Pyramid in Ukraine

Bronze Age pyramid found in Ukraine

The discovery of a Bronze age pyramid in the Ukraine, pre-dating Egyptian pyramids and those of South America gives credibility to the assertion of a young amatuer pyramidologist that there may be a pyramid in Bosnia.

Indiana Jones of the Balkans and the mystery of a hidden pyramid ...


With this latest find it appears that pyramid culture, like monument builders was a distinct development in human civilization. Challening two assumptions, first that people in ancient Europe were primitive and underdeveloped and second that they were nomadic and war like. See Kurgan Peoples.

In fact this discovery also gives greater credence to the controversial theories of archaeologist Maria Gimbutas who claimed that the earliest Indo-Europeans came from the Ukraine. Ukrainian scholars have claimed that a distinct Kievan (the Rus) culture existed early than it is credited with by Western scholars.

Indo-European Origins in Southeast Europe

Followed by expansion into India as well as Persia.

If this pyramid is older than those found in Egypt then this discovery may indicate that Indo-Europeans arrived in the Nile region coincidental with similar movements of Semitic and African peoples at the time.

3rd millennium BC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Archaeologists in Ukraine have unearthed the remains of an ancient pyramidal structure that pre-dates those in Egypt by at least 300 years. The stone foundations of the structure, which probably resembled Aztec and Mayan ziggurats in South America, were discovered near the eastern city of Lugansk.

It is thought they were laid about five millennia ago during the early Bronze Age by animists who worshipped a sun god. The “pyramid” is in fact a complex of temples and sacrificial altars topping a sculpted hillside with steps on its sides.

Viktor Klochko, head of the excavation, said the discovery was of international significance. “This is the first monument of its age and kind found in eastern Europe,” he told the Guardian. “It changes our whole conception of the social structure and the level of development of the cattle breeders and farmers who were the direct ancestors of most European peoples.”

SEE:

The Monument Builders

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Canada and NAM

Canada should withdraw from NATO, a position that has been longstanding in the NDP. Until Jack Layton buried it changing party policy on the fly in the 2004 election claiming that the NDP now supports NATO. Now the chickens come home to roost over Afghanistan.

We should also withdraw from NORAD which is fast becoming an excuse for BMD and the weaponization of space. It was also a colossal failure during 9/11 because it is under American command.

Instead we should take the Third Way and join the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Which met in Cuba this weekend.

Representatives of regional groups advocate revitalizing the NAM

An old bulwark against both US and Soviet Imperialism, Canada's involvement would go along way to further legitimizing NAM and give it the Social Democratic Internationalist/Multilaterialst voice it needs. This could only be done by an NDP government. NAM is a legitimate international alliance recognized by the UN. And our historic recognition of Cuba shows that a Third Way was and is possible.
At the very least we sahould attend NAM conferences as an observer.

Cuba has scored international notice by hosting the NAM conference.

This week, Cuba used the mystery surrounding Fidel Castro's health to attract attention to the Nonaligned Movement summit in Havana.

With the help of ally Hugo Chavez, the country kicked-off an effort to revitalize the 116-member NAM organization and transform it into a force countering U.S. predominance in the world.

Despite the usual American jingoist reporting on the conference as being a rogues gallery of Americas enemies, that is far from what NAM was and is historically. It acted as a third way between competing Imperialisms during the Cold War. And today its revival will insure that the US. cannot act as the sole Imperialist superpower.

Cuban President Fidel Castro, right, met United Nations Secretary General Koffi Annan in a Havana hospital room on Thursday. (Juventud Rebeld/Associated Press)

Nonaligned Movement supports Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia

The 92-page declaration also broadly condemned terrorism, with exceptions and asserted the right of all countries – Cuba and Venezuela were mentioned – to determine their own form of government.

And while declaring democracy to be a universal value, the movement said no one country or region should define it for the whole world. The leaders mentioned Venezuela and Cuba in particular as they asserted the right of all countries to determine their own form of government. The statements, many of which contain veiled criticisms of the U.S., were to be approved by unanimous consent after another round of speeches Saturday night by leaders of the Nonaligned Movement.

