Judaism is Dead

The coffin is in Gaza

by Dan Lieberman / September 24th, 2024

After WWII, economically advanced and well-accepted American Jews represented almost 50 percent of world Jewry. Their economic, social, and political progress and humanist values established a tone for Western Jews. The Zionists usurped the American position. Jews became a nationality within the borderless state of Israel.

Although the Jews are not a people  — speaking different languages, having different cultures, not having a shared history, and not residing together in one place for generations — and Judaism has featured rabbis, who are teachers, and has never instituted a hierarchy, Israel’s Nation State Laws unilaterally claimed Israel as being the sole representative of all Jews.

Article 6A ─ The state shall foster the well-being of the Jewish people in trouble or in captivity due to the fact of their Jewishness or their citizenship;
Article 6B ─ The state shall act in the Diaspora to preserve the affinity between the state and the Jewish people; and
Article 6C ─ The state shall act to preserve the cultural, historic, and religious heritage of the Jewish people in the diaspora.

With the help of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and its accomplices — Anti defamation League (ADL), Hillel, a Zionist indoctrination organization for college students, Jewish National Fund, and AIPAC, among others — the Zionists wrestled the dominant position from American Jews.

From appearances, Zionism rang well with Jewish populations and achieved success. Population statistics that indicate Jews flocked to their “new country” are a troubling misread of history. Falsely claiming that Israel saved the Jews after the World War II genocide, Zionism has caused a second and more killing Holocaust — the ethical Judaism that shaped Western Jews is dead and the Judaism that rabbinical Jews brought to fruition in Mesopotamia and guided world Jewry is subdued. Jews are at odds with one another and cannot escape the charges of committing genocide of the Palestinian people.

Freed from a pastoral life, dry conditions, and restricted economies in the Levant, new communities  of Mesopotamian Jews, knowledgeable and worldly, appeared in the Fertile Crescent after the third century B.C. and survived to modern times. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers housed the great Jewish academies of Surah, Pumbadita, and Nehardea, and best expressed the legacy and heritage of modern Judaism. In The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492, by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Princeton University press, 2012, the authors claim that “Judaism reached its Golden Age in 800-1200 A.D. During that time, Mesopotamia and Persia contained 75% of world Jewry with the rest in North Africa and Western Europe.”

The Middle East and North African Jews who came to Israel were Arabs; the Europeans Jews were Ashkenazi; the Ethiopian Jews were Beta Israel; and the Yemenite Jews were from the Arabian Peninsula. Israel replaced the differing languages, dialects, music, cultures, and heritage of these unique ethnicities with uniform characteristics, and created a new people, the Israeli Jew. Destruction of centuries old Jewish history and life in Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt accompanied the creation of a new people. The Zionists, who complained about persecution of Jews, wiped out a major portion of Jewish history, determined who was Jewish, and required all Jews to shed much of their ancestral characteristics before integrating into the Israeli community.

Most Jews adhere to Rabbinical Judaism, a form of Judaism that achieved its modern status in Mesopotamia during the 5th century A.D. It was in the Persian Parthian and Sassanian Empires (248 B.C. to 641 A.D) that Jewish scribes codified the oral and written laws from the Torah, Mishnah, and Gemara and produced the Babylonian Talmud, which became the central text of Rabbinic Judaism, and the basis for Jewish law.

In 2023, the world’s core Jewish population (those identifying as Jews above all else) was estimated at 15.7 million. With 7.2 million Jews, Israel claimed the largest Jewish population in the world, not all of them lived in Israel, followed by the United States with 5.7 million, which also contained a sizeable population of self-exiled Israelis. By numbers, Israel appears as the selected home of world Jewry. The numbers do not tell the story. Relatively few Jews selected Israel as their home. Jews arrived there temporarily, by mistake, or by accidents of history, and could not get out. Their children, born in Israel, are products of the mistaken voyages and never realized  the dilemma their parents faced. The large birth rate of the Israeli Orthodox Jews and Mizrahi (Arab and North African Jews) and the low birth rate of the Western Jews skewed the statistics. Examine the record.

From its beginnings to the start of World War I, Zionism proved a stagnant adventure. During that period, statistics indicate that  about 70,000 Jews came to Palestine, not all of them were Zionists, many being adventurists, utopian Socialists, and some seeking opportunities. By 1918, only about 30,000 of the original 70,000 remained. Meanwhile, more than 2,500,000 East European Jews ventured to other places, mostly to the United States. Where are the Zionists?

World War I, destruction of the Ottoman Empire, and the Balfour Declaration revived the Zionist adventure. The League of Nations’ certification of the British Mandate in Palestine prevented  formation of a national Palestinian governing body, and provided opportunities for English speaking European Jews to work in the British administration. They came with protection of his Majesty’s forces. From 1918-1922, approximately 24,000 Jews arrived in Palestine.

The year 1924 was more fortuitous for the Zionists. The US Immigration Act closed the doors to mass Jewish immigration from East European nations and this Act steered Jews to Palestine. By 1931, Palestine housed 175,000 Jews. Were the new arrivals Zionists or people seeking an improved situation from their depressed surroundings?

During the 1930’s, Nazi persecutions of the Jews drove more than 60,000 German Jews to immigrate to Palestine (about 280,000 German and Austrian Jews migrated to other places, with about 125,000 managing to come to the United States). The German Jews were deficient in wanting  to learn Hebrew , unwilling to integrate, and perceived their voyage to the British Mandate as an escape from persecution in Nazi Germany and not necessarily a permanent solution to their refugee problem.

Figures are difficult to certify. Accepted figures are that at the end of World war II, about six million refugees wandered Europe and, after the guns went silent, one million found refuge in displaced person (DP) camps, of which 250,000 were Jews. During 1945-1950, about 120,000 of the Jewish DPs arrived in the former British Mandate. Many of the DPs had no other choice and some were unaware of where the ships were taking them. Their voyages did not conclude in 1950. Not well publicized is that “Between 1945 and 1967, almost 190,000 Jews left Palestine and Israel.”

The vast number of Jews wanting to leave Israel troubled the humanitarian commissions that previously served the refugees. Meetings between commission representatives and  Israeli authorities  highlighted that “emigration from the country was creating serious complications in Europe, and becoming a political embarrassment for Israel.” What did the Israeli government do? A discussion on Israel’s formation relates:

The government restricted distribution of passports and exit permits….The Israeli government also decided that new immigrants wishing to leave the country would not be allowed to do so unless they refund the state for the value of material benefits that they had received upon immigration to Israel. In some cases, prospective emigrants were even required to repay the costs involved in bringing them to Israel and maintaining them in immigration camps in Israel. And this was a serious obstacle for emigration because many people who wanted to leave the country were unable to pay all those costs, so they had to stay in Israel. And, the government also launched a propaganda campaign in the newspapers against emigration.

The dispossession of the Palestinians , which led to the 1948 war between Israel and Arab states, provoked Arab leaders to question the loyalty of their Arab Jews and placed the Jews living in Arab nations in a difficult position. Although Arabs by ethnicity and having a Jewish heritage in their surroundings for 2000 years, these Jews were now regarded with suspicion. Zionist operations within their nations, military conflicts, and oppression of the Palestinians, provoked the Arab governments into hostile actions against their Jewish citizens who had no recourse but to find safety with those who had caused their plight.

