The Next Stage of the Syrian Civil War. By Walter Russell Mead.

The Syrian Civil War: The Next Stage. By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, September 27, 2015.

Putin: My Goal Is to “Rescue” Assad. The American Interest, September 25, 2015.

A Critical Moment in the Syria Crisis. By Simond de Galbert and Benjamin Haddad. The American Interest, September 27, 2015.

Putin has checkmated Obama in Syria. By Hisham Melhem. Al Arabiya News, September 26, 2015.


Mead:

The hallmark of identity wars, both religious and ethnic—as the fighting bogs down and passions are more bitter, communities start purging minorities—has arrived in Syria. The New York Times:

In one of the most ambitious deals yet struck between combatants in the multisided war in Syria, supporters and opponents of President Bashar al-Assad will essentially trade territory in two different parts of the country, stop bombing and besieging one another’s civilians and pledge to observe a six-month cease-fire.

If the deal holds, it will be the most far-reaching since a pact struck more than a year ago that allowed the evacuation of rebel fighters from the center of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city.

The deal would end attacks by the government and its allies on Zabadani, a city between Damascus, the capital, and the Lebanese border that has long been held by local insurgents, as well as attacks by rebels on the Shiite villages of Foua and Kefraya in Idlib Province.

But it involves a sectarian population exchange, sending the Shiites in Idlib to other government-held areas, and moving Zabadani’s Sunni rebels and their families to insurgent-held Idlib, raising the specter of forced demographic change.

When it’s organized, it’s called “exchange of populations.” When it happens on the fly in wartime, it’s called ethnic cleansing or mass flight. Literally tens of millions of people were forced out of their original homes during the 20th century in exactly this way—most of them before 1950. Hindus and Muslims in British India as it divided, Palestinian Arabs and Jews from across the Middle East, Germans after World War II, Greeks and Turks after World War I, Crimean Tatars, Balkan Serbs, Bosniaks, Albanians and Croats… In Iraq, Christians, Sunnis, Shias, Kurds and Yazidis have all lost their homes.

It’s a terrible thing, but more than once it has been embraced by world powers as better than what in many cases is the likeliest alternative: a genocide of the weak, the destruction of the losing side in a civil war.

So far, every twist in the story of the Syrian civil war has revealed new and deeper visions of the hell of hatred and brutality that civilization and order normally keep under wraps. Even the most destructive wars sometimes ultimately burn themselves out, but this one still seems to have a long way to go. With Iran and Russia bolstering a sagging Assad, and panicky Sunni states shoveling money and weapons toward any force they think can stand against Iran’s allies, the conditions for an even longer and more destructive war are beginning to appear.

Why the Right is Right. By Greg Gutfeld.

Why the Right is Right. By Greg Gutfeld. Video. Prager University, September 21, 2015. YouTube. Also here.





Transcript:

Why are you Right? Yes, you, conservative person. Can you answer that question?

I think it’s so important that I wrote a book about it – How to be Right: The Art of Being Persuasively Correct. Because if you can’t be persuasive about why you are right, then we, the United States of America and the Republic for which it stands, are lost. So, here is the simple answer to why you are Right: It is a more practical, generous, and compassionate way to live. Let me explain:

There have been a bunch of academic studies on how those on the Left and Right approach problems. They pretty much all come to the same conclusion. The Right tends to be risk averse, more concerned about external threats like tyranny and terror. Conservatives – get this – tend to be conservative. They are less likely to play with fire, in just about every sense: financially, artistically, sexually. They are cautious about changing traditions (sometimes to a fault), which is why they cling to that crazy Constitution they like so much – and to their guns and their religion.

We conservatives also focus on what we can fix, and accept what we cannot – which is one of the many reasons we’re not obsessed over global warming. With Radical Islam we know what the threat is, and that it’s a lot worse than a few missing polar bears (I know that makes me sound mean – sorry polar bears).

Liberals, the research tells us, are generally more outgoing, more likely to try new stuff. They are open to new ideas (though not school choice, or flat taxes, or a market based health care reform), and are less likely to feel threatened by unfamiliar things. This is why, in general, they seem to have more fun. They are more likely to try drugs, for example (which is fine, as long as they don’t end up throwing up in my toaster). In short, liberals are pretty liberal. They feel free to take risks that the risk-averse usually end up paying for – over and over. Which explains the necessity for conservatism. We are the clean-up crew.

Liberals may seem to have more fun (and many do), but according to polls they aren’t as happy as conservatives. And with all the fun they’re having, I’ve never quite figured out why the angriest people I’ve encountered in my life have been liberals. Maybe it’s because short-term fun doesn’t translate into long-term happiness. Marriage, families and religion do that and those are the things conservatives most value. Liberals tend to live for now. Conservatives for later.

A risk-averse conservative is more likely to save money. He is more likely to protect his investments. He is more likely to protect property, and advocate for rule of law and preservation of individual protections. And he offers no excuses for looting. Instead, he empathizes with the Asian, Arab and black small businessman whose convenience store, laundry or restaurant goes up into flames during the riot that liberals reflexively endorse as an “understandable response to injustice.”

Of course, conservatives aren’t risk-averse in everything. But they take risks with their own lives, not with the society. Conservatives risk all to build businesses. That risk, however, is rooted in a fact-based belief (not faith) in the free market. If people want the product or service you’re supplying at the price you’re asking, you will succeed and the risk will pay off.

Over time, it’s conservative risk-taking that creates a civilization, by building families, businesses, and nations. All of which creates more wealth – wealth that can then be used to help those in need. You need money to make money, but you also need money to give money. Conservatism makes what liberalism takes.

So, for example, for liberals to get their minimum-wage hike, first we need conservatives to build businesses, to think like businessmen, to sacrifice their own salaries in order to pay others; to sleep on floors if necessary in order to break even. Then when they make a profit, and things are going great – when the calm sets in –liberalism can appear and say, “How dare you not pay these people a living wage?” Once the tables are full of diners, and bills are being paid, and you’re thinking about opening a second joint, liberalism arrives to demand its cut. Think of it as a protection racket. Sort of like the Gambino family, but without loyalty, job prospects, and track suits.

