THE FLASHLIGHT, May 10-16, 2008
THE FLASHLIGHT
May 10-16, 2008
No Peace without Justice, no Justice without the Facts
Mary K. Matossian, Editor
China
NYT 5-12 A 7.9 earthquake caused huge destruction in Sichuan Province in mountainous Western China. It was the worst quake in 58 years. About 80% of buildings collapsed into piles of brick and concrete. 5-14. There was widespread anger vs. the government for failing to apply and enforce adequate building codes.
5-15. Hundreds of thousands were homeless and over 40,000 were still trapped under the rubble. The known dead reached 19,500. CNN 5-15 The ultimate death toll could reach 50,000.
Burma
NYT 5-13. There are now 32,000 known dead from the hurricane that hit Burma last week. UN estimates that more than 100,000 are dead. The military dictatorship still refuses to allow in most Western relief managers. It allowed in some relief supplies without foreign personnel, and then put them in storage. Help is reaching only one-third of those in need. The worst danger is the contamination of water by the corpses of people and animals. 5-15. PBS estimates that there may be 250,000 dead. Buddhist monks are organizing relief.
Lebanon
BBC 5-9. Hezbollah Shiites, fighting street by street, took over much of West Beirut, inhabited mainly by Sunnis. CNN 5-15. 60 have died in fighting across Lebanon. NYT and BBC 5-16. Hezbollah has shown its military superiority over the Sunni-Christian-Druse coalition. The latter has conceded the Presidency to Gen. Suleiman, commander of the Lebanese Army, which is weaker than Hezbollah. It appears that Hezbollah will obtain its desire: veto power over government decision making. This is a win for Iran and Syria, as opposed to Saudia, Egypt, and the US.
Iraq `NY Review of Books, 5-29. Article by Thomas Powers, “Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?”
p. 14. “ The Surge has not so much ended the sectarian strife as it has set the stage for a renewal of civil war at a higher level of violence.” P. 16. “ Invading the Middle East is the kind of imperial overreach that breaks the spine of Great Powers.”
US Presidential Primaries
PBS 5-9. The race for the Democratic nomination is over, and Obama has won. The Clinton camp is $25 million in the red. The Democrats have six times the money as the Republicans to fight in the fall election. PBS and CNN 5-14. Former presidential candidate John Edwards announced his support for Obama. This put Hillary Clinton’s 2 to 1 win in W. Va. in the shadow. Three long-time Republican house seats have been taken back by Democrats in by-elections. CNN 5-15. The Steelworkers Union backed Obama.
CNN 5-15. Speaking to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, Pres. Bush accused the Democratic opposition of “appeasing terrorists” because Obama has said he would have direct talks with Iran. Obama retorted that Bush is engaging in “the same old head-in-the-sand cowboy diplomacy.” He rejected the idea that not talking to other countries punishes them. Sen. John Kerry said that Bush has presided over the strengthening of Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East. Schneider commented that Jews tend to vote Democratic, and that Bush’s appeal was directed more at pro-Israeli Christian evangelicals, who often vote Republican.
US: Gay Marriage Issue
` CNN 5-15. The California Supreme Court has voted 4-3 that the law banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. The opponents of gay marriage have introduced an initiative on the November ballot to amend the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Archaeology:
The End of Minoan Crete
PBS 5-14 and Wikipedia. Archaeologists are now confident that Minoan Civilization in Crete was mainly destroyed in about 1600 BC by a huge tsunami, with a height between 115 feet and 492 feet. It was generated by the most severe volcanic eruption in human history, Category 7, on the island of Thera (Santorini). The tidal wide swamped Minoan coastal settlements, where most Minoans lived, killing about 80% of the population. Some Peloponnesian Greeks survived because the Gulf of Corinth, running from east to west, was sheltered from the tidal wave. A century a half later they attacked Crete and probably destroyed most of the survivors and their buildings. Then they repopulated Crete.
Caral Civilization, A “mother civililization” in Peru.
PBS 5-14. Archaeologists, testing the theory that warfare was the main cause for the beginning of civilizations, found a “mother civilization” buried near the coast of Peru. It went back to 2600 BC, and was as old as Egyptian civilization. Both peoples built great pyramids. In its first thousand years Caral Civilization possessed no weapons and no defensive walls. It also lacked ceramics and metal. Its focus was on pleasure. Archaeologists have found many bone flutes and an amphitheater.
In addition, the inhabitants used two psychoactive drugs: from the achiote plant, an aphrodisiac, and from the coca plant, the stimulant cocaine. To enhance the effects of cocaine they added to it lime (calcium carbonate, an alkaline substance obtained from ground-up seashells), which counteracted stomach acids, and increased absorption of the cocaine. The Caral people obtained these substances from trade with their neighbors in Equador and the rain forests. In return they offered their neighbors cotton, which they grew in their fertile fields.
