Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video on the Roman empire is called Archaeology, History, Forensic science – “Gladiator Graveyard”.

By Ann Talbot:

European history in the longue durée
Europe Between the Oceans by Barry Cunliffe

9 October 2008

Barry Cunliffe, Europe Between the Oceans: Themes and Variations: 9000 BC—AD 1000, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008)

Professor Barry Cunliffe’s new book is a well-informed synthesis that is based on a lifetime’s work in European archaeology, prehistory and protohistory. It covers the period from the last glacial maximum to the first millennium—9000 BC to AD 1000. Nothing of similar scope and depth of learning has appeared since V. Gordon Childe’s Dawn of European Civilisation which now is much out of date. Cunliffe’s book, by contrast, reflects the great body of archaeological work conducted since the Second World War.

The book explores the history of Europe from its initial settlement in the wake of the retreating ice by the first hunter-gatherers, the appearance of the first farmers around 7000 BC, the emergence of metal working in the fifth millennium and the development of sophisticated Mediterranean civilisations with close links to the Middle East in the mid-third millennium. Cunliffe explains how these civilisations were replaced by more familiar societies of the classical ancient world dominated by the Greek city states, Carthage and Rome. He continues with the collapse of the Roman Empire, the development of barbarian kingdoms in the West and the formation of an Islamic Empire in much of the Mediterranean.

This is not a book that deals with specific societies, cultures, peoples, or civilisations such as the Greeks or Romans, the Celts or the Germans. Nor does it deal with individuals such as Julius Caesar or Charlemagne. But it provides the reader with the means to put more tightly focused accounts of these subjects into a wider historical frame of reference. In a period where history is often studied in the form of short, disconnected snippets, Cunliffe’s book is invaluable in providing some context for more detailed histories. The reader is given an overview of the flow of European history through an extended period of time and a wide geographical area.

This is a video of a discussion in the USA about the Clovis comet theory about the Pleistocene.

From ScienceDaily:

Egalitarian Revolution In The Pleistocene?

ScienceDaily (Oct. 6, 2008) — Although anthropologists and evolutionary biologists are still debating this question, a new study supports the view that the first egalitarian societies may have appeared tens of thousands of years before the French Revolution, Marx, and Lenin.

These societies emerged rapidly through intense power struggle and their origin had dramatic implications for humanity. In many mammals living in groups, including hyenas, meerkats, and dolphins, group members form coalitions and alliances that allow them to increase their dominance status and their access to mates and other resources. Alliances are especially common in great apes, some of whom have very intense social life, where they are constantly engaged in a political maneuvering as vividly described in Frans de Waal’s “Chimpanzee politics”.

In spite of this, the great apes’ societies are very hierarchical with each animal occupying a particular place in the existing dominance hierarchy. A major function of coalitions in apes is to maintain or change the dominance ranking. When an alpha male is well established, he usually can intimidate any hostile coalition or the entire community.

In sharp contrast, most known hunter-gatherer societies are egalitarian. Their weak leaders merely assist a consensus-seeking process when the group needs to make decisions, but otherwise all main political actors behave as equal. Some anthropologists argue that in egalitarian societies the pyramid of power is turned upside down with potential subordinates being able to express dominance over potential alpha-individuals by creating large, group-wide political alliance.

What were the reasons for such a drastic change in the group’s social organization during the origin of our own “uniquely unique” species? Some evolutionary biologists theorize that at some point in the Pleistocene, humans reached a level of ecological dominance that dramatically transformed the natural selection landscape. Instead of traditional “hostile forces of nature”, the competitive interactions among members of the same group became the most dominant evolutionary factor. According to this still controversial view, known as the “social brain” or “Machiavellian intelligence” hypothesis, more intelligent individuals were able to take advantage of other members of their group, achieve higher social status, and leave more offspring who inherited their parent’s genes for larger brain size and intelligence. As a result of this runaway process, the average brain size and intelligence were increasing across the whole human lineage.

Also increasing were the abilities to keep track of within-group social interactions, to remember friends and their allies and enemies, and to attract and use allies. At some point, physically weaker members of the group started forming successful and stable large coalitions against strong individuals who otherwise would achieve alpha-status and usurp the majority of the crucial resources. Eventually, an egalitarian society was established. Although some of its components are well supported by data, this scenario remains highly controversial. One reason is its complexity which makes it difficult to interpret the data and to intuit the consequences of interactions between multiple evolutionary, ecological, behavioral, and social factors acting simultaneously. It is also tricky to evaluate relevant time-scales and figure out possible evolutionary dynamics.