In short, conservatism doesn’t compete with liberalism – it sustains it. Without conservatism, there is no liberalism. And so when a liberal asks you, “Why are you a conservative?” simply say, “So that you can be a liberal.”

I’m Greg Gutfeld.

Solving the Middle East’s Problems. By Mordechai Kedar.

Solving the Middle East’s Problems. By Mordechai Kedar. Arutz Sheva 7, September 13, 2015.

Small Homogeneous States Only Solution for Middle East. By Mordechai Kedar. IMRA, April 1, 2011.

The Middle East’s Tribal DNA. By Carl Philip Salzman. NJBR, November 5, 2013.

Israel and the Palestinians: An Existential War of Blood and Faith. By Michael Kaplan. NJBR, July 20, 2015. (incomplete draft)


Kedar:

Does anyone remember the gushing words about the “Arab Spring?”

Three months from now, in December, it will be the fifth anniversary of the transmogrification known – in its early stages - as the “Arab Spring.” When it began, in 2010, the entire world applauded the street heroes, the giants that arose from the ranks of the common man, those who single-handedly drove Ben Ali from Tunisia, put Mubarak on the dock in Egypt, rebelled against the bloodthirsty Libyan ruler Qaddafi, went out to the streets against Assad in Syria, protested loudly against President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen and held an anti-regime sit-in in the town square of Bahrain.

The entire world held its breath hoping that a new chapter was being written in the annals of Middle Eastern history, one that meant an end to dictatorships and the rise of democracies, an end to violent regimes amid the blossoming of the rights of man and civil liberties, the disappearance of corruption and the start of transparent government.

The unbelievable sights at Tahrir Square in Cairo were followed by the first democratic elections ever held in Egypt, a coalition in Tunisia, political parties in Morocco, an independent parliament in Kuwait, protests for political liberty in Syria and Muslim women who left the kitchen to demand their rights. This was the dream we were shown through the rose-colored glasses of romantic journalists as they fell into the trap of their own hopes for a new reality in the region.

Today, five years after the “great light” burst forth, the Arab world is fumbling along in a dark tunnel, forlorn and depressed, without even a sliver of light at the end of it or anywhere along its length. Syria, Iraq, Libya and Egypt are all battlefields where the victims are civilians, a revolt in Egypt deposed the president elected in pseudo-democratic elections and Sisi is bringing the level of civil rights in Egypt back to the dark days of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The world keeps asking itself why the Arab Spring was such a dismal failure, trying to get to the source of the region’s problems. The answer to this question is complex, because it includes different factors that influenced events at different periods and in different ways.

Still, one can say with certainty that the main source of all the troubles is the cornerstone of Middle Eastern culture, tribal loyalties, once necessary for survival in a vast dry and arid desert area spanning the Sahara in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Sinai Desert, and also the deserts of Syria, Iraq and Jordan. In the desert man must be part of a tribe in order to protect his water sources from other tribes who are also in need of water. That fact turns the “other” into an enemy, a threatening figure who is against “us” because he is not one of “us.”

It is always “us” and “them”, our group against all the others, every man loyal to his tribe to the death, to its customs and traditions and not to a state or the state’s laws and institutions. It is called “tribalism” and the Arab world still lives under the influence of this way of life.

The second problem, spawned by tribalism, is violence. Middle Eastern culture says that since the other is an enemy, he may try to kill me as soon as he gets near enough to take my water sources, so I have to get him before he gets me.

It follows that the first reaction to any problem that arises in the Middle East is violence, violence aimed to kill.

The third problem evolving from the ancient tribal culture is the Middle Eastern concept of honor. No Muslim will accept humiliation, and he who is humiliated will seek revenge against those who caused him shame – and that revenge means murder. A person is willing to murder members of his own household, his sister and even his mother, if they have brought shame upon him by acting too freely. Honor takes first place in relations between politicians and nations, is sometimes more important that development, economics and health.

The fourth problem, also a result of tribalism, is corruption. Appointing relatives to positions in a regime – nepotism - is considered a serious problem in the West, and there are laws, rules and bureaucratic procedures that are supposed to prevent its occurrence. In Middle Eastern culture, nepotism is the name of the game, both in the political and public spheres, because anyone in power has a basic distrust of anyone from another group. A leader will appoint his family, or members of another family with whom he has a pact of loyalty, to the positions under his patronage and if the relations between the families deteriorate, he will either fire them or make sure they resign.

The fifth problem is economic corruption. A government official feels beholden financially to his family and tribe, not to the state and certainly not to other population groups in the country, so he allocates funds for investment in infrastructure in the area his tribe resides in or areas filled with his supporters. He does not allocate funds to groups that did not support him. As far as he is concerned, they can go to hell – or Europe – as they wish.

The sixth problem is the existence of a large number of ethnic groups in the Middle East: Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Berbers, Jews, Arameans, Persians, and more. Often the groups live in a state of ongoing friction, their relations marked by hostility rather than tranquility. As a rule, they do not intermarry, and each group fiercely guards its dialect, customs and traditions. Each group delineates itself by defining its enemies. That is the source of the violence between the Arabs and the Kurds, the Turks and the Kurds, the Arabs and the Berbers – and let’s face it, the Arabs and everyone else.

The seventh problem is religion. Islam is the main religion of the Middle East, and Islamist extremists see members of other religions who live in their proximity as infidels deserving of death. This is the cause of the horrific violence of Islamists against Christians, Yazidis, Jews, Alawites, Zoroastrians, Bahais, Mandeans, Shabakists, Druze and atheists.

The eighth problem is the internecine sectarian conflict within Islam. In the middle of the seventh century, Islam split into two parts, the Sunnis and the Shiites. Their struggle is really about wresting control over Islam, but over time the struggle has assumed a religious cast with each side making use of Allah, the Qur'an, the Hadiths (Oral Law), Sharia, history and theology for its own ends, so that Sunni Islam is now quite different from Shia islam. There is a case for claiming that, similarities notwithstanding, they are two distinct religions. The two groups have  spent the centuries since the split massacring one another, with millions sacrificed in this endless struggle, not a few during the 1980s war between Shiite Iran and Iraq, headed by a Sunni, Saddam Hussein.

