The presence of Phoenician colonies in North Africa started out as peaceful traders among the Amazigh original inhabitants of the region. These colonies, though initially inhabited by Phoenicians from the eastern Mediterranean, became a mix of the two peoples as they intermarried with the local Amazigh.

The Amazigh, as well as the Punic Phoenicians, who survived the Roman subjugation of the region are credited with preserving the Phoenician language up till the time of Saint Augustine in the 5th century. Furthermore, traces of the Phoenician alphabet are evident in the Tamazight (Berber) alphabet called Tifinagh.

The presence of the Berber in North Africa today is a living proof that the “Arab World” is not made up of 325 million Arabs. In fact, pan-Arabism is an unfounded heresy forced down the throats of people who were conquered and subjugated, beginning with the advent of the Arab conquest in the 7th century. The Amazigh, much like the overwhelming majority of the people of this (Arab) “world,” belong to a wide variety of ethnic groups that are different in blood, tradition, language, literature, art and history, and should not be lumped together as a single people.

Who and what are the Amazigh (Berber)? 

The Amazigh which means ”free humans” or “free men” are known to the world as Berbers. In fact, the word Berbers is offensive to these ancient inhabitants of North Africa and the Sahara desert. The name “Berber” is another one of many peccadilloes of the Romans who threw names at people left and right. They, along with the Greeks referred to every people they could not understand with the same unintelligible Berber language whether they were in the East or the West.

The majority of the Moors in medieval “Arabic” Spain were actually Berbers, who had adopted the Arabic Muslim culture and Arabic as their written language. Even today the Berbers are ethnically — but far from politically — the dominant part of the populations of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania. Isolated Berber-speaking groups are found all over North Africa, from the Atlantic in the west to Egypt in the east. A colorful nomadic Berber tribe, the Tuaregs, whose male warriors wear blue dresses and indigo-colored veils, still roam the Sahara desert.

Muslim yes, Arab no

It may come as a surprise to hear that the North African Muslim countries of Morocco and Algeria are, in an ethnic sense, not Arab nations at all, but Berber nations, speaking a completely different language than Arabic. Politically the Arab minority has dominated these countries for centuries, and has — without much success, though — attempted to eradicate the Berber language. This also holds true of the present leaderships in independent Morocco and Algeria, who up to now have tried to establish an Arab identity for their countries. In recent years the Maghreb/Tamazgha — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya — (= “land of the setting sun” in Arabic/Berber respectively, i.e. the western part of North Africa) has experienced an awakening of Berber consciousness. Berber protests have had limited success, but they have at least led to the introduction of formal teaching of Berber in some Moroccan and Algerian schools and universities. The strong Berber desire to establish a national Berber identity appears to be accelerating. In 2001 and 2002 several Berber demonstrations have been held in Morocco and Algeria, calling for official acceptance of Berber identity and state-funded education in the Berber language.

Blood and perception

In terms of “blood” Berbers most likely represent as many as 80% of the population in Morocco and Algeria; more than 60% in Tunisia and Libya; and 2% in Egypt – altogether some 50 million people. A proper Berber census has never been taken and the above figures are uncertain. Centuries of cultural “Arabization” has persuaded many Berbers, particularly in the cities, to adopt the Arabic language. The number of people perceiving themselves as Berbers is hence much lower, about half of the figure given above. However, the influx of “proper” Arabs from the East into the Berber area, in connection with the Muslim conquest of the 8th century, is estimated at only 200,000. It is thus quite probable that the population of the Maghreb/Tamazgha — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya — actually consists of native Berber stock. Some 4 million of Maghreb/Tamazgha origin — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, half of whom perceive themselves as Berbers, now live in Europe, mainly in France.

The Berber language is known as “Berber” to Europeans and as “Shilha” to Arabs, while the Berbers themselves call their language Tamazight (the “gh” in the words Tamazight and Amazigh is pronounced as a sharp “r“). The language has a large number of dialects, due to the wide geographical separation of different Berber-speaking groups.

No unified history

The Berbers have never experienced a unified political identity, which makes a review of the “history of the Berbers” somewhat problematic. There have been many strong Berber-led and Berber-populated kingdoms and cultures – often warring among themselves – existing in parallel in various regions of North Africa and Spain, but never a unified “Berber empire”. Nor have these cultures used any written Berber language – there are almost no written records in Berber, except for short inscriptions on a few monuments and buildings. Instead, the Berbers have tended to assimilate the culture and adopt the written language of their conquerors – initially Phoenician, Greek and Latin, later Arabic – while continuing to speak spoken Berber among themselves.

A chronology of some historical events in the Berber area:

• ca 3000 BC – first Egyptian references to the people who are now called Berber
• ca 1100 BC – Phoenicians establish trade centers
• ca 800 BC – Carthage is founded
• 146 BC – Romans destroy Carthage and establish the province Mauritania Tingitana (the origin of the word Moor) in North Africa/Tamazgha — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya –
• ca 200 – Berbers become Christians
• ca 350 – North Africa/Tamazgha — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya — becomes a hotbed for “heretic” Christian cults in the Christian Roman Empire
• ca 400 – St. Augustine
• 429 – Vandals invade North Africa/Tamazgha — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya –
• 533 – Byzantine Empire drives out the Vandals and takes control – religious conflicts between Berber Christian “heretics” and Byzantine church
• 674-700 – Muslim Arabs drive out the Byzantines and conquer North Africa/Tamazgha — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya — Conversion to Islam begins
• 711-713 – Spain conquered by Muslim Arabs and Berbers. Al-Andalus established in Spain
• 1085-1258 – Berber Almoravid and Almohad dynasties rule Al-Andalus and North Africa/Tamazgha — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya –
• 1492 – Moors driven out of Al-Andalus
• 1900 – French and Spanish colonial aspirations in North Africa/Tamazgha — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya — leading to colonisation
• 1956-1963 – Independence of North African/Tamazgha — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya — states

Tamazight – a language with 38 consonants

The Berber language, Tamazight, belongs to the African branch of the Afro-Asian language family, along with ancient Egyptian. There are various names for the different Berber dialects (which are different enough to be called languages by some), but Tamazight is seen as the root language. Old Phoenician language is mixed into the the Tamazight as evident to etymologists.

