Andaman Islands

Jarawa people of the Andaman Islands

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Andaman Islands (अंडमान द्वीप) form an archipelago in the Bay of Bengal between India, to the west, and Myanmar, to the north and east. Most are part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Union Territory of India, while a small number in the north of the archipelago, including the Coco Islands, belong to Myanmar.

The Andaman Islands are home to the only known paleolithic people, the Sentinelese people, who have had no contact with any other people.

Early inhabitants

The Andaman islands have been inhabited for several thousand years, at the very least. The earliest archaeological evidence yet documented goes back some 2,200 years; however, the indications from genetic, cultural and isolation studies suggests that the islands may have been inhabited as early as the Middle Paleolithic. The indigenous Andamanese people appear to have lived on the islands in substantial isolation from that time until the 18th century CE.


The Andamans are theorized to be a key stepping stone in a great coastal migration of humans from Africa via the Arabian peninsula, along the coastal regions of the Indian mainland and towards Southeast Asia, Japan and Oceania.

The name of the Andaman Islands is ancient. A theory that became prevalent in the late 19th century is that it derives from Andoman, the Malay form of Hanuman, the Sanskrit name of the Indian God.

Chola empire

From 800 to 1200 CE, the Tamil Chola dynasty created an empire that eventually extended from southeastern peninsular India to parts of Malaysia. Rajendra Chola I (1014 to 1042 CE) took over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and maintained them as a strategic naval base to launch a naval expedition against the Srivijaya empire (a Hindu-Malay empire based on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia).

Maratha empire

The Maratha admiral Kanhoji Angre used the Andamans as a base and "fought the British off these islands until his death in 1729."

Of the people who live in the Andaman Islands, a small minority of about 1,000 are the so-called Andamanese, the aboriginal inhabitants (adivasi) of the islands. By the 1850s when they first came into sustained contact by outside groups, there were estimated 7,000 Adamanese, divided into the following major groups:

Great Andamanese

Jarawa
The Jarawa (also Järawa, Jarwa) are one of the Adivasi indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands in India. Their present numbers are estimated at between 250–400 individuals. Since they have largely shunned interactions with outsiders, many particulars of their society, culture and traditions are poorly understood. Their name means "people of the earth" or "hostile people" in Aka-Bea.

Along with other indigenous Andamanese peoples, they have inhabited the islands for at least several thousand years, and most likely a great deal longer. The Andaman Islands have been known to outsiders since antiquity; however, until quite recent times they were infrequently visited, and such contacts were predominantly sporadic and temporary. For the greater portion of their history their only significant contact has been with other Andamanese groups; the experience of such a lengthy period of isolation almost completely lacking in external cultural influences is equalled by few other groups in the world.[citation needed]

There is some indication that the Jarawa regarded the now-extinct Jangil tribe as a parent tribe from which they split centuries or millennia ago, even though the Jarawa outnumbered (and eventually out-survived) the Jangil.[2] The Jangil (also called the Rutland Island Aka Bea) were presumed extinct by 1931.[3]


The Jarawa are a designated Scheduled Tribe

Jangil (or Rutland Jarawa)

Onge

Sentinelese

As the numbers of settlers from the mainland increased (at first mostly prisoners and involuntary indentured laborers, later purposely recruited farmers), these indigenous people lost territory and numbers in the face of punitive expeditions by British troops, land encroachment and various epidemic diseases. Presently, there remain only approximately 400–450 indigenous Andamanese. The Jangil were soon extinct. The Great Andamanese were originally 10 distinct tribes with 5,000 people in total; most of the tribes are extinct, and the survivors, now just 52, speak mostly Hindi.[32] The Onge are reduced to less than 100 people. Only the Jarawa and Sentinelese still maintain a steadfast independence and refuse most attempts at contact; their numbers are uncertain but estimated to be in the low hundreds.

Jarawa

Jarawa

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: What Donald Trump and ISIS Have in Common

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: 

What Donald Trump and ISIS Have in Common

TIME columnist Abdul-Jabbar is a six-time NBA champion and league Most Valuable Player. He is also a celebrated author, filmmaker and education ambassador whose life and career are the subject of Minority of One, a new documentary on HBO Sports.

The 2016 candidate has more in common with the terrorist group than he does with America

The terrorist campaign against American ideals is winning. Fear is rampant. Gun sales are soaring. Hate crimes are increasing. Bearded hipsters are being mistaken for Muslims. And 83 percent of voters believe a large-scale terrorist attack is likely here in the near future. Some Americans are now so afraid that they are willing to trade in the sacred beliefs that define America for some vague promises of security from the very people who are spreading the terror. “Go ahead and burn the Constitution — just don’t hurt me at the mall.” That’s how effective this terrorism is.

