Hasta La Gadget!

Hollywood disaster films are known for blowing up some of the world’s most famous landmarks. But a new website to promote the upcoming “Independence Day” flick destroys something a little closer to home: your actual home. 

Just type your address into the Independence Day My Street website, and watch as your neighborhood is transformed into a battlefield. The video footage of the alien invaders wiping out your community is set to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.”

Once you’re done destroying your own home, take out other landmarks, such as the Golden Gate Bridge: 

The Red Sox team store outside Fenway Park: 

Or even Trump Tower: 

Of course, it’s hard to top the home so memorably destroyed in the first film:

“Independence Day: Resurgence” opens on Friday. 

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Most BBM users finally have access to the app’s video calling capability. BlackBerry has released the feature for Android and iOS in Asia-Pacific, which is apparently home to its biggest userbase. The company said it made cross-platform video calls a…

Duane Jethro, University of Cape Town

“Lucy, you want to see Lucy?” young, would-be tour guides prompt in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Lucy stars in tourist brochures as one of the East African country’s great attractions. She also appears in the cultural history collage at the entrance of the Ethiopian National Museum. Ethiopians are clearly proud of Lucy, a hominin specimen of special renown, a cultural heritage attraction.

You meet Lucy, or Dinknesh, meaning “you are marvellous” in Amharic, in the lobby of the Ethiopian National Museum. “Hi, I’m Lucy,” greets a sketch of Australopithecus afarensis. “I am almost 3.2 million years old, but am walking fully upright.” It goes on to suggest: “Please meet my world-famous ancestors and descendants, all from Ethiopia,” prompting a visit to the palaeoanthropological exhibit in the basement.

This is striking. Lucy, an ape-like creature, becomes a human-like cultural ambassador for African archaeological heritage in Ethiopia. What does it mean to humanise the remains of our ape ancestors? What kinds of things are they made to say about the countries that display them? And what do they say about Africa as a place of scientific “discovery”?

Simplifying complicated science

One reason why fossil remains are humanised is because it helps make confusing biological leftovers sensible. It also simplifies complicated scientific findings for the media. But this simplification of science also creates problems. These stories often hinge on the idea of “discovery”, a word linked to colonial exploitation, and recycle stereotypes about who is allowed to produce, and what counts as, new scientific knowledge.

Let’s take Lucy. Popular media accounts state that she was “discovered” by Donald Johanson in Hadar, in Ethiopia’s Afar Valley, in 1974. He happened upon the remains by chance while walking back to his car near an ongoing archaeological dig. The team celebrated the find that night, playing music by the Beatles, which led to the specimen being named Lucy, after the song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Told differently, we could say, the remains of a female ape-like hominin were found in a developing African country by a highly educated man from America. This white man is portrayed as having the strength, expertise and skill to recover precious female fossil remains in black Africa. He takes credit for digging up, identifying and explaining its importance, as an Indiana Jones-like hero of science.

This is a common way of explaining how hominin fossils are recovered in Africa. Think about how Homo naledi was found northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, and identified, and how Professor Lee Berger became the dominant voice in explaining its scientific importance. In reality, archaeology does not work like this. Nick Shepherd‘s article, “When the Hand that Holds the Trowel is Black…”, shows that simple stories like these actively erase the black labour and nous that go into recovering such finds.

This shows that the unearthing of important fossil remains often entails the burying of important information about who should share in the prestige it brings.

Story of our ancestors

The palaeontology exhibition in Ethiopia’s National Museum uses Lucy’s remains to make claims about shifts in deep time. One panel declares, “These remains tell us a long story of great transformation in landscapes, living beings and techniques. They tell us the long story of our ancestors.”

Referencing human and spiritual predecessors, ancestors are a potent explanatory idiom in Africa. My original research shows, for example, how “ancestors” informed the heritage claims made by Freedom Park in South Africa.

Exhibition panels also flag Ethiopia as a special site of palaeoarchaeological remains. It has “the most complete and richest record of human ancestors and with the longest record of stone and tool making”. Indeed, one panel declares, “the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens, our very species, were discovered in Ethiopia around 200,000 years ago”.

Ethiopia makes a distinctive contribution to the African story of human evolution. “Hominid species are known only in Africa and nowhere else on earth,” a panel explains. Ethiopian fossils, however, complete the African story of human evolution. “Early hominids have been found in several African countries,” its says. “Together with Ethiopian fossils [they] contribute to a general understanding of evolution in Africa.”

