They built more pyramids than the Egyptians, invented the world’s first “rock” music, and were as bloodthirsty as the Aztecs when it came to human sacrifices.

Yet ever since their demise at the hands of a vengeful pharaoh, the pre-Christian civilisations of ancient Sudan have been overshadowed by their Egyptian northern neighbours. Now, the race is on to excavate black Africa’s first great kingdoms – before some of their heartlands are submerged for ever.

In a highly controversial move, the Sudanese government is planning to flood a vast stretch of the southern Nile valley as part of plans for a big hydro-electric dam at Merowe, near what was once the ancient city of Napata.

The project has been criticised by environmental groups, who say it will lead to the displacement of about 50,000 people – small farmers and their families, who have tilled the Nile’s fertile banks for centuries.

The Sudanese government insists, however, that the Chinese-backed project should go ahead, saying it is essential to pull the country into the developed world. With the dam scheduled for completion in 2008, archaeologists are in a race against time to survey what will eventually become a 100-mile-long lake.

The affected area lies in what is known as the Nile’s fourth cataract, one of the six stretches of river divided from each other by sets of rapids impassable by boat.

Already more than 700 sites of potential interest have been discovered in just one small part of the area to be flooded – showing the need not only for an urgent programme to rescue the most important artefacts, but also for a reappraisal of Sudan’s archaeological importance.

“Previously we thought the fourth cataract was something of a backwater – it is wrong to say so,” said Julie Anderson of the British Museum’s department of ancient Egypt and Sudan. “But in the last year alone 700 brand new sites have been discovered – an indication of the untapped riches that exist.

“Although Sudan is the largest country in Africa it has often been in the shadow of Egypt. The fourth cataract is changing that perception. It is exciting, as everything we find is brand new.”
telegraph.co.uk

In pre-Dynastic tombs that have been found, it was clear that these ‘human sacrifices’ were voluntary.

India Digitizes Age-Old Wisdom
Effort Seeks to Keep Westerners From Poaching Folk Remedies

NEW DELHI — In a drafty government institute, Nighat Anjum reads from a dog-eared textbook on traditional Indian medicine and acquaints herself with the miracle fruit known as aamla, which is said to be useful in treating heart palpitations, immune disorders, bed-wetting and memory lapses.

Tapping on a computer keyboard, the 27-year-old physician enters its properties in a database that eventually will contain more than 100,000 such traditional remedies — the collective wisdom of the ancient healing arts known as ayurveda , unani and siddha , the latter based on the teachings of the Hindu god Shiva.

Other entries include powdered nightingale droppings (a skin lightener and laxative), nightingale flesh (an aphrodisiac), ostrich fat (for aches and pains), ostrich blood (for inflammation), charred sea crab (constipation, ulcers, cataracts and dental stains), honey (for improving vision), tumeric (for treating wounds and rashes) and coconut milk (urinary tract infections).

Employing about 150 doctors and technicians, the four-year, $2 million effort is aimed at protecting India’s traditional remedies from theft by multinational drug companies in a practice known here as bio-piracy. The database will also include hundreds of yoga poses so that foreigners cannot copyright them as their own.
washingtonpost.com

NAIROBI, Jan. 7 — On New Year’s Day, groups of angry Masai herders attempted to drive their emaciated cattle onto the manicured lawns of the presidential residence so their animals could graze on the thick carpets of green grass in the morning sun.

With a drought turning their fields and pastures into dusty gray wastelands, and with millions of people in the region facing a food shortage, the herders wanted to make a point, organizers of the action said.

“Africa is not so poor that it doesn’t have enough food or grazing land to feed itself. There’s plenty of food here,” said Ben Ole Koissaba, a leader of the Masai, one of the largest and most powerful tribes in Kenya. “Many countries around the world face drought, but people don’t starve. We think it’s ludicrous for the government to treat its citizens this way. Why does this keep happening?”
washingtonpost.com

The movement built by Cesar Chavez has failed to expand on its early successes organizing poor rural laborers. As their plight is used to attract donations that benefit others, services for those in the fields are left to languish.

…in the canyons of Carlsbad north of San Diego, hundreds of farmworkers burrow into the hills each year, covering their shacks with leaves and branches to stay out of view of multimilliondollar homes. They live without drinking water, toilets, refrigeration. Fireworks and music from nearby Legoland pierce the nighttime skies.

In a larger camp a dozen miles to the south in Del Mar, farmworkers wash their clothes in a stream, bathe in the soapy water, then catch crayfish that they boil for dinner.
latimes.com

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz told the cabinet on Sunday that Israel should give monetary compensation to Palestinians whose olive trees have been cut down.

According to Mazuz, 2,400 trees were axed in a recent wave of vandalism in the West Bank, apparently by militant settlers.