Tamazight has only 3 vowels - a, i, u. This parsimony, vowel-wise, is amply compensated by a generous number of consonants – 38 consonants in all. To be able to write all 38 with Latin letters, diacritical marks and letter-pairs (like for example gh, pronounced as one variant of r), are used. Even the $-sign has to be called upon to help symbolize one of the 38 consonants. Learning to correctly pronounce this multitude of consonants, with their sometimes minute differences of pronounciational nuance, is no easy task for a casual European student of Tamazight. English, in comparison, has 21 consonant letters in its alphabet, but reportedly 24 consonant sounds (if you include sounds like voiced and unvoiced “th”, “sh”, voiced “s”, etc.)

Image Source: unilang.org

In European languages the grammatical information of a word (tense, gender, number, etc) is most often given by “concatenation”, i.e. by adding an appropriate word ending to the word: one table, two tables, happen, happened, etc. But that is not how the Berbers do it. The grammatical information in Tamazight is instead conveyed via several changes in the word, e.g. of the vowels in the word, or sometimes by simultaneously adding something to the front as well as to the end of a word. Plural of am$ar (= male elder) becomes im$arn (= male elders), while one corresponding female elder is tam$art and several female elders is tim$arin. (I am not able to explain how the consonant symbol “$” is pronounced, but it reportedly belongs to the class of “fricatives”).

The word order is VERB – SUBJECT – OBJECT. “The boy drank water” is thus expressed as “Drank the boy water”.

Tifinagh / Tamazight

As I mentioned earlier, the Berber language has not been written – until fairly recently – except as short inscriptions on monuments. The Berber alphabet that was used for this task in antiquity is called Tifinagh and consists of a number of strange-looking phonetic symbols. It is most likely derived from the Phoenician alphabet and only has symbols for consonants. Some Berber activists have tried to augment the consonant symbols with vowel symbols. This modern form of Tifinagh is sometimes heroically used to write Berber, most often only by the activists themselves. Most people who are literate in Berber use the Latin letter system for writing Tamazight.

The name Tifinagh or “tifin negh”,  means ‘our invention’.

Berber languages such as Tamazight, Tamasheq and Amazigh, are spoken by about a million or so people in Morocco, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Libya.

Links/Sources: 

1. Free Tifinagh fonts
   http://www.chez.com/imazighen/assckltfngh.html
   http://www.mondeberbere.com/langue/polices.htm
2. L’école d’amazigh – online lessons in Amazigh and the Tifinagh alphabet
   http://www.ircam.ma/ecoleamazighe/menu.htm
3. Tawalt – a Libyan Berber site in the Tifinagh and Arabic scripts
   http://www.tawalt.com
4. Berber Language Page
   http://isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Handbook/Berber_root.htm
5. Monde Berbere (Berber World) – information on the Berber people of Morocco in Berber, French and English: http://www.mondeberbere.com
6. Amazigh World – information about Berber language and culture (in Berber and French)
   http://www.amazighworld.org
7. Kra isallen – Le magazine en ligne de l’association Tamazgha
   http://www.tamazgha.fr
8. TIFIN’ ART – Calligraphies et peintures (Tifinagh calligraphy)
   http://tifin.arts.monsite.wanadoo.fr/index.jhtml
9. “The Mariners of Elysium: Evidence for the Ancestors of the Guanches as Founders of Predynastic Egypt” by Jonah Lissner.

~ Robby Martin

Mosey not only promised that the BBC would remain ‘independent’ during the Olympics_ his words conjured up a vaguely nationalistic image of BBC staff ‘standing fast’ against commercial or governmental pressure of the type “we can see in some foreign countries” _ etc _
It was another example of insidious BBC ‘realpolitik’_ the worst kind_ and within a matter of days the words that he’d spoken at Lord’s and written onto his BBC blog turned out to be nothing more than lies _
At the time anti-BBCTrust took the opportunity to post a response on Mosey’s blog_ specifically to delineate and emphasize the promises that were written there _

comment #55 at 07:15 31st Mar 2012 on Mosey’s blog post
your article is duly noted_ as indeed are the promises made therein _
1_ decision-makers should be held to account
2_ voice of the public… should be heard
3_ tell the news story of the London Games fairly and impartially
4_ BBC will be independent in its coverage
5_ BBC will never let our partnerships dictate our journalism

“Commercial interests or government pressure we can see in some foreign countries”???
LOL _ we can see that daily in the UK too!
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But it was less than a week after Mosey’s assurances that the first breach of his promises occurred_ when the Conservative Olympics Minister spoke in an interview with the London Evening Standard_ wherein he asked Londoners to ‘shop their neighbour’ if they suspected they were “plotting to disrupt the Olympics” _