The ninth problem is the prevailing culture. Schematically, the Middle East’s population is made up of three cultural groups: the desert-dwellers, or Bedouin, the falakhim – farmers who live in villages – and the urban population dwelling in cities. These groups differ in many ways from one another and each is prone to stereotyping the others to the point where there is no way to get around their mutual preconceptions. The falakh hates the Bedouin for stealing the agricultural produce he reaps by the sweat of his brow. The Bedouin considers the falakhs and city dwellers inferior to him for giving up the original Arab desert way of life and becoming weak and lily-livered in mind and body. The city dwellers consider the Bedouin primitive desert people. Marriages between the groups are rare.

The tenth problem can be laid at the door of British, French and Italian colonialism. These powers drew borders that suited their interests but had no bearing on the sociological zones of the Middle East. This is how countries were formed with populations of all kinds of ethnic groups, tribes, religions and sects who had never had any connection with one another and certainly never saw themselves as members of the same nation. Although Syria has existed for decades (that verb should be in past tense) there was no national Syrian consciousness uniting its citizens. They remained Arabs, Kurds, Turkmans, Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Shia, Sunni, et al. Iraq also did not succeed in creating an Iraqi people despite great efforts expended on the part of the regime, and its citizens defined themselves as Kurds, Sunni, Christians, Yazidi, etc. The colonialists actually created what their citizens considered illegitimate countries foreign entities forced upon them by Christian European strangers who understood absolutely nothing about the Middle East.

The eleventh problem is the modern Arab regime. In each Arab country a minority group has gained control of the entire country and preserves its power by using a “mighty hand and an outstretched arm,” a drawn sword – and subterranean torture chambers. The Alawite minority in Syria, the Qaddafi tribe in Libya and the Hashemites of Jordan are all examples of small groups that control others with little legitimacy, if any.

The twelfth problem is Israel, a small country that was established as a result of the fall of the Ottoman Empire in WWI and the end of British colonialism, two world developments that made it possible for the Jews to return to the historical land of their birth after two thousand years of exile.

In general, Arabs and Muslims do not recognize the right of the Jewish people to its land, do not recognize Judaism as a living religion, and view the Jews as a collection of communities belonging to whatever country they are in and not as a people. The very existence of the state of Israel infuriates them, no matter what its size.

The rulers of the modern Arab states, with both ruler and state lacking legitimacy, were in dire need of an external enemy that would enable them to silence internal opposition and unite the people as one under their fraudulent flag. Israel was a unifying factor, an external enemy that served as the scapegoat upon which the masses could vent their rage. That is what is behind the constant hostility of the Arab media regarding Israel, and three generations of Arabs have been raised on this propaganda machine aimed solely at Israel. Their approach to Jews and Israelis is a direct consequence of this inciteful propaganda.

The thirteenth problem is oil. This important resource turned the Arab countries in the gulf to societies that sell a commodity, do not work, purchase but do not create, societies whose every possession stems not from ability, studying or work, but from what others – the Americans and the Europeans – found under their earth. The biggest effort the men of the Gulf have to expend is the walk to the bank to deposit their checks. Easy money created a materialistic, hedonist society, busy with itself and with having fun, buying luxury cars, houses that strike you blind, designer clothing, watches that cost millions and designer jewelry, showing off in the media and buying every gadget that reaches the stores. Just opposite their palatial homes are tens of millions of Egyptians and other Arabs living in abject poverty, in unplanned neighborhoods, filled with the ignorant, unemployed and despairing poor. The gap between the wealth of the Gulf and the poverty in the Arab street is mind-boggling.

The fourteenth problem is the West’s meddling in Middle Eastern affairs, not in order to solve the region’s problems, but in order to promote its own interests. Oil, gas, arms sales, development contracts, purchases and trade, all are intended to take advantage of the natural resources of the Middle East and of the cheap labor it offers in order to advance western economies. The countries of the West, the USSR and today’s Russia and China, protected and still protect non-legitimate Arab rulers, keeping them dependent on the West and the economic agreements signed with them.

Anyone who signs any kind of contract with an Arab ruler knows full well that this contract will be carried out at the price of the people who live – if you can call it living – under a cruel regime, but that doesn’t stop the money hungry Western countries. Since when did moral considerations ever move them?

The fifteenth problem is the existence of al Jazeera, the Jihad website and network run by a terror state, Qatar. From the first day it hit the air in November 1996, al Jazeera spends its time unrestrainedly inciting against dictators, Israel, against the West and against the Western culture slowly finding its way into the airspace of Islamic countries. 

Al Jazeera’s stated objective is to destroy the modern Arab state and hand over the rule to the Muslim Brotherhood. This mixed salad of messages is wrapped in attractive clichés such as “opinion and other opinion” and is covered with a mask of openness and video editing. This channel brought the angry people out into the streets at the end of 2010 and all through 2011, setting the Arab world ablaze, but it does not know how to put out the fire. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks played an instrumental role that helped the public organize demonstrations, but the motivation came from al Jazeera’s incitement.

The seething mass of problems that plague the Middle East have destroyed the region’s social, economic, political and normative infrastructure, leading to the waves of emigration to Europe that we are now witnessing. During the twentieth century, Europe tried to solve the myriad cultural problems that beset the Middle East by creating the Modern Arab State, cloning the Nation-State it had invented and that suited Europe’s cultural needs. The European-style Modern Arab State is a colossal failure, because the Arab population has a Middle Eastern culture, with problems that Europe knows nothing about – tribalism on the one hand, and violence, extremism and a lack of national consciousness on the other.