Why would Jews, who survived the ups and downs of having lived among Arabs for 2000 years, suddenly leave  their homelands? An Iraqi Jew had closer ethnic relationship to an Egyptian Muslim than to an Ashkenazi Jew. The former differed mainly in religious practices. An Iraqi Jew, except for religious practices, had little commonality with the Ashkenazi Jew.

The sudden exit of Arab Jews from their ancient lands questioned the veracity of the Zionist movement. If Zion was a home for Jews, why hadn’t these Jews moved to the Levant during the Ottoman Empire, and why hadn’t the Zionists considered relocating them from their inception? One answer is contained in an article, “Ideology or Ethnicity? The Israeli Political Crisis,” By Ori Yehudai

The concept of the “new Jew” espoused by Labor Zionists was a project of Western modernization. It emphasized modern “Israeliness”—the product of the Zionist revolution—over “Jewishness,” which was identified with the diasporic past. This approach was less appealing for Jews originating in Muslim countries, many of whom had remained more rooted in Jewish tradition.

It is obvious that it was the creation of apartheid and genocidal Israel that doomed the life of fellow Jews in Arab lands and, in many case, extraordinary lives that were reduced to despair and destitution and could not be easily repaired. Moshe Gat, Professor Emeritus, Bar Ilan University, General History and Political Science reports in  Iraq and its Jewish minority: from the establishment of the state to the great Jewish immigration 1921-1951,

 Jews were considered among the top tier of Iraqi society and were at the centre of its political and spiritual life. There were judges, lawyers, writers, poets, and politicians among them. They viewed themselves as worthy and capable of shaping the Iraqi state and society, feeling that they were an integral part of it. The community leaders’ good economic status, their influence over the country’s trade and economy, and long history in Iraq served as suitable grounds for integrating into local society since the establishment of Iraq as a state.

The last two great waves of immigration came from the Soviet Union. From 1970 to 1988, 291,000 Soviet Jews were granted exit visas, of who 165,000 migrated to Israel and 126,000 to the United States. The Kremlin granted visas to Soviet Jews who had relatives in Israel, but the Washington Post, February 19, 1989, reports, “Most of the newcomers leave the Soviet Union on Israeli visas, but once they get to the halfway stop in Vienna, more than 90 percent jump ship and opt for the United States.” Arrangements between Israel and the United States steered the recalcitrant back to Israel. Few Soviet Jews cared to go to Israel. They had no choice.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the desperate economic and social situation prompted its citizens to seek comfortable surroundings. Additional opportunities for Soviet Jews to migrate arose and 810,727 came to Israel during the last decade of the 20th century. Did these Jews come to Israel as Zionists or as disenchanted who had no other place to go? A report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) leans to the latter conviction.

The exodus of Soviet Jews increased in 1989 with almost 90 percent wanting to resettle in the United States. Some estimated that as many as 50,000 to 60,000 would leave in 1989. There would be a dual-track system for Soviet Jews to leave the Soviet Union. They could either apply to go to Israel or apply for refugee status at the American Embassy in Moscow….This arrangement of a two-track system in Moscow resulted in Israel becoming, “by default, the destination for the vast majority of Jews seeking refuge.”

Another wave of immigrants to Israel came from Ethiopia. The Beta Israel practiced a more biblical Judaism than rabbinic Judaism and considered  themselves Jews. Historians are uncertain how this relationship emerged and when it was first noticed. From 1980 to 2009, they came to Israel in several operations, with a strange logistics support from the United States.

More pull by Israeli rabbis than push from Ethiopians, the Israeli government decided in 1977 that the Beta Israel qualified for the Israeli Law of Return. Israeli forces performed several dramatic operations to rescue the Beta Israel communities from civil war and famine. “At the end of 2019, there were 155,300 Jews of Ethiopian descent in Israel. Approximately 87,500 were Israelis who were born in Ethiopia, and 67,800 were born-and-raised Israelis with fathers born in Ethiopia.”

Despite progress, Ethiopian Jews are still not well assimilated into Israeli-Jewish society. They remain, on average, on a lower economic and educational level than other Israelis.  From UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

TEL AVIV, 9 February 2012 (IRIN) – Growing up in Israel, Shay Sium became accustomed to being called a “nigger.” Sium, 32, has lived in Israel most of his life, but says he and other Ethiopian Jews are treated differently from other Israelis: factories do not want to employ them; landlords refuse them; and certain schools turn away their children. “The word discrimination doesn’t describe what we experience. There is another word for it: racism. It is a shame that we still have to use this word today,” he told IRIN. An estimated 125,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel, but while they are supposed to be full citizens with equal rights, their community has continued to face widespread discrimination and socio-economic difficulties, according to its leaders. A recent decision – as reported by local media – by 120 homeowners not to sell or rent their apartments to Israeli-Ethiopian families has brought discrimination against Ethiopian Jews in Israel back into the spotlight

They came as Beta Israel. They survive as converts to a new Israeli, their heritage disappearing in the Zionist regimented surroundings.

Commentary has shown that Zionism attracted a relatively small portion of Jews to Palestine. They came for many other reasons and left for many reasons. The total number of Israelis who migrated to other countries and resided abroad reached 756 thousand at the end of 2020. The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics said that between 572-612 thousand Israelis lived outside the country, and this estimate does not include the number of those born abroad.

Israel is not composed of Jews who sought a state defined by Israel’s Nation State Laws. It is composed of Jews who sought escape from economic and social oppression or deprivation, only to learn they were to become executioners in victimizing and oppressing others and have their children indoctrinated by a philosophy that traumatized them with the belief that the entire world was composed of anti-Semites waiting to harm them, and only Israel provided a safe haven.

The Zionists have not created an ingathering of the Jewish people or returned them to their ancient lands. As described previously, Jews as a people do not exist, an ancient Hebrew civilization is a fictitious exaggeration, and Jews of today are scarcely related to Hebrews who wandered the hills of Judah 2500 years ago. Want confirmation?

Go to Ashkelon and its open-air museum of civilizations that ruled Ashkelon from the Canaanites to the Ottomans. No mention of a Hebrew civilization or Hebrew rule. Go to any of the great museums of the world — Metropolitan, British, Louvre, several in Berlin, and Jerusalem. No artifacts or presentations of any ancient Hebrew civilization and no reference to Jews governing the Mediterranean coast of present day Israel, the area to which the Zionists “returned.” Go to Jerusalem and learn there is no extant major structure from Biblical Israel. The only well-known structure, the Western wall, is an ancient supporting wall of the platform from Herod’s time, which did not hear worshippers at that time. It became a place of prayer for Jews in the late 15th century after Mameluke authorities permitted Jews a safe place for worship, and suddenly morphed into “the most revered site in Judaism,” during modern times. Revered by default, there is no other.

Another revered Jewish ground is Masada and its heroic fighters against Roman oppression. The balloon recently burst on this one. From the Times of Israel, Masada legend upended: ‘The Romans came, saw and conquered, quickly and brutally.

