New insights into the origin of the Indo-European languages

 by Max Planck Society

The language family began to diverge from around 8,100 years ago, out of a homeland immediately south of the Caucasus. One migration reached the Pontic-Caspian and Forest Steppe around 7,000 years ago, and from there subsequent migrations spread into parts of Europe around 5,000 years ago. Credit: P. Heggarty et al., Science (2023)

An international team of linguists and geneticists led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has achieved a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the origins of Indo-European, a family of languages spoken by nearly half of the world's population. The work is published in the journal Science.

For over two hundred years, the origin of the Indo-European languages has been disputed. Two main theories have recently dominated this debate: the "Steppe" hypothesis, which proposes an origin in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe around 6,000 years ago, and the "Anatolian" or "farming" hypothesis, suggesting an older origin tied to early agriculture around 9,000 years ago.

Previous phylogenetic analyses of Indo-European languages have come to conflicting conclusions about the age of the family, due to the combined effects of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the datasets they used and limitations in the way that phylogenetic methods analyzed ancient languages.

To solve these problems, researchers from the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology assembled an international team of over 80 language specialists to construct a new dataset of core vocabulary from 161 Indo-European languages, including 52 ancient or historical languages. This more comprehensive and balanced sampling, combined with rigorous protocols for coding lexical data, rectified the problems in the datasets used by previous studies.

Indo-European estimated to be around 8,100 years old

The team used recently developed ancestry-enabled Bayesian phylogenetic analysis to test whether ancient written languages, such as Classical Latin and Vedic Sanskrit, were the direct ancestors of modern Romance and Indic languages, respectively.

Russell Gray, Head of the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution and senior author of the study, emphasized the care they had taken to ensure that their inferences were robust. "Our chronology is robust across a wide range of alternative phylogenetic models and sensitivity analyses," he stated. These analyses estimate the Indo-European family to be approximately 8,100 years old, with five main branches already split off by around 7,000 years ago.

These results are not entirely consistent with either the Steppe or the farming hypotheses. The first author of the study, Paul Heggarty, observed that, "Recent ancient DNA data suggest that the Anatolian branch of Indo-European did not emerge from the Steppe, but from further south, in or near the northern arc of the Fertile Crescent—as the earliest source of the Indo-European family. Our language family tree topology, and our lineage split dates, point to other early branches that may also have spread directly from there, not through the Steppe."

New insights from genetics and linguistics

The authors of the study therefore proposed a new hybrid hypothesis for the origin of the Indo-European languages, with an ultimate homeland south of the Caucasus and a subsequent branch northwards onto the Steppe, as a secondary homeland for some branches of Indo-European entering Europe with the later Yamnaya and Corded Ware-associated expansions.

"Ancient DNA and language phylogenetics thus combine to suggest that the resolution to the 200-year-old Indo-European enigma lies in a hybrid of the farming and Steppe hypotheses," said Gray.

Wolfgang Haak, a Group Leader in the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, says, "Aside from a refined time estimate for the overall language tree, the tree topology and branching order are most critical for the alignment with key archaeological events and shifting ancestry patterns seen in the ancient human genome data. This is a huge step forward from the mutually exclusive, previous scenarios, towards a more plausible model that integrates archaeological, anthropological and genetic findings."

More information: Paul Heggarty et al, Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.abg0818. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg0818

Israel Aflame BY RICHARD C. GROSS

 “Our future does not depend on what the Gentiles will say but on what the Jews will do.”

— David Ben-Gurion, first Israeli prime minister, 1955-1963

This is not your father’s Israel.

Shortly after Israel’s 75^th birthday May 14, the country’s first ultra-conservative coalition government passed legislation in the Knesset (Parliament) 64-0 Monday that robs the Supreme Court of its ability to rule against government actions it considers “unreasonable.” All 56 opposition members refused to vote and walked out yelling “shame.”

The court is the only check on the government because there’s no written constitution, only 12 Basic Laws that substitute for one. The Knesset passed only one part of a package of bills. The threat is that more will be adopted when it reconvenes in the fall.

