Mermaids of the Bronze Age

Remember my post a few months back about Islam and the eating of mermaids? A friend sent me a link to this very short news article about some research by Omani and French scientists that leads them to believe that Arabian fishermen of the Bronze Age worshipped the dugong.

Moscow, September 30, Interfax – Arabian fishermen of the Bronze Age worshipped the item of their fishing – dugong, a large marine mammal. This follows from a recent research conducted by a group of French and Oman scientists.

During archaeological excavations of the Arabian island Aquab the scientists found a sanctuary of the Bronze Age, an oval platform constructed of the remains of 40 dugongs where they discovered about two thousand items of jewelry and tools, Izvestia daily reports on Wednesday.

Dugongs could be treated by fishermen as early prototypes of fabulous mermaids because this huge mammal, which is now mostly living next to Australia’s seashores, can whistle.

Save Our Seas site, where I found the nifty dugong picture.

*Snort*

This struck me as really funny.

Musical Fountains at the Burj Dubai

Talk About Cool, Plus Oh My!

Vanished Persian Army Said Found in Desert.

The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology’s biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.

Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.

According to Herodotus (484-425 B.C.), Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, sent 50,000 soldiers from Thebes to attack the Oasis of Siwa and destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun after the priests there refused to legitimize his claim to Egypt.

After walking for seven days in the desert, the army got to an “oasis,” which historians believe was El-Kharga. After they left, they were never seen again.

“A wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops and caused them wholly to disappear,” wrote Herodotus.

The tale of Cambyses’ lost army, however, faded into antiquity. As no trace of the hapless warriors was ever found, scholars began to dismiss the story as a fanciful tale.

Now, two top Italian archaeologists claim to have found striking evidence that the Persian army was indeed swallowed in a sandstorm. Twin brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni are already famous for their discovery 20 years ago of the ancient Egyptian “city of gold” known as Berenike Panchrysos.

At the end of their expedition, the team decided to investigate Bedouin stories about thousands of white bones that would have emerged decades ago during particular wind conditions in a nearby area.

Indeed, they found a mass grave with hundreds of bleached bones and skulls.

“We learned that the remains had been exposed by tomb robbers and that a beautiful sword which was found among the bones was sold to American tourists,” Castiglioni said.

Among the bones, a number of Persian arrow heads and a horse bit, identical to one appearing in a depiction of an ancient Persian horse, emerged.

Wow, gives me chills.
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Looking for a nice illustration for this post, I found this picture and story about Cambyses II. Mantiq al-Tayr, I hope you don’t love this story so much that you die and go to heaven.

Cambyses captured Pelusium by using a clever strategy. The Egyptians regarded certain animals, especially cats, as being sacred, and would not injure them on any account. Cambyses had his men carry the `sacred’ animals in front of them to the attack. The Egyptians did not dare to shoot their arrows for fear of wounding the animals, and so Pelusium was stormed successfully. After the taking of the city Cambyses seized the opportunity to show his contempt of the Egyptians. He himself carried a cage of cats in front of him upon his horse, and hurled them with insulting taunts and laughter, in to the faces of his foes.

Yup, what looks like cats flying around in that picture is indeed cats flying around.

Little Quiz

Which of the following news stories involves Muslims or Arabs in any way?

Bus driver doesn’t let passengers off bus until they pray with him.

Teacher of young children refuses to be fingerprinted because she believes her holy book tells her fingerprinting is “the mark of the beast.”

Vigilantes capture, torture, and behead a criminal gangster. On video.

A tightly-knit, religious “family” distributes drugs, assassinates police officers, and passes out holy books and money to the poor. They claim

they don’t kill for money and they don’t kill innocent people. However, their delivery of that message was accompanied by five severed heads rolled onto a dance floor.

Father runs over his own daughter because she doesn’t behave the way he wants her to.

Here’s a hint: the one that you’ve probably heard or read in the news is probably the one about the Muslim/Arab.

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And on an unrelated note, here’s a cute photo of some cats and some birds:

Italy Convicts CIA Operatives in Absentia

This must be the week that chickens come home to roost. First the five plaintiffs against Ashcroft et al win a victory, and now the Italian courts have convicted 23 CIA guys for just doing their thang on Italian soil.

An Italian court sentenced 23 former CIA agents to up to eight years in prison today for their role in the abduction of an Egyptian terrorist suspect in the first trial over “extraordinary renditions”.

The Americans were all tried in absentia, but the verdicts were nevertheless hailed by human rights campaigners as an important victory that could open the way to further prosecutions.

That’s 23 guys who can’t vacation in Italy, anyway. That’s something.

Classed under Italian law as “fugitives”, all were represented by Italian lawyers who had little or no contact with their clients.

“Fugitives.” Sweet.

The trial, which opened in June 2007, is the first in the world over the abduction of terror suspects during the Bush era by the CIA and its proxies and their subsequent “rendition flights” to third countries which permit or turn a blind eye to torture.

Abu Omar, an imam and militant Islamist whose real name is Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, was seized on a Milan street in February 2003. He was taken to the US air force base at Aviano in northeastern Italy, then flown to the US base at Ramstein in Germany, and eventually to Cairo. He claims he was tortured.

He was released after four years in prison without being charged, and now lives in Egypt. He told Human Rights Watch in 2007 that he had been “hung up like a slaughtered sheep and given electrical shocks” during his interrogations. “I was brutally tortured and I could hear the screams of others who were tortured too,” he said.

