The Tel Aviv-Cairo-Riyad axis of terror

Famed research journalist Thierry Meyssan writes in Voltairenet (article available in Spanish, French and Italian - originally found in Eutsi in Spanish language) on the Gaza genocide. He does give a somewhat different viewpoint of what I have been reading so far, so guess it's worth a mention.

Meissan argues that some of the appointments of the new US President B. Obama have been recieved with dislike in Tel Aviv and that the attack against Gaza, coordinated with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, is an attempt to force Obama's hand.

It's been denounced (Petras called him the "first Jewish President") that Obama is strongly supported by the Israel Lobby, not just this last year but through all his political career. But Obama's base, the politically relevant one, does not just include Zionists but also realistic generals who are (common sense) tired of getting the US foreign policy dictated almost to the letter by Tel Aviv and who think it's about time that the inverse becomes true: that Tel Aviv is forced to make concessions in order to get peace and stability in the so-called Middle East. Some among these realists are even asking to include Syria and Iran in the Western bloc and, in order to achieve that, propose making reality the Oslo accords and giving Golan Heights back to Syria.

All this, Meyssan argues, would mean the end of the Zionist project of unlimited genocidal expansion, leaving it stuck in the 1967 borders (i.e. undoing all the de-facto gains of the last decades) and making it just another ally among many western-friendly West Asian countries. It's even possible it would be forced to get rid of its arsenal of WMD.

Meanwhile the radical Zionists, whose most important figure in the current US government is Hillary Clinton (a convert to Christian Zionism), want to consolidate the apartheid system normalizing the Israeli bantustan system for the Palestinians, who would get a formal recognition as autonomous Israeli protectorate.

In September and October 2008, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt held meetings in Cairo where they agreed that, in case of uncertainty for the Zionist project in Washington D.C., Israel would attack Gaza with Saudi financing, while Egypt would infiltrate paramilitary troops in the territory.

The Obama cabinet has ended being a mixture of tendencies: the state department is fully under Zionist control and the cabinet chief, Rahm Emmanuel, is an Israeli citizen (who with all lkehood informs Tel Aviv in real time of what happens in Washington) but the National Security Council and the ministry of defense is in the hands of Atlantist realists who are nowadays worried about uncontrolled Israeli activities causing disruption in the oil and gas supplies to the USA and Europe.

This one has been the first Israeli "war" (rather a masacre) not financed by the USA (though I can't help thinking on where did Madoff's money end) but by Saudi Arabia. This neo-medieval theocracy is worried about any kind of Islamic Fundamentalism it cannot control (read Hamas) and wants to supress it by any means at hand.

A defeat of this plot would leave Israel very much weakened anyhow, especially after two recent major defeats (Lebanon and Georgia).

On Europe, Meyssan just mentions the clear pro-Zionist partiality of Sarkozy and the typical arrogance exhibited by Tel Aviv with one of its greatest benefactors: the EU. But I can't help to consider wether this week's news of a trial by the Spanish Audiencia Nacional (political tribunal under full control of the Spanish government) against Israeli politicians and generals on massacres happened in 2002 doesn't mean that some European powers are maybe taking steps in prevision of Israel (or at least the Israeli hardliners) falling out of grace in Washington D.C. (and other capitals of the West). I seriously doubt that Spain (a middle sized power, certainly much richer than Israel but in serious economic trouble and seldom an independent player in international politics) would allow its pitbull judges to act against Israel (causing an important diplomatic row) if it was not intently moving piece in the international chessboard. This means probably that, while France is standing firmly by the Zionist bloc within NATO, Spain is showing its support for the Realist bloc instead.

In any case I have to say that this is the first independent analysis that puts any hopes in Obama and his team regarding the Zionist problem. Nearly everything else I have read basically understands that Obama is not just another Zionist US president but maybe the most boot-licking one of all. I wonder if Meyssan is blind or if he has actually found some discrepancies in Washington. Of all what I see, very few signs could support at the moment a turning point of the Atlantic Empire in regard to Israel.

But certainly the Realist bloc, if it actually exists, should have very great concerns regarding the absurdly problematic "clash of civilizations", fed basically by Israel and Saudi Arabia for their own goals (apparently opposed but efefctively in agreement). Meyssan is one of the persons that most strongly have denounced the 9/11 scam, so he must know all that. Maybe there is some real Realist bloc within the USA and NATO, that is extremely concerned that, without a change of policy regarding Israel, the farce could become true and actually challenge the Western interests in the region.

