PM rules out use of armed forces against Naxals.IAF set for govt nod to open fire during anti-Naxal ops.RSS 'satisfied' with Chidambaram's anti-Naxal measures. MAMATA Calls Maoists for Talk!Maoist revelation may put UPA in tight spot!
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This Sunday: Exclusive! Senators Levin and Graham, Generals McCaffrey and Myers
Afghanistan: As the war enters its ninth year and President Obama weighs the assessment of his military commanders, the debate over the best way forward intensifies in Washington. Is sending more troops the best answer? Can the Taliban and Al Qaeda be defeated? Two key voices on the Hill and two experienced military leaders weigh in on the direction a new war strategy should take: Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI); a GOP member of that same committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC); Gen. Barry McCaffrey (Ret.); and Fmr. Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers (Ret.).
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| Mamata |
Calcutta, Oct. 10: Mamata Banerjee today said the Centre should initiate talks with Maoists and "eminent people" could be asked to start the process.
The railway minister's push for talks has come at a time the UPA government, of which her Trinamul Congress is a constituent, is planning a crackdown on the Maoists across several states.
"We do not believe in the politics of bloodshed and violence. These daily killings should stop. There are many prominent people among the Maoists who have brains. I would like the central government to begin a dialogue with the Maoists. The Maoists should shun violence and sit for dialogue. If possible, I think intellectuals and eminent people can be asked to start such a dialogue," she said in an interview to STAR Ananda.
"All this (the talks) should be done publicly and there shouldn't be any hide-and-seek. I will definitely tell Chidambaramji to start such talks. Not all Maoists or Naxalites are bad.''
P. Chidambaram, the Union home minister, has said the door for talks was open but the Maoists will have to lay down arms first.
Mamata said discussions with the Maoists may be the only way to stop them from killing people. "What we are watching is a Maoist agitation in Lalgarh and its adjoining areas on the issue of development. Our party had begun the movement (for the tribals) first. I have seen tribals here survive by eating ants as they don't get food for days. But killing innocents cannot be the solution. The Maoists will have to be convinced that their path is not right," she said.
"For this, dialogue is necessary. If talks can be held with the Ulfa in Assam or with (separatist) leaders of Jammu and Kashmir, what's wrong with having discussions with the Maoists?'' she asked.
Automobile hub
Mamata said tonight the railways would set up an automobile hub in Howrah on 300 acres of railway land. "The hub will be built on a public private partnership basis. But I don't want to disclose other details of this project as an expert committee is looking into it," she said.
In Delhi, railway sources said they were not aware of an auto "hub" but plans were afoot to build a facility where a large number of automobiles in rail transit can be stored for distribution to various outlets in the Northeast and Bangladesh. The sources did not know if Mamata was speaking of the same facility or another hub.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091011/jsp/bengal/story_11601809.jsp
OUR CORRESPONDENT
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| Chhatradhar Mahato |
Jhargram, Oct. 10: A court in Jhargram today turned down the state government's plea for further police custody of Chhatradhar Mahato and put him in judicial remand.
The additional chief judicial magistrate of the Jhargram court, Vishal Mangrati, said no further police custody of the leader of the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities was required because the case diary did not mention any "fresh development" during the last three days that Mahato was in police remand.
The judge rejected Mahato's lawyer's plea that he be released on bail. The charges that the government had brought against Mahato were "very serious" in nature, the judge said. He has been put in judicial remand till October 23.
Public prosecutor Ashok Bakshi prayed for 15 days' police custody for Mahato. He argued that the Maoist-affected area was huge and Mahato needed to be taken to several places to "uncover" the extent to which the "Maoist menace" had spread.
The judge, however, said Mahato had been sent to police custody thrice and in the last instance, there was no "fresh development" so there was no need to send him to police custody again.
A senior police officer said the government would appeal against the judicial custody order in the sessions court. Unlike the last time when Mangrati had said: "I am not convinced that the provisions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act are applicable to the accused" since the committee was not a banned outfit, he made no such observation today.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091011/jsp/bengal/story_11601810.jsp
Indian PM rules out use of armed forces against Naxals!On the other hand it is learnt that IAF is all set for govt nod to open fire during anti-Naxal ops!RSS 'satisfied' with Chidambaram's anti-Naxal measures and UPA partner , the Rly Minister of India Calls Maoists on talk!What a Nice treatment with such a delicious Recipe!
Maoist revelation may put UPA in tight spot!The recent disclosure by Maoist Politburo member Kishanji that it had helped the Congress in Andhra Pradesh and had been helping The Trinamool Congress in West Bengal may put the UPA in an embarrassing spot .
Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh (RSS) praised Union Home minister P Chidambram for his move to bring about greater coordination among the states to tackle Naxalites.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Sunday met Home Minister P Chidambaram in New Delhi and discussed problems relating to tackling of Maoist violence and coordinated action against the menace with neighbouring states.
The meeting came days after the Cabinet Committee on Security approved a new plan under which coordinated action will be undertaken to prevent violence by the Left extremists in selected areas and development activities will be carried out of on a war-footing there.
Before approval, the new plan was discussed threadbare by the Centre and the affected states like Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal.
Bhattacharjee, who is here to attend the CPI(M) Politburo meeting, had a 45-minute breakfast meeting with Chidambaram at the latter's residence.
Though there was no official word on the meeting, informed sources said Maoist violence in West Bengal was the prime focus of discussion. The ruling CPI(M) has been facing the brunt of Maoist attacks for over a year now, with almost 80 of its leaders and supporters being killed.
Last week, a prominent Maoist leader had said in Kolkata that they were ready to speak to West Bengal government but laid a series of conditions including release of its leaders and ceasefire and had ruled out laying down of arms.
"We are ready for a discussion but the government should first declare ceasefire (which will be) followed by us," Maoist leader Kishenji told PTI from an undisclosed location.
With Maoists striking at will, Chidambaram has warned them of action if they did not abjure violence. The Centre has already issued an appeal for talks with the CPI(Maoist) provided they lay down arms.
According to the new plan worked out by the Union Home Ministry, the anti-Maoist operations will be undertaken in states affected by Left-wing extremism and would be assisted by the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, a central force.
According to the Ministry, the Maoists have their influence in 20 states across the country. "Over 2,000 police station areas in 223 districts in these states are partially or substantially affected by the menace," Chidambaram had said recently.
The latest incidents of violence include beheading of a police inspector in Jharkhand and 17 policemen being gunned down by Maoists in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district.
Deploying paramilitary forces in West Bengal's violence-hit Lalgarh was a "mistake" committed by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee said on Saturday.
"I still think that the Lalgarh operation was a mistake. The union home ministry didn't consult us before beginning the operation in the region," Banerjee told the Bengali TV channel Star Ananda in an interview.
"The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M)-led Left Front government here is just utilising the central forces to capture these areas with their own armed cadres," she said.
"The centre should immediately begin a process of dialogue with the so-called Maoists to resolve the matter. Both the parties should talk it out sitting across the table."
Terming the whole process as "wrong", Banerjee said the deployment of central forces in the Maoist-affected pockets was not a permanent solution.
"One can only reclaim few Maoist stronghold pockets by the help of army, but he or she cannot bring any change to the socio-political situation in that area," the Trinamool chief added.
Banerjee also welcomed the initiative of Union Home Minister P Chidambaram who had urged the Maoist rebels to stop violence and participate in a dialogue process with the government.
"I am interested to play a role to resolve any socio-political issue in the state - be it Lalgarh violence or the Gorkhaland agitation in the northern part of the state," she said, adding that her party will never support "bloodbath" and "vindictive politics".
"We appreciate and share the views of the Home minister to tackle the naxal menace by ensuring greater coordination among the states... It will definitely help in reining in the activities of the Maoists", RSS media in-charge Madan Das Devi told reporters on the second day of its three-day brainstorming session in Rajgir.
"The Centre and states should work in tandem to check the activities of the Naxalites", he said.
"We are satisfied with the steps taken by Chidambaram to counter the problem", the RSS leader said, pointing out that Naxalites were not involved in war against the Centre only but also against the people as a whole."
The RSS leader also emphasised the need to keep the morale high of the security forces fighting the naxalites. He said during the executive committee meeting, the RSS would adopt a resolution to work on finding ways how to fight the naxal problems.
With government approving a Home Ministry offensive against Maoists, Defence Minister A K Antony on Saturday said the IAF too was all set to get permission to open fire in self-defence during anti-Naxal operations after laying down safeguards and procedures.
However, he reiterated that the government would not involve them in a combat role in the anti-Naxal operations, which was the primary responsibility of the State government and central paramilitary forces.
"After carefully preparing safeguards and operational details, for self defence only, we will give the operational clearance. When we give permission, we will first inform the Air Force," Antony told reporters here on the sidelines of an international flight safety conference organised by the IAF.
"There is no proposal to deploy the armed forces in anti-Naxal operations. The IAF will have a limited role to transport the paramilitary forces and casualty evacuation.
There is no proposal to engage the IAF in a combat role in the operations," he said.
The Defence Minister said the government was "very clear that we will avoid deployment of armed forces to maximum extent in internal security situation".
Antony said internal security was "purely the primary duty" of state governments and paramilitary forces and that the Centre would extend all help to them.
IAF chief Air Chief Marshal P V Naik had a fortnight ago sought Defence Ministry permission to defend air force helicopters and crew members operating in Naxal-hit areas.
The Defence Ministry's stated position is not to use armed forces in internal security role and that the IAF proposal would have to be considered by a higher authority such as the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) to permit the IAF to use force to defend itself when attacked by Maoists.
If permitted, the IAF would deploy its Garud special force commando to man the guns to be mounted on the helicopters operating in the Maoist-hit areas for transporting paramilitary personnel and for casualty evacuation.
Meanwhile, the CCS had a couple of days ago given its approval to a Home Ministry plan to go on the offensive in selected districts of the states infested by Maoists.
The CCS decision against the backdrop of the Left extremists beheading a Jharkhand police inspector after kidnapping him and killing 17 policemen in Gadchiroli in Maharashtra in an ambush.
Refusing to bracket Naxals with terrorists, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday ruled out use of armed forces against them and said that the government is willing to hold talks with them if they abjured violence.
"They (Naxals) are banned organisations and are covered under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act," he said replying to a question if the government proposed to declare the ultra-left groups as terror outfits.
"We are not in favour of using the armed forces against the Naxalites. The para-military forces and police are adequate (for counter-Naxal operations)," he told a press meet here and underscored the need for looking at the causes of alienation of the people, particularly the tribals.
While terming Naxalism as the biggest internal security threat, the Prime Minister said dialogue with them was possible only if they shunned violence.
"Why the Naxalites alone, the government is prepared to have a dialogue with even the terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir if they abjure violence," he said.
Voicing concern over yesterday's audacious Taliban assault on Pakistan Military's General Headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, the Prime Minister said, "People and government of Pakistan should realise the great harm and (their) patronisation of terrorist groups have done to the South Asian region.
