Oldest Man Made Poison Found in South Africa Pushing Back Ancient Civilization 20,000 Years

The late Stone Age may have had an earlier start in Africa than previously thought — by some 20,000 years. A new analysis of artifacts froma cave in South Africa reveals that the residents were carving bone tools, using pigments, making beads and even using poison 44,000 years ago. These sorts of artifacts had previously been linked to the San culture, which was thought to have emerged around 20,000 years ago. “Our research proves that the Later Stone Age emerged in South Africa far earlier than has been believed and occurred at about the same time as the arrival of modern humans in Europe,” study researcher Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, said in a statement. The Later Stone Age in Africa occurred at the same time as Europe’s Upper Paleolithic Period, when modern humans moved into Europe from Africa and met the Neanderthals about 45,000 years ago. “[T]he differences in technology and culture between the two areas are very strong, showing the people of the two regions chose very different paths to the evolution of technology and society,” Villa said. [10 Mysteries of the First Humans] Hints of culture Traces of civilization have been found going back nearly 80,000 years in Africa, but these fragments — bone tools, carved beads — vanish from the archaeological record by about 60,000 years ago. In fact, almost nothing is known about what happened in Southern Africa between 40,000 and 20,000 years ago, Villa and his colleagues wrote online today (July 30) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This gap makes it hard to link middle-Stone Age societies to the ones that came later. The researchers brought the latest in dating technology to bear on a site on the border of South Africa and Swaziland called Border Cave. They found that a number of the artifacts in the cave were much older than expected. Tools and beads found at Border Cave, South Africa, date back as far as 40,000 years. Ostrich eggshell beads, sharp bone points likely used for arrowheads, and notched bones were among the fragments of life dating back thousands of years before the San were thought to have emerged. One long-bone tool is decorated with a spiral incision that was then filled with red-clay pigment. A set of warthog or pig tusks shows signs of grinding and scraping. Other bones are marked with notches, as if they were used to keep a tally of something. The researchers also found beads, several apparently deliberately blackened by fire, one dating back more than 38,000 years. A piece of wood associated with a stone with a hole through it was dated to about 35,000 years ago. The tool appears to be an early digging stick of the sort used by the later San people to unearth roots and termite larvae. Oldest poison The researchers also dated a lump of beeswax mixed with toxic resin that was likely used to haft, or attach, stone points to the shafts of arrows or spears. The beeswax dates to about 35,000 years ago, making it the oldest known example of beeswax being used as a tool. Finally, researchers dated a thin wooden stick scarred with perpendicular scratches. A chemical analysis revealed traces of ricinoleic acid, a natural poison found in castor beans. It’s likely that the stick was an applicator used to put poison on an arrow or spearheads, the archaeologists reported. At about 20,000 years old, the applicator marks the first use of poison ever discovered. “The very thin bone points from the Later Stone Age at Border Cave are good evidence for bow and arrow use,” Villa said. “The work by d’Errico and colleagues [published alongside Villa's group's report in the same journal] shows that the points are very similar in width and thickness to the bone points produced by San culture that occupied the region in prehistoric times, whose people were known to use bows and arrows with poison-tipped bone points as a way to bring down medium and large-sized herbivores.” The ancient dates help fill in a continuity gap of human civilization, said study researcher Lucinda Backwell, a researcher in palaeoanthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. “The dating and analysis of archaeological material discovered at Border Cave in South Africa, has allowed us to demonstrate that many elements of material culture that characterize the lifestyle of San hunter-gatherers in southern Africa, were part of the culture and technology of the inhabitants of this site 44,000 years ago,” Backwell said. It seems plausible that these technologies arose 50,000 to 60,000 years ago in Africa and later spread to Europe, Villa said. http://www.livescience.com/21961-oldest-poison-tools-stone-age-humans.html

Bow and arrows were invented in South Africa 64000 yrs ago

Human beings were able to create tools around 2.5 million years ago – but we first made bows and arrows 64,000 years ago It took more than two million years to create the bow and arrow after man started making tools. Human beings were able to create tools around 2.5 million years ago – but we first made bows and arrows 64,000 years ago. The invention of the weapons was a huge leap for our ancestors, enabling them to hunt far more effectively. Researchers reconstructed the process by which our ancestors invented bows – and found that the ‘giant leap’ in our history only occurred relatively recently. Other primates such as chimps are able to use tools, but complex processes such as making bows are beyond them. Early man first started using tools to manufacture other tools around 2.5 million years ago, scientists say. But the bow was not first used until 64,000 years ago, when its invention greatly increased the flexibility of their activities. Researchers from the University of T|bingen say that manufacturing the bow was a challenge to early man and reconstructed the steps he would have needed to take. They say the bow and arrow made up a complementary tool set – with the interchangeable arrows working in tandem with the ‘controlling element’, the bow. Making the bow took 22 raw materials and three semi-finished goods (binding materials and multi-component glue) as well as five production phases. Further steps were needed to make the complementary arrows, reports the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Other primates such as chimps are able to use tools, but complex processes such as making bows are beyond themOther primates such as chimps are able to use tools, but complex processes such as making bows are beyond them Researcher Miriam Haidle said: ‘The bow and arrow have long been regarded as a possible indicator of culture in prehistoric times. Bows and arrows appear to have been in use for some 64,000 years, given evidence from South Africa. ‘Until recently, their significance in human cognitive ability was unclear. ‘This study was able to show a high level of complexity in the use of tools at an early stage in the history of homo sapiens.’