Where humankind originated

Surprisingly, South African heritage sites make similar claims. Maropeng and the Sterkfontein Caves, for example, are described as “the oldest and most continuous palaeontological dig in the world”. Known as the “Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site”, it is “widely recognised as the place from which all of humankind originated”. Visitors could take comfort in the company slogan, “Welcome Home”.

This was the site of major shifts in human evolution. It is the place where “the best evidence [has been unearthed] of the complex journey which our species has taken to make us what we are”. “Our ancestors were able to use and control fire at least one million years ago in the Cradle of Humankind,” the website states. It is a special place in Africa, “the birthplace of humankind … where our collective umbilical cord lies buried”.

It is not surprising these countries appear to be making similar, competing claims. African fossils are valuable remains, and much is at stake. They reference problematic ways of talking about archaeology as a science of “discovery” in Africa.

The fossils serve as evidence distinguishing countries as important sites of archaeological research. They also allow countries to make claims to and about Africa, and the idea of Africa as the cradle of humankind. And finally, they have the potential to attract, entertain and educate visiting tourists, and generate revenue in the process.

Duane Jethro, Postdoctoral Fellow, Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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WASHINGTON — Two psychologists who helped the CIA develop and execute its now-defunct “enhanced interrogation” program partially admitted for the first time to roles in what is broadly acknowledged to have been torture.

In a 30-page court filing posted Tuesday evening, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen responded to nearly 200 allegations and legal justifications put forth by the American Civil Liberties Union in a complaint filed in October. The psychologists broadly denied allegations that “they committed torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, non-consensual human experimentation and/or war crimes” — but admitted to a series of actions that can only be described as such.

“Defendants admit that over a period of time, they administered to [Abu] Zubaydah walling, facial and abdominal slaps, facial holds, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding, and placed Zubaydah in cramped confinement,” the filing says. 

The American Psychological Association issued a lengthy report last year acknowledging members of the profession collaborated with the CIA and Pentagon on the torture program, and apologized. But until now, no psychologist has ever been called to account in court.

Mitchell has spoken publicly in the past about his role in the program and wrote an autobiographical account of the experience that had been scheduled for publication May 10, but was postponed indefinitely, likely due to the lawsuit. Jessen, however, has not previously admitted to the acts described in Tuesday’s court filing.

“This is historic. Until now, no one responsible for the CIA torture program has ever been forced to admit their actions in court,” Dror Ladin, the lead ACLU attorney in the case, said in a statement. “The psychologists’ admissions include key details, and their denials are hard to square with the public record.”

Mitchell and Jessen admitted to placing Zubaydah, the CIA’s first detainee, “in boxes of the variety described” by the ACLU. One box the ACLU wrote about in its complaint was the size of a coffin. The other was considerably smaller, forcing Zubaydah to crouch in a fetal position to fit inside.

The methodical response to a litany of torture allegations makes for bizarre reading. For example, the psycholgists admit to throwing Zubaydah into a wall repeatedly — but they challenge the ACLU’s use of the term “wall slamming.” It’s “walling,” they say.

The two psychologists also admit that they were paid $1,800 a day by the CIA for their work as contractors, and that their company received a total of $81 million from the agency.

… the psycholgists admit to throwing Zubaydah into a wall repeatedly — but they challenge the group’s use of the term “wall slamming.” It’s “walling,” they say.

Details of the torture program remain under seal, despite the public release of the executive summary of a Senate Intelligence Committee report. Government classification restrictions and a non-disclosure agreement with the CIA, the defendants say, hinders their “ability to respond fully to the Complaint’s allegations.”

Tuesday’s admissions came in an ongoing lawsuit brought by the ACLU, which is representing two former CIA prisoners and the family of a third who died in CIA custody.

Mitchell and Jessen both worked at the Air Force Survival Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape school in Spokane, Washington, before joining the CIA. They denied the allegations related specifically to the treatment of three men who are plaintiffs in the ACLU suit.

They admitted “upon information and belief” to knowing that Gul Rahman is dead. But they claimed to be unfamiliar with the other two plaintiffs, Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ben Soud.

The ACLU is likely to argue that their clients’ treatment was the direct result of the program Mitchell and Jessen admitted to developing for use against Zubaydah.

The first court hearing in the case was held in April in Spokane, Washington, where Senior Judge Justin L. Quackenbush of the Eastern District of Washington denied Mitchell and Jessen’s request to have the case thrown out.

Read Mitchell and Jessen’s response to the ACLU complaint here: 

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