"The situation in our neighbourhood -- in Pakistan and Afghanistan is not as it should be. Rising role of terrorist groups is a matter of concern for us," he said. Singh refused to be drawn into any controversy over CBI's decision seeking closure of the case against Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi in the Bofors gun deal.
"It is not proper for me to comment on CBI petition for closure of the case as it is sub-judice, but we acted on legal advice from Attorney General, Solicitor General (which was) endorsed by the Law Minister," he said.
Maintaining that the worst of price rise was over, the Prime Minister ruled out announcement of any fresh farm loan waiver and hoped that the Rabi crop would be normal.
He also described as "improper" the Maharashtra-for-Marathi campaign by MNS leader Raj Thackeray, saying, "I feel sorry. I am confident the people of Maharashtra will give him a befitting reply."
When Haifa Zangana was captured by Iraq's secret police in 1971, she feared she might never see her friends or family again.
The 22-year-old University of Baghdad student was sent to Qasr-al Nihaya prison, or "Palace of the End," where she was subjected to brutal interrogations for days on end. Zangana's captors beat her and deprived her of sleep, food and even sanitary napkins, as they tried to get her to name other young revolutionaries.
When the initial interrogations were over, she was transferred to the infamous Abu Ghraib. She says she was released only as a result of her family's relentless efforts. Almost four decades later, she still feels guilty for surviving when so many of her friends died in prison.
Obama emails Delhi lawyer, ex-classmate, about Nobel
It was a surprise email for Supreme Court lawyer Surat Singh from his 'friend' US President Barack Obama, saying that he honestly did not feel that he deserved to be a Nobel laureate.
Singh, who studied along with Obama at the Harvard Law School 21 years ago, was earlier also invited by the US President for his inaugural ceremony in Washington on January 20 this year.
"This morning, Michelle (wife) and I awoke to some surprising and humbling news."
To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honoured by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace," Obama wrote in the email to Singh.
The US President said that he was grateful to Singh that he "stood with me thus far, and I am honoured to continue our vital work in the years to come".
Obama also explained to Singh why he said in his remarks after the announcement that the award comes as a "call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century".
"...I also know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes," Obama wrote.
Mkt undergoes healthy correction
corporate entity Reliance Industries (RIL). The downward adjustment in market took place even as Indian rupee appreciated sharply against dollar, hitting hard the export-oriented companies, and telecom sector reeled under worries about increased tariff competition.
FMCG and consumer durables stocks, however, shined on keen demand throughout the week.
In the week to October 10, the Bombay Stock Exchange 30-share barometer tumbled by 491.89 points, or 2.87 per cent, to 16,642.66 against its last weekend's close.
Similarly, the broader 50-share Nifty of the National Stock Exchange fell by 138.20 points, or 2.72 per cent, to close the week at 4,945.20 from its previous weekend's close.
The market virtually failed to respond to RIL's surprised 1:1 bonus issue and higher-than-expected Q2 results announced by IT bellwether Infosys Technologies.
Analysts said the major trigger would be second quarter results during next week but liquidity situation seems to be causing concerns among investors as several companies are expected to raise large chunk of funds by way of IPOs and Qualified Institutional Placements in the calendar year.
India hints at Pak link to Kabul embassy attack!
Hinting at Pakistani link to the Kabul Embassy attack, India said on Saturday that Afghanistan faces threat from terrorists and their "patrons residing across the border" and that the blast was handiwork of those who want to undermine Indo-Afghan friendship.
Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, who returned after a two-day visit to Kabul in the wake of Thursday's attack, made it clear that India will not be deterred by such acts as she reiterated the unwavering commitment to pursuing bilateral development partnership and assisting the people of Afghanistan in realising a democratic, peaceful and prosperous country.
"The attack was clearly the handiwork of those who are desperate to undermine Indo-Afghan friendship and do not believe in a strong, democratic and pluralistic Afghanistan," she said.
"The international community and indeed the people of Afghanistan face a clear danger from the perpetrators of such wanton acts of terrorism and their patrons residing across the border," Rao said, apparently hinting at Pakistan.
Afghanistan has already hinted at Pakistani linkage to the attack, with its Foreign Ministry saying that the blast was "planned and implemented from outside the borders of Afghanistan".
Expressing her "deep concern and revulsion over the barbaric and cowardly attack", Rao said it was "so clearly aimed against the people of India and the people of Afghanistan and their abiding friendship."
The Foreign Secretary emphasised that the scourge of terrorism must be resolutely opposed, resisted and overcome through "undiluted commitment" and effort by the international community.
During her visit, Rao met President Hamid Karzai, Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta and National Security Adviser Zalmai Rassoul.
"They were unanimous in their view that the attack was carried out by elements from outside Afghanistan seeking to damage the excellent relations that exist between India and Afghanistan," a statement by the Ministry of External Affairs said.
The Afghan leaders assured her that the Government of Afghanistan would do all in its power to expeditiously investigate the dastardly attack and bring to justice the perpetrators and those behind this attack.
The Foreign Secretary extended her heartfelt condolences to the families of those Afghan nationals who lost their lives in this cowardly attack, particularly to the families of the two Afghan security personnel who died during the attack and whose presence of mind and alertness prevented what could have been a far greater tragedy.
MSNBC reports:
Zangana's account of those days, "Dreaming of Baghdad," was recently released for the first time in the United States. She says the book, which was originally published in France in 1990, was the first written by an Iraqi woman dealing openly with torture.
"I thought I could break this barrier myself, maybe we can talk about it, and in the future put an end to it, by dealing with it, facing it," she said in an interview.
Carrying the scars of a brutally oppressive regime, Zangana wrote the book because she felt obliged to share the hardships of being a politically active woman in Iraq in the 1970s. Today, she fears Americans don't hear often enough directly from female Iraqis, so she spends considerable time and energy spreading the word about their lives.
"Women in Iraq are losing on two levels," Zangana said. "First as citizens, and second as women, based on their gender." They are left with the burden of looking after their family as breadwinners are killed and those who remain are left with virtually no job prospects.
'No space to breathe'
Zangana, who was born to a middle-class Kurdish-Arabic family in Baghdad, became politically active as a student at the University of Baghdad. She joined other young revolutionaries in the fight against Iraq's oppressive regime, which left "no space to breathe" for any political opposition.
"You are fine as long as you don't say 'No' to anything established or decision taken by the Baath Party… If you have the courage to oppose the regime, there is torture, there are executions," she said about that time.
Because it was easier for women than men to travel freely, Zangana was given responsibility for maintaining communication between various offices of the "Central Leadership," a faction within the influential Iraqi Communist Party in 1970s. Zangana and her fellow party members aimed to overthrow the Baathists and advocated for Kurdish self-determination.
Zangana was caught by the police on a hot day in August 1971, as she returned to Baghdad from the south of the country, while people were having fiestas and the streets were empty. She was kept for two weeks at Qasr-al Nihaya detention center for "initial interrogations."
Torturer takes pity
Terrorized by the howls of the tortured, she lost her ability to sleep. At night, she listened to their screams and pleas for mercy in an effort to recognize familiar voices from fellow dissenters, who might have been detained like herself. A torturer took pity on her when he saw her legs covered with menstrual blood, and gave her a piece of cloth.
Once, an interrogator accused her of leaking information to her fellow party members while she was still in prison.
"Do you think a few whores and bastards can jeopardize our government?" he asked, as Zangana recalled in her memoir. She was forced to sign a letter that accused her of joining the Iraqi Communist Party to meet new men and seek sexual pleasures.
Zangana spent the next six months in Abu Ghraib and then a prison for prostitutes, which she claims was an attempt to humiliate her.
Following her release, Zangana had to report to the security forces once a month about her activities. She felt like a burden on her family in Baghdad, and decided to flee to London in 1976 as a political exile.
For years, Zangana tried to suppress her memories of jail: the tiny cells with curtains stained with blood and urine; the flashbacks of beaten, disfigured bodies thrown in front of her for purposes of intimidation.
She even had to teach herself to sleep again, because many nights she would suddenly wake up at 2 a.m., "the time when they used to lead me out of my cell for interrogation."
'Huge gap' in perception
As Zangana looks at Iraq today, she says the extensive loss of life is beyond what a society can handle, with repercussions for women that often get lost in translation.
Zangana tells the story of a Western aid worker who asks an Iraqi woman what she thinks about gender equality and how it feels to wear an abaya, a garment that's used to cover up the body.
The aid worker expects to hear that she felt oppressed by the abaya. But the woman responds that she's "willing to be painted black from top to bottom" as long as she can have electricity.
"There's kind of this huge gap," Zangana said, between the reality about women's lives in Iraq and how people perceive it to be in the West. It is important to pay attention to women's voices today, she believes, to be able to see the full picture about the human cost of the war.
And she insists on the vision that drove her youthful idealism more than 30 years ago.
"The time spent on preparing for wars and invasions," she said, "if it [was] only spent on…building bridges and helping to create a dialogue among people, we would have been living in a far better world now."
President Barack Obama linked scientific discovery to helping the struggling economy Wednesday as he honored those who invented batteries for implanted defibrillators, mapped the human genetic code and made global positioning systems possible.
Later in the day, the president invoked Galileo's legacy to inspire the next generation at what may have been the first White House skywatching party. It was a star-studded finish for a day devoted to science, technology and innovation.
During a White House ceremony, Obama handed out the National Medal of Science and the Medal of Technology and Innovation to more than a dozen recipients. The president said the United States must continue to invest in "the next generation of discoveries and the next generation of discoverers."
Repeating his pledge to put thousands more students in college classrooms, he committed to spending 3 percent of the gross domestic product to educate future scientists and researchers.
"Throughout our history, amid tumult and war and against tough odds, this nation has always looked toward the future and then led the way," he said.
With the country facing economic and security challenges, Obama said the recipients of the nation's highest research honor are reminders that the United States can pull itself out of an economic recession that has defined his first year of his presidency.
"For at our best, this nation has never feared the future," he said. "We've shaped the future. Even when we've endured terrible storms, we haven't given up or turned back — we've remain fixed on that brighter horizon. That's how we've led in the pursuit of scientific discovery; and in turn that's how science has helped us lead the world."
From atoms to the stars
Among those honored was Dr. Francis Collins, Obama's director of the National Institutes of Health, who mapped the human genome. The president also honored the IBM Corp. for its supercomputers and a pair of Adobe Systems Inc. officials for changing how Americans use their computers to find information.
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"The scientists in this room have plumbed the furthest reaches of the universe and the deepest recesses of the human mind. They've sequenced the human genome and stimulated the workings of the atom. They've developed technologies that have greatly improved our understanding of the human body and the natural world, and they've fostered innovations that have saved millions of lives and improved countless more," Obama said.
"So this nation owes all of you an enormous debt of gratitude far greater than any medal can bestow."