In any case it is still weak. And Obama's independent foreign policy is even weaker. I hold some hopes on this guy not just being another figurehead but a real Machiavellan "prince", i.e. a true statesman, but this hope is mostly based on astrology, not on real facts by the moment. Astrologically thinking, Obama could be even stronger than Putin, with whom he shares some traits, but we can't forget that the main weakness of a Leo is always his vanity.

We'll see. Meanwhile the people of Gaza and all Palestine continue being treated worse than cattle while the world governments remain outragingly silent.
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Palestine before Israel

A very interesting, and at moments beautiful, documentary blogpost I just found at Lawrence of Cyberia: Those People in Gaza: Where Do They Come From, And Why Are They So Mad?

Using a historical (somewhat critical) Zionist text as leit motiv and many historical photos (mostly from Palestine Remembered) the article uncovers the history of Palestine in the early 20th century, and how the inhabitants of Gaza are largely the descendants, when not the same people, we see fishing, farming, trading, celebrating, studying... in pre-Zionist Palestine.



And how the Zionist terrorists massacred them, took their homes and lands, pushed them into exile and built a European colony called Israel upon the ruins, trying to erase all memory of the people who lived and thrived there.
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Eurasian mtDNA and my rustic approach to molecular clock theory

In the previous post I explored the apparent pulses of the expansion of mtDNA macro-haplogroup M. Then I considered that the same method could be extended to all Eurasian mtDNA. Here I post a graph that does precisely that with the three so-called Eurasian macrohaplogroups: M, N and R (this last a descendant of N but most important on its own right):

click to expand
(for detail on M subclades see previous post)

What do I see here?

Haplogroup N:

N participated in the expansion of M along the Indo-Pacific arc as "young sister", so to say. N shows a slightly (1 SNP) longer coalescence than M and that explains well why in the first moment M almost monopolized the show - it's still today much more important in numbers and diversity than N(xR).

Nevertheless N seems to have sent an avanguard descendant towards the West within that process: macro-X-N1, maybe with its "sister" W (?). This is a niche that M does not seem to have explored until very late, maybe because of geographic constrictions.

Haplogroup R:

R seems to have participated very actively in the onset of the second pulse of M expansion, also following mainly the route eastward (from South Asia), where it found a niche (B and F especially). But within this second eastern expansion, or just in the aftermath, R descendants (R0-HV, U and JT) begin pouring into West Eurasia, following the trail of macro-X-N1.

Sahul:

Most of the haplogroups found in Australia (aborigines) and New Guinea split within the two expansive pulses, meaning that they did so after arrival to Sahul. The colonization of this continent took place together with the main colonization of Eastern Asia (and largely that of South Asia itself).

S (Australian clade) and M27-29 (Melanesian) appear to belong to the earliest pulse, while P, Q, and M42 rather seem to belong to the second pulse. There are also some other derived clades (N* within macro-W, some R31 subclades) that appear to have arrived to Australia from South Asia but I'm not considering here.

Late localized pulses:

Surely there are others within derived clades that I have not considered so far. But, within these three macro-haplogroups, A (East Asia and America) and M6 (South Asia) seem to have expanded rather late. Even later than these would be the expansion of M1 in westward direction.

Chronological approximation:

If the H node (not shown but placed 5 SNPs away from R) corresonds with Aurignacian expansion, then it approximates 45-40,000 years BP. If the M node corresponds with the Toba epysode, then it must be some 74,000 years old. Therefore each new SNP can approximate some 4,000 years of perehistory.

The first expansive pulse, therefore would have happened some 4000-8000 years after Toba, that is c. 70-66,000 BP. The second expansive pulse would have taken place instead more around 55,000 BP.

Just a very rought estimate, I know, but please don't begin telling me that two similarly derived subclades may have evolved in totally different periods. That is blatant nonsense, even if hidden behind erudite equations.

And when out of Africa then? Well, if the above estimate has any value, and as the number of SNPs separating M from L3 is of 4: 4000x4=16000, 16000+74000= 90000 BP or, roughly, when the Aterian people were in North Africa and their close relatives in the Levant.

