Excavations highlight early Christians' penchant for burying stuff in the sand

From the needle-in-a-haystack department, Israeli excavators stumbled upon a 2,000-year-old gold earring near the Old City walls of Jerusalem.

2,000 years, eh? Why does that sound familiar? What was going on in Jerusalem two thou- oh my God! Could it be... His?

Men have been wearing earrings since, uh, pre-Christian times. Some pagans thought that earrings protected the mind by guarding the ear cavity against invading evil spirits. The ancient Persians just thought they looked hip. When Jay-C was preaching his radical message about faith, love and hope, He was probably trying to appeal to the hip crowd, too. And He was all about keeping out the jinns.

Call it a hunch.

Meanwhile, from impossibly small things found in the sand to impossibly large things kept hidden all these years, archaeologists in Syria just discovered a 1,200-year-old, nearly 700,000 cubic-foot church buried in the desert outside of Damascus.

What is really spectacular about the find, aside from the fact that a colossal cathedral went undetected for twelve centuries' worth of human curiosity and scavenging, is that the site where it was found - Palmyra - is one of the most heavily excavated (and rewarding, to the visitor) digs in the Middle East.

Archaeologists have found pottery shards, gold chains, glassware, oil lamps, gravestones... yes, even earrings. And only now an entire church!

Saved by the [lack of a] Bell

"The Syrian economy, out of all the regional economies, has been least affected by this [global financial] crisis... The Syrian financial market is yet to be born, and the financial institutions and banks are still in their infancy, the capital of which is mostly domestic..."

- Syrian Finance Minister Dr. Mohammed al-Hussein, in an op-ed from the Syrian pro-gov't daily al-Thawra, commenting on how Syria's defence against the domino effect of the financial market crisis is, um, its grossly underdeveloped financial market.
[See further comment from Asharq Alawsat here.]

Canada mum on Darfur militant in Sudanese government

There’s been no official word yet from the Government of Canada in response to the Sudanese Arab government naming Musa Hilal – a janjaweed militia leader with known ties to the atrocities in Darfur – as a special advisor to the government in the Ministry of Federal (i.e. internal) Affairs.

First reported by the London-based Arabic daily asharq alawsat January 19, Musa Hilal’s official position in the government remains ambiguous, but his very presence underscores the level of commitment (or lack thereof) that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has toward resolving a conflict that has left more than 200,000 people dead in an ethnic cleansing in Darfur since 2003.

Human Rights Watch and international observers in Darfur accuse Musa Hilal of organizing raids on civilians and refugees in Darfur, and there is proof from eyewitness accounts that Hilal has been present at the scene of Darfur atrocities, as reported in the New York Times.

Hilal has also been implicated by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the atrocities in Darfur, though not formally charged with war crimes.

According to the online edition of the English Sudan Tribune, Musa Hilal is a convicted felon (armed robbery, 1998) who was released from prison in 2003 by top Sudanese government officials, apparently (one may only infer) to provide his services to the government in suppressing the uprising by the Sudanese Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, both non-Arab parties from the Darfur region struggling for more autonomy in western Sudan.

The last official word from Canada about Sudan came only two weeks ago, when Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier commented (“Canada urges all parties to negotiate in a spirit of compromise conducive to ongoing dialogue and reconciliation…”) on the third anniversary of the Naivasha Agreement, which ended the 20-year Second Civil War between Sudan’s Arab government and the black-African (ethnic Dinkas and others) Sudan People's Liberation Movement in the south of the country.

The anniversary, January 9, came a day after suspected janjaweed units attacked a UN supply convoy in western Darfur.

Should someone with Darfur’s blood on his hands be advising the Sudanese government about its policy toward, er, Darfur?