Recent research by a team of Tel Aviv University archaeologists may upend the Masada legend by asserting that the siege likely lasted just a few weeks and not years. [ED: Indicates that Masada Jews did not commit suicide] Likewise, the primary motivation for the Romans in assaulting Masada wasn’t to defeat the last holdout of the Jewish rebellion but rather to preserve the supply of lucrative balsam, a perfume produced in nearby Ein Gedi.

But the dominant faction at Masada was indeed “the bandits,” who, as noted by Josephus, sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem went down from Masada to Ein Gedi in a raid. They killed hundreds of women and children at the balsam plantation there after the workers fled, and disrupted production of the precious fragrance. It was an effective raid designed to damage Roman interests in the region.

The Zionists have not created an ingathering of Jewish people. The Jews, as a people do not exist.
The Zionists have not recreated an ancient Jewish civilization. No vital ancient Jewish civilization ever existed.

Examine closely.
The Zionists recreated the medieval European ghetto, complete with walls and Jewish isolation from other communities. They replaced intermittent attacks against Jews with permanent attacks on Jews; come to Israel and face a daily barrage of flying bullets.

The Zionists have divided Jewish communities, caused severe family frictions, and spurred Jews to relinquish their Jewish faith.

The Zionists shifted intermittent resentment against Jews to perpetual animosity, leading almost the entire world to label Jews as committing genocide of the Palestinian people. We are all anti-Semites now.

The humanism that guided American Jews is almost gone.
Jewish heritage that developed the Talmud, the guiding laws of modern Jewry, has disappeared.
Jews are depicted as people with yarmulkes, living on hilltops, and carrying Uzi guns.
The Messiah that brings Jews back to Jerusalem has arrived and is not wanted.

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Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.

The more definitive the proof of Israeli atrocities, the less they get reported

Videos show Israeli soldiers push three Palestinian men off a roof in a West Bank town under illegal Israeli occupation. The western media can barely stifle their yawns.

by Jonathan Cook / September 20th, 2024

The coverage of Israeli soldiers pushing three Palestinians off a roof in the West Bank town of Qabatiya – it’s unclear whether the men are dead or near-dead – is being barely reported by the western media, even though it was videoed from two different angles and a reporter from the main US news agency Associated Press witnessed it.

AP reported on this incident some nine hours ago. Its news feed is accessed by all western establishment media, so they all know.

Yet again, the media has chosen to ignore Israeli war crimes, even when there is definitive proof that they occurred. (Or perhaps more accurately: even more so when there is definitive proof they occurred.)

Remember, that same media never fails to highlight – or simply make up – any crime Palestinians are accused of, such as those non-existent “beheaded babies”.

AP itself treats this latest atrocity in the West Bank as no big deal. It reports simply that it may be part of a “pattern of excessive force” by Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians.

That comment, without quote marks and ascribed to a human rights group, is almost certainly AP’s preferred characterisation of the group’s reference to a pattern not of “excessive force” but of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

AP makes sure to give Israel’s pretext for why it is committing war crimes: “Israel says the raids are necessary to stamp out militancy.”

But it forgets yet again to mention why that “militancy” exists: because Israel has been violently enforcing an illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories for many decades, in which it – once again illegally – has drafted in an army of settler militias to drive out the native Palestinian population.

AP also forgets to mention that, under international law, the Palestinians have every right to resist Israel’s occupying soldiers, including “militantly”.

Western governments might characterise Palestinians shooting at Israeli soldiers as “terrorism”, but that’s not how it is seen in the international law codes that western states drafted decades ago and that they claim to uphold.

It’s also worth noting that the local Palestinian reporter who witnessed this crime had his report rewritten by “Julia Frankel, an Associated Press reporter in Jerusalem”.

As is true with many other western outlets, AP copy is editorially overseen from Jerusalem, where its office is staffed mostly with Israeli Jews.

Western news outlets doubtless privately rationalise this to themselves as a wise precaution, making sure copy is “sensitive” to Israel’s perspective and less likely to incur the wrath of the Israeli government and Israel lobby.

Which is precisely the problem. The bias in western reporting is baked in. It is designed not to upset Israel – in the midst of a “plausible genocide”, according to the World Court – which means it’s entirely skewed and completely untrustworthy.

It makes our media utterly complicit in Israel’s war crimes, including when Israeli soldiers throw Palestinians off a roof.

UPDATE:

Very belatedly, the BBC has reported this on one of its news channels. Note, it adds an entirely unnecessary disclaimer that the footage hasn’t been “independently verified” – whatever that means. There are now at least three separate videos, all taken from different angles, showing the same war crime. Even the Israeli military has confirmed the incident happened.

The BBC also assumes the three Palestinians are dead. There is absolutely no reason to make that assumption: it violates the most basic rules of reporting.

And the anchor, clearly nervous about how she should refer to the men being pushed off a roof, ends by observing that the footage is “another example of the tensions and the many fronts on which we see Israel fighting”. No, it’s another example of Israeli soldiers committing war crimes, and the media trying to deflect attention from that fact.

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Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). Read other articles by Jonathan, or visit Jonathan's website.

 

Chanukah 2023

by Deborah Adelman / September 25th, 2024

LONG READ

Boeing Headquarters, Chicago
December 14, 2023

On the last night night of Chanukah, you stand on a bridge, alongside twelve others, blocking traffic.  You hold a black rectangular posterboard with the letter “I” lit up in small holiday lights bright against the dark matting.  You are letter seven in the phrase CEASEFIRE NOW! “F” stands to your left, “R” to your right. You check in with each other, smiling. Each one of you, each letter, is a necessary part of the entire demand.

On the sidewalk, a rally with speeches, singing and chanting continues, a determined, spirited din to accompany your blockade. Through the crowd, you see the face of your rabbi holding a mic, but it’s hard to distinguish his words.

A row of police officers stands in front of you, and another row behind them, and a third behind the second, their faces impervious. They are young. Many of them are not white. They are too far away for you to read the last names on their badges, but you imagine they contain all the identities of contemporary working-class Chicago, all the ethnicities from which CPD now amply recruits.

You note their guns, their batons, their body armor, their pepper spray. You are not inexperienced with police and are fairly certain that at this moment, the situation is under control. There will be no tasering, pepper spraying or shooting. Still, with the cops, there are no guarantees– those words spoken at your training last week come back to you -and you could imagine the situation unraveling and getting rough, but you don’t. You feel calm, strong, completely certain, no second thoughts or doubts.  Your parents, of blessed memory, taught you how to face the police.

You are about to be arrested.

Standing on this bridge and blockading traffic had taken more maneuvering than you expected.  The group had to line up in reverse order on the bridge’s pedestrian walkway without attracting police attention. Keeping police focused on the rally in front of Boeing headquarters would give you the space needed to figure out how to spell backwards, get in formation, cross the bridge on the green light and stop. You spread out and took position, resting the four-foot letters on the asphalt in front of you, your message shining: CEASEFIRE NOW! You stopped traffic in a matter of seconds. Now drivers wanting to head east onto the Washington bridge are stuck and their horns, blaring from behind the police line, make it clear that you’ve made a lot of people angry.

