Taiwan's top court to rule on indigenous hunting rights

Issued on: 09/03/2021 - 10:40

Tama Talum, centre, has fought a long legal battle to protect indigenous hunting rights SAM YEH AFP

Tama Talum prosecution - Wikipedia

Taipei (AFP)

Taiwan's top court will rule on whether the island's current hunting regulations breach the constitutional rights of indigenous tribes in a long-running legal saga that is reaching its landmark conclusion.

The hearing, which began on Tuesday, centres around a member of the Bunun tribe who was arrested in 2013 for killing a deer and goat on land near his village in southern Taitung county.

Tama Talum, 62, said he was following tribal customs and was hunting the animals as food for his mother who was used to eating wild game.

The prosecution went up to the Supreme Court which upheld Talum's conviction and jail term of three years and six months for possessing an illegal weapon and hunting protected species.

That ruling sparked anger among Taiwan's aboriginal communities and the Supreme Court then made the highly unusual move of asking the Constitutional Court to make its own ruling.

Hunting was once a core way of life for Taiwan's indigenous people who -- much like the native populations in Australia and the Americas -- were decimated by waves of immigration and have faced a long history of discrimination.

Under current laws, indigenous hunters are only allowed to use homemade guns -- something they argue are dangerous and cause injuries -- and hunt on festival days.

The Constitutional Court has now been asked to rule whether indigenous hunters should be exempted from those laws and will give its decision later.

"We hunters follow the wisdom of our ancestors when going to the mountains to hunt... it's a realisation of co-existence and co-prosperity with all animals in nature," Talum told the court via an interpreter on Tuesday.

- First people -

Icyang Parod, Taiwan's minister of indigenous affairs, welcomed the court hearing.

"We think there can be a balance between the ecological equilibrium and the aboriginal hunting culture," he told reporters.

Outside the Constitutional court on Tuesday indigenous activists lit a traditional smoke signal ceremony as they and supporters chanted: "Hunters are innocent, the laws violates the constitution."

Taiwan's multiple indigenous tribes led a comparatively uninterrupted life for thousands of years before immigrants first began arriving from the Chinese mainland in the 17th century.

They are an Austronesian people -- their languages, cultures and traditions far more closely linked to populations in South East Asia and the Pacific than the Chinese mainland.

They now make up only two percent of Taiwan's 23 million population and remain highly marginalised, with wages lower than the national average, a higher rate of unemployment and poorer health indicators.

In 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen -- Taiwan's first leader with some indigenous heritage -- delivered a landmark apology for how the island's governments had treated aboriginal communities.

Indigenous activists welcomed the apology but say there are still core issues of dispute -- particularly the loss of ancestral land rights.

Much of that land is now designated national park, leading to clashes over hunting, fishing and foraging in areas where permits are needed.

© 2021 AFP

INDIGENOUS ACTIVISTS HOLD OVERNIGHT PROTEST BEFORE COUNCIL OF GRAND JUSTICE HEARING ON TAMA TALUM CASE

03/09/2021

by Brian Hioe

語言:
English
Photo Credit: Daniel Yo-Ling Chen

INDIGENOUS ACTIVISTS held an overnight sleep-in outside of the Judicial Yuan yesterday night, with a hearing by the Council of Grand Justices scheduled to take place on the Tama Talum case today. During the overnight sleep-in, talks were held outside of the Judicial Yuan and live-streamed for the duration of the night. This was followed by traditional ceremonies held this morning outside of the Judicial Yuan at 8 AM, with plants burned to produce smoke and offerings of rice wine, betel nut, and miscanthus. After the ceremony, Indigenous activists escorted Talum into the building. Demonstrators also protested in support of Talum last week.

PHOTO CREDIT: BRIAN HIOE

Among the participant groups in the demonstration were the Indigenous Youth Front, LIMA, the Pangcah Amis Guardian Alliance, and Pisaodo’an, along with Bunun community members and elders. The appeal to the Council of Grand Justices was filed by Pan Zhi-qiang of the Puyuma, a traditional protector of the Lijia community. The overnight sleep-in was a rare all-night protest, which have become increasingly uncommon in the years since the 2014 Sunflower Movement. It should also be noted that the Tama Talum case has now dragged on for close to a decade.

Tama Talum, a Bunun man thought to be around 61-years-old at present, was arrested in 2013 after hunting wild game for his elderly mother. Because of the fact that Talum’s mother was in her nineties, Talum sought to hunt food for her to eat because she was used to eating wild game and because store-bought meat, such as pork, made her sick. Talum’s full name in Bunun is Talum Suqluman, but referring to someone by the name of their father is a sign of respect in Bunun. Because Talum’s father’s name was Tama, this why Talum is known as Tama Talum in most reporting on the case. Talum is also known by his Chinese-language name of Wang Guang-lu.

Talum’s hunting caused him to run afoul of the Controlling Guns, Ammunition and Knives Act after shooting a Formosan serow and Reeve’s muntjac. While Indigenous are permitted to hunt using firearms, they are only permitted to use handmade rifles. This resulted in a jail sentence of three years and two months in jail for illegal firearm possession and a jail sentence of seven months, as well as a 70,000 NT fine, being handed down to Talum.

PHOTO CREDIT: BRIAN HIOE

Though scheduled to start his jail term in December 2015, Talum refused to turn himself into police, stating that he would wait for police to arrest him at his home and accompany his elderly mother in the meantime. In anticipation of arrest, Talum asked his daughter to return home to take care of his mother, and reportedly even inquired as to whether he would be able to bring his mother to jail, to continue caring for her.

Following an extraordinary appeal by Prosecutor-General Yen Da-ho, this resulted in Talum not being arrested and remaining free pending an appeal. The trial against Talum was later suspended in 2017. Representatives of organizations such as the Legal Aid Foundation were critical of the heavy sentence originally faced by Talum, with Chen Cai-Yi of the Legal Aid Foundation stating that “the ruling of this case was even more serious than that of a murder case.”

