Interesting

War Crimes. By Ben-Dror Yamini

So what exactly is our story with the bombs and civilians injuries? Are we the most evil element in the world, as the Evil and Stupidity Front claims, from Professor Noam Chomsky and José Saramago, through Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah, and up to some of the moviemakers and authors, among us too, that agree that Israel commits crimes against humanity?

בן דרור ימיני | 5/8/2006

A short historical reminder. This time we won’t say a word about Muslims that butcher Muslims. We got used to it. The Muslims, especially in the eyes of the Left, are the retarded kids of the world. From them there is no need to demand responsibility, morale, international law. They are allowed.

This time we will deal with the West. We won’t head as far as the bombing of Dresden. We’ll go to recent history. It happened in 1999. Just 7 years ago. Milošević irritated the Free World when he tried to take control of Kosovo. NATO started bombing. Following is an incomplete list of the injuries. Just of civilian ones.

On April 12th – 12 killed in a bombing of a civilian train; on April 14th – 70 refugees are killed in a “hunt after warriors”. NATO forces admit that they find it hard to estimate the number of casualties; Apri 27th – 16 civilians are killed. Two missiles diverted from their course; April 28th – A stray missile reaches a peaceful neighborhood in Sophia, capital of Bulgaria. May 1st – 27 killed in a bombing of a bus on a bridge in Belgrade. According to other claims 47 were killed. All of them civilians; May 6th – 15 civilians are killed in the town of Nis in Yugoslavia; on May 7th – the Chinese embassy in Belgrade is erroneously bombed. 3 civilians were killed; May 13th – at least 100 civilians are killed in the village of Korisa. Burnt bodies of kids are presented in the world media. NATO’s spokesman announces that the bombings were against “legitimate military targets”. May 19th – NATO airplanes are bombing the Belgrade hospital. At least 3 patients end their lives; May 30th – 11 civilians are killed in the bombing of a bridge. They were on their way to the local market. On the same day the NATO bombers manage to bomb an old age home, causing the death of 20 of its residents; on May 31st another 11 civilians are killed in a bombing.

NATO, by the way, spread leaflets telling the civilians that bridges are about to be bombed. Obviously that didn’t help. Does this reminds something to somebody? There was a general sorrow for hurting innocents, but nobody dreamt of a cease fire. The bombings continued. It took months. Not days or weeks. The determination proved itself. Milosovic was forced to accept the international terms.

We’ve been in this situation before

Let’s continue to November 2004. The Ivory Coast Air Force attacked rebel concentrations. Since when does anybody count black people at all? That’s it, to the bombers’ bad luck 9 French were killed by accident. Soldiers. Not civilians. The French were angry. So angry that they wiped out the entire Ivory Coat Air Force and took control of the country’s airport. And that was only the beginning. When it was the natives’ turn to get angry, the French were sure to enforce order in a very aggressive way, which included killing 27 protesters.

Now let’s go back and discuss the proportions. Milošević didn’t announce that he intends to destroy all of Europe. The Ivory Coast didn’t announce that its intention is to destroy France. And yet, the reactions of NATO and French were harsh and hard. The Security Council did not call for a cease fire. Au contraire. It was obvious that it’s necessary to get rid of the bad guy in the story. It took a lot of time. In the end he had to bend.

We should be sorry for every innocent that gets hurt. The question is whether somebody has invented a formula in which it’s possible to battle evil without hurting the innocents. In NATO they didn’t find that formula. In France neither. When we get to Israel the rules are being changed. Israel is required to restrain itself. Why? After all Nasrallah is much more dangerous than Milošević. The Hezbollah is not a guerilla organization. It’s an organization that possesses long-range missiles. In normal countries the state has an army. In the case of Lebanon, Hezbollah has a state. The Hezbollah controls Lebanon and Iran controls the Hezbollah. And also develops nuclear weapons, and also announces that it wants to wipe Israel off the map.

These are just declarations, the members of the Evil Front will tell us, the stupidity and reconciliation, those signed on various petitions. If we will just turn over the second cheek, Ahmandinejad and Nasrallah will send us flowers.

