brief

Around 36,000 years ago, Neandertals and people lived side by side in southwestern France for at least a millennium, according to a newly assembled chronology of ancient occupations there. Paul Mellars of Cambridge University in England and his coworkers say that their work supports the controversial view that shortly before dying out about 28,000 years ago, Neandertals borrowed toolmaking techniques from neighboring Homo sapiens.http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire

Mellars' team took radiocarbon measurements to date animal bones previously excavated at a French cave. Neandertal stone tools recovered there, dubbed Chatelperronian artifacts, display a toolmaking style that blends techniques typical of Neandertals and of Late Stone Age people.

From the ages of bones found with various tools, the scientists conclude that two periods of Chatelperronian toolmaking occurred in the cave, one 40,000 to 39,000 years ago and the second between 36,000 and 34,500 years ago. Implements with sharpened edges characteristic of human toolmaking were also unearthed in the cave and date to between 39,000 and 36,000 years ago, the scientists report in the Nov. 3 Nature.

The Neandertal occupations of the cave coincided with relatively warm eras that sandwiched a colder period during which modern humans moved in, Mellars says. The artifact record shows an overlap of the two species in the cave around 36,000 years ago, though the two groups might not actually have used the cave simultaneously.http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire

It was during such brief periods of coexistence between the two species in southwestern Europe that Neandertals adopted some modern toolmaking techniques, Mellars argues.

It's more likely that Neandertals developed Chatelperronian tools on their own and never abandoned the French site, counters João Zilhão of Cidade University in Lisbon, Portugal. The cave studied by Mellars contained only a few humanmade tools that are probably about 36,000 years old, reflecting no more than a brief incursion, Zilhão says.

ossil

Check your tile countertop for fossils. A consumptive Homo erectus—or at least a piece of him—might be trapped there. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

While cutting coveted travertine into tiles, a saw operator in Turkey sliced through a fossilized skull and gave the pieces to his supervisor. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz The fragments from the 500,000-year-old rock sat on a shelf behind the supervisor's desk until a local geologist visiting the fossil-rich site claimed them.

"The workers didn't know what it was," says John Kappelman of the University of Texas at Austin, who studied the fossil. "The first saw cut took off a bit of the top of the [skull] and the second saw cut went through the middle of the eye orbit."

The partial skull is the first H. erectus fossil found in Turkey, Kappelman and colleagues report online and in an upcoming American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

A wildly successful species that predated modern humans, H. erectus walked out of Africa all the way to China, Indonesia, and the Republic of Georgia starting about 2 million years ago, other fossils show. Whether the tall tool users ever arrived in Europe remains controversial, but the new find suggests they at least got close.

Kappelman says the skull's heavy brow ridge and sharply sloped forehead mark it as H. erectus.

Moreover, he says the inside of the skull displays telltale signs of tuberculosis, which in rare cases infects the lining of the brain. If confirmed, the find would push back the origin of the disease in hominins—the anthropological term describing human and near-human predecessors—back hundreds of thousands of years.

Until now, the oldest direct evidence of tuberculosis came from a 5,400-year-old Egyptian mummy. In 2005, genetic analysis of several strains suggested the disease originated about 3 million years ago in East Africa, the cradle of early human evolution.

The Turkish travertine traveler physically buttresses the claims of an early origin of the disease, Kappelman says.

When Kappelman initially examined the fossil, he missed the signs of tuberculosis—a stippling of tiny pits around the eye orbit. But when he showed the fossil to paleopathologist Michael Schultz of the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany, Schultz recognized the pattern.

It matched what Schultz had seen in the skull of a 19th-century Austrian man who died from tuberculosis of the meninges, the membranes sheathing the brain. When the disease invades this covering, its characteristic tubercles, or grains, press tiny pits into the front of the skull, near the eyes.

"The imagery of that [Austrian] case is an exact match for what we have," says Kappelman.

The diagnosis arrives millennia too late for the adult male H. erectus, but it's just in time to set off a scientific controversy.

Two other paleopathologists, Pia Bennike of the University of Copenhagen and George Armelagos of Emory University in Atlanta, are skeptical of the claim. They want to see more of the ancient individual—such as his spine—to confirm that he indeed carried tuberculosis.

Kappelman hopes to find more of the early man in the quarry's scrap heap. He might make a few trips to Home Depot too. "Back in the tile section, they have travertine from Turkey," he says. "Honestly, it's a case where the rest of this thing might be in somebody's kitchen."

research

http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.blog.ca
In 2000, British Petroleum shortened its name to BP and adopted the slogan “Beyond Petroleum,” complete with a new yellow and green earthy logo. Then Chevron rolled out their new slogan, “Human Energy,” and broadcast commercials promising to become part of the solution to the world’s energy and pollution problems. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.blog.ca Now, the greening of oil companies’ public image has reached one of the environmentalist movement’s favorite punching bags: ExxonMobil.