Indigenous rights groups have emphasized that the case violated the traditional culture of indigenous, seeing as hunting is part of traditional Bunun culture, and enforcement of the law sometimes comes down against indigenous for seeking to practice their traditional culture.

PHOTO CREDIT: BRIAN HIOE

At the same time, in the early years of the Tsai administration, Indigenous activists frequently accused the Tsai administration of failing to take action regarding the Tama Talum case, much as how the Tsai administration’s apology to Taiwanese Indigenous on behalf of the ROC government was criticized as shallow in consideration of the Tsai administration’s failure to restore Indigenous traditional territories in private hands.

The sentencing against Tama Talum took place shortly before the January 2016 presidential elections that put Tsai in power, with Tsai even mentioning the case as an example of the injustices facing Taiwanese Indigenous during the third presidential debate between her and Eric Chu of the KMT. After Talum contracted a case of pneumonia that put him in the Intensive Care Unit in October 2016, during which Talum was unconscious for close to two weeks, this resulted in protests calling for Tsai to pardon him. Various petitions in support of Talum have been launched over the years, including recently.

The Tama Talum case points to a constellation of issues facing Taiwanese Indigenous. Despite legal provisions protecting traditional Indigenous hunting rights, the application of such laws are often haphazard and legal absurdities such as Indigenous being forced to use handmade weapons instead of modern firearms to hunt remain on the books, despite the fact that handmade weapons can misfire dangerously.

PHOTO CREDIT: BRIAN HIOE

Otherwise, Indigenous traditional practices variously run up against the juridical practices of the ROC state, or the state has been slow to act on legal protections promised to Indigenous. Indeed, it should not be surprising that a settler colonial state has little interest in protecting the rights of the Indigenous that it displaced—another way of looking at the issue is to consider discrimination against Taiwanese Indigenous as written into the fabric of ROC law. Although laws were changed in 2004 to allow Indigenous to hunt for cultural purposes, what these changes would be were not announced until 2012. The specifics of the law still conflicted with Indigenous practices, and what constituted hunting for personal purposes allowed under the Indigenous Basic Act could be murky territory.

Indigenous groups have sought to emphasize that hunting is a traditional part of Indigenous culture protected by law. Against criticisms that Indigenous hunting practices threaten endangered species, Indigenous activists have sought to highlight that Indigenous practices conserve natural ecology.

PHOTO CREDIT: BRIAN HIOE

It should be noted there have been other cases of Indigenous hunters arrested for practicing their hunting rights in past years, including arrests of Puyuma and Truku hunters in 2015 during the initial wave of attention regarding the Talum case. None of these cases became a cause celebre in the manner of the Talum case, but they gesture toward the larger issue at hand.

Indigenous groups have sought to organize around the issue. The National Aboriginal Hunter Conference has been held annually since 2018, with 130 representatives from 26 Indigenous communities issuing the Taiwan Aboriginal Hunter Declaration in 2020. The declaration emphasized that Indigenous would seek to maintain traditional cultural practices, contribute to the sustainability of the natural environment, and try to obtain the right to use regular firearms while hunting. Indigenous groups have also experimented with using cell phone apps to register kills and hunter’s associations have been formed for the same purpose.

PHOTO CREDIT: DANIEL YO-LING CHEN

After the end of the traditional ceremony, Indigenous groups traveled to Soochow University to watch the proceedings of the hearing by livestream. A number of arguments sought to highlight that Indigenous hunting practices would not lead to any ecological imbalance, as argued by Icyang Parod, Minister of the Council of Indigenous Peoples, and Control Yuan member Kao Yung-cheng.

The majority of arguments today at the hearing tended toward arguing for a constitutional reinterpretation regarding the issue of Indigenous hunting, though the National Police Agency took the opposite stance by arguing that the existing laws were sufficient to protect Indigenous hunting rights and that there was no need for an interpretation. Furthermore, National Police Agency representatives defended the present restriction of Indigenous to using homemade firearms for hunting, arguing that because homemade firearms are frontloading, stating this was more “safe” but seemingly implying that this would prevent their use for committing crimes. Indigenous advocates stated that Indigenous cultures forbid maltreatment of animals, as a result of which the use of modern guns would be more pain-free. 

Some debate ensued regarding whether Indigenous hunters should apply ahead of time before hunting, with Lin Hua-qing of the Council of Agriculture stating that hunting applications could be used to avoid hunting animals are in mating season. Arguments against this were that applying for hunting beforehand would go against traditional hunting practices in which hunters do not know what they will hunt beforehand. Tama Talum defended his hunting as part of his adherence to traditional culture, since this was carried out to care for his mother. 

The Council of Grand Justices will announce its decision on the arguments it heard at the hearing today next month.

BRIAN HIOE

Brian Hioe is one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance writer on social movements and politics, as well as a translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018.

Indigenous Activists Hold Overnight Protest Before Council of Grand Justice Hearing on Tama Talum Case | New Bloom Magazine

THE LUWIANS: STUDIES ON AN ANATOLIAN CIVILIZATION

August 2016
Idil Journal of Art and Language 5(24)
DOI: 10.7816/idil-05-24-01
Authors:

Eberhard Zangger
Luwian Studies


Serdal Mutlu


Download full-text PDFRead full-text

Download citation
Copy link

References (34)

Abstract
A catalogue of Middle and Late Bronze Age sites in western Asia Minor is currently established in the framework of a project supported by the University of Zurich. By the end of 2016, information about at least 340 sites will be available online and thus accessible to researchers and the general public. The sites are systematically registered for the first time and brought into context with rivers, lakes, arable floodplains, ore deposits, and trade routes. The sites’ coordinates have been entered into a Geographic Information System to analyze human-landscape interrelations. These settlements provide evidence that western Asia Minor was densely inhabited during the 2nd millennium BCE. A network of petty states and cities existed between the Mycenaean civilization on mainland Greece and the Hittite civilization in central Anatolia.