The secular, more liberal opposition wants to retain a pluralistic society and freedoms as outlined in the 10^th of those laws. Adopted in 1992, it “Declares basic human rights in Israel are based on the recognition of the value of man, the sanctity of his life and the fact that he is free.”

The court agreed to petitions from civil rights groups to review the law in September that seeks to curb its own role in an increasingly fractured society. It could rule to vote down or accept the law’s divisiveness. Either way, it could create more dissension, more major demonstrations, more dissatisfaction with the outcome. It’s never been easy being Israeli.

The law means bad news for Israeli Arabs, who represent about 20 percent of Israel’s 9.5 million population. The extremist nationalists and ultra-Orthodox want to make the country more Jewish. They want to expand Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank that could lead to annexing the former Jordanian territory captured in the 1967 Six-Day war.

About 450,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and another 220,000 live in East Jerusalem. There’s not much space left for a negotiated Palestinian state, a goal of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

“A majority of Israelis did not vote for the ultra-nationalist parties,” the liberal Reform Rabbi Marvin Schwab, 76, of Poway, Calif., told me in an email. “No opportunity was given for a national referendum to express the will of the Israeli people on this issue.”

Many Israelis have accused secular Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of wanting to change the Supreme Court to protect himself if he is convicted of longstanding corruption charges and possible imprisonment. Sound familiar?

Netanyahu, whose nickname in Israel is Bibi – nearly all Israelis have a diminutive – has served the longest as prime minister, beginning in 1996. It’s obvious from the Knesset’s action that he will do anything — anything — to retain power, even defy appeals from President Joe Biden not to pass the bill.

He absolutely reminds me of Trump.

Biden, a longtime backer of Israel, has stayed mum. But his White House called the vote “unfortunate.” It remains to be seen what effect it will have on Israeli-American relations.

“This decision lays the groundwork to give the minority’s very religious elements of society the power to control that society,” Rabbi Schwab wrote. “This is not about protecting the rights of the minority. This is about giving that minority the power to determine how the majority will live their lives.”

The conservatives argue changing the court will mean further democratizing Israel because they believe they’ve been ignored by it all of these years, with secular Israelis getting everything. Example: The court of 15 judges refused to permit Netanyahu’s choice of Aryeh Deri, a convicted felon, to be seated as a cabinet minister.

Israel could use a written constitution. Badly. All it has are those Basic Laws that do not provide checks and balances of the executive, legislative or judicial branches of government. That’s the court’s job. The U.S. Constitution does that for us. Thank James Madison, our fourth president, who drafted it in 1787.

The months of parliamentary deliberations in the one- chamber, 120-seat legislature ignited 29 weeks 0f tumultuous, dramatic and historic demonstrations by tens of thousands of protesters waving blue and white Israeli flags. As never before, their numbers overwhelmed the hilly streets of staid Jerusalem, those of the more free-wheeling coastal Tel Aviv’s and elsewhere.

The only American comparisons I can make are demonstrations by Black Lives Matter and those protesting the Supreme Court’s overturning the legal right to abortion.

Hundreds if not thousands of marchers made the exhausting 40-mile trek up steep hills from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the Knesset there over four days, camping out overnights in small white tents. Even that didn’t help sway the extremist lawmakers, some from ultra-Orthodox parties. They want to ensure the ultra-Orthodox don’t serve in the military and will get more money for their schools.

There is a difference between the Orthodox and the more severe and faithfully religious ultra-Orthodox. The former serve in the military and pay taxes. The latter mostly don’t work and get money from the government so they can devote their time studying the Torah and religious commentaries.

“This is the most widespread and significant democratic awakening in the history of the country,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem policy outfit, the AP reported.

This is what happens when people living in a democracy take it for granted. I hope Americans are paying attention.

“I think this country is going to either split into two countries or be finished altogether,” protester Yossi Nissimov told the AP from his tent city outside the Knesset.

There’s precedent for that, the Bible says. Ancient Israel split in two, the Kingdom of Israel in the north, with Samaria as its capital, and the Kingdom of Judah, or Judea, with Jerusalem its capital and the Dead Sea its eastern border. The reasons: It’s complicated.