A striking example of an egregiously mistaken belief held by the West is the naïve and unfounded faith that democracy can flourish in the Middle East. Western democracy is based on a social order stemming from European culture: the belief in equality for all religions and ethnic groups, women’s liberation, minority rights and freedom of expression and thought. Add to that the right to choose alternative lifestyles, along with freedom of religion and from religion, a ban on violence and free elections and you have a list that is almost totally foreign to the Middle East. Most of these freedoms are opposed to the spirit of Islam or to tribal culture, but Middle Eastern societies hold “free” elections to create the impression that they have become democracies, although they have not adopted any of the other characteristics of a democracy. Elections are an easily adopted mechanism, but the other elements of democracy are substantive and are therefore difficult, or impossible, to embed in the Middle East.

Today Europe is being punished by a wave of refugees for the sins it committed in the Middle East, those it perpetrated on purpose while taking advantage of the Arab rulers’ dependency on the West, as well as those it committed unintentionally.

During this period of soul-searching it is important that the West internalize the reasons behind the troubles that have fallen upon the Middle East. It can then deal with them properly, put aside its own interests, and find solutions that can work in the region – starting with the dismantling of the existing, non-legitimate states and continuing with the establishment of emirates with homogeneous populations on the ruins of those failed states. The Gulf Emirates, with the exception of Bahrain, serve as the model of a type of regime that suits the cultural characteristics of the area and it is imperative that they become the model that is implemented when attempting to solve the problems of the Middle East.

Best wishes for a happy new year.

Sheikh Muhammad Ayed: We Will Use Muslim Refugees to Conquer Europe.

Al-Aqsa Mosque Address: Europe Wants the Muslim Refugees as Labor; We Shall Conquer Their Countries. By Sheikh Muhammad Ayed. Video. MEMRI TV, Clip No. 5076, September 11, 2015. YouTube.

Commentary in the Daily Mail, The Times of Israel.





Transcript:

In an address delivered at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Muhammad Ayed said that the European countries are not motivated by compassion toward the refugees, but by their need for labor. “We shall conquer their countries,” he declared in the address, which was posted on the internet on September 11, 2015.

Sheikh Muhammad Ayed:

(The infidels) want us to be tormented. They want us to be humiliated. (The Quran) says: “The Jews and the Christians will never be pleased with you,” but we will never follow their religion. This dark night will be over, and soon, we will trample them underfoot, Allah willing. Germany is not a compassionate country that wishes to absorb refugees from Syria and Iraq, and Palestinian refugees in the Levant and elsewhere. Europe has become old and decrepit, and needs human reinforcement. No force is more powerful than the human force of us Muslims. Oh Muslims, the Germans say, in their economic reports, that they need 50,000 young workers. Now, they have got 20,000, and they want another 30,000 and more, to work in their factories. They are not motivated by compassion for the Levant, its people, and its refugees. Throughout Europe, all the hearts are infused with hatred toward Muslims. They wish that we were dead. But they have lost their fertility, so they look for fertility in their midst. We will give them fertility! We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries – whether you like it or not, oh Germans, oh Americans, oh French, oh Italians, and all those like you. Take the refugees! We shall soon collect them in the name of the coming Caliphate. We will say to you: These are our sons. Send them, or we will send our armies to you.

NOVA: Dawn of Humanity.

The first human? Homo naledi, a new branch of the human family tree. National Geographic.

Dawn of Humanity. Video. NOVA. PBS, September 10, 2015. Also here.

Homo Naledi, New Species in Human Lineage, Is Found in South African Cave. By John Noble Wilford. New York Times, September 10, 2015.

Naledi Fossils: This Face Changes the Human Story. But How? By Jamie Shreeve. National Geographic, September 10, 2015.

Naledi Fossils: Mystery Lingers Over Ritual Behavior of New Human Ancestor. By Nadia Drake. National Geographic, September 15, 2015.

In this artist’s depiction, Homo naledi disposes of its dead in South Africa’s Rising Star cave. Though such advanced behavior is unknown in other early hominins, the scientists who discovered the fossils say no other explanation makes sense. ART BY JON FOSTER. SOURCE: LEEBERGER, WITS

Homo naledi, a new species of the genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa. By Lee R. Berger et al. eLife, September 10, 2015.

Geological and taphonomic context for the new hominin species Homo naledi from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa. By Paul H.G.M Dirks et al. eLife, September 10, 2015.

The many mysteries of Homo naledi. By Chris Stringer. eLife, September 10, 2015.





Wilford:

Acting on a tip from spelunkers two years ago, scientists in South Africa discovered what the cavers had only dimly glimpsed through a crack in a limestone wall deep in the Rising Star Cave: lots and lots of old bones.

The remains covered the earthen floor beyond the narrow opening. This was, the scientists concluded, a large, dark chamber for the dead of a previously unidentified species of the early human lineage — Homo naledi.

The new hominin species was announced on Thursday by an international team of more than 60 scientists led by Lee R. Berger, an American paleoanthropologist who is a professor of human evolution studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The species name, H. naledi, refers to the cave where the bones lay undisturbed for so long; “naledi” means “star” in the local Sesotho language.

In two papers published this week in the open-access journal eLife, the researchers said that the more than 1,550 fossil elements documenting the discovery constituted the largest sample for any hominin species in a single African site, and one of the largest anywhere in the world. Further, the scientists said, that sample is probably a small fraction of the fossils yet to be recovered from the chamber. So far the team has recovered parts of at least 15 individuals.

“With almost every bone in the body represented multiple times, Homo naledi is already practically the best-known fossil member of our lineage,” Dr. Berger said.

The finding, like so many others in science, was the result of pure luck followed by considerable effort.

Two local cavers, Rick Hunter and Steven Tucker, found the narrow entrance to the chamber, measuring no more than seven and a half inches wide. They were skinny enough to squeeze through, and in the light of their headlamps they saw the bones all around them. When they showed the fossil pictures to Pedro Boshoff, a caver who is also a geologist, he alerted Dr. Berger, who organized an investigation.

Just getting into the chamber and bringing out samples proved to be a huge challenge. The narrow opening was the only way in.