You wear many layers. Underneath, a long-sleeved t-shirt and a fleece. On top, a parka and insulated vest. Wool socks, zippered boots, no strings-you’ve prepared for what you will be allowed to keep in your cell, which will be cold. Woolen hat, gloves, and of course, an N95 mask. You won’t be able to put it on later, so you’re wearing it in advance. Your ID is in the zippered vest pocket. You’ve made sure to get to a bathroom before the rally, since no one knows how long it will take for the police to clear everyone from the bridge. You wonder if the much younger people blockading the street with you have had the same concern. Probably not.

Your underlayer, the lightweight cotton t-shirt, nestles against your skin. You bought it at the Yiddish Book Center last spring, after a week-long language class there. It is black, and has der aleph-beis, the alphabet, printed in white letters across the back.  No one can see your shirt, but you know it is there and you feel the language of your ancestors sprawled across your ribcage. Yiddish is buried deep inside you, protecting you. Khof curls like a reverse C, a strong spine protecting the top and bottom as they open to the left, like two outstretched arms in a battering wind. The sound of khof, its friction against the back palette, is easy for you to pronounce. You’ve heard it since you were a child, words like Khanike and kholem and Khelm, the town in Ashkenazi Jewish lore known for its harmless, charming simpletons.  Snuggling your back, mid-alphabet, khof lies somewhere near the bottom of your lungs and when you breathe, it comes to life, a seed germinating and sprouting inside you, rising from the black Galician soil where your grandmother raised her gardens.

But now is not the time to dwell in your past. Not the time to lament how this language was passed on to you only as a relic, not something alive and breathing, even though your grandmothers were born into it, lived and loved and birthed their own children in it.

You are here to protest what is happening right now. Today, the civilian death toll from the Israeli bombing of Gaza stands at 18,000. Among the dead, there are at least 8,000 children. You are standing on this bridge to disrupt, to say there can be no business as usual, that your tax dollars will not pay for meting out slaughter. You are blocking this bridge to call out the death company whose headquarters you stand in front of, the company that supplies the fighter jets and the bombs delivering this assault. On this last night of Chanukah you are saying not in our name, the slogan written in stark white letters across the black t-shirts worn by many in the crowd of protestors. By now, two months into public, continuous protest around the country, these t-shirts have become a familiar outfit.

Squad cars arrive, blue lights flashing, followed by paddy wagons.  The lieutenant in charge is angry and frustrated by your surprise move which changed the scene from a rally easily monitored by officers on bicycles into one that would require much more.  He warns you that your action is illegal, and you are subject to arrest.  As if you didn’t know. As if this were not intentional.

The arrests happen quickly. The lieutenant approaches you one at a time, starting with C, unraveling the demand for ceasefire from its beginning.  He gets close in your faces and repeats what he has already said -your action is illegal. He asks if you will agree to leave and walk off the bridge on your own, then asks if you understand that you are about to be arrested for disorderly conduct and obstruction.  R, to your left, seems subdued, maybe nervous. He is young, likely has a job to get to tomorrow or an interview for something next week, something consequential.  Most of your group is young. They are all putting themselves at risk. But no one breaks rank.

No, I am not walking off this bridge. Yes, I understand I am going to be arrested and charged.

You watch as the police detain C,E,A,S,E and F. The same procedure for all –several officers tie their hands behind their backs, capture their wrists in zipties. Each one is led from the bridge past the crowd towards the paddy wagons.  The crowd cheers and sings and sends love.

It’s a parade of sorts and you wonder why the police have chosen to march people on this side of the bridge right past the rally, when they could have walked all of you on the other side where you would be far less visible to your admiring comrades. It is dramatic and theatrical.

As your turn approaches, you remember your daughter’s advice, from her own arrest last month in New York. “Have them tie you up in front. It’s your legal right if you ask. It will be easier on your shoulders, Mom.”.

Lately, your shoulders have been bothering you. You’ve been aware of your rotator cuffs in a way you weren’t before. When the lieutenant approaches you, you have already seen and heard six people arrested and you are ready. After he asks you if you will leave on your own, warns you of your imminent arrest and tells you the charges, you hold your wrists in front of you and make your request. To your surprise, though he is snarly and clearly tired of all of you, he agrees.

And off you go, zip-tied in front, masked, bundled in layers, past the cheering crowd.  A friend and her daughter stand on the sidelines, taking pictures and a video you will watch later, over and over again, seeing yourself taken to a paddy wagon by the Chicago police.

If your parents were still alive, they’d be in the crowd giving you the thumbs up.  If they could have heard another friend shout “Free Palestine,” as you were marched by, they would have agreed.

Eventually, there are seven of you in the paddy wagon.  You’ve been sorted by perceived gender, or perhaps by what’s on your IDs. You’re careful about what you discuss.  Nothing about your action. There is only one other woman in your age range, and so when the conversation turns to music, you are pretty much lost.

You sit in the wagon for a long time before it bounces off towards wherever you are heading.  There don’t seem to be any shock absorbers in the wagon, and no seat belts. You all agree that you are heading east over the same bridge you’ve been blocking, though of course you can’t see outside. Chicagoans internalize a sense of the grid. Zip-tied and jostled, you sit in two rows, lined up against either side. After a short ride, the wagon comes to an abrupt halt. You wait, perhaps fifteen long minutes, or more, no idea where you are. “They are probably getting dinner,” your companion to the right says.  She has an extensive arrest record and says it wouldn’t be the first time the cops stop for pizza while the protestors in the wagon wait.

This remark leads to an exchange about previous arrest experiences, even though music is a safer topic. Surveillance. When one of your wagon mates asks you if you’ve been arrested before, you say no, only tear-gassed, but you note that you’ve been protesting your entire life, even while still in utero, at least according to family lore. Whatever was being protested in 1958 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin before your birth month of October, well, you were there along with your mom. There was plenty to protest. The sixties were in their prequel and your parents were certainly not too happy about the fifties either.

“And how does it feel now to be arrested?” she asks.

“Overdue,” you say.

This will become your go-to phrase when people ask you about the arrest.  You are not inclined to say that it is the least you can do, that it is nothing compared to the death and destruction raining down upon the people of Gaza, because it sounds trite, but, given your long protest history, it really is how you feel. The least you could do. And certainly overdue.

In the collective holding cell at the precinct jail, you share stories. You bond. Seven women in a cell for an undetermined period, of course it happens. Demographically, there are obvious ways to distinguish the group.

Two of you are in your sixties. The rest, much younger.

One of you is Christian, a minister. The rest, Jewish.

Three of you are well versed in the Frankfurt School. The rest, not so much but they do get the basic concepts. Everybody in this cell has at least an undergrad degree.

Four of you work at non-profits. Two are professors (or retired, you, specifically.). And then there’s the one minister.