The Luwian Civilization - The Missing Link in the Aegean Bronze Age

• May 2016

• Publisher: Ege Yayinlari
• ISBN: 9786059680110

• Project: Middle and Late Bronze Age Settlements in Western Asia Minor

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303183224_The_Luwian_Civilization_-_The_Missing_Link_in_the_Aegean_Bronze_Age

E ZANGGER AT ACADEMIA.EDU

https://luwianstudies.academia.edu/EZangger

Read more: How World War Zero wrecked three Bronze Age civilisations

Luwians, Anatolia and the Bronze Age Collapse ~ Dr. Zangger ...

www.youtube.com › watch

31:49

In this lecture we interview Dr. Zangger the President of Luwian Studies.We dive into the ancient world ...

Feb. 15, 2020 · Uploaded by Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Luwian Studies - YouTube

www.youtube.com › channel

Luwian Studies is an independent, private, non-profit foundation based in ... Presented by Dr. Eberhard Zangger, President of the Board of Luwian Studies. CC.

OCTOBR 9, 2017

Luwian hieroglyphic inscription explains the end of the Bronze Age
by Luwian Studies

Luwian Hieroglyphic inscription by the Great King of Mira, Kupanta-Kurunta, composed at about 1180 BC. Credit: Luwian Studies

An interdisciplinary team of Swiss and Dutch archaeologists today announced the rediscovery of a 29-meter-long Luwian hieroglyphic inscription that describes the events at the end of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean. One of the greatest puzzles of Mediterranean archeology can thus be plausibly solved.


The 35-cm tall limestone frieze was found back in 1878 in the village of Beyköy, approximately 34 kilometers north of Afyonkarahisar in modern Turkey. It bears the longest known hieroglyphic inscription from the Bronze Age. Soon after local peasants retrieved the stones from the ground, the French archeologist Georges Perrot was able to carefully copy the inscription. However, the villagers subsequently used the stones as building material for the foundation of their mosque.

From about 1950 onwards, Luwian hieroglyphs could be read. At the time, a Turkish/US-American team of experts was established to translate this and other inscriptions that during the 19th century had made their way into the collections of the Ottoman Empire. However, the publication was delayed again and again. Ultimately, around 1985, all the researchers involved in the project had died. Copies of these inscriptions resurfaced recently in the estate of the English prehistorian James Mellaart, who died in 2012. In June 2017, Mellaart's son Alan handed over this part of the legacy to the Swiss geoarcheologist Dr. Eberhard Zangger, president of the Luwian Studies foundation, to edit and publish the material in due course.

The academic publication of the inscription will appear in December 2017 in the Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society – TALANTA. Among other things, Zangger and the Dutch linguist and expert in Luwian language and script, Dr. Fred Woudhuizen, will present a transcription, a translation, a detailed commentary, and the remarkable research history of the find.

The inscription and a summary of its contents also appear in a book by Eberhard Zangger that is being published in Germany today: Die Luwier und der Trojanische Krieg – Eine Forschungsgeschichte. According to Zangger, the inscription was commissioned by Kupanta-Kurunta, the Great King of Mira, a Late Bronze Age state in western Asia Minor. When Kupanta-Kurunta had reinforced his realm, just before 1190 BC, he ordered his armies to storm toward the east against the vassal states of the Hittites. After successful conquests on land, the united forces of western Asia Minor also formed a fleet and invaded a number of coastal cities (whose names are given) in the south and southeast of Asia Minor, as well as in Syria and Palestine. Four great princes commanded the naval forces, among them Muksus from the Troad, the region of ancient Troy. The Luwians from western Asia Minor advanced all the way to the borders of Egypt, and even built a fortress at Ashkelon in southern Palestine.

According to this inscription, the Luwians from western Asia Minor contributed decisively to the so-called Sea Peoples' invasions – and thus to the end of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean.


Explore furtherIsraeli archaeologists find inscription of name from Bible

More information: For more information, see www.luwianstudies.org\

Provided by Luwian Studies

The Luwians of Western Anatolia: Their Neighbours and Predecessors

Fred C. Woudhuizen, The Luwians of Western Anatolia: Their Neighbours and Predecessors. Oxford: Archeopress, 2018. iv, 162. ISBN 9781784918279 £26.00 (pb).

Review by
Naoíse Mac Sweeney, University of Leicester. n.macsweeney@leicester.ac.uk

Table of Contents

This book was written as a follow-up to Eberhard Zangger’s The Luwian Civilization (2016, Zero Books). Zangger set out to establish the Luwian-speakers of Anatolia as a ‘lost’ civilization of the Bronze Age; Woudhuizen uses historical linguistics to locate the Luwians in western Anatolia. Yet as a sequel (the book is explicitly framed as such on p.1), Woudhuizen’s book has been somewhat overtaken by events following the publication of the original Zangger volume. The arguments put forward within its slim covers can only be assessed within the wider context of the book’s publication — for which, see the latter part of this review.

The book begins by covering some well-established topics (Chapters 1 and 2) before moving to the more controversial claims of Woudhuizen’s central argument (Chapters 3-5), including a reprinted publication of an inscription widely considered to be a forgery (Chapter 6), and finally addresses a wide range of different issues more loosely linked to this central argument (Chapters 7-10).

The first chapter charts the distribution of Luwian place names in the Aegean and Anatolia, and presents the standard argument that such toponyms are survivals from an early, pre-Greek language that must have once been spoken in the region. Chapter 2 turns to the historical geography of western Anatolia, making a series of identifications between Hittite and later Greek toponyms (e.g. Milawata sounds like Miletos, and Samurna sounds like Smyrna). The identifications proposed here are mostly well attested, and have been more fully discussed elsewhere.1

In Chapter 3, Woudhuizen moves into more controversial territory, arguing that the hieroglyphic Luwian script was developed in western Anatolia towards the end of the Early Bronze Age. In support of his argument, he offers readings of several short inscriptions found on seals. Seal legends are also the focus of Chapter 4, which additionally includes a new reading of the inscriptions on the famous silver stag rhyton (Metropolitan Museum of Art 1989.281.10), challenging the conventional reading by Hawkins (pp. 67-73). This chapter argues that these legends provide evidence for a ‘great kingdom’ called Assuwa located in Luwian western Anatolia, whose powers extended into the Aegean and even onto the Greek mainland.