Afrikan Slaves In The Arab World

Over 28 Million Africans have been enslaved in the Muslim world during the past 14 centuries While much has been written concerning the Transatlantic slave trade, surprisingly little attention has been given to the Islamic slave trade across the Sahara, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. While the European involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade to the Americas lasted for just over three centuries, the Arab involvement in the slave trade has lasted fourteen centuries, and in some parts of the Muslim world is still continuing to this day. A comparison of the Muslim slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts. While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Muslim slave trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims. While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Transsahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%! While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service. While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive. While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth. It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States). A comparison of the Muslim slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts. While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Muslim slave trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims. While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Transsahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%! While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service. While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive. While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth. It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States). While Christian Reformers spearheaded the antislavery abolitionist movements in Europe and North America, and Great Britain mobilized her Navy, throughout most of the 19th Century, to intercept slave ships and set the captives free, there was no comparable opposition to slavery within the Muslim world. Even after Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and Europe abolished the slave trade in 1815, Muslim slave traders enslaved a further 2 million Africans. This despite vigorous British Naval activity and military intervention to limit the Muslim slave trade. By some calculations the number of victims of the 14 centuries of Muslim slave trade could exceed 180 million. Nearly 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in America, and 130 years after all slaves within the British Empire were set free by parliamentary decree, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, in 1962, and Mauritania in 1980, begrudgingly removed legalized slavery from their statute books. And this only after international pressure was brought to bear. Today numerous international organizations document that slavery still continues in some Muslim countries. Reports on slavery in Sudan, Mauritania for instance needs looking into. Recently, a former slave from the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, Mende Nazer, had her autobiography: “Slave: My True Story” published. Mende Nazer was an alleged slave in Sudan. She was made famous by her transfer to England to serve a diplomatic family. Mende Nazer reports that she was abducted and sold into slavery in Sudan when she was a child of twelve or thirteen (she doesn’t know when she was born). She lived in a village of the Karko Nuba in the Nuba mountains of Sudan with her family. The village was attacked one night. Mende fled with her family into the mountains. She became separated from her family, and when a man caught her and told her he would protect her, she believed him. She had already seen people killed in front of her. The man told her to stay with a group of children. Later, the raiders came and took all of the children to the town of Dilling, there the children were taken by families to serve as servants. Mende also reports that she was taken by a woman from Khartoum whom she served for six or seven years. She had to do all the hard work of the household, and sleep on the floor of the garden shed. She was never paid anything for her labor, and was frequently beaten. She wanted to leave, but had no money and nowhere to go, and was afraid to go to the police. The woman of the house said that she owned Mende, and called Mende her ‘Abda’, or slave. Eventually Mende was sent to London to work as a domestic. After several months Mende escaped and claimed asylum. At first, the Home Office rejected her claim in October 2002. In November, the Home Office overturned its decision and granted Mende asylum. www.africanecho.co.uk

The Mali Election Scam: Legitimizing France’s “Total Re-conquest”