Rough but efefctive it seems. I'm open to fine-tuning suggestions.
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On mtDNA M and its subclades

Unlike haplogroup N, all major (and many minor) subclades of M stem directly from the M node. And they are many: 26 in total. This clearly suggests that M experienced a large expansion upon arrival to Asia, most likely to South Asia (based on diversity and geographical logic).

And then what?

Well, some subclades (like M8-CZ, M7, M4, etc.) have experienced multiple ramifications, sign of new expansions. But here I'm focusing on M and its direct descendants (by the moment - can't do all at the same time, especially with such complex data).

One thing I noticed is that after the N node, the different subclades show varied numbers of SNPs before further division. Some have just one SNP, while others have five or even as many as 11. While it's difficult to say for sure (there's randomness at play here) wether a 2 SNP clade has coalesced for longer than a 1 SNP lineage, when you compare these with "sister" clades that have five or eleven SNPs at the root, you can reach to some reasonable conclusions:

- Clades with "short" roots exapanded shortly after the M expansion, maybe even along with this one.
- Clades with "intermediate" roots (c. 5 SNPs) coalesced for some time before really finding their opportunity for expansion.
- Clades with "long" roots (c. 10 SNPs) lagged behind their "sisters" clearly.

Also the statistics on this matter can shed some light on the expansion of macro-haplogroup M as such.

So I made this graph:

What do I gather from this? Not sure but maybe it could be read as follows:

Early expansion:

Within the expansion of M, still mostly undifferentiated, some "daughter" clades were already active. These are primarily those with one or two SNPs at their roots. It would seem that:

1. SE Asia was then colonized (M9-E, M21)
2. New Guinea was reached (M27-29)
   
3. East Asia proper was reached too (notably M7)
4. Some derived expansion also happened within South Asia (notably M3 and M4)

The most important clades of this group in South and East Asia may appear to belong to a second moment (2 SNPs) but this is hard to discern.

Second expansion:

This second wave includes a large number of sublineages. By regions:

1. South Asian lineages in this group are not particularly important (large) excepted M2. Not sure if we can consider M6 (also important) as belonging to this wave or if it represents a expansion on its own right, albeit limited to South Asia.
   
2. Sahulian lineages instead are significative, including all the M found in Australia. It may suggest that Australia was colonized after New Guinea (at least by M descendants).
3. The Andamanese subclades (color-coded as SE Asian), at least M31, also belong to this moment.
4. East Asian M8-CZ, as well as G, expanded at this expansive peak as well.
   

Late clades:

The only really important late clade is M1, that found its way into West Asia and beyond long after the expansion into Eastern Eurasia had happened.

In brief:

It appears that the expansion of M might have happened in two somewhat distinct waves and that this expansion happened surely before migration into West Eurasia of M1. Both waves participated in the colonization of South and East Asia but the first wave is more strongly associated to the colonization of SE Asia and New Guinea, while the second is to that of Australia and Andaman islands instead. A third late minor wave expanded basically into Western Eurasia and Africa (M1).

Edit: Extending the count to all Eurasian clades?

This can be done for comparison purposes. After all, M did not expand alone with all likehood: N and R were also there.

Let's see: M is 4 SNPs derived from L3, while N is 5. This would place the N node right on the 1 SNP "peak" of the graph above. Most N-derived clades (macro-R, macro-X, macro-W and S - see my previous post on N) would fit on the 2 SNPs bar (what basically means that Australia was surely colonized in the first wave, albeit with a dominance of N subclades), while R would sit at the 3 SNPs bar, making the "pause" somewhat more dynamic and the whole expansion process somewhat more continuous.

Then what we could well call macro-F (including F, R5, R9b and an unnamed New Guinean lineage) would sit on the 4 SNPs bar, with F as such sitting on the 6 SNPs bar, wholly in the second wave of M expansion. B would also sit on the 4 SNPs bar. This suggests that SE Asia was also affected by the "second wave" but that R subclades were most important there in this occasion.

For a West Eurasian reference, the R0-HV node would sit on the 6 SNPs bar, while the H node would be on the 8 SNPs bar, in the aftermath of the second wave, and H3 on the 9SNPs bar. This may mean, indirectly, that M1 is just a late arrival in West Eurasia or at least that it expanded at a late moment even for the West.

A lot to think about, indeed.

