Wednesday, September 27, 2006

The Tories Acid Rain Solution

“The Harper government will focus its environmental policy on fighting smog and improving air quality, with less emphasis on reducing greenhouse gases – largely carbon emissions – that are at the heart of the Kyoto accord,” the Globe wrote in a front page story last Friday.

Clean air is not the same as greenhouse gases. Typical Tories stuck in the past, their made in Canada solution was made by Brian Mulroney, twenty years ago. Clean Air is Acid Rain reduction. But being Conservatives they of course live in the past.

Environment Canada is set to spend 10 times more on improving air quality than on reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next three years, according to figures released yesterday.The department made its spending plans known yesterday in its annual report to Parliament on plans and priorities, otherwise known as its estimates.The department said it plans to spend $687-million over the next three years to protect Canadians and the environment "from the effects of pollution and waste."This compares with $61.3-million to be spent on greenhouse gas reductions. Ministry to focus on smog control

I guess they got the message after Mulroney got the Green Politician award last spring from none other than the current head of the Green party and the Environmental community. So I guess someone should tell the Harpocrites you can't get the award for doing the same thing a second time.

I understand that they have sent this leaked report back for reconsideration by cabinet. Opps. Maybe they should wait for the reccomedations of the Auditor Generals department to be released tomorrow. There is a Made in Canada plan.

Apparently though they have no intentions of consulting anybody but the very best experts in the field of Green House Gas Emissions in Canada.

Canadian Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said today in an interview that talks with energy companies in advance of the new environmental strategy's release ``are going very well.'' Lunn, 49, also said industry seems ``very receptive'' to helping cut emissions by investing more in cleaner technology.

Lunn himself courts the nutbars that deny climate change. You know the Conservatives are like Fox news fair and balanced. There are after all two sides to a story. Thats why we teach flat earth theory in science class. But this guy is also a lobbyist for the Calgary Petro Industry. The folks that approve all Tory environment policies.


Federal Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn is distancing himself and his government from a Conservative party gathering in Victoria today featuring a controversial scientist who dismisses warnings about the dangers of climate change.

Retired climatologist Tim Ball, sponsored by the Calgary-based Friends of Science group that is partly funded by the energy industry, travels the country arguing that global warming presents no threat and could even be good for Canada.

“Global warming? Let’s hope so,” Ball wrote in an essay published in June.

The breakfast speech was organized by Conservative electoral district associations in Victoria, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, and Lunn’s Saanich-Gulf Islands riding.

Ball “brings a wealth of knowledge and experience on this issue,” states the notice inviting Tories in the three ridings to the event.

“The federal Conservative government is scheduled to reveal its Environmental Policy in September. This is an opportune time to hear from Dr. Ball, who disputes many of the findings of scientists and environmentalists as to the issues surrounding global warming.”


Sticking to that plan ain't going to win them any new support. Which is the only reason they are focusing on the environment at all.

A polling firm recruited by the federal government is advising Prime Minister Stephen Harper that he can use a major environmental policy announcement in the coming weeks as a "wedge issue" to sway voter opinion in the next election.

But nothing has really changed since last summer. Conservatives' climate-change vision a foggy one

See

Kyoto


Ambrose


industrial ecology

Social Ecology.


Green Capitalism

Environment

Green Plan

Oil


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The New Conservative Racism

The right in Canada has picked up on the issue of dual citizenship. Of course with most right wing approaches to issues, it appears on the surface to seem a reasonable response to an emergining issue, in this case brought on by the crisis in Lebanon this summer.

Canadian citizenship | I'm a lumberjack, and you're not | Economist.com

But underneath is the same old vile racism and anti-immigrant chauvinism that historically dominates WASP/WASCatholic conservative mentality.

In Ottawa, faith makes a leap to the right


Likewise, for the first time ever in English-speaking Canada, Catholics who attended church voted for Conservatives more than Liberals. And in Quebec, the Liberal vote dropped to 29 from 56 per cent among weekly churchgoers, far more than among the less observant.
Likewise, for the first time ever in English-speaking Canada, Catholics who attended church voted for Conservatives more than Liberals. And in Quebec, the Liberal vote dropped to 29 from 56 per cent among weekly churchgoers, far more than among the less observant.

The new right in Canada is simply the Old Right and so the issue of who is a real Canadian is the core of their values argument. The racism is alive and on the upswing in Canada

Whether it is first nations rights, or those of recent immigrants, or the sturm and drang over dual citizenship of Lebanese Canadians, look below the surface and the argument is simple, why aren't these folks white like me.