In June [former CIA station chief Robert Seldon] Lady spoke to Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by Mr Berlusconi’s brother Paolo, about the affair. “Of course it was an illegal operation. But that’s our job. We’re in a war against terrorism,” he said.

He added: “I am not guilty. I am only responsible for following an order I received from my superiors. It was not a criminal act, it was an affair of state.”

Interesting defense. Puts me in mind of what George W. Bush said at the advent of his war on Iraq: “War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders’.”

U.S. Pays for Abuse of Muslims After 9/11

Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. government will pay $1.26 million to five Muslim men detained for months without charges after the September 11 attacks who sued for unlawful imprisonment and abuse, their lawyers said on Tuesday.

The men claimed they suffered inhumane and degrading treatment in a Brooklyn detention center, including solitary confinement, severe beatings, incessant verbal abuse and a blackout on communications with their families and attorneys.

Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights who brought the case in Brooklyn federal court, said it was the largest settlement so far for claims of abuse in the United States following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Justice Department agreed to settle the suit, which was filed in 2002 after hundreds of immigrants were rounded up and held for months following the attacks, according to the CCR.

A spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department was not immediately available to comment on the settlement, in which the U.S. government admits no liability or fault. The five men were all eventually released after being cleared of any connection to terrorism but then deported.

It’s a start.

The lawsuit, which sued top Bush administration officials including former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, was one of many that accused the Bush administration of disregarding constitutional rights.

The claims against Ashcroft and others are continuing. The CCR is also seeking to bring claims on behalf of five new plaintiffs.

Map of Palestine as Archipelago

I’ll be back to this map again later, but in the meantime, here’s the post from another WordPress blog where I got the map.

Excerpt:

What Mr. Bousac’s imaginary map does quite neatly is illustrate that while there are countries in the world made up of pieces of land as divided as those parts of the West Bank currently under Palestinian control, there are none that are not real archipelagos, surrounded by water, rather than by parts of another state.

Since some degree of fragmentation is a feature of many of the maps proposed by Israeli governments in recent years for the shape of a Palestinian state, it seems important to ask what chance a country with this landlocked archipelago shape really has of becoming a viable nation-state. Mr. Bousac’s illustration, like the real map it is based on, also puts some of the failure of the Palestinian Authority to function more like a state since the Oslo Accords were signed into context.

This leaves aside the more obvious problem that the biggest island in a Palestinian archipelago is the Gaza Strip, which is completely cut off from the West Bank. In a fascinating essay in the Abu Dhabi newspaper The National, the Indian writer Pankaj Mishra looked at parallel in the recent histories of Israel and India, and that prompts the thought that we have seen an attempt to create one country out of two isolated territories in the past — in the form of Pakistan, which originally included the mass of territory that eventually broke away to become the separate country of Bangladesh. That history, unfortunately, does little to support the idea that a similarly divided Palestinian state will have an easy time developing into one country.

Refreshing

I finally found a news outlet that refers to the Lord’s Resistance Army as a Christian extremist group, instead of just glossing over the fact that they are a Christian terrorist group, like every one else does. It’s Middle East Online, which I know nothing about yet.

Notorious Ugandan Christian radicals suspected of committing attacks in Sudan’s Darfur.

KHARTOUM – Uganda’s Christian extremist rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, the feared abductors of children who have spread fear in east-central Africa, are now rumoured to be heading into new terrain in Sudan’s troubled Darfur.

A brutal guerrilla group, whose chief Joseph Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court, the LRA has already expanded into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR) and south Sudan.

Earlier this year in south Sudan, LRA men attacked several food aid distribution stations, killed hundreds of civilians and kidnapped children for use as soldiers, forcing thousands of people into Western Equatoria.

Ahh, that’s more like it.

Women’s Soccer in Palestine

Yay, another underdog team to root for. I suppose it’ll be even harder to find their gear than the Palestinian men’s team’s.

The Palestinians were playing the Jordanians. But more significant was that the women’s teams were playing, and for the Palestinian side it was the first international match played outdoors at home.

In Al Ram, just north of Jerusalem, signs of the Israeli occupation are never far away. The stadium sits half a block from Israel’s West Bank separation barrier. Though it is made up mostly of a fence, barbed wire and ditches, here in this urban environment it takes the form of a high, seemingly endless concrete wall.

But at Monday’s soccer game, Palestinians came together in a more peaceful endeavor for the cause. Though nonpartisan, the event clearly bore the stamp of the non-Islamist camp that holds sway in the West Bank.

Watching over the players on the field were huge posters of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas. A couple of images of King Abdullah II of Jordan had been hastily added. Several dignitaries attended, including the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad.

FIFA, the international governing body of football, as soccer is known in most of the world, also sent a representative, in a salute to the Palestinian commitment to the sport.

Most of the women played bareheaded, though one Palestinian and a few of the Jordanians wore hijabs and tights under their shorts. The Palestinian team’s captain, Honey Thaljieh, 24, is a Christian from Bethlehem. The youngest player, Aya Khatib, 14, is a Muslim from a refugee camp near Jericho.

For such a varied cross section of Palestinian society, an unusual harmony prevailed.

“There are no politics involved,” said Nur Nabulsi, 17, a member of the Palestinian team. “We play only for Palestine.”