“The objective is the total reconquest of Mali” -French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, (20 January, 2013) Presidential elections are due to take place in Mali on Sunday, July 28th. The latest polls indicate a victory for Ibrahim Boubecar Keïta, with Soumaila Cissé coming in second place. There are 27 candidates running in the election. The holding of the election just months after the French military intervention in January 2013 has been widely criticized due to the chaotic state of the country. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon admitted that the elections would not be ‘perfect’ but indicated that they would have to be accepted by the Malian people. There have already been reports of widespread fraud and irregularities, with thousands of NINA (Numero d’identité nationale) voter cards not being delivered to voters. There have also been reports of dollars being handed out to bribe voters. There is a very low distribution of NINA cards in the refugee camps both inside and outside Mali. Only 300 voter cards have been distributed among 730,000 refugees in camps in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Algeria and Niger while Burkina Faso’s 50,000 Malian refugees have only received 30 NINA cards. The electoral lists are the same as 2009, thereby excluding 300,000 eligible voters who have come of age since then. The NINA cards were only distributed in April in spite of the fact that it would take at least 6 to 12 months for their adequate distribution in a war torn country of Mali’s size. The regions of the North of the country, formally occupied by jihadists and separatist forces will hardly vote at all. The MNLA, Azawad National Liberation Movement, who waged a war against the central government in Bamako since 2012, want to declare independence from the Malian state. The region of Kidal in the North is still occupied by the rebel forces, with French troops also stationed there. The hastily organized elections will not help the cause of national reconciliation due to the fact that so many people have been excluded from voting. The Malian war and its consequences In March 21, 2012, generals of Mali’s military (green berets) overthrew the country’s president Amadou Toumani Toure, inaugurating the National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State. The coup was led by Captain Amadou Aya Sanogo and was supported the next day by a mass, popular movement called the March 22nd Movement led by left-wing deputy Dr. Oumar Mariko. The generals were unhappy with the half-hearted efforts of their government to crack down on the terrorists invading the country from the north. Soldiers had been badly equipped, with many going hungry. Amadou Toumani Toure had ruled Mali as a French puppet since 2002 and previously been accused of drug dealing with war lords. Toure had served Western corporations well, while the Malian people languished in dire poverty. Many of the supporters of the coup had demonstrated in support of Muammar Kaddafi during the Libyan war of 2011 and wanted to see a strong state defeat what they considered to be a French conspiracy to destabilize and subsequently re-colonize the mineral rich country, by using jihadist terrorism as a pretext for intervention. The reaction of the ‘international community’ to the military coup was swift. The coup was condemned and sanctions were imposed on Mali, with ECOWAS, the Community of West African States threatening to invade and occupy the country to restore ‘democracy’. These measures impeded the efforts of the Malian military to regain control of the Northern territories. The sanctions also helped precipitate a humanitarian crisis as Malian goods could not be transported from ports in the Ivory Coast and Guinea. All of this weakened the country’s defenses enabling the terrorists to capture village after village. In spite of the fact that the ‘international community’ was fully aware of the advances of the terrorists, it was more concerned with the ‘rule of law’ and ‘democracy’ than in helping the Malian military defeat the barbarians. The generals finally ceded to the international pressure and agreed to nominate Dioncounda Traore,( a NATO asset) as interim president. Meanwhile, the MNLA was joined by extremist Wahhabi terrorists groups funded by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, France’s allies. The terrorist groups, ACMI, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb and Mujao (Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa), overran some of the country’s most important cities such as Timbuktu, where they destroyed thousands of ancient scientific manuscripts and holy shrines, as well as occupying the cities of Tessalit, Gao and Kidal. In January 11th 2013 after the occupation of the town of Konna by islamists, France launched Operation Serval, a military invasion of Mali aimed at ‘liberating’ the country from the terrorists. The pretext for the intervention was a letter sent by French puppet president Dioncounda Traore to the UN. By March most of the terrorist groups had been driven out of Northern cities, which were now under the control of French and Chadian military. Most of the fighting was done by Chadian soldiers with the French playing a supporting role. An article published by Le Nouvel Observateur in June 2013 revealed that the MNLA had been working closely with the DGSE(Direction générale de la Sécurité extérieure) the French secret service since 2003, confirming the suspicions of Malian patriots that the French had deliberately used the terrorists to destablise the country.[1] On April 18th the Oauagadougou Accords were signed in the Burkina Faso capital between the interim government and the MNLA rebels. As the MNLA rebels are puppets of France and do not have any legitimacy, while the interim government is unelected, the accords are a violation of the Mali’s 1992 constitution. The Oauagadougou Accords effectively hand over sovereignty of Kidal and the Northern regions to the MNLA rebels. Under international law, states are not required to recognize sovereignty over national territories by armed gangs. This is precisely what the Qauagdougou Accords require. Mali is going to be partitioned. This has been the French plan since the 1990s; the country will be divided and conquered, with an unstable independent republic of Azawad in the north and a truncated, impoverished Mali in the South, with French military bases ‘keeping the peace’. To compound the country’s problems, there are three potential ‘azawads’: the Moor Azawad of the North west, the Toureg Azawad of the North East and a mixture of Songhay, Peul and Toureg on the banks of the Niger river. It is therefore possible that the armed gangs will continue to fight among themselves if independence is achieved under the UN occupation. Oumar Mariko- The people’s candidate. If there is any ‘terrorist’ feared by the French occupation forces in Mali, Oumar Mariko is certainly one of them. Dr. Mariko is the secretary general of Parti Sadi, Solidarité africaine pour la démocratie et l’indépendance, African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence. Mariko comes from a generation of African intellectuals inspired by Thomas Sankara, the Marxist revolutionary of Burkina Faso, and the African socialism of Mali’s first president Modibo Keïta. Mariko was one of the organizers of the March 22 movement, a popular mass movement which initially supported the military coup, hoping to use the seizure of power to mobilize the masses in favour of genuine democracy. Mariko was prevented from travelling to France last year for a conference to discuss French imperialism in Mali. One of the reasons for the celerity with which elections have been organized in Mali is to prevent the masses from voting for Parti Sadi’s candidate. Mariko is the only presidential candidate, who has genuine mass support and has not relied on corporate funding for his election campaign. Mariko is an admirer of Hugo Chavez and wants to reestablish the role of the social state through nationalizing national resources, re-establishing national sovereignty and instituting popular democracy. Mariko is the man the French government wants out of the picture. However, given the fact that so many have been excluded from the election and there has been so little time to organize mass meetings, and the allegations of fraud, Mariko is unlikely to win. Legitimizing neo-colonialism The French ruling class wants to create an image of legitimacy for its invasion and “total re-conquest” of Mali. The Malian elections are a total sham. They have been imposed on a people traumatized by a war planned and foisted upon them by imperialism. The partition of the country corresponds to the plan elaborated by French politician Alain Peyrefitte during the De Gaulle era, which involves creating the conditions for French control over the Sahara/Sahel region. The French are attempting to resurrect the 1957 L’Organisation commune des régions sahariennes (OCRS) in co-operation with the 2004 US Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative, a plan to control the Sahara which could see the eventual destabilization of Niger, Algeria, Tchad, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, Senegal and Ghana. This is part of the US initiative Africom, which aims to militarize all of Africa in accordance with US/NATO strategic interests, thereby weakening Chinese influence in the continent and ensuring access to cheap resources for Western multi-national corporations. The purpose of the electoral charade is to legitimize the break up of the country and the occupation by French and UN forces, thus preventing the Malian people from ever having a claim over their own lands and resources. As a consequence, the country will be partitioned and Mali will become the new Somalia. [1] http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/monde/20130607.OBS2446/mali-les-secrets-d-une-guerre-eclair.html

Are blacks abandoning Christianity for Afrikan faiths?