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Note: this kind of extrapolation based on SNP counts can only be done, if anything, with mitochondrial DNA. Chromosomes, even the rather small Y chromosome, are too large and complex and have not been properly sequenced so far, so doing the same is not really viable.
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On macro-haplogroup N

I recently posted on Eurasian mtDNA. But I had to rethink my notes and conclusions on super-haplogroup N, largely on review of the somewhat complex (and badly named) strucure of this clade (see Ian Logan's mtDNA site) and the realization that haplogroup W is at least as South Asian as West Eurasian (see Metspalu 2004), and has its highest concentration in Northern Pakistan.

So, after due rethinking, I get the following haplogroup N map:


In other words, the true structure of haplogroup N has 6 subclades:

1. macro-R: including huge and widespread haplogroup R (South Asian by origin without any serious doubt), some Indian N* and East Asian N9 (that includes Y)
2. macro-W: including South & West Eurasian W, as well as Australian N* lineages. W as such is most frequent in Pakistan and hence I have depicted it there. In West Eurasia is most directly linked with West Asia.
   
3. macro-X: including West Eurasian X and N1, as well as some of the Indian N*. X is also found occasionally in North Asia and notably, in the distinct X2a subclade, among the Natives of North America (apparently arrived there associated with Clovis culture). Nevertheless the highest diversity of X by far is in West Asia/North Africa, so it must be considered a West Eurasian clade. N1 includes several subclades, among which is haplogroup I of apparent ancient presence in Europe (always in small ammounts).
   
4. S: Australian specific
5. A: East Asian and American, with a long sequence of SNPs at the root
   
6. Ket N*, with an even longer sequence of SNPs at the root

While haplogroups A and Ket N* appear to have gone through long periods of small population size, all the other four clades are defined by only one SNP at their respective roots, suggesting that they diversified rapidly after splitting from the N node. The most extreme case would, of course, be R.

Origins and spread:

I would think that macro-R and macro-W appear to have originated in South Asia, maybe in NW and/or Western coastal South Asia, if we are to follow their modern distribution patterns. From there they would have migrated to the East, maybe with M and other N-derived clades (A, S), seeding N9 in East Asia, as well as W-related N* in Australia. The handful of R-derived clades in Eastern Asia and Sahul may have gone with them or soon after (broadly in the same process anyhow).

Macro-X instead appears to be most diverse in Western Eurasia, maybe indicating an older migration in this direction than the one starred by R subclades (U, R0 and JT) in the same direction. I am not sure in relation with which one would M1 (and possibly other M subclades such as M48) migrated in westward direction. It is possible then that X/N1-related Indian N* represents a backflow from West Eurasia (but hard to say with certainty).

Overall I'd say that N is most diverse in South Asia (if anywhere) and that, contrary to my previous post, it must have coalesced along with M in the subcontinent. Nevertheless it does seem to have a more western center of gravity than M, possibly indicating that the N-M split (from L3) happened in relation to events and geography of South Asia. It is possible that (broadly) M represents those that advetured further into the subcontinent, while N those that remained closer to the Indus river and Arabian sea area. Nevertheless the ability of N carriers to reach out to East Asia and Australia, among other remote places, along with a majority of M carriers, indicates that these geographic boundaries were by no means strict or rigid and that the different early Eurasian populations were admixing all the time within this process.

Important note/caveat: defining N as South or West Eurasian is largely a matter of where did macro-W coalesce. I have here suggested that W could be South Asian by origin but the philogeny of the haplogroup is complex and by no means clear (see Ian Logan's notes on W) . The presence of related macro-W "N*" in Australia would suggest a migration via South and SE Asia (no other explanation is possible) and the presence of W in Thailand also would suggest a South Asian center of gravity. But the matter is not fully clear and, if macro-W would be of West Asian origin after all, my previous model, with N (but not R) coalescing in West Asia, could stand.
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Welsh expropiate Zionazi goods at Tesco (video)

... and are arrested.



Found at Palestine Video.
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A unique human trait: rythm

Research by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has discovered that newborn human babies can perfectly detect and synchronize the beat in music. This trait, probably related to the origins of music, appears to be uniquely human, as our closest relatives (chimpanzees and bonobos) do not seem able to synchronize their behaviour with rythmic sounds.

More at Science Daily.