In the evening, Obama welcomed 150 schoolchildren to the White House for an astronomy event. More than 20 telescopes were set up for skywatching — and Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, took questions from the kids as well as from Internet users. Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin and Hubble repairman John Grunsfeld were also in attendance.
A first for the White House?
The White House star party may have been a first for the president's home, according to U.S. Naval Observatory spokesman Geoff Chester. The event was organized under the auspices of the International Year of Astronomy, which marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first observations of Jupiter and its moons with a telescope.
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| OSTP Telescopes are set up in the dark for Wednesday night's White House star party. |
Then the president looked through an 8-inch telescope, hauled south from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and focused on twin stars nicknamed "double-double" that are in the constellation Lyra. The stars are 160 light-years away, which translates to 960 trillion miles.
"That's really far away," Obama said after his glimpse into the scope's eyepiece. "Outstanding."
Dean Howarth and Dan Carroll, suburban Virginia high school science teachers, had a brass replica of Galileo's telescope and a fancier Newton telescope replica for the White House party. And as if that weren't enough, they also were planning to change into costumes to dress as the two science legends.
"We're either really cool or really crazy," Howarth said before he changed into his Newtonian garb.
Tyriek Mack and Owen Duffy, eighth graders from Washington, liked science enough to have attended space camp in Alabama, but the visit to the White House was even better, they said. Duffy, whose personal telescope is broken, said he couldn't wait until the president was done so he could "rush back to the telescopes" set up on the lawn.
So with the telescopes, astronomers, and costumes, was there an element of geekiness on the White House lawn?
"Does the geekiness need to be questioned?" Howarth said. "The nice thing is that people are paying attention to geeks."
Weapons turned on police
Naxalite insurgents have developed a unique strategy to strengthen their armoury — snatch weapons from security personnel.
To wage a war against the state, guerrillas of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) have been carrying out a series of attacks (see list on left) on government forces.
As the Central government prepares to unleash the biggest offensive against the Maoists — spread across 13 states in the country — after the Maharashtra assembly polls, the CPI(Maoist) central committee has directed its combat forces to step up attacks on police installations and loot weapons.
"We are prepared for war. We would kill the police with their own weapons," said the Maoists' central committee member and second-in-command of their guerilla forces, Koteshwar Rao, alias Kishanji.
In September, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had called the Naxal insurgency the greatest threat to the nation's internal security.
Between January and August 2008, 317 civilians were killed owing to Maoists violence. This year, till August 31, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs, 341 people had been killed across 11 states.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Wednesday said security forces would engage Maoists till they abjured violence and that the Indian Air Force (IAF) would take steps to protect itself from Naxal attacks.
On Saturday, Defence Minister A.K. Antony said the government is ready to give the air force the go-ahead to shoot down Naxalites in defence. The air force had sought this permission in the wake of the killing of an IAF personnel in a Naxal attack on a helicopter during the Chhattisgarh assembly polls last year.
A majority of weapons robbed are light machine guns and INSAS self-loading rifles and bolt-action rifles, Kishanji told Hindustan Times on the phone from his hideout somewhere in the Maoist stronghold of Lalgarh in West Bengal, about 250 km southwest of state capital Kolkata.
Director General of Police, Orissa, M. Praharaj conceded that the Maoists possessed a large quantity of police weapons. "It is well known that the Maoists have looted a cache of arms and ammunition during attacks on Koraput and Nayagarh."
Kishanji claimed that 85 per cent of arms and ammunition in the Maoists' arsenal had been looted from security personnel, 10 per cent was purchased from the black market and the remaining five per cent manufactured in the Maoists' own factories. Hindustan Times, however, could not independently verify the claim.
Kishanji said the rebels depend mostly on people's support to continue their activities. "There is a fixed quota for everything. All of us — combat squad troops or central committee members— get just two pairs of clothes from the organisation. Comrades have to fetch their own weapons."
The villagers, Rao said, serve meals to the Maoists twice a day — forenoon and evening. He denied the charge that villagers were forced to serve them. "We have been able to move freely in villages and jungles for the last 30 years only because the people have accepted us as their friends," he said.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/jharkhand/Weapons-turned-on-police/463844/H1-Article1-463805.aspx
Kishanji visited city twice
India in new anti-Maoist strategy
| By Sunil Raman BBC News, Delhi |
 Maoists have a presence in more than 200 districts of India |
The Indian government has agreed on a new tactic to fight Maoists who are operating in several states.
Officials say state police are to take the lead in co-ordinating operations against the Maoists, while central forces are only to lend assistance.
The decision came hours after at least 17 policemen were killed in a battle with Maoist insurgents in the western state of Maharashtra.
India says that Maoist insurgents pose its biggest security threat.
They operate in many states and say they are fighting for the rights of the poor and landless.
Remanded
Maoists have a presence in over 223 of India's 600-odd districts across 20 states, according to the government.
Around 70,000 central paramilitary troops along with elite commando and special forces will be deployed in the upcoming operation against the rebels.
The troops will be provided cover by the army and armoured air force helicopters.
A senior government official told the BBC that the operation is to be launched within weeks to "wipe out the top leadership" of the rebels and secure some 40,000 sq km of territory that is being held by them.
The government believes there are less than 20 top rebel leaders, nearly 30 commanders, and some 12,000 cadres.
A senior home ministry official pointed out that last month the government managed to arrest top Maoist leaders Amit Bagchi and Kobad Ghandy, taking the total number of arrested "politburo members" to seven.
The Maoist leadership has consistently maintained that their strength has been "overestimated" by the government.
What is not contested is that areas where the insurgents wield most influence are mostly poor and dominated by tribes people. They are also areas widely seen as being rich in mineral wealth which the Maoists say is being handed over to corporate firms while the poor remain deprived.
 A massive security operation against the rebels will be launched soon |
The government has come to the conclusion that development work can take place in the affected areas only after the rebels are defeated.
A recent statement by the Maoist leadership called upon its armed cadres to paralyse government functioning, attack and kill police and paramilitary soldiers and destabilise administrative functioning.
There have been over 1,400 cases related to violence by Maoists between January and August, according to official records. Nearly 600 civilians have died over that period.
In the latest attack on Thursday evening, a group of Maoists attacked a police station in Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra.
At least 17 policemen, including a top commander, were killed in the battle. It was not clear whether the rebels suffered any casualties.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told police chiefs last month that a campaign against the rebels had failed to produce results.
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Pakistan commandos rescue 39 hostages, 3 die
Militants' assault on compound is country's third major attack in a week
 Adrees Latif / Reuters Soldiers secure the perimeter of Pakistan's army headquarters after a deadly attack on Saturday. |
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RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Pakistani commandos stormed an office building on Sunday and rescued 39 people whom suspected Taliban militants took hostage after a brazen attack on the army's headquarters.
Saturday's attack on the tightly guarded army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi came as the military prepared an offensive against the militants in their stronghold of South Waziristan on the Afghan border.
The strike at the heart of the powerful military called into question government assertions the militants were virtually crippled by recent setbacks. But a top official said it only underlined the need to finish them off.
Three hostages, two commandos and four of the gunmen were killed in the pre-dawn rescue operation, said army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas. One wounded gunman was captured.
"Now there is no terrorist left there. The operation is over," Abbas told Reuters.
Pakistani Taliban militants linked to al-Qaida have launched numerous attacks over the past couple of years, most aimed at the government and security forces, including bomb attacks in Rawalpindi.
On Saturday, gunmen wearing army uniforms attacked the army headquarters killing six soldiers including a brigadier and a lieutenant colonel in a gun battle at a main gate.
Five gunmen were killed there and two of their wounded colleagues captured. But others fled and took hostages in a building housing security offices near the headquarters.
Commandos launched their rescue assault under cover of darkness with a blast and gunfire erupting at 6 a.m. (8 a.m. ET).
"They were in a room with a terrorist who was wearing a suicide jacket but the commandos acted promptly and gunned him down before he could pull the trigger," Abbas said of one large group of hostages.
"Three of the hostages were killed due to militant firing," he said. More hostages were later found alive.
Violent week
The attack on the army came after a violent week.
Last Monday, a suicide bomber attacked a U.N. office in Islamabad killing five members of staff, and on Friday a suspected suicide bomber killed 49 people in Peshawar.
"What happened in Peshawar, Islamabad and today, all roads lead to South Waziristan," Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Saturday. "Now the government has no other option but to launch an offensive."
The army has been preparing an offensive with air and artillery attacks but has not said when ground troops will go in.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33251608/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
Army abuse claims 'being ignored'
 The ex-investigator said most soldiers served their country with dignity |
The Royal Military Police has failed to investigate claims of abuse against civilians by British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, a whistleblower has said.
The former senior investigator said the RMP was not equipped to deal with the pressures of their own investigations.
He told BBC 5 Live's Donal MacIntyre programme allegations of torture and murder were being "covered up".
The Ministry of Defence said there was no evidence of failures and claims of abuse were always fully investigated.
'Structural flaws'
Speaking anonymously, "John" said whilst most British troops had served their country with distinction, hundreds of suspicious incidents of alleged misconduct had not been properly investigated or simply ignored.
|  For too long I belonged to an organisation that wasn't seeking out the truth  Whistleblower "John"  |
Referring to his time in the RMP's Special Investigation Branch, he said: "I believe that I was serving in something that was party to covering up quite serious allegations of torture and murder.
"... For too long I belonged to an organisation that wasn't seeking out the truth."
He said a lack of resources was partly to blame, but claimed there were also serious structural flaws in the Army justice system.
One case which came to his attention involved the alleged murder of an Iraqi by a British sergeant.
There was, he claimed, evidence to strongly suggest the Iraqi victim had been shot at point blank range for throwing rocks at a British Army tank.
'Testing conditions'
He told the BBC: "A friend of mine who was a senior NCO went to the scene and was ordered not to investigate it as a murder. He was told that statements should just be taken as if it was a routine incident."
Some cases involving allegations of murder and abuse, followed by a failure to carry out an adequate investigation, have already come to public attention.
The death of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi hotel receptionist who died in British military custody having allegedly been beaten by soldiers, is currently the subject of a public inquiry.
Responding to the allegations, the MoD insisted any substantive allegations of abuse brought to its attention would always be investigated as fully as possible and that such cases were relatively rare.
It also said there was no evidence of systemic failure or interference in the RMP or military justice system.
In a statement it added: "We must remember that over 100,000 of our personnel served in Iraq and, with the exception of a few individuals, they have performed to the highest standards under extraordinarily testing conditions there."
You can hear the full report on the Donal MacIntyre programme on 5 live on Sunday, 11 October, 2009 at 1930 BST. Download the free podcast. You can can contact the programme by emailing donal@bbc.co.uk
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Even the Maya are getting sick of 2012 hype
Apocalypse Next? Experts trace fears to modern, not ancient sources
 Moises Castillo / AP Guatemalan Mayan elder Apolinario Chile Pixtun gestures as he pays his respects at an altar within the Iximche ceremonial site in Tecpan, Guatemala. Chile Pixtun shrugs off the 2012 frenzy, saying he's "fed up with this stuff." |
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MEXICO CITY - Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.