We’ve been in this situation before. We have the right to prevent it from recurring.

Written by Ben-Dror Yamini
Translated to English by Oren Douek

Noam Chomsky: America and Israel Greatest Threats to Peace

mysticpolitics:

Imagine if Iran — or any other country — did a fraction of what American and Israel do at will.

When was the last time Israel bombed the Iranian Embassy, or bombed a Muslim community center in Argentina? When did Israeli leaders threatens to annihilate Iran?

…

Apes With Apps

Using tablets and customized keyboards, bonobos can become great communicators

[Top: Two-year-old Teco, shown with the author [left] and researcher Susannah Maisel, uses a simplified 25-lexigram app. His first lexigram was grape; Left: Kanzi, a 31-year-old bonobo, can converse with humans by selecting “lexigram” symbols on his Motorola Xoom tablet; Right: When Kanzi presses a lexigram on the touch screen, the computer speaks the word and shows a corresponding picture.]

Have you ever watched a toddler play with an iPhone?

Most likely, the child was completely captivated and surprisingly adept at manipulating the tiny icons. Two-year-old Teco is no different. Sitting with his Motorola Xoom tablet, he’s rapt, his dark eyes fixed on the images, fingers pecking away at the touch screen. He can’t speak, but with the aid of the tablet app I created for him, he’s building a vocabulary that will likely total several thousand words. What’s more, he’ll be able to string those words together into simple sentences and ask questions, tell jokes, and carry on conversations.

Such talents wouldn’t seem exceptional in a human child, but Teco is an ape — a bonobo, to be precise. To the uninitiated, bonobos look very much like chimpanzees, but they are in fact a separate species with distinct physical and behavioral traits. More collaborative and sociable than their chimp cousins, bonobos also seem to be more adept at learning human language. And they are endangered, found in the wild only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Recent estimates put the wild bonobo population at between 10 000 and 50 000. Fewer than 150 live in captivity. Along with the chimpanzee, they are our species’ closest relatives.

For more than three decades, researchers have been working with a small group of bonobos, including Teco, to explore their amazing cognitive and linguistic abilities. Teco’s father, Kanzi, is the group’s most famous member: Anderson Cooper has interviewed him, and he’s played piano with Paul McCartney and Peter Gabriel. Animal lovers worldwide have marveled at his ability to communicate by pointing to abstract symbols. He recognizes nearly 500 of these “lexigrams,” which he uses to make requests, answer questions, and compose short sentences. The spoken words he understands number in the thousands.

Even so, many people question these abilities. Indeed, for more than a century scientists have debated whether apes could ever truly comprehend human language. Many researchers argue that language is the exclusive domain of humans, and several influential studies in the 1980s concluded that supposedly “talking” apes were merely demonstrating their capacity for imitation, with lots of unintentional cuing by the animals’ handlers. Linguist Noam Chomsky has likewise argued that the human brain contains a species-specific “language acquisition device,” which allows humans, and only humans, to acquire language.

But the bonobo research I’ve been involved with, led by primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh at the Bonobo Hope Great Ape Trust Sanctuary, in Des Moines, strongly suggests otherwise. Today, the wide availability of touch screens, tablet computers, digital recording, and wireless networking is giving researchers the world over powerful new ways to study and unambiguously document ape communication. The results of these studies are in turn helping to spark a renaissance of technology-aided research into primate development and cognition and shedding light on the origins of culture, language, tools, and intelligence.

Stealing a Nation, a Special Report by John Pilger »

airadam:

56-minute John Pilger documentary on the outright theft of the Chagos Islands (notably, Diego Garcia) by the British government in order that the US could build an enormous military base there. The indigenous population of these islands was brutalised and then exiled - dumped in Mauritius and forbidden to return.

Post-script : in 2010 a final dirty trick was cynically used to prevent the people returning - declaring the area a “nature reserve.”

These islanders did not declare a war of annihilation on the USA and the UK, not did they try to repeatedly destroy the USA and UK. So why don’t we hear all the Palestinian sympathisers raising their voices for them?