I’m not talking about ISIS. I’m talking about Donald Trump.

This is not hyperbole. Not a metaphor. Webster defines terrorism as “the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal; the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.”

If violence can be an abstraction — and it can; that’s what a threat is — the Trump campaign meets this definition. Thus, Trump is ISIS’s greatest triumph: the perfect Manchurian Candidate who, instead of offering specific and realistic policies, preys on the fears of the public, doing ISIS’s job for them. Even fellow Republican Jeb Bush acknowledged Trump’s goal is “to manipulate people’s angst and fears.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, however, defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” Now, we don’t require by law that our candidates tell the truth. They can retweet (as Trump did) racist “statistics” from a white supremacist fictional organization that claimed 81% of murdered whites are victims of blacks, when the truth is 84% of whites are murdered by whites. They can claim (as Trump did) to have seen on TV thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering on 9/11, even though there is no evidence of this. They can say (as Trump did) Syrian refugees are “pouring” into the country when only 2,000 have come (out of 4.3 million U.N.-registered refugees). Then, when caught lying (as Trump has been over and over), they can do what every belligerent child does: deny, deny, deny.

While Trump is not slaughtering innocent people, he is exploiting such acts of violence to create terror here to coerce support. As I have written before, his acts could be interpreted as hate crimes. He sounds the shrill alarm of impending doomsday even though since 9/11, about 30 Americans a year have been killed in terrorist attacks worldwide — as The Atlantic pointed out, “roughly the same number as are crushed to death each year by collapsing furniture.” Trump’s irresponsible, inflammatory rhetoric and deliberate propagation of misinformation have created a frightened and hostile atmosphere that could embolden people to violence. He’s the swaggering guy in old Westerns buying drinks for everyone in the saloon while whipping them up for a lynching.

About 30,000 foreign fighters have gone into Syria to join ISIS, thousands of them from Europe and at least 250 from the United States. What most of us in these bountiful countries can’t understand is how our young, raised with such opportunity, choose to abandon our values to embrace a culture of pitiless violence. Before going, many of these recruits spend much of their time on social media being brainwashed by propaganda videos. One 23-year-old woman, a devout Christian and Sunday school teacher, was recruited via Skype. The recruiter spent hours with the lonely woman teaching her the rituals of Islam. Maybe that’s because, according to some psychologists, the brain’s default setting is simply to believe because it takes extra work to analyze information.

The same process works for Trump’s supporters. They are impervious to facts or truth because their (understandable) frustration and anger at partisan greed and incompetence have fatigued them out of critical thinking. Like deranged newscaster Howard Beale in Network, they are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore. To express their outrage, they have rallied around a so-called “outsider” with no political experience, no detailed policies, and whacky ideas that subvert the very Constitution that he would be required to swear to uphold. Electing him would be like asking the clown at a child’s birthday party to start juggling chainsaws.

But understanding and even having sympathy for his followers’ feelings of political impotence doesn’t excuse their dangerous behavior. There is never an excuse for people blindly following a leader who consistently lies to them, who exaggerates threats and who proposes remedies that are unconstitutional. It’s shameful enough that Trump’s solutions run contrary to American values, but it’s more shameful that his followers refuse to acknowledge it. Such brainwashed behavior is demeaning to them and harmful to the country. Perhaps that’s why Trump enjoys the endorsement of several white supremacist groups, one of which proclaimed on their website: “Heil Donald Trump—The Ultimate Savior” and called for him to “Make America White Again!” Don’t worry — he’s trying his hardest.

Trump’s latest enemy du jour are Muslims. He’s the schoolyard bully rallying classmates to make fun of the skinny kid with glasses. When President Obama said that “Muslim-Americans are our friends and our neighbors; our co-workers, our sports heroes,” Trump quickly tweeted: “What sport is he talking about, and who?” The press immediately provided him with a list, as well as photos of Trump with prominent Muslim-American sports figures, including Shaquille O’Neal, Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali and, yes, me. What makes his statement even more insidious is the suggestion that, even if there were no Muslim sports heroes, Muslims would somehow be lesser people, less worthy. This cruel and dim-witted thinking is not the stuff presidents are made of.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar poses with Donald Trump. 

