Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalA medieval woman's work left blue pigment on her teeth
The skeleton reveals the hidden role of women in producing medieval manuscripts.
KIONA N. SMITH - 1/9/2019, 12:17 PM
Archaeologists recently unearthed the skeleton of a woman they say was probably a skilled artist who helped produce the richly illustrated religious texts of medieval Europe. The woman lived sometime between 997 and 1162 CE, according to radiocarbon dating of her teeth, at a small women’s monastery called Dalheim in Lichtenau, Germany. And she died with tiny flecks of expensive lapis lazuli pigment still caught in her teeth, probably from licking the tip of her paintbrush to make a finer point.
. . .
. . . Recent historical research suggests that for much of the Middle Ages, nuns were prolific producers of religious books, especially in Germany and Austria, where records as early as the 700s CE mention books transcribed and illuminated by women. In Germany, about 4,000 books produced between 1200 and 1500 CE can be attributed to 400 specific female scribes.
For the early Medieval period, when the unnamed illuminator of Dalheim lived and worked, it’s a different story. Fewer records—and fewer books—survive from those early days. And even at surviving libraries of women’s monasteries before 1100 CE, only about one percent of the books can be clearly connected with female scribes and painters.
But the woman from Dalheim tells us, through the telltale blue flecks in her mouth, that women were scribing and painting manuscripts in medieval Europe, even if history had forgotten them. Until the 1400s CE, most scribes and painters didn’t sign their work, as a mark of humility, and that has largely erased women from the record, leaving historians to assume all the scribes were men.
More:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/medieval-illuminated-manuscripts-were-also-womens-work/
Wonderful. So glad someone decided to REALLY think about this and use a little common sense.
Anyone who has done a lot of reading over years has run into incident after incident of situations going back like this for centuries, involving people around the world.
They continue and then they are gone. People in the past simply appeared to remain clueless, dumb as mud. They didn't have technology to make mass printing available, so they didn't have a lot of history to examine, evaluate, and of course, we know the results of such profound ignorance.
People often have died, over time, some tortured as part of the dying, as ignorance ruled the day, and power-mad imbeciles decided to manipulate the gullibility of others.
Your posted article, published by Vanity Fair, was, at long last, the first study, the first effort I've seen to look below the surface, and the propaganda. So funny, considering the spooks spooked themselves in some of these cases. Shows how wildly vulnerable they actually are, doesn't it?
Can only marvel that this information didn't come sooner, publicly, but then, we are still fighting the same blind ignorance now which was prevalent in the dark ages. It's just easier to conceal it seems to be the difference. So many ways to cover it up.
There are more now, who do have a clue, and that number is going to grow, of course, as long as people are allowed to continue to read and search, and as long as people are allowed to write the truth. God knows there has always been a green light for people who want to publish gibberish, wrapped in a flag.
Thank you, geralmar, for taking the time to make this enormous contribution. Hope many conscious, awakened, curious people see your link and pounce on it. Such good information.
Bolsonaro's Education Plan Means To Expurge Paulo Freire's Influence From The School System
Educator is one of the best-known Brazilian intellectuals in the world, and his education methodology is used in many elite schools in the country
Jan.7.2019 3:41PM
Paulo Saldaña
BRASÍLIA
There are precious few details from the Bolsonaro administration regarding education known to the public, but one of them calls attention: the plan to wipe the name Paulo Freire from all Brazilian schools.
It's not clear what this means in practical terms, but educators are up in arms against the plan. Freire's method and philosophy are a strong influence in some of the best public and private schools in Brazil, and he is the best-known Brazilian intellectual worldwide.
Specialists say that Freire, who passed away in 1997, became a scapegoat to those who accuse schoolteachers of indoctrinating children. His work and its influence among educators would be the base for sectarian education, and one of the reasons for the failure of the Brazilian public educational system - a belief not shared by owners and principals of the country's elite schools.
Born in 1921 in Recife, Pernambuco, Paulo Freire's name emerged in education circles in the early 1960s, when he developed a successful alphabetization methodology for adults in the countryside of the state of Rio Grande do Norte. The Paulo Freire method, which builds reading skills using the students' knowledge and experiences, became known worldwide.
More:
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2019/01/bolsonaros-education-plan-means-to-expurge-paulo-freires-influence-from-the-school-system.shtml
Sound familiar? Wiping out the intelligence from earlier history to be replaced by doctrine and views of the current regime?
Brazil's indigenous people fight back against Bolsonaro's attacks on Amazon
Germany and Brazil have a long history of partnering on environmental protection. But President Jair Bolsonaro's stances on Brazil's indigenous people and their lands threaten the progress that has been made.