A new article in PLoS One makes steps towards answering these challenges. The paper is co-authored by Sergey Gavrilets, a theoretical evolutionary biologist, and two computer scientists, Edgar Duenez-Guzman and Michael Vose, all from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

The researchers built a complex mathematical model describing the process of alliance formation which they then studied using analytical methods and large-scale numerical simulations. The model focuses on a group of individuals who vary strongly in their fighting abilities. If all conflicts were exclusively between pairs of individuals, a hierarchy would emerge with a few strongest individuals getting most of the resource. However, there is also a tendency (very small initially) for individuals to interfere in an ongoing dyadic conflict thus biasing its outcome one way or another. Positive outcomes of such interferences increase the affinities between individuals while negative outcomes decrease them. Naturally, larger coalitions have higher probability of winning a conflict.

Gavrilets and colleagues identified conditions under which alliances can emerge in the group: increasing group size, growing awareness of ongoing conflicts, better abilities in attracting allies and building complex coalitions, and better memories of past events.

Most interestingly, the model shows that the shift from a group with no alliances to one or more alliances typically occurs suddenly, within several generations, in a phase-transition like fashion. Even more surprisingly, under certain conditions (which include some cultural inheritance of social networks) a single alliance comprising all members of the group can emerge in which resources are divided evenly. That is, the competition among non-equal individuals can paradoxically result in their eventual equality.

Gavrilets and colleagues argue that such an “egalitarian revolution” could also follow a change in the mating system that would increase father-son social bonds or an increase in fidelity of cultural inheritance of social networks. Interestingly, the fact that mother-daughter social bonds are often very strong in apes suggests (everything else being the same) that females could more easily achieve egalitarian societies.

The model also highlights the importance of the presence of outsiders (or “scapegoats”) for stability of small alliances. The researchers suggest that the establishment of a stable group-wide egalitarian alliance should create conditions promoting the origin of conscience, moralistic aggression, altruism, and other cultural norms favoring group interests over those of individuals. Increasing within-group cohesion should also promote the group efficiency in between-group conflicts and intensify cultural group selection.

“Our language probably emerged to simplify the formation and improve the efficiency of coalitions and alliances,” says Gavrilets. The scientists caution that one should be careful in applying their model to contemporary humans (whether members of modern societies or hunter-gathers). In contemporary humans, an individual’s decision to join coalitions is strongly affected by his/her estimates of costs, benefits, and risks associated as well as by cultural beliefs and traditions. These are the factors explicitly left outside of the modeling framework.

In humans, a secondary transition from egalitarian societies to hierarchical states took place as the first civilizations were emerging. How can it be understood in terms of the model discussed? One can speculate that technological and cultural advances made the coalition size much less important in controlling the outcome of a conflict than the individuals’ ability to directly control and use resources (e.g. weapons, information, food) that strongly influence the outcomes of conflicts.

Journal reference:

1. Gavrilets et al. Dynamics of Alliance Formation and the Egalitarian Revolution. PLoS ONE, 2008; 3 (10): e3293 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003293

Adapted from materials provided by Public Library of Science, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

This Democracy Now! video from the USA is called American Psychological Association and TORTURE- part 1.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

From Associated Press in the USA:

Psychologists’ group votes against aiding military in prisoner interrogations at Guantanamo

By LINDSEY TANNER | AP Medical Writer

1:04 PM EDT, September 18, 2008

The nation’s leading psychologists’ association has voted to ban its members from taking part in interrogations at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other military detention sites where it believes international law is being violated.

The ban means those who are American Psychological Association members can’t assist the U.S. military at these sites. They can only work there for humanitarian purposes or with non-governmental groups, according to Stephen Soldz, a Boston psychologist. Soldz is founder of an ethics coalition that has long supported the ban.

“This is a repudiation by the membership of a policy that has been doggedly pursued by APA leadership for year after year,” Soldz said Thursday. “The membership has now spoken and it’s now incumbent upon APA to immediately implement this.”

The new policy should take effect at the association’s next annual meeting in August 2009. However, its council likely will discuss whether to act sooner, said spokeswoman Rhea Farberman.

The interrogation ban brings the psychologists more in line with the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association. In 2005, the psychologists association adopted a position that said, for national security purposes, it was ethical to act as consultants for interrogation and information-gathering.

Psychologists have been involved in decisions that approve of coercion methods, including “taking away comfort items like clothes and toilet paper from detainees” to help extract information from them, Soldz said.