Paul Dirks, a geologist at James Cook University in Australia, who was lead author of the journal paper describing the chamber, said the investigators first had a steep climb up a stone block called the Dragon’s Back and then a drop down to the entrance passage — all of this in the total absence of natural light.

For the two extended investigations of the chamber in 2013 and 2014, Dr. Berger rounded up the international team of scientists and then recruited six excavating scientists through notices on social media. One special requirement: They had to be slender enough to crawl through that crack in the wall.

One of the six, who were all women and were called “underground astronauts,” was Marina Elliott of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She said the collection and removal of the fossils involved “some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions ever encountered in the search for human origins.”

Besides introducing a new member of the prehuman family, the discovery suggests that some early hominins intentionally deposited bodies of their dead in a remote and largely inaccessible cave chamber, a behavior previously considered limited to modern humans. Some of the scientists referred to the practice as a ritualized treatment of their dead, but by “ritual” they said they meant a deliberate and repeated practice, not necessarily a kind of religious rite.

“It’s very, very fascinating,” said Ian Tattersall, an authority on human evolution at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the research.

“No question there’s at least one new species here,” he added, “but there may be debate over the Homo designation, though the species is quite different from anything else we have seen.”

A colleague of Dr. Tattersall’s at the museum, Eric Delson, who is a professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, was also impressed, saying, “Berger does it again!”

Dr. Delson was referring to Dr. Berger’s previous headline discovery, published in 2010, also involving cave deposits near Johannesburg. He found many fewer fossils that time, but enough to conclude that he was looking at a new species, which he named Australopithecus sediba. Geologists said the individuals lived 1.78 million to 1.95 million years ago, when australopithecines and early species of Homo were contemporaries.

Researchers analyzing the H. naledi fossils have not yet nailed down their age, which is difficult to measure because of the muddled chamber sediments and the absence of other fauna remains nearby. Some of its primitive anatomy, like a brain no larger than an average orange, Dr. Berger said, indicated that the species evolved near or at the root of the Homo genus, meaning it must be in excess of 2.5 million to 2.8 million years old. Geologists think the cave is no older than three million years.

The field work and two years of analysis for Dr. Berger’s latest discovery were supported by the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society and the South African Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation. In addition to the journal articles, the findings will be featured in the October issue of National Geographic Magazine and in a two-hour NOVA/National Geographic documentary to air Wednesday on PBS.

Scientists on the discovery team and those not involved in the research noted the mosaic of contrasting anatomical features, including more modern-looking jaws and teeth and feet, that warrant the hominin’s placement as a species in the genus Homo, not Australopithecus, the genus that includes the famous Lucy species that lived 3.2 million years ago. The hands of the newly discovered specimens reminded some scientists of the earliest previously identified specimens of Homo habilis, who were apparently among the first toolmakers.

At a news conference on Wednesday, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a senior author of the paper describing the new species, said it was “unlike any other species seen before,” noting that a small skull with a brain one-third the size of modern human braincases was perched atop a very slender body. An average H. naledi was about five feet tall and weighed almost 100 pounds, he said.

Tracy Kivell of the University of Kent, in England, an associate of Dr. Berger’s team, was struck by H. naledi’s “extremely curved fingers, more curved than almost any other species of early hominin, which clearly demonstrates climbing capabilities.”

William Harcourt-Smith of Lehman College, another researcher at the Museum of Natural History, led the analysis of the feet of the new species, which he said are “virtually indistinguishable from those of modern humans.” These feet, combined with its long legs, suggest that H. naledi was well suited for upright long-distance walking, Dr. Harcourt-Smith said.

In an accompanying commentary in the journal, Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, found overall similarities between the new species and fossils from Dmanisi, in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, dated to about 1.8 million years ago. The Georgian specimens are usually assigned to an early variety of Homo erectus.

Much remains to be discovered in the Rising Star Cave, like determining the ages of the fossils and the evolutionary position of H. naledi in the genus Homo and the human family tree. The discovery chamber has not given up all of its secrets. “There are potentially hundreds if not thousands of remains of H. naledi still down there,” Dr. Berger said.

At the news conference in South Africa on Thursday announcing the findings, Dr. Berger said: “I do believe that the field of paleoanthropology had convinced itself, as much as 15 years ago, that we had found everything, that we were not going to make major discoveries and had this story of our origins figured out. I think many people quit exploring, thought it was safer to conduct science inside a lab or behind a computer.” What the new species Naledi says, Dr. Berger concluded, “is that there is no substitute for exploration.”

Is Donald Trump Following in the Footsteps of Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan?

Is Donald Trump Another Andrew Jackson? By Alfred J. Zacher. History News Network, September 14, 2015.

Donald Trump Is Reagan’s Heir. By Matthew Pressman. The Atlantic, September 16, 2015.

Donald Trump is brilliant revenge: The GOP’s demise looks a lot like this. By Heather Cox Richardson. Salon, September 8, 2015.


Zacher:

The possibility of Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee for president and thereafter being elected to that high office elicits an historical perspective. The name that most readily reflects the credentials and character of Donald Trump is Andrew Jackson. The seventh president was not part of the establishment of the Democratic Party that imparted the thoughtful sometimes-scholarly qualities of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. He was not a member of the Founders. Jackson like Trump was a popular figure of power and success as the general who won the battle of New Orleans. He was a successful lawyer and judge, though known as being hot headed, vulgar and impulsive. He had minimal experience in government serving relatively briefly in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Jackson entered the political arena at a time of transition and great upheaval in the country. Americans were leaving the comfort of their homes and the country life they knew to work in cities or risking their lives moving to farmlands in the Middle West. This was a rugged, individualistic striving newly enfranchised citizenry who found in the roughhewn outspoken Jackson the personification of themselves. Jackson believed the government was benefiting the wealthy and monopolies to the detriment of the average American.