“From today, Israel will be a little more democratic, a little more Jewish, and we will be able to do more in our offices,” ultra-extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, 47, told reporters. “With God’s help, this will be just the beginning.”

I’m not so sure God is listening. Ben-Gvir, a severe right-winger, was convicted of supporting Kach, a Jewish terrorist group run by Rabbi Meir Kahane, an Israeli-American killed by an Arab in Manhattan in 1990.

And, no, the legislation doesn’t make Israel more democratic just because Ben-Gvir thinks dismantling the Supreme Court will give the minority extremists more freedom to control Israel. Netanyahu may be voted out of office in the next election and it could mean lost power for this coalition of ultra-conservatives.

“The demographics that underly Netanyahu’s coalition already promised to make this seemingly abrupt crisis just the start of a phase to change Israel’s character,” wrote Tom Ackerman, 75, a retired journalist of Corte Madera, Calif., in an email. He reported from Israel for seven years and from various locations for Al-Jazeera for 10 years. “Nearly half its Jewish school-age children are ultra-Orthodox who enjoy exemption from national military service and whose schools don’t provide a modern education,” he wrote.

For those attuned to symbols, the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av (the 9^th of Av on the lunar Hebrew calendar, which this year coincides with July 26-27) is a time of mourning for the religious faithful. It commemorates, in part, the destruction of the Jewish temples in Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II’s Babylonians in 586-87 B.C. and by Emperor Vespasian’s Romans in 70 A.D.

Another, perhaps a more concrete symbol, is for Biden to stop being Mr. Nice Guy with Israel. He should declare the United States will reassess its relations with the Jewish state with an eye toward halting, substantially decreasing or suspending its annual $3.8 billion grant to the country.

If Israel’s democracy is made extinct and replaced with a theocracy, there’s a substantial price to pay for that.

Richard C. Gross, who covered war and peace in the Middle East and was foreign editor of United Press International, served as the opinion page editor of The Baltimore Sun.

Unveiling the Alliance Between Iran and Palestine BY M. REZA BEHNAM

 

Photograph Source: Michael Künne, PRESSCOV – CC BY-SA 3.0

“It is justice that the ordering of society is centered.”                

–  Aristotle

Iranians and Palestinians come from dissimilar cultural and historical landscapes. Yet, the Islamic Republic of Iran has embraced and championed the Palestinian cause. The two have been drawn together by a shared narrative—one of intrusion, domination and duplicity by foreign powers.  

Although Iran in a former incarnation was an empire, Iranians and Palestinians have both known the heavy hand of British and American imperiums.  And both have resisted and survived the arrogance, indignity and humiliation imposed on them by those foreign powers.  

Iran experienced foreign occupation first at the hands of the British after the Second World War and later by the Americans after the CIA-British MI6 overthrow of the democratic government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953.  The Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, restored to the throne by the United States, governed cruelly for 26 years, subordinating Iranian interests to those of the United States.  Washington’s support for his repressive rule set off the bitter anti-American revolution of 1978-79 and led to the reinvention of Iran as an Islamic Republic.    

In Palestine, Britain’s imperial design after World War I opened the door to the ongoing Palestinian Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe).  Zionism’s colonizing project begun in 1917 based on Britain’s promise of support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, ushered in the state of Israel in 1948.   Efforts to gain demographic control, to dispossess and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people continues unabated by the last remaining colonial power, Israel. 

The anti-imperialist ideology of the revolution affirmed the Islamic Republic’s identification with the Palestinian cause.  In February 1979, Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat was welcomed in Tehran as the first foreign “head of state.” The former Israeli diplomatic mission in Tehran was turned over to the Palestinians, and the road in front of the mission was renamed Palestine Avenue.  Chairman Arafat was invited to officially inaugurate the new diplomatic legation.  During the ceremony, revolutionary leader, the  Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, told Arafat that Iran’s revolution would be incomplete until the Palestinians had won their freedom.  That official pronouncement linked the Iranian Revolution to the struggle of the Palestinians. 