Six of you have tattoos.  Only one does not. You. So you feel inadequate and explain that for five years, you and your daughter have been trying to decide on a mother-daughter tattoo.  You both can be indecisive, debating people and so it hasn’t happened yet, because you haven’t agreed on a design yet, but you will. Maybe a monarch on you, a milkweed pod on her. Or loons and canoes. She has some nostalgia for the Midwest, despite her decision to trot off to New York.

And then, on this night of a Chanukah protest and arrest, the next division raises one of your important foundational stories. Of the six Jewish women, five have had a painful, conflictive break with Zionist ideology and the communities and families in which they were raised.  Only one has been raised as an anti-Zionist.  Only one has never supported Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish ethnostate at the expense of Palestinian freedom and self-determination.  Only one has been raised as an American Jewish minority within a minority.  You.

“You are lucky,” someone tells you.  The others agree.

You think about this before responding.

On the one hand, you admire people who break with the ideas they have been raised in, if those ideas are unjust. You admire people who can make a break with received wisdom. There is liberation in that act. Rejecting at least some part of one’s parents’ thinking is usually necessary.  Each generation should be an improvement upon the preceding one, you often say to your kids, when they let you know that their ideas about something are different -i.e., more advanced-than yours.

At many moments in your life, certain aspects of your parents’ Old Left beliefs have been a constraint.  Perhaps shackle. But you have always agreed with their most basic premises, certainly those about justice and equality and the evils of capitalism. And you have always admired their consistent walking the walk, the life of protest and boycotts and political actions, your upbringing among Black and brown people in hyper segregated Milwaukee, their clear, lived intention to provide you with something other than whiteness.  But it was not an easy way to grow up.

And especially on the topic of Israel, the basic tenet in which they raised you–no, there should not be a Jewish ethnostate-one you have never broken with, has made it hard for you to find community with other American Jewish people, including your extended families.

“Yes, lucky,” you agree.  There is nuance in everything, but not always.

You’ve just heard the heartache of someone who told her rabbi that he had taught her a pack of lies.  They avoid each other.  Another whose parents have told her that they are deeply ashamed of her. And another, whose parents haven’t spoken to her in years, speaks with resignation about their rupture.

The stories are painful.

At some point, you leave the topic of Zionism and return to tatoos. Show and tell begins. But it is winter in Chicago and are dressed warmly, to have stood on a bridge in the cold, so you are all wearing long sleeves and warm leggings and sweatpants.  Someone rolls up the left sleeve of her shirt.  But how to show the upper arm?  Some minor undressing occurs. Another rolls up the leg of her sweatpants to show off the art on the back of her calf.  But how to show the thigh?  Pull them down!  Finally, a cellmate rolls up her shirt to show you a tattoo that extends from her neck along her spine, almost to her butt, a gorgeous breathtaking tattoo that elicits oohs and aahs from the entire group. Along with the tattoo we see her belly and bra, her ribs and backbone.  This escalation of the undressing is enough for the officers watching you from outside the thick glass windows of the collective cell.  Enough story-telling, enough female bonding, enough revealing of the artwork on covered limbs and backs. More than enough.  The show is over.  One by one they call you out, dissemble the collective. They “process” you, take your fingerprints, your mug shot, take you to another are of the jail where there are individual cells, each one of you on her own. You spend the rest of your time, another seven hours, in a cold cell with bright lights, a camera, a hard bench, an open toilet and sink combination with a trickle of water to wash hands and take a drink, left alone to ponder.  You sit in solitary, counting the cinder blocks of your cell, with lots of time to go over the shared stories, the laughter, the tears, the determination.

At 3:30 a.m. you are released. The jail support team is waiting for you outside the precinct door to offer hugs, smiles, sufganyot, the jelly-donuts you eat at Chanukah, and a ride home. They’ve been waiting outside half the night.  Now the other half is yours.

You wonder, where did this story begin? Where will it take me? How do I tell it?FacebookTwitteRedditEmail

Deborah Adelman is a writer and activist living in Oak Park, Illinois. Her fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in Jewish Currents, Lilith, Cream City Review, and Memoir Magazine, among others. Currently she is writing about the legacy of anti-Zionist social justice activism she received from her parents and ancestors. She hopes to amplify their legacy as part of the struggle against the current genocide in Gaza. She is also working towards fluency in Yiddish, the language of her grandparents, to better channel their world and because it is a beautiful diasporic language endlessly open to absorbing the words of the many worlds in which it lives. Read other articles by Deborah.

 

Israel’s Enforced Disappearance of Palestinian Women from Gaza

by Visualizing Palestine / September 26th, 2024

Our latest visual captures the horrific testimonies of Palestinian women from Gaza who were arbitrarily detained and held incommunicado by Israel for more than 50 days, according to interviews by Amnesty International and the UN. Held hostage under the “Detention of Unlawful Combatants law,” which grants the Israeli military sweeping powers to detain anyone from Gaza without evidence, Palestinians detained from Gaza are being subjected to torture and inhumane treatment, denied access to lawyers, while their location is kept secret from their families.

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Visualizing Palestine is the intersection of communication, social sciences, technology, design and urban studies for social justice. Visualizing Palestine uses creative visuals to describe a factual rights-based narrative of Palestine/Israel. Read other articles by Visualizing Palestine, or visit Visualizing Palestine's website.

Pakistan: Police blasphemy killings raise new concerns

M. Raja in Islamabad
DW

Activists say two separate cases of police killing men accused of blasphemy have opened a new dimension in a long-running human rights problem for Pakistan.

The family of a man who was accused of blasphemy said he was killed by police

Image: Allah Bux/AP/picture alliance

Last week, Shah Nawaz, a 32-year-old doctor in Pakistan's Sindh province, was shot by police, who claimed he had resisted arrest after being accused of insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad and sharing "blasphemous" content on social media.

Nawaz's family rejected the police's claims and said he was killed while in custody after surrendering to police. The family said authorities told him he would have a chance to prove his innocence.

It was the second such killing in a week. On September 12, a 52-year-old man in Balochistan province was killed while held in custody at a police station for blasphemy accusations.

The killings drew condemnation from the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), which said in a statement it was "gravely concerned by the alleged extrajudicial killing of two people accused of blasphemy."

"This pattern of violence in cases of blasphemy, in which law enforcement personnel are allegedly involved, is an alarming trend," the HRCP statement said.

A long-running problem in Pakistan

In religiously conservative Pakistan, speech considered insulting or criticizing Islam is punishable by death.

Although no one has ever been formally executed by the state under blasphemy laws, in dozens of cases, lynch mobs have killed those accused before a trial could take place.

Muslim mob in Pakistan accuses Christians of blasphemy  02:16

Pakistan, in recent years, has witnessed a surge of blasphemy-related killings. In numerous cases, mere accusations have unleashed lynch mobs.

Last year, blasphemy accusations triggered mobs that attacked Christian neighborhoods in the eastern province of Punjab, burning several churches and displacing hundreds of people from their homes. Christians have said those involved in the violence have yet to be put on trial.

In 2011, a former governor of Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was murdered by his bodyguard over his support for reforming Pakistan's blasphemy laws.

"Such killings are the combination of religious intolerance, deeply influential religious forces, and the state being unwilling or unable to confront the problem," Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, told DW.