Chapter 5 moves forward in time into the Late Bronze Age and the period when the ‘great kingdom’ was conquered by the Hittites. The chapter briefly surveys textual evidence for Hittite rule in western Anatolia, making no reference to the wealth of archaeological evidence.2 Chapter 6 presents a particularly long and controversial inscription which Woudhuizen claims belongs to this period — the Beyköy inscription. As mentioned above, this inscription is now widely held to be a forgery.

The final four chapters of the book spin off into a range of different directions, covering the following topics in rapid succession: the Aegean activities of the pharaoh Amenhotep III; the radical reinterpretation of several well-known Hittite texts; a highly controversial claim to have deciphered the Phaistos Disc; an attempt to provide a grammatical reconstruction of the original language represented by the hieroglyphic Luwian script; an argument that the Trojans were ethnically distinct from the Luwians instead of ‘Thraco-Phrygian descent’ (p. 130); and finally that the pre-Luwian inhabitants of the region were the Pelasgians.

Readers familiar with the controversy surrounding Zangger and Woudhuizen may want to skip the next two paragraphs, but for others this book requires some contextualisation. Zangger’s book on the Luwians appeared in 2016 to great fanfare in the media, focusing on the claims that: a) Zangger had discovered a hitherto-unknown ancient civilization, and b) the Luwians were dramatically wiped out at the end of the Bronze Age by ‘World War Zero’. These claims were immediately discredited by specialists in the field, who pointed out that the ‘Luwians’ had been the focus of academic study for decades, and also that the collapses at the end of the Bronze Age were neither caused purely by war nor resulted in the disappearance of the Luwian language.3 It seems likely that the media attention lavished on the book owed more to its sensationalist claims and to Zangger’s expertise as a professional publicist, rather than to its rigour or accuracy.

The controversy was to continue. In 2017, Zangger collaborated with Woudhuizen to publish the text of a new hieroglyphic Luwian inscription known as ‘Beyköy 2’. The inscription itself was said to have been lost or destroyed, but Zangger and Woudhuizen produced their text using drawings they had discovered amongst the papers of the archaeologist James Mellaart (1925-2012). The inscription was rapidly identified as a forgery by leading scholars of Luwian including David Hawkins and Mark Weeden, and Zangger distanced himself from the inscription early in 2018, citing Mellaart’s previous record of falsifying discoveries.4 In contrast, Woudhuizen continues to argue for the authenticity of the Beyköy inscription, the text of which is reprinted in Chapter 6 of this book (with only limited discussion).

Two central pillars on which this book rests had therefore already been knocked askew before its publication in 2018 — the idea of the Luwians as a ‘lost great civilization’, and the Beyköy inscription. Although Woudhuizen seems keen to stick to his guns on both counts, it is difficult to see how this position can be maintained in the face of mounting evidence and arguments marshalled by leading scholars in the field. The wilder claims made in this book (e.g. that the Phaistos Disc is in Luwian, p. 111; that the Theban Kadmos was granted rule over islands by the king of Assuwa, but that he could only maintain control by having Assuwan henchmen, p. 65) do little to encourage confidence, nor does the refusal to engage with mainstream academic scholarship.

Notes

1. See chapters by Matsumura and Weedon; Günel; and Gander, all in Weedon and Ullman (eds) 2017. Hittite Landscape and Geography (Leiden: Brill).

2. For this evidence, e.g. Dedeoğlu, F. and E. Abay 2014, “Beycesultan Höyük Excavation Project: New Archaeological Evidence from Late Bronze Age Layers”, Arkeoloji Dergisi 17: 1-39; Glatz, C. 2009, “Empire as Network: Spheres of Material Interaction in Late Bronze Age Anatolia,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28: 127-141; Luke, C., C. H. Roosevelt, P.J. Cobb, and Ç. Çilingiroğlu 2015, “Composing Communities: Chalcolithic through Iron Age Survey Ceramics in the Marmara Lake Basin, Western Turkey,” Journal of Field Archaeology 40.4: 428-449; Mac Sweeney, N. 2010, “Hittites and Arzawans: a view from western Anatolia”, Anatolian Studies 60: 7-24.

3. See, for example, this short but damning piece by Eric Cline at Rogueclassicism.

4. Luwian Studies.

A Bronze Age queen was buried wearing a priceless silver crown

HUMANS 11 March 2021
By Michael Marshall  

A selection of grave goods from La Almoloya, an ancient site in Spain

J.A. Soldevilla/Arqueoecologia Social Mediterrània Research Group, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

A Bronze Age society in what is now Spain may have been ruled by women, at least some of the time. Archaeologists have found the bones of a woman buried with a silver diadem – or crown – and other riches under the remains of a building that seems to have been used for political meetings.

The woman lived in a society that has been dubbed El Argar – the name of the first archaeological site preserving evidence of the culture, which was excavated in the 1880s by engineer-turned-archaeologist Luis Siret and his brother Henri.

The Argaric culture, which dominated what is now south-east Spain between around 2200 and 1550 BC, became famous following the Sirets’s discovery. But the Spanish civil war (1936 – 1939) and ensuing military dictatorship saw research grind to a halt for many decades, says Roberto Risch at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.

Risch and his colleagues have been excavating an Argaric site called La Almoloya for several years. The ancient building they found there seems to have had some kind of governmental purpose, perhaps serving as a palace or a form of parliament.

“It’s a building with a hall where 50 to 55 people could be sitting listening to each other, or to someone explaining something,” says Risch. There is no evidence of food and no clear-cut religious artefacts, so it doesn’t look like a home or a temple.

Buried in a very large, ovoid jar under the floor of the hall, the team found the bodies of a woman and a man. Both had a multitude of funerary goods, suggesting they were eminent in Argaric society, says co-author Cristina Rihuete Herrada, also at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. DNA analysis shows they weren’t related, but they may have been married: both were immediate relatives of a baby girl buried under a nearby building, who may have been their daughter.

Most of the funerary items, including the most spectacular ones, were found on the woman. She was wearing a silver diadem on her head, two silver earplug piercings and two silver bracelets. As a result, the team believes she was the ruler.