“No one in the Nonaligned Movement thinks that the United States is responsible for all the problems, but many think that it is for some,”

Raul joined numerous U.S. foes who said a bellicose America had made the world more dangerous.

“The United States spends one billion dollars a year in weapons and soldiers,” he said. “To think that a social and economic order that has proven unsustainable could be maintained by force is simply an absurd idea.”

Many demanded that the United Nations take action against U.S. veto power in the security council. “The U.S. is turning the security council into a base for imposing its politics,” Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad complained. “Why should people live under the nuclear threat of the U.S.?”

The document supports Iran's position while encouraging Iran to continue cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency. North Korea Parliament leader Kim Yong Nam claimed his communist nation “would not need even a single nuclear weapon if there no longer existed
U.S. threat,” and said U.S. financial sanctions have “driven the situation into an unpredictable phase.”

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed that the security council must be more responsive to less powerful countries. “The Security Council must reform, for the sake of the developing world, and for the sake of the United Nations itself,'' Annan told the Nonaligned leaders. “The perception of a narrow power-base risks leading to an erosion of the U.N.'s authority and legitimacy, even, some would argue, its neutrality and independence. I have in the past described this as a democracy deficit.”

The Nonaligned Movement was formed in 1961 to establish a neutral third path in a world divided by the United States and the Soviet Union. Cuba last hosted the group in Havana 27 years ago.

The world has changed dramatically since then, but Annan said its collective mission is more relevant than ever: promoting democracy, protecting human rights and developing civil societies. Many leaders said their group will be stronger with Fidel Castro as the movement's president, but it's unclear whether the 80-year-old Castro will recover enough from intestinal surgery to guide the group for the next three years until Egypt takes over.

SEE:

NATO

NDP

Cuba

Latin America

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How Long?

NATO faces five-year effort to pacify Afghanistan Let's see five plus 2006 equals 2011. Not 2009 as the Conservative government would have us believe. Just like the latest claims of victory over the Taliban are exaggerated....NATO hails Afghan offensive as success .....they have withdrawn back across the border into the safety of Pakistan. Gone but not defeated. More lies our government is telling us.

Taliban vow to retake Panjwai redoubt

The Taliban fighter who passed through Kandahar city this weekend seemed remarkably calm and happy, considering the horrors he has seen in the past two weeks.

The 37-year-old watched friends torn apart by bombs and shredded by gunfire. More agonizingly for a proud warrior, he saw foreign soldiers seize control of the farmland where he grew up. Hundreds of insurgents had dug trenches to defend Panjwai District, but they ran away when confronted with an onslaught of air power and a grinding advance by the Canadians and their allies, who declared victory in the battle yesterday.

"The Taliban will continue their fight for Panjwai," the fighter said.

Also See:

Afghanistan

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When Is Sorry Not Sorry

When you don't apologise for what you said but for the reacton to what you said.

Pope 'deeply sorry' at backlash on comments

And we are still waiting for him to apologize for his attacks on secular, humanist, pluralistic, democratic society. And for all the martyrs the Catholic Church created who fought for this society.Because the Vatican has never apologized for its attack on rationalism or science. Nor has it ceased to attack reason and science.

Remember Giordano Bruno died for you.

"The universe comprises all being in a totality; for nothing that exists is outside or beyond infinite being, as the latter has no outside or beyond." Giordano Bruno, On the Cause, Principle, and Unity (fifth dialogue).

Giordano Bruno can, without much doubt, be referred to as the martyr of Freethought.

Giordano Bruno: The Forgotten Philosopher
For six years, between 1593 and 1600 he lay in a Papal prison. Was he forgotten, tortured? Whatever historical records there are never have been published by those authorities who have them. In the year 1600 a German scholar Schoppius happened to be in Rome and wrote about Bruno, who was interrogated several times by the Holy Office and convicted by the chief theologians. At one time he obtained forty days to consider his position; by and by he promised to recant, then renewed his "follies." Then he got another forty days for deliberation but did nothing but baffle the pope and the Inquisition. After two years in the custody of the Inquisitor he was taken on February ninth to the palace of the Grand Inquisitor to hear his sentence on bended knee, before the expert assessors and the Governor of the City.