In some cases, accusing someone of blasphemy can be used to settle personal scores, vendettas or to seize property.

"There is no need to go to court, just a public accusation of blasphemy will gather and incite vigilante mobs to lynch the accused, without waiting for any court case," Tahira Abdullah, a human rights activist, told DW.

Ruth Stephen, a Pakistani minority rights activist, told DW that accusing someone of blasphemy can be used "strategically to settle personal scores."

She added that the government of Pakistan "organizes and enables" religious extremists, which contributes to the problem of blasphemy killings.

Abdullah said a long-term solution would be for authorities to "review and amend the laws and procedures, which were tampered with illegally and unconstitutionally by unelected military dictator Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s."

Can the government intervene?

The HRCP has demanded the government ensure an independent inquiry into the recent blasphemy deaths at the hands of police.

A member from Pakistan's minority community protests after a Christian man was convicted of blashphemy in July 2024Image: Fareed Khan/AP/picture alliance

However, analyst Kugelman said that Islamist hardliners are "deeply influential" in Pakistani politics, and "civilian and military leaderships have been unwilling to antagonize them."

"We have seen throughout Pakistan's history that those who exploit blasphemy laws, and those who justify violence against alleged violators of those laws, are treated with kid gloves by the Pakistani state," Kugelman said.

Activist Stephen said that the international community should put pressure on Pakistan's government to take action against blasphemy killings, for example, with the threat of sanctions.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has regularly asserted that Pakistan is one of the world's strictest and most frequent enforcers of blasphemy laws.

However, analyst Kugelman said that he doesn't think the international community will go as far as enacting sanctions over blasphemy-related killings.

"But we've seen the problem repeatedly flagged by Western governments, including the US in its annual religious freedom reports. Of course, simply flagging the problem won't make it go away, but at least it keeps the issue front and center internationally, and that's critical."

"International pressure can't stop rising mob killings, but it can keep the issue on the radar. And that at least puts pressure on the Pakistani government, knowing that key capitals, especially in the West, are concerned about a problem that Islamabad has been unwilling or unable to stop," he added.

Pakistan: Officer Shehrbano Naqvi retells 'blasphemy' rescue  03:23

Edited by: Wesley Rahn

Monet's odes to London's 'beautiful' smog appear in city

London (AFP) – Claude Monet was enchanted by the mysterious light generated by London's famous "smog", and the city he loved is now hosting a new exhibition recognising his strange fascination with the industrial pollution.

Issued on: 26/09/2024 -

Claude Monet was fascinated by the light cast by London's smog 

© BENJAMIN CREMEL / AFP



"Monet and London. Views of the Thames" opening Friday will be the first time his paintings of the Houses of Parliament and the River Thames go on show in the city, as he had wished 120 years ago.

The French Impressionist painter made three visits to London, for several months at a time, between 1899 and 1901.

The city was then the most populated city in the world and a major industrial centre, its air often thick with pollution.

He stayed in the Savoy Hotel, from where he had a breathtaking view of the Waterloo and Charing Cross bridges.

To paint the Palace of Westminster -- the UK parliament -- he crossed the river and set up his easel on a terrace of St Thomas' Hospital, which is still in use today.

"Every day, I find London more beautiful to paint," the artist wrote to his stepdaughter in 1900.

he wrote of the ever-changing weather and its transformative effects on the Thames © BENJAMIN CREMEL / AFP

In a letter to his wife, he wrote of the ever-changing weather and its transformative effects on the Thames.

"You wouldn't believe the amazing effects I have seen in the nearly two months that I have been constantly looking at the River Thames," he wrote.

He told a US journalist in 1901 that "London is the more interesting that it is harder to paint.

"The fog assumes all sorts of colours; there are black, brown, yellow, green, purple fogs," he added.

In one painting, the outline of Charing Cross Bridge can just be seen against a yellow haze, probably caused by sulphur emissions.

The painting was given to Winston Churchill in 1949 by his literary agent, accompanied by a note wishing that "the fog that shrouds Westminster", then ruled by the Labour party, would lift.
'Pure gold'

Monet's favourite season in London was winter, when "the fog mixed with all the pollution, the smoke from the factories, all the particles in the air," said Karen Serres, curator of the exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery.

"One thing that Monet also really loved was the moment when the clouds opened just a little bit, and a ray of sunlight kind of punctured through and illuminated the Thames," she added.

The new exhibition brings together his paintings of the Thames © BENJAMIN CREMEL / AFP

Monet, who died of lung cancer in 1926 aged 86, described one such moment to his wife. "The sun came up, so blinding that one could not look at it," he wrote.

"The Thames was pure gold. God it was so beautiful."

Monet would return to Giverny, north of Paris, after his London trips with dozens of paintings to finish in his studio.

Around 40 of these London paintings were shown in Paris in 1904.

He wanted to show the works in London too, but by then he had become a victim of his own success and the paintings were sold before he could organise the show.

The owner of a painting of Charing Cross Bridge wrote to Monet after seeing the exhibition in Paris that "you have enabled us to understand better" the "wonderful landscape".

Monet made London look "like an enchanted place", said the curator, while adding: "I'm sure was not the case at all for the inhabitants."

Despite this, the critic from the Times, clearly impressed by the new show, issued a call to "bring back smog!" -- but only if it brought back the "enchanting, unearthly hues" captured by Monet.

The exhibition, which runs until January 19, brings together 21 paintings from private collections and museums in countries including France, the United States and Ireland.

© 2024 AFP

Myanmar junta invites armed groups to stop fighting, start talks

Yangon (AFP) – Myanmar's embattled junta on Thursday invited armed groups opposed to its rule to stop fighting and start talks to bring peace, after three-and-a-half years of conflict.

Issued on: 26/09/2024

Myanmar's junta chief military Min Aung Hlaing arrives to deliver a speech during a ceremony to mark the country's Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw on March 27, 2024 

The unexpected offer comes after the junta suffered a series of major battlefield reverses to ethnic minority armed groups and pro-democracy "People's Defence Forces" that rose up to oppose the military's seizure of power in 2021.

As well as battling determined resistance to its rule, the junta is also struggling with the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi, which triggered major flooding that has left more than 400 dead and hundreds of thousands in need of help.

"We invite ethnic armed groups, terrorist insurgent groups, and terrorist PDF groups which are fighting against the state to give up terrorist fighting and communicate with us to solve political problems politically," the junta said in a statement.

The military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's elected civilian government in February 2021, triggering mass protests that were met with a brutal crackdown.

Civilians set up PDFs to fight back and ethnic minority armed groups -- many of which have fought the military for decades -- were reinvigorated, plunging the country into civil war.

Armed groups should follow "the path of party politics and elections in order to bring about lasting peace and development", the statement said.

"The country's human resources, basic infrastructure and many people's lives have been lost, and the country's stability and development have been blocked" by the conflict, the junta said.

Padoh Saw Taw Nee, a spokesman for the Karen National Union (KNU), which has been battling the military for decades for more autonomy along the border with Thailand, said talks were only possible if the military agreed to "common political objectives."

"Number one: no military participation in future politics. Two they (the military) have to agree to a federal democratic constitution," he told AFP.