Or is it?
Definitely not, the Mayan elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."
It can only get worse for him. Next month, Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.
At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared.
"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."
Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan, ideas.
A significant time period for the Maya does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.
But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya Indians say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials — such as one on the History Channel that mixes predictions from Nostradamus and the Maya and asks: "Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?"
Grains of truth
It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or "Planet X." But this one has some grains of archaeological truth.
One of them is Monument Six.
Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn't survive; the site was largely paved over, and parts of the tablet were looted.
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However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.
Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico's National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, "He will descend from the sky."
Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Maya sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.
And anyway, the Maya in the drought-stricken Yucatan peninsula have bigger worries than 2012.
"If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn't have any idea," said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. "That the world is going to end? They wouldn't believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain."
Talent for astronomy
The Maya civilization, which reached its height from the year 300 to 900, had a talent for astronomy.
Its Long Count calendar begins in 3114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Maya, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.
"It's a special anniversary of creation," said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. "The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they're just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six."
Bernal suggests that apocalypse is "a very Western, Christian" concept projected onto the Maya, perhaps because Western myths are "exhausted."
U.S. dominates Nobel prizes, thanks to science
Eight American researchers, plus President Obama, honored so far this year
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STOCKHOLM - After cleaning up in the Nobel science prizes, the United States on Friday scored another coup: the peace prize for a president less than nine months in office.
At a time when some had begun to question how long America's pre-eminence in science and diplomacy could last, nine of the 11 nominees who won or shared this year's five prizes handed out so far are American.
On Monday, the economics prize will be announced, and Americans are the favorites.
The scientists were recognized for work that led to breakthroughs in cancer therapies and antibiotics, and brought the world digital photography and high-speed Internet. Obama won for his mission to rid the world of nuclear arms and to bridge the divide with the Muslim world.
He is the third sitting president, after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to win the prize. Jimmy Carter got it after he left office, as did former Vice President Al Gore. No country comes closer to boasting so many leaders with Nobel laurels.
Obama's triumph capped a giddy week for Nobel-watchers in which the big U.S. disappointment was in literature. After great expectations for Philip Roth or Joyce Carol Oates, the prize went to Herta Mueller, a Romanian-born German author.
Nobel official cites money, drive
The chief of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences sees two big reasons for the U.S. dominance in science: money and ambition.
Gunnar Oquist, permanent secretary of the group that picks the chemistry and physics winners, cited a U.S. willingness to pour money into research and an eye for the big breakthrough, as opposed to incremental steps forward.
"In Europe, they are focusing on high production with good enough quality," he told The Associated Press Wednesday.
However, Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted that Nobels are generally given for work that's a decade old or more, and that the U.S. must not become complacent.
U.S. strength reflects federal financial support since World War II, but it has flattened out or declined while other countries are investing heavily in their own scientific research, he said.
"The United States probably will not lose its eminence in science in the coming years, but its pre-eminence, its dominance is, of course, at risk as other countries make their own investments," he said.
While Americans lag in categories such as literature, they hold more than 40 percent of the physics, chemistry and medicine awards.
Jeremy Berg, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in Bethesda, Md., said ample federal money gives American scientists confidence they can tackle daunting, long-term problems without feeling pressured to produce fast results or lose funding. Obama has said he wants to boost investment in science.
High salaries attract talent
Gunnar Karlstrom, a chemistry professor at Lund University in Sweden, said high salaries for researchers make the U.S. attractive to foreign scientists.
Ulf Lagerkvist, professor of medical biochemistry at the University of Gothenburg, insisted that even though the prizes may have been awarded to many U.S. citizens, the award is in fact "to a very high degree international."
"The Americans have proven very good at recruiting from around the whole world," he said, noting that they offer both better research opportunities and funding.
"It's incredibly much easier to get money from the American Congress than it is from equivalent institutions in Europe," he said.
Europe and Asia have their share of Nobel Prizes, but of the 816 winners since the first awards were made in 1901, 309 have been American. The next closest is Britain, with some 114 winners.
The Nobel Foundation keeps no official tally of citizenships since laureates often have more than one.
Berg, the American, noted that other countries have begun to build up their own scientific establishments, and could well enlarge their share of prizes.
"It's the science that's important, and the fact that there are more countries investing in it, I think, is a great thing," Berg said.
EU wants to up ante
The European Union's executive body has weighed in on the debate. A new EU-commissioned report says Europe lags well behind Japan and the U.S. in funding for research and development as well as higher education. It suggests targets for 2030 of more than doubling research and development funding to 5 percent of gross domestic product, and tripling spending on higher education to 3.3 percent of GDP.
It says EU countries too often prefer funding projects within their borders instead of contributing to others with bigger potential.
"Lots of small initiatives" are no solution, said Professor John Wood, head of the European group that wrote the report. "We cannot have 27 member states playing small games everywhere."
Tsunami may have inspired Atlantis legend
Scientists' findings could gauge destructive potential of future disasters
 NASA / MITI A satellite image of the Santorini archipelago reveals the central volcano as well as the islands that were rocked by an eruption in 1650 B.C. |
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The volcanic explosion that obliterated much of the island that might have inspired the legend of Atlantis apparently triggered a tsunami that traveled hundreds of miles to reach as far as present-day Israel, scientists now suggest.
The new findings about this past tsunami could shed light on the destructive potential of future disasters, researchers added.
The islands that make up the small circular archipelago of Santorini, roughly 120 miles southeast of Greece, are what remain of what once was a single island, before one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human antiquity shattered it in the Bronze Age some time between 1630 B.C. to 1550 B.C.
Speculation has abounded as to whether the Santorini eruption inspired the legend of Atlantis, which Plato said drowned in the ocean. Although the isle is often regarded as just an invention, the explosion might have given rise to the story of a lost empire by helping to wipe out the real-life Minoan civilization that once dominated the Mediterranean, from which the myth of the bull-headed 'minotaur' comes.
The primary means by which the eruption potentially wreaked havoc on the Minoan civilization is by the giant tsunami it would have triggered. However, the precise effects of this eruption and killer wave have been a mystery for decades.
Now scientists find the tsunami may have been powerful enough to race some 600 miles from Santorini to reach the farthest eastern shores of the Mediterranean, leaving behind a layer of debris more than a foot thick by the coast of Israel.
Researchers dove as far as 65 feet deep off the coast of Caesarea in Israel to collect tubes of sediment, or cores, more than 6 feet long from the seabed.
"The work resembles a construction site with pneumatic hammers, heavy weights, floats to counter-weight equipment, hoses. Each time, we took the system down it took hours of surface preparation, planning and discussion," said researcher Beverly Goodman, a marine geoarchaeologist at Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences at Eilat, Israel.
Within the cores, they found evidence of up to nearly 16 inches of sediment deposited roughly about the date of the Santorini eruption. The range of sizes of the particles making up this deposit is the kind one might find laid down by a tsunami — storms, in comparison, cannot kick up the seafloor as much, and as such the range of particle sizes they generate is more limited.
The discovery was very much an accident, Goodman noted. They were actually researching the demise of the harbor of ancient Caesarea, the cause of which remains hotly debated, with culprits including earthquakes and tsunamis.
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These findings support the idea that the Santorini eruption and the side effects from it, such as the tsunami, were massive.
"In the case of the eastern Mediterranean, there seems to be a surprising dearth of archaeological sites along the coastline following the Santorini eruption event," Goodman said. Either archaeologists have failed to concentrate on this time span, "which isn't the case," she said, or the tsunami had a very real impact on coastal settlements.
The dramatic changes in life triggered by the tsunami "might have been part of the fabric of the Atlantis story," Goodman added. "The network of sea-based trade was rather sophisticated in that period, and colonies that were nearly solely dependent on those trade routes existed. It is hard to imagine that such a far-reaching disaster didn't cause them severe shortages in supplies, wealth and power."
Although Atlantis itself "is a myth and legend, it is informative about the experiences of the ancients," Goodman said. "It may very well be the case that those passing the story on had heard of or witnessed events in which coastal buildings went underwater because of earthquakes; beachfront towns were flooded during tsunamis; islands were created by underwater volcanic activity. There may be that grain of truth that lent legitimacy and a certain reality to the legend of Atlantis."
To better reconstruct the Santorini tsunami, the scientists plan to analyze deposits closer to the eruption, such as on Crete and in western parts of Turkey. Knowing the potential effect of tsunamis could be critical for the coastal planning and management, Goodman said, adding that the eastern Mediterranean is very highly populated and possesses considerable sensitive infrastructure such as power stations.
"I suppose there is always the question of whether I think another tsunami will occur in the eastern Med," Goodman said. "The answer is yes. I actually checked the elevation of the house I am moving to near Caesarea before agreeing to move there."
Goodman and her colleagues detailed their findings in the October issue of the journal Geology.
Physicist at Swiss atom lab held on terror links
Man suspected of ties to al-Qaida offshoot, officials say
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GENEVA - A nuclear physicist working at the world's largest atom smasher has been arrested on suspicion of links to the Algerian branch of al-Qaida, another blow to a project that has been plagued by glitches and was shut down after a massive electrical failure a year ago.
The scientist, arrested in France, is suspected of having links to al-Qaida's North African offshoot, which has carried out a deadly campaign against security forces in recent months, a French official said Friday.
The judicial official said the suspect was one of two brothers arrested Thursday in southeastern French city of Vienne. The official spoke anonymously because the case is ongoing.
The scientist has been assigned to analysis projects at the laboratory since 2003, and was one of more than 7,000 scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest atom smasher, said the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN.
The physicist had no contact with anything that could be used for terrorism, it said.
"None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain," the organization said.
A senior U.S. counterterrorism official told NBC News there was no imminent plot but it appears the physicist was planning an attack on CERN or on using his position to learn "nefarious things."
"He is more of a jihadist propagandist and facilitator of AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb)," said the official. "There's no indication of any relationship to CERN activity. That can change but as of now, the French do not believe there is a relationship between his activities and his employment."
The French, the official said, had apparently picked up the brothers out of caution after their names turned up in an investigation.
Computers seized
The LHCb experiment where he worked is the smallest of a series of installations along the 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border.
The nuclear research organization said the man, whom it did not identify, was arrested Thursday in the eastern French city of Vienne, 20 miles south of Lyon, along with his brother.
The men were French and aged 25 and 32, police said. The arrest was part of a French judge's probe into suspected terrorist links.
Police searched the suspects' apartments and seized their computers.
Al-Qaida in Islamic Maghreb regularly targets Algerian government forces and occasionally attacks foreigners.
The collider started spectacularly in September 2008 with beams of particles flying in both directions on the first day of trying. But later that month an electric failure because of a construction fault caused the entire machine to shut down. It has been undergoing repairs almost ever since.
Spokeswoman Renilde Vanden Broeck said there was no indication of sabotage in the shutdown and that the arrested man would have had access only to the small experiment he was working on, and not to the tunnel itself.