Explore key Neanderthal and Palaeolithic sites: On a Discovery Tour of France

It has long been suspected that women had leadership roles in Argaric culture, says Rihuete Herrada. Four silver diadems have previously been found buried with Argaric women, although it wasn’t clear whether the women were rulers rather than important religious figures. But this is the first time a woman buried with such riches has been found in a building more clearly used for governing.


The man was buried with a dagger and had injuries consistent with a life of horse riding, as well as a long-healed skull injury. This suggests he may have been a warrior.

Journal reference: Antiquity, DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.8

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2270827-a-bronze-age-queen-was-buried-wearing-a-priceless-silver-crown/#ixzz6ooMJ1yc6

US Set to Send $11B in International Aid in Latest COVID Bill

By Katherine Gypson
March 10, 2021 VOA

FILE - A doctor uses a stethoscope to listen to the breathing of a patient confirmed to have COVID-19 at the Fann university hospital in Dakar, Senegal, May 13, 2020.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed $11 billion in foreign aid Wednesday as part of the massive $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The move is just the beginning of the U.S. international response to the coronavirus pandemic, former aid officials told lawmakers.

“The gap still remains,” Rajiv Shah, a former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and currently president of the Rockefeller Foundation, said during a House panel hearing Wednesday.

“In order for the U.S. to lead the world in filling that gap,” he added, “we will likely both have to do more to bring together multilateral partners through the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other institutions where we can use our voice.”

Experts had pushed for the American Rescue Plan to contain as much as $20 billion in foreign aid.

“This was a tricky issue, getting that $11 billion in there, but it’s an acknowledgement of a few things,” said J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and director of its Global Health Policy Center.

“It’s an acknowledgement that fixing COVID within the United States’ boundaries and getting out from underneath the pandemic — reopening society, reopening the economy — will only be successful if it is done universally around the world, that we cannot be thinking as if it were some isolated islands,” he said.

FILE - A worker pulls a cart of coronavirus aid items being prepared for shipment, at a World Health Organization facility, part of the International Humanitarian City, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, March 5, 2020.

Some aid recipients

Morrison said the $11 billion includes support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which has taken on the fight against the coronavirus in many low-income countries. Money also will go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s health preparedness programming.

The United States has provided $2 billion out of a planned $4 billion to COVAX, a global alliance providing COVID-19 vaccines to at-risk populations in 92 mid- and low-income countries, according to a USAID press release. The COVAX program runs separately from Russian and Chinese efforts to win the vaccine diplomacy race by distributing their own shots.

Republican Representative Nicole Malliotakis said it was crucial to counter Chinese influence in the coronavirus aid sphere by ensuring the aid in the American Rescue Plan and other U.S. development programs is “clearly branded as a gift from the American people, United States, as the most generous nation in the world.”

The American Rescue Plan is the fifth coronavirus relief package passed by Congress in the past year to address the economic and health impact of the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease. It is not clear if U.S. lawmakers will pass another aid package given concerns about the massive amount of spending to date.

Shah, however, said it was clear that the United States and other wealthy nations would need to work together to address the crisis in the developing world.

“There will be the need for much greater assistance in a coordinated global economic recovery,” he said at Wednesday's hearing. “It is true that developing countries and emerging economies have been hit hard by the pandemic. And it is also true that while we have done 20% to 30% of GDP [gross domestic product] and fiscal and monetary responses across wealthier nations, emerging markets have done 6% and developing countries have done less than 2%.”

Subcommittee Chairman Joaquin Castro, a Democrat, warned that global poverty rates have risen for the first time in decades during the pandemic.

The bulk of the American Rescue Plan funds a massive anti-poverty program within the United States. Experts estimate that the relief bill’s impact on the American economy will cause the global economy to grow by as much as 1 percent.

President Joe Biden is expected to sign that bill into law by the end of this week.

plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. 

Analysis of Chilling Massacre Site Unearthed in Croatia Points to a 'Random Killing'

MINDY WEISBERGER, LIVE SCIENCE
11 MARCH 2021


Blunt force injuries in boy (l) and young woman (r) (M. Novak/Institute for Anthropological Research)

HUMANS

Around 6,200 years ago, 41 people in what is now Croatia were killed and buried in a mass grave, and members of their own community may have murdered them, according to new analysis of the remains.

Adult men and women were among the dead, but ages in the group ranged from 2 years old to 50 years old, and about half of the skeletons belonged to children.

Many of the killing blows were strikes to the skull that landed from behind, and there were no marks on the arm bones that indicated the victims tried to defend themselves from their attackers, scientists reported in a new study.

Genetic analysis showed that about 70 percent of the deceased were not closely related to other victims, but all shared common ancestry.

Researchers suspect that the massacre may have been prompted by a sudden population boom or shift in climate conditions that depleted resources and led to indiscriminate mass murder.

Related: 25 grisly archaeological discoveries

The grave was discovered in 2007, when a man who lived in a small village in the hills of Potočani, Croatia, was digging a foundation for a garage, and heavy rains exposed a pit holding dozens of skeletons.

Archaeologists with the University of Zagreb happened to be conducting a survey nearby, and they were able to start investigating the mass grave on the day it was discovered, said Mario Novak, lead author of the new study and head of the Laboratory for Evolutionary Anthropology and Bioarchaeology at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, Croatia.

The pit is small, measuring about 6.5 feet (2 meters) in diameter and 3 feet (1 m) deep, and at least 41 bodies had been unceremoniously dumped there.

At first, the archaeologists thought that the remains were modern, either from World War II or the Croatian War of Independence in the 1990s, Novak told Live Science. But there were no contemporary objects in the pit – just fragments of pottery that looked to be prehistoric.

And when researchers inspected the victims' teeth, they found no dental fillings. Radiocarbon dating of bones, soil and pottery fragments confirmed the age of the burial, dating it to around 4200 BCE.

The researchers identified 21 of the victims as children between the ages of 2 years and 17 years old, and 20 as adults between 18 years and 50 years old; 21 of the dead were male and 20 were female.