Bruno answered the sentence of death by fire with the threatening: "Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it." He was given eight more clays to see whether he would repent. But it was no use. He was taken to the stake and as he was dying a crucifix was presented to him, but he pushed it away with fierce scorn.

Giordano Bruno and the Infinite Universe

Giordano Bruno the Nolan was an excommunicated Dominican friar who had developed an art, science and philosophy which was a Hermetic interpretation of Copernicus and Lucretius. Francis A. Yates, a primary interpreter of Bruno for our age, has written of him, The lunatic, the lover, and the poet were never all of imagination so compact as in Giordano Bruno. His life and stand against the mediocrity of papal hierarchy and monastic privilege of his times is the essence of the artist/rebel/poet which we are so familiar with now.

Also See:

Pope

Catholic Church

Abortion

Same Sex Marriage

Gnostic

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Our Own Bush

While George Bush attempts to justify secret jails, rendition, and 'nuanced' definitions of torture in the name of Freedom Fries, Democracy Chips and the war on terror, nary a word is said in Canada about this same issue by the Liberal Leadership Candidates.

Nope not a word. And yet it was under the Liberals that this happened..... Arar: Still under scrutiny four years after ordeal and this........Canada: A torturer's apprentice?......and this....Khadr Canada's Shame

And the Liberals have a Leadership candidate who not only supports the right to use torture but uses a nuanced defense of torture in the name of democracy, freedom, and the American way. And his name is Ignatieff.

Evil under Interrogation: Is Torture ever Permissible?
by Michael Ignatieff
May 15, 2004
Reprinted from the Financial Times

And he was still advocating for 'nuanced' Torture this spring after throwing his hat in the Liberal Leadership ring.

Prospect April 2006 | 121 » Essays » If torture works...
The debate over torture is not as simple as it seems. Those of us who oppose torture under any circumstances should admit that ours is an unpopular policy that may make us more vulnerable to terrorism
Michael Ignatieff


Says one right wing blogger in the U.S. of this particular article by Ignatieff.....
I had been meaning to link to this article by Michael Ignatieff in the April 2006 issue of Prospect magazine, on torture. (I am particularly interested in his quote from Ken Roth, in which Ken says that "vigorous" questioning of torture suspects is okay, but then, so far as I can tell, regards anything that goes beyond what the Geneva Conventions mandate for full blown, acknowledged POWs under Geneva III to be out of bounds, even for unprivileged combatants.) I think this is a quite brave and quite persuasive argument by Michael - this is a case in which Michael's agoniste method of moral philosophy performs impressively, and avoids the problem that Mark Steyn lampooned in an article on Ignatieff a few months ago in Maclean's, the problem of Hamletting.

And nary a word about it from any of his rivals. Because it was under the Liberal government that Canadian citizens were sent to Syria to be tortured under the illegal CIA rendition progam. And while his opponents have challenged him on Iraq and Afghanistan they have failed to challenge him on this key question.

The Ethics of Torture

A more philosophically complicated route to much the same conclusion is taken by Harvard's Michael Ignatieff in a new book, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror. Ignatieff hedges his answer: He's against torture but in favor of "coercive interrogations.'' Our counter-terrorist actions should be openly debated and subject to review by all three branches of the federal government, he argues, conjuring up, in my mind, congressional debates and court decisions about whether it's OK to hack off a prisoner's finger but not his whole hand.

But the point is a serious one. The ultimate evil, Ignatieff says, would be for Americans to become so frightened that we demand a virtual police state to protect us. By comparison, giving up some civil liberties — for ourselves and our prisoners — is the lesser and necessary evil.

I think he and I would agree that the hypothetical situation does focus on one important point. Requiring presidential approval for physical abuse of a prisoner would, whatever the president decided, be a major improvement over the present situation, in which an attitude gets set at the top and just trickles down to the people at the action level, leaving the president and other big-wigs free to deny any responsibility.

Do you sir support the continued use of torture of Canadian citizens.
Yes or No.

But of coures we all know the anwser, he is a true Liberal.....

Ignatieff ducks debate with critics in torture row

So I must ask. If elected leader of the Liberals whom will he jail and torture?