The culture of resistance, which has come to define the Islamic Republic and its commitment to Palestine, was central to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, ratified on 3 December 1979.  In foreign policy, for example, the constitution asserts that the government, “considers the attainment of independence, freedom, and rule of justice and truth to be the right of all people of the world….”

Recognizing that the United States has committed itself financially and militarily to the continued supremacy of Israel, the Islamic Republic has been equally determined to aid Palestinians in their resistance to Israeli domination.  For that, and its opposition to U.S-Israeli expansion, Iran has been in the crosshairs of every U.S. president since its history shifted from monarchy to an Islamic Republic.  

Iran’s advocacy for Palestinian self-determination has been viewed by some of its critics as interference.  Inside Iran the concern is that the country may become more Palestinian than Palestinians.   Nearly all of Iran’s leaders, however, claim a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations and have indicated that Tehran would accept any decision embraced by the Palestinian majority. The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has also stated that Palestine’s fate should be determined by the Palestinian people.  “The initiative to self-determination is today in the hands of the Palestinian fighters,” so said President Ebrahim Raisi in his 14 April 2023 address to the people of Gaza on the occasion of al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day); the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan.   

Iran and Palestine know that alliances are vital to the survival of each.  They recognize that Israel, with U.S. backing, is the most powerful and dangerous force in the neighborhood.  Together the Islamic Republic and its Palestinian allies— Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine— and in Lebanon, Hezbollah, have stood against U.S.-Israeli hegemonic regional ambitions.  According to a 2020 U.S. State Department report, Iran provides $100 million a year to Palestinian groups. 

For that, Washington has put Tehran on notice that it will pay a high price for allying with the Palestinians.  Despite the political and economic costs and Washington’s ongoing efforts at regime change, Iran remains undaunted.  

Washington’s harassment of Iran, however, has known no bounds. Support for Iraq in its war with Iran (1980-88), crippling economic sanctions, sabotage operations, assassinations of Iranian leaders and scientists, disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, military threats and fomenting terrorist attacks inside Iran are among the bullying tactics Iranians have endured.                          

The determination to coerce Iran into submission was particularly evident during the presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2009).  In 2003, while planning for the invasion of Iraq, a frequent refrain among Bush administration officials was “Today Baghdad, tomorrow Damascus, and then on to Tehran.”  Although Bush’s war and future goals did not go as planned, he launched an unprecedented financial war against Iran, implementing a list of strategies to drive it out of the global economy.  

The “maximum pressure” campaign of former President Donald Trump (2017-2021), and continued by the Biden administration, has further severed Iran’s financial sector from the global economy, reduced its global trade and diminished its foreign currency reserves.  With the sharp depreciation of the Iranian currency, the rial, an overall inflation rate of 51 percent and food inflation at 70 percent, nearly 60 percent of the total population of 87.2 million are experiencing poverty.

In a 2019 summary, Human Rights Watch noted that U.S. officials, on several occasions, have indicated that U.S. sanctions are causing intentional suffering—what Human Rights Watch refers to as collective punishment—to compel Iranians to demand governmental change.

To further its predatory expansionist plans in Palestine and the region, Israel has left no stone unturned to block conciliation between Washington and Tehran. Its leaders have used the Iran “threat” narrative to make detente difficult.  Economic sanctions, the consequence of decades of Israeli demonization of Iran, have also made it increasingly difficult for Tehran to continue funding its allies.  

The 2015 nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, would have given Iran a modicum of economic stability and improved relations with the United States.  Also, it would have made economic aid to Palestinians easier.  Under Israeli pressure, Trump abrogated the nuclear pact in 2018 and imposed 1500 additional economic sanctions.   

In addition to sanctions, the United States has increased its military threat against Iran.  Forty-five U.S. military bases encircle the country, with U.S. troops deployed near Iran in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Syria.  

U.S. Central Command, the largest military coalition in the world, has listed deterring Iran its number one priority.  In 2023, the United States and Israel began a new series of extensive war games, with Iran as their primary target. 

