Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Found this Image on the Star Walk App
Spectacular view of V838 Monocerotis light echo
The light echo around the star V838 Monocerotis as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in November 2005. Credit: NASA, ESA and H. Bond (STScI). Tap © to visit the web site.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
'Hitler was descended from Jews and Africans' DNA tests reveal | Mail Online
DNA tests reveal 'Hitler was descended from the Jews and Africans he hated'
By Allan Hall
Last updated at 10:53 AM on 24th August 2010
Revealing: The DNA tests on relatives of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler show he was probably descended from Jewish people and North Africans
Adolf Hitler is likely to have been descended from both Jews and Africans, according to DNA tests.
Samples taken from relatives of the Nazi leader show that he is biologically linked to the 'sub-human' races he sought to exterminate.
Journalist Jean-Paul Mulders and historian Marc Vermeeren used DNA to track down 39 of the Fuhrer's relatives earlier this year.
They included an Austrian farmer revealed only as a cousin called Norbert H.
A Belgian news magazine has reported that samples of saliva taken from these people strongly suggest Hitler had antecedents he certainly would not have cared for.
A chromosome called Haplopgroup E1b1b (Y-DNA) in their samples is rare in Germany and indeed Western Europe.
'It is most commonly found in the Berbers of Morocco, in Algeria, Libya and Tunisia as well as among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews,' Mr Vermeeren said.
'One can from this postulate that Hitler was related to people whom he despised,' adds Mr Mulders in the magazine, Knack.
Haplogroup E1b1b1, which accounts for approximately 18 to 20 per cent of Ashkenazi and 8.6 per cent to 30 per cent of Sephardic Y-chromosomes, appears to be one of the major founding lineages of the Jewish population.
'This is a surprising result,' said Ronny Decorte, a genetic specialist who agreed that Hitler probably did have some roots in North Africa.
Roots: Hitler's DNA was found to contain Haplogroup E1b1b, commonly found in the Berbers of Morocco (left) - and also accounts for approximately 18 to 20 per cent of the Y-chromosomes of Sephardic Jews (right) who hail from Morocco, Spain and Portugal)
'It is difficult to predict, what happens with this information, both to opponents and supporters of Hitler,' he added.
The magazine says the DNA was tested under stringent laboratory conditions to obtain the results.
It is not the first time that historians have suggested Hitler had Jewish ancestry.
His father, Alois, is thought to have been the illegitimate offspring of a maid called Maria Schickelgruber and a 19-year-old Jewish man called Frankenberger.
This would have made the man who inspired the Holocaust one-quarter Jewish.
Hidden secrets: The Waldviertel region in Austria where Hitler's cousin, farmer Norbert H, was found
The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland where Hitler's extermination programme of the Jews was carried out
DNA on a serviette was taken from Alexander Stuart-Houston (now aged 61), a grand-nephew of Hitler
Reports have suggested that Hitler's nephew, Patrick, tried to blackmail his uncle over the issue of Alois Hitler's parentage. Hitler asked his lawyer, Hans Frank, to investigate the claims and he announced just before the outbreak of the Second World War that they were 'without any foundation'.
'Hitler would not have been pleased about this,' added Mr Decorte, of the Catholic University of Leuven.
'The affair is fascinating if one compares it with the conception of the world of the Nazis, in which race and blood was central.
'Hitler's concern over his descent was not unjustified. He was apparently not "pure" or "Ayran".'
DNA was also taken from American Alexander Stuart-Houston, 61, a grand-nephew of Hitler.
He was trailed for seven days before he dropped a used serviette which Mulders said led him to the cousin in Austria - and the link with Hitler's sworn enemies.
Comments (65)
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i'm a berber and algerian and do not ressemble arabs or black africans and do not understand the point behind the story or the alleged study ,this has reached algeria and half the country is laughing and the other is outraged and says do not associat us with such a monster,our nation for the last 3000 years only gave birth to heros and delt a blow to every monster that has tried to erase our existance whatever time it took.
