Comment by tonytran2015: 1. It appears that Australia has been dead set on Population Replacement in Australia. This is just part of “the bigger picture”, First Nation People are only among many to be replaced. 2. The World needs more of German general Dietrich von Choltitz, the last Nazi governor of Paris.
Mining giant Rio Tinto has destroyed something so ancient in WA it’s hard to fathom with a human brain.
Two rock shelters, recognised as one of Australia’s oldest known Aboriginal heritage sites — with evidence of human occupation from over 46,000
years ago — were destroyed last weekend.
Rio Tinto was given permission to blast Juukan Gorge 1 and 2 under Section 18 of the Aboriginal Heritage Act.(Supplied: Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation)
Rio Tinto, operating legally under a law written in the early 1970s, detonated the shelters to extend its Brockman 4 iron ore mine.
Rio knew the site was thousands of years old and it had delayed destruction
of the rock shelters to allow excavations to be carried out and for cultural artefacts to be salvaged.
But archaeologist Dr Michael Slack, who led the excavations in 2014, found
several “staggering” artefacts, including grinding and pounding stones believed to be the earliest use of grindstone technology in Western
Australia, and a 28,000-year-old kangaroo leg bone sharpened into a pointed tool, which appeared at the site up to 10,000 years earlier than in other sites.
He also uncovered a 4,000-year-old belt made of plaited hair, whose DNA was associated with today’s Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura traditional owners.
His excavation dated human occupation in the region scores of thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
“What we found were some really important discoveries,” he said.
“And so significant in that respect, that it’s one of those sites you only excavate once or twice in your career.”
How can we put the loss into perspective? Can our brains comprehend deep time?
According to historians, written language was invented around 5,500 years ago. The Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was constructed around 4,500 years ago.
So go back a further 40,000-odd years.
…
Peter Stone, a world-renowned archaeologist and UNESCO chair in Cultural
Property Protection and Peace at Newcastle University in the UK, said
the destruction of the rock shelters was comparable to the Islamic State’s destruction of Palmrya.
“It’s a tragedy that sits up there with all sorts of sites; the Palmyras, Mosuls and Bamiyan Buddhas of this world,” he said last week.
Is anyone responsible?
Western Australia’s Aboriginal Heritage Act hasn’t been updated since the 1970s.
Since mid-2010, mining companies operating in WA have applied 463 times for
leases that grant permission to destroy or disturb heritage sites and none has been refused.
Rio Tinto received legal
approvals and ministerial consent in 2013 to conduct the detonations after consulting traditional owners and allowing archaeological
excavations.
WA’s Treasurer and Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Ben Wyatt, says the WA
Government is hoping to modernise the Aboriginal Heritage Act.
And Burchell Hayes, a traditional owner of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama people,
said his people were sad that something they had a deep connection to had been destroyed.
“We can’t undo what’s already happened, but what we can do is try and go back to Rio Tinto and talk to them on how we can protect the remaining sites in that area,” he said.
…
Where does that leave us?
It makes one think of a story from World War II.
In the final days of the German occupation of Paris, a German general called Dietrich von Choltitz, the last Nazi governor of the city,
refused a direct order from Adolf Hitler to obliterate major landmarks in the city.
If it weren’t for his disobedience, the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame, and other buildings and bridges would have been blown to smithereens.
Why didn’t he do it?
He believed Hitler had become insane by that stage and the destruction would have been militarily futile.
But he also had an affection for the city’s history and culture.
Comment by tonytran2015: It appears that Australia has been dead set on Population Replacement in Australia. This is just part of “the bigger picture”, First Nation People are only among many to be replaced.
Rio Tinto expressed deep regret over the blast to Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt in a private phone call
Mr Wyatt says a lawyer for traditional owners contacted his office last week to ask for the Federal Government to intervene
Permission to blast the site was signed off in 2013
Two sites in the Juukan Gorge were destroyed last weekend
by mining company Rio Tinto, after being approved for destruction in
2013, despite significant archaeological discoveries that were made in
2014.
The blasting of the sites was one of the
worst destructions of an archaeological site in recent memory according
to Peter Stone, the UNESCO chair in Cultural Property Protection and
Peace at Newcastle University in the UK.
…
Minister says traditional owners called his office in 11th-hour bid to stop blast
Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt has confirmed he was contacted by legal
representatives of traditional owners trying to stop the destruction of 46,000-year-old cultural sites in the Pilbara.
Mr Wyatt said his office received a call at the 11th hour, a few days before Rio Tinto blasted the site, asking the Federal Government to step in and prevent it.
He said his office provided
advice to a lawyer representing traditional owners about how to access
“Commonwealth provisions” but said he did not step in to stop the blast.
“I was advised that the call had occurred, and that advice had been given
and that the lawyer was proceeding with the advice given,” he said.
George Floyd died at the hands of uniformed officers, proving yet again that the US has the “deadliest police culture,” the like of which is nowhere to be found in the modern world, his family lawyer told RT’s Ruptly video agency.
Public outrage over police brutality – fueled by the arrest and death of African American man George Floyd in Minnesota – is wreaking havoc across US cities.
Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney and one of the counsels for the Floyd family, told Ruptly that the country’s law enforcement agencies stand out as notorious among their foreign counterparts.
“America has the deadliest police culture in the modern world. There is no nation on the planet that kills and incarcerates more of its people,”he said.