Regime change has continued to be the preferred U.S. course of action toward Iran, further sowing insecurity and angst among Iranians.  Ongoing threats, attacks and destabilizing activities have also made Iran extremely watchful internally and externally.   Their concern has forced the country’s leaders to further build-up its security and defense systems.  

A primary objective of the September 2020 U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords—normalizing relations among the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and Israel—has been to taunt and ride roughshod over Iran.  Another less noted objective has been to undermine Tehran’s resolve and ability to support the Palestinians.  

The Arab signatories made their betrayal of the Palestinians and their cause official when they agreed to the accords.   The agreement has confirmed, as Netanyahu brazenly stated, that Israel did not need to resolve the Palestinian issue in order to normalize relations with Arab states.  Iran, a non-Arab state, has stood alone.   

Although some Arab leaders have offered financial assistance, most subordinated the Palestinian cause to their own domestic and regional interests.  Cooperation between Israeli and Arab autocrats is not new.  Oman and Qatar, for example, have maintained covert relations with Israel for decades. And Egypt—the flagship of the Arab world—in collaboration with Israel, has imposed a crippling 15-year blockade of Gaza, causing extreme hardship for more than 2 million Palestinians trapped in the densely-populated 139-square mile strip.  

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, aid to Palestinians from 1994 to 2020, amounted to more than $40 billion, with close to 77 percent of that amount provided by non-Arab donors.  Very little of that amount has gone to the people of Palestine, while 40 percent has ended up in the coffers of the Palestinian Authority (PA).  

It is worth noting that the PA has been a collaborating force with Israel since 1994; carrying out Israel’s colonial system of economic control of the occupied territories and maintaining security, not for Palestinians, but for Jewish colonial “settlers.”  In June 2023, during a closed session of a Knesset committee,  Prime Minister  Netanyahu admitted as much, saying:  “Israel needs the Palestinian Authority….it does our job for us.”  Adding that, Israel also needs to crush Palestinian aspirations for an independent state.  

The political realities of the region dictate the urgency of the Iran-Palestine entente.  For now, their strategic partnership is the only check on the aggressive actions and hegemonic policies of Washington and Tel Aviv.

For Palestinians, the Constitution of the Islamic Republic is a direct expression and confirmation of their alliance:  “The Islamic Republic of Iran… considers the attainment of independence, freedom, and rule of justice and truth to be the right of all people of the world. Accordingly, while scrupulously refraining from all forms of interference in the internal affairs of other nations, it supports the just struggles of the mustad’affun [oppressed] against the mustakbirun [oppressors] in every corner of the globe.”

US and Israel: Is the ‘Unbreakable Bond’ Finally Breaking? BY RAMZY BAROUD

 Israeli President Isaac Herzog added nothing of great value in his speech at the United States Congress on July 19.

His was the typical language. He spoke of a ‘sacred bond’, touted the shared experience between both nations as “unique in scope and quality”, and celebrated the great, common “values that reach across generations”.

But this theatrical language was meant to hide an uncomfortable truth: the relationship between Israel and the US is changing at a fundamental level.

Two days before Herzog’s speech, Israel’s opposition leader and former prime minister, Yair Lapid, declared that “the United States is no longer (Israel’s) closest ally.”

Lapid’s words were a mix of facts and political opportunism.

Lapid and others in his camp are keen on blaming Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the waning relationship between both countries; or to use more pertinent language, for weakening the ‘sacred’, ‘unbreakable bond’, which has for many years joined the two countries together.

Lapid’s assessment, however, is imprecise. While it is true that Netanyahu played a role in widening the distance between Tel Aviv and Washington, that distance was growing based on other dynamics – a mixture of political, geopolitical, and demographic changes and trends.

But whose assessment is closer to the truth? Herzog’s claim of a ‘sacred bond’ or Lapid’s more dramatic assertion of a faltering alliance?

To address this question, we must look beyond the exaggerated public statements made by officials from both countries and particularly from the leaders of the US’ two powerful parties, the Republicans and the Democrats.

In terms of language, the leaderships of both parties insist that Washington’s devotion to Israel is beyond politics and that Israel’s security is above America’s own political polarization.

