Clipmarks | Settlements Clips

Anthropologists in Amazon Jungles

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 19:35:26 GMT

clipped by: milmufmas

Revealed by overgrown earthworks, the 100 square-mile urban units consist of clusters of interconnected villages ranging from 50-150 acres in size. The town-nodes were arranged along a highly-regular pattern of roads built around a central plaza about 500 feet across. The cities appear to have been at their height between the 13th and 17th centuries.

"No single Xingu settlement merits the term 'city.' But what do you do with a core of five settlements are few kilometers away from each other?" Michael Heckenberger, a University of Florida anthropologist currently in Brazil, told Science. "A fast walk from one to another would take you 15 minutes, maximum."

The work suggests that the Amazon basin, particularly the Xingu region, may have been more populated than previously thought, but without the traditional city structures that mark other old urban civilizations in other parts of the world.

Ford did question, however, Heckenberger's use of the term "urban" to describe the settlements.

Amazons' lost towns

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:24:48 GMT

clipped by: PKiller

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

'Lost towns' discovered in Amazon

A remote area of the Amazon river basin was once home to densely populated towns, Science journal reports.

The Upper Xingu, in west Brazil, was once thought to be virgin forest, but in fact shows traces of extensive human activity.

Researchers found evidence of a grid-like pattern of settlements connected by road networks and arranged around large central plazas.

There are signs of farming, wetland management, and possibly fish farms.

The ancient urban communities date back to before the first Europeans set foot in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon in the 15th Century.

"They have quite remarkable planning and self-organisation, more so than many classical examples of what people would call urbanism," he said. Although the remains are almost invisible, they can be identified by members of the Kuikuro tribe, who are thought to be direct descendents of the people who built the towns.

" 'Lost towns' discovered in Amazon"

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:08:20 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly
clipper's remarks: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7586860.stm

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

'Lost towns' discovered in Amazon

A remote area of the Amazon river basin was once home to densely populated towns, Science journal reports.

The Upper Xingu, in west Brazil, was once thought to be virgin forest, but in fact shows traces of extensive human activity.

Researchers found evidence of a grid-like pattern of settlements connected by road networks and arranged around large central plazas.

There are signs of farming, wetland management, and possibly fish farms.

The settlements are now almost completely overgrown by rainforest.

The ancient urban communities date back to before the first Europeans set foot in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon in the 15th Century.

'Lost towns' discovered in Amazon

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:54:50 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A remote area of the Amazon river basin was once home to densely populated towns, Science journal reports.

Researchers found evidence of a grid-like pattern of settlements connected by road networks and arranged around large central plaza

There are signs of farming, wetland management, and possibly fish farms.

Like medieval European and ancient Greek towns, those forming the Amazonian urban landscape were surrounded by large walls. These were composed of earthworks, the remains of which have survived.

Each community had an identical road, always pointing north-east to south-west, which are connected to a central plaza

Evidence was found of dams and artificial ponds

The people who once lived in the settlements are thought to have been wiped out by European colonists and the diseases they brought with them.

News Middle East Israel 'doubling' settlement growth

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:26:49 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: While Israel has been bullying the surrounding countries, this has received little coverage.

Clip Source: english.aljazeera.net

Israel has nearly doubled settlement construction activity in the occupied West Bank since 2007, a report by the rights group Peace Now says.

The report on settlement expansion coincided with the 18th visit by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, to the Middle East, on Tuesday.

Rice urged Israel to stop expanding settlements, deemed illegal under international law, arguing that they were not helpful to the peace process.

"The settlement activity is not conducive to creating an environment for negotiations," Rice said at a news conference with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Earlier in Jerusalem, after talks with Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, Rice referred to settlements, saying "anything that undermines confidence between the parties ought to be avoided".

A US-backed "road map" for peace calls on Israel to halt all settlement activity in the West Bank and for Palestinians to rein in armed groups.

