend our interests with the defense of Assange, the defense of democratic rights, and opposition to war.

Sincerely,

Will Lehman

 


The following sites updated:





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