The curent attack on dual citizenship focuses on Canadians from the Middle East. In particular comments by MSM types like Andrew Coyne and Peter Worthington (an old right whingnut himself) all the way to the nutbars at the Western Slander; have focused on the dual citizenship of Lebanese Canadians and of Mahar Arar, a Syrian Canadian.

Monday, September 25, 2006
Loyalty and Country

Peter Worthington brusquely touched on what Andrew Coyne delivered with more eloquence: loyalty, what you can do for your country. This was easily the best opinion piece on the weekend, arguing that a country is not simply a dispenser of services, but a great moral project in which we are all engaged.

I would simply beseech Mr. Coyne to bring this to its logical conclusion. If we are to limit dual citizenship on the basis of rewarding loyalty to those who actively belong to our common moral project, should we not expand this to include countries that share it? What difference morally do we have with New Zealanders or Great Britons? Let's end the free ride, but let's reciprocate where it makes emminent sense to do so . The Monarchist


But what gets overlooked is dual citizenship was the basis of the British colonialization of Canada. As fellow blogger Lord Kitchners Own points out. After WWII dual citizenship was allowed for the Displaced Persons who emigrated here from war torn Europe, such as Germans, Italians and Poles.

It is also offered to those who are Chinese Canadians, who of course were not allowed to become Canadians for a long time and suffered a head tax in doing so, something the Harper government has finally apologized for.

The recent attacks on migrants and even indigenous peoples in Canada are reminicisnt of those after WWI. When waves of new non-white, read non British, Central and East Europeans migrated to Canada to open the West. This was no better reflected in the reaction of the WASP ruling class in Canada to the Winnipeg General Strike. Led by Scots and British trade unionists and socialists it was the Ukrainian immigrants that were identified as 'Enemy Aliens' and as the 'Bolshevik Threat in Canada, Revolutionaries out to overthrow society. Just as todays migrants from the Middle East are identified as 'terrorists'.

http://www.sfjff.org/sfjff18/filmmakers/images/d0721b-c-1.gif

The Canadian government responded by pressing the DOMINION POLICE, the Royal North-West Mounted Police, military intelligence and even private detective agencies such as Pinkerton's, into action against potential saboteurs. After 1917, and the successful Bolshevik revolution in Russia, attention turned to the threat posed by radical political movements in Canada.

Towards war's end, in September 1918, a fledgling Canadian intelligence system survived inevitable pressures for demobilization and a return to peacetime practices. Within the army, a skeletal military intelligence directorate kept in touch with world events through its access to a regular flow of information from London. The newly created ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE (RCMP) turned some of its attention to monitoring domestic political radicalism. The achievement of continuity, linking the activities of WWI with the post-1918 era, provided the framework for future growth in the Canadian intelligence system. But it would take the massive demands placed upon the military and society in WWII before a more fully fledged intelligence community would emerge. Intelligence and Espionage-TCE

Between the two World Wars came the Great Depression, the coincidence of the market crash of 1929 and the drought that his the Prairie Basin in Canada and the United States. On the left this brought about the popularity of workers governments, mainly associated with the CCF, and the worker farmer alliance of the Commmunist Party. On the Right fascism raised its ugly prescence in Quebec, Ontario and in Alberta.

In Alberta the KKK focused on Catholics and French language being imposed on us. Ironic since it was the Metis and Indian rebellion of Riel and Dumont that opened up the West. And gave us our taste for anti-colonial struggle against the Federal state.

That anti-Catholicism remained an undercurrent in the post war revival of the right. In particular those in Southern Alberta, Moromons, Dutch Reformed Church, and the American diaspora. Who made an issue of hating Trudeau, and bi-lingualism and bi-culturalism in the name of a former British colonial anachronism being a Dominion. They appealed to British Colonial ideals, Anglo Saxon superiority, a single language, a single race of true Canadians.

That hatred of bi-linugalism of the Federal government carries on today in their argument against being a multicultural society. And make no mistake about it. When you read the real venemous propaganda of the racist right you see that this is good old fashioned White Wacism.


Martin Robin's Shades of Right: Nativist and Fascist Politics in Canada, 1920-1940. The Ku Klux Klan, according to Martin, offered its supporters an impressive 'galaxy of hates': Blacks, Catholics, Jews, Japanese, Chinese, and even streetwalkers; anyone and everyone could be branded an enemy, and, indeed, they are interchangeable. They are described in broadly the same terms and assigned the same nefarious intentions and deeds.... the extremist and hateful ideologies described were too close for comfort to the mainstream of Canadian politics. The majority of British Columbia's politicians shared the Ku Klux Klan's hatred of so-called Orientals and implemented a series of harsh discriminatory policies against them. Both the Progressive and Conservative parties unabashedly collaborated with the Klan throughout the 1920s, and anti-Semitism and fascism were a pervasive influence on the French-Canadian elite at the same time. Mackenzie King misread Hitler's bellicose intentions through his personal sympathy for him.Antisemitism in Canada: History and Interpretation. by Esther Delisle


Active in Montreal by 1921, the secret United States fraternity dedicated to Anglo-Saxon Protestant supremacy had established branches throughout Canada by 1925. The Klan's Canadian agenda resembled that of the American parent fraternity, but included some peculiarly Canadian elements such as an emphasis on loyalty to the British Crown, on anti-French propaganda, and on vitriolic opposition to Roman Catholicism.