In a speech at the Israeli Knesset (parliament) on May 1, US House speaker Kevin McCarthy followed the typical American script on Israel. He, too, spoke of “unbreakable bond” and “bipartisan US support” and, expectedly, was met with resounding applause.

Biden, too, is a resolute supporter of Israel. His oft-repeated phrase “You don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist” is now a mantra among US allies of Israel.

Yet, while Republican kinship to Israel remains strong, that of the Democrats is not; so weak, in fact, that in June 2022, a Pew Research Center poll said that “more Democrats and those who lean Democratic express a favorable view of Palestinians than of Israelis.”

So, the notion that Israel is a common cause between America’s top political parties is simply untrue. No wonder that Biden has, for seven months, delayed inviting Netanyahu to the White House following the formation of Israel’s latest government coalition.

Crowded with far-right politicians, Netanyahu’s coalition is simply a liability to any democratic system anywhere in the world.

Many Israelis agree, believing wholly or partially that their government is no longer democratic – due to Netanyahu’s growing control over the country’s once-independent institutions.

Amid all of this, Biden is struggling to find the balance.

“I’m very concerned,” Biden told reporters last May. “(Israel) cannot continue down this road, and I’ve sort of made that clear.”

This is the same Biden who described as ‘bizarre’ a proposal by former US Presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, to withhold funds from Israel due to its mistreatment of Palestinians.

Washington gives Israel at least $3.8 billion annually in military aid. If the anti-Israel trend among Democrats continues, the calls of withholding funds might, in the coming year, no longer appear so ‘bizarre’.

Under intense pressure from the pro-Israel lobby, on July 17, Biden finally invited Netanyahu to the White House. The visit, however, considering the intensifying anti-Netanyahu protests, is unlikely to reset the relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv.

In fact, even if the protests subside, relations between the US and Israel will not be the same.

For over a decade, the US has slowly, but unmistakably, walked away from the Middle East, partly because of the disastrous outcomes of the Iraq invasion, and partly due to the growing power of China in the Asia-Pacific region.

The US retreat has rung alarm bells in Israel, with Israeli politicians and mainstream intellectuals urging self-reliance. This led to an unrelenting Israeli search for new allies, mostly in the Global South.

The success, from Netanyahu’s viewpoint, of this campaign has helped Israel somewhat liberate itself from any commitment to the US agenda in the Middle East, including engaging in the US-led ‘peace process’ with the Palestinian leadership.

Despite Biden’s insistence, during his Middle East trip in July 2022, on the need for a “reinvigorated” peace process, Tel Aviv neither supported nor even seemed to notice Washington’s new quest.

Back then, Netanyahu was not even a prime minister, as Israel was ruled by a government coalition under the leadership of Lapid himself.

While Netanyahu is being conveniently blamed for the dwindling ties, the disengagement from Washington was, in fact, mostly a collective decision and protracted process.

When, on July 10, Israel’s far-right minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, declared that “President Biden must internalize that Israel is no longer another star in the American flag”, he was merely reiterating a popular line used by others before him.

Even Netanyahu resorted to similar language when, in March, he told the US Administration that Israel is “a strong, proud and independent democracy”.

Though much of Israel’s self-proclaimed ‘independence’ was an outcome of unconditional US support, Israelis hardly acknowledge this fact.

Israel’s Ministry of International Defense Cooperation Directorate (SIBAT) is constantly reporting on the growth in Tel Aviv’s military exports to the rest of the world. These exports reached $12.5 billion last year. Most of this technology was either developed by the US, or jointly with the US, and much of the research was funded by American taxpayers.

Nonetheless, this sense of ‘independence’ has given Netanyahu the needed confidence to abandon the Democratic Party in favor of the more accommodating Republicans.

For their part, the new generation of Democratic politicians is viewing Israel, at least the Israeli Right, as an extension of the Republican Party, thus the growing hostility towards Israel.

In the final analysis, both Herzog and Lapid are partly wrong: The ‘sacred bond’ is less sacred than ever and, whether the US is Israel’s closest ally or not, it makes little difference, since Israel is unlikely to find an alternative to Washington’s blind support anytime soon.