It makes you think because we typically consider the most uniquely human traits stuff like logic, speech or even the famous precission peg of our hands or even walking upright on two legs. But this issue of music and rythm would appear to be more "primitive", maybe just because it's so intuitive, rather than merely logic (though in Antiquity music and maths were often studied together).
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Hawking also against Zionist apartheid

I never heard that the super-famous astronomer and cosmologist Stephen Hawking made any political statement before but in this year of 2009 he seems to have not been able to contain himself anymore, confronted with the genocide of Gaza. He said:

If Israel wants peace, it will have to talk to Hamas, like Britain did with the IRA. Hamas are the democratically elected leaders of the Palestinian people, and cannot be ignored.

The situation is like that in South Africa before 1990. It cannot continue.

Source: The First Post. Found via Mounadil al Djazaïri blog (in French).
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Israel keeps attacking Gaza

There was a ceasefire, right? It has been broken by Israel in at least three times: first, naval gunfire murdered several people at a Gaza beach, then a drone plane killed a young girl and now it's a full fledged attack with airplanes, helicopters tanks and bulldozers.

It is pretty clear that the Zionazis only pretend one thing here: to annihilate the refugees of Gaza. meanwhile the World governments remain in their accomplice silence.
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No two states solution for Palestine

From CBS News (quite neutral and even "subversive" for a US media report, albeit balanced):



Then what? A single state multiethnic solution has always been the Palestinian option and the only realistic and fair democratic alternative.

But who will bell the cat?

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Update: the Gaza Justice Action Center believes that Bob Simon (reporter) and Robert G. Anderson (producer), as well as the CBS, deserve our congratulations and support for making a (sadly rare) great impartial job with this program. You can send them a support note at this link.
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On Eurasian mtDNA

A quite lengthy discussion with (primarily) Terry Toothill at Dienekes' Anthropology Blog on Eurasian genetics and particularly mtDNA and the possible routes of migration and coalescence areas has caused me to review and re-consider Eurasian mtDNA genetics, often poorly understood because of higher complexity, less clear-cut nomenclature and somewhat less interest in general as of late.

After careful consideration of the genealogical tree (see Ian Logan's mtDNA site for reference), I came with the following simplified map:


Legend:

• Red large dots represent top level subclades of M, small red dots mean significative presence of an M subclade likely to have originated in some other region.
• Blue large dots represent top level subclades of N(xR), small blue dots mean significative presence of an N subclade likely to have originated in some other region (notably Australian N* related to West Eurasian W), blue squares represent N* (normally a single top-level N subclade but hard to confirm). An exception is East Asian N9-Y, actually related to R at its genesis but considered a separate haplogroup everywhere, which has been here considered like any other N(xR) subclade for simplicity.
  
• Green large dots represent top level subclades of R, small green dots mean significative presence of an R subclade likely to have originated in some other region. R is a derivate subclade of N, linked to N9-Y at its origin but because of its widespread distribution it is always considered separately.
• Grayed out areas are not really considered for various reasons.
  
• Regions are marked by gray borders and 3-letter abbreviations in black: WEA (West Eurasia), SOA (South Asia), AND (Andaman Islands), SEA (SE Asia), AUS (Australian Aborigines), MEL (Melanesia), EAS (East Asia), CAS (Central Asia), KET (Ket people of the Yenisei basin), NAM (North American Natives), SAM (South American Natives).
  

Discussion:

It seems self-evident from the top-level diversity (and central geographical position) that South Asia was with all likehood the place of coalescence of haplogroups M and R. The case is less clear for haplogroup N and the genesis of R itself is directly associated with a major East Asian clade (N9-Y).

Pre-R (i.e. the N-derived ancestor of R and N9-Y) could have been South Asian or not (in which case we would have to look to East Asia). But considering the context, I'm more inclined to think that pre-R lived in South Asia and that R is its direct derivate in that region, with N9-Y representing maybe an early migration into East Asia.

The context is not just geography and common sense but also the problem of N as such. If we are to follow the clue of highest top level diversity, West Eurasia stands (by narrow margin admittedly) as the most likely candidate for the origing of N. It is not a too solid conclusion but it does make some good sense anyhow.

Specially if, as I do, you suspect, based on archaeology, that the presence of H. sapiens in Asia may be as old as c. 100,000 BP, long before the Toba supervolcano event and the expansion of H. neanderthalensis into West and Central Asia.

I do understand that the main expansion of H. sapiens in Eurasia happened after these two events: towards the east after Toba (i.e. after c. 74,000 BP) and towards the west after a phase of losing ground to Neanderthals (i.e. after c. 60,000 BP).