“There’s a pervasive feeling of lawlessness,” Mazuz said, adding, “This phenomenon is part of a wider phenomenon of a lack of law enforcement against Israelis in the territories.”

The attorney general said that after the state pays the Palestinians the guilty parties – presumably settlers – will, in turn, need to compensate the state.

“All security and law enforcement officials must devote themselves to a determined struggle against this grave phenomenon, and those responsible must be caught and brought to trial.”
haaretz.com

Fanatic Netanyahu stands waiting with a bomb for Iran
“Netanyahu has the inside track on winning the election and forming the government – by a narrow margin. One of the more likely outcomes is that voters who would have gone with Sharon to Kadima will be less likely to support Olmert. They will come home to Likud,” said Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political studies at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv.

Sharon: End of an unrepentant terrorist
All Arabs, whether Egyptians, Palestinians, Lebanese or Jordanians, put ARIEL SHARON at the top of the list of Israeli leaders who treated them with both violence and contempt. To the Arab world at large, the image of the ailing Prime Minister is solidly fixed as the “Butcher” or the “War Criminal”, and the basic feeling now at the prospect of his death was that it would be a shame if he passed away peacefully in bed.

The U.S. digging in for a long stay in Iraq
As PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH announced an end to the U.S.’s funding to “rebuild” IRAQ, contracts were being made to build a $1 billion U.S. Embassy complex in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone, which houses Iraqi government offices, the U.S. military command and some Western embassies.

The U.S. readies its WMDs
…New U.S. policies that involve the use of nuclear weapons were formulated in the administration document “Nuclear Posture Review” of 2001 and became more defined in a Pentagon draft document “Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations,” Jorge Hirsch, a professor of physics at the University of California San Diego, wrote in an article published on a San Diego Union-Tribune website.

These policies, the drafters of which occupy the upper echelons of the BUSH administration, allow the use of nuclear weapons against adversary underground installations, against adversaries using or intending to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. forces and for rapid and favorable war termination on U.S. terms.

Hirsch suggests that those policies could be implemented in the near future against the Persian Gulf.

Americans are quite well advanced in their planning for the use of those weapons, which raises the fears that other countries will, out of fear, try to build their own. A new concept of warfare is being developed.

The final straw for President Bush in Iraq
According to a poll of Military Times readers, support for President THE U.S. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH’s leadership as commander-in-chief and support for the war in Iraq is dropping among the U.S. military. Over the course of the last year support for IRAQ WAR dropped 9 percent, and barely a majority, 54 percent, view the commander-in-chief’s performance as positive.

Losing the support of active duty military could be the final straw for PRESIDENT BUSH in IRAQ. Already, the foreign policy establishment – former military, former intelligence officials and former Foreign Service officers – have publicly expressed their opposition to the war. In addition, Gold Star families who have lost loved ones, military families with members currently serving, and IRAQ WAR veterans are speaking out against the war. And, there have been increasing cases of soldiers refusing to return to IRAQ. In addition, the military has been unable to meet its recruitment goals.

from the ‘Conspiracy Theories’ section:

FBI evidence of Mossad involvement in September 11 attacks on the U.S.?!
On the day of the September 11, 2001 attacks, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked how they could affect Israeli-U.S. relations. His quick reply was: “It’s very good…….Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel)”.

An article by reporter Jim Galloway, published on The Austin American-Statesman on Nov. 25, 2001, stated that the FBI had evidence suggesting that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence, along with some rogue American and foreign spy agencies, may be deeply involved in or even entirely responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks as well as other acts of terrorism against the United States.

The new U.S. 20 dollar bill contains hidden pictures of 9/11- “Coincidence or a Conspiracy”?
Can simple geometric folding of the $20 bill contain a representation of September 11 attacks on the United States?

This was sent by one of Al Jazeera friends, and we would like to share it with you.

“Instead of a new beginning, Iraq is caught in a very old colonial trap”
The current political turmoil in Iraq is the direct result of the illegal occupation, and although the country’s political future is very much in flux, oil remains the central feature of the political landscape.

The newest U.S. strategy: Iraqis kill each other instead of the Marines

DAKAR, Senegal, Jan. 6 (AP) – War-ravaged Congo is suffering the world’s deadliest medical crisis, with 38,000 people dying each month, mostly from easily treatable conditions like diarrhea and respiratory infections, said a study published Friday in Britain’s leading medical journal.

Nearly four million people died between 1998 and 2004 alone, an indirect result of years of fighting that has brought on a collapse of public health services, the study in the journal, Lancet, concluded.

Major fighting ended in Congo in 2002, but the situation remains dire because of continued insecurity, poor access to health care and inadequate international aid. The problems are particularly acute in eastern Congo.

The study was based on a survey of 19,500 households across Congo, a country of 60 million, between April and July 2004. Health Ministry workers and staff members of an aid group, the International Rescue Committee, conducted the interviews.