After the Big Bang
The projects are aimed at making discoveries about the makeup of matter when the Large Hadron Collider starts collecting data later this year or early next year.
"LHCb is an experiment set up to explore what happened after the Big Bang that allowed matter to survive and build the universe we inhabit today," said a description on the organization's Web site.
The Big Bang was a vast explosion that scientists theorize was the beginning of the universe 14 billion years ago.
The European laboratory has been working for years to build the $10 billion collider.
Not all physicists working on the LHCb project were informed of the arrest.
"This is news to me," said Ken Wyllie, one of dozens of scientists in the department.
The prosecutor's office in the Isere region said the arrest of the physicist had been transferred to the anti-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor's office.
Many of the scientists at the laboratory, whether or not they are employees of the organization or of other institutes around the world, live in France, and about half the operation is on French territory.
The nuclear research organization said the man was affiliated with an outside institute.
The laboratory said it is providing the support requested by the French police in the inquiry.
More on: European Nuclear Physics Organization | terrorism
| NBC News highlights |
Resettling in U.S. is no easy shift for Iraqis
Many take step back in careers in hopes of safer lives for their families
 | Saif Alnasseri, his daughter Sarah, wife Zeinab Alrubaye and mother Layla Alshawi gather to break their fast during Ramadan at their home in Plainfield, N.J., on Aug. 30. "Every morning we wake up and ask ourselves, 'Did we make the right decision,' he said. "In Iraq, financially we were living the good life, but we were in danger." |
| Sarah Simonis / AP |
| Conflict in Iraq video |
 Korean activists use balloons to spread news Oct. 10: South Korean activist try to spread news to North Korea by attaching thousands of leaflets to balloons. NBC's Peter Alexander has the story. |
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Her mansion in Iraq was bombed, her medical career and future in her beloved country dashed the day she found a white envelope on her car windshield. Inside was a single bullet. Wassan Yassin was marked for death.
She knew she had to flee. She eventually landed in America, far from where her life was threatened, her sister was shot and her co-worker kidnapped. Her new Florida surroundings offered a haven from the horrors of war.
But there is no happy ending. Not yet, at least.
Yassin's first year here has been marked by frustrating — even humiliating — experiences: A small apartment in a crime-scarred area of Jacksonville. Food stamps. And no job, even though she's a gynecologist who also morphed into a construction company executive during the war.
Saif Alnasseri, a 31-year-old wartime translator and journalist, has fared better. A former pharmacist at a large Iraq hospital, he now is a pharmacist's assistant in a New Jersey drug store. Life in America has been a trade-off: His job supervising dozens of workers, his comfortable home and lush garden in Baghdad are gone, but he has something else — security.
"We are safe here and this is very important to us," Alnasseri says. "But there are a lot of things I spent years building in Baghdad. ... I was very well-known in my neighborhood. They called me doctor. I had a lot of people who respected me. Here I'm starting from the beginning. From zero."
"Every day I say, 'OK, I made the right decision,'" he adds. "After two hours, I say, 'Did I really?'"
Agonizing transition
For thousands of Iraqis, resettling in America has been an agonizing transition filled with questions, doubts — and, sometimes, despair.
Many Iraqis have discovered that gold-plated resumes have opened few doors in a nation reeling from its worst economic decline since the Depression. Stories abound of Iraqi professionals doing menial jobs — a doctor flipping burgers, a druggist washing dishes.
Iraqis also have struggled to navigate a confusing bureaucracy and an overburdened social service system that has sometimes run of out money to help provide their basic needs.
"Everything is kind of conspiring to make it a particularly difficult time for them," says Bob Carey, a vice president of the International Rescue Committee, a refugee assistance agency. "There's the declining economy, the conditions from which they come, the conditions in which they arrive, the fact they're often highly skilled professionals with sometimes high expectations."
"It is," he says, "the perfect storm."
38,000 in U.S.
Only a trickle of some 2 million Iraqi refugees have resettled in America since the war began. Most have poured into Syria, Jordan or other neighboring countries.
About 38,000 Iraqis have come to the United States in the last three fiscal years, compared with just hundreds in the three prior years. The overwhelming majority are refugees; others received special immigrant visas, awarded to translators or those who've worked with the U.S. government or contractors.
The State Department says the exodus of Iraqis didn't start until 2006, after the bombing of the mosque in Samarra ignited sectarian violence.
Advocacy groups and some lawmakers have long accused the U.S. government of being too slow to respond to the Iraqi refugee crisis, imperiling those who'd been targeted because they'd worked with Americans. Some of the delays were blamed on the many layers of security clearance.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33254020/ns/world_news-conflict_in_iraq/
Maya civilization
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Maya civilization |
| Peoples · Languages · Society |
| Religion · Mythology · Human sacrifice |
| Architecture · Calendar |
| Textiles · Trade |
| Pre-Columbian Music · Writing |
| History |
| Classic Maya collapse |
| Spanish conquest of Yucatán |
The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Preclassic period (c. 2000 BC to 250 AD), many Maya cities reached their highest state development during the Classic period (c. 250 AD to 900 AD), and continued throughout the Postclassic period until the arrival of the Spanish. At its peak, it was one of the most densely populated and culturally dynamic societies in the world. [1]
The Maya civilization shares many features with other Mesoamerican civilizations due to the high degree of interaction and cultural diffusion that characterized the region. Advances such as writing, epigraphy, and the calendar did not originate with the Maya; however, their civilization fully developed them. Maya influence can be detected from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and to as far as central Mexico, more than 1000 km (625 miles) from the Maya area. Many outside influences are found in Maya art and architecture, which are thought to result from trade and cultural exchange rather than direct external conquest. The Maya peoples never disappeared, neither at the time of the Classic period decline nor with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores and the subsequent Spanish colonization of the Americas. Today, the Maya and their descendants form sizable populations throughout the Maya area and maintain a distinctive set of traditions and beliefs that are the result of the merger of pre-Columbian and post-Conquest ideologies (and structured by the almost total adoption of Roman Catholicism). Many Mayan languages continue to be spoken as primary languages today; the Rabinal Achí, a play written in the Achi' language, was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2005.
Contents[hide] |
Geographical extent
The geographic extent of the Maya civilization, known as the Maya area, extended throughout the southern Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco, and the Yucatán Peninsula states of Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatán. The Maya area also extended throughout the northern Central American region, including the present-day nations of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and western Honduras.
As the largest sub-region in Mesoamerica, it encompassed a vast and varied landscape, from the mountainous regions of the Sierra Madre to the semi-arid plains of northern Yucatán. Climate in the Maya region can vary tremendously, as the low-lying areas are particularly susceptible to the hurricanes and tropical storms that frequent the Caribbean.
The Maya area is generally divided into three loosely defined zones: the southern Maya highlands, the southern (or central) Maya lowlands, and the northern Maya lowlands. The southern Maya highlands include all of elevated terrain in Guatemala and the Chiapas highlands. The southern lowlands lie just north of the highlands, and incorporate the Mexican states of Campeche and Quintana Roo and northern Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador. The northern lowlands cover the remainder of the Yucatán Peninsula, including the Puuc hills.[2]
History
Preclassic
The Maya area was initially inhabited around the 10th century BC. Recent discoveries of Maya occupation at Cuello in Belize have been carbon dated to around 2600 BC.[3][4] This level of occupation included monumental structures. The Maya calendar, which is based around the so-called Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, commences on a date equivalent to 11 August, 3114 BC. However, according to "accepted history" the first clearly "Maya" settlements were established in approximately 1800 BC in Soconusco region of the Pacific Coast. This period, known as the Early Preclassic,[5] was characterized by sedentary communities and the introduction of pottery and fired clay figurines.[6]
Important sites in the southern Maya lowlands include Nakbe, El Mirador, Cival, and San Bartolo. In the Guatemalan Highlands Kaminal Juyú emerges around 800 BC. For many centuries it controlled the Jade and Obsidian sources for the Petén and Pacific Lowlands. The important early sites of Izapa, Takalik Abaj and Chocolá at around 600 BC were the main producers of Cacao. Mid-sized Maya communities also began to develop in the northern Maya lowlands during the Middle and Late Preclassic, though these lacked the size, scale, and influence of the large centers of the southern lowlands. Two important Preclassic northern sites include Komchen and Dzibilchaltun. The first written inscription in Maya hieroglyphics also dates to this period (c. 250 BC).[7]
There is disagreement about the boundaries which differentiate the physical and cultural extent of the early Maya and neighboring Preclassic Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec culture of the Tabasco lowlands and the Mixe-Zoque– and Zapotec–speaking peoples of Chiapas and southern Oaxaca, respectively. Many of the earliest significant inscriptions and buildings appeared in this overlapping zone, and evidence suggests that these cultures and the formative Maya influenced one another.[8] Takalik Abaj, in the Pacific slopes of Guatemala, is the only site where Olmec and then Maya features have been found.
Classic
The Classic period (c. 250–900 AD) witnessed the peak of large-scale construction and urbanism, the recording of monumental inscriptions, and a period of significant intellectual and artistic development, particularly in the southern lowland regions.[9] They developed an agriculturally intensive, city-centered empire consisting of numerous independent city-states. This includes the well-known cities of Tikal, Palenque, Copán and Calakmul, but also the lesser known Dos Pilas, Uaxactun, Altun Ha, and Bonampak, among others. The Early Classic settlement distribution in the northern Maya lowlands is not as clearly known as the southern zone, but does include a number of population centers, such as Oxkintok, Chunchucmil, and the early occupation of Uxmal.
The most notable monuments are the stepped pyramids they built in their religious centers and the accompanying palaces of their rulers. The palace at Cancuen is the largest in the Maya area, though the site, interestingly, lacks pyramids. Other important archaeological remains include the carved stone slabs usually called stelae (the Maya called them tetun, or "tree-stones"), which depict rulers along with hieroglyphic texts describing their genealogy, military victories, and other accomplishments.[10]
The Maya civilization participated in long distance trade with many of the other Mesoamerican cultures, including Teotihuacan, the Zapotec and other groups in central and gulf-coast Mexico, as well as with more distant, non-Mesoamerican groups, for example the Tainos in the Caribbean. Archeologists have also found gold from Panama in the Sacred Cenote of Chichen Itza.[11] Important trade goods included cacao, salt, sea shells, jade and obsidian.
The Maya collapse
For reasons that are still debated, the Maya centers of the southern lowlands went into decline during the 8th and 9th centuries and were abandoned shortly thereafter. This decline was coupled with a cessation of monumental inscriptions and large-scale architectural construction.[12] Although there is no universally accepted theory to explain this "collapse," current theories fall into two categories: non-ecological and ecological.