Conservative Olympics Minister _ Hugh Robertson

Although this was a public statement made by the government minister in charge of the Olympics_ which had the potential to create all manner of social and anti-social ramifications that would all be directly attributable to UK hosting the Olympics (not least the already over-burdened police possibly having to deal with any number of false alarms as neighbours ‘ratted’ on each other) still the BBC didn’t publish one word about it!!
Instead_ on the BBC web-pages devoted to London 2012 a link was posted to the article published by the Evening Standard_ and after 2 days even that link had disappeared _
London Olympics hasn’t even begun yet but BBC directors and management have already started the ‘white-wash’ that is bound to be painted over anything they decided the public doesn’t ‘need to know’ _
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Unfortunately BBC white-wash hasn’t only been used on London Olympics in these last weeks _
North of the border the BBC headquarters in Glasgow was briefly occupied by 30 local activists during a protest march in support of 1600 Palestinian prisoners who are presently on hunger-strike _  The activists who occupied the BBC headquarters were demanding to know why such a massive human-interest story was being completely ignored by the UK’s national broadcaster _
According to a local report of the incident the occupiers demanded a meeting with someone from BBC Scotland’s management before they would bring their occupation to a close_ and after 3 hours of negotiation the request was finally granted _
“Four representatives from the ‘We Are All Hana Shalabi’ network met with Ian Small, Head of Public Policy and Corporate Affairs at the BBC for approximately one hour. During the meeting they challenged him over the BBC’s coverage over Palestine and particularly the silence over the recent wave of Palestinian hunger strikers, which were started by Khader Adnan over 3 months ago. The official responded by saying that the BBC aimed its coverage towards a certain demographic of people, namely white collar workers who are over 50 years of age.”

Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s (PSC) BBC watcher_ Amena Saleem_ writing in the online magazine_ electronic intifada quoted Liam O’Hare_ an organiser of the Glasgow protest_ who had been present for the meeting with Director Small _  “He said that the BBC demographic was white-collar and aged over 50.  The idea that the BBC aims its coverage towards a certain section of society, when it’s paid for by all licence-fee payers, is a disgrace.”
“The BBC is complicit in the occupation (of Palestinian land) through its silence,” O’Hare continued, “When you see the magnitude of what Palestinian prisoners are prepared to do to challenge Israel’s apartheid, and then look at the media’s blackout of that, you realize its inherent bias.”
Amena Saleem goes on to report that when PSC asked BBC News management why they were happy to report rocket attacks but not a ‘peaceful’ mass hunger strike, the answer was ‘violence makes news’.
“We pointed out that there is plenty of violence at the weekly protests in the West Bank — it comes from the Israeli forces and results in frequent injuries and sometimes death. In fact, we said, violence by Israel’s military, navy and air force and by Israeli settlers in the West Bank is an everyday feature of life for Palestinians — if violence does, in fact, make news, there’s no shortage of it for the BBC in occupied Palestine.“
Amena Saleem’s article

BBC Director Ian Small _ whose principle talent is apparently 'whitewashing'

It would be truly interesting to know if Ian Small was really recanting a BBC mantra about ‘white-collar over 50s’ when he spoke to protesters_ or whether he wasn’t just saying the first thing that came into his head!  It is difficult to imagine how the BBC could really be broadcasting to only one sector of the English public when there are so many elements of BBC which are specifically aimed at a multi-cultural audience_ and a World Service that broadcasts to diverse countries and cultures in a wealth of languages.
If it was a mantra then that is REAL news that all English licence-fee payers should be very concerned about, regardless of whether they care about the plight of Palestinians or not _  But if Small’s comment wasn’t an expression of BBC policy_ then he is the second BBC director who has been shown up as a liar to the English public in less than a month _

The anti-BBCTrust asserts here that in fact MOSEY AND SMALL ARE BOTH LIARS and that their announcements were made as part of a cover for that new tranche of BBC policies that were brought in under the regime of Mark Thompson_ after the real and rightful BBC Director-General_ Greg Dyke_ had been forced to resign as head of a once truly honest and independent BBC that had focussed public attention onto Prime Minister Blair and his New Labour cronies after they had sold the world the falsehood of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) _
What these incidents point to is something hidden and very possibly malignant at the BBC _ but what the exposure of these incidents points to is that_ not only in England_ but across the web-based international community_ the public are becoming more and more aware of the fact that no-one can  believe the BBC _
And that is the REAL legacy Mark Thompson will leave behind him when he finally quits _

BBC Director Mark Thompson _ under whose guidance the BBC has become COMPLETELY UNTRUSTWORTHY

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originally published at ‘anti-BBCTrust‘

Well let us take it chronologically, this claim isn’t completely false. According to the Quran AND the Talmud, at the time when Moses (peace be upon him) liberated the ‘sons of Jacob’ he took them to that land, now called Palestine…

But there’s one detail that we all seem to miss or ignore: the inhabitants of Palestine are neither Israelites or ‘sons of Jacob.’ Neither are they “israelis” nor “Arabs.” They are Canaanites, who simply learned Arabic with the arrival of Islam. But the real issue here is, how did the Palestinians come to associate themselves with being “Arab,” and how does this affect their claim to the land?

Well, the officialisation of the “Arab world” creation, created by Michel Aflaq, a secular Syrian who studied in France during the 1930s, invented the idea, that was then implemented throughout all the Muslim countries in the region. Whether they were truly Arab or not was not a priority for those who created that ideology, that was, in certain countries, implemented by force (still being forced upon regions today), and that included (and still includes) Palestine.

It is also an illogical event to create a union, recognised by other western countries during the 1940s and 1950s, practically in a time where these countries were being colonised by those same western countries. I mean, why would your colonist want you to unite?!  That’s a miss….

Now, one would ask and say: How would that affect the current situation? And how would it solve it or at least leave a dent in it?