According to historian Howard Palmer, much of the Klan's appeal in Alberta stemmed not just from its stand on moral issues in a time of rapidly changing moral standards, but also from the character of the provincial Klan leader, J. J. Maloney. Maloney was an Irish Catholic from Ontario. He had a somewhat chequered personal history, but was blessed with boyish good looks and charismatic charm. As a young man, Maloney briefly trained for the priesthood at a seminary in Montreal. He soon withdrew, however, complaining about the seminary's strict rules and the vow of celibacy. Fired from a lay job he subsequently acquired with the Roman Catholic Church, Maloney sued the Church for libel. When the Catholic Church counter-sued, Maloney affiliated himself with the Presbyterian Church, and mounted a vigorous anti-Catholic campaign from the pulpit. Joining the Ku Klux Klan in 1929, he moved to Edmonton, which he denounced as "The Rome of the West" because of its large French-speaking and European immigrant Catholic population. The National Association of Canada and the Ku Klux Klan

There was an obvious volatility in Alberta, and an equally obvious power vacuum, when Klan activity reached its peak in the early 1930s. Premier Brownlee seemed unable to cope with the impact of the Great Depression and the personal scandal (losing a lawsuit claiming he'd seduced a young secretary) that dogged his tenure. He resigned. The UFA then faced an election.

Maloney, Snelgrove, and their followers and sympathizers could not see or seize the opportunity. They persisted in a strategy of dividing Albertans against themselves. In so doing, they left it to a charismatic, fundamentalist preacher named William Aberhart to play the populist card and unite Albertans against real or imagined enemies on the distant horizon in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa.

Few would argue that Aberhart and Social Credit were not better for Alberta than J.J. Maloney, R.C. Snelgrove and their ilk would have been. Howard Palmer suggests that "Social Credit, by and large, had a positive impact on ethnic relations," when it first took the stage. But it is also true that Aberhart's demonstration of a successful "unite the right" strategy did not exclude people who had embraced Maloney's and Snelgrove's gospels of fear, anger, and prejudice.

Baergen points out that Alberta is the only Canadian jurisdiction ever to have accepted formal registration of the Ku Klux Klan under its Societies Act. And it did so not once, but twice; first under Brownlee's beleaguered UFA government, in 1932, and again in 1972, the year the government of Premier Peter Lougheed introduced the Individual's Rights Protection Act (IRPA), Alberta's first human rights legislation. The current government of Premier Ralph Klein replaced-critics in the Opposition and the press said, "weakened" -the IRPA with the 1996 Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act.
KKK - Heritage Community Foundation

Upholding social decency and political equality: the Lacombe Western Globe and the Ku Klux Klan, 1929-1932. (Alberta History)


WWII came and fascism went under a rock however WASP Canada interned the Japanese as they had other enemy aliens, the Chinese Head Tax was still on.

In the aftermath of WWII we had the revival of the Communist Boogy Man during the cold war. Canada embraced DP's from eastern Europe whose countries had falled to Stalin. These exiles were fervent anti-communists, as well as anti-semites.

They helped establish the World Anti-CommunistLeague which was a cabal of ex-Nazis and their followers around the world as well as virulent right wing ethnic Nationalists many from the Ukraine Their influence dominated the re-birth of the Right in North America as it embraced the Anti-Stalinism of the liberal left turning it into Anti-Communism pure and simple.

In Canada the movement against communism had its roots in both the business lobby and the new immigrants from Poland, the Ukraine and especially Hungary.

In particular the emigre population that arrived here after the failed Anti-Stalinist revolution in Hungary in 1956. 50th Anniversary Hungarian Workers Revolt

These immigrants became the backbone for the rebirth of the Right in Canada.Along with their anti-communism they expressed an anti-semitism that their country had been dominated by the Jewish Bolsheviks, a conspiracy theory that has held sway amongst the far right since the Bolshevik revolution.

