brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

September 26, 2007

Demise of the Maya in Belize

Filed under: belize,General,global islands,weather — admin @ 5:42 am

What was done
Polk et al. analyzed environmental changes on Belize’s Vaca Plateau via “vegetation reconstruction using δ13C values of fulvic acids extracted from cave sediments,” which provide “a proxy record of Maya alteration of the environment through agricultural practices,” in conjunction with “speleothem carbon and oxygen isotope data from another nearby cave in the study area” that “provide information regarding climate variability.”

What was learned
Starting at approximately AD 500, according to the three US researchers, increasingly more negative δ13C values in the sediment record indicate “the declining practice of agriculture,” which they say is “characteristic of a C3-dominated environment receiving little contribution from the isotopically heavier C4 agricultural plants.” This inference makes sense, because (1) the period of initial agricultural decline coincides with the well-known Maya Hiatus of AD 530 to 650, which was driven by an increasing “lack of available water resources needed to sustain agriculture,” and (2) the study area “would likely have been among the first sites to be affected by aridity due to its naturally well-drained upland terrain, causing a shift away from agricultural land use that preceded [that of] many other lowland areas.”

In line with this scenario, it is not at all surprising Polk et al. report that as early as AD 800 their δ13C values indicate the Vaca Plateau “was no longer used for agriculture, coinciding with the Terminal Classic Collapse” of the Maya, which Hodell et al. (2007) identify as occurring, in total, between AD 750 and 1050. These latter figures thus indicate that the Ix Chel archaeological site on the Vaca Plateau was, indeed, one of the very first sites to say goodbye to the Maya people, as the recurring and intensifying droughts of the Medieval Warm Period gradually squeezed the life out of the Maya’s waning culture.

What it means
The results of the study of Polk et al. are just another example of the devastating human consequences of the catastrophic droughts that plagued many parts of North, Central and northern tropical South America during the globe-girdling Medieval Warm Period; but as such, they constitute yet another important testament to the reality of the Medieval Warm Period and its “globe-girdling” nature.

Filed under: Film,General — admin @ 5:18 am

Burning down Myanmar’s Internet firewall

Filed under: General,global islands,media — admin @ 5:17 am

YANGON – Myanmar maintains some of the world’s most restrictive Internet controls, including government-administered blocks on foreign news sites and the use of popular e-mail services. But when politically sensitive fuel-price protests broke out last month in the old capital city Yangon, government censors proved powerless to stop the outflow of information and images over the Internet to the outside world.

State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) authorities have increased their efforts to curb local and foreign media coverage of the protests and their heavy-handed response against demonstrators. Pro-government thugs have been deployed to harass and intimidate local journalists and camera-carriers, some of whom have had their mobile-phone services cut.

Authorities initially ordered a blackout on all local media coverage of the protests and have since crafted and placed articles in mouthpiece media criticizing the protest leaders they have detained. But the government is losing decidedly its most crucial censorship battle: over the Internet. Despite government bans, journalists and dissidents continue to send information and video clips of the protests over the Internet to foreign-based news organizations.

Exile-run media have published detailed blow-by-blow accounts and explicit video clips of government crackdowns. Popular video-sharing website YouTube is flush with footage of the protests posted by citizen journalists under Burmese names, including one posting by a user who apparently uses the same name as SPDC leader General Than Shwe. The Thailand-based, exile-run Irrawaddy – a la CNN – has called on the Myanmar population to play the role of citizen journalists and send information to their newsdesk.

So why have the Myanmar authorities, who had apparently deployed some of the most restrictive cyber-controls anywhere in the world, so utterly failed to stem the outflow of sensitive information? Myanmar’s military government deploys various software-based filtering techniques aimed at severely limiting the content the country’s citizens can access online.

Most Internet accounts in Myanmar are designed to provide access only to the limited Myanmar intranet, and the authorities block access to popular e-mail services such as Gmail and Hotmail. According to the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a joint research project on Internet censorship issues headed by Harvard University, Myanmar’s Internet-censorship regime as of 2005 was among the “most extensive” in the world.