Date 06.01.2019
Author Astrid Prange
"Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was convinced that the country was big enough for nature reserves and agribusinesses to exist side by side," says Thomas Fatheuer of the Kobra network, which connects activists and academics focused on Brazil. Fatheuer knows the country well, as he lived there for 20 years and headed the Rio de Janeiro office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the German political foundation affiliated with the Green party . "But," he says, "the message of the new President Bolsonaro is that Brazil now needs to give more space to agribusiness."
After being sworn in, Bolsonaro wasted no time to make good on his promise. He started by shifting the power to designate indigenous land and nature reserves from Brazil's Ministry of Justice to the country's Ministry of Agriculture, which is headed by agricultural lobbyist Tereza Cristina Dias.
Bolsonaro also made lawyer Ricardo Salles Brazil's new environmental minister. While serving as environment secretary for Sao Paulo state between July 2016 and August 2017, Salles controversially allowed industrial companies to operate in nature reserves.
13 percent of Brazil is indigenous lands — a few of which still shelter some of the world's last uncontacted tribes
Indigenous peoples fight back
Bolsonaro recently took aim at the country's environmental agency Ibama on Twitter, saying that it was an "industry of fines” and that "fewer than one million people live in the isolated reserves for indigenous peoples, who are exploited by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)."
More:
https://www.dw.com/en/brazils-indigenous-people-fight-back-against-bolsonaros-attacks-on-amazon/a-46974782
Australians care if politicians tell lies, but people in the US don't
4 January 2019
By Michael Le Page
The US may have entered a “post-truth” era, but Australia has not. Researchers who asked people in the US their views on politicians who frequently bend the truth found that fact-checking had little impact, whereas for Australians it did change their political opinions.
The findings in Australia are positive and encouraging, says team member Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Bristol in the UK. They suggest fact-checking is a genuine counter to politicians who regularly make false statements.
“People like a politician less if they find out they have been lied to a lot,” says Lewandowsky. “It’s a reasonably large effect.”
But when the team did a follow-up study in the US, the size of the effect was ten times smaller. “We have a lot of information now suggesting American voters don’t really care about facts, in the sense that if you tell them a politician is dishonest it doesn’t really seem to matter,” says Lewandowsky.
More:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2189545-australians-care-if-politicians-tell-lies-but-people-in-the-us-dont/
The Sounds That Haunted U.S. Diplomats in Cuba? Lovelorn Crickets, Scientists Say
Diplomatic officials may have been targeted with an unknown weapon in Havana. But a recording of one “sonic attack” actually is the singing of a very loud cricket, a new analysis concludes.
By Carl Zimmer
Jan. 4, 2019
In November 2016, American diplomats in Cuba complained of persistent, high-pitched sounds followed by a range of symptoms, including headaches, nausea and hearing loss.
Exams of nearly two dozen of them eventually revealed signs of concussions or other brain injuries, and speculation about the cause turned to weapons that blast sound or microwaves. Amid an international uproar, a recording of the sinister droning was widely circulated in the news media.
On Friday, two scientists presented evidence that those sounds were not so mysterious after all. They were made by crickets, the researchers concluded.
That’s not to say that the diplomats weren’t attacked, the scientists added — only that the recording is not of a sonic weapon, as had been suggested.
More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/science/sonic-attack-cuba-crickets.html
Bolsonaro "declares war" on Brazil's indigenous people
Saturday, 5 January 2019, 11:41 am
Press Release: Survival International
Jair Bolsonaro has started his Presidency in the worst possible way for the indigenous peoples of Brazil. Taking responsibility for indigenous land demarcation away from FUNAI, the Indian affairs department, and giving it to the Agriculture Ministry is virtually a declaration of open warfare against Brazil’s tribal peoples.
Tereza Cristina, the new head of the Ministry, has long opposed tribal land rights, and championed the expansion of agriculture into indigenous territories. This is an assault on the rights, lives and livelihoods of Brazil’s first peoples – if their lands are not protected, they face genocide, and whole uncontacted tribes could be wiped out.
This onslaught on Brazil’s first peoples attacks the heart and soul of the Brazilian nation.
The theft of indigenous territories also sets the stage for environmental catastrophe. Tribal peoples are the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world and evidence proves they manage their environment and its wildlife better than anyone else.
More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1901/S00014/bolsonaro-declares-war-on-brazils-indigenous-people.htm
Washington Trained Guatemala's Mass Murderers--and the Border Patrol Played a Role
Washington Trained Guatemala’s Mass Murderers—and the Border Patrol Played a Role
Now two Guatemalan children have died under Border Patrol custody. But the agency’s role in Latin American oppression has a long history.