Jackson clearly represented the views of the majority of electorate during his two terms in office. He met both his and their goal of destroying the Bank of the United States, the institution that carried on some of the functions of the present day Federal Reserve. He and his followers believed the Bank served the wealthy and the monopolies at the expense of the average citizen. Once successful in closing the bank, Jackson established state banks whose easy lending policies led to speculation that ended in a severe depression lasting five years.

Another of his objectives and of the majority of the electorate was the removal of Native Americans from Georgia. Jackson ignored the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, which found unconstitutional the State of Georgia law which disposed of all of the property belong to Native Americans. Further, the law ordered them to leave Georgia. Countless thousands of Native Americans were forced to march to the Oklahoma Territory, with many dying along the way.

Andrew Jackson left office a popular president, appearing to have fulfilled the objectives of the rising segment of the population, who were demanding an opportunity to share in the wealth of the nation. They did not blame Jackson for the depression and they were solidly behind the removal of the Native American.

From this historical perspective, the chances of Donald Trump being the Republican nominee and the next president may reside in the degree of discontent there is within the electorate and their belief he has the wherewithal to resolve that discontent.

The American Jewish Divide Is About Much More Than Iran. By Peter Beinart.

The American Jewish Divide Is About Much More Than Iran. By Peter Beinart. Haaretz, September 9, 2015.

Beinart:

Since the 1960s, American Christians have been waging a bitter culture war. American Jews are now prominent combatants on opposing sides.

Journalists keep saying that the fight over the Iran nuclear deal has bitterly divided the American Jewish community. I think that’s wrong. The fight over the Iran nuclear deal has shown that the American Jewish “community” does not exist.

Community is not an easy term to define, but it suggests a group of people who share a common set of behaviors or beliefs. Shared ancestry doesn’t, by itself, create community. Millions of Americans hail from the British Isles but there is no Anglo-American community because Americans from the British Isles don’t share behaviors or beliefs that distinguish them from Americans as a whole. Shared religion doesn’t, by itself, create community either. There are millions of American Catholics. But knowing an American is Catholic, as opposed to Protestant, tells you almost nothing about how she lives or thinks.

In 2015, knowing that an American is Jewish doesn’t tell you much about how she lives or thinks either. There are today basically two American Jewish communities (though of course some American Jews fall in between), each of which has more in common with a group of American gentiles than with each other. The Iran deal has pitted these two communities against each other. But they’ve been separate for a long time.

Community number one is heavily Orthodox, although it includes some older and more traditional members of the Conservative movement. It’s smaller numerically: Orthodox Jews comprise only 10 percent of American Jewry. Add in the traditionalist Conservatives and you have perhaps 20 percent. (That’s based on the percentage of American Jews who keep kosher). But on Iran, and anything else having to do with Israel, community number one punches above its weight because its members are far more likely to devote themselves to Jewish organizations and causes.

Understanding community number one begins with understanding the way it lives: apart. Orthodox and the most traditional Conservative Jews may work among non-Jews. But they don’t really live among them. According to a fascinating new paper by the Pew Research Center, 84 percent of Orthodox Jews say most or all of their friends are Jewish. Among non-Orthodox Jews, the figure is 26 percent. Eighty-one percent of Orthodox parents send their children to Jewish-only schools. Among the non-Orthodox, the figure is 11 percent. 

There’s a reason community number one lives apart. It is deeply religious, and defines being religious as observing a set of laws that require separation. It’s hard to have close non-Jewish friends when you can’t eat at their homes. It’s hard for your kids to make non-Jewish friends when they don’t go to school or camp with them, and can’t participate in extracurricular activities on Shabbat. 

In its effort to buffer itself against a cultural mainstream it considers threatening to its religious values, community number one shares little with more secular American Jews. But it shares a lot with conservative American Christians. And since the September 11 attacks, these similarities have blossomed into a political alliance based on a shared commitment to Israel, a shared belief that Islamists threaten both Israel and America, and a shared belief that American liberals will not adequately combat that threat.

In the Republican Party, which now claims the allegiance of most Orthodox Jews, community number one works with evangelical Christians extremely effectively. In 2012, Meir Soloveitchik, scion of one of American Orthodoxy’s most famous dynasties, gave the invocation at the Republican National Committee. Ted Cruz has made the Orthodox community central to his presidential fundraising. And the struggle against the Iran deal is largely a product of this conservative Jewish-Christian alliance. In the South, where Jews are scarce, the most prominent opponents of the deal have been evangelical Christians like Cruz and Mike Huckabee. In the northeast, the most prominent opponents have been Orthodox Jews like Joe Lieberman and Brooklyn state Senator Dov Hikind. It’s no coincidence that the only three Democratic senators to oppose the Iran deal (as of this writing) hail from New York, New Jersey and Maryland, states whose Jewish populations are disproportionately Orthodox. Or that later this month, Schumer will attend a fundraiser thanking him for his vote in Teaneck, New Jersey, one of the most prominent Orthodox towns in the country. 

If community number one lives according to a series of boundaries between us and them, right and wrong, community number two is defined by its lack of clear boundaries. If Orthodox Jews anchor community number one, community two is anchored by the more than one-fifth of American Jews who define themselves as Jewish by culture but not religion. These cultural Jews intermarry at a rate of almost 80 percent. Only one in seven say that all or most of their friends are Jewish. 

If the Jews in community number two don’t live tribally, they don’t think tribally either. According to Pew, they reject the idea that God gave the land of Israel to the Jews. They don’t think the current Israeli government wants peace. And they overwhelmingly support a Palestinian state.

In other words, they don’t equate Israel with morality and its adversaries with immorality. Whereas community number one is Manichean, community number two is relativistic. It doesn’t see Israel, or Jews, as having any special claim on morality or truth.

If the religious Jews of community number one have much in common with conservative Christians, the secular Jews of community number two have much in common with secular gentiles. In fact, surveys show that in their political and moral views, non-Orthodox Jews share more with atheists than with any American denomination.  

If community number one is an integral part of the conservative Republican coalition, community number two is an integral part of the liberal Democratic one. Secular Jews help define the values of blue state America: tolerance, diversity, irony, empathy. Just think of blue state America’s patron saint: Jon Stewart.