ExxonMobil representatives announced they will stop funding nine think tanks and interest groups that have repeatedly denied that global warming is a serious threat. One group axed was the George C. Marshall Institute, which churns out books and lengthy reports challenging the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, particularly targeting the conclusion that a scientific consensus considers global warming a real—and human-caused—problem.

Organizations like the Institute for Energy Research, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow had spent $23 million of Exxon’s dollars in the last 10 years, according to The Guardian, to plant seeds of doubt about global warming and prevent government action.

Greenpeace’s blog claims that even with the cuts to those nine, ExxonMobil still channels cash to 28 other global-warming-denying groups. But this announcement was the first time that the oil giant has publicly conceded that deniers detract attention from researching clean and viable alternative energy sources. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.blog.ca And, interestingly, this minor change of heart was spurred by the Rockefeller family, big-time shareholders in ExxonMobil, who have been pressuring execs to go greener. Cutting funds to a few interest groups might have been simply a move of appeasement, as the company held its annual shareholders meeting in Dallas yesterday with the Rockefellers in tow. But a baby step is better than nothing.

draft

May 18, Wednesday. Selected the Visitors to the Naval Academy, although we have not yet the appropriation bill, but we can no longer delay, if there are to be Visitors. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

Congress is very dilatory in necessary business, and yet impatient of delay in others.

Mr. Seward called on me this afternoon at a late hour in reference to alleged misconduct of the Marigold, which is charged with firing a gun at a blockade-runner within six hundred yards of Morro Castle. As Temple, Fleet Captain of the East Gulf Squadron, had left me but a few moments previously, I sent for him, there having been no report of the case. While waiting for Temple, Mr. S. informed me that a forged proclamation had been published by sundry papers in New York, among others by the World and Journal of Commerce, imposing a fast on account of the failures of Grant and calling for a draft of 300,000 men. Seward said he at once sent on contradicting it and had ordered the English steamer to be delayed. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

He then had called on Stanton to know whether such a document had passed over the regular telegraph. Stanton said there had not. He (S.) then ordered that the other line should be at once seized, which was done. Seward then asked if the World and Journal of Commerce had been shut up. Stanton said he knew of their course only a minute before. Seward said the papers had been published a minute too long; and Stanton said if he and the President directed, they should be suspended. Seward thought there should be no delay.

Gold, under the excitement, has gone up ten per cent, and the cotton loan will advance on the arrival of the steamer at Liverpool with the tidings. It seems to have been a cunningly devised scheme, — probably by the Rebels and the gold speculators, as they are called, who are in sympathy with them.

radiation

Scientists remain on the lookout for novel drugs that combat radiation damage. One of the most promising is CBLB 502, made by Cleveland Biolabs in Buffalo, N.Y. [see "Surviving Side Effects"; SciAm, October 2007]. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.USIn the April 11 Science, researchers report that the drug, also called Protectan, enabled 87 percent of mice to survive lethal doses of radiation, although it worked only if injected within an hour before exposure. (It showed some protective effects if injected after exposure to lower levels of radiation.) The compound, which could be given in the event of a nuclear explosion or meltdown, did not shield malignant cells, so it could protect healthy cells of cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment. The company now needs to test the agent in large numbers of people. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

khmer rouge

If Sok Chear had her way, she would slice the elderly man into ribbons and pour salt into his wounds. She would beat him up and torture him and give him electric shocks to make him talk.

For Ly Monysar, even that would not be enough. “Only killing them will make me feel calm,” he said. “I want them to suffer the way I suffered. I say this from the heart.” http://louishjhsheehan.blogspot.com

Sok Chear, an office worker, and Ly Monysar, a security guard, are two of the millions of Cambodians who suffered for four years in the late 1970s under the brutal Communist Khmer Rouge, which caused the deaths of 1.7 million people. http://louishjhsheehan.blogspot.com

Three decades later, five aging former Khmer Rouge leaders are in custody and awaiting trial. And Sok Chear and Ly Monysar have an innovative role to play in the tribunal, where the first case is expected to begin this autumn.

They are two of hundreds of people who have applied to the court to be recognized officially as victims of the Khmer Rouge and to bring parallel civil cases against them.

They will have a chance not to beat and torture them but to seek mostly symbolic reparations — a monument, perhaps, or a museum or trauma center.

It is a controversial experiment in this unusual hybrid tribunal, which is administered jointly by the United Nations and the Cambodian government and comprises elements of Cambodian and international law.

“For the first time in history, the internal rules of a tribunal will give victims of crimes the possibility to participate as parties,” said Gabriela González Rivas, deputy head of the tribunal’s victims unit.

