Hefndin er sæt

Áhugaverð grein eftir Jared Diamond í The New Yorker.

In 1992, when Daniel Wemp was about twenty-two years old, his beloved paternal uncle Soll was killed in a battle against the neighboring Ombal clan. In the New Guinea Highlands, where Daniel and his Handa clan live, uncles and aunts play a big role in raising children, so an uncle’s death represents a much heavier blow than it might to most Americans. Daniel often did not even distinguish between his biological father and other male clansmen of his father’s generation. And Soll had been very good to Daniel, who recalled him as a tall and handsome man, destined to become a leader. Soll’s death demanded vengeance.

Daniel told me that responsibility for arranging revenge usually falls on the victim’s firstborn son or, failing that, on one of his brothers. “Soll did have a son, but he was only six years old at the time of his father’s death, much too young to organize the revenge,” Daniel said. “On the other hand, my father was felt to be too old and weak by then; the avenger should be a strong young man in his prime. So I was the one who became expected to avenge Soll.” As it turned out, it took three years, twenty-nine more killings, and the sacrifice of three hundred pigs before Daniel succeeded in discharging this responsibility.

Vengeance Is Ours

Via 3quarksdaily

Stórfelld bókhaldstrix sem komast ekki í fréttir

Ég mæli með því að þið hlýðið á meðfylgjandi upptöku (~1m:30s) úr þættinum Vikulokin, þar sem Kristinn H. Gunnarsson og Gísli Marteinn Baldursson tjáðu sig meðal annars um stöðu mála í íslensku efnahagslífi, ég ætlaði ekki að trúa mínum eigin eyrum þegar ég heyrði þetta og geri vart enn.

Upptakan (~160K)

Kristinn H.:

En annað vil ég nefna sem mér finnst kannski ekki alveg eins gott, sem ríkisstjórnin er að gera á þessum tíma. Hún er að afskrifa skatta sem menn áttu að borga vegna söluhagnaðar, hagnaðar af sölu hlutabréfa á undanförnum mörgum árum.

Þáttarstjórnandi:

Já.

Kristinn H.:

Það hefur, uppsafnaður 620 miljarða króna söluhagnaður, sem á að skila um 100 miljörðum króna í ríkissjóð, og ef að ekki hefði verið heimilt að fresta söluhagnaðinum á hverjum tíma þá væru þessir peningar í ríkiskassanum.

Þáttarstjórnandi:

Frumvarp fjármálaráðherra í vikunni?

Kristinn H.:

100 miljarðar króna. Nú er verið að leggja til, og það fer í gegnum þingið greinilega, að afskrifa þessar skuldir. Þær munu koma fram meðal annars í fjármálafyrirtækjum í því að þær hækka eigið fé fyrirtækjanna, vegna þess að skattarnir eru útreiknaðir og þeir eru færðir sem skuld fyrirtækisins við ríkissjóð, svo þegar frumvarpið er orðið að lögum þá breytist þessi skuld í eign, og hækkar eigið fé þessara fyrirtækja um miljarða króna, og allir þeir sem hafa verið að kaupa eða selja kvóta í kvótakerfinu okkar fallega, og skemmtilega, eigum við að segja það, á undanförnum árum og grætt stóra peninga að þeir sleppa við að borga skattana af því.

Þáttarstjórnandi:

Svona stórfelld bókhaldstrix ná ekki upp í fréttir.

Gísli Marteinn:

Nei þetta er náttúrulega, hérna, þarna erum við Kristinn auðvitað ósammála, því ég, hérna, er ánægður vegna hverrar krónu sem verður eftir í vösum einstaklinganna fremur heldur en hjá ríkinu, af því að, af því að fólkið fer nú betur með þetta heldur en ríkið.

Maður á ekki orð yfir þessu rugli. Ríkið að gefa bröskurum og fjármálafyrirtækjum 100 miljarða? Bara sí svona.

Svo sem ekkert skrítið að svona fullkomin dæmi um "corporate welfare" skuli ekki koma fram í fréttum, enda hrein og bein svívirða.

Taugafræðilegur grunnur meðvitundar

The Neuronal Basis of Consciousness

Ef þú hefur einhvern minnsta áhuga á mannsheilanum, meðvitund okkar og skynjun þá mæli ég eindregið með því að þú dundir þér við að horfa á þessa fyrirlestra, sem Christof Koch prófessor hjá California Institute of Technology hefur gert aðgengilega á netinu, ég efast stórlega um að þú verðir fyrir vonbriðgum.