Secular Jewish identity is so interwoven into liberal American identity, in fact, that liberal American Jews often see them as one and the same. As the sociologist Chaim Waxman has observed, “Increasing numbers of young American Jews assume that liberal American values are actually Jewish values.” Especially since the Iraq War, diplomacy has been a core element of those liberal values. And since 2008, no American politician has articulated them more effectively than U.S. President Barack Obama. Which helps explain why community number two, overwhelmingly, supports Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

For all the current talk of intra-Jewish healing, the rift between America’s two Jewish communities will likely grow. One big reason is generational. Some American Jews have a foot in both camps, but they’re disproportionately older. It’s among the older generation that one more often finds Jews who are secular but intensely tribal (Ed Koch was a good example), and thus live like the members of community number two but view Israel like the members of community number one. It’s also more common to find older religious Jews who are nonetheless politically liberal (Jack Lew is a good example) because they came of age before the Orthodox community moved en masse into the GOP.

Among the young, the divide is sharper. Younger religious Jews are more cloistered than their parents and grandparents. (When Jack Lew and Joe Lieberman were growing up, many Orthodox Jews still attended public school). Younger secular Jews are more assimilated and less tribal than their parents and grandparents.

In the past, I’ve speculated about ways to bridge this divide. But doing so will be hard because Iran is not the cause of the current American Jewish disunity. It’s a symptom. Since the 1960s, American Christians have been waging a bitter culture war. And American Jews are now prominent combatants, on opposing sides. 

The Roots of the Migration Crisis. By Walter Russell Mead.

The Roots of the Migration Crisis. By Walter Russell Mead. Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2015.

Mead:

The Syrian refugee disaster is a result of the Middle East’s failure to grapple with modernity and Europe’s failure to defend its ideals.

The migration crisis enveloping Europe and much of the Middle East today is one of the worst humanitarian disasters since the 1940s. Millions of desperate people are on the march: Sunni refugees driven out by the barbarity of the Assad regime in Syria, Christians and Yazidis fleeing the pornographic violence of Islamic State, millions more of all faiths and no faith fleeing poverty and oppression without end. Parents are entrusting their lives and the lives of their young children to rickety boats and unscrupulous criminal syndicates along the Mediterranean coast, professionals and business people are giving up their livelihoods and investments, farmers are abandoning their land, and from North Africa to Syria, the sick and the old are on the road, carrying a few treasured belongings on a new trail of tears.

It is the first migration crisis of the 21st century, but it is unlikely to be the last. The rise of identity politics across the Middle East and much of sub-Saharan Africa is setting off waves of violence like those that tore apart the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. The hatreds and rivalries driving endangered communities to exile and destruction have a long history. They probably have a long future as well.

What we are witnessing today is a crisis of two civilizations: The Middle East and Europe are both facing deep cultural and political problems that they cannot solve. The intersection of their failures and shortcomings has made this crisis much more destructive and dangerous than it needed to be—and carries with it the risk of more instability and more war in a widening spiral.

The crisis in the Middle East has to do with much more than the breakdown of order in Syria and Libya. It runs deeper than the poisonous sectarian and ethnic hatreds behind the series of wars stretching from Pakistan to North Africa. At bottom, we are witnessing the consequences of a civilization’s failure either to overcome or to accommodate the forces of modernity. One hundred years after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and 50 years after the French left Algeria, the Middle East has failed to build economies that allow ordinary people to live with dignity, has failed to build modern political institutions and has failed to carve out the place of honor and respect in world affairs that its peoples seek.

There is no point in rehearsing the multiple failures since Britain’s defeat of the Ottoman Empire liberated the Arabs from hundreds of years of Turkish rule. But it is worth noting that the Arab world has tried a succession of ideologies and forms of government, and that none of them has worked. The liberal nationalism of the early 20th century failed, and so did the socialist nationalism of Egypt’s  Gamal Abdel Nasser and his contemporaries. Authoritarianism failed the Arabs too: Compare what  Lee Kwan Yew created in resource-free Singapore with the legacy of the Assads in Syria or of  Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Today we are watching the failure of Islamism. From the Muslim Brotherhood to Islamic State, Islamist movements have had no more success in curing the ills of Arab civilization than any of the secular movements of the past. Worse, the brutal fanaticism and nihilistic violence of groups like Islamic State undercuts respect for more moderate versions of Islamic spirituality and thought.

The Turks and the Iranians have had more economic and institutional success than the Arabs, but in both Turkey and Iran today, the outlook is bleak. Iran is ruled by a revolutionary alliance of reactionary clerics and hungry thugs, and it is committed to a regional policy of confrontation and sectarian war. Like the Soviet Union, Iran is an uneasy conglomeration of national and cultural groups held together by a radical but increasingly stale ideology. Turkey, too, is cursed by blind Islamist enthusiasm and unresolved ethnic and ideological chasms. Neither country is immune to the violence sweeping the region, and neither country has been able to develop policies that would calm rather than roil their turbulent surroundings.

At the same time, foreign values are challenging traditional beliefs and practices across the region. Women throughout the Islamic world are seeking to shape theological and social ideas to better reflect their own experience. Modern science and historical and textual criticism pose many of the questions for traditional Islamic piety that 19th-century science and biblical criticism posed for Christianity. Young people continue to be exposed to information, narratives and images that are difficult to reconcile with traditions they were raised to take for granted.

As hundreds of thousands of refugees stumble from the chaos of an imploding Arab world toward Europe, and as millions more seek refuge closer to home, we see a crisis of confidence in the very structures of Middle Eastern civilization, including religion. Reports that hundreds of Iranian and other refugees from the Islamic world are seeking Christian baptism in Europe can be seen as one aspect of this crisis. If people feel that the religion they were raised in and the civilization of which they are a part cannot master the problems of daily life, they will seek alternatives.

For other Muslims, this means the embrace of radical fundamentalism. Such fanaticism is a sign of crisis and not of health in religious life, and the very violence of radical Islam today points to the depth of the failure of traditional religious ideas and institutions across the Middle East.