The research noted that the Myanmar government “maintains the capability to conduct surveillance of communication methods such as e-mail, and to block users from viewing websites of political opposition groups and organizations working for democratic change in Burma”. An ONI-conducted survey of websites containing material known to be sensitive to the regime found in 2005 that 84% of the pages they tested were blocked. The regime also maintained an 85% filtration rate of well-known e-mail service providers, in line with, as ONI put it, the government’s “well-documented efforts to monitor communication by its citizens and to control political dissent and opposition movements”.

Myanmar’s technical censorship capabilities were also reputedly bolstered by the regime’s procurement and implementation of filtering software produced and sold by US technology company Fortinet. According to ONI’s research, the regime was as of 2005 continuing to seek to refine its censorship regime, which showed no signs of lessening and could worsen as it moves to more sophisticated software products.

Eschewing the censors

Two years later, thanks to the growing global proliferation of proxy servers, proxy sites, encrypted e-mail accounts, http tunnels and other creative workarounds, the cyber-reality in Myanmar is actually much less restricted than ONI’s research indicated.

To be sure, official Internet penetration rates are abysmally low in Myanmar, because of the prohibitive cost and bureaucratic hassle, including the provision of a signed letter from the relevant porter warden that the applicant is not “politically dangerous”, to secure a domestic connection.

However, those low figures mask the explosion of usage at public Internet cafes, particularly in Yangon, where a growing number are situated in nondescript, hard-to-find locales. All of the cafes visited in recent months by this correspondent were equipped with foreign-hosted proxy sites or servers, which with the help of the cafe attendant allowed customers to bypass government firewalls and connect freely to the World Wide Web – including access to otherwise blocked critical news sources.

One particularly popular proxy site in Myanmar’s cyber-cafes is Glite.sayni.net, popularly known as Glite. According to the site’s India-based administrator, the Glite program has been downloaded by tens of thousands of Internet surfers and resides on hundreds of private and public servers in Myanmar, allowing its users to access Gmail accounts that the government has tried to block.

The authorities have so far moved to block three particular Glite versions, but the program’s administrator says he has in response designed and set up more sites, of which he estimates there are currently 11 unblocked versions, some of which are housed in support site forums in a format that is difficult to search and block.

He says Glite is also designed not to be indexed by search sites, which gives Myanmar’s Internet cafes their own private and secure access and makes censor search-engine results for its site seem deceptively sparse. Although the site’s administrator says he is “apolitical”, he believes Myanmar’s junta is “fighting a losing battle” in trying to censor the Internet.

Other popular proxy servers in Yangon’s cafes are Your-freedom.net and Yeehart.com, both of which similarly maintain new, updated versions to bypass government firewalls. The same is true for various encrypted e-mail services, including the hyper-secure Hushmail.com, which many local and exile-based journalists have been trained to use and technology experts say the junta lacks the expertise to crack.

The proliferation of evasive small-scale technologies, some like Glite maintained by private individuals with a penchant for programming, have in these restive times left Myanmar’s junta with few viable censorship options but to unplug the Internet altogether. Indeed, there have been recent reports of rolling Internet blackouts across Yangon’s cyber-cafes, particularly during the late afternoons, when journalists would normally file their stories.

So far the authorities seem reluctant to make yet another policy decision, on top of last month’s hyper-inflationary fuel-price hikes, that would impinge on national livelihoods, particularly the urban-based business class, who judging by their numbers in Yangon’s cyber-cafes have grown increasingly reliant on the Internet for cheap communications. That, of course, could change in the weeks ahead if the street protests mount and the government cracks down more forcefully.

Yet the comprehensive news coverage that has leaked out of Myanmar represents an important victory for the global forces fighting to keep the Internet free from government censorship. And when the dust finally clears on Myanmar’s popular protests, depending on the eventual outcome, the information-driven movement could one day be known as Myanmar’s Glite revolution.

Filed under: Film,General — admin @ 4:55 am

Nicaragua leader slams U.S. in 1980s throwback

Filed under: General,global islands,military,nicaragua — admin @ 4:55 am

UNITED NATIONS – In a throw-back to Cold War disputes, leftist Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega launched a blistering attack on U.S. global “tyranny” on Tuesday and defended Iran’s right to pursue a nuclear program.