The placement of fallen fragments of coconut helped William Jones decide on whether or not to go to graduate school. The Yoruba priest that Jones had invited into his Brooklyn apartment had examined the four coconut pieces he had strewn on the floor before telling Jones that it would be OK for him to further his studies. That was more than a decade ago and today, Jones, 42, is still a practitioner of the Yoruba spiritual tradition. He said that consultations with Yoruba priests leave him with a sense of inner peace. “I go to see a priest or a ‘babalawo’ when I need clarity on something,” said Jones, a well-known digital artist. It’s the customized advice from babalawos (masters and diviners in the Ifa Yoruba tradition) and Yoruba priests (practitioners of the Yoruba spiritual tradition that have undergone the rites of initiation) that attracted Jones to what is believed to be the indigenous spiritual practice of the Yoruba ethnic group after realizing his dissatisfaction with the generalized sermons offered at Christian churches. Jones had attended predominantly African-American churches throughout the earlier part of his life and had considered himself to be a spiritual person. The Christian church just did not give him the personal attention he wanted. Another African-American, Ozahu Belagun, 37, could not accept the Christian teaching of the metaphysical space for torture and condemnation, known as ‘hell.’ “How can you tell me I’m going to a place [hell] that you’ve never been?” Belagun asked. “And how do you know that you’re not going there?” orisha.jpg Belagun, known as Pompey Blocker before he acquired an indigenous African name, has explored a variety of spiritual orientations. His mother was a Jehovah’s Witness. He practiced Islam for three years and was inducted as a Freemason in 2005. Now he practices voodoo and asserts that it’s nothing like the hocus-pocus sorcery depicted in Hollywood films. “I’ve always been connected to things that other people would shun and say is evil,” Belagun said, referring to the tradition of voodoo. Voodoo is believed to have historic roots in present day Benin and thus it shares similarities with other West African-derived religions. The more popular of these are: Ifa Yoruba spiritual tradition, Palo, Candomble, Umbanda and Santeria (also known as Lukumi). These practices are also known as orisha-centered religions because all of them recognize spirit-deities, known as orishas. Orishas, also spelled orixas or orisas, are spirits that control various natural forces and principles, including: fertility, water and love. Orisha literally translates in the Yoruba languages as ‘owner of head,” because it is believed that followers eventually take on the personality of designated orishas. The Yoruba tradition has gained in popularity among blacks exploring African spirituality because of its accessibility in America. The Yoruba ethnic group is one of the largest three in Nigeria and those who have immigrated to the United States, have brought the teachings of Orisha and Ifa (the systemic basis of Yoruba spirituality) with them. The fact is while West African-derived religions have historically been looked down upon, research shows that more African-Americans are exploring and adopting them. Many of these African-Americans were Christians and have either completely abandoned the Christian doctrine, like Jones, or are still incorporating Christianity with the West African-derived religions to create a unique, sort of ‘on-demand’ syncretism. For example, Oluwole Ifakunle, or Baba Ifakunle, said he receives phone calls from Christians soliciting his babalawo services. “The first thing they ask is, ‘you know how to read?’” Ifakunle said. (Consultations during which babalawos and priests communicate with the orishas through the use of items such as coconuts or cowrie shells are known as readings.) After that initial inquiry, he said the Christians usually go on to explain that they are dealing with a problem that has not been resolved the ‘Christian way,’ which includes praying with a pastor or fasting. Ifakunle said that one Christian woman called him after suffering from a series of what she believed were demonic nightmares. But according to him, it’s not only Christian parishioners who seek his spiritual counsel. He said that a number of Christian pastors and ministers have visited his Harlem-based shrine. “They usually come to me when they want to increase their church membership,” he said. “Then I’ll do a ritual to help them.” Anthropologists say these examples of religious syncretism are nothing new. Black slaves, particularly in present-day Haiti, hid their African spiritual practices from slave owners by disguising and incorporating them into the Roman Catholic religion they were often forced to accept. In fact, voodoo orishas, called loas or lwas, were reconfigured to mirror Roman Catholic saints and vice versa. So Papa Legba (a powerful spirit intermediary) became St. Peter, St. Lazarus or St. Anthony. Ayizan (the loa of trade and marketplace) became St. Clare of Assisi. So while syncretism has occurred throughout history, what is relatively new is the heightened interest of West African-derived religions in the United States. “Since the ‘50s and ‘60s there has been an increase with more African-Americans embracing these religions,” said Sylvester Johnson, associate professor at Indiana University’s religious studies department. “Today, the practice in the U.S. is mostly in urban areas.” Johnson attributes the concentration of African-American practitioners of orisha-based religions in cities including Miami, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Sacramento and New Orleans can be attributed to the black pride movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. In Atlanta, a city commonly referred to as the heart of the nation’s black middle class, black pride is still very evident today. “Atlanta has attracted a lot of black professionals, who have tended to lean toward a more black consciousness and afro-centric attitude,” Johnson explained. The city has a number of Santeria and Yoruba followers. Africanized churches like the Shrine of the Black Madonna the First Afrikan Church serve the needs of those desiring a more African cultural experience. The research of Harvard University African religious traditions professor Jacob Olupona reflects a greater tolerance and appreciation for not only African religions, but for other aspects of African culture. He said more African-Americans are traveling to places like Senegal, Ghana and mostly Nigeria where they gain a better understanding of indigenous spiritual practices. “Part of it is a search for one’s roots and one’s identity,” Olupona explained. While there are no concrete statistical data that quantifies the number of African-American practitioners of orisha-based religions, 70 million is the often-quoted figure for the number of “African and New World peoples who participate in, or are closely familiar with, religious systems that include Ogun,” based on research cited in the highly acclaimed book, “Africa’s Ogun: old world and new,” by anthropologist and professor Sandra Barnes. Ogun is among the pantheon orishas. In his book, “Orisa Devotion as World Religion,” Olupona explains that orisha devotion was preserved by captured Africans during the transatlantic slave trade and is manifested in various forms throughout the Americas. Olupona notes the diversity among African-American followers of orisha-centered practices. “It’s not just the lower socioeconomic class of African-Americans,” he said. “You have the middle-class and educated people