In Europe and the West, the crisis is quieter but no less profound. Europe today often doesn’t seem to know where it is going, what Western civilization is for, or even whether or how it can or should be defended. Increasingly, the contemporary version of Enlightenment liberalism sees itself as fundamentally opposed to the religious, political and economic foundations of Western society. Liberal values such as free expression, individual self-determination and a broad array of human rights have become detached in the minds of many from the institutional and civilizational context that shaped them.

Capitalism, the social engine without which neither Europe nor the U.S. would have the wealth or strength to embrace liberal values with any hope of success, is often seen as a cruel, anti-human system that is leading the world to a Malthusian climate catastrophe. Military strength, without which the liberal states would be overwhelmed, is regarded with suspicion in the U.S. and with abhorrence in much of Europe. Too many people in the West interpret pluralism and tolerance in ways that forbid or unrealistically constrain the active defense of these values against illiberal states like Russia or illiberal movements like radical Islam.

Europe’s approach to the migration crisis brings these failures into sharp relief. The European Union bureaucracy in Brussels has erected a set of legal doctrines stated in terms of absolute right and has tried to build policy on this basis. Taking its cue from the U.N.’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other ambitious declarations and treaties, the EU holds that qualified applicants have an absolute human right to asylum. European bureaucrats tend to see asylum as a legal question, not a political one, and they expect political authorities to implement the legal mandate, not quibble with it or constrain it.

This is, in many ways, a commendable and honorable approach. Europeans are rightly haunted by what happened in the 1930s when refugees from Hitler’s Germany could often find no place to go. But solemn declarations to “do the right thing” do not always lead to sound policy.

Under normal circumstances, the rights-based, legalistic approach can work reasonably well. When refugee flows are slack, the political fallout from accommodating them is manageable. But when the flow of desperate people passes a certain threshold, receiving countries no longer have the will (and, in some cases, the ability) to follow through. Ten thousand refugees is one thing; 10 million is another. Somewhere between those extremes is a breaking point at which the political system will no longer carry out the legal mandate. To pretend that this isn’t true is to invite trouble, and Europe is already much closer to a breaking point than Brussels or Berlin would like to admit.

In eastern and central Europe, the social and economic conditions for absorbing mass migration from the Middle East simply don’t exist. The relatively homogenous ethnic nation states that now comprise the region were created through generations of warfare, often accompanied by episodes of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Most of these states enjoyed a brief period of independence between the two world wars and were then engulfed, first by the Nazis and later by the Soviet empire. Their independence and security still feel fragile, and most of their citizens still believe that the role of the state is to protect the well-being of their own ethnic group and express its cultural values.

Larger, more self-confident and richer societies in Europe’s west and north are better prepared to cope with immigration. But rules that work for Germany and Sweden can produce uncontrollable backlashes in other parts of Europe. Add to this picture the continuing budgetary and welfare crises and the mass youth unemployment in many Eurozone economies, and it is easy to envision a point at which Europe’s capacity to absorb refugees reaches a ceiling.

And the flow of refugees to Europe could easily grow. The Turkish war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party could escalate. Social breakdown or the victory of radical Islamist forces in Egypt could provoke a mass flight of the Copts, the last remaining large Christian population in a region that has seen one Christian community after another exterminated or forced into exile over the last 150 years. The sectarian war in Syria could intensify and spread into Lebanon. The intensifying religious conflict across the Sahel and northern sub-Saharan Africa could create the kind of political and economic insecurity that would produce vast flows of desperate migrants and asylum seekers.

The breaking point may be reached sooner rather than later. In the short term, Europe’s attempts to welcome and resettle refugees will accelerate the flow. The news that rich countries like Germany are welcoming migrants will stimulate many more people to hit the road. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, is calling on member states to accept 160,000 migrants through a quota system. What will be the response when the number of migrants shoots well past that number?

The EU has failed to see that refugee and asylum policy must have three distinct components: the compassionate embrace of those in great need, a tough-minded effort to reduce the flow at the source by correcting or preventing the problems that give rise to it, and an effective border-control regime that limits the number of refugees and migrants who reach EU soil.

When it comes to reducing the number of migrants at their source, the Europeans have gotten it partly right. The EU has been relatively generous with economic-development aid to North Africa and the Middle East. That aid often falls short of the hoped-for results, but at least the Europeans are trying.

There is a second dimension to this policy that runs into a buzz saw of European assumptions and beliefs: the security question. Poverty is one driver of migration to Europe, but what has turned a policy problem into an international crisis is the intersection of poverty and insecurity. It is the brutal war in Syria that has displaced millions of people from their homes and sent them streaming into refugee encampments from Amman to Budapest. It was the breakdown of order in post-intervention Libya that made the Libyan coast a point of embarkation for desperate refugees from Libya and farther south.

The humanitarian question of refugees and asylum seekers cannot be separated from the bankruptcy of Western security policy in Syria and Libya, and the bankruptcy of Western policy cannot be separated from the long-standing difficulties that many European states have in taking a responsible attitude toward questions of military security.

The utter failure of Western policy in both Libya and Syria has to be seen for what it is: not just a political blunder but a humanitarian crime. The feckless mix of intervention and indifference in Libya and the equally feckless failure to intervene in Syria have helped to trigger the flows of migrants that are overwhelming Europe’s institutions.

It is impossible to have a humane and sustainable asylum policy without an active and engaged foreign policy that from time to time involves military action. The West’s current stance on human rights and asylum is reminiscent of the liberal approach to questions of peace and war in the early 1930s. On the one hand, the West adopted a high-minded, legalistic stand that declared war illegal (the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928); on the other, we adhered to a blind commitment to disarmament. A noble ideal was separated from any serious effort to create the conditions that would make it achievable.

The dream of a liberal, humanitarian peace that both the Obama administration and the EU share may not be achievable in the wicked and complicated world in which we live. It certainly cannot be achieved with the kinds of policies now in favor in capitals on both sides of the Atlantic.