"Number three: they have to be accountable for everything they have committed... including war crimes and crimes against humanity," he said. "No impunity."

"If they don't agree with it, then nothing will happen," he added.

"We will keep putting pressure on them politically, militarily."
Election pledge
This photo taken on January 4, 2022, shows soldiers from the Taaung National Liberation Army (TNLA), a Palaung ethnic armed group, near their frontline in Myanmar's northern Shan state © STR / AFP

The junta, which justified its coup with unsubstantiated allegations of fraud in the 2020 elections won by Suu Kyi's party, has long pledged to hold fresh polls when conditions permit.

Census takers are due to start collecting data in early October in preparation for possible polls in 2025.

The military has lost swathes of territory in border areas in the past year after a major surprise offensive led by a trio of ethnic minority armed groups.

The groups have seized control of lucrative border crossings and last month took Lashio, a city of 150,000 people -- the biggest urban centre to fall to rebels since 1962.

Batches of conscripts have been training after the military enforced a draft law in February -- prompting tens of thousands of eligible young people to flee the country to avoid being called up, according to rights groups.

More than 5,700 civilians have been killed and over 20,000 arrested in the military crackdown since 2021, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a local monitoring group.

The United Nations warned last week that Myanmar was plunging into a human rights "abyss", detailing shocking torture meted out by the military on people in its custody.

Detainees reported being beaten with iron poles, bamboo sticks and motorcycle chains, and being terrorised with snakes and insects.

Pope Francis has offered refuge on Vatican territory to Suu Kyi, Italian media said on Tuesday.

The 79-year-old Nobel peace laureate is serving a 27-year prison sentence on charges ranging from corruption to not respecting Covid pandemic restrictions.

Rights groups say her closed-door trial was a sham designed to remove her from the political scene.

© 2024 AFP

Hurricanes, storms, typhoons... Is September wetter than usual?

Agence France-Presse

September 26, 2024 

Streets in Glucholazy, southern Poland, flooded in September 2024 © Sergei GAPON / AFP

With typhoon Yagi battering Asia, storm Boris drenching parts of Europe, extreme flooding in the Sahel and hurricane Helene racing towards Florida, September so far has been a very wet month.

But while scientists can link some extreme weather events directly to human-caused global warming, it remains too early to draw clear conclusions about this sodden month.

"You will always have some sort of extreme weather events, but their intensity has been magnified by global warming, especially in the context of rainfall," Paulo Ceppi from Imperial College London's Grantham Institute told AFP on Thursday.

"That's probably one of the common drivers of these different events in very different parts of the world."

Early indications from monthly data show some record-breaking precipitation levels in the regions affected.

In central Europe, the torrential rains accompanying storm Boris were "the heaviest ever recorded" in the region, according to the World Weather Attribution (WWA) network of scientists, inundating homes and farmland.

Global warming has doubled the likelihood of severe four-day downpours since the pre-industrial era and the costs of climate change are "accelerating", WWA said in a report published Wednesday.

Meanwhile in Japan's city of Wajima, more than 120 millimeters (4.7 inches) of rainfall per hour from typhoon Yagi was recorded on the morning of September 21 -- the heaviest rain since comparative data became available in 1929.
Hotter, and wetter?


"Attributing different weather patterns around the world at the same time to climate change is very challenging," said Liz Stephens, science lead at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

A farmer salvages their harvest from a flooded ricefield in Hanoi's Chuong My district on September 24, 2024 following serious flooding in Vietnam in the wake of Typhoon Yagi © Nhac NGUYEN / AFP

"But the fundamental principle remains that for every 1 degree Celsius of warming the atmosphere can hold seven percent more moisture," she told AFP.


With global warming on track to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times "you can do the math pretty quickly and that will have a measurable impact," said Ceppi from the Grantham Institute.

The 2024 northern summer saw the highest global temperatures ever recorded, beating last year's record, according to the EU's climate monitor Copernicus.

A hotter planet, in other words, could also signal a wetter one.


The sweltering summer in the Mediterranean this year "gives a lot of extra evaporation, pumping more water vapour into Europe if the conditions are right and allowing for all that moisture to be dumped in certain places," Ceppi said.

"The global temperatures -- both over the land and the ocean -- were anomalously high during August-September despite La Nina-like conditions evolving in the Pacific," Roxy Mathew Koll at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology told AFP.

"Anomalously high temperatures assist in supplying additional heat and moisture for storms and weather systems to intensify."


La Nina refers to a naturally-occurring climate phenomenon that cools the ocean surface temperatures in large swathes of the tropical Pacific Ocean, coupled with winds, rains and changes in atmospheric pressure.

In many locations, especially in the tropics, La Nina produces the opposite climate impacts to El Nino, which heats up the surface of the oceans, leading to drought in some parts of the world and triggering heavy downpours elsewhere.

Currently, "neutral" conditions prevail, meaning neither El Nino nor La Nina are present.


Large swaths of South America and Southern Africa suffered from drought in 2024.

The global September update from Copernicus is due early next month and will provide hard data on precipitation levels.

© 2024 AFP

AI research uncovers 300 ancient etchings in Peru's Nazca desert

Agence France-Presse
September 24, 2024

This undated handout picture released by the Yamagata University Institute of Nasca shows one of 303 new geoglyphs discovered by scientists at Yamagata University in Japan, where a team of researchers applied AI-assisted image analysis of aerial photographs, which accelerated the pace of geoglyph discovery during a 6-month fieldwork in the Nazca Pampas. The famous Nazca Lines, recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, are geoglyphs more than 2,000 years old with geometric and animal figures that can only be seen from the sky. © Handout / Yamagata University Institute of Nasca/AFP

The fabled Nazca lines, a series of massive incisions on the desert floor depicting animals, plants, imaginary beings and geometric figures, have fascinated scientists ever since they were first discovered around a century ago.

Best viewed from the air, the lines situated some 220 miles (350 kilometers) south of Lima are one of Peru's top tourist attractions.

Announcing the new discoveries in Lima on Monday, archaeologist Masato Sakai, from Yamagata University, said: "The use of AI in research has allowed us to map the distribution of geoglyphs in a faster and more precise way."

© Handout / Yamagata University Institute of Nasca/AFP

He said the findings were the fruit of collaboration between his university's Nazca Institute and the research division of the technology company IBM.

"The traditional method of study, which consisted of visually identifying the geoglyphs from high-resolution images of this vast area, was slow and carried the risk of overlooking some of them," he added.
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The study was also published on Monday in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal, describing how AI can be used to accelerate discoveries in archeology even in well-known sites

.

A combination made on September 24, 2024 of undated handout picture released by the Yamagata University Institute of Nasca shows 9 of 303 new geoglyphs discovered by scientists at Yamagata University in Japan, where a team of researchers applied AI-assisted image analysis of aerial photographs, which accelerated the pace of geoglyph discovery during a 6-month fieldwork in the Nazca Pampas. The famous Nazca Lines, recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, are geoglyphs more than 2,000 years old with geometric and animal figures that can only be seen from the sky. © Handout / Yamagata University Institute of Nasca/AFP

The paper said it had taken nearly a century to discover 430 figurative Nazca geoglyphs.