It is No Measure of Health to be Well Adjusted to a Profoundly Sick Society BY SINÉAD O'CONNOR

 

There are no media which block mockery of those perceived to be (whether mistakenly diagnosed by media, or otherwise ) mentally ill. They do not care to recognise how dangerous it is to do so.

It isn’t for me that I have been willing to keep putting my head above the parapet, and willing to keep getting the fucking shit kicked out of me.. as I do on the issues of mental health or child abuse. It’s because PEOPLE GET BULLIED WHEN MEDIA DON’T EDIT RESPONSIBLY AND PEOPLE DIE BECAUSE OF THAT BULLYING. (See Miley letter 4 on my site for suicide statistics.)

When editors do not act responsibly on the issue of mental health their readers kill themselves.

That’s the bottom line. Media create everyone’s reality. They create the world as we see it. The music. Who’s a lunatic. Who is sane. Who exactly are media to be allowed define what is sane?

Is having the close up HD slow fuckin motion face of Gaddafi being shot off on the front page in massive technicolor on all the bottom shelves of news stores so that every child in the universe can see it, sane?

Is that a sane practice? No. Did Britney Spears ever do anything like that? No. She fuckin’ didn’t.

Because she is a lady, not a whore for blood. She got made crazy by the media when there was fuck all wrong with her BUT the media. She got Kafka’d.

That’s what happens to her fans then. Those that love her won’t be inspired by her to be their beautiful selves. It doesn’t suit media’s idea of the future that young people grow up to make the world a loving place. So media fuck up the young people’s heroes. Then the young people are afraid.

And what’s the worst thing to be called? What is it everyone’s so afraid of? Being either considered ” crazy” or actually being “crazy”. And why is that such a terrifying thing to be considered? Because “Crazy” people get treated like shit. Not with love, which is what one’s grandmother would expect of one, in the presence of a person afflicted with a disability of any kind.

But as Krishnamurti said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”. If people like Fowler and the other irresponsibly murderous-tongued media are sane, then I really wanna be crazy thanks. Because you know what? It’s not me going round killing people it’s media.

I recommend all readers to my website wherein you will find a link to a British information pack on mental health advocacy and human rights.

When the afflicted are mocked they die. When their heroes are mocked by their perceived mental afflictions, they die. Not the heroes, they never die, that’s the sad part. It’s the afflicted.

They have to hide. It’s like trying to walk up the street with two broken legs and make sure you walk like normal because if you don’t, people will come and smash up your legs and laugh about it when you scream. And no one will defend you.

That is why I consider I myself the defender of the mentally ill. I myself am not in fact mentally ill.

I have been the subject of a mis-diagnoses, which came about by a doctor who never met me, who on the phone to a general practitioner who was meeting me for the first time, said “from what I read about her in the papers I’d say she is bipolar”.

It suited me to believe it. The fact was I had a baby 5 months previously and his father didn’t want to know him. I was severely distressed by this and had taken myself to the doctor to say I was feeling depressed and not feeling like myself.

I have over the last three years, had three ‘second opinions’ in consultation with three hospitals.

The last results were in the last 6 weeks. All have confirmed that I never did have bipolar disorder. I was diagnosed by media. Because I’m the type of woman that media wouldn’t want being a hero. Because it doesn’t suit them to have women feel strong. And so they’ll use other women. Who’ll write venom about women. Kafka again.

Any woman who might inspire others to be themselves at any cost and to believe that there is a God despite religion, who can be called upon to immediately intervene, when people recognise that religion has them talking to the wall, has to be ‘crazied’. It’s been that way from creation.

I’m honoured to be one in an ancient historic line. Of female spiritual soldiers. Soldiers, not ladies, so don’t gimme any of the “If you’re not a fucking saint and perfect you can’t be a spiritual soldier” shit. Google Jesus mashing up the fucking temple.

I’m willing to fight on behalf of those who are not able to defend themselves, using all I have learned from being treated as the mentally ill are treated. My relentlessness in seeking human rights laws be APPLIED to the mentally is not going to cease. The mentally ill are amongst the most extremely vulnerable of this earth.