My manager Deborah Morales and I with Trump several years ago, before he forgot there are Muslim athletes

Photo provided by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Trump’s claims that he might support registering Muslims as well as call for a ban of Muslims from entering the United States — even U.S. citizens abroad — have elevated him to the level of a James Bond super-villain. And like those villains, he is doomed to failure. Even former Vice-President Dick Cheney condemned Trump: his proposals go “against everything we stand for and believe.”
There’s absolutely no evidence that his unconstitutional ideas would help in any way—quite the opposite. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson criticized Trump’s proposal as “irresponsible, probably illegal, unconstitutional and contrary to international law, un-American, and will actually hurt our efforts at homeland security.”

One of my favorite poems is “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats, in which he describes, in a chillingly obtuse and mystical way, a second coming — not of Christ, but of something much darker and sinister:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

When I read the description of the beast, it’s “gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,” I can’t help but think of Trump and his cynical strategy of using misinformation, half-truths and deception in order to gain access to a position that should only be held by those who would be repulsed by that strategy.


Indeed, what rough beast slouches toward Washington to be born?

Meanwhile, Muhammad Ali released a statement that, while not directly naming Trump, referenced “political leaders” misleading the public about Islam:

I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world. True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.

We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda. They have alienated many from learning about Islam. True Muslims know or should know that it goes against our religion to try and force Islam on anybody.

Speaking as someone who has never been accused of political correctness, I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.

Terrorist: Christian, Muslim or Other- You’re 7 Times More Likely To Be Killed By A Conservative Terrorist Than A Muslim Extremist

If you’ve been listening to the vitriol spewed by the Right — and even if you haven’t — you’ve probably heard whispers that ISIS is sneaking terrorists into the country as Syrian refugees. While this is not in any way true, our conservative friends absolutely believe it, and their politicians — Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Carson, and the rest of the Clown Car™ — absolutely capitalize on the opportunity to demonize Muslims, all while completely ignoring the true terrorist threat: crazy white people.

“We have no idea who these people are, we are the worst when it comes to paperwork,” Trump said of refugees from Syria who are fleeing ISIS in mid-November. “This could be one of the great Trojan horses.” The billionaire adamantly declared that “we cannot let them into this country, period,” because refugees represent a “problem.”

This is a sentiment that has become quite popular with the Right — keep them out, they’re dangerous, they’re going to kill us. After all, we have more important problems — like Planned Parenthood, Benghazi, and whatever nonissue conservatives insist on pretending is an impending threat to America. One very real issue that conservatives all ignore is the threat the Right poses, a threat far greater than any Muslim — one that was very recently placed on full display by Robert Lewis Dear’s attack on a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado.

Dear, a Christian conservative, killed three and injured nine in his terrifying attack, in which he set up propane tanks in the parking lot of the Planned Parenthood and went in shooting. Desperate conservatives, in an effort to shield their violent and hateful rhetoric from any blame, have concocted a story of a bank robbery gone wrong in which the terrorist ducked into  Planned Parenthood to avoid the police, but that story has been disproved time and again. Some, like 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz, portray Dear as a “transgender leftist activist” because of a typographical error on his voter registration — another tale that is, of course, utter and complete bullshit. Perhaps conservatives are simply ignorant of literally everything — or maybe, just maybe, they don’t want you to realize that you are more than seven times more likely to be killed by a right-wing terrorist than one of their dreaded Muslims.
Conservatives are right about one thing — the United States faces an unprecedented and growing terrorist threat. To understand the nature of this threat, you need only do one thing: look in the mirror…unless you’re not white; in that case, find a picture of a white person and look at it. There’s your terrorist.


A survey conducted by the New York Times with the  Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies revealed something startling: 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdictions while only 39 percent listed “Islamic” extremism. In fact, only three percent listed Muslim extremism as a “severe” problem while seven percent said anti-government extremism is a severe issue. The Times notes that, when compared to right-wing extremism, Islamic terrorism is a minor problem: Despite public anxiety about extremists inspired by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, the number of violent plots by such individuals has remained very low. Since 9/11, an average of nine American Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six terrorism-related plots against targets in the United States. Most were disrupted, but the 20 plots that were carried out accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.

In contrast, right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities, according to a study by Arie Perliger, a professor at the United States Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. The toll has increased since the study was released in 2012.