Had the Palestinians kept their own identity (and I used to know a few Palestinians and members of the so-called “Arab world” who knew who they really were) which predates the arrival of the “sons of Jacob” to that land, and had the rest of the region also retained their identity, which as well predates all of this – then “israel” would have had no arguments to claim the land, AND the public opinion would not be so easily swayed.

I know this would have made a gigantic difference nowadays – because i simply believe the “Arab world” was created as a bed for israel to lie on, on so many levels.

What’s happening now in the “Arab world” vis-a-vis the israelis is that the israelis go around saying they want a piece of land among a big pool of “Arabs” who are ‘hostile’ towards them thus falsely implying that they are a minority and that the [false] majority (i.e. the “Arabs”) don’t want them there. This is why they go about saying “There was no such thing as a Palestinian” and “Palestine never existed.” Thus trying to erase Palestinian identity.

And not only trying to erase Palestinian identity, but also Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, Egyptian etc.

Moreover the term “Arab” is a very orientalist term because it goes about falsely representing the people of all that region as being homogeneous.

It was also invented in the ‘West’ which therefore imposed an equivocal identity on the people of that region thus reducing or brushing-aside the real identities there (such as being Lebanese, being Syrian, being Iraqi etc.), and this also created divisions within the countries there (e.g the Berbers in North Africa, the Kurds etc.)

I believe it also subconsciously promulgates the imagined division of them and us, i.e the “East” and the “West”.

George in Christendom
In AD 302 Diocletian issued an order that every Christian soldier should be arrested and all the other soldiers in his army should offer a sacrifice to Roman gods _   George renounced the Emperor’s edict and in front of his fellow soldiers claimed himself to be a Christian _
Diocletian attempted to convert George by offering gifts of land_ money and slaves_ and asked in return that his favourite tribune simply make a sacrifice to the Roman gods_ like the rest of his army _  Finally recognizing the futility of his efforts to persuade the young soldier Diocletian had him executed _
Before the execution George gave his wealth to the poor _  After various torture sessions_  including laceration on a wheel of swords_ from which he was resuscitated three times_ George was lastly beheaded outside Nicomedia’s city wall _ on April 23 303 AD _   His body was returned to Lydda in Palestine for burial_ where Christians came to honour him as a martyr _

George in Islam
Saint George is also known and venerated by Muslims and Christians throughout the Middle East_ from Egypt to Asia Minor _  His stature in these regions derives from his legend becoming something of a composite of various famous warriors_ mixing elements from Biblical, Quranic and folkloric sources _  He has also been partially identified with Al-Khidr _  Khidr is a revered figure in Islam_ whom the Qur’an describes as ‘a righteous servant of God’  _  He is said to have killed a dragon near the sea in Beirut and from the beginning of the 20th century Muslim women visit his shrine in that area to pray to him _

Saint George the ‘political emblem’
It is truly ironic that with such a life-history_ the flag of St George should have latterly developed a reputation and recognition as a symbol of Right-wing_ anti-Islamic groups _   However_ such sad ‘facts of life’ should never be seen as a testament of Saint George_ but only of the blatant ignorance and the lowest kind of stupidity which such groups proudly proclaim as ‘rightfully’ belonging to them _
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originally published at ‘Left of Left‘

Reblogged from Occupied Palestine | فلسطين:

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Call for Int’l Action: Show your support on Palestinian (Child) Prisoners Day

by Silvia and Andreas | 13 April 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank Follow @IsmPalestine

Please SUBMIT pictures in solidarity with Hassan Safady FREE HASSAN SAFADY FREE ALL PRISONERS IN ADMINSTRATIVE DENTENTION

Today Hasan Safady entered into his 42nd day of hunger strike. Ten months ago, he was brutally arrested from his home in the old city of Nablus and has since then been kept in administrative detention.

Read more… 541 more words

But ‘Change’ has indeed occurred since Obama came to power!!
Gone are ALL the promises to remove America from the horror of it’s recent Neo-Conservative past _
Instead of stopping drone attacks on civilian targets _
the Obama administration has increased them _
Instead of putting Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders on trial _
this US presidency has run a policy of assassination against them _
Instead of closing Guantanamo _
the four years incumbent president has decided that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and four others will now be tried in military court after 5 years of incarceration _ during which Mohammed alone was subjected to waterboarding torture 183 times!
Instead of Obama keeping his promises _ by putting these men through a transparent judicial process where ALL MEN ARE EQUAL before the law _ these five will face the death penalty behind the secretive and heavily biased processes of a US military court ONLY so that US ‘Democrats’ can score a mass of political points in the run up to the next presidential election _

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed _ subjected to waterboarding torture 183 times

BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Beale stated today that in the end the Obama administration had no choice but try these suspects from within the confines of Guantanamo Bay _
“But why now?” he asks_ “Does it have anything to do with an (upcoming) presidential election?
And given what’s already been said, what are the chances of a fair trial?”