In his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly for 18 years, Ortega said U.S. leaders continued to dictate what was right or wrong “as if they were God”, while poor countries were still afflicted by “oppression and violence and terror”.

“Today we are more threatened than we were 18 years ago,” said Ortega, who spoke about two hours after U.S. President George W. Bush, in his speech to the Assembly, criticized a lack of human rights in Iran, North Korea, Cuba and other states.

Referring to the United States, Ortega said that what was called “the most exemplary democracy in the world” was “really a tyranny. It’s the most impressive, huge dictatorship that has existed — the empire of North America.”

Ortega, leader of the radical Sandinista Party, ruled his central American nation in the 1980s when his government fought U.S.-backed Contra rebels. The Sandinistas were voted out of office in 1990 but he returned to power in January.

In a speech that appeared largely improvised, Ortega said the United States dictated the world economic order and was guilty of hypocrisy in trying to deny developing countries the right to nuclear power.

“With what authority does he (Bush) question the right of Iran and the right of North Korea … to nuclear development for peaceful purposes?” he asked.

“And even if they wanted nuclear power for military purposes, with what right can we question this? The U.S. is the only country in the world to have launched nuclear bombs on innocent people — Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Japanese cities bombed in 1945.

Iran says its nuclear program is only to generate nuclear power, but Washington and other Western capitals fear it is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.

Under Ortega, Nicaragua has cultivated ties with Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an arch-foe of Washington, visited Managua in January. Ortega went to Iran in June.

Last month, oil-rich Iran promised to help fund a new $350 million ocean port and build 10,000 houses for the cash-strapped Nicaraguan government.

In his speech on Tuesday, Ortega said the General Assembly reflected a world where “a capitalist and imperialist minority is imposing global capitalism to impoverish the world, continue to enslave us all and promote apartheid against Latin American immigrants and against African immigrants in Europe”.

Filed under: Film,General — admin @ 4:42 am

Thailand to buy foreign arms

Filed under: General,global islands,military,thailand — admin @ 4:41 am

Thailand’s post-coup government has approved the 6.7 billion baht purchase of Israeli guns, Ukrainian armoured vehicles and Chinese missiles, a cabinet spokesman said.

The army would spend 960 million baht on 15,000 rifles and 259 million baht on 992 sub-machine guns from Israel, Nattawat Suthiyothin said after a cabinet meeting.

The cabinet also approved 3.9 billion baht for 96 Ukraine-built BTR-3E1 armoured personnel vehicles, produced by state-owned Kharkiv Morozov Machine Building Design Bureau, after heavy lobbying by Russia, China, and Canada failed.

The navy would pay 1.6 billion baht for ground-to-ground missiles from China, Nattawat said without giving further details.

The military, which ousted elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a bloodless coup last year, has faced criticism for buying new equipment at a time when Thailand’s economic growth has slowed due to post-coup political uncertainties.

Defence Minister Boonrawd Somtas told Reuters last month the military needed new tanks, ships, fighter jets and helicopters after the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis had capped annual defence spending at 80 billion baht in the past decade.

Next year’s budget allocates 143 billion baht to defence spending.

September 25, 2007

Filed under: Film,General — admin @ 10:44 am

Resort Charges $14,500 for Dessert

Filed under: General,global islands,sri lanka — admin @ 10:43 am

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — This dessert may be a little too rich for you, but you’re probably not rich enough for it. A Sri Lankan resort is charging $14,500 for what it calls the world’s most expensive dessert, a fruit infused confection complete with a chocolate sculpture and a gigantic gemstone.

“The Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence” was created to give visitors at The Fortress resort in the coastal city of Galle a one-of-a-kind experience, said the hotel’s public relations manager, Shalini Perera.

The dessert is a gold leaf Italian cassata flavored with Irish cream, served with a mango and pomegranate compote and a champagne sabayon enlighten. The dessert is decorated with a chocolate carving of a fisherman clinging to a stilt, an age old local fishing practice, and an 80 carat aquamarine stone.

The dessert has to be specially ordered, Perera said. Though the hotel has gotten calls about it from as far away as Japan, she said, no one has yet forked over the money to try it.

Filed under: Film,General — admin @ 4:55 am

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