Free Republic

The president of the Portuguese Association of Archeological Research (APIA), Nuno Ribeiro, revealed Monday having found rock art on the island of Terceira, supporting his believe that human occupation of the Azores predates the arrival of the Portuguese by many thousands of years, Lusa reported. "We have found a rock art site with representations we believe can be dated back to the Bronze Age," Ribeiro told Lusa in Ponta Delgada, at a presentation in University of the Azores on the topic of early human occupation of the Azores. The oldest cave art known in Europe is of prehistoric origin, dating...

History books tell us that Portuguese navigators found the Azores islands uninhabited in the middle of the Atlantic during the early 1400s. But some intriguing constructions suggest that people occupied this area long before.So, who was this civilisation, and why did they leave?Was the Azores home to an ancient civilisation? | Next Stop Stories | BBC Reel | October 28, 2022

Gibraltar finally joined the official list of British cities on Monday (Aug 29), after 180 years in which its status, granted by Queen Victoria, had been overlooked due to an administrative error. The British overseas territory bid to become a city earlier this year as part of the celebrations for Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee, but research in the National Archives established it had in fact been granted city status in 1842. "It is excellent to see official recognition given to the City of Gibraltar, a huge accolade to its rich history and dynamism," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in...

The islands’ pioneers likely arrived centuries before European conquest, as part of a large-scale movement of people from North Africa. Today the Canary Islands are a tourist hub, a volcanic archipelago with palm trees and azure beaches, located off the coast of Morocco and governed by Spain. But the history of this paradise is marred by the brutal conquest, enslavement and treatment of its indigenous people by European colonizers beginning around the 15th century. Although scientists know a fair bit about the fate of the islands’ original inhabitants, much is unknown about their origins. Some scholars have debated whether the...

A team of Spanish and Portuguese researchers has carried out molecular genetic analysis of the Y chromosome (transmitted only by males) of the aboriginal population of the Canary Islands to determine their origin and the extent to which they have survived in the current population. The results suggest a North African origin for these paternal lineages which, unlike maternal lineages, have declined to the point of being practically replaced today by European lineages... Although contribution is now mainly European, scientists state that North African and Sub-Saharan contribution was higher in the 17th and 18th centuries. The explanation as to why...

Archaeological and genetic analysis may indicate that three skeletons buried in medieval graves in France may have been Muslim, according to a study published February 24, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Yves Gleize from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) and University of Bordeaux, France, Fanny Mendisco from University of Bordeaux, France, and colleagues. The rapid Arab-Islamic conquest during the early Middle Ages led to major political and cultural changes in the Mediterranean. Although the early medieval Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula is well documented, scientists have less evidence of the Muslim expansion...

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

There they go again. The story is so old already. Arab militia or Arab army or Arab terrorist attacks non-Arab. Or was that Muslim fanatic attacks non-Muslim? This time, it's happening in Sudan. While we're sitting and talking, probably a few hundred more black Africans in Sudan have starved to death, or been brutally killed, raped, enslaved, or simply pushed off their land by 7th century Arab imperialist invaders, or more rightly "Arab settlers". Oh yes, that's right. "Arab settlers". Like the ones Saddam Hussein brought into Kurdistan - i.e., the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq - in the 1970s...

'Arab Spring': The chilly cruel winter reality of Arab racism and Islamic bigotry Not that ethnic racism and religious bigotry weren't rampant before the so-called "Arab spring" sprung about. But the intolerance tide seems to be only worsening, and without an Arab dictator to "hold" various factions together, vulnerability expand, risks rise. --- RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY: As the D.B. puts it: "Violence Against Egypt's Copts in an Intolerant Arab Spring.. The elephant in the room of the Arab Spring is now the mistreatment of minority communities—Christians and others—across the Arab world." FPM asks: Hillary Clinton Promises to Save Egypt's Christians? ......

YAFRAN, Libya — For centuries, Jews lived among the Berbers of Yafran, observing the Sabbath at the synagogue of Ghriba, but they suddenly left 63 years ago, and their land in Libya remains untouched. Every hamlet around Yafran bears the mark of the Libyan Jews, who arrived in the country 2,300 years ago and, until their departure soon after Israel's creation in 1948, constituted half the city's population. Everywhere, the ruins of their homes still cling to the mountainside. Some were lived in, others subsumed by the Berber population. Time has taken its toll, but the houses remain untouched and...

...12-year jail terms to two men convicted of killing popular Algerian singer Lounes Matoub, an avid Berber campaigner... gunned down aged 42 near the Kabylie region's capital Tizi Ouzou... June 25, 1998... their lawyers, along with the singer's family, demanded the "real" perpetrators be identified... the artist's sister Malika Matoub... demanded that Hassan Hattab, a leader of the armed extremist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, who claimed responsibility for the killing, appear in court instead... Matoub's murder caused an uproar in Algeria and came during a civil war between Islamic extremists and the security forces. Matoub's widow Nadia has...