Clive Stafford Smith_ Director of Reprieve once said _ “The phrase ‘Honor Bound to Defend Freedom’ is one of the Orwellian apspects of Guantanamo _  For most of the world_ Guantanamo epitomizes the suppression of freedom…“
The already infamous reputation that Guantanamo has earned for itself will grow larger and meaner with this latest use of its facilities for American justice _  Nor will ‘Gitmo’ ever be closed all the time that it has any intrinsic value to US politicians_ US Military procurement and US media hyperbole_ ALL of whom will profit from these biased and undemocratic trials _

Now political observers from around the world can say amongst ourselves what must be finally and officially accepted_ in the sense that ALL the world can bear witness to the last decade of ‘War on Terror’_ in the aftermath of tens of thousands of innocents dead_ tens of thousands incarcerated or missing_ hundreds of thousands removed from their normal lives and existence_  What little honour remained to the United States of America and its ‘democracy’ on the international stage_ is finally and irreversibly DEAD!
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originally published at ‘Left of Left‘

March 2012 _ First month of reporting errors to BBC by anti-BBCTrust
The anti-BBCTrust logged 48 errors during its first month of monitoring the BBC News website specifically for this purpose _   Since this blog was set up only on March 5th 2012 incidents for the whole month were not actually recorded _  Nevertheless it is felt the statistics as they stand are worthy of note for various reasons_ not least to give BBC management something to reflect upon _
Therefore this anti-BBCTrust report is hereby released into the public domain _

Synopsis
The data so far collected has already revealed some interesting results _
Whether any kind of result is even possible at such an early stage of research is open to debate_ and anti-BBCTrust is making no claims to having achieved anything statistically significant_ Nevertheless the pattern of  results has done much to assist in the early stages of formatting anti-BBC error-reporting_ both online to the BBC and on the anti-BBC blog itself _

Special interests (for all!)
Special areas of interest for future research have also been revealed by this early examination of the data _  Some of these matters have already been raised with the BBC by other parties_ long before anti-BBCTrust began gathering data _
These incidents are highlighted by anti-BBCTrust because the continued existence of them raises serious concerns about BBC independence from commercial and political influence _
To make the point_ this is one error gathered in the data so far _

Whilst the accompanying report several times mentioned this Mossad televised event in Dubai_ the picture caption misleadingly reads Hamas _

Another area of immediate interest raised by this research has been the use of “quotation marks” by the BBC _  the anti-BBC Trust considers the misuse of “speech marks” to be a serious matter and has begun to focus more attention on their usage by BBC which is already yielding results in April that will be included in the next report _

BBC Correspondents
A by-line of correspondence between BBC staff and anti-BBCTrust has also been produced by reporting these errors _   anti-BBCTrust was contacted by BBC errors team on two occasions during March 2012 _  Curiously on both occasions the responses were in defence of BBC errors which had already been ‘corrected’ thereby making the defence of them apparently wrong as well _
Whilst the essence of these communications is recorded on anti-BBCTrust blog Correspondence page _  one perhaps important  element not recorded are the details which clearly show these communications were made by staff in a supervisory role _ one or two days after the error was originally reported and eventually corrected _  The correspondents were properly going through older error reports and responding to the matters raised when they felt that was pertinent _ 

Technical Matters
Reported errors are found ONLY on BBC News web-pages that are directly linked to the front page of the website _   anti-BBCTrust uses a human-created algorithm to conduct error searches _
The method of search created allows for some randomization in the search pattern to occur _  The 48 individual reports in Appendix A – March 2012 Report Sheet  show that time of report has no apparent structural restrictions_ and these round the clock inspections coincide with the BBC News website regularly updating the front page with edited links that lead to other areas of BBC online_ such as BBC Magazine_ BBC Editor’s blogs_ etc _
The result is that anti-BBCTrust searches do achieve a level of randomness _ but regardless of these details_ the overriding  element is that reported errors are always directly linked to the BBC News website front page _

Errors are presently divided into six types _

badly edited
reliance on spell checking software _ oversight failures _ incomplete clean-up after editing

badly written
lack of clarity from the writer_ to the point of not being readable_ hence ‘error’
these are possibly created by difficult and unnecessary convolutions of sentences or being altogether unclear as to how something should be written properly _

font/technical errors _
typesetting errors such as ‘typeSETTing’ _ audio-synch errors on news footage
print or white space anomalies that may have been created by source code

missing or repeated words
editing errors_ possibly caused by incorrect usage and/or malfunction of editing software

misuse of words
deliberate usage and styling of words or phrases possibly to achieve ‘extracurricular’ goals

spelling mistakes
mistakes created ONLY by human error based on not knowing how to spell a particular word

wrong tense/pronoun/pluralization
errors which are minor and can be caused by anything_ ranging from a lack of document oversight to an inept understanding of how the English language works

____________________________________________________________________

RESULTS
results are placed in six categories _
report numbers refers to the actual Report Sheet post number (see Appendix A)

48 errors were recorded in a 26day period
beginning midday GMT March 5th 2012
ending midnight GMT March 31st 2012

BBC corrected errors _ 40
uncorrected errors _ 8

badly edited _ 9
report numbers _ 03-07-16-24-28-36-38-39-45

badly written _ 7
report numbers _ 01-02-08-11-12-35-44

font or technical errors _ 2
report numbers _ 04-09

missing or repeat words _ 8
report numbers _ 06-13-15-17-21-30-32-48

misuse of words _ 4
report numbers _ 20-23-33-34

spelling mistakes _ 1
report numbers _ 40

wrong tense/pronoun/pluralization _ 17
report numbers _ 05-10-14-18-19-22-25-26-27-29-31-37-41-42-43-46-47

____________________________________________________________________

APPENDIX A _
REPORT SHEET _ MARCH 2012
in order to save storage space for included photographs this extension of the report can only be viewed at the original posting on the anti-BBCTrust blog report

Four other Kaibil soldiers were sentenced in 2011 to 6,060 years for their role in the Dos Erres massacre. This was the first time soldiers had been arrested, tried and sentenced for any of the massacres committed by State security forces during the ‘la violencia’, the bloody military campaign from 1981 to 1983.