- mourad, london, 25/8/2010 14:46
I don't think this is anything new, but of course as always my heart goes out to those lives lost because of this man and all their families. I doubt anyone ever wants to hear or could even understand how they could be related to a man like this, it sickens me that he was a human being.
- Someone, A place, 25/8/2010 13:50
Psychology 101 - we despise in others what we deny in ourselves. - martin flaxman, queen charlotte, canada, 23/8/2010 10:08 So true. Jealousy drives a lot of people's emotion. I'm guilty of it!
- DeAnna, Georgia, USA, 25/8/2010 13:39
This goes to show that the worst kind of hate is self-hate. It is seductive, potentially powerful beyond measure, and is also characterized by self-denial. What is so insidious about self-hate is that if one can hate oneself, one can hate any and all things, including G_d.
- Steven Edward Aanes, Oakwood, GA 30566, 25/8/2010 12:07
Considering he had blue eyes (stated by Goebbels in his diary) and looked very european, I find this hard to believe. The DNA test here wasn't exactly very precise ...
- Alan, Bristol, UK, 25/8/2010 09:43
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Friday, February 04, 2011
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
In Egypt, a Date With a Revolution
ON Friday, the “day of rage,” I was in the streets with the protesters. Friends and I participated in a peaceful demonstration that started at the Amr Ibn al-As Mosque in Old Cairo near the Church of St. George. We set off chanting, “The people want the regime to fall!” and we were greeted with a torrent of tear gas fired by the police. We began to shout, “Peaceful, Peaceful,” trying to show the police that we were not hostile, we were demanding nothing but our liberty. That only increased their brutality. Fighting began to spread to the side streets in the ancient, largely Coptic neighborhood.
A friend and I took shelter in a small alleyway, where we were warmly welcomed. The locals warned us not to try to escape to the metro station, and pointed us toward a different escape route; many of them even joined the protests. Eventually, a man drove us in his own car to safety.
Clearly, the scent of Tunisia’s “jasmine revolution” has quickly reached Egypt. Following the successful expulsion in Tunis of the dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the call arose on Facebook for an Egyptian revolution, to begin on Jan. 25. Yet the public here mocked those young people who had taken to Twitter and Facebook to post calls for protest: Since when was the spark of revolution ignited on a pre-planned date? Had revolution become like a romantic rendezvous?
Such questions abounded on social networking sites; but even cynics — myself included — became hopeful as the calls continued to circulate. In the blink of an eye, the Twitter and Facebook generation had successfully rallied hundreds of thousands to its cause, across the nation. Most of them were young people who had not been politically active, and did not belong to the traditional circles of the political opposition. The Muslim Brotherhood is not behind this popular revolution, as the regime claims. Those who began it and organized it are seething in anger at police cruelty and the repression and torture meted out by the Hosni Mubarak regime.
And, from the outset, the government decided to deal with the people with the utmost violence and brutality in the hope that the Tunisian experience would not be repeated. For days now, tear gas has been the oxygen Egyptians have inhaled. So much was in the air that there are reports of small children and the elderly having suffocated on the fumes in their homes. The security forces in Cairo started by shooting rubber bullets at the protesters, before progressing onto live ammunition, ending dozens of lives.
In Suez, where the demonstrations have been tremendously violent, live ammunition was used against civilians from the first day. A friend of mine who lives there sent me a message saying that, Thursday morning, the city looked as if it had emerged from a particularly brutal war: its streets were burned and destroyed, dead bodies were strewn everywhere; we would never know how many victims had fallen to the police bullets in Suez, my friend solemnly concluded.