The WACL would have remained a small far right group had it not been for the Cold War where its influence grew as it spread into the Anti-Fidel Cuban exile community in Florida, and then as it worked as front for CIA efforts at destabilization in Latin America, in particular the fall of Allende's Chile on 9/11/71. It's ideology is so commonplace today that it is still reflected in the historical revisionism of the mainstream right when it deals with the Cuban Revolution.

The post Reagan right also has its roots in this movement in particular those around the Christian Right in Canada and the U.S.Jew-haters and red-baiters: The Canadian League of Rights The WACL was represented in Canada by Alberta based Geza Matri and his Anti-Bolshivk League and the Edmund Burke Society. The later giving birth to the new far right movements in Canada of the last decade the Heritage Front.

An excellent resource for the interlocking conspiracies of the right, whose ideology is conspiracy theory itself, is the Anti-Fascist Archives.

Ironically of course while the current gang of rightwingers bemoans dual citizenship of some folks from the Middle East;

Tories seek new rules for dual citizenship

$85M cost of Lebanon evacuation renews longstanding debate

They conviniently overlook the group with the largest dual citizenship for fear of being labeled anti-semitic; the Jewish diaspora. But thats also because Israel is a state. A state that had the Conservatives support when it invaded Lebanon creating this crisis of emergency migration. Indeed Canadian and American Jews still traveled to Israel during the Summer War while their fellow Canadians fled Lebanon.

And to many of the Evangelical base in the right this is the prophecy of the end times. Israel and the Jewish reocuppation of the Temple in Jerusalem is crucial to their final solution; the rapture which will overcome us with the coming of their ultimate White God, Jesus, who will take the true believers to heavan leaving the rest of us to his holy destruction.

And watch as the real nutars on the right so called liberatarians who defend the rights of property and property owners, claim that Indigenous peoples should assimilate too. Without any of that unpleasant land claims business being settled.

Yep under all this phony concern for dual citizens is good old fashioned racism the construction of the perfect White Anglo Saxon Politically Correct Christian Canadian. WASP-CCC. Buzzing about spreading hate in the name of nativist nationalism. Except we are all immigrants, something they forget.


See:

Fascism

Social Credit

Racism

Lebanon

Migration


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Winning Friends

This is not way to win friends.....Quit crying, Musharraf tells Canada

"We have suffered 500 casualties," he said. "Canadians may have suffered four or five." Musharraf said any nation, such as Canada, that enters a war-torn area must be prepared to suffer casualties or get out of the operation. "You suffer two dead and you cry and shout all around the place that there are coffins," he said. "Well, we have had 500 coffins."Musharraf defends war effort, downplays Canadian losses

Yeah he can't quite get the number of Canadian dead right, first he says two then four....but that can't compare to his 500...that is after all only 100 per year....now that's worth crying about....obviously most of those died probably from accidents, and friendly fire if stats work out....

Graham condemns Musharraf's comments Well somebody had better because there was nary a peep out of the PM's office or the New Conservative Government....does that mean they agree with tough guy dictator Musharraf?

Nor is this fueding with Karzai....Canada's new friend.....

He also rejected speculation that the Taliban leader Mulla Omar was hiding in the Baluchistan regional capital of Quetta in western Pakistan and called it a ridiculous statement.He said Taliban were not operating from Pakistan, they are operating from inside Afghanistan.


What Musharraf is lying about is the relationship his government and army has in supporting the Taliban and Pashtun rebels in Baluchistan where he conviniantly assissinated their mutual enemy and greatest threat... the leader of the autonomous movement of Baluchistan.

"None of this is true and Karzai knows it," he said. "He is not oblivious to what is going on in Afghanistan. He knows that the drug trade is financing the Taliban. He knows that this is not a problem created by Pakistan. But he is turning a blind eye. He is like an ostrich with his head buried in the sand."

Blind eye? Ostrich? I think he meant bat. Oh yeah he was on John Stewarts Comedy News Show...wait he said this on CNN....guess its all reality TV to him as he does the book tour with his new biography which has been taken off the shelves for its lies. This guy just can't help lying...its cause he is a dictator you can dress him up in a business suit but he is still not a democrat.

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"What President Karzai is very cleverly hiding is the fact that all this is happening in Afghanistan, in the southern provinces of Afghanistan," Musharraf said.

Musharraf is right about one thing that this is a general Pashtun uprising. And Karzai knows it and that is why he is less emphatic about the Taliban and generalizes about terrorism. When in fact this is a general revolt against his government.