Samband Bandaríkjanna og nágranna þeirra í suðri

Hér fyrir neðan er að finna hlekki í viðtal við Noam Chomsky, þar sem hann stiklar á stóru varðandi samband Bandaríkjanna við löndin í Suður Ameríku. Verst að spyrillinn les spurningarnar upp af blaði og virkar við það afskaplega trénaður, en hvað um það, viðtalið er ekki nema ~20 min. í tveimur hlutum og vel þess virði að heyra.

Hluti 1
Hluti 2

Félagslyndar hýenur

Ágæt grein um samfélagsstrúktúr hýena, það virðist meira í þessi kvikindu spunnið en maður hefur gert sér grein fyrir.

Most of the research on the social brain hypothesis has focused on primates. One reason for that bias, Dr. Holekamp said, is many scientists thought that no other animals were worth studying. “Primatologists have argued for years,” she said, “that primates are unique in terms of the complexity of their social lives.”

From her experience with hyenas, Dr. Holekamp had her doubts. So she began to run experiments on spotted hyenas similar to the ones run on primates. She would play recordings of hyenas, for example, to see if other hyenas recognized them individually. They did. She soon came to see the primates-only view of the social brain as deeply flawed.

“I would argue that’s not true at all: spotted hyenas live in a society just as large and just as complex as a baboon,” Dr. Holekamp said, noting that spotted hyenas live in the largest social groups of any carnivore. “We’re talking about 60 to 80 individuals who all know each other individually.”

via 3quarksdaily

Rambar Bólivía á barmi borgarastyrjaldar?

Justin Produr ræðir við kólumbíska aktivistan Manuel Rozental um ástandið í Bólivíu og vandamálin sem Evo Morales stendur frammi fyrir.

Bolivia on the Brink

JP: So most of the land is just privately owned?

MR: Privately and also outright illegally owned, but owned. The clearest example is a fellow called Branco Marinkovic. He’s Croatian in origin, his family came to the flatlands, the eastern part of the country, where all the gas and soy is, around the time of WWII. He owns millions of hectares of land. The titles are illegally or irregularly obtained and wouldn’t hold in any court but he has an enormous amount of power and is one of the greatest enemies of Evo and his government.

The eastern region, is called the ‘media luna’. It is half of the country, Santa Cruz city and six other provinces, consisting of lightly populated, resource-rich lowlands essentially owned by 19 families (See for example in Spanish, Raul Bustamente’s article “En Santa Cruz ya reina el fascismo” in Argenpress, and “La Rebelion de los 100 clanes” in Econoticias Bolivia). Most of these families are of European ancestry or call themselves ‘whites’ even if they’re mestizos.

They are profoundly racist and well known to be. While we were in Bolivia, we were told by several people that these people still sell people with the land, a feudal practice. They have economic power and control over the media – all of the mainstream media is controlled by them except for one TV channel and one radio station that are government run. The judicial system within the government is still in the hands of the right. They won the ‘prefecturas’ -- the local governments in five of the six provinces in the media luna. Evo had the majority for the presidency, even in that region, but the right, or the 19 clans, won locally. They retain control in the eastern region.

Áhugaverð sýn á ástralska heimsveldið

Grein eftir John Pilger þar sem hann ræðir heimsvaldastefnu Ástralíu sem og stöðu frumbyggja þar í landi.

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This “top end” of Australia borders the Arafura and Timor Seas, across from the Indonesian archipelago. One of the world’s great submarine oil and gas deposits lies off East Timor. In 1975, Australia’s then ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, who had been tipped off about the coming Indonesian invasion of then Portuguese East Timor, secretly recommended to Canberra that Australia turn a blind eye to it, noting that the seabed riches “could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia . . . than with [an independent] Timor”. Gareth Evans, later foreign minister, described a prize worth “zillions of dollars”. He ensured that Australia distinguish itself as one of the few countries to recognise General Suharto’s bloody occupation, in which 200,000 East Timorese lost their lives.
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Australia is engaged in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, where its troops and federal police have dealt with “breakdowns in law and order” that are “depriving Australia of business and investment opportunities”. A former senior Australian intelligence officer calls these “wild societies for which intervention represents a blunt, but necessary instrument”. Australia is also entrenched in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rudd’s electoral promise to withdraw from the “coalition of the willing” does not include almost half of Australia’s troops in Iraq.
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