While the media heralded the sentences as progress, not one media outlet has yet bothered to mention israel’s involvement in Guatemala’s 36-year reign of terror, or that israel had stood by three successive military juntas and three brutal campaigns against the indigenous Mayan population. Odd considering that in no Central American country was israeli military involvement as pervasive and entrenched as that in Guatemala.

Reuters, on March 13^th, squeezed in mention that former military dictator Efrain Rios Montt, now 85 years old, was in the process of being brought to justice.  Montt had been denied amnesty in January and was now facing charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for pursuing a scorched-earth campaign in the Mayan highlands that included massacres that are regarded as among the most horrific in the 36-year war against leftist insurgents.

Of particular interest is Montt’s defense as presented by his lawyer to the publication Prensa Libre, that while his client would appear to hear the prosecutor’s charges, “We are sure there is no responsibility, since he was never on the battlefield.”  Montt claims that he did not control battlefield operations and that commanders were responsible for making decisions in their own posts. However, military patrol logs turned over to the United Nation’s Truth Commission show that the military was operating under a rigid chain of command and reports from the field went right up to top commanders.

israel’s Foothold in Central America

As a region Central America has had all the characteristics traditionally associated with israeli arms clients: longstanding entrenched traditions of military rule, right-wing ideology, high incidence of territorial disputes and internal strife, and a propensity toward human rights violations.

Since the US/CIA-sponsored overthrow of the democratically elected Arbenz government in 1954, Guatemala had been ruled by a succession of right-wing regimes determined to suppress an indigenous revolutionary movement.  Most of these were military juntas, but even under the nominally civilian regime (1966-1970) military officials filled critical government posts.  During the 1960’s the state waged a brutal campaign against a guerrilla movement based in the country’s Ladino population.  Although dealt a devastating blow by 1970, news sectors of resistance emerged particularly in the indigenous Mayan communities. While israel entered the region as peddler of arms, within a decade israel was a committed partner in the regional counter-insurgency campaigns in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Somoza’s Nicaragua.

The Carter administration’s human rights policy inaugurated in 1977 had a great impact of israel’s sales to Central America, particularly to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Somoza’s Nicaragua, all of which had been accused of gross and systematic violations of human rights.  Guatemala’s military was so unrelentingly bloody that the US Congress never permitted the sale of arms, and as late as 1985 the US Congress remained adamant about denying it military aid.

During the five-year period following the US ban on military aid, israel was active delivering Arava STOL counter-insurgency aircraft, rocket launchers, Uzi submachine guns, Galil assault rifles, ammunition, spare parts, helmets, flack jackets.  In 1983 the Guerrilla Army of the Poor [EGP] issued a communiqué stating that a munitions factory producing bullets for Galil rifles and Uzi submachine guns had begun operation in Alta Verapaz.  israeli advisers set up the factory and then trained Guatemalans how to run it.  The munitions factory additional produced Galil rifle parts, was armor plating military vehicles and had the capability of building grenade launchers.

What israel offered to the regimes went beyond the sale of weapons and military communications to include a broad range of electronic anti-guerrilla equipment and training, counter-insurgency and intelligence advice, military-agricultural development–strategic hamlets.   By 1983 there were an estimated 300 israeli advisers in Guatemala working and developing the country’s security structure and in the army performing a variety of functions all aimed hunting down and assassinating insurgents.  Successive military rulers have seen israel as the world’s foremost practitioner of counterinsurgency and continue to look to israel for advice, expertise and arms.

Rural Population Pacification Program

israel’s involvement in Guatemala helped insulate successive juntas from any US or international political pressure.  The flow of arms, counter-insurgency and technical assistance serviced to reinforce the brutal excesses with which the Guatemalan military established control over the indigenous population.

The aspect of israeli cooperation with Guatemala’s military that had the most serious implications is the role played by israeli personnel in the universally condemned rural scorched earth military pacification plans.  These plans involved an intensified bombing campaign to depopulate areas whose residents were thought to support rebels. The same kind of rural “pacification” that the US has employed in Vietnam, the well-remembered Phoenix Program of winning hearts and minds with a combination of civic amenities and wholesale blood letting.

Cheryl Rubenberg wrote in the May-June 1986 Middle East Report, that when Montt staged his coup on March 23, 1982, Ha’olam Hazeh reported Montt had been helped by 300 israeli military advisors who assisted in training and executing the coup. Furthermore, Yediot Arahonot referred to the coup as “the israeli connection.”

In January 1983, at the height of the Rios Montt’s carnage, then chief of staff Hector Fuentes summed up the relationship this way. “israel is our principal supplier of arms and the number one friend of Guatemala in the world.  An unnamed Guatemalan business leader told the Los Angeles Times, “We’re isolated internationally.  The only friend we have left in the world is israel.”  Despite a seemingly incompatible ideology, what types of policies did the Guatemalan government pursue with the help they received from a nation populated with thousands of Holocaust survivors?

In 1982, israeli military helped develop and implement General Rios Montt’s ‘Plan Victoria’ a devastating scorched earth campaign that was unleashed on the highland Mayan population.  Montt himself had bragged to the Washington Times that the israeli government was helping with the counterinsurgency program called “Techo, tortilla y trabajo” (shelter, food and work).  The three T’s followed an earlier Montt program called “Fusiles y Fridoles” [beans and bullets], where wholesale slaughter was combined with the provision of life’s necessities to those willing to “cooperate” with the junta.

In Guatemala’s mountainous region, a major strategy was the wholesale destruction of indigenous Mayan villages and communities. As the army bombed, strafed and burned village after village with israeli planes and napalm, and other flame-producing chemicals, civilians their animals, communal lands and homes, whole villages were burnt to the ground and obliterated.  Destroyed were growing fields and seed strains that had been developed and improved continuously over thousands of years.