Victims have been included in other comparable tribunals, like the International Criminal Court, but their role has been more limited.

As civil parties, the victims here will have standing comparable to those of the accused, including rights to participate in the investigation, to be represented by a lawyer, to call witnesses and to question the accused at trial, according to a court statement.

“Participation in these types of proceedings is a tool of empowerment,” Ms. Rivas said. “People can tell their story, feel that what happened to them is a consideration, a recognizing that what happened to them shouldn’t have happened.”

The inclusion of victims is part of the evolution and refining of the mechanisms of international justice, said Diane Orentlicher, special counsel of the Open Society Justice Initiative, in a telephone interview from New York.

“There has been a growing recognition, after 15 years of international and hybrid courts like this one, not to exclude victims from the justice that is being dispensed on their behalf,” she said. The Cambodia tribunal has been accused of compromising international standards of justice with its awkward admixture of Cambodian law and its vulnerability to manipulation by the country’s strongman, Prime Minister Hun Sen, who exercises control over the Cambodian judiciary.

The participation of victims is drawing more criticism, partly from people concerned for the rights of the accused and the preservation of the presumption of innocence. http://louishjhsheehan.blogspot.com

Victor Koppe, a defense lawyer for one of the Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea, called the presumption of innocence “the most fundamental issue” in the case.

“The question is whether or not everything in this tribunal is institutionalized in such a way that only guilty verdicts can come,” he said.

Other critics say the court is being distracted by social agendas from its core task of seeking justice for crimes against humanity.

“I would put this under the category of therapeutic legalism,” said Peter Maguire, an expert on international justice and author of “Facing Death in Cambodia.”

“This is an invention of the 1990s, where people freighted the trials with all this baggage,” Mr. Maguire said. “How do you measure closure, how do you measure truth, how do you measure reconciliation? These are not empirical categories.”

These added elements can also encumber an already tortuously slow process, the critics say.

Almost two years of the tribunal’s budgeted three-year mandate have passed since it was set up in August 2006, after nearly a decade of contentious negotiation between the United Nations and the Cambodian government.

Nearly a year has passed since the first of the five defendants was charged in the case. Most analysts are confident that more money will be found from international donors to extend the life of the tribunal, which began with a budget of $53 million. But as Mr. Maguire put it, this court needs to get hustling.

So far, Ms. Rivas said, about 1,300 people who say they were victims have applied to participate. About half seek to be civil parties, while the other half offer evidence that could be submitted to prosecutors. Most names have been channeled through a documentation center or through human rights groups.

Ten people have been accepted so far as civil parties, she said.

As the number grows, it is likely that they will be combined into class actions representing religious or ethnic groups, victims of particular crimes or other parties.

Theary Seng, 37, a Cambodian-born American lawyer who lost her parents to the Khmer Rouge, is organizing two groups of orphans — including Sok Chear, Ly Monysar and herself — to bring civil cases.

In February at a pretrial hearing, Ms. Seng became the first and so far the only victim to address the court, standing face to face with Nuon Chea, whom she blames for the deaths of her parents.

Though her words were addressed to the court, she said, her eyes were locked directly with those of Nuon Chea, 82, the most senior of the five imprisoned leaders — the man Sok Chear said she wants to flay.

In a short statement, Ms. Seng contrasted the legal protections that Nuon Chea is receiving with the arbitrary arrest and abuse she said she and her younger brother suffered as children under the Khmer Rouge.

Noun Chea, the Khmer Rouge ideologue, was sometimes known as Brother Number Two to Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader, who died in 1998. http://louishjhsheehan.blogspot.com

“He was stoic, stoic,” Ms. Seng said, recalling the confrontation. “He’s completely stoic. Eighty percent of the time I was addressing him in my statement. He didn’t break the stare.”

Nearly one-fourth of the Cambodian population died between 1975 and 1979 from execution, torture, starvation and overwork in the mass labor brigades the Khmer Rouge created.

Today, though, most of the survivors are as stoic as their victimizers. When asked about the tribunal, most simply say they want to know who caused their suffering and why.

But the approach of the court sessions has aroused the feelings of many people, and those who have applied to participate are among those with the strongest emotions.

Sok Chear, 32, who said she was raped and brutalized as a girl by the Khmer Rouge, remains inconsolable over the loss of her father, an engineer, who disappeared into the hands of the black-clothed cadre and never returned.

“We were always waiting for him to come home, but he never came,” she said. “We were always waiting and waiting. Even now, I still look around — maybe my father is still alive.”

Tears still come when she talks about him.

“He gave me rice to eat and I want to repay him,” she said, “even one plate of rice, my gift to him, even one plate for him to eat from his daughter.”