Non-ecological theories of Maya decline are divided into several subcategories, such as overpopulation, foreign invasion, peasant revolt, and the collapse of key trade routes. Ecological hypotheses include environmental disaster, epidemic disease, and climate change. There is evidence that the Maya population exceeded carrying capacity of the environment including exhaustion of agricultural potential and overhunting of megafauna.[13] Some scholars have recently theorized that an intense 200 year drought led to the collapse of Maya civilization.[14] The drought theory originated from research performed by physical scientists studying lake beds,[15] ancient pollen, and other data, not from the archaeological community.
Postclassic period
During the succeeding Postclassic period (from the 10th to the early 16th century), development in the northern centers persisted, characterized by an increasing diversity of external influences. The Maya cities of the northern lowlands in Yucatán continued to flourish for centuries more; some of the important sites in this era were Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Edzná, and Coba. After the decline of the ruling dynasties of Chichen and Uxmal, Mayapan ruled all of Yucatán until a revolt in 1450. (This city's name may be the source of the word "Maya", which had a more geographically restricted meaning in Yucatec and colonial Spanish and only grew to its current meaning in the 19th and 20th centuries). The area then degenerated into competing city-states until the Yucatán was conquered by the Spanish.
The Itza Maya, Ko'woj, and Yalain groups of Central Peten survived the "Classic Period Collapse" in small numbers and by 1250 reconstituted themselves to form competing city-states. The Itza maintained their capital at Tayasal (also known as Noh Petén), an archaeological site thought to underlay the modern city of Flores, Guatemala on Lake Petén Itzá. It ruled over an area extending across the Peten Lakes region, encompassing the community of Eckixil on Lake Quexil. The Ko'woj had their capital at Zacpeten. Postclassic Maya states also continued to survive in the southern highlands. One of the Maya nations in this area, the K'iche' Kingdom of Q'umarkaj, is responsible for the best-known Maya work of historiography and mythology, the Popol Vuh. Other highland kingdoms included the Mam based at Huehuetenango, the Kaqchikels based at Iximché, the Chajomá based at Mixco Viejo[16] and the Chuj, based at San Mateo Ixtatán.
Colonial period
Shortly after their first expeditions to the region, the Spanish initiated a number of attempts to subjugate the Maya and establish a colonial presence in the Maya territories of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Guatemalan highlands. This campaign, sometimes termed "The Spanish Conquest of Yucatán," would prove to be a lengthy and dangerous exercise for the conquistadores from the outset, and it would take some 170 years before the Spanish established substantive control over all Maya lands.
Unlike the Aztec and Inca Empires, there was no single Maya political center that, once overthrown, would hasten the end of collective resistance from the indigenous peoples. Instead, the conquistador forces needed to subdue the numerous independent Maya polities almost one by one, many of which kept up a fierce resistance. Most of the conquistadores were motivated by the prospects of the great wealth to be had from the seizure of precious metal resources such as gold or silver; however, the Maya lands themselves were poor in these resources. This would become another factor in forestalling Spanish designs of conquest, as they instead were initially attracted to the reports of great riches in central Mexico or Peru.
The Spanish Church and government officials destroyed Maya texts and with it the knowledge of Maya writing but by chance three of the pre-Columbian books dated to the post classic period have been preserved.[17] The last Maya states, the Itza polity of Tayasal and the Ko'woj city of Zacpeten, were continuously occupied and remained independent of the Spanish until late in the 17th century. They were finally subdued by the Spanish in 1697.
Political structures
A typical Classic Maya polity was a small hierarchical state (ajawil, ajawlel, or ajawlil) headed by a hereditary ruler known as an ajaw (later k'uhul ajaw).[18] Such kingdoms were usually no more than a capital city with its neighborhood and several lesser towns, although there were greater kingdoms, which controlled larger territories and extended patronage over smaller polities.[citation needed] Each kingdom had a name that did not necessarily correspond to any locality within its territory. Its identity was that of a political unit associated with a particular ruling dynasty. For instance, the archaeological site of Naranjo was the capital of the kingdom of Saal. The land (chan ch'e'n) of the kingdom and its capital were called Wakab'nal or Maxam and were part of a larger geographical entity known as Huk Tsuk. Interestingly, despite constant warfare and eventual shifts in regional power, most kingdoms never disappeared from the political landscape until the collapse of the whole system in the 9th century AD. In this respect, Classic Maya kingdoms are highly similar to late Post Classic polities encountered by the Spaniards in Yucatán and Central Mexico: some polities could be subordinated to hegemonic rulers through conquests or dynastic unions and yet even then they persisted as distinct entities.[citation needed]
Mayanists have been increasingly accepting a "court paradigm" of Classic Maya societies which puts the emphasis on the centrality of the royal household and especially the person of the king. This approach focuses on Maya monumental spaces as the embodiment of the diverse activities of the royal household. It considers the role of places and spaces (including dwellings of royalty and nobles, throne rooms, temples, halls and plazas for public ceremonies) in establishing power and social hierarchy, and also in projecting aesthetic and moral values to define the wider social realm.
Spanish sources invariably describe even the largest Maya settlements as dispersed collections of dwellings grouped around the temples and palaces of the ruling dynasty and lesser nobles. None of the Classic Maya cities shows evidence of economic specialization and commerce of the scale of Mexican Tenochtitlan. Instead, Maya cities could be seen as enormous royal households, the locales of the administrative and ritual activities of the royal court. They were the places where privileged nobles could approach the holy ruler, where aesthetic values of the high culture were formulated and disseminated, where aesthetic items were consumed. They were the self-proclaimed centers and the sources of social, moral, and cosmic order. The fall of a royal court as in the well-documented cases of Piedras Negras or Copan would cause the inevitable "death" of the associated settlement.
Art
Many[who?] consider Maya art of their Classic Era (c. 250 to 900 AD) to be the most sophisticated and beautiful of the ancient New World[citation needed]. The carvings and the reliefs made of stucco at Palenque and the statuary of Copán are especially fine[citation needed], showing a grace and accurate observation of the human form that reminded early archaeologists of Classical civilizations of the Old World[citation needed], hence the name bestowed on this era. We have only hints of the advanced painting of the classic Maya; mostly what have survived are funerary pottery and other Maya ceramics, and a building at Bonampak holds ancient murals that survived by chance. A beautiful turquoise blue color that has survived through the centuries due to its unique chemical characteristics is known as Maya Blue or Azul maya, and it is present in Bonampak, Tajín Cacaxtla, Jaina, and even in some Colonial Convents. The use of Maya Blue survived until the 16th century when the technique was lost. Some Pre Classic murals have been recently discovered at San Bartolo, and are by far the finest in style and iconography, regarded as the Sistine Chapel[citation needed] of the Maya. With the decipherment of the Maya script it was discovered that the Maya were one of the few civilizations where artists attached their name to their work.
Architecture
Maya architecture spans many thousands of years; yet, often the most dramatic and easily recognizable as Maya are the stepped pyramids from the Terminal Pre-classic period and beyond. There are also cave sites that are important to the Maya. These cave sites include Jolja Cave, the cave site at Naj Tunich, the Candelaria Caves, and the Cave of the Witch. There are also cave-origin myths among the Maya. Some cave sites are still used by the modern Maya in the Chiapas highlands.
It has been suggested[who?] that temples and pyramids were remodeled and rebuilt every fifty-two years in synchrony with the Maya Long Count Calendar. It appears now that the rebuilding process was often instigated by a new ruler or for political matters, as opposed to matching the calendar cycle. However, the process of rebuilding on top of old structures is indeed a common one. Most notably, the North Acropolis at Tikal seems to be the sum total of 1,500 years of architectural modifications. In Tikal and Yaxhá, there are the Twin Pyramid complexes (seven in Tikal and one in Yaxhá, that commemorate the end of a Baktún). Through observation of the numerous consistent elements and stylistic distinctions, remnants of Maya architecture have become an important key to understanding the evolution of their ancient civilization.
Urban design
As Maya cities spread throughout the varied geography of Mesoamerica, site planning appears to have been minimal. Maya architecture tended to integrate a great degree of natural features[citation needed], and their cities were built somewhat haphazardly as dictated by the topography of each independent location. For instance, some cities on the flat limestone plains of the northern Yucatán grew into great sprawling municipalities, while others built in the hills of Usumacinta utilized the natural loft of the topography to raise their towers and temples to impressive heights. However, some semblance of order, as required in any large city, still prevailed.
Classic Era Maya urban design could easily be described as the division of space by great monuments and causeways. Open public plazas were the gathering places for people and the focus of urban design, while interior space was entirely secondary. Only in the Late Post-Classic era did the great Maya cities develop into more fortress-like defensive structures that lacked, for the most part, the large and numerous plazas of the Classic.
At the onset of large-scale construction during the Classic Era, a predetermined axis was typically established in a cardinal direction. Depending on the location of natural resources such as fresh-water wells, or cenotes, the city grew by using sacbeob (causeways) to connect great plazas with the numerous platforms that created the sub-structure for nearly all Maya buildings. As more structures were added and existing structures re-built or remodeled, the great Maya cities seemed to take on an almost random identity that contrasted sharply with other great Mesoamerican cities such as Teotihuacan and its rigid grid-like construction.
At the heart of the Maya city were large plazas surrounded by the most important governmental and religious buildings, such as the royal acropolis, great pyramid temples and occasionally ball-courts. Though city layouts evolved as nature dictated, careful attention was placed on the directional orientation of temples and observatories so that they were constructed in accordance with Maya interpretation of the orbits of the heavenly bodies. Immediately outside of this ritual center were the structures of lesser nobles, smaller temples, and individual shrines; the less sacred and less important structures had a greater degree of privacy. Outside of the constantly evolving urban core were the less permanent and more modest homes of the common people.
Building materials
A surprising aspect of the great Maya structures is their lack of many advanced technologies seemingly necessary for such constructions. Lacking draft animals necessary for wheel-based modes of transportation, metal tools and even pulleys, Maya architecture required abundant manpower. Yet, beyond this enormous requirement, the remaining materials seem to have been readily available. All stone for Maya structures appears to have been taken from local quarries. They most often used limestone which remained pliable enough to be worked with stone tools while being quarried and only hardened once removed from its bed. In addition to the structural use of limestone, much of their mortar consisted of crushed, burnt and mixed limestone that mimicked the properties of cement and was used as widely for stucco finishing as it was for mortar. Later improvements in quarrying techniques reduced the necessity for this limestone-stucco as the stones began to fit quite perfectly, yet it remained a crucial element in some post and lintel roofs. In the case of the common Maya houses, wooden poles, adobe and thatch were the primary materials; however, instances of what appear to be common houses of limestone have been discovered as well. Also notable throughout Maya architecture is the corbel arch (also known as a "false arch"), which allowed for more open-aired entrances. The corbelled arch improved upon pier/post and lintel doorways by directing the weight off of the lintel and onto the supporting posts.
Notable constructions
- Ceremonial platforms were commonly limestone platforms of typically less than four meters in height where public ceremonies and religious rites were performed. Constructed in the fashion of a typical foundation platform, these were often accented by carved figures, altars and perhaps tzompantli, a stake used to display the heads of victims or defeated Mesoamerican ballgame opponents.