and professors who are adopting African religions.” One of these more educated individuals is Dianne Diakité, an associate professor at Emory University’s religion department who freely participates in Yoruba and other African-based religions. She says that the recent spread of West African-derived religions in the Unites States arises from the impact of African and Caribbean immigrants. However, the attitude she refers to as ‘Afrophobia,’ continues to generate fear about things related to African culture. “Historical records indicate that most black churches and missionaries of the 19th century understood African religious traditions as a threat to the moral and cultural uplift of black communities and described anyone practicing those religions as barbaric, primitive and savage,” Diakité said. She explains that contemporary stereotypes and distortions have characterized African religions as superstition, witchcraft and fetishism. ‘Afrophobia,’ as Diakité describes it, is a consequence of slavery and colonialism. But perhaps that fear, or at least a hesitation, may be justified when investigating what is involved in West African-derived religions. Animal sacrifices, secret initiations, the chanting of the names of ancestors in libations, the personification of spirits in masquerades, shaving of body hairs, spirit possessions and refrain from eating tabooed foods are some of the aspects associated with the African religions that may be difficult for some people to accept. “A lot of African-Americans are not ready to make that transition yet,” said Belagun. “Christianity is basically a third generation belief system among African-Americans— they’re Baptists and their mother was a Baptists and then their grandmother was a Baptist.” When it comes to religion, African-Americans tend to take it quite seriously. The most recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Life reported nearly eight in ten African-Americans, 79 percent, say religion is very important in their lives, compared with 56 percent among the general U.S. adult population. 16 percent of African-Americans attend evangelical Protestant churches and 59 percent attended ‘historically black Protestant churches.’ Among ‘historically black churches’ 85 percent say religion is very important. 30 percent of respondents among ‘historically black churches’ attended religious services more than once a week and 80 percent said they prayed daily. Nearly two-thirds of members of historically black Protestant churches are Baptists. Overall, not only are black Americans are most likely to report a formal religious affiliation, but they are also the most religiously committed racial or ethnic group in the nation, according to the survey. However, the study also confirms that the United States is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country. Even African-Americans are exploring non-Christian alternatives. The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey found that those who claimed ‘no religion’ grew in every state within the last 18 years. Between 1990 and 2008, the number of nonreligious Americans nearly doubled, from 8 to 15 percent, according to the ARIS study. Among African-Americans, the increase was also nearly double, from 6 percent to 11 percent. So, while increasing numbers of African-Americans are denouncing religion for atheism, others are adopting African religions, especially those from West Africa. A growing dissatisfaction with Christianity among African-Americans seems to reflect disenchantment with the tradition of the black church. “When you got churches full of pedophiles and crooks, people want to see what else is out there for them,” said Kenny Depeyster. His reference to highly publicized scandals, including the sexual harassment accusations against Georgia mega-church pastor, Bishop Eddie Long, notes that these cases are now ‘bigger and in the public eye.’ Depeyster is a ‘palero,’ a follower of the Palo spiritual tradition that is believed to have emerged from the Congo basin region in central Africa. Palo was carried to the New World via the slave trade and was preserved by Afro-Latino communities in the United States. Today, African-Americans are also a part of the tradition. Depeyster has been a palero for about 16 years. Christianity, he said, was not emphasized in his family. But for Yoruba spiritual practitioner, William “Baba Bill” Mathews, 62, Christianity was a strong influence in his family’s life. Mathews eventually left the church because he felt it lacked spirituality. He remembers an incident as a 7-year-old boy one Sunday when he had told his grandmother that he did not want to go to church. “My grandmother smacked me on my head and she said, ‘why don’t I want to go to God’s house?’” Mathews recalls. “I told her, ‘God don’t live there; God lives in nature.’” According to Mathews, that childhood premonition was his calling into orisha. He openly practices Yoruba spirituality saying that it is no longer something to be ashamed of. “During slavery, the blacks had to hide what they were doing, but that is no more,” he said. Mathew appreciates the simplicity of West African-derived religions and its accessibility regardless of one’s educational status. He says Christianity has become highbrow and “difficult to understand.” According to him, that’s why the Yoruba tradition has grown “leaps and bounds” in the United States. Mathews and his wife recently visited the Oyotunji African Village in northern Beaufort County, S.C. Organized in the 1970s by the late Efuntola Oseijeman Adefunmi in an attempt to reclaim ancestral Yoruba customs and tradition, the Oyotunji village serves as a tourist attraction and a mecca for African-American followers of orisha-centered religions. Adefunmi, an African-American born in 1928 as Walter King, served as a spiritual father for many blacks seeking knowledge about orishas. His historical significance and cultural relevance is well cited among religious scholars. The Oyotunji community that he founded is said to be North America’s oldest, authentic African village. “The Oyotunji community is a utopia,” Olupona said. “It is a symbol of the black power movement that took place in this country in the 1970s.” Reverend Terri Adisa, an interfaith spiritualist, asserts that African-Americans can find more spirituality in Oyotunji village than in a typical black Christian church. She says the church has moved away from teaching members how to apply practical spiritual principles toward a more superficial doctrine. “Christianity today is not about God, it’s about ‘church-ianity,” Adisa said, referencing a term that is gaining popularity. “It’s about how to act and behave and dress in church,” she said, “but when you get to the parking lot you’re cussing at each other.” That disapproval of what Adisa perceives as a lack of sound spiritual commitment is not unlike the views of other African-Americans who have chosen to follow an African religion. Similarly, another Yoruba priest said that the Christian phrase of “being born again,” is really another way to say “hypocrite.” Paleros, Yoruba spiritualists, voodoo practitioners and other followers of orisha-centered religions seem to be attracted to the tradition because they say it brings results. They enjoy going to a priest (which varies in name according to the tradition) and having the priest indicate their symptoms and the solutions. “It’s like going to a doctor,” Jones said. Nonetheless, that ‘doctor-like’ treatment may not suit everyone. Christianity still dominates in black America, but the ones who have ventured beyond say they are satisfied, at least for now