"He doesn't want to tell the world what is the facts for his own personal reasons. In the governance of Afghanistan is there a certain community which is feeling alienated and this country has 50 to 60 per cent representation of Afghanistan and that is his problem. He has to balance out and he is not being able to do that and, therefore, he is trying to hide that everything is happening in Pakistan. If you keep going wrong, I have been telling the world for three months, "we are delaying we are getting late" all of this that I've read is what is happening in Afghanistan, in all the provinces. This is a movement going on. This is a Pashtun uprising," said the General. Motormouth Mush calls Karzai ostrich

But despite that fact Musharraf regime is the one that nurtured the seperpent at its breast and still does. Karzai said: “On the remarks of my brother, President Musharraf, Afghanistan is a country that is emerging out of so many years of war and destruction and occupation by terrorism and misery that they brought to us.


Also See:

Afghanistan

War




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Tory Cuts For All

The politically correct ideology of the right is to cut government and government programs. The trade in is of course that these cuts pay for tax cuts to business. How could it be otherwise. After all the cuts were not needed since we have a $13. billion dollar surplus.

Hey someone has to pay for the Harper cuts to business taxes. Why not make it womens groups, medical marijuana research (remember the Tories don't need no stinkin research dey got dem selves a War on Drugs), non-profit public policy research groups, assorted NGO's, etc.


You know those special interests that don't reflect Severely Normal Albertans...opps I meant Canadians.

Folks that got pork like these big spenders..
Flaherty scrooge to Canada's museums

Is it a coincidence that the Creationists are on a big push agianst museums just like Real Women is attacking Status of Women, because they are part of the War on Christianity. These are after all Harpers real base.

The Harpocrites claim that these programs were a waste of money and inefficient, but the reality it is ideloglogically driven, it is conservative political correctness run amok. Liberal programs axed under Tory spending cuts

So for the $1 billion in cuts what did Joe and Jane lunchbucket Canuck get? They got cuts as a special interest group too.

But what was the rationale for chopping $93 million from programs to promote adult literacy and workplace skills as well as a youth employment program that paid wage subsidies to employers who hired young people who would not otherwise have found work? These are the very kind of government programs that are vital to help Canada's working poor attain better-paying jobs. To take nearly 10 per cent of the cuts from assistance programs in Human Resources and Skills Development — the one ministry that is supposed to help the most vulnerable members of the workforce — suggests that these Canadians are not a priority at this time for the Conservatives. Use surplus to aid the working poor


When the New Government says tax cuts, just like the old government, they mean cuts to business taxes. The ultimate special interest group. What's good for business is good for our New government of Canada.

Our government believes that it is important that entrepreneurs like you have the opportunity to compete in a country with a supportive economic environment which rewards hard work and helps entrepreneurs get ahead. The reduction that we made this year in the small business eligibility threshold moved from $400,000—sorry, to $400,000 from $300,000. That goes to the point of wanting Canadians to reinvest in their small businesses and grow their businesses.

We’re also reducing the 12 per cent rate to 11.5 per cent in 2008 and 11 per cent in 2009. That’s the small business rate. We’ve provided the tax relief promised but not delivered, I might add, by the previous government.

We reduced the general corporate income tax rate. We eliminated the corporate surtax for all corporations. We eliminated the federal capital tax as of January 1, 2006. We are delivering results for businesses, not just good intentions. Just like you deliver results in your businesses.

So cutting taxes is one way to help Canadian businesses grow. Providing the right environment for growth is another.

You know, Canada wasn’t built by programs. Even though I’ve been in government for a while, it wasn’t built by governments either.

We must set clear and practical goals, make the right choices and work together—private sector and public sector—in a sustained and systematic way for an even better economic future. We need a competitive tax system. We need a competitive regulatory system.

Address by the Honourable Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance,
to the Ontario Convenience Stores Association Annual General Meeting





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More Dino News

Here are a couple more interesting Dino-stories in the news.

Two 'unique' dinosaurs found on Grand Staircase

Large flock of parrot-like dinosaurs uncovered

And just when you thought it was safe to practice science well there are those Creationists who still insist on the Alley Oop view of history.

Museum puts dinosaurs in Eden
Like most natural history museums, this one has exhibits showing dinosaurs roaming the Earth.Except here, the giant reptiles share the forest with Adam and Eve. That, of course, is contradicted by science, but that's the point of the $25 million Creation Museum rising fast in rural Kentucky.

Dinosaurs, Bible meet in Pensacola
Inside Dinosaur Adventure Land, a creationist theme park that sits behind a string of car dealerships on a busy commercial strip in Pensacola, a group of 50 home-schooled children romped in the muggy afternoon heat. ''Dinosaurs were big lizards who lived with Adam and Eve,'' park founder Kent Hovind told children and their parents during a presentation on dinosaurs and the book of Genesis. Hovind, an evangelist and former earth-science teacher, launched the amusement park in 2001 to promote young earth creationism - the belief that God created the Earth and all of its inhabitants in six days 6,000 years ago. Most scientists estimate that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. ''The goal is to start thousands of these,'' he said.