They only know two things: incarceration and brutality.
Merritt and his partner attorney Ben Crump will push for“comprehensive police reform”in Washington, DC together with the families of Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, another African American shot dead while jogging near Brunswick, Georgia.
WASHINGTON, DC: Governor Andrew “Killer” Cuomo is directly responsible for the deaths of over 5,800 nursing home patients from coronavirus in New York State. Cuomo’s science-denying policy of March 25th forced 4,400 people who tested positive for COVID-19 into nursing homes across New York State. Even though there were more than 2,000 available beds on the Navy Hospital ship Comfort.
Another 2,000 at the Javits Center. And 2,100 unused beds at a field hospital in the heart of the outbreak in Brooklyn. 6100 available beds, all constructed at a cost of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Instead of discharging these COVID-19 patients to readily available facilities specifically built for the outbreak, those facilities went largely unused. The Brooklyn facility alone had a capacity of 2,100 people but never saw a single patient.
Instead, Gov Cuomo deliberately and systematically followed a policy guaranteed to threaten the lives of every nursing home patient in the state of New York. To not put sick people into nursing homes is simply common sense. Why on earth would Cuomo do this? Or allow it to happen. Why did he not stop it from happening?
Student activist Drew Pavlou has been handed a two-year suspension from the University of Queensland after speaking out about the institution’s ties to China.
Drew Pavlou faced a disciplinary hearing on May 20 at the university over 11 allegations of misconduct, detailed in a confidential 186-page document, reportedly linked to his on-campus activism supporting Hong Kong and criticising the Chinese Communist Party.
The university ordered his suspension on Friday after the 20-year-old philosophy student left the previous hearing after about one hour, citing procedural unfairness.
UQ Chancellor Peter Varghese said on Friday he was concerned with the outcome of the disciplinary action against Pavlou.
“There are aspects of the findings and the severity of the penalty which personally concern me,” Varghese said in a statement.
The same police department that hired the officer who cruelly and arbitrarily murdered George Floyd has responded to the intensifying media coverage of the riots that are now beginning to spread across the US with what some might describe as ‘Stalinist’ tactics.
CNN tweeted a photo of reporter Omar Jimenez being taken into custody in the middle of the live report.
This video was captured by the crew while they were being arrested.
…
Jimenez could be seen holding his CNN badge while reporting, identifying himself as a reporter. He could be heard telling the officers that they would move wherever the police needed them, while also making it clear that he was in the middle of a live report.
An officer gripped his arm as Jimenez talked, then put him in handcuffs.
“We can move back to where you like. We are live on the air here…Put us back where you want us. We are getting out of your way – wherever you want us (we’ll) get out of your way,” Jimenez said.
“We were just getting out of your way when you were advancing through the intersection,” Jimenez said.
CNN’s Josh Campell was nearby but was allowed to remain.
“I identified myself…they said, ‘OK, you’re permitted to be in the area,’” recounted Campbell, who is white. “I was treated much differently than (Jimenez) was.”
Jimenez and the crew had been reporting from the site, which was near a police precinct that was burned down by protesters overnight.
…First: who has the disease killed? Covid-19 targets the old and the sick; this is not to be callous, but to understand the enemy and to provide context. The average age of those dying of covid-19 in the UK is over 80, and fully a third are residents of care homes where average “stay” (a euphemism I’m afraid) was only 30 months from admission before the virus anyway.
…Second: who hasn’t it killed? Parents, unions and nervy adults fret
about the risk, but there is little need. With no serious pre-existing
conditions, the young-ish and healthy are far more likely to be hit by
lightning (49 occurrences per annum in UK) than to die of covid-19 (33
in England under age 40, of which only 3 under the age of 19). Panning
out, among healthy under 60s (i.e. children and the vast majority of our
working population), 253 people have died of covid-19 in English
hospitals; this compares to 400 (non-suicide) drownings per year in the
UK. …
…
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has shamelessly used the coronavirus crisis to puff up his national political profile, ordered the elderly hospitalized with Covid back to their nursing homes where they could spread the virus like so many Typhoid Marys. Amid calls for a Federal probe into Cuomo’s callous and deadly decision to rip elderly patients from their hospital beds and send them back to cramped senior facilities, Cuomo demurs, blaming…you guessed it: Trump!
In Pennsylvania a particularly cruel (and unelected) creature, Rachel Levine, in charge of the state’s Covid policy oversaw a virus outbreak that claimed the elderly in care facilities as 70 percent of the entire state’s death toll. Astonishing! A real genocide of the old. Of course before she ordered those elderly hospitalized with Covid back to their care facilities to infect and kill others she moved her own mother out of the facilities and into a hotel.
… Vladimir Putin has outlawed Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation from doing any business in Russia. We give the Russians credit. Microsoft ought to be kicked out of America as well, as long as they’re pushing cult baby killers like Marina Abramovic. Also, as more countries around the world have phenomenal success attacking the coronavirus with hydroxychloroquine, the question becomes: How long before our tainted and corrupt Centers for Disease Control and Prevention follows suit and allows HCQ usage here to fight coronavirus? How long will the CDC push death instead of life?
Rio Tinto was given permission to blast Juukan Gorge 1 and 2 under Section 18 of the Aboriginal Heritage Act.(Supplied: Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation)