All languages come from Afrika according to study

A researcher analyzing the sounds in languages spoken around the world has detected an ancient signal that points to southern Africa as the place where modern human language originated. The finding fits well with the evidence from fossil skulls and DNA that modern humans originated in Africa. It also implies, though does not prove, that modern language originated only once, an issue of considerable controversy among linguists. The detection of such an ancient signal in language is surprising. Because words change so rapidly, many linguists think that languages cannot be traced very far back in time. The oldest language tree so far reconstructed, that of the Indo-European family, which includes English, goes back 9,000 years at most. Quentin D. Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, has shattered this time barrier, if his claim is correct, by looking not at words but at phonemes — the consonants, vowels and tones that are the simplest elements of language. Dr. Atkinson, an expert at applying mathematical methods to linguistics, has found a simple but striking pattern in some 500 languages spoken throughout the world: A language area uses fewer phonemes the farther that early humans had to travel from Africa to reach it. Some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100 phonemes, whereas Hawaiian, toward the far end of the human migration route out of Africa, has only 13. English has about 45 phonemes. This pattern of decreasing diversity with distance, similar to the well-established decrease in genetic diversity with distance from Africa, implies that the origin of modern human language is in the region of southwestern Africa, Dr. Atkinson says in an article published on Thursday in the journal Science. Language is at least 50,000 years old, the date that modern humans dispersed from Africa, and some experts say it is at least 100,000 years old. Dr. Atkinson, if his work is correct, is picking up a distant echo from this far back in time. Linguists tend to dismiss any claims to have found traces of language older than 10,000 years, “but this paper comes closest to convincing me that this type of research is possible,” said Martin Haspelmath, a linguist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Dr. Atkinson is one of several biologists who have started applying to historical linguistics the sophisticated statistical methods developed for constructing genetic trees based on DNA sequences. These efforts have been regarded with suspicion by some linguists. In 2003 Dr. Atkinson and Russell Gray, another biologist at the University of Auckland, reconstructed the tree of Indo-European languages with a DNA tree-drawing method called Bayesian phylogeny. The tree indicated that Indo-European was much older than historical linguists had estimated and hence favored the theory that the language family had diversified with the spread of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, not with a military invasion by steppe people some 6,000 years ago, the idea favored by most historical linguists. “We’re uneasy about mathematical modeling that we don’t understand juxtaposed to philological modeling that we do understand,” Brian D. Joseph, a linguist at Ohio State University, said about the Indo-European tree. But he thinks that linguists may be more willing to accept Dr. Atkinson’s new article because it does not conflict with any established area of linguistic scholarship. “I think we ought to take this seriously, although there are some who will dismiss it out of hand,” Dr. Joseph said. Another linguist, Donald A. Ringe of the University of Pennsylvania, said, “It’s too early to tell if Atkinson’s idea is correct, but if so, it’s one of the most interesting articles in historical linguistics that I’ve seen in a decade.” Dr. Atkinson’s finding fits with other evidence about the origins of language. The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert belong to one of the earliest branches of the genetic tree based on human mitochondrial DNA. Their languages belong to a family known as Khoisan and include many click sounds, which seem to be a very ancient feature of language. And they live in southern Africa, which Dr. Atkinson’s calculations point to as the origin of language. But whether Khoisan is closest to some ancestral form of language “is not something my method can speak to,” Dr. Atkinson said. His study was prompted by a recent finding that the number of phonemes in a language increases with the number of people who speak it. This gave him the idea that phoneme diversity would increase as a population grew, but would fall again when a small group split off and migrated away from the parent group. Such a continual budding process, which is the way the first modern humans expanded around the world, is known to produce what biologists call a serial founder effect. Each time a smaller group moves away, there is a reduction in its genetic diversity. The reduction in phonemic diversity over increasing distances from Africa, as seen by Dr. Atkinson, parallels the reduction in genetic diversity already recorded by biologists. For either kind of reduction in diversity to occur, the population budding process must be rapid, or diversity will build up again. This implies that the human expansion out of Africa was very rapid at each stage. The acquisition of modern language, or the technology it made possible, may have prompted the expansion, Dr. Atkinson said. “What’s so remarkable about this work is that it shows language doesn’t change all that fast — it retains a signal of its ancestry over tens of thousands of years,” said Mark Pagel, a biologist at the University of Reading in England who advised Dr. Atkinson. Dr. Pagel sees language as central to human expansion across the globe. “Language was our secret weapon, and as soon we got language we became a really dangerous species,” he said. In the wake of modern human expansion, archaic human species like the Neanderthals were wiped out and large species of game, fossil evidence shows, fell into extinction on every continent shortly after the arrival of modern humans.

S.Africa’s ex-ANC “bad boy” plans election bid against the odds

He wears a red beret, talks the language of Revolution and calls himself “Commander in Chief”. Any echo of Venezuela’s late firebrand socialist leader Hugo Chavez is not accidental. Julius Malema, expelled “bad boy” of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress and now facing racketeering charges he denies, this month launched the nation’s newest political movement, calling for a revolutionary jolt to Africa’s biggest economy through nationalisation of mines and expropriation of white-owned land. Citing among his heroes Chavez and retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the 32-year-old Malema says his Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) movement plans to contest elections next year against President Jacob Zuma and the ANC, which has ruled since the end of apartheid in 1994. “We want them out of power. They have failed our people,” Malema, wearing his trademark red beret, said in an interview this week in Johannesburg’s Sandton financial district. The EFF, which has yet to register formally as a party, is the latest in a scattering of new political groupings that have emerged recently to try to challenge the ANC. The ruling party remains dominant and still likely to win next year, but internal splits and enduring inequality and poverty in post-apartheid South Africa have eroded its support, especially among restive young people born after 1994. Political analysts say that for Malema, arguably South Africa’s most high-profile and divisive politician in recent years, grabbing headlines is easy. But as a political orphan now shut out of the mighty ANC machine that nurtured his early career, he faces a tough reality check to show he has the backing, funding and organisational skills to form a viable party and run a credible campaign. “I don’t give him much chance,” said veteran South African journalist and political commentator Allister Sparks, adding that money-laundering charges brought last year against the former ANC Youth League leader could also derail any election bid. Nevertheless, surveys last month by consumer insights company Pondering Panda found more than one in four young South Africans aged between 18 and 34 said they would vote for a party led by Malema in an election. In the poll, conducted by mobile phone, respondents who supported Malema said they did so because he would do more to help poor people than other parties. “These figures show that even under ANC rule, many young people feel their lives have not improved as they expected,” Pondering Panda’s Shirley Wakefield said in a statement. Thrown out by the ANC as a troublemaker in 2012, Malema seems unfazed by the formal accusations of racketeering that could still send him to jail over murky state tender deals. He says the charges and a $1.6 million tax bill slapped on him after he left the ANC are a “nice coincidence”. “You can’t wage a war against capital and not expect a reaction,” said Malema, who at the height of his controversial Youth League leadership displayed a penchant for expensive Swiss watches and flashy cars. Since his fall from grace, he has been forced to auction off vehicles and properties. “REVOLUTION IS PAINFUL” Malema burnished his anti-capitalist credentials last year by intervening on the side of striking miners during an outbreak of violent labour unrest that killed at least 50 people, rattled investors and triggered ratings downgrades for South Africa. Wildcat mining strikes have persisted this year, and it is no surprise that state takeover of “mines, banks and other strategic sectors” and expropriation of land for “equal redistribution” – all without compensation – are at the top of “non-negotiable” policy proposals presented by Malema’s EFF. Such radical tenets, which have been rejected by the current ANC leadership, are guaranteed to make existing and future investors in South Africa see red. But Malema is unapologetic. “Revolution is painful,” he said.