By Greg Grandin and Elizabeth Oglesby YESTERDAY 4:05 PM
Catarina Alonzo, mother of Felipe Gómez Alonzo, at her home in the village of Yalambojoch, Guatemala, on December 27, 2018. (Reuters / Luis Echeverria)
John P. Longan was an agent with the US Border Patrol in the 1940s and ’50s, working near the Mexican border, where two Guatemalan migrant children fell mortally ill last month in the custody of the Border Patrol—7-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquín, who died on December 8, and 8-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo, who died on Christmas Eve. Longan had a reputation for violence, as did many patrollers. Since its founding in the early 20th century, the Border Patrol has operated with near impunity, becoming arguably the most politicized branch of federal law enforcement—even more so than J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.
As the Cold War heated up in Latin America, following the 1959 victory of the Cuban Revolution, Longan, who started his career as a police officer in Oklahoma, moved on to work with the CIA, providing security assistance—under the cover of the State Department—to allied anti-communist nations. Put simply, Longan taught local intelligence and police agencies how to create death squads to target political activists, deploying tactics that he had earlier used to capture migrants on the border. He arrived in Guatemala in late 1965, where he put into place a paramilitary unit that, early the next year, would execute what he called Operación Limpieza, or Operation Clean-Up. Within three months, this unit had conducted over 80 raids and multiple extrajudicial assassinations, including an action that, over the course of four days, captured, tortured, and executed more than 30 prominent left-opposition leaders. The military dumped their bodies into the sea while the government denied any knowledge of their whereabouts.
Longan’s Limpieza was a decisive step forward in the unraveling of Guatemala, empowering an intelligence system that through the course of the civil war would be responsible for tens of thousands of disappearances, 200,000 deaths, and countless tortures. (Greg Grandin describes Longan’s work in The Last Colonial Massacre.)
The US role in that civil war wasn’t, of course, limited to the covert operations of one former Border Patrol agent. Throughout the Cold War, Washington intervened multiple times in Guatemala, funded a rampaging army, ran cover for the death squads that its own security agents, like Longan, helped create, and signaled that it would turn a blind eye to genocide. Even before Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election, two retired generals playing prominent roles in his campaign traveled to Central America and told Guatemalan officials that “Mr. Reagan recognizes that a good deal of dirty work has to be done” (for this quote, see Allan Nairn’s 1980 “Controversial Reagan Campaign Links with Guatemalan Government and Private Sector Leaders,” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, October 30, 1980). In office, Reagan supplied munitions and training to the Guatemalan army to carry out that dirty work (despite a ban on military aid imposed during the Carter administration, since existing contracts were exempt from the ban). Reagan was steadfast in his moral backing for Guatemala’s génocidaires, calling de facto head of state Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, who seized power in a coup in the spring of 1982, “a man of great integrity” and “totally dedicated to democracy.”
More:
https://www.thenation.com/article/border-patrol-refugees-guatemala-cia-war-crimes/
Two-Thirds Of Brazilians Are Against Favoring The US
Datafolha survey shows rejection of Bolsonaro's foreign policy plan no matter age, gender, income or location
Dec.27.2018 10:49AM
Luciana Coelho
SÃO PAULO
Two in every three Brazilians disagree that Brazil should favor the United States in matters of foreign policy, according to a new Datafolha survey.
Alignment with the US and the Trump administration is one of the main diplomacy guidelines of both president-elect Jair Bolsonaro and his Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ernesto Araújo.
The poll interviewed 2,077 people in 130 townships on December 18th and 19th and resulted in 66% of people disagreeing with favoring the United States to the detriment of other countries. The margin of error is two percentage points up or down.
Among the 29% of respondents that agree with the idea, half (15% of the total) say they agree entirely, and 14% say that they partially agree with the plan. One percent said they neither agree or disagree and 4% said they don't have any opinion on the topic.
More:
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2018/12/two-thirds-of-brazilians-are-against-favoring-the-us.shtml
Businessman linking Uribe to death squad released from jail despite admitting to drug trafficking
Source: Colombia Reports
Businessman linking Uribe to death squad released from jail despite admitting to drug trafficking
by Adriaan Alsema January 2, 2019
A notoriously violent neighbor and former business partner of Colombia’s former President Alvaro Uribe has been released from jail despite admitting to drug trafficking charges, local media reported Wednesday.
Santiago Gallon was arrested in the border city of Cucuta last year after British intelligence agencies accused him of trafficking at least five tons of cocaine to Europe and the United States.
Gallon admitted to the charges but was released on Monday and allowed to be tried in liberty after a series of irregularities and delays in the investigation carried out by the prosecution office in Medellin.
Uribe’s neighbor and former business partner was first convicted and imprisoned in 1994 for ordering the assassination of football player Andres Escobar, but was later absolved after his bodyguard took the blame.
Read more: https://colombiareports.com/colombia-businessman-linking-uribe-to-death-squad-released-from-jail-despite-admitting-to-drug-trafficking/
By tossing him out into public right now, the Uribe-puppet President has signed this man's death warrant. He'll be gone in no time at all, just like one of his own earlier victims.
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