Other data sets, using different definitions of political violence, tell comparable stories. The Global Terrorism Database maintained by the Start Center at the University of Maryland includes 65 attacks in the United States associated with right-wing ideologies and 24 by Muslim extremists since 9/11. The International Security Program at the New America Foundation identifies 39 fatalities from “non-jihadist” homegrown extremists and 26 fatalities from “jihadist” extremists.
“Meanwhile, terrorism of all forms has accounted for a tiny proportion of violence in America,” the authors note. “There have been more than 215,000 murders in the United States since 9/11. For every person killed by Muslim extremists, there have been 4,300 homicides from other threats.”

Conservatives can continue to fear monger away about the “threat” presented by Syrian refugees all they want, but the fact is that of 784,000 refugees settled in the United States since 9/11, only three have been charged with plotting a terrorist attack. Meanwhile, we deal with white terrorists like Dylann Roof, Jerad and Amanda Miller, and Robert Lewis Dear.


Watch a report on the dangers presented by right-wing extremism, below:

Papantonio: Right Wing Extremism Kills People

AUTHOR: JOHN PRAGER NOVEMBER 30, 2015 3:06 PM

Mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif.; multiple victims, suspects at large

By ABC7.com staff
Updated 7 mins ago
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (KABC) -- Law enforcement officials have identified Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik as two suspects in a San Bernardino mass shooting that killed 14 people on Wednesday.

FULL DETAILS: 14 people killed in shooting at Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino

Police said Farook, 28, was U.S. born and worked as an environmental inspector for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health for five years.

Malik, 27, was married or engaged to Farook, according to officials.

Police said Farook and Malik were killed in a gun battle with police after the shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino.

Officials said Farook attended a banquet held at the center by the department of public health, but left angry.

MORE: Father receives text message from daughter during San Bernardino mass shooting

Shortly after, that's when police said the shooting that killed 14 people and injured 17 happened.

It was earlier believed that a third suspect may have been involved and police detained a person spotted running nearby where Farook and Malik were killed.

Police said later Wednesday evening that they now have reason to believe that Farook and Malik were the only shooters involved.

The brother-in-law of Farook said he was stunned to hear of his relative's involvement in the shooting.

Farhan Khan, who is married to the sister of Farook, spoke to reporters at the Anaheim office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

MORE: San Bernardino Inland Regional Center Shooting - What We Know

Khan said he last spoke to Farook about a week ago. He added that he had "absolutely no idea why he would do this. I am shocked myself."

Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the couple left their baby with family Wednesday morning and never returned.

Officers were investigating a home in Redlands, which is believed to be connected to Farook and Malik.


The Associated Press contributed to this report

San Bernardino Shooting: Reports of Up to 12 Dead at Center for Developmentally Disabled, Official Sources Say

There were reports of up to 12 people dead in a shooting Wednesday in San Bernardino, California, according to various official sources.

The San Bernardino Fire Department has reported that they were responding to reports of 20 people being shot at the Inland Regional Center, a facility that cares for the people with developmental disabilities.

Marybeth Feild, the president and CEO of the Inland Regional Center, told the Associated Press that the shooting took place near a building that houses a library and conference center where at least 25 people work.



According to the San Bernardino Sheriff, authorities were searching for one to three suspects. The suspects were heavily armed and were possibly wearing body armor, according to San Bernardino police spokeswoman Sgt. Vicki Cervantes.


The FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have both confirmed to ABC News that they are responding to the shooting.

A White House spokesman confirmed to ABC News that President Obama has been briefed on the situation by Homeland Security advisor Lisa Monaco while in Paris for the climate summit,

A man whose wife works at the Inland Regional Center said that his wife saw a man she believed to be a shooter.


"The guy came in next to her office and I guess started shooting," said the man, who identified himself to KABC as Marc.

A swat team arrives at the scene of a shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., Dec. 2, 2015.

What we know so far:

*Police responded to reports of an active shooter at an Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Calif., Wednesday afternoon.

*There were initial reports of at least 3-12 dead and 20 others injured, officials said.

*Eyewitnesses said they saw as many as three gunmen, according to the San Bernardino Police Department.

*The suspects were wearing what appeared to be ski masks and vests, witnesses said.

*Witnesses also said the alleged gunmen left the scene in a black SUV.

*FBI and ATF agents are working to clear the building.

*Bomb technicians were called to inspect a suspicious device.


*President Obama has been briefed on the situation, according to the White House.

Sources: Dylan Stableford Yahoo News

             By MEGHAN KENEALLY ABC News Dec 2, 2015, 4:03 PM ET 

Click here for Yahoo News Live

Click here for ABC NEWS

So frequent are these mass shootings that it may seem normal, but it is not. We cannot accept this as normal. 

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