Tel Aviv Hospital Bar Africans From Visiting Patients, Citing Health Concerns

The director of Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv announced Monday that entry to the hospital will be denied to African migrants, unless if they are in need of medical attention or hospitalization. Ichilov director Gabi Barbash issued the new instructions on Monday, in which migrant workers and refugees will only be granted access if they are in need of hospitalization or to be examined in the emergency room. Also, Husbands of women in labor or parents of children that are hospitalized will only be granted entry as long as they are wearing identification tags. Moreover, the hospital decided that all migrant workers and refugees entering the hospital, including those who are admitted for medical care, must get a chest X-ray in order to rule out the possibility that they are carrying tuberculosis. Ichilov’s director also instructed to isolate migrants who are patients in the maternity ward in a separate space. Children of migrants hospitalized in Dana Children’s Hospital in the Ichilov Medical Center Tel Aviv will also be separated from Israeli children in a special ward, according to the instructions. The new guidelines state that the hospital will assess the situation and “take extra steps in order to minimize the health risks to our patients and staff.” The instructions were issued a week after an African baby who was allegedly carrying tuberculosis was found in the hospital. The six-week girl is currently in isolation in the hospital’s intensive care unit. The mother of the baby, a migrant from Eritrea who has active tuberculosis, is hospitalized at the Shmuel Harofeh Hospital in Be’er Yaakov. Hundreds of children who have come in contact with the baby, whether in the neonatal intensive care unit or in the hospital’s emergency room, were summoned to the hospital in order to get tested for tuberculosis, and are receiving antibiotics as a preemptive treatment, in accordance with the results of the tests. An Ichilov official claim that the reason for the new instructions is purely medical and the guidelines are a response to growing concerns of tuberculosis infections, however their has been an ongoing media campaign in Israel aimed at portraying Africans and African migrants as disease carriers. The hospital’s management has complained for years over the vast amount of medical treatments given to the migrant and refugee population without any financial compensation. Nevertheless, the Treasury claims that the extra cost of treatment for refugees, beyond the hospital’s ongoing activity, is negligent. In a letter distributed to hospital workers, Barbash stated that “we are all aware of the new reality forced upon us, due to the massive presence of the illegal migrant worker community in south Tel Aviv. This community numbers close to 100,000 refugees from Africa and lives in poverty, which increases the difficult health problems with which they arrive from their home countries and from their journey.” Israel has refused to grant these legitimate African asylum seekers the necessary documents so that they may be able to work and take care of themselves.

How Argentina ‘Eliminated’ Africans From Its History And Conscience

Tens of millions of black Africans were forcibly removed from their homelands from the 16th century to the 19th century to toil on the plantations and farms of the New World. This so-called “Middle Passage” accounted for one of the greatest forced migrations of people in human history, as well as one of the greatest tragedies the world has ever witnessed. Millions of these helpless Africans washed ashore in Brazil — indeed, in the present-day, roughly one-half of the Brazilian population trace their lineage directly to Africa. African culture has imbued Brazil permanently and profoundly, in terms of music, dance, food and in many other tangible ways. But what about Brazil’s neighbor, Argentina? Hundreds of thousands of Africans were brought there as well – yet, the black presence in Argentina has virtually vanished from the country’s records and consciousness. According to historical accounts, Africans first arrived in Argentina in the late 16th century in the region now called the Rio de la Plata, which includes Buenos Aires, primarily to work in agriculture and as domestic servants. By the late 18th century and early 19th century, black Africans were numerous in parts of Argentina, accounting for up to half the population in some provinces, including Santiago del Estero, Catamarca, Salta and Córdoba. In Buenos Aires, neighborhoods like Monserrat and San Telmo housed many black slaves, some of whom were engaged in craft-making for their masters. Indeed, blacks accounted for an estimated one-third of the city’s population, according to surveys taken in the early 1800s. Slavery was officially abolished in 1813, but the practice remained in place until about 1853. Ironically, at about this time, the black population of Argentina began to plunge. Historians generally attribute two major factors to this sudden “mass disappearance” of black Africans from the country – the deadly war against Paraguay from 1865-1870 (in which thousands of blacks fought on the frontlines for the Argentine military) as well as various other wars; and the onset of yellow fever in Buenos Aires in 1871. The heavy casualties suffered by black Argentines in military combat created a huge gender gap among the African population – a circumstance that appears to have led black women to mate with whites, further diluting the black population. Many other black Argentines fled to neighboring Brazil and Uruguay, which were viewed as somewhat more hospitable to them. Others claim something more nefarious at work. It has been alleged that the president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, sought to wipe out blacks from the country in a policy of covert genocide through extremely repressive policies (including possibly the forced recruitment of Africans into the army and by forcing blacks to remain in neighborhoods where disease would decimate them in the absence of adequate health care). Tellingly, Sarmiento wrote in his diary in 1848: “In the United States… 4 million are black, and within 20 years will be 8 [million]…. What is [to be] done with such blacks, hated by the white race? Slavery is a parasite that the vegetation of English colonization has left attached to leafy tree of freedom.” By 1895, there were reportedly so few blacks left in Argentina that the government did not even bother registering African-descended people in the national census. The CIA World Factbook currently notes that Argentina is 97 percent white (primarily comprising people descended from Spanish and Italian immigrants), thereby making it the “whitest” nation in Latin America. But blacks did not really vanish from Argentina – despite attempts by the government to eliminate them (partially by encouraging large-scale immigration in the late 19th and 20th century from Europe and the Near East). Rather, they remain a hidden and forgotten part of Argentine society. Hisham Aidi, a lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, wrote on Planete Afrique that in the 1950s, when the black American entertainer Josephine Baker arrived in Argentina, she asked the mixed-race minister of public health, Ramon Carilio: “Where are the Negroes?” In response, Carilio joked: “There are only two — you and I.” As in virtually all Latin American societies where blacks mixed with whites and with local Indians, the question of race is extremely complex and contentious. “People of mixed ancestry are often not considered ‘black’ in Argentina, historically, because having black ancestry was not considered proper,” said Alejandro Frigerio, an anthropologist at the Universidad Catolica de Buenos Aires, according to Planete Afrique. “Today the term ‘negro’ is used loosely on anyone with slightly darker skin, but they can be descendants of indigenous Indians [or] Middle Eastern immigrants.” AfricaVive, a black empowerment group founded in Buenos Aires in the late 1990s, claimed that there are 1 million Argentines of black African descent in the country (out of a total population of about 41 million). A report in the Washington Post even suggested that 10 percent of Buenos Aires’ population may have African blood (even if they are classified as “whites” by the census). “People for years have accepted the idea that there are no black people in Argentina,” Miriam Gomes, a professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires, who is part black herself, told the Post. “Even the schoolbooks here accepted this as a fact. But where did that leave me?” She also explained that almost no one in Argentina with black blood in their veins will admit to it. “Without a doubt, racial prejudice is great in this society, and people want to believe that they are white,” she said. “Here, if someone has one drop of white blood, they call themselves white.” Gomes also told the San Francisco Chronicle that after many decades of white immigration into Argentina, people with African blood have been able to blend in and conceal their origins. “Argentina’s history books have been partly responsible for misinformation regarding Africans in Argentine society,” she said. “Argentines say there are no blacks here. If you’re looking for traditional African people with very black skin, you won’t find it. African people in Argentina are of mixed heritage.” Ironically, Argentina’s most famous cultural gift to the world – the tango – came from the African influence. “The first paintings of people dancing the tango are of people of African descent,” Gomes added. On a broader scale, the “elimination” of blacks from the country’s history and consciousness reflected the long-cherished desire of successive Argentine governments to imagine the country as an “all-white” extension of Western Europe in Latin America. “There is a silence about the participation of Afro-Argentines in the history and building of Argentina, a silence about the enslavement and poverty,” said Paula Brufman, an Argentine law student and researcher, according to Planete Afrique. “The denial and disdain for the Afro community shows the racism of an elite that sees Africans as undeveloped and uncivilized.”