The results showed that Congo’s monthly mortality rate was 40 percent higher than the average for sub-Saharan Africa. Mortality rates were highest in Congo’s eastern provinces, where death rates were 93 percent higher than the average for sub-Saharan Africa.

Congo’s government dismissed the report. “I consider that a big lie,” said Henri Mova Sakanyi, the minister of information. “These figures are very exaggerated. All over the world, people die of disease. It’s not just Congo.”
nytimes.com

SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico, Jan. 4 – This is the oddest political campaign to emerge in Mexico in many a year.

Zapatista supporters of Subcommander Marcos awaited him in Palenque on Tuesday. In his speeches, he blames “savage capitalism” and the rich for social problems from gay-baiting to racism to domestic violence.

The candidate is a Marxist rebel leader who once started a civil war, wears a ski mask, smokes a pipe, keeps a crippled rooster as a mascot and is not on the ballot for any political office.

Yet the start of a six-month national tour led by the man known as Subcommander Marcos has all the earmarks of a run-of-the-mill campaign for political office: slogans, chants, partisan songs, rallies large and small, a campaign caravan making stops in towns and cities, jabs at other politicians, cute presentations from children and hugs from local community leaders, shaking hands with admirers over a line of bodyguards, and the occasional obligation to kiss, or at least hug, a baby or two.

Marcos, a captivating speaker who now calls himself Delegate Zero, even has a stump speech of sorts, in which he blames “savage capitalism” and the sins of the rich for everything from gay-baiting to racism to domestic violence.

He intends to deliver it all over the country in advance of the presidential election in July, trying to convince voters that there is no real difference among the three candidates from the major parties because all are going to cater to an oligarchy of business leaders.

“In the coming days we are going to hear a ton of promises, lies, trying to give us hope that, yes, things are now going to get better if we change one government for another,” he said Tuesday before a crowd of 4,000 masked followers in the town square of Palenque, site of noted Maya ruins. “Time and time again, every year, every three years, every six years, they sell us this lie.”

The crowd of masked supporters, many of them farmers bused in that morning, held banners with slogans like “Death to the Free Trade Agreement” and “Death to Neoliberal Globalization.” A red flag with hammer and sickle flew in the crowd. Nearby someone had strung up large portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.

“This is only going to change from the bottom and from the left,” Marcos continued, picking up a recurrent theme. Then he promised a better, more equal world “where we can be respected for the work that we do, the value that we have as human beings, and not for our bank accounts or, let’s say, a car, the type of vehicle we drive or the clothing we wear, a world where workers occupy a place that they deserve.”
nytimes.com

These people just don’t get that the threat the Zapatistas pose to the powers that be is all the greater because they are NOT hammer and sickle Marx and Lenin Marxists, but reflect indigenous values.

ELTON, La. — The dizzying downfall of lobbyist Jack Abramoff means more than just another Washington political scandal in this rural outpost of tin-roofed homes and fraying trailers.

It is a measure of vengeance.

Abramoff, the once-powerful lobbyist at the center of a wide-ranging public corruption investigation, pleaded guilty Jan. 3 to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials in a deal that requires him to provide evidence about members of Congress.

Led on by what they say were his false promises of political access, leaders of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, which is based here, paid Abramoff and his partners about $32 million for lobbying and other services — more than $38,000 for each of their 837 tribal members. By their accounting, they got very little in return.

It was thievery, tribal members said, that echoes the historic losses of Native Americans to European settlers.

“Abramoff and his partner are the contemporary faces of the exploitation of native peoples,” said David Sickey, a member of the tribal council. “In the 17th and 18th century, native people were exploited for their land. In 2005, they’re being exploited for their wealth.”
washingtonpost.com

ALBERT Hofmann, the father of LSD, walked slowly across the small corner office of his modernist home on a grassy Alpine hilltop here, hoping to show a visitor the vista that sweeps before him on clear days. But outside there was only a white blanket of fog hanging just beyond the crest of the hill. He picked up a photograph of the view on his desk instead, left there perhaps to convince visitors of what really lies beyond the windowpane.

Mr. Hofmann will turn 100 on Wednesday, a milestone to be marked by a symposium in nearby Basel on the chemical compound that he discovered and that famously unlocked the Blakean doors of perception, altering consciousnesses around the world. As the years accumulate behind him, Mr. Hofmann’s conversation turns ever more insistently around one theme: man’s oneness with nature and the dangers of an increasing inattention to that fact.

“It’s very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature,” he said, listing to the right in a green armchair that looked out over frost-dusted fields and snow-laced trees. A glass pitcher held a bouquet of roses on the coffee table before him. “In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans,” he said. “The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature.” And, yes, he said, LSD, which he calls his “problem child,” could help reconnect people to the universe.
nytimes.com