Non-Arab and/or non-Muslims in the "Arab" worldOne key element missing from the discussion is the question of non-Arab and/or non-Muslims in the "Arab" world.  The Arab nationalists have succeeded in establishing some 23 non-democratic, ethnically (Arab) and religiously (Islam) defined nation-states in over 1 million square miles of territory, often at the expense of non-Arabs, such as the Kurds (Muslims, non-Arabs), Assyrians (Christians, non-Arabs), Copts (Christians, non-Arabs), southern Sudanese (Christian and pagan non-Arabs), Maronite Lebanese (Christian and mostly identified with their Phoenician ancestors) and Mizrahi Jews.  Arab nationalist ideology claims all this territory exclusively as "Arab" despite the legitimate claims...

'Berbers, Where Do You Stand on "Palestine"?' Moroccan Islamist Daily: "Amazighs of Morocco, Where Do You Stand on Palestine?" On January 15, the Moroccan pro-Hamas Islamist daily Al-Tajdid published a column by Hassan Bouikhf titled "Amazighs of Morocco, Where Do You Stand on Palestine?" The article took to task Berber activist groups that did not show support for the Palestinians in Gaza: February 26, 2009 No. 2262 Columnist Ahmed 'Asid: We Don't March Because Islamists and Pan-Arabists Have Monopolized the Public SphereColumnist Ahmed 'Asid responded to Al-Tajdid's accusations in the Moroccan Bayan Al-Yawm daily on January 23, 2009: "…We know...

Fascism in the Arab world - Pan-Arabism, etc. (Part 4)   Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege... by Elizabeth Thompson - 2000 - History - 402 pages...pan Syrianism... pan Arabism... najjada... Lebanese...The fascist nature of the groupshttp://books.google.com/books?id=5L7QGODjdEkC&pg=RA1-PA193   The Baath Party and FascismThe Ba’ath Party and Fascism. (Leadership Cult). ...Unity has taken the form of a pan- Arabism that envisions the elimination of artificial boundaries fixed by imperial powers after the First World War and the foundation of a single Arab State. The nationalism of the Ba'ath calls for an unquestioning faith: a questioning of reason, a doubting of Party...

The Middle East - Page 89 by Library Information and Research Service - Middle East - 1999 After Sayyid Jamal, in Arabic countries and especially in Egypt, many individuals were found who, by leaning on racism, Arabism and pan-Arabism, ...http://books.google.com/books?id=Ma1tAAAAMAAJ&q=arabismA New Road for France - Page 30 by Jacques Soustelle, Benjamin Protter - Political Science - 1965 - 278 pagesIsrael and French Algeria were... two barriers against which the totalitarian wave.. embodied by Nasser... a dictatorial pseudo-state type was created in Algeria, firmly tied to a single party, dominated by the racist ideology of a Nasser-type pan-Arabism and by the...

Rabat, Morocco - Some years ago, a visitor to the Moroccan capital Rabat was unlikely to be reminded of the nation's Amazigh (Berber) component by other than touristic details such as water sellers in colourful costumes, with their brass cups and jangling bells. Today, however, researchers interested in the Amazigh people can visit the imposing building housing the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) in a sign that the authorities' traditional lack of interest is giving way to a more inclusive attitude. "Amazigh culture is part of the Moroccan national heritage," IRCAM director Ahmed Boukouss says in his large office...

The mountains of northern Algeria have long sheltered outlaws, but it's not just rugged terrain that draws Al-Qaeda to ravines and forests. The local Berber people's alienation from the Arab-dominated government of the OPEC member makes the steep slopes of Kabylie a congenial base for the toughest rebel force in north Africa. That reality means blind eyes are sometimes turned to the guerrilla outsiders' presence by a population that shares little of their religious fundamentalist ideology. Diplomats say the resulting denial of intelligence to the state poses a transnational security threat that extends from Kabylie, just 90 minutes' drive east...

BERIANE, Algeria (Reuters) - Hundreds of Algerian security forces were deployed in the town of Beriane on Sunday to try to end three nights of clashes between Arabs and minority Berbers, the worst urban unrest in the OPEC producer in months. Residents said two people, including a 67-year-old, man have been killed and dozens made homeless since the disturbances involving rival gangs of hooded young men broke out in this north Saharan town of about 35,000 on Thursday evening. "They burn our houses, steal and kill. The hatred has made them blind," Slimane Baaziz, 51, a member of the Mozabite...

Rabat - A Moroccan court Thursday banned an Amazigh party on the grounds that the law did not allow parties based on religion, language or ethnicity, judicial sources said Thursday. The court in Rabat confirmed the earlier decision of the Interior Ministry, which had refused to recognize the Democratic Amazigh Moroccan Party (PDAM), which had been established in July. None of the other parties showed solidarity towards the PDAM, largely because the party had championed the full normalization of Morocco's relations with Israel. The founder of the PDAM, Ahmed Dgharni, sparked a scandal in December by visiting Tel Aviv for...

No mystery as to why Christian missionaries might be having their greatest success in the Kabyle. In Algeria, that remains the Berber heartland. It is where the Berbers, that is those who were not forcibly transformed, during the centuries of Arab rule (interrupted by 132 years of French rule) into "Arabs" (how many of those "Arabs" who now persecute the Berbers realize that they themselves are a generation, or two, or five removed from their clearly Berber origins?) The cause of the Berbers is hardly known in this country. The writer Kateb Yacine, a Berber who refused to write in...