Exporting Democracy, Revising Torture: The Complex Missions of Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff: Michael Ignatieff, who calls himself a liberal and a human rights campalgner, is a wolf in sheep's clothing

PMag v21n3p06 -- The Terrorized Worlds of Jack and Michael
Andres Kahar begins with a question: What do Jack Bauer, protagonist of TV's 24, and Michael Ignatieff, protagonist of reality's Harvard University, have in common? That question leads us into very dark subject matter.

FRIDE - Exporting Democracy, Revising Torture: The Complex Missions of Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff has been useful to the US government as it has tried to promote democracy in the middle east. He brings to this unofficial job a special, double-edged approach: he provides conservative arguments to the liberal audience and liberal alibis to the conservatives

If you scratch a Liberal you find an authoritarian as nasty as any Tory. One who would impose a police state on Canadians if they deemed it necessary. As has happened in the past. By the very Liberal Icon whom Ignatieff is seen as reincarnating.

Trudeau: Yes, well there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed. But it is more important to keep law and order in the society than to worry about weak-kneed people who don't like the looks of—

CBC reporter Tim Ralfe (interrupting): At any cost? How far would you go with that? How far would you extend that

Trudeau: Well, just watch me.

Finally one should ask the Man Who Would Be PM where does he really feel at home.....

Legal Affairs
March April 2005

America the Mercurial

A new theory predicts when countries will honor or renege on their international obligations. Guess who doesn't fit the model.

By Michael Ignatieff

Hathaway is mistaken in assuming that domestic constituencies in all democracies will push their governments toward complying with international treaties. This may be the case in Canada and Western Europe, but it is not the case here at home. Uniquely among Western nations, the United States has an entrenched domestic constituency that actively opposes the loss of power it equates with international law. This constituency first emerged after 1945 among the Senate's defenders of segregation, when Southern Democrats opposed ratifying human rights treaties because they would put Jim Crow in the international dock. In deference to this lobby, the United States effectively withdrew from international human rights from the period of the Eisenhower presidency to the Carter Administration. In addition to the segregationists, another group opposed the Roosevelt Administration's liberal multilateralism on the grounds that the U.N. and the Security Council would step on the toes of U.S. sovereignty.

Also See

Liberal Leadership Race

CIA



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The Spectre of Charles Whitman

As I wrote on the case of the murderous teenage couple in Medicine Hat earlier this year, who paralled the Charles Starkweather murders almost fifty years before there is an earlier cultural archtype for the campus shooter in the Charles Whitman case.

In fact the Whitman shooting at the University of Texas Library Tower in the summer of 1966 is the archtype of the phenomena of the random mass killer in American society. Before Ecole Poytechnique, Columbine or Dawson College there was Whitman, the Texas Tower sniper.

The creation of increased police power and gun control that resulted from this first incident of mass murder did nothing to prevent later incidences on campuses and schools across North America. Nor can policing, since it is always after the fact.

Charles Whitman's shootings were considered the impetus for establishing SWAT teams and other task forces to deal with situations beyond normal police procedures. It also led President Lyndon B. Johnson to call for stricter gun control policies

He too was a classic case of the Little Man suffering from the emotional plague. A plague that is spreading in our society in quantum leaps. Despite being found to have had a tumour, Whitmans actions were predetermined by his character. It is the authoritarian character development that is an interaction of society and the individual that is at the core of the creation of this aberrant behaviour. Just as the increase in serial sex murders occured after Jack the Ripper

Charles Whitman: The Texas Tower Sniper

Charlie was admitted to the University of Texas in Austin on September 15, 1961. After years of rigid discipline at home and regimented life in the Marines, he was suddenly free to use his time as he wished. Almost immediately he began to get into trouble. He and some friends were arrested for poaching deer. He accumulated gambling debts and refused to pay them, angering some dangerous characters in the process. His grades were unimpressive. He did manage some improvement after he married his girlfriend, Kathy Leissner, in August, 1962, but the Marine Corps was unforgiving of his previous behavior. His scholarship was withdrawn and he returned to active duty in February, 1963.