[The puzzling absence of ceramics among the Caral people was probably because cocaine could be obtained simply by chewing the leaves of the coca plant. Wine and opium, drugs which were available in Europe and the Middle East in Neolithic times, before civilization, were consumed in liquid form (they didn’t learn how to smoke opium until the Bronze Age (after c. 3000 BC). Western Neolithic people needed large containers to store these liquids as well as cups for drinking. Drugs may have played a major role in the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution and prehistoric religion. ]
May 10-16, 2008
No Peace without Justice, no Justice without the Facts
Mary K. Matossian, Editor
China
NYT 5-12 A 7.9 earthquake caused huge destruction in Sichuan Province in mountainous Western China. It was the worst quake in 58 years. About 80% of buildings collapsed into piles of brick and concrete. 5-14. There was widespread anger vs. the government for failing to apply and enforce adequate building codes.
5-15. Hundreds of thousands were homeless and over 40,000 were still trapped under the rubble. The known dead reached 19,500. CNN 5-15 The ultimate death toll could reach 50,000.
Burma
NYT 5-13. There are now 32,000 known dead from the hurricane that hit Burma last week. UN estimates that more than 100,000 are dead. The military dictatorship still refuses to allow in most Western relief managers. It allowed in some relief supplies without foreign personnel, and then put them in storage. Help is reaching only one-third of those in need. The worst danger is the contamination of water by the corpses of people and animals. 5-15. PBS estimates that there may be 250,000 dead. Buddhist monks are organizing relief.
Lebanon
BBC 5-9. Hezbollah Shiites, fighting street by street, took over much of West Beirut, inhabited mainly by Sunnis. CNN 5-15. 60 have died in fighting across Lebanon. NYT and BBC 5-16. Hezbollah has shown its military superiority over the Sunni-Christian-Druse coalition. The latter has conceded the Presidency to Gen. Suleiman, commander of the Lebanese Army, which is weaker than Hezbollah. It appears that Hezbollah will obtain its desire: veto power over government decision making. This is a win for Iran and Syria, as opposed to Saudia, Egypt, and the US.
Iraq `NY Review of Books, 5-29. Article by Thomas Powers, “Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?”
p. 14. “ The Surge has not so much ended the sectarian strife as it has set the stage for a renewal of civil war at a higher level of violence.” P. 16. “ Invading the Middle East is the kind of imperial overreach that breaks the spine of Great Powers.”
US Presidential Primaries
PBS 5-9. The race for the Democratic nomination is over, and Obama has won. The Clinton camp is $25 million in the red. The Democrats have six times the money as the Republicans to fight in the fall election. PBS and CNN 5-14. Former presidential candidate John Edwards announced his support for Obama. This put Hillary Clinton’s 2 to 1 win in W. Va. in the shadow. Three long-time Republican house seats have been taken back by Democrats in by-elections. CNN 5-15. The Steelworkers Union backed Obama.
CNN 5-15. Speaking to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, Pres. Bush accused the Democratic opposition of “appeasing terrorists” because Obama has said he would have direct talks with Iran. Obama retorted that Bush is engaging in “the same old head-in-the-sand cowboy diplomacy.” He rejected the idea that not talking to other countries punishes them. Sen. John Kerry said that Bush has presided over the strengthening of Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East. Schneider commented that Jews tend to vote Democratic, and that Bush’s appeal was directed more at pro-Israeli Christian evangelicals, who often vote Republican.
US: Gay Marriage Issue
` CNN 5-15. The California Supreme Court has voted 4-3 that the law banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. The opponents of gay marriage have introduced an initiative on the November ballot to amend the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Archaeology:
The End of Minoan Crete
PBS 5-14 and Wikipedia. Archaeologists are now confident that Minoan Civilization in Crete was mainly destroyed in about 1600 BC by a huge tsunami, with a height between 115 feet and 492 feet. It was generated by the most severe volcanic eruption in human history, Category 7, on the island of Thera (Santorini). The tidal wide swamped Minoan coastal settlements, where most Minoans lived, killing about 80% of the population. Some Peloponnesian Greeks survived because the Gulf of Corinth, running from east to west, was sheltered from the tidal wave. A century a half later they attacked Crete and probably destroyed most of the survivors and their buildings. Then they repopulated Crete.
Caral Civilization, A “mother civililization” in Peru.
PBS 5-14. Archaeologists, testing the theory that warfare was the main cause for the beginning of civilizations, found a “mother civilization” buried near the coast of Peru. It went back to 2600 BC, and was as old as Egyptian civilization. Both peoples built great pyramids. In its first thousand years Caral Civilization possessed no weapons and no defensive walls. It also lacked ceramics and metal. Its focus was on pleasure. Archaeologists have found many bone flutes and an amphitheater.
In addition, the inhabitants used two psychoactive drugs: from the achiote plant, an aphrodisiac, and from the coca plant, the stimulant cocaine. To enhance the effects of cocaine they added to it lime (calcium carbonate, an alkaline substance obtained from ground-up seashells), which counteracted stomach acids, and increased absorption of the cocaine. The Caral people obtained these substances from trade with their neighbors in Equador and the rain forests. In return they offered their neighbors cotton, which they grew in their fertile fields.
[The puzzling absence of ceramics among the Caral people was probably because cocaine could be obtained simply by chewing the leaves of the coca plant. Wine and opium, drugs which were available in Europe and the Middle East in Neolithic times, before civilization, were consumed in liquid form (they didn’t learn how to smoke opium until the Bronze Age (after c. 3000 BC). Western Neolithic people needed large containers to store these liquids as well as cups for drinking. Drugs may have played a major role in the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution and prehistoric religion. ]
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