Don't laugh they want to build one outside of Drumheller, Alberta where the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology is. The largest display of Dino's in North America.

CBC.ca - Arts - Film - 'Heller Skelter
Although awed by the grandeur of the valley’s rolling hills, it was Drumheller’s peculiar culture that struck him as documentary material. This town of less than 6,000 is a functioning paradox: it’s home to the biggest dinosaur cemetery in the world and a hotbed for creationism. For Carriere, the presence of so many creationists in a town where you can’t drive a block without seeing a kitschy dino statue was irresistibly ironic. His new film, The Cross and Bones, is about competing pilgrimages. The film opens with shots of paleontologists arriving in the Badlands to dig for remains, while in the hills nearby, devout Christians gather to rehearse the annual Passion play (the re-enactment of Christ’s crucifixion). If that juxtaposition isn’t odd enough, Carriere introduces us to yet another local pilgrimage: the annual biker rally held in the Drumheller Valley, a scene of black leather, sun-baked skin, motorcycle stunts and loads of drinking.

And for a laugh check this out: A Creationist looks at the Royal Tyrell museum

I wonder if he used this guide book.... Royal Tyrrell Museum Guide, Revised Edition by Margaret Helder, Ph.D.

Don't visit the Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller without this indispensible guide! "Everything in the museum can be interpreted in a long age or young age context, depending on one's world view." Get the other point of view, and find out how these fossils testify to the truth of Scripture. Uniquely Canadian Creation Ressources


Who knew Hanna-Barbera got it right?!





See:

Fossils

Dinosaurs

Creationism

Evolution

Darwin


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Another myth blown

Cannibalism amongst humans is controversial as are assertions that Neandertal man was, which has also been proven untrue. For more Neandertal news see here.

It now it appears that another prehistoric cannibalism myth bites the dust.

For half a century dinosaur lovers have been fed a lie, or at least an unsupported claim. The early carnivore Coelophysis bauri was not necessarily the cannibal that museums and books have portrayed it to be, according to the first rigorous evaluation of its stomach contents. "This is a beautiful study, and it needed to be done. These specimens have been touted for decades as evidence of dinosaur cannibalism," says paleontologist Raymond Rogers of Macalester College.


See:

Fossils

Dinosaurs

Cannibalism


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Hey Cus,Good To Know Ya

Jurrasic Park may arise with a Neandertal colony instead of Dinosaurs. After all in the 19th Century we kept folks in Zoo's during the rise of European colonization of Africa. And they were human beings. These folks after all are only our cousins.

Announcing a two year Neandertal genome decoding project ...
"If Dr. Pääbo and 454 Life Sciences should succeed in reconstructing the entire Neanderthal genome, it might in theory be possible to bring the species back from extinction by inserting the Neanderthal genome into a human egg and having volunteers bear Neanderthal infants. This might be the best possible way of finding out what each Neanderthal gene does, but there would be daunting ethical problems in bringing a Neanderthal child into the world again."

How Neandertal DNA Will Shed Light on Human Genes
Neandertals, our most closely related cousins, vanished approximately 30,000 years ago, leaving only traces of their existence. Now scientists in Germany and Connecticut plan to resurrect their DNA, potentially shedding light on our own unique evolutionary path.

Also See:

454 Life Sciences' Genome Sequencer 20(TM) Wins R&D 100 Award

ScienceDaily: Neandertal Genome To Be Deciphered

Max Planck Society - Press Release Neandertal Genome to be Deciphered


But it seems that it has taken ten years to get this project off the ground

Neandertal DNA Archaeology September/October 1997
For the first time, DNA of a premodern human has been recovered. Svante Pääbo of the University of Munich and colleagues in Germany and the United States successfully extracted the DNA from a right humerus (upper arm bone) of a Neandertal. Their findings, presented in the July issue of the journal Cell, provide important information about when Neandertals and modern humans diverged from a common ancestor, the nature of interaction between Neandertals and modern humans, and the ultimate fate of the Neandertals.

Neandertal DNA sequences and the origin of modern humans.
Furthermore, the age of the common ancestor of the Neandertal and modern human mtDNAs is estimated to be four times greater than that of the common ancestor of human mtDNAs. This suggests that Neandertals went extinct without contributing mtDNA to modern humans.

Are you a Neandertal? Take the genome sequency quiz on how much you know about Neandertal DNA. The Neandertal Mystery (and human history)

With all this news about Neandertal's in 2006 it could be because this is the 150 anniversary of the first discovery of Neandertal.