Ly Monysar, 41, is a broken man, poor and sick and bitter, his voice quavering as he tells of the loss of his entire family when he was 9.

He sustains himself with fantasies of revenge every bit as chilling as the calculated brutality men like Nuon Chea are accused of.

“I want to kill all those people who did this to me,” he said. “And if I can’t, I’ll come back in the next life and find them. I’ll create my own genocidal regime and take my revenge on them all.”

australian Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Just after noon on 11 April 1941, the Germans and Italians positioned themselves for a concentrated attack on the city. To exaggerate the size of their force and strike fear in the defenders, they were ordered to make more dust than normal. The 5th Panzer Regiment of the 5th Light Division drew fire first to try to assess the defence. Within an hour, five of the German tanks were destroyed and the others pulled back. At 3:00 PM the men of the 2/13th Battalion saw about 400 German soldiers approach. http://louis1j1sheehan.usThe Australians defensive fire forced the Germans to retreat, carrying their dead and wounded with them.

At 4:00 PM, a platoon-sized formation from the 2/17th Battalion saw 700 Germans launching an attack on their position. The Australians were outnumbered and outgunned with only two Bren guns, a few dozen rifles and a couple of Boys anti-tank rifles. The Australian artillery opened fire and inflicted significant casualties, but the German soldiers kept advancing. Several groups of Panzers and Italian M13s advanced on the Australians. As the Axis armor closed in, four British tanks arrived, firing over the head of the infantry. The Axis tanks could not hurdle the obstacles set for them and they fell back to regroup. This attack yielded only one dead on the Allied side.

Morshead's defence plan was aggressive. He ordered rigorous patrolling of the anti-tank ditches and more mines laid. The aggressive patrolling appeared to work. The 2/13th Battalion encountered a German raiding party with a large amount of explosives. The party had clearly intended to blow the sides of an anti-tank ditch, allowing easier passage for tanks to cross - but they were forced to retreat.

In cases where panzers and Italian tankettes did reach or pass the Australian lines, the infantry — ensconced in well-built strongpoints, including many installed by the original Italian garrison — simply concentrated on the German or Italian infantry, knowing that the tanks' guns could not be brought to bear on them and the Axis tanks would face anti-tank guns in the second line of defences. On the most important of these attacks on 1 May, a combined Italo-German infantry and armour force attacking, had its armour driven back and the infantry stood and fought behind Australian lines for quite some time before they withdrew.

On 15 April 1941 an Australian fighting patrol was returning from patrolling in the area of 2/48th Battalion when, at about 5.30 p.m, an Italian attack threatened to overwhelm the forward positions of the 2/24th Battalion. http://louis1j1sheehan.usItalian infantry numbering about 1,000 advanced on the bunkered platoons against mortars, rifle and machine gun fire and one post was overrun. Early in the battle, the 2/23rd Battalion's 'B' Company also arrived and engaged the Italian force. The combination of aggressive fire from the Australian soldiers plus devastating fire from the 51st Field Artillery Regiment swung the battle in the Australians' favour. The aggressive Australian patrolling continued and on 16 April, the main body of the 1st Battalion 62nd "Trento" Regiment was encountered approaching from Acroma. The Italian battalion then came under heavy shellfire and were halted. About half a battalion of panzers of the German 5th Armoured Regiment followed the Italian infantry but, as they reached the perimeter defences, came under intense fire from the 51st Field Artillery Regiment and withdrew. The 2/43rd Battalion War Diary reported that "The Italians attacked our 48 Bn and whilst withdrawing they (the Italians) were fired upon by German tanks believed to be supporting the attack."^[11] The Australians sent out Bren gun carriers specifically to find the Italian battalions' flank. The extra fire-power finally stopped the Italians, and all firing ceased. A British communique on 17 April 1941 described the actions:

One of our patrols successfully peneterated an enemy position outside the defenses of Tobruk capturing 7 Italian officers and 139 men. A further attack on the defenses of Tobruk was repulsed by artillery fire. The enemy again suffered heavy casualties. During yesterdays operations a total of 25 officers and 767 of other ranks were captured. In addition over 200 enemy dead were left on the field.

—New York Times^[12]

An intelligence assessment by the 2/43rd Battalion concluded that:

Reports from PW indicate that a large scale attack was to have been launched on the Tobruch defences on or about 16 April 41. There appears to have been no co-ordination between enemy tanks and inf units. The ITALIANS appear to have been some what in the dark as to their actual objectives and the method of co-ordination by means of GERMAN liaison offrs working with ITALIAN units has not been successful. PW also state that the spasmodic attacks in different sectors between 14 and 16 Apr, sometimes inf alone, sometimes tks alone sometimes both, were all intended to be a simultaneous assault which apprently went badly astray in its timing.^[13]