Israel rushes West Bank construction

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:47:29 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: 1,000 new bldgs on Palestinian land, last year X2. Israel is not serious about peace. It is still stealing Palestinian land.

Clip Source: www.democracynow.org

Meanwhile, the Israeli group Peace Now has issued a new report on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The group said construction had begun on more than 1,000 buildings in the West Bank since January, nearly double the number of building starts in the same period in 2007. More than half of the current construction was taking place in areas beyond the settlement blocs Israel has said it intends to keep in any peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Tags: israel

Facts Americans need to know about Israel/Palestine

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:10:45 GMT

clipped by: Spiritualmonkey

Clip Source: ifamericansknew.org

It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power – and duty – to bring a resolution.

123 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 1,050 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000. (View Source)

1,057 Israelis and at least 4,862 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000. (View Source)

8,341 Israelis and 32,744 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000. (View Source)

During Fiscal Year 2007, the U.S. gave more than $6.8 million per day to Israel and $0.3 million per day to the Palestinians. (View Source)

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation.

Israel currently has 223 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land.

Tags: israel, palestine, terrorism, money, human rights, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, occupation

Urban

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:30:30 GMT

clipped by: n_almanzo

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Urban planning

Landscape, urban, city, and town planning are the disciplines of land use planning that explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities. Other professions deal in more detail with a smaller scale of development, namely architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. Regional planning deals with a still larger environment, at a less detailed level.

Another key role of urban planning is urban renewal, and re-generation of inner cities by adapting urban planning methods to existing cities suffering from long-term infrastructural decay.^[1]

Urban planning is concerned with the ordering and design of settlements, from the smallest towns to the world's largest cities. Shown here is Hong Kong's CBD.

NY Threatens To Sue Merrill Over ARS

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:06:32 GMT

clipped by: Forbes Markets

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

New York state on Friday threatened to sue Merrill Lynch & Co over auction-rate securities as part of its industrywide probe of banks accused of misleading investors about the debt's risks.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who has reached settlements with five major banks to buy back more than $30 billion of the securities and pay fines of $360 million, said on a conference call with reporters that his office is "preparing to commence legal action" against Merrill.

Merrill said in a statement that it was surprised by Cuomo's announcement.

Tags: merrill lynch, credit crisis, auction rate securiies

Stone Age graveyard shows Sahara was once green

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:05:08 GMT

clipped by: Deepti
clipper's remarks: The Sahara is the world's largest desert and has been for tens of thousands of years, but changes in the Earth's orbit 12,000 years ago brought monsoons further north for a while

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

A Stone Age graveyard on the shores of an ancient, dried-up lake in the Sahara is brimming with the skeletons of people, fish and crocodiles who thrived when the African desert was briefly green

The 10,000-year-old site in Niger, called Gobero after the Tuareg name for the area, was discovered in 2000 but the group has only now gathered enough information to make a full report

The team stumbled onto the assortment of human and animal bones and artifacts while looking for dinosaur fossils

The site contains at least 200 graves that appear to have been left by two separate settlements 1,000 years apart

The older group were tall, robust hunter-gathers known as Kiffians

A second group

were Tenerians, smaller, shorter people who hunted, herded and fished

The team sampled tooth enamel from the skeletons, pollen, bones and examined soil and tools to date the site, artifacts and remains

Tags: sahara, africa, discovery, excavation

Asia urged to get ready for climate change

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:28:35 GMT

clipped by: spirithiker
clipper's remarks: No matter who is creating greenhouse gas, the poor and disadvantaged will be hardest hit.

Clip Source: www.alertnet.org

A new report backed by the United Nations warns climate change could undermine rapid economic growth in many of East Asia's cities and displace millions of their inhabitants if they don't do more to prepare for its impact.

And the report warns that a one-metre rise in sea level could lead to a 2 percent loss of gross domestic product (GDP), wiping out development gains and poverty reduction efforts in one catastrophic stroke.