When can crazy stop being a term of abuse?

This piece was first published on CounterPunch in October 2013.

Sri Lanka massacres that triggered civil war haunt 40 years later

 Forty years ago, mobs in Sri Lanka burned 13 people alive, part of a week-long pogrom that turbocharged simmering ethnic unrest into all-out civil war.

Known in Sri Lanka as "Black July", the brutal violence triggered a 26-year conflict that killed about 100,000 people and set development back by decades, ending only after the Tamil rebels fighting for autonomy were massacred in 2009.

The 1983 anti-Tamil mob attacks escalated on July 29, when Mohan Panneer Selvam was just eight years old.

A rampaging gang torched his home in the tea-growing central town of Hawa Eliya, burning 13 people inside, including his parents, relatives and their staff.

"My grandmother started to escape, they shot her and threw her body into the house," Panneer Selvam said, breaking down while recalling the events narrated to him by his older sister.

He and his younger brother were away at boarding school when the riots broke out, returning as orphans to the ruins of their burned home two months later.

His sister -- then a child of 10 -- was the sole survivor only because their mother "threw her out of the kitchen window," he said.

She was wounded and found "two or three days later" by police and sent to a camp for Tamils made homeless by the violence.

"My sister saw the burnt bodies -- they put the bodies in a municipal tractor (trailer)," he told AFP. "They dumped them somewhere."

-'Pogrom' -

Ethnic tensions between the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the largely Hindu and Christian Tamil minority had long simmered, and worsened after ex-colonial ruler Britain quit in 1948.

The conflict erupted in July 1983, when a landmine ambush laid by Tamil rebels killed 13 Sinhalese soldiers, in the Tamil heartland of Jaffna.

The government flew the bodies to Colombo for a mass burial, but relatives demanded individual funerals and rioted.

The backlash degenerated into a week of violence targeting Tamils, with the worst of the violence on July 29, dubbed "Black Friday", when Panneer Selvam's family was killed.

The ethnic tensions between the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the largely Hindu and Christian Tamil minority had long simmered

According to the government, about 400 to 600 people died over the course of the massacres -- mostly Tamils. But minority groups say the true toll could be in the thousands.

"The events that happened... changed the course of history," said Tamil legislator M. A. Sumanthiran.

"We don't regard what happened in 1983 as a riot, because it was planned violence unleashed on the Tamil people in this country. It was a pogrom."

Some claim the army was actively involved or provided tacit support to the attacks in revenge for the loss of their 13 comrades, and several then-government officials were seen leading mobs.

No one has been prosecuted.

But some Sinhalese did protect Tamil neighbours.

Human Rights lawyer Nimalka Fernando, who is Sinhalese, sheltered Tamil and Muslim neighbours.

"Over 40 years, it has been a journey to grapple with waves of internally displaced people, waves of refugees in my own country," she said.

- Dream of autonomy -

Sumanthiran said autonomy was the "political standard of the Tamil people", noting they had always voted for a federal system -- and had even demanded a separate state during elections in 1977.

"To quell that, to subdue that, violence was practised," he said. "So '83 was the height of that kind of strategy by the government".

By some estimates, about 1.3 million Tamils fled the country after the riots

Sumanthiran says about 1.3 million Tamils fled the country after the riots, many north to neighbouring India -- motivating their increasing interest in the conflict.

New Delhi pressed Colombo to seek peace by granting autonomy to the Tamils, and the Sinhalese leaders' policy "boomeranged" back in their faces, he added.

"While everything was on fire, the Indian government intervened," Sumanthiran said.

Of the estimated 100,000 killed in the war, the dead are split roughly equally between the security forces, Tamil fighters and Tamil civilians, with Sinhalese and Muslims also among the dead.

The physical scars of the war fade, and only a few of the battle-scarred buildings remain.

But the legacy of events 40 years ago lives on.

Today, Sumanthiran said many Tamils still dream of political autonomy.

"Successive governments after the war ended have been successful in sort of delaying it -- promising and not doing," he said. "But I don't think they can do that for too long".