- Palaces were large and often highly decorated, and usually sat close to the center of a city and housed the population's elite. Any exceedingly large royal palace, or one consisting of many chambers on different levels might be referred to as an acropolis. However, often these were one-story and consisted of many small chambers and typically at least one interior courtyard; these structures appear to take into account the needed functionality required of a residence, as well as the decoration required for their inhabitants stature.
- E-Groups are specific structural configurations present at a number of centers in the Maya area. These complexes are oriented and aligned according to specific astronomical events (primarily the sun's solstices and equinoxes) and are thought to have been observatories. These structures are usually accompanied by iconographic reliefs that tie astronomical observation into general Maya mythology. The structural complex is named for Group E at Uaxactun, the first documented in Mesoamerica.
- Pyramids and temples. Often the most important religious temples sat atop the towering Maya pyramids, presumably as the closest place to the heavens. While recent discoveries point toward the extensive use of pyramids as tombs, the temples themselves seem to rarely, if ever, contain burials. Residing atop the pyramids, some of over two-hundred feet, such as that at El Mirador, the temples were impressive and decorated structures themselves. Commonly topped with a roof comb, or superficial grandiose wall, these temples might have served as a type of propaganda. As they were often the only structure in a Maya city to exceed the height of the surrounding jungle, the roof combs atop the temples were often carved with representations of rulers that could be seen from vast distances.
- Observatories. The Maya were keen astronomers and had mapped out the phases of celestial objects, especially the Moon and Venus. Many temples have doorways and other features aligning to celestial events. Round temples, often dedicated to Kukulcan, are perhaps those most often described as "observatories" by modern ruin tour-guides, but there is no evidence that they were so used exclusively, and temple pyramids of other shapes may well have been used for observation as well.
- Ball courts. As an integral aspect of the Mesoamerican lifestyle, the courts for their ritual ball-game were constructed throughout the Maya realm and often on a grand scale. Enclosed on two sides by stepped ramps that led to ceremonial platforms or small temples, the ball court itself was of a capital "I" shape and could be found in all but the smallest of Maya cities.
Writing and literacy
Writing system
The Maya writing system (often called hieroglyphs from a superficial resemblance to the Ancient Egyptian writing) was a combination of phonetic symbols and logograms. It is most often classified as a logographic or (more properly) a logosyllabic writing system, in which syllabic signs play a significant role. It is the only writing system of the Pre-Columbian New World which is known to completely represent the spoken language of its community. In total, the script has more than a thousand different glyphs, although a few are variations of the same sign or meaning, and many appear only rarely or are confined to particular localities. At any one time, no more than around 500 glyphs were in use, some 200 of which (including variations) had a phonetic or syllabic interpretation.
The earliest inscriptions in an identifiably-Maya script date back to 200–300 BC.[19] However, this is preceded by several other writing systems which had developed in Mesoamerica, most notably that of the Zapotecs, and (following the 2006 publication of research on the recently-discovered Cascajal Block), the Olmecs.[20] There is a pre-Maya writing known as "Epi-Olmec script" (post Olmec) which some researchers believe may represent a transitional script between Olmec and Maya writing, but the relationships between these remain unclear and the matter is unsettled. On January 5, 2006, National Geographic published the findings of Maya writings that could be as old as 400 BC, suggesting that the Maya writing system is nearly as old as the oldest Mesoamerican writing known at that time, Zapotec.[21] In the succeeding centuries the Maya developed their script into a form which was far more complete and complex than any other that has yet been found in the Americas.
Since its inception, the Maya script was in use up to the arrival of the Europeans, peaking during the Maya Classical Period (c. 200 to 900). Although many Maya centers went into decline (or were completely abandoned) during or after this period, the skill and knowledge of Maya writing persisted amongst segments of the population, and the early Spanish conquistadors knew of individuals who could still read and write the script. Unfortunately, the Spanish displayed little interest in it, and as a result of the dire impacts the conquest had on Maya societies, the knowledge was subsequently lost, probably within only a few generations.
At a rough estimate, in excess of 10,000 individual texts have so far been recovered, mostly inscribed on stone monuments, lintels, stelae and ceramic pottery. The Maya also produced texts painted on a form of paper manufactured from processed tree-bark, in particular from several species of strangler fig trees such as Ficus cotinifolia and Ficus padifolia.[22] This paper, common throughout Mesoamerica and generally now known by its Nahuatl-language name amatl, was typically bound as a single continuous sheet that was folded into pages of equal width, concertina-style, to produce a codex that could be written on both sides. Shortly after the conquest, all of the codices which could be found were ordered to be burnt and destroyed by zealous Spanish priests, notably Bishop Diego de Landa. Only three reasonably intact examples of Maya codices are known to have survived through to the present day. These are now known as the Madrid, Dresden, and Paris codices. A few pages survive from a fourth, the Grolier codex, whose authenticity is sometimes disputed, but mostly is held to be genuine. Further archaeology conducted at Maya sites often reveals other fragments, rectangular lumps of plaster and paint chips which formerly were codices; these tantalizing remains are, however, too severely damaged for any inscriptions to have survived, most of the organic material having decayed.
The decipherment and recovery of the now-lost knowledge of Maya writing has been a long and laborious process. Some elements were first deciphered in the late 19th and early 20th century, mostly the parts having to do with numbers, the Maya calendar, and astronomy. Major breakthroughs came starting in the 1950s to 1970s, and accelerated rapidly thereafter. By the end of the 20th century, scholars were able to read the majority of Maya texts to a large extent, and recent field work continues to further illuminate the content.
In reference to the few extant Maya writings, Michael D. Coe, a prominent linguist and epigrapher at Yale University, stated:
"[O]ur knowledge of ancient Maya thought must represent only a tiny fraction of the whole picture, for of the thousands of books in which the full extent of their learning and ritual was recorded, only four have survived to modern times (as though all that posterity knew of ourselves were to be based upon three prayer books and 'Pilgrim's Progress')." (Michael D. Coe, The Maya, London: Thames and Hudson, 4th ed., 1987, p. 161.)Most surviving pre-Columbian Maya writing is from stelae and other stone inscriptions from Maya sites, many of which were already abandoned before the Spanish arrived. The inscriptions on the stelae mainly record the dynasties and wars of the sites' rulers. Also of note are the inscriptions that reveal information about the lives of ancient Maya women. Much of the remainder of Maya hieroglyphics has been found on funeral pottery, most of which describes the afterlife.
Writing tools
Although the archaeological record does not provide examples, Maya art shows that writing was done with brushes made with animal hair and quills. Codex-style writing was usually done in black ink with red highlights, giving rise to the Aztec name for the Maya territory as the "land of red and black".
Scribes and literacy
Scribes held a prominent position in Maya courts. Maya art often depicts rulers with trappings indicating they were scribes or at least able to write, such as having pen bundles in their headdresses. Additionally, many rulers have been found in conjunction with writing tools such as shell or clay inkpots. Although the number of logograms and syllabic symbols required to fully write the language numbered in the hundreds, literacy was not necessarily widespread beyond the elite classes. Graffiti uncovered in various contexts, including on fired bricks, shows nonsensical attempts to imitate the writing system.
Mathematics
In common with the other Mesoamerican civilizations, the Maya used a base 20 (vigesimal) and base 5 numbering system (see Maya numerals). Also, the preclassic Maya and their neighbors independently developed the concept of zero by 36 BC. Inscriptions show them on occasion working with sums up to the hundreds of millions and dates so large it would take several lines just to represent it. They produced extremely accurate astronomical observations; their charts of the movements of the moon and planets are equal or superior to those of any other civilization working from naked eye observation.[citation needed]
In common with the other Mesoamerican civilizations, the Maya had measured the length of the solar year to a high degree of accuracy, far more accurately than that used in Europe as the basis of the Gregorian Calendar. They did not use this figure for the length of year in their calendars, however; the calendars they used were crude, being based on a year length of exactly 365 days, which means that the calendar falls out of step with the seasons by one day every four years. By comparison, the Julian calendar, used in Europe from Roman times until about the 16th Century, accumulated an error of only one day every 128 years. The modern Gregorian calendar is even more accurate, accumulating only a day's error in approximately 3257 years.
Astronomy
Uniquely, there is some evidence to suggest the Maya appear to be the only pre-telescopic civilization to demonstrate knowledge of the Orion Nebula as being fuzzy, i.e. not a stellar pin-point. The information which supports this theory comes from a folk tale that deals with the Orion constellation's area of the sky. Their traditional hearths include in their middle a smudge of glowing fire that corresponds with the Orion Nebula. This is a significant clue to support the idea that the Maya detected a diffuse area of the sky contrary to the pin points of stars before the telescope was invented.[23] Many preclassic sites are oriented with the Pleiades and Eta Draconis, as seen in La Blanca, Ujuxte, Monte Alto, and Takalik Abaj.
The Maya were very interested in zenial passages, the time when the sun passes directly overhead. The latitude of most of their cities being below the Tropic of Cancer, these zenial passages would occur twice a year equidistant from the solstice. To represent this position of the sun overhead, the Maya had a god named Diving God.[citation needed]
The Dresden Codex contains the highest concentration of astronomical phenomena observations and calculations of any of the surviving texts (it appears that the data in this codex is primarily or exclusively of an astronomical nature). Examination and analysis of this codex reveals that Venus was the most important astronomical object to the Maya, even more important to them than the sun.
Religion
Like the Aztec and Inca who came to power later, the Maya believed in a cyclical nature of time. The rituals and ceremonies were very closely associated with celestial and terrestrial cycles which they observed and inscribed as separate calendars. The Maya priest had the job of interpreting these cycles and giving a prophetic outlook on the future or past based on the number relations of all their calendars. They also had to determine if the "heavens" or celestial matters were appropriate for performing certain religious ceremonies.
The Maya practiced human sacrifice. In some Maya rituals people were killed by having their arms and legs held while a priest cut the person's chest open and tore out his heart as an offering. This is depicted on ancient objects such as pictorial texts, known as codices. It is believed that children were often offered as sacrificial victims because they were believed to be pure.[24]
Much of the Maya religious tradition is still not understood by scholars, but it is known that the Maya, like most pre-modern societies, believed that the cosmos has three major planes, the underworld, the sky, and the Earth.
The Maya underworld is reached through caves and ball courts.[citation needed] It was thought to be dominated by the aged Maya gods of death and putrefaction. The Sun (Kinich Ahau) and Itzamna, an aged god, dominated the Maya idea of the sky. Another aged man, god L, was one of the major deities of the underworld.
The night sky was considered a window showing all supernatural doings. The Maya configured constellations of gods and places, saw the unfolding of narratives in their seasonal movements, and believed that the intersection of all possible worlds was in the night sky[citation needed].
Maya gods were not separate entities like Greek gods. The gods had affinities and aspects that caused them to merge with one another in ways that seem unbounded. There is a massive array of supernatural characters in the Maya religious tradition, only some of which recur with regularity. Good and evil traits are not permanent characteristics of Maya gods, nor is only "good" admirable. What is inappropriate during one season might come to pass in another since much of the Maya religious tradition is based on cycles and not permanence.