The 1856 discovery of the Neandertal type specimen (Neandertal 1) in western Germany marked the beginning of human paleontology and initiated the longest-standing debate in the discipline: the role of Neandertals in human evolutionary history


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.

We may have coexisted but human Neandertal interaction appears limited to humans taking over long deserted Neandertal caves. Scientists find contention in the idea that their was social interaction and mating between us For instance a the conclusion in a 2004 Study found: No Evidence of Neandertal mtDNA Contribution to Early Modern Humans.

But that was contradicted this summer by the release of this study:

There is a little Neanderthal in a lot of us

People who have large noses, a stocky build and a beetle brow may indeed be a little Neanderthal, according to a genetic study. But the good news is that other research concludes that Neanderthals were much more like us than previously thought.

People of European descent may be five per cent Neanderthal, according to a study published in the journal PLoS Genetics, which suggests we all have a sprinkling of archaic DNA in our genes. The researchers focused on linkage "disequilibriums," or sections within genes that did not make sense if only modern human matings are considered.

"Instead of a population that left Africa 100,000 years ago and replaced all other archaic human groups, we propose that this population interacted with another population that had been in Europe for much longer, maybe 400,000 years," says Dr Vincent Plagnol, of the University of Southern California, who with Dr Jeffrey Wall analysed 135 different regions of the human genetic code. "Possible Ancestral Structure in Human Populations".

Meanwhile our cousins appear to have survived longer than once thought.Carbon dating confirms Neandertals lived longer along with modern humans than previously thought. Giving more evidence of possible interaction.

Neandertals' Last Stand Was in Gibraltar, Study Suggests
A new cave discovery suggests that Neandertals survived until at least 28,000 years ago—2,000 years longer than previously thought. The Iberian Peninsula—now home to Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar—was a final holdout for Neandertals (often spelled "Neanderthals") as modern humans spread across the rest of Europe and an ice age descended, a new study says .


The Last of the Neandertals?
The Gibraltar dates appear to represent the latest known Neandertal sighting, because there are no other accepted sites younger than 30,000 uncalibrated years ago. But the Gibraltar Neandertals were not entirely alone: Although there are very few modern human sites in southern Spain or Portugal at that time, one site about 100 kilometers east at Bajondillo, Spain, has been dated to about 32,000 uncalibrated years ago. The team concludes that Neandertals did not rapidly disappear from the area as moderns advanced across Europe but co-existed with them by taking refuge at Gibraltar and other southern sites over thousands of years. "While pioneer modern humans were staking tenuous footholds" in the region, the last Neandertals "were hanging on," Finlayson says. He points out that Gibraltar was surrounded by coastal wetlands and woodlands and blessed with mild temperatures around this time, making the peninsula an excellent refuge from competition with the moderns.

But they were not wiped out by modern humans. No siree....wait for it.....Climate Change may have had something to do with it.

Neanderthals' 'last rock refuge

Chris Stringer thinks the site provides an important insight into the reasons for Neanderthal extinction.

"For years, many of us have tended to look for one single reason why Neanderthals died out - that we interbred with them, or out-competed them, or killed them off. The Gibraltar evidence fits into a picture that has been emerging in recent years of quite a complex event," he explained.

"The idea of modern humans coming in and Neanderthals dying out simply didn't happen."

One view of Neanderthal extinction has them rapidly vanishing as modern humans swept across Europe. Modern man is a suspect, but the new evidence supports an important role for climate change.

Televisual representation of a Neanderthal (BBC)
In the end, rapid climate change may have doomed the species
The Neanderthals survived in local pockets during previous Ice Ages, bouncing back when conditions improved. But the last one appears to have been characterised by several rapid and severe changes in climate which hit a peak 30,000 years ago.

These were probably more dramatic in more northerly parts of Europe, where they may have upset the balance between Neanderthals and modern humans, allowing moderns to gain the upper hand.









Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.
PNAS, January 17, 2006; 103(3): 553 - 557.
T. Higham, C. B. Ramsey, I. Karavanic, F. H. Smith, and E. Trinkaus
Revised direct radiocarbon dating of the Vindija G1 Upper Paleolithic Neandertals



And Neandertals may be the evolutionary norm and modern humans the deviant, coincidental with Stephen J. Goulds theory of evolution being a truncated bush rather than a tree.