He was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. After a year and a half of freedom, he found the discipline and structure of military life oppressive. His wife was back in Texas finishing her degree and he was lonely. He tried to recapture his scholarship but failed, and was informed that the time he’d spent in Austin did not count as active duty enlistment. He resented the Marine Corps and it showed in his behavior. In November 1963, he was court-martialed for gambling, usury and unauthorized possession of a non-military pistol.

It is not that he, or Starkweather for that matter, are role models, they are not well remembered until events happen to remind us of them. It is that they are personality types, whose existence is increasing in society. It was forty years ago when Whitman climbed the Texas Tower and began shooting. America was at war in Vietnam but its prescence was not yet covered on nightly TV.

Today we are again at war and we are its victims as much as those abroad where the troops fight. It is incidents like Columbine and Dawson, just as it was the Texas Tower shooting that brings the war home.


Also See:

Gill

Medicine Hat



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Gill In the Armed Forces

The Dawson College killer had a brief stint in the Canadian Armed Forces. Showing again the authoritarian personality that would be evoked this week in Montreal.

Radio-Canada reported that Gill wanted to join the Canadian Forces to follow in the military footsteps of his family in India. The military confirmed that he took a leadership course in 1999 at an army base in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, east of Montreal, but dropped out after a month. He wasn't there long enough to get any weapons training Shooter had brief military service

The question here is if he was unacceptable to the Armed Forces why was he later allowed to buy guns through a gun club.

Of course his conflict with authority afirms the fact that he was suffering from what Wilhelm Reich called the emotional plague. The Little Man syndrome sees ones self as conflicted wanting to be in charge but hating those in charge. Hating the world around him because he hated himself.

Listen Little Man

You are different from the really great man in only one thing: The great man knows when and in what he is a little man. The little man does not know that he is little, and he is afraid of knowing it.

For you are afraid of life, Little Man, deadly afraid. You will murder it in the belief of doing it for the sake of "socialism," or "the state," or "national honor," or "the glory of God."

I recognized the deadly fear of the living in you, a fear which always makes you set out correctly and end wrongly. You had the happiness of humanity in your hands, and you have gambled it away.

You yourself create all your misery, hour after hour, day after day. You think the goal justifies the means. You are wrong: The goal is in the path on which you arrive at it. Every step of today is your life of tomorrow. You stand on your head and you believe yourself dancing into the realm of freedom.

You could have long since become the master of your existence, if only your thinking were in the direction of truth. You are cowardly in your thinking, Little Man, because real thinking is accompanied by bodily feelings, and you are afraid of your body. Many great men have told you: Go back to your origin - listen to your inner voice - follow your true feelings - cherish love.

Also See:

Gill


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A Replacement For Ambrose

Our MIA Minister of the Environment Rona Ambrose, who by the delightful negligence she has shown, now faces law suits. She who tells us its ok if we are losing endangered species. Who creates a Green Plan in consultation with her allies in the Alberta Oil business.Who faces a private members resolution to remove her from the job.

She could easily be replaced. By someone who actually takes the environment seriously, who has a plan and who recognizes the libertarian value of DIY that can mobilize a community green campaign.

Yep I am talking about Tory bad boy Garth Turner, who on his blog says this...

So I decided to drive back to pick up Dorothy and Cheka last night and get down to the lake for a last weekend before everything hits the fan in Ottawa. I need a few more hours to finish off my Citizen’s Guide to the Environment, which I hope to have posted here in the next few days, then sent around to all the homes in the riding. The older I get it seems the more I worry about the damage we are doing to this world, and I’m committed to trying to get people to change a few daily habits.

The This-is-not-Kyoto Green Plan 2 is scheduled to be released in the next few weeks, and I’m looking forward to a bold vision that can last a generation and erase a decade of environmental irresponsibility. But a national strategy of clean air and conservation is just one aspect of a better world. My neighbour Allan going down the beach with shopping bags last night is another. He went and cleaned up the incredible pile of garbage left by mush-for-brains teenagers who held a drinking party about a kilometer from our door. Nobody asked him. He just loves this place. It loves him.

It's the stuff like this this that makes one say yeah Garth you're da man.


Also See

Kyoto

Ambrose

A Critique of Kyoto Capitalism Is NOT Sustainable

industrial ecology

Social Ecology.

Green Capitalism



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