Using AI, scientists found 303 more during only six months of field surveys.

The AI model was particularly good at picking up smaller relief-type geoglyphs which are harder to spot with the naked eye.

Among the new figures discovered were giant linear-type geoglyphs, mainly representing wild animals, but also smaller ones with motifs of abstract humanoids and domesticated camelids, a mammal from the camel family.


Scientists used AI to analyze a vast amount of geospatial data produced by aircraft to identify areas where they might find more geoglyphs.

The people that formed the Nazca civilization lived in the area of southwestern Peru from 200 BC to 700 AD.

What drove them to create the lines, designated a UNESCO World Heritage site, is a mystery.


Some scientists believe they have astrological and religious significance.

The first geoglyphs were discovered in 1927.

© 2024 AFP

Japan acquits world's longest-serving death row prisoner

An 88-year-old man who was sentenced to death in 1968 for killing a family was cleared of all charges following a retrial in Japan. He spent most of his life on death row

A former Japanese boxer convicted more than 50 years ago of killing his boss and family was acquitted by a Japanese court on Thursday.

Shizuoka District Court ruled that 88-year-old Iwao Hakamada was innocent, in a retrial that was granted 10 years ago.

The court's presiding judge, Koshi Kunii, said the court acknowledged multiple fabrications of evidence and that Hakamada was not the culprit, according to broadcaster NHK.

Hakamada is the fifth death row inmate granted a retrial in Japan's post-war history. All four previous cases also resulted in acquittals.

Hundreds of people queued in the morning at the court to try and secure a seat for the verdict in what has become a high-profile case that has gripped the nation.
A long battle to clear his name

In 1968, Hakamada was convicted of the murder of a company director and three of his family members two years before.

He at first denied the crime, but confessed after what he later described as a brutal police interrogation that included beatings.

He was sentenced to death but lengthy appeals and the retrial process led to the postponement of his execution.

A first appeal for a retrial was dismissed by a court 27 years after his sentencing.

The latest retrial, which was finally approved by the court in 2023 after a second appeal was filed in 2008 by his sister, Hideko Hakamada, now 91, began in October.

Japan is the only major industrialized democracy other than the United States to retain capital punishment.

As of December, 107 prisoners were waiting for their death sentences to be carried out. The method used for execution is always hanging.

tj/rm (AFP, AP)

Graphene at 20: Here’s how this wonder material is quietly changing the world

The Conversation
September 25, 2024 

Graphene (Shutterstock)

Twenty years ago this October, two physicists at the University of Manchester, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, published a groundbreaking paper on the “electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films”. Their work described the extraordinary electronic properties of graphene, a crystalline form of carbon equivalent to a single layer of graphite, just one atom thick.

Around that time, I started my doctorate at the University of Surrey. Our team specialised in the electronic properties of carbon. Carbon nanotubes were the latest craze, which I was happily following. One day, my professor encouraged a group of us to travel to London to attend a talk by a well-known science communicator from the University of Manchester. This was Andre Geim.

We were not disappointed. He was inspiring for us fresh-faced PhD students, incorporating talk of wacky Friday afternoon experiments with levitating frogs, before getting on to atomically thin carbon. All the same, we were sceptical about this carbon concept. We couldn’t quite believe that a material effectively obtained from pencil lead with sticky tape was really what it claimed to be. But we were wrong.


The work was quickly copied and reproduced by scientists across the globe. New methods for making this material were devised. Incredible claims about its properties made it sound like something out of a Stan Lee comic. Stronger than steel, highly flexible, super-slippery and impermeable to gases. A better electronic conductor than copper and a better thermal conductor than diamond, as well as practically invisible and displaying a host of exotic quantum properties.

Graphene was hailed as a revolutionary material, promising ultra-fast electronics, supercomputers and super-strong materials. More fantastical claims have included space elevators, solar sails, artificial retinas, even invisibility cloaks.

Just six years after their initial work, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, further fuelling the enthusiasm around this wonder stuff. Since then, hundreds of thousands of academic papers have been published on graphene and related materials.
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But not everyone is on board. Skim through the comments section of any popular article on the material, and you’ll quickly find the sceptics. We have endured decades of empty promises about the real-world impact of graphene, they complain. Where are the game-changing products to enrich our lives or save the world from climate change, they ask.

So has graphene been a resounding success or a damp squib? As is so often the case, the reality is somewhere in between.
Graphene’s ups and downs


In terms of public perception, it’s fair to say that graphene has been held to an impossible standard. The popular media can certainly exaggerate science stories for clicks, but academics – including myself – are not immune from over-egging or speculating about their pet projects either. I’d argue this can even be useful, helping to drive new technologies forward. Equally, though, there can be a backlash when progress looks disappointing.

Having said that, disruptive technologies such as cars, television or plastic all required decades of development. Graphene is still a newcomer in the grand scheme of things, so it’s far too early to reach any conclusions about its impact.


What has quietly occurred is a steady integration of graphene into numerous practical applications. Much of this is thanks to the Graphene Flagship, a major European research initiative coordinated by Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. This aims to bring graphene and related materials from academic research to real-world commercial applications, and more than 90 products have been developed over the past decade as a result.

These include blended plastics for high-performance sports equipment, more durable racing tires for bicycles, motorcycle helmets that better distribute impact forces, thermally conductive coatings for motorcycle components, and lubricants for reducing friction and wear between mechanical parts.


Safer motorbike helmets are just one of many ways in which graphene is coming to market. n_defender

Graphene is finding its way into batteries and supercapacitors, enabling faster charging times and longer life spans. Conductive graphene inks are now used to manufacture sensors, wireless tracking tags, heating elements, and electromagnetic shielding for protecting sensitive electronics. Graphene is even used in headphones to improve the sound quality, and as a more efficient means of transmitting heat in air-conditioning units.

Graphene oxide products are being used for desalination, wastewater treatment and purification of drinking water. Meanwhile, a range of graphene materials can be bought off the shelf for use in countless other products, and major corporations including SpaceX, Tesla, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Apple are all rumoured or known to be using them to develop new products.

From promise to practicality

The impact of graphene on materials science is undeniable. The impact on consumer products is tangible, but not as visible. Once a material is embedded in a working product, there is little need to keep mentioning it, and proprietary concerns can make companies reluctant to get into details in any case. Consumers can therefore be blissfully unaware that their car, mobile phone, or golf club contains graphene, and most probably don’t care, as long as it works.

As production methods improve and costs decrease, we can expect graphene to become ever more widely adopted. Economies of scale will make it more accessible, and the range of applications is likely to continue to expand.

Personally, after two decades, I still get excited when I try it out for something new in the lab. While I may be guilty of having contributed to the initial hype, I remain optimistic about graphene’s potential. I’m still waiting for my ride on a space elevator, but in the meantime, I’ll take comfort in the fact that graphene is already helping to shape a better future – quietly and steadily.

Stephen Lyth, Strathclyde Chancellor's Fellow, Chemical and Process Engineering, University of Strathclyde

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.