US- South Africa War Games: The Pentagon’s Hidden Agenda is to Make “Africans fight Africans”

The Pentagon is involved in organizing war games in different part of the World. The stated military mandate is national security and the “Global War on Terrorism”. The South African media has reported the holding of military exercises involving the US military and the South African National Defense Force (SANDF). The South African and US armed forces are to conduct war games in the Eastern Cape over a period of almost two weeks (24 July to August 5) The joint war games are to be coordinated by USAFRICOM’s “US Army Africa Contingency Command”. “SA Navy Captain Jaco Theunissen said the militaries would share technical expertise during the exercise, which would start on 24 July and end on 5 August, and would involve 5 000 soldiers. “We are exercising to do a human support intervention in an unstable country,” said Theunissen. “What we simulate is what is currently happening in a lot of countries in the world, especially in the African continent. “You’ve got warring factions destabilising the country…. We are exercising the war fight, where you will fight against rebel groups.” Medical units would also practice giving basic medical healthcare to a local population in an unstable warring environment. All branches of the SANDF – the army, air force, navy, and health – would participate.” (Times Live South Africa, July 18, 2013, emphasis added) What these official statements imply is that The Republic of South Africa is slated to participate in US-NATO sponsored “humanitarian interventions” directed against other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which have been tagged by Washington as so-called “unstable nations”. These July-August war games were prepared in prior exchanges in February at USAFRICOM headquarters in Vicenza, Italy between the U.S. Army Africa Contingency Command and SANDF commanders: Col. Vuka Sean Mahlasela, 44th Parachute Regiment commander, South African National Defense Force, or SANDF, said the exercise helped both forces learn to cooperate with each other and improved the relationship between U.S. and South Africa. “Joint and multinational operations have become the norm of the day. The national defense forces play a very significant role to be able to operate with regional, international and multinational forces to test tactics and share skills and knowledge as well as to learn from each other as multinational forces,” Mahlasela said. Some of the training in which SANDF participated included basic command and control of a multinational exercise; intricacies of joint task force operations; requirements of different logistical infrastructures; and proposed ways on how to run meetings, which the U.S. military calls “Seven-Minute Drills.” USAFRICOM: US Army Africa command Post Soldiers Train with South African Forces March 8, 2013) Lt. Col Light Jongilanga Tsalupondo, administrative commander for the 43rd Brigade of the South African National Defense Force, discussed training events with Staff Sgt. Robert Hamrick of U.S. Army Africa Contingency Command Post during a contingency command post exercise in preparation for Shared Accord 13 {July-August 2013 War Games] These February training and briefing sessions for SANDF commanders were intended to create conditions, whereby the SANDF would directly collaborate with USAFRICOM in US led military operations on the African continent: “[SANDF] will take back to their leadership how to better synchronize and collaborate with the U.S.,” said Palacios, a Bronx, N.Y. native. “This is the success that was achieved during these last few days and will set us up for long-term success during Shared Accord in July.” While the stated purpose of the war games is to “protect Africa”, the real objective is imperial conquest. Washington’s hidden agenda is to “make Africans fight Africans”. It is worth noting that the SANDF was recently involved in fighting rebel forces in the Central African Republic, in which 15 SANDF soldiers were killed. Korea In April, the US completed a two-month-long ‘Foal Eagle’ exercise military exercise in Korea involving several thousand air, ground and naval personal. The objective was to trigger increased tensions on the Korean peninsula. Australia On July 18, the US commenced the largest joint war games in Australia’s history involving 20,000 US troops. The military exercises –which are part of the Pentagon’s “Asia Pivot”– are being staged on Australia’s eastern seaboard. The Obama administration’s so-called “pivot to Asia” involves the repositioning of American military forces throughout the Asia-Pacific region as well as strengthening US military alliances and strategic partnerships in that part of the world.In order to display its military might, the Pentagon leads multinational military exercises each year in the Asia-Pacific region, which is a “very dangerous escalation of US military presence,” Rozoff said. The exercises are “a cause of severe concern to countries like China and to Russia.” Rozoff described the US military as “out of control” that needs to be disarmed and pacified by the international community. The US and Australia have strengthened their alliance in recent years. The US military is building up its presence in Australia and plans to send 2,500 Marines there on six-month rotations each year starting in 2016. (Press TV, July 19, 2013)