From the March 18, 2003 NY Times --
 

In Click Languages, an Echo of the Tongues of the Ancients By NICHOLAS WADE Do some of today's languages still hold a whisper of the ancient mother tongue spoken by the first modern humans? Many linguists say language changes far too fast for that to be possible. But a new genetic study underlines the extreme antiquity of a special group of languages, raising the possibility that their distinctive feature was part of the ancestral human mother tongue.     They are the click languages of southern Africa. About 30 survive, spoken by peoples like the San, traditional hunters and gatherers, and the Khwe, who include hunters and herders.     Each language has a set of four or five click sounds, which are essentially double consonants made by sucking the tongue down from the roof of the mouth. Outside of Africa, the only language known to use clicks is Damin, an extinct aboriginal language in Australia that was taught only to men for initiation rites.     Some of the Bantu-speaking peoples who reached southern Africa from their homeland in western Africa some 2,000 years ago have borrowed certain clicks from the Khwe, one use being to substitute for consonants in taboo words.     There are reasons to assume that the click languages may be very old. One is that the click speakers themselves, particularly a group of hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari, belong to an extremely ancient genetic lineage, according to analysis of their DNA. They are called the Ju|'hoansi, with the upright bar indicating a click. ("Ju|'hoansi" is pronounced like "ju-twansi" except that the "tw" is a click sound like the "tsk, tsk" of disapproval.)     All human groups are equally old, being descended from the same ancestral population. But geneticists can now place ethnic groups on a family tree of humankind. Groups at the ends of short twigs, the ones that split only recently from earlier populations, are younger, in a genealogical sense, than those at the ends of long branches. Judged by mitochondrial DNA, a genetic element passed down in the female line, the Ju|'hoansis' line of descent is so ancient that it goes back close to the very root of the human family tree.     Most of the surviving click speakers live in southern Africa. But two small populations, the Hadzabe and the Sandawe, live near Lake Eyasi in Tanzania, in eastern Africa. Two geneticists from Stanford, Dr. Alec Knight and Dr. Joanna Mountain, recently analyzed the genetics of the Hadzabe to figure out their relationship to their fellow click speakers, the Ju|'hoansi.     The Hadzabe, too, have an extremely ancient lineage that also traces back close to the root of the human family tree, the Stanford team reports today in the journal Current Biology. But the Hadzabe lineage and that of the Ju|'hoansi spring from opposite sides of the root. In other words, the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi have been separate peoples since close to the dawn of modern human existence.     The Stanford team compared them with other extremely ancient groups like the Mbuti of Zaire and the Biaka pygmies of Central African Republic and found the divergence between the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi might be the oldest known split in the human family tree.     Unless each group independently invented click languages at some later time, that finding implies that click languages were spoken by the very ancient population from which the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi descended. "The divergence of those genetic lineages is among the oldest on earth," Dr. Knight said. "So one could certainly make the inference that clicks were present in the mother tongue."     If so, the modern humans who left Africa some 40,000 years ago and populated the rest of the world might have been click speakers who later lost their clicks. Australia, where the Damin click language used to be spoken, is one of the first places outside Africa known to have been reached by modern humans.     But the antiquity of clicks, if they are indeed extremely ancient, raises a serious puzzle. Joseph Greenberg of Stanford University, the great classifier of the world's languages, put all the click languages in a group he called Khoisan. But Sandawe and Hadzane, the language of the Hadzabe, are what linguists call isolates. They are unlike each other and every other known language. Apart from their clicks, they have very little in common even with the other Khoisan languages.     That the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi differ as much in their language as in their genetics is a reflection of the same fact. They are extremely ancient, and there has been a long time for both their language and their genetics to diverge. The puzzle is why they should have retained their clicks when everything else in their languages has changed.     Dr. Knight suggested that clicks might have survived because in the savanna, where most click speakers live, the sounds allow hunters to coordinate activity without disturbing prey. Whispered speech that uses just clicks sounds more like branches creaking than human talk. Clicks make up more than 40 percent of the language and suffice for hunters to convey their meanings, Dr. Knight said.     Dr. Anthony Traill, an expert on click languages at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, said he did not find the hunting idea very plausible.     "Clicks are acoustically high-impact sounds for mammalian ears," Dr. Traill said, "probably the worst sounds to use if you are trying to conceal your presence."     But he agreed that it was a puzzle to understand why clicks had been retained for so long. He has found that in the ordinary process of language change, certain types of click can be replaced by nonclick consonants, but he has never seen the reverse occur. "It is highly improbable that a fully fledged click system could arise from nonclick precursors," Dr. Traill said.     Because languages change so fast, it is difficult for linguists to measure their age. Indeed, most think that languages more than a few thousand years old can rarely be dated. But if Dr. Traill is right, that clicks can be lost but not reinvented, that implies that clicks may be a very ancient component of language.     Dr. Bonnie Sands, a linguist at Northern Arizona University, said click sounds were not particularly hard to make. All children can make them. Dr. Sands saw no reason why clicks could not have been invented independently many times and, perhaps, lost in all areas of the world except Africa.     "There is nothing to be gained by assuming that clicks must have been invented only once," she said, "or in presuming that certain types of phonological systems are more primordial than others."     Dr. Traill said that although a single click was not difficult, rattling off a whole series is another matter, because they are like double consonants. "Fluent articulation of clicks in running speech is by any measure difficult," he said. "It requires more articulatory work, like taking two stairs at a time."     Given the laziness of the human tongue, why have clicks been retained by click speakers while everything else changed? "That is a major problem," Dr. Traill said. "All the expectations would be that they would have succumbed to the pressures of change that affect all languages. I do not know the answer."     A leading theory to explain the emergence of behaviorally modern humans 50,000 years ago is that some genetic change enabled one group of people to perfect modern speech. The new power of communication, according to an archaeologist, Dr. Richard Klein, made possible the advanced behaviors that begin to be reflected in the archaeological record of the period.     The Stanford team calculated a date of 112,000 years, plus or minus 42,000 years, for the separation of the Hadzabe and Ju|'hoansi populations. If this means that modern speech existed that long ago, it does not appear to fit with Dr. Klein's thesis.     But Dr. Knight said the estimate was very approximate and added that he believed the new findings about click language were fully compatible with Dr. Klein's theory. Clicks might have been part of the first fully articulate human language that appeared among some group of early humans 50,000 years ago. Those with the language gene would have outcompeted all other groups, so that language become universal in the surviving human population.     That would explain why the metaphorical Adam hit it off with Eve. They just clicked.