With over 30 mega cities (cities where the population exceeds five million) and many more settlements popping up in coastal areas, East Asia is experiencing rapid urbanisation.

Industrialisation is also boosting the region's contribution to global warming - in 2000 East Asia produced almost a fifth of global emissions from burning fossil fuels.

The number of reported disasters in the region has risen sharply since the mid-1990s, rising from 428 between 1994 and 1998 to 707 between 1999 and 2003.

Tags: greenhouse gas, climate change

Israel and Its Illegal Expansion In West Bank

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:41:33 GMT

clipped by: klippety
clipper's remarks: What's there to mull over? Two wrongs do not make one right!

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Israel mulls new settler enclave in West Bank

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has proposed building a new Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem, a spokesman for the main settlers organization said on Monday.

The Defence Ministry, which oversees the issue, made no comment on a move that would be seen by Palestinians and by Israel's U.S. and European allies as a breach of commitments to halt settlement activity on land Palestinians want for a state.

The Palestinians have already accused Israel of bad faith during the nine-month-old, U.S.-sponsored Annapolis peace process for approving the expansion of other settlements, mostly near Jerusalem, and for last month giving the go-ahead for an entirely new settlement in the Jordan Valley.

Structured settlements

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 04:17:47 GMT

clipped by: cielohardfore

Clip Source: sell-structured-settlements-videos.blogspot.com

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Clip Source: sell-structured-settlements-videos.blogspot.com

Name: Woodbridge Investments

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Clip Source: sell-structured-settlements-videos.blogspot.com

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Structured settlement payment

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:58:13 GMT

clipped by: cielohardfore

Clip Source: www.woodbridgeinvestments.com

If you are currently receiving monthly or annual payments from a structured settlement, lottery or casino jackpot, or any other kind of annuity, there’s no reason to wait for your money. Woodbridge Investments will buy your payments for cash!

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Israel's Front-Line Thugs

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:10:52 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

The security forces are, of course, by no means scared to act when it suits them. Palestinian demonstrations are routinely put down with excessive force: rocks flung by pre-teens are countered with rubber bullets, tear gas, and – often – live and indiscriminate fire. But when it comes to clamping down on violence emanating from the settler community, a different set of rules apply, and the authorities' reeking hypocrisy is exposed as endemic to the way in which they view the different strands of Israeli society.

Via Philip Weiss

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Of late, there has been a steady stream of brutal assaults carried out by settlers against their Palestinian neighbours in the West Bank, right under the noses of the lackadaisical army. The phenomenon is, sadly, nothing new; what has brought the story back into the spotlight are the efforts of human rights groups, such as B'Tselem to film the violence and document the shocking reality on the ground – which is why, it seems, the authorities are so keen to clamp down on their activity in the region.

However, the settlers don't confine their vindictive and vicious attacks to Palestinians; they are not averse to attacking their Jewish peers either.

Then another Breaking the Silence group came under attack from settler vigilantes, who doused the participants with boiling water after confronting them in the streets of Hebron and heckling them with cries of "traitor", and other such hostile invective.

Tags: israel, settlements, west bank, palestine, hypocrisy

Clipmarks | Settlements Clips

Anthropologists in Amazon Jungles

Amazons' lost towns

'Lost towns' discovered in Amazon

" 'Lost towns' discovered in Amazon"

'Lost towns' discovered in Amazon

'Lost towns' discovered in Amazon

News Middle East Israel 'doubling' settlement growth

Israel rushes West Bank construction

Facts Americans need to know about Israel/Palestine

Urban

Urban planning

NY Threatens To Sue Merrill Over ARS

Stone Age graveyard shows Sahara was once green

Asia urged to get ready for climate change

Israel and Its Illegal Expansion In West Bank

Israel mulls new settler enclave in West Bank

Structured settlements

Tired of waiting for small periodic payments?

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Israel's Front-Line Thugs