By 1983 the military’s counter-insurgency program resulted in an estimated 45,000 dead, and one million, mostly indigenous Mayans who comprise a majority of Guatemala’s eight million people, in internal exile.  Another 100,000 refugees fled into Mexico while others either starved to death, or were forced to enter the army’s israeli inspired “model villages” in the Playa Grade military zone.   In these “model villages” the indigenous Indian population were forced to grow cash crops such as snow peas and broccoli for export to foreign countries.

Perhaps these “model villages” are better described as factory farms where Mayan survivors were forced to grow nontraditional exports rather than their traditional crops.  In the process, tens of thousands died and Mayan culture severely jeopardized. Several sources reported that work in the “model villages” was not performed for wages, but in exchange for staple foods – the very corn and beans the “inmates” were no longer allowed to grow for themselves. The military was the sole marketing agent for the villages’ produce.

Jane Hunter in her book Israeli Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central America noted that Air Force Colonel Eduardo Wohlers had visited israel and studied the elements of agricultural production on the kibbutz, a distorted version of which were introduced into Guatemala with israeli technical assistance as “model villages”.

“…The comprehensive manner in which villages are governed has disrupted traditional lines of authority. Previous systems of settling disputes and selecting leaders have no meaning in this context.

The forced relocation has wrenched the indigenous people from their land, from which they drew much of their identity, where they buried their dead and the umbilical cords of their children.  Being forced to grow alien crops in the place of the corn which occupies a central place in Mayan culture is, as the military is no doubt aware, a deliberate act of cultural destruction.” [Page 121]

As late as 1988 it was reported that the military’s strategy of forced population control continued with some 600,000 – 800,000 mostly from the indigenous population were in the “civilian defense patrols.”  One of the most oppressive features of the pacification program was the “civilian self-defense patrols” whose ranks were filled by coercion, with most joining out a fear of being called subversive, and thus marked for torture or execution. The patrols are believed by most analysts to have been suggested by the israelis.

Milton Jamail and Margo Gutierrez wrote in It’s No Secret: Israel’s Military Involvement in Central America,

“The Guatemalan government, in facing a broad based popular movement, had come to resemble the israelis on the West Bank and Gaza: they are an occupying army.  They must use force to stop dissent, but also need to plan for the more long-range effort of social control.  Thus the israeli plans at home provide a prototype for solving Guatemala’s problems.” [page 57]

On November 12^th 1985, Ha’aretz published Victor Perera’s “Guatemala, an israeli Dream Turned Nightmare” which provided a glimpse of israel’s operations post 1977 when israel had been the main foreign participant in what has been called the “Hidden Holocaust”.  Perera’s article laid bare the scope of israeli assistance to the Guatemalan regime: major arms deliveries of Galil assault rifles, Arava counterinsurgency planes, armored cars and assorted gear that kept the Guatemalan military in business after the Carter Administration had banned military aid to Guatemala.

In a February 1983 news report on Guatemala, CBS anchorman Dan Rather stated: “israel has helped that Central American country wage a war with no questions asked.”  Rather added that israel had provided Guatemala with automatic weapons, helmets, troops transports, and other equipment. “And they didn’t send down congressmen, human rights activists or priests.  They taught the Guatemalans how to build an air base.  They set up their intelligence network, tried and tested on the West Bank and Gaza, designed simply to beat the guerrilla.”

An important component of israel’s contribution to Guatemalan counter-insurgency offensive was the development of a computerized system for processing police data.  According to some reports, the electronic technology provided by israel enabled the surveillance on 80% of the Guatemalan population, with names and other information stored in a computer system maintained and operated by israelis.

Another computer system made by Tadiran measured the usage of water, electricity and telephone, enabling the military to pinpoint and raid houses where there was a high or unusual level of activity.  Starting in 1980 residents of Guatemala City have had their water and electricity monitored by this israeli computer.  Interestingly the computer system was located behind Guatemala’s National Palace, and was linked to a complex of intelligence gathering and storage facilities.  In 1981, Amnesty International charged that the whole network of offices and installations was under the direct supervision of then-President Romeo Lucas Garcia, who along with other top officials was responsible for selecting victims and carrying out “death squad” executions.

Planning Genocide and War Crimes

israeli advisors are known to have trained the Guatemalan airforce and army special forces – Kaibils, and the intelligence services.  Elisabeth Malkin in the New York Times of December 4, 2009 reported that included in military files entered into evidence against Montt, were almost 200 pages of platoon reports, each repeating a similar story:

…”A military patrol enters a Mayan village in the region of El Quiché in the summer of 1982. The soldiers capture anybody who does not flee in time and “eliminate” anybody who tried to escape.  Then they burn the house, destroy the crops and kill the livestock. … A woman was found hiding in a ditch and realizing her presence, the point man fired, killing her and two ‘chocolates.’” ‘Chocolates’ were two children she was protecting.

Malkin quotes Kate Doyle, Director of the Guatemala Documentation Project with the National Security Archive in Washington DC, as calling the secret military file “the record of a deliberate policy of murder and mayhem”.

There is on-line access to the Guatemala Documentation Project, as well as numerous links to other resources. Of particular interest is should readers be interested in finding out more about the genocide in Guatemala. Oddly, there is no mention of israel’s participation in the genocide.