(Directly above:) Former Pacific Stock Exchange president Warren Langley being arrested today in San Francisco.

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A wilful blindness
Why can't liberal interventionists see that Iraq is part of a bid to cement US global power?

George Monbiot
Tuesday March 11, 2003
The Guardian

The war in Afghanistan has plainly brought certain benefits to that country: thousands of girls have gone to
school for the first time, for example, and in some parts of the country women have been able to go back
to work. While more than 3,000 civilians were killed by the bombing, while much of the country is still
controlled by predatory warlords, while most of the promised assistance has not materialised, while torture
is widespread and women are still beaten in the streets, it would be wrong to minimise gains that have
flowed from the defeat of the Taliban. But, and I realise that it might sound callous to say it, this does not
mean that the Afghan war was a good thing.
    What almost all those who supported that war and are now calling for a new one have forgotten is that
there are two sides to every conflict, and therefore two sets of outcomes to every victory. The Afghan
regime changed, but so, in subtler ways, did the government of the US. It was empowered not only by its
demonstration of military superiority but also by the widespread support it enjoyed. It has used the licence
it was granted in Afghanistan as a licence to take its war wherever it wants.
    Those of us who oppose the impending conquest of Iraq must recognise that there's a possibility that, if it
goes according to plan, it could improve the lives of many Iraqi people. But to pretend that this battle
begins and ends in Iraq requires a wilful denial of the context in which it occurs. That context is a blunt
attempt by the superpower to reshape the world to suit itself.
    In this week's Observer, David Aaronovitch suggested that, before September 11, the Bush administration
was "relatively indifferent to the nature of the regimes in the Middle East". Only after America was attacked
was it forced to start taking an interest in the rest of the world.
    If Aaronovitch believes this, he would be well-advised to examine the website of the Project for the New
American Century, the pressure group established by, among others, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb
Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Elliott Abrams and Zalmay Khalilzad, all of whom (except the president's
brother) are now senior officials in the US government.
    Its statement of principles, signed by those men on June 3 1997, asserts that the key challenge for the US
is "to shape a new century favourable to American principles and interests". This requires "a military that is
strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully
promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global
responsibilities".
    On January 26 1998, these men wrote to President Clinton, urging him "to enunciate a new strategy",
namely "the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power". If Clinton failed to act, "the safety of
American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a
significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard". They acknowledged that this doctrine
would be opposed, but "American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on
unanimity in the UN Security Council".
    Last year, the Sunday Herald obtained a copy of a confidential report produced by the Project in September
2000, which suggested that blatting Saddam was the beginning, not the end of its strategy. "While the
unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force
presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." The wider strategic aim, it
insisted, was "maintaining global US pre-eminence".
    Another document obtained by the Herald, written by Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby, called upon the US to
"discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional
or global role".
    On taking power, the Bush administration was careful not to alarm its allies. The new president spoke only
of the need "to project our strength with purpose and with humility" and "to find new ways to keep the
peace". From his first week in office, however, he began to engage not so much in nation-building as in
planet-building.
    The ostensible purpose of Bush's missile defence programme is to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles.
The real purpose is to provide a justification for the extraordinarily ambitious plans - contained in a
Pentagon document entitled Vision for 2020 - to turn space into a new theatre of war, developing orbiting
weapons systems that can instantly destroy any target anywhere on Earth. By creating the impression that
his programme is merely defensive, Bush could justify a terrifying new means of acquiring what he calls "full
spectrum dominance" over planetary security.
    Immediately after the attack on New York, the US government began establishing "forward bases" in Asia.
As the assistant secretary of state, Elizabeth Jones, noted: "When the Afghan conflict is over we will not
leave Central Asia. We have long-term plans and interests in this region." The US now has bases in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Georgia. Their
presence has, in effect, destroyed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation which Russia and China had
established in an attempt to develop a regional alternative to US power.
    In January, the US moved into Djibouti, ostensibly to widen its war against terror, while accidentally gaining
strategic control over the Bab al-Mandab - one of the world's two most important oil shipping lanes. It
already controls the other one, the straits of Hormuz. Two weeks ago, under the same pretext, it sent
3,000 soldiers to the Philippines. Last year it began negotiations to establish a military base in Sao Tome
and Principe, from which it can, if it chooses, dominate West Africa's principal oilfields. By pure good
fortune, the US government now exercises strategic control over almost all the world's major oil producing
regions and oil transport corridors.
    It has also used its national tragedy as an excuse for developing new nuclear and biological weapons, while
ripping up the global treaties designed to contain them. All this is as the project prescribed. Among other
policies, it has called for the development of a new generation of biological agents, which will attack people
with particular genetic characteristics.
    Why do the supporters of this war find it so hard to see what is happening? Why do the conservatives who
go berserk when the European Union tries to change the content of our chocolate bars look the other way
when the US seeks to reduce us to a vassal state? Why do the liberal interventionists who fear that
Saddam Hussein might one day deploy a weapon of mass destruction refuse to see that George Bush is
threatening to do just this against an ever-growing number of states? Is it because they cannot face the
scale of the threat, and the scale of the resistance necessary to confront it? Is it because these brave
troopers cannot look the real terror in the eye?