(Novak et al, 2021, PLOS One)
Above: The Potočani mass burial, with the upper layers of the pit showing numerous commingled skeletons. 

Just random killing

But how did they end up buried together? For the new study, Novak and his colleagues sampled DNA from remains and analyzed the bones of 38 individuals. When the researchers inspected the bodies, they found that most had at least one traumatic injury at the back of the skull, and some skulls had as many as four punctures.

Mass graves in medieval Europe frequently contained people of all ages and sexes who succumbed to the Black Death, but the victims in the Potočani pit died by violence, not of infectious disease, Novak explained.

"The only plausible scenario was a massacre," he said.

Distribution of men and women, and of adults and children, was roughly equal, and there were no wounds to their limbs or faces, so they likely weren't killed in a skirmish during combat.

It is unknown if the victims were restrained or otherwise incapable of defending themselves – "if someone attacks you with a club or a sword, you reflexively raise up your forearm to protect the head," which would have left at least some remains with cut marks on the arm bones, Novak said. "But we didn't see any facial injuries, and no defensive injuries whatsoever."

(M. Novak/Institute for Anthropological Research)

Above: Three penetrating injuries on the right side of the skull of a young adult female from Potočani.

Genetic data showed that only 11 of the victims were close relatives, so the massacre wasn't targeting a specific family group. Neither did it look like a planned discriminatory killing, in which foes tended to murder older men while taking women captive.

"In this case, it was just random killing, without any concern for sex and age," Novak said.

A Neolithic death pit that was recently described in Spain also held a jumble of skeletons – male and female, young and old. DNA showed that the victims were recent arrivals to the region, so they may have been slaughtered by locals protecting their territory, Live Science previously reported.

But genetic evidence from the site in Potočani indicated that even though most of the dead weren't closely related, they shared common ancestry. This means that they weren't newcomers; rather, they came from a local population that was homogeneous and stable, "so we can exclude that this massacre was associated with the influx of new immigrants," Novak said.

The most likely explanation is one that archaeologists and climatologists have suggested for other ancient massacre sites in Germany and Austria dating to about 5,000 years ago, in which adults and children were also killed indiscriminately and thrown into shallow mass graves.

In those scenarios, prolonged climate change that caused flooding or droughts – perhaps combined with an unexpected population boom – could have led to squabbles over precious resources.

And in Potočani, one of those struggles turned deadly.

"By studying such ancient massacres, we might try to get a glimpse into the psychology of these people, and maybe try to prevent similar events today," Novak said.

"We have evidence of ancient massacres going back to 10,000 years ago, at least. Today, we also have modern massacres – the only thing that's changed is we now have more efficient means and weapons to do such things. But I don't think human nature or human psychology has changed much."

The findings were published online March 10 in the journal PLOS One.

Related content:

Back to the Stone Age: 17 key milestones in Paleolithic life

In Photos: The Life and Death of Ancient 'Urbanites'

Photos: 5,000-year-old Neolithic figurine

This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.

BGR SCIENCE

We now know why Starship SN10 detonated after landing

By Mike Wehner @MikeWehner
March 10th, 2021

SpaceX’s Starship program is a very, very big deal for the company. It’s still in its infancy, with test flights not yet reaching Earth orbit, but in the future, we might see Starships taking humans to Mars or even further. With all that in mind, you can understand why every launch of a Starship prototype is important for both SpaceX and, potentially, humanity, but with a trio of explosions marring the past three launches, it’s been a trying time for the company.

Now, with the image of Starship SN10 exploding on the landing pad still fresh in everyone’s mind, SpaceX boss Elon Musk has finally offered up some details that could explain why the mighty rocket was a one-launch wonder.

According to Musk, some issues that were already being workeout for the next prototype likely contributed to SN10’s landing issues. To be clear, the spacecraft did “land,” but it did so without a bit too rough for its landing legs to handle. The prototype apparently crushed its own legs when it landed, and Musk thinks he knows why.

“SN10 engine was low on thrust due (probably) to partial helium ingestion from fuel header tank. Impact of 10m/s crushed legs & part of skirt,” Musk explained in an exchange on Twitter. He then went on to explain why the helium ingestion was an issue to begin with: “If autogenous pressurization had been used, CH4 bubbles would most likely have reverted to liquid. Helium in header was used to prevent ullage collapse from slosh, which happened in prior flight. My fault for approving. Sounded good at the time.”

The prior flight Musk is referencing here was SN8, which also ended in an explosion. In attempting to solve one problem, SpaceX may have inadvertently created another. But that’s all in the past now, and SpaceX is looking forward to proving that it can land its Starship without an explosion following in the minutes that follow.

Musk did note in follow-up tweets that SpaceX isn’t totally set on using legs for Starship in the future. It’s possible, Musk said, that the company will opt for a “catch” technique rather than a controlled landing. It wouldn’t be pretty, but as Musk admits, it would probably be a more reliable option.

“Might just catch the ship with the launch tower, same as booster,” Musk explained. “Could just have it land on a big net or bouncy castle. Lacks dignity, but would work. But, optimized landing propellant is only ~5% of dry mass, so it’s not a gamechanger.”

PSA

PPP Loans and Small Business Debtors in Bankruptcy

March 10, 2021

After the Paycheck Protection Program (the "PPP") was established in The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the “CARES Act”), enacted on March 27, 2020, debtors in bankruptcy cases applied for PPP loans. The Small Business Administration (the "SBA”) opposed PPP loans for debtors, and courts were split as to whether the SBA could block debtors from qualifying for and receiving PPP loans. Then Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (Act) (Pub. L. No. 116-260), which was signed into law on December 27, 2020 (the “CAA”). The CAA amends the United States Bankruptcy Code to permit PPP loans to certain debtors, namely Subchapter V small business debtors, Chapter 12 family farmer debtors, and self-employed Chapter 13 debtors. However, there was a catch. The CAA further provides that PPP loans will be available only if the SBA Administrator in its discretion sends a letter to the Director of the Executive Office for United States Trustee acquiescing to PPP loans in bankruptcy. To date, the SBA has not acquiesced.