The life-cycle of maize lies at the heart of Maya belief. This philosophy is demonstrated on the belief in the Maya maize god as a central religious figure. The Maya bodily ideal is also based on the form of this young deity, which is demonstrated in their artwork. The Maize God was also a model of courtly life for the Classical Maya.
It is sometimes believed[attribution needed] that the multiple "gods" represented nothing more than a mathematical explanation of what they observed. Each god was literally just a number or an explanation of the effects observed by a combination of numbers from multiple calendars. Among the many types of Maya calendars which were maintained, the most important included a 260-day cycle, a 365-day cycle which approximated the solar year, a cycle which recorded lunation periods of the Moon, and a cycle which tracked the synodic period of Venus.
Philosophically, the Maya believed that knowing the past meant knowing the cyclical influences that create the present, and by knowing the influences of the present one can see the cyclical influences of the future.
Even in the 19th century, there was Maya influence in the local branch of Christianity followed in Chan Santa Cruz. Among the K'iche' in the western highlands of Guatemala these same nine months[clarification needed] are replicated, until this very day, in the training of the ajk'ij, the keeper of the 260-day-calendar called ch'olk'ij.
Agriculture
The ancient Maya had diverse and sophisticated methods of food production. It was formerly believed that shifting cultivation (swidden) agriculture provided most of their food but it is now thought that permanent raised fields, terracing, forest gardens, managed fallows, and wild harvesting were also crucial to supporting the large populations of the Classic period in some areas. Indeed, evidence of these different agricultural systems persist today: raised fields connected by canals can be seen on aerial photographs, contemporary rainforest species composition has significantly higher abundance of species of economic value to ancient Maya, and pollen records in lake sediments suggest that corn, manioc, sunflower seeds, cotton, and other crops have been cultivated in association with the deforestation in Mesoamerica since at least 2500 BC.
Contemporary Maya peoples still practice many of these traditional forms of agriculture, although they are dynamic systems and change with changing population pressures, cultures, economic systems, climate change, and the availability of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
Rediscovery of the Pre-Columbian Maya
Spanish clergy and administrators dating to the 16th century were largely familiar with ancient Maya sites, writing and calendar systems. Published writings of 16th century Bishop Diego de Landa and writings of 18th century Spanish officials spurred serious investigations of Maya sites by the late 18th century.[25] In 1839 United States traveler and writer John Lloyd Stephens, familiar with earlier Spanish investigations, visited Copán, Palenque, and other sites with English architect and draftsman Frederick Catherwood. Their illustrated accounts of the ruins sparked strong popular interest in the region and the people, and they have once again regained their position as a vital link in Mesoamerican heritage.
However, in many locations, Maya ruins have been overgrown by the jungle, becoming dense enough to hide structures just a few meters away. To help find ruins, researchers have turned to satellite imagery. The best way to find them is to look at the visible and near-infrared spectra. Due to their limestone construction, the monuments affected the chemical makeup of the soil as they deteriorated. Some moisture-loving plants stayed away, while others were killed off or discolored. The effects of the limestone ruins are still apparent today to some satellite sensors.
Much of the contemporary rural population of the Yucatán Peninsula, Chiapas (both in Mexico), Guatemala and Belize is Maya by descent and primary language.
Maya sites
There are hundreds of significant Maya sites, and thousands of smaller ones. The largest and most historically important include:
- Cancuén
- Chichen Itza
- Coba
- Comalcalco
- Copán
- Dos Pilas
- Kalakmul
- El Mirador
- Nakbé
- Naranjo
- Palenque
- Piedras Negras
- Quiriguá
- Seibal
- Tikal
- Uaxactún
- Uxmal
- Yaxha
See also
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Maya |
| Ancient history |
|---|
| ↑ Prehistory |
| Sumer · Akkad · Babylonia · Hittite Empire · Syro-Hittite states · Neo-Assyrian Empire · Urartu Egypt · Nubia · Land of Punt · Axum · Nok · Carthage Archaic Greece · Median Empire . Classical Greece · Achaemenid Empire · Seleucid Empire · Dacia · Thrace · Scythia · Macedon · Roman Republic · Roman Empire · Parthian Empire · Sassanid Empire · Late Antiquity Hồng Bàng Dynasty · Gojoseon · Shang China · Qin Dynasty · Han Dynasty · Jin Dynasty Vedic India · Maha Janapadas · Mauryan India · Chola India · Satavahana India · Gupta India Aztecs · Incas · Mayas · Olmecs · Teotihuacan |
| see also: World history · Ancient maritime history · Protohistory · Axial Age · Iron Age · Historiography · Ancient literature · Ancient warfare · Cradle of civilization |
| ↓Middle Ages |
- Childhood in Maya society
- Hunac Ceel
- Maya calendar
- Maya death rituals
- Maya health and medicine
- Maya mythology
- Maya numerals
- Maya peoples
- Maya textiles
- Mayan languages
- Pre-Columbian Maya music
- Trade in Maya civilization
- List of Mesoamerican pyramids
Footnotes
- ^ "Painted Metaphors: Pottery and Politics of the Ancient Maya". University of Pennsylvania Almanac. University of Pennsylvania. 4/7/2009. http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/volumes/v55/n28/maya.html. Retrieved 2009-06-17.
- ^ Coe, Michael D. - (1999 -). The Maya (Sixth edition - ed.). New York -: Dante Reed -. pp. 31 -. ISBN 0-500-28066-5.
- ^ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v260/n5552/abs/260579a0.html
- ^ http://ambergriscaye.com/pages/mayan/mayasites.html
- ^ See, for example, Drew (2004), p.6.
- ^ Coe, Michael D. (2002). The Maya (6th ed.). Thames & Hudson. pp. 47.
- ^ HISTORY OF WRITING and RELIGION
- ^ Coe, Michael D. (2002). The Maya (6th ed.). Thames & Hudson. pp. 63–64.
- ^ Coe, Michael D. (2002). The Maya (6th ed.). Thames & Hudson. pp. 81.
- ^ "Maya Art Return". http://www.archaeology.org/9901/newsbriefs/maya.html. Retrieved 2006-12-25.
- ^ See Coggins (1992).
- ^ Coe, Michael D. (2002). The Maya (6th ed.). New York: Thames & Hudson. pp. 151–155. ISBN 0-500-28066-5.
- ^ University of Florida study: Maya politics likely played role in ancient large-game decline, Nov. 2007
- ^ Gill, R. (2000). The Great Maya Droughts. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0826321941.
- ^ Hodell, David A.; Curtis, Jason H.; Brenner, Mark (1995). "Possible role of climate in the collapse of Classic Maya civilization". Nature 375 (6530): 391–394. doi:.
- ^ Love 2007, p.305. Sharer 2006, pp.621, 625.
- ^ "The Ancient Maya", Robert J. Sharer, Loa P. Traxler Contributor Loa P. Traxler, p126, Stanford University Press, 2006, ISBN 0804748179
- ^ Both terms appear in early Colonial texts (including Papeles de Paxbolón) where they are used as synonymous to Aztec and Spanish terms for supreme rulers and their domains – tlahtoani (Tlatoani) and tlahtocayotl, rey or magestad and reino, señor and señorío or dominio.
- ^ Saturno, WA; Stuart D, Beltran B (Mar 3 2006). "Early Maya writing at San Bartolo, Guatemala". Science 311 (5765): 1281–3. doi:. PMID 16400112.
- ^ Skidmore (2006).
- ^ "Earliest Maya Writing Found in Guatemala, Researchers Say". NationalGeographic.com. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0105_060105_maya_writing.html. Retrieved 2007-06-06. The following year saw the publication of research on a tablet containing some 62 glyphs that had been found near the Olmec center of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, which was dated by association to approximately 900 BC. This would make this putative Olmec script (see Cascajal Block) the oldest known for Mesoamerica; see Skidmore (2006, passim)
- ^ Miller and Taube (1993, p.131)
- ^ As interpreted by Krupp 1999.
- ^ "Evidence May Back Human Sacrifice Claims". Live Science. http://www.livescience.com/history/human_sacrifice_050123.html. Retrieved 2007-06-06.
- ^ Demarest, Arthur. Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 pg. 32-33.
References
Further reading
- Braswell, Geoffrey E. (2003). The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0292709145. OCLC 49936017.
- Christie, Jessica Joyce (2003). Maya Palaces and Elite Residences: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0292712448. OCLC 50630511.
- Demarest, Arthur Andrew (2004). Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization. Cambridge, England; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521592240. OCLC 51438896.
- Demarest, Arthur Andrew, Prudence M. Rice, and Don Stephen Rice (2004). The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands: Collapse, Transition, and Transformation. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado. ISBN 0870817396. OCLC 52311867.
- Garber, James (2004). The Ancient Maya of the Belize Valley: Half a Century of Archaeological Research. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0813026857. OCLC 52334723.
- Herring, Adam (2005). Art and Writing in the Maya cities, AD 600-800: A Poetics of Line. Cambridge, England; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521842468. OCLC 56834579.
- Lohse, Jon C. and Fred Valdez (2004). Ancient Maya Commoners. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0292705719. OCLC 54529926.
- Lucero, Lisa Joyce (2006). Water and Ritual: The Rise and Fall of Classic Maya Rulers. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0292709994. OCLC 61731425.
- McKillop, Heather Irene (2005). In Search of Maya Sea Traders. College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press. ISBN 1585443891. OCLC 55145823.
- McKillop, Heather Irene (2002). Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0813025117. OCLC 48893025.
- McNeil, Cameron L. (2006). Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0813029538. OCLC 63245604.
- Rice, Prudence M. (2004). Maya Political Science: Time, Astronomy, and the Cosmos (1st edition ed.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0292702612. OCLC 54753496.
- Sharer, Robert J. and Loa P. Traxler (2006). The ancient Maya (6th edition ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804748160. OCLC 57577446.
- Tiesler, Vera and Andrea Cucina (2006). Janaab' Pakal of Palenque: Reconstructing the Life and Death of a Maya Ruler. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. ISBN 0816525102. OCLC 62593473.
External links
- Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc (FAMSI)
- Mayan Math and astronomy
- Mayaweb (Dutch and English)
- Guatemala, Cradle of The Maya Civilization
- Maya Society and some photos of Tools, Weapons & Artifacts
- Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya at the National Gallery of Art
- Learn more about Maya hieroglyphs and Maya numbering from the National Gallery of Art
- Maya articles by Genry Joil.
- Mesoweb by Joel Skidmore.
- The Daily Glyph by Dave Pentecost.
- Junglecasts - podcasts by Ed Barnhart, Nicco Mele, Dave Pentecost
- Ancient Civilizations - Maya Research site for kids
- The Mayan Kingdom A Photographic Web Book on the Mayan Civilization by Tony Trupp
-
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