COURTESY JOHN COULTHART

From Salon--

The latest Perle jam

In the higher circles of the Bush Administration,
investigative journalism is now regarded as a form of
terrorism. At least that seemed to be the definition
used by foreign policy adviser Richard Perle during an
appearance yesterday on CNN, when he described New
Yorker writer Seymour Hersh as a "terrorist." Toward
the end of a routine war-promoting television
appearance for Perle -- during which he debated former
Congressman Tom Andrews, national director of Win
Without War -- Wolf Blitzer asked him about an article
by Hersh that explores Perle's private business
activities.

Posed during the final moments of the program,
Blitzer's question may have been incomprehensible to
many viewers -- but in an era of press subservience
the CNN anchor deserves credit for asking it at all.
Perle's response was outrageous, even for him:

BLITZER: ... There's an article in the New Yorker
magazine by Seymour Hersh that's just coming out today
in which he makes a serious accusation against you
that you have a conflict of interest in this because
you're involved in some business that deals with
homeland security, you potentially could make some
money if, in fact, there is this kind of climate that
he accuses you of proposing.
    Let me read a quote from the New Yorker article, the
March 17th issue, just out now. "There is no question
that Perle believes that removing Saddam from power is
the right thing to do. At the same time, he has set up
a company that may gain from a war."

PERLE: I don't believe that a company would gain from
a war. On the contrary, I believe that the successful
removal of Saddam Hussein, and I've said this over and
over again, will diminish the threat of terrorism. And
what he's talking about is investments in homeland
defense, which I think are vital and are necessary.
    Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American
journalism has to a terrorist, frankly.

BLITZER: Well, on the basis of -- why do you say that?
A terrorist?

PERLE: Because he's widely [perhaps "wildly"]
irresponsible. If you read the article, it's first of
all, impossible to find any consistent theme in it.
But the suggestion that my views are somehow related
for the potential for investments in homeland defense
is complete nonsense.

BLITZER: But I don't understand. Why do you accuse him
of being a terrorist?

PERLE: Because he sets out to do damage and he will do
it by whatever innuendo, whatever distortion he can --
look, he hasn't written a serious piece since Maylie
[actually "My Lai," Hersh's 1967 expose of an American
massacre in Vietnam].

===
from Counterpunch:

When Perle was working for Senator Scoop Jackson, he
was investigated by the Justice Department and found
to have violated US policies relating to unlawful
transmission of sensitive classified US information to
Israel.

"An FBI summary of a 1970 wiretap recorded Perle
discussing classified information with someone at the
Israeli embassy," writes Paul Findley (They Dare To
Speak Out, Chicago, Ill, Lawrence Hill Books 1989)."He
came under fire in 1983 when newspapers reported he
received substantial payments to represent the
interests of an Israeli weapons company. Perle denied
conflict of interest, insisting that, although he
received payment for these services after he had
assumed his position in the Defense Department, he was
between government jobs when he worked for the Israeli
firm."

COURTESY JOSHUA BABCOCK!

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