On March 3, 2021, the SBA released guidance in its FAQs with respect to borrowers who received PPP loans under the Cares Act and later became debtors in a bankruptcy case.

If a borrower that was eligible for a First Draw PPP Loan files for bankruptcy protection after disbursement of the First Draw PPP Loan, that borrower is eligible for loan forgiveness, provided it meets all requirements for loan forgiveness set forth in the PPP Interim Final Rules, including but not limited to, loan proceeds are used only for eligible expenses and at least 60% of the loan proceeds is used for eligible payroll costs.”

FAQ No. 59. This is in line with what debtors in applicable bankruptcy cases have been doing – seeking loan forgiveness. The SBA further discussed whether a borrower that was eligible for a First Draw PPP Loan and files for bankruptcy protection after disbursement of the First Draw PPP Loan is eligible to apply for a Second Draw PPP Loan. According to FAQ No. 60:

No. Each applicant for a Second Draw PPP Loan must certify on the Second Draw Borrower Application Form (SBA Form 2483-SD) that the applicant and any owner of 20% or more of the applicant is not presently involved in a bankruptcy proceeding. Thus, a borrower that received a First Draw PPP Loan and files for bankruptcy protection after disbursement of the First Draw PPP Loan is not eligible to apply for a Second Draw PPP Loan.

This does not address the situation where the Second Draw Borrower has since exited bankruptcy and therefore “is not presently involved in a bankruptcy proceeding.” Small businesses that have confirmed bankruptcy plans and are looking to receive a second draw should be able to apply so long as the First Draw PPP Loan can be forgiven and the SBA does not suffer a loss. The application for a Second Draw Loan asks, in part, whether the SBA suffered a loss as opposed to whether a default occurred. Having a default under the loan by the filing of the bankruptcy case does not necessarily mean that there has been a loss suffered by the SBA.

In the meantime, there remains no avenue for chapter 11 debtors to receive PPP Loans during the course of the bankruptcy case.

Senate confirms Michael Regan as EPA chief

ANNA M. PHILLIPS LOS ANGELES TIMES
MARCH 10, 2021 

WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed Michael Regan on Wednesday to run the Environmental Protection Agency, putting an environmental regulator known for consensus building at the helm of the agency that will lead President Joe Biden’s efforts to combat climate change through tougher rules on power plants, car emissions and pollution from the fossil fuel industry.

Senators voted 66-34 to confirm Regan, North Carolina’s top environmental regulator, whose reputation for working with Democrats and Republicans in his home state made him an attractive candidate to Biden. Sixteen Republicans crossed party lines to vote for him, while Democrats backed his nomination unanimously.

Though little known outside Washington and North Carolina, Regan has been embraced by Democrats and environmentalists in part because he represents a complete departure from the last four years.

Whereas his immediate predecessors, Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler built careers on fighting against major federal pollution rules, Regan, 44, has a history of environmental advocacy and no known ties to the fossil fuel industry. Unlike Pruitt and Wheeler, who sought to downplay the threat of climate change, Regan hasn’t been shy about backing the scientific consensus linking greenhouse gas emissions to warming temperatures and echoing the Biden administration’s pledge to make it a focus.

After graduating from North Carolina A&T State University with a degree in environmental science, Regan spent nearly a decade working in the EPA’s air quality and energy programs during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He also worked for the advocacy organization Environmental Defense Fund and, for the last four years, has held the top post at the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality where he was credited with brokering the largest coal ash cleanup settlement in the country.

As EPA administrator, Regan will lead an agency suffering from low morale after enduring a complete philosophical shift under the Trump administration. Dozens of environmental regulations protecting the nation’s air and water quality were rolled back and replaced with rules favored by the industries the agency is responsible for regulating. The administration weakened limits on greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, relaxed pollution regulations on coal-fired power plants and significantly watered down the Endangered Species Act.

Dozens of scientists and career employees quit, leaving the agency understaffed. Enforcement of the nation’s environmental regulations declined, as did civil and criminal prosecutions against accused polluters.

During his confirmation hearing, Regan said he would work quickly to return the agency to its mission of protecting the environment and public health.

“We will restore the roles of science and transparency at EPA, and support the talented, dedicated career officials,” he told senators. “We will move with a sense of urgency on climate change. We will stand up for environmental justice and equity.”

Sean Hecht, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Regan’s experience working on environmental policy at the federal and state level is likely to give him credibility both with career EPA employees and state regulators responsible for implementing many of the most important federal pollution regulations.

His accomplishments in North Carolina, where a Democratic governor has faced a legislature dominated by Republicans, may also serve him well in Washington.

“He’s somebody who’s able to get things done in the face of a very complicated political environment,” Hecht said. “And even if not everybody is happy with the outcome, I think that’s a very important skill to have.”

Regan has also promised to elevate environmental justice issues within the agency, directing more funding and attention to low-income communities disproportionately affected by toxic chemicals and air pollution from heavy industry and transportation. Biden has pledged to devote 40% of spending in his $2 trillion climate plan to these communities, though it’s unclear how that process will work.

“We’re feeling very hopeful,” said Juan Parras, co-founder of the Houston-based advocacy group Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services.

Parras and his wife Ana organize residents in predominantly working-class Latino and Black communities in southeastern Houston that border chemical refineries, major highways and the heavily polluted Houston Ship Channel. Like many other local activists, they are eager for Biden’s EPA to restore the National Environmental Policy Act, one of the nation’s most significant environmental laws. It was weakened by the Trump administration in effort to speed the approval of projects such as roads and oil and gas pipelines.

“We have a complexity of issues down here. Our public officials are going to push against anything Biden does,” Parras said. “But we feel we finally have the ear of the administration.”

Journalist Andrea Sahouri, Arrested at Black Lives Matter Protest in Iowa, Found Not Guilty of 'Bogus Charges'

"If reporters are arrested and hauled away from protests, that denies people the right to know what's going on in their community."

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer



Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri, arrested while doing her job at a protest last year, was acquitted of two misdemeanor charges. 