He said that some even declined to diagnose post-traumatic stress in detainees because that would suggest detainees had been abused or harmed while in custody.

The group has no real power to enforce its new policy, although its council is expected to discuss whether to recommend the ban become part of its ethics code. That would mean a violator’s membership could be revoked, Farberman said,

Yale University psychologist Alan Kazdin, the group’s president, said the policy “will have teeth.”

“The organization will be disseminating our position to Congress and to other leaders and make it very clear what psychologists cannot do as part of our policy,” he said.

This video is about the Wall Street crash in 1929.

The economic crisis of 2008 continues.

See: Europe gripped by fear of global crash.

And Panic sell-off on Wall Street.

And Unemployment and poverty grip New York State.

And The American “financial tsunami” hits Asia.

And Capitalist crash drives HBOS into the arms of Lloyds TSB; see also here.

Britain: MASSIVE JOBLESS RISE – greatest since 1992.

Mass sacking of British bank workers: here. And here.

From British daily The Guardian:

A psychological diagnosis of the banking crisis

* Oliver James

* Thursday September 18 2008

Shares in the troubled bank HBOS are up and down like a manic-depressive. It is tempting to assume that the brokers doing the buying and selling are every bit as febrile. Indeed, a study of 26 successful New York brokers from 2000 does suggest they are distinctly flaky.

They had high levels of depersonalisation (feeling detached from one’s surroundings) and a staggering two-thirds were depressed. There were similarly high levels of anxiety and sleeplessness. The more they earned, the more likely they were to have these problems. Twice daily, they consumed both alcohol and an illegal substance (mostly cocaine). For relaxation, they chose solitary pursuits: jogging, masturbation and fishing were common.

But for all their Affluenza-driven compulsions and misery, it would be wrong to characterise brokers’ turbulent share-dealing as evidence of mental instability. In fact, it is a wholly rational response to the way they are incentivised. In the deregulated shambles of our financial services industry, their bosses motivate them with extremely short-term rewards. If the only way to succeed in the system is to slap a bet on HBOS shares falling, then it is rational to do so.

See also here.

This video from the USA is called Matt Lauer Corners Bush on Torture.

From British daily The Morning Star:

(Thursday 07 August 2008)

CHINA‘S people will be overjoyed to know that US President George W Bush is championing a free media, free assembly and trade union rights in their country.

It’s not every day that you can count on an 18 carat gold-plated war criminal to speak out for other people’s freedom

Do those responsible for a million deaths in Iraq, countless more in Afghanistan and a global network of torture facilities realise how hollow their rhetoric sounds to all but the most sycophantic?

Of course not, because the views of the rest of the world don’t count in the “free” US media, which is dominated by the rich and powerful and reflects their interests and opinions.

TV networks such as Fox are notorious for their disregard for facts. They pump out tendentious propaganda at top volume in a bid to intimidate other news outlets. And it works.

That’s why so many US people believe lies about Saddam Hussein being linked to the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and Barack Obama being linked to Islamist extremism.

And it’s why US news programme presenter Dan Rather, who previously had a reputation for honesty and integrity, admitted that he had fallen in line with US war psychosis before the invasion of Iraq because he feared for his job if he challenged White House lies.

If Mr Bush is so keen on trade union rights, he could start at home with notorious anti-union firm Wal-Mart.

Human Rights Watch researcher Carol Pier said last year that Wal-Mart workers have “virtually no chance to organise because they’re up against unfair US labour laws and a giant company that will do just about anything to keep unions out.”

See also here.

End Psychologists’ Role in State Torture: here.

This video is called Global Treasures BOSRA Syria.

From Leiden university in the Netherlands:

Use of milk 3,000 years older than thought

Using cow’s milk for direct consumption, cheese, butter and yoghurt looks like a typical Dutch tradition. Yet, Syrians eight thousand years ago were the first people to milk cattle. A group of archaeologists discovered this. In Nature of 7 August they will report on this.

Tomorrow, Wednesday 6 October, at 18:00 Central European time, a more extensive article on this will be at the Leiden University site.

This video is called Fall of the Bastille.

From British daily The Morning Star:

What Bastille Day means today

(Sunday 03 August 2008)

The Fourteenth of July by Christopher Prendergast
(Profile, £15.99)

“MEMORY has always been less about remembering a past than interpreting its legacy.”

Christopher Prendergast takes that iconic moment in modern world history, the taking of the Bastille, and examines the way memories of the event from the contemporary to the present have served various political agendas, subordinating the past to the perceived requirements of the present.