After having escaped from Old Cairo on Friday, my friends and I headed for Tahrir Square, the focal point of the modern city and site of the largest protests. We joined another demonstration making its way through downtown, consisting mostly of young people. From a distance, we could hear the rumble of the protest in Tahrir Square, punctuated by the sounds of bullets and screams. Minute by painstaking minute, we protesters were gaining ground, and our numbers were growing. People shared Coca-Cola bottles, moistening their faces with soda to avoid the effects of tear gas. Some people wore masks, while others had sprinkled vinegar into their kaffiyehs.
Shopkeepers handed out bottles of mineral water to the protesters, and civilians distributed food periodically. Women and children leaned from windows and balconies, chanting with the dissidents. I will never forget the sight of an aristocratic woman driving through the narrow side streets in her luxurious car, urging the protesters to keep up their spirits, telling them that they would soon be joined by tens of thousands of other citizens arriving from different parts of the city.
After several failed attempts to break through the security checkpoints and get to Tahrir Square, we sat in a cafe to rest. Three officers from the regime’s Central Security Forces, all in civilian clothing, sat down next to us. They appeared to be completely relaxed, as though they were impervious to the sounds of bullets and shouting, or to the numbers of wounded and dead Egyptians being reported on Al Jazeera, which was being broadcast on the coffee shop’s television. They and their colleagues were all over the city, spying on their countrymen.
Hour by hour on Friday evening, the chaos increased. Police stations and offices of the ruling National Democratic Party were on fire across the country. I wept when news came that 3,000 volunteers had formed a human chain around the national museum to protect it from looting and vandalism. Those who do such things are certainly highly educated, cultivated people, neither vandals nor looters, as they are accused of being by those who have vandalized and looted Egypt for generations.
The curfew meant that I couldn’t return home, so I spent the night at a friend’s house near the Parliament building and Interior Ministry, one of the most turbulent parts of the city. That night, the sound of bullets was unceasing. We watched from the window as police shot with impunity at the protesters and at a nearby gas station, hoping, perhaps, for an explosion. Despite all of this and despite the curfew, the demonstrations did not stop, fueled by popular fury at President Mubarak’s slowness to address the people and, a few hours later, indignation at the deplorable speech he finally gave.
On Saturday morning, I left my friend’s house and headed home. I walked across broken glass strewn in the streets, and I could smell the aftermath of the fires that had raged the night before. The army, called in by the regime to put down the protests, was everywhere. I tried first to cross over to Tahrir Square, in order to see for myself whether the museum was safe. A passer-by told me that the army was forbidding people from entering the square, and that shots were being fired. I asked him, anxiously, “Is the army shooting at the demonstrators?” He answered, confidently: “Of course not. The Egyptian army has never fired a shot against an Egyptian citizen, and will not do so now.” We both openly expressed our wish for that to be true, for the army to side with the people.
NOW that army troops were monitoring the demonstrations, the police force had completely disappeared from the streets, as if to taunt people with the choice between their presence and chaos. Armed gangs have mushroomed across the city, seeking to loot shops and terrorize civilians in their homes. (Saturday night, a gang tried to rob the building where I have been staying, but was unable to break in.) Local volunteers have formed committees to stand up to the criminals, amidst an overwhelming feeling that the ruling regime is deliberately stoking chaos.
Late Saturday, as I headed toward Corniche Street on the Nile River, I walked through a side street in the affluent Garden City neighborhood, where I found a woman crying. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that her son, a worker at a luxury hotel, had been shot in the throat by a police bullet, despite not being a part of the demonstrations. He was now lying paralyzed in a hospital bed, and she was on her way to the hotel to request medical leave for him. I embraced her, trying to console her, and she said through her tears, “We cannot be silent about what has happened. Silence is a crime. The blood of those who fell cannot be wasted.”
I agree. Silence is a crime. Even if the regime continues to bombard us with bullets and tear gas, continues to block Internet access and cut off our mobile phones, we will find ways to get our voices across to the world, to demand freedom and justice.
Mansoura Ez-Eldin is the author of the novels “Maryam’s Maze” and “Beyond Paradise.” This article was translated by Ghenwa Hayek from the Arabic.