(Photo: Kelsey Kremer/Des Moines Register)

Supporters of press freedom celebrated Wednesday after a six-member jury in Iowa acquitted Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri in a three-day trial resulting from her arrest while covering a Black Lives Matter protest last year.

"Reporting is not a crime, and journalists should not be punished for doing their jobs and covering matters of public interest."
—Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ

Sahouri was arrested in the Iowa capital on May 31, 2020 while she was reporting on the uprising sparked by the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. The Polk County prosecutor then charged the journalist with two simple misdemeanors—failure to disperse and interference with official acts—that could have resulted in a fine, a 30-day jail sentence, or both.

"The acquittal of journalist Andrea Sahouri in Iowa today is a welcome relief, but Polk County prosecutors never should have filed charges against her in the first place," declared Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) program director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. "Reporting is not a crime, and journalists should not be punished for doing their jobs and covering matters of public interest."

Amnesty International USA's Denise Bell said the human rights group is "incredibly relieved and heartened" to learn that Sahouri was found not guilty of the "bogus charges" and also put her case into a broader context.

"Clearly, the jury saw these charges for what they are—completely ridiculous," she said. "This case should never have gone to trial. In much the same way Sahouri's unfounded arrest is a part of a larger pattern of police abuses, the decision of Polk County prosecutors to bring her to trial on these charges fits a larger pattern of practices undermining human rights within the United States justice system."

"Reporting at a protest as a working member of the media is not a crime, and treating it as one constitutes a human rights violation," Bell continued. "This fits into a larger trend of police forces across the United States committing widespread and egregious human rights violations in response to largely peaceful assemblies protesting systemic racism and police violence, including the killing of Black people."

The Amnesty researcher emphasized that "journalists must be able to report on scenes of protest without fear of retribution. The right of the media to do their work is essential to the right of freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly."

Sahouri said last year in a video recorded in a police transport vehicle that she was pepper-sprayed in her face and arrested after identifying herself as a journalist, saying: "I'm press. I'm press. I'm press."

In a tweet Wednesday highlighting comments from the ACLU of Iowa, the reporter noted that her acquittal "will set precedent for other unjust arrests during protests."

Sahouri said in a statement after the verdict, "I'd like to thank my family and friends, my Des Moines Register and Gannett colleagues and people around Des Moines, nationally and globally, who have supported me for nearly a year after I was unjustly assaulted and arrested."

She also discussed the case in an interview with the Register, saying that "it's really a tough feeling to go through this trial and have the State of Iowa trying to bring you down and trying to make you seem like you're doing something wrong, when you're really just doing your job."

Spenser Robnett, Sahouri's boyfriend last year, was arrested with her; though Robnett faced the same charges, he was also acquitted, according to the newspaper. The journalist explained that although prosecutors offered to drop the other charge if she pleaded guilty to failure to disperse, she felt it was important to go to trial.

"Andrea was assaulted, arrested, charged, and ultimately tried for doing her job."
—Maribel Perez Wadsworth, Gannett Media

"One, I did nothing wrong, regardless of if I'm a journalist or not, but two, I know I'm not going to be the last journalist arrested, by any means," she said. "This will continue. We've seen an upward trend of journalists being arrested just in the past year, in 2020, and it's really important to stand by your convictions and set this kind of precedent."

Gannett Media, the newspaper's parent company, paid for Sahouri's defense, according to president of news Maribel Perez Wadsworth.

"It was clear Andrea was at that protest as a working journalist. It was clear that police were allowing other journalists to do exactly what Andrea was doing that day—reporting from a breaking news scene," said Perez Wadsworth. "Andrea was assaulted, arrested, charged, and ultimately tried for doing her job."

Register executive editor Carol Hunter, who testified at Sahouri's trial, warned of the impact of such arrests.

"Newsgathering is a fundamental part of press freedom. Reporters need to be at protests as the public's eyes and ears, to conduct interviews, take photos, and witness for themselves the actions of protesters and law enforcement," she said. "If reporters are arrested and hauled away from protests, that denies people the right to know what's going on in their community."

Pentagon working group to address climate change as national security threat

In a memo this week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced he was establishing a Climate Working Group at the Pentagon as the threats from climate change constitute a threat to national security. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

March 10 (UPI) -- The Defense Department supports a White House executive order prioritizing climate change, the Secretary of Defense said in a memo released Wednesday by the Pentagon.

Austin's letter directs the establishment of a Climate Working Group within the Defense Department to coordinate Pentagon responses to a January executive order from President Joe Biden, as well as a tracking protocol to measure implementation of climate and energy goals.

"Climate change presents a growing threat to U.S. national security interests and defense objections. The changing climate is altering the global security and operating environments, impacting our missions, plans and installations," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told senior Pentagon leadership and commanders of combatant commands in a memo dated March 9.

"The department will act immediately to include the security implications of climate change in our risk analyses, strategy development and planning guidance," Austin said in the memo, which directs the establishment, as well as spells out membership, of the DoD Climate Working Group.

RELATED 12 GOP states sue Biden over order that sets 'social costs' of climate change

Biden's executive order includes a comprehensive approach to cooperation between government agencies, countries and non-governmental organizations.

Biden specifically charged the Secretary of Defense with coordinating with cabinet members, technological offices and other agencies to develop "an analysis of the security implications of climate change (Climate Risk Analysis) that can be incorporated into modeling, simulation, war-gaming, and other analyses" within 120 days.

Biden signaled his intent to seriously consider climate considerations on Jan. 20, the day of his inauguration, when one of 17 executive orders he signed mandated that the United States will rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change.
RELATED Naval Postgraduate School to study surprise climate issues in $2.4M award

Austin's action follows a 2020 report after a study on military supply chains by the General Accountability Office.

The 45-page report called for Defense Department incorporation of "climate adaptation into its acquisition and supply guidance."

"Whether it is increasing platform efficiency to improve freedom of action in contested logistics environments, or deploying new energy solutions to strengthen resilience of key capabilities at installations, our mission objectives are well aligned with our climate goals," Austin said in the March 9 memo.