He notes that, even during the first anniversary festival in 1790, the Vainqueurs - those who actually stormed Paris’s prison-fortress - were ignored.

After collecting the few contemporary accounts of the participants, Prendergast details the Establishment treatment of what, in its eyes, often became an embarrassing moment in the national story.

Afraid of the naked expression of the sans-culottes, the governmental powers that emerged from the collapse of feudalism set about treating the celebrations of July 14 as a culmination rather than a beginning of the revolution.

Indeed, the annual festival soon ceased, Napoleon replacing the commemorative date with a celebration of his own birthday.

Revived in 1880 with the Third Republic, Bastille Day had little to do with revolution, but was presented as “the historic challenge of modernity” - read emerging capitalism - “to feudalism, clericism and monarchy.”

Subsequently, the day was treated according to the political tenor of the times, increasingly nationalistic and militaristic.

The Popular Front movement of the 1930s saw even the French left attempting to use the day to unite the Marseillaise with the Internationale.

Prendergast finds the Bastille celebrations of 1945, with the French rejoicing in a real freedom from “the long night of the worst ‘Bastille’ ever imposed,” as the closest to the spirit of 1789.

By the 2000 bicentennial, the history of the Quatorze had “grown arthritic … threatened with terminal senility.”

This assessment appears born out by a recent Guardian article informing interested readers that Carla Bruni-Sarkozy “wore a neat Jackie-Kennedy-style magenta Christian Dior to celebrate Bastille Day.”

However, Zhou Enlai’s famous observation that it is too early to assess the significance of the French Revolution should make us hesitate to see the story of the Bastille sink into communal memory oblivion.

GORDON PARSONS

This video from Britain says about itself:

Eighteenth century Newgate was a hellhole for both men and women. The turnkeys profited on the misery of the convicted, who faced disease, abuse and most likely death in the grotty dungeons of London’s most infamous prison. William Hogarth painted scenes he witnessed in ‘A Harlot’s Progress’.

From British daily The Morning Star:

History of a brutal place

(Sunday 13 July 2008)

The Gaol, by Kelly Grovier
(John Murray, £25)

THIS is a fascinating account of how Newgate prison, which was situated roughly where the Old Bailey now stands and was rebuilt twice before its final demolition in 1903, inspired some of the greatest names in British literature.

Playwright Ben Jonson, who was famed for writing Volpone and The Alchemist, was held in the jail and wrote his comedy The Devil is an Ass in his old cell.

Christopher Marlowe was also a prisoner, but there is no hard evidence of the experience in his work, while Daniel Defoe, who was confined after lampooning church attitudes, wrote biographies of Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild, perhaps the prison’s two most famous inmates.

Then there is John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, which was a runaway success in 1728 and is still popular today.

But the real strength of The Gaol is, in author Kelly Grovier’s words, its role as “the pre-eminent theatre in which the capital’s dramas unfolded,” with all the corruption, fever and brutality that made Newgate a “living morgue of social history.”

Rebuilt after its destruction in the Great Fire of 1666 and attacked in the Gordon Riots of 1780, it was finally demolished for good in 1903.

An enjoyable book about a dreadful place, one described by Henry Fielding as “a prototype of hell itself.”

JP BEAN

This video is a

Short expository documentary about the role of The Netherlands in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

From the International Institute for Asian Studies in the Netherlands:

This research is based on original VOC records housed at the National Dutch Archives in The Hague.

Till now there has been a regrettable lack of solid data on the Dutch trade in slaves from around the Bay of Bengal, particularly Arakan.

Wil O. Dijk’s research, based on original VOC records housed at the National Dutch Archives in The Hague serves as a first step towards opening a window onto what has been in effect a ‘protracted history of silence’ surrounding this sordid trade.

An end to the history of silence?

The Dutch trade in Asian slaves: Arakan and the Bay of Bengal, 1621 – 1665

This video from the USA is called Children and Youth in Tennessee.

By Naomi Spencer:

Kids Count report

Living conditions worsen for US children

16 June 2008

For decades, measures of child well-being in the United States—infant mortality rates, the percentage of children whose parents had steady employment, and general health indicators—saw gradual improvements or stable levels for the overall population. Since 2000, however, many aspects of this trend have stalled or reversed course as millions of working class families have fallen into poverty and low-wage jobs, and basic government-funded social programs have eroded.

Data compiled in the annual Kids Count report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) emphasize this fact, noting that now “more children are living in relative poverty in the United States than in any other economically advanced nation.”

See also here.

Latinos Being Hit Hard by Economic Slump in the USA: here.