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Modern Humans, not Neandertals, may be evolution's "odd man out"

New research published in the August, 2006 journal Current Anthropology by Neandertal and early modern human expert, Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, suggests that rather than the standard straight line from chimps to early humans to us with Neandertals off on a side graph, it's equally valid, perhaps more valid based on the fossil record, that the line should extend from the common ancestor to the Neandertals, and Modern Humans should be the branch off that. "I wanted to see to what extent Neandertals are derived, that is distinct, from the ancestral form. I also wanted to see the extent to which modern humans are derived relative to the ancestral form," Trinkaus says. "What I came up with is that modern humans have about twice as many uniquely derived traits than do the Neandertals. "In the broader sweep of human evolution," says Trinkaus, "the more unusual group is not Neandertals, whom we tend to look at as strange, weird and unusual, but it's us - Modern Humans."

The most unusual characteristics throughout human anatomy occur in Modern Humans (right), argues Trinkaus, not in Neadertals (left).
The most unusual characteristics throughout human anatomy occur in Modern Humans (right), argues Trinkaus, not in Neadertals (left).

Trinkaus first asserted this theory three years ago.



And Neandertals were more advanced than once thought.

How modern were European Neanderthals?

Neandertals were much more like modern humans than had been previously thought, according to a re-examination of finds from one of the most famous palaeolithic sites in Europe by Bristol University archaeologist, Professor Joao Zilhao, and his French colleagues.

Professor Zilhao has been able to show that sophisticated artefacts such as decorated bone points and personal ornaments found in the Châtelperronian culture of France and Spain were genuinely associated with Neandertals around 44,000 years ago, rather than acquired from modern humans who might have been living nearby. His findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) USA.

Now archaeologists can show that the Grotte des Fées stratigraphic pattern is illusory because the supposedly Neandertal levels overlying those belonging to the modern human Aurignacian culture are in fact backdirt from nineteenth-century fossil hunting. According to Professor Zilhao and his team, this adds to the evidence from other sites in the region that the Neandertals already had the capacity for symbolic thinking before the arrival of the modern humans into western Europe, which has been radiocarbon dated to around 40,000 years ago.

Professor Zilhao said: "This discovery, along with research on the rock strata at other cave sites, has huge implications for how we view the European Neandertals and, more widely, human evolution. The differences between Neandertals and modern humans may be much less than had been previously thought, suggesting that human cognition and symbolic thinking may date back to before the two sub-species split around 400,000 years ago."

New Neandertal remains from Cova Negra (Valencia, Spain).

The recognition of diagnostic Neandertal features in several of the specimens, as well as their western European context and late Pleistocene age, suggests that all the human remains from Cova Negra represent Neandertals. The archaeological evidence from Cova Negra indicates sporadic, short-term occupations of the site, suggesting a high degree of mobility among Neandertals.

Evidence shows they were tool makers who had developed a flint based tool manufacturing base. Anghilak Cave: Documenting Neandertal Occupation at the Periphery thus proving the importance labour in the transition of becoming human.

And evidence shows that Neandertals were practicing mutual aid and solidarity.

Does Wounded Skull Hint at Neandertal Nursing?
European researchers have investigated a 36,000-year-old case of assault and battery. Their conclusion: the victim, a Neandertal, possibly male, received a violent blow to the head. Presumably he survived, however, because somebody nursed him back to health.

Neandertal Humans Developed Social Skills
"This is the oldest example of someone surviving for some period of time without an effective set of choppers," Trinkaus said. "There had to have been extensive preparation of food a combination of cutting and cooking before this person could eat. They had good cutting tools and controlled fire, but the absence of real hearths and tools that would have done more than dice the food suggests that this individual was being given softer food items by other members of the social group

A good site dealing with Neandertals and Evolution/Creationism is Fossil Hominids. Because the evidence show that Neandertals were not what Creationists claim they are;

They were people, forced to live in harsh conditions, after the dispersal of humanity at Babel, during the great post-Flood Ice Age.


Photo: Front and side view of Neandertal skeleton reconstruction
Scientists made castings from two Neandertal specimens to reconstruct the first-ever fully articulated Neandertal skeleton, seen above in frontal and side views.
National Geographic News March 10, 2005

For a virtual tour on Neandertals go to: Prehistoric Cultures -- Universitiy of Minnesota Duluth They prove that Jocks are not an evolutionary branch of Neandertals.

Old Stone Age is a website dedicated to ongoing Neandertal digs in Europe.

Blogs to keep you uptodate on the lastest Neandertal news;

John Hawks Anthropology Weblog paleoanthropology, genetics, and evolution

General Evo News

Technocrati Links for Neandertal


And about that spelling thing.....Robert J. Sawyer: Neanderthal or Neandertal

And you too can be a Neandertal.

http://armada-digital.iespana.es/neandertal_banner.gif

See:

Anthropology

Evolution

Darwin

Primitive Man




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