The United Nations backed two “Truth Commissions” and sponsored reports Memory of Silence and the 1998 Catholic Church’s report Guatemala Never Again found that over 200,000 people were killed in Guatemala, and 45,000 disappeared.  The report also found that 90% of the acts of violence were perpetrated by the military or paramilitary forces, 3% by armed revolutionaries, and 3% by unidentifiable authors.  The report details some on the cruelty committed by agents of the State, especially by the Army in their operations against Mayan communities.  It documents 626 massacres by State security forces, the vast majority carried out against Mayan communities and noted:

“… Acts such as the killing of defenseless children, often by beating them against walls or throwing them alive into pits where the corpses of adults were later thrown; the amputation of limbs; the impaling of victims; the killing of persons by covering them in petrol and burning them alive; the extraction, in the presence of others, of the viscera of victims who were still alive; the confinement of people who had been mortally wounded, in agony for days; the opening of wombs of pregnant women, and other similarly atrocious acts, were not only actions of extreme cruelty against the victims, but also morally degraded the perpetrators and who inspired, ordered or tolerated these actions.

“But what can I answer to him?”

The Guatemalan Special Forces, known as the Kaibils, is especially renowned for brutality and has been repeatedly implicated in the genocide that occurred during Mott’s rule. While prison sentences amounting to 12,120 years have been handed down to 5 Kaibils to date, the last being Pedro Pimentel on March 13, 2012, what of the elements that trained and armed the soldiers?  Where are the names of israeli individuals, both military and civilian that planned the battlefield operations?  Where are the names of israeli government officials who maintained diplomatic and covert relations with Montt and other Guatemalan dictators.  Are the roles played by israel’s military industrial complex not at least accountable as those German companies who employed and exploited slave labor during World War II?

While there are hundreds of similar stories throughout the region where israel has been involved in giving aid and comfort to military junta, they apparently have had no effect on israeli rulers, citizens or financial backers. israeli officers are known to have formed and trained the ‘death squads’ in El Salvador, which have been responsible for an estimated 20–30,000 murder of leftist dissidents.

There is an extraordinary episode reported by Mickey Z in Counterpunch on July 07, 2004.  In mid 1985, Yoav Karni writing in Ha’aretz put to rest any exalted expectations of the revered moralist Elie Wiesel.  Wiesel received a letter from a Nobel Prize Laureate documenting israel’s contributions to the atrocities in Guatemala, and suggested that he use his considerable influence to put a stop to israel’s practice of arming neo-nazis.  Wiesel it seems “sighed” and admitted to Karni that he did not reply to that particular letter.  “I usually answer at once,” Wiesel explained, “But what can I answer to him?”

A shallow response from a man who claims to speak with “moral authority” for a “nation” populated with thousands of Holocaust survivors.

[8] And Zuckerberg said Let there be Help Center and a Facebook Team _ [9] And let them deny Facebook users any kind of REAL assistance _ [10] So Zuckerberg created the Help Center_ [11] And he divided the Facebook users which were under the Help Center from the Facebook Team which was above the Help Center_ [12] And it was so _ [13] And Zuckerberg called the Facebook Team ‘Unavailable’ _ [14] And the evening and the morning were still only the second year! : \

[15] And Zuckerberg said_ Let there be Unanswered Questions_ [16] And let them gather in one place called Forums_ [17] And let there be Ominious Silence from Facebook in the Forums also _ [18] And it was so _ [19] Then Zuckerberg said_ Let there be Groups formed from Facebook users_ [20] And let these Groups have Admins who shall have no clearer understanding of Help Center than their Group members _ [21] And it came to pass that Facebook users had their accounts Blocked for No Reason_ [22] So they could not even ask Unanswered Questions from the Help Center _ [23] But Zuckerberg smiled on them saying_ Let the Facebook Team be Completely Inaccessible except through Facebook _ [24] And it was so _

[25] And it came to pass that Facebook users filed Lawsuits to get their personal stuff back _ [26] And Facebook lost the Battle against the Lawsuits [27] and Darkness was upon the face of Zuckerberg _ [28] So that after the Battle against the Suits Zuckerberg went forth and created Facebook Upgrades [29] And new Security Rules to punish the Facebook users_ [30] Saying unto them ‘Vengeance is Mine!’ >: (

[31] Then Zuckerberg created the ‘like’ button but not the ‘dislike’ button _ [32] So that the Facebook users must ‘like’ everything on Facebook _ [33] But it was not so _  [34] And he made the Dark and Lonely Underworld called ‘Complaints Page’ [35] Saying unto the Facebook Team “You must Never Ever go there!” [36] And “Give unto the Commercial Interests the Top Priority from Now even unto All Eternity” [37] And so the Facebook Team obeyed Zuckerberg_ [38] and Zuckerberg was brought into the Lists of Fortune 500 [39] And the evening and the morning were called Facebook 2pointO

[40] But the Facebook Upgrades had multiplied until they were Legion [41] And the Children of the Upgrades were called Facebook Glitches [42] And the Glitches went forth to wreak havoc over all the Social Network [43] And Zuckerberg saw that it was good >: )

[44] Yet still Zuckerberg was displeased and many times did change the Security Rules and added unto them many more thereof [45] Until they were measured Beyond Number _ [46] And it came to pass that amongst the Facebook users there was much weeping and a gnashing of teeth _ [47] And on their Home Pages Zuckerberg created Sort buttons [48] So that Facebook friends could no longer find each other _ [49] And Zuckerberg created Pages which weren’t like Groups_ [50] And then they were! [51] But still Zuckerburg was displeased_ and thus he  created new Timelines which were for Facebook users and Pages alike _

[52] And it came to pass that fully Homogenized Facebook was Total Crap!

(but still no-one knows if on the seventh day Zuckerberg will finally Give It A Rest!) >: \