But some H. sapiens may well have survived in West Asia after the Neanderthal expansion and, in my opinion they may well have carried haplogroup N, either still undifferentiated or in the process of evlution towards the modern West Eurasian N subclades (all them quite rare): N1, X and W. These N carriers would have also migrated eastward after Toba through South Asia, mixing to an extent with the carriers of M, who were already in the subcontinent. Together (more or less, the exact process is not known) they must have migrated towards East Asia and Sahul, roughly at the same time when N was evolving into "pre-R" (R plus N9-Y) and into "pre-W" (W plus directly related Australian N*), as well as when pre-R was evolving into R (soon after).

This expansive epysode must have happened soon after Toba, I think, because only something of the dimensions of the Toba catastrophe would have left so much empty land for such a massive migration, evident in the huge ammount of new clades at this genealogical "point".

After R had already coalesced (necesarily in South Asia), there was surely a "back-migration" towards West Asia that brought R (already evolving into U and maybe also into R0, aka pre-HV, and pre-JT). This wave eventually colonized Europe, as it's well known, and we do have a clear date for that: c. 45-40,000 years ago - and at least U subclades participated in that migration. So the whole process of divergence of N and then of "pre-R" and of R itself happened probably between 74,000 and 40,000 years ago. This was surely also the moment of diversification of M (I'd say that rather to the beginning, soon after Toba).

And this timeframe (c. 60-40,000 BP) is when we do have the best available archaeological evidence for expansion of H. sapiens east of South Asia and west of West Asia. Though archaeological evidence in some cases may be of later date than the actual events, specially in those areas not throughtly researched.

West and South Asia though, as well as North Africa, do have some evidence pointing to older presence of H. sapiens. In the case of West Asia and North Africa this includes the oldest skulls north of the Sahara and are dated to c. 90,000 BP (North Africa, modern solid datation) and c. 130,000 BP (West Asia, old contoversial datation).

In the case of South Asia, it has the oldest evidence worldwide of stone blade technology (dated c. 103,000 BP) as well as strong indications of survival and continuity through the Toba epysode. There are no human remains though until much later, possibly because the tropical climate (wet and hot) makes preservation less likely even for bones.

Below there is a simplified map for a plausible scenario:


Notes:

1. I have depicted migration into Sahul (Melanesia and Australia) as two separate events. This matter is not fully agreed upon and, admittedly, I depicted it that way on a mere whim.
2. There is an interesting problem regarding SE Asia: it must have been necesarily a passage for the migrations into East Asia and Sahul, yet it appears to keep a relatively low index of high-level diversity (excepted the Andaman islands, where not just two unique subclades of M but also a distinct fossil clade of Y-DNA D appear to suggest that the regional diversity was much higher in the past). In comparison East Asia appears as much more diverse. I guess that Terry might want to make a case out of this matter but, sadly for his hypothesis, Central Asia does not appear to show any autonomous top-level diversity at all. Only the rare Ket N* might suggest that some N-derived clades (but not anything else) might have been in Northern Asia (rather than Central Asia) since old but how N arrived there and exactly when is a total mystery.
   

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Everything is ETA, Great Inquisitor rules

The eight Basque citizens arrested some days ago have been jailed accused of "membership in armed organization", no matter that their only "crime" seems to have been active politically and work peacefully for the independence of the Basque Country. No direct or indirect relationship with ETA has been established at all, nor is likely to exist in any manner. But Great Inquisitor B. Garzón thinks, like his predecessor Fray Torquemada, that evidence and justice do not matter at all but rather the political goal of destroying the old Basque democracy and to exclude a most important sector of Basque society from any sort of democratic repesentation or even human rights.

Relatives and friends of the arrested before the hearing

Obviously the pseudo-elections of March in the Western Basque Country are on sight and the possibility, even if remote, that the Spanish nationalist bloc might achieve a pseudo-majority thanks to the banishment of this important political current that claims self-determination for the Basque Country, is part of the equation. One of the arrested was speaker of the new platform Democracy 3 Million and the attorney general, Conde-Pumpido, has already vowed to make all in his hand to prevent Basques from choosing freely in these upcoming elections.

Again several Basque citizens are arrested and jailed on mere political grounds and again Basques will not be able to vote freely in the upcoming elections. The ghost of Franco laughs with that irking childish voice in his megalomaniatic mausoleum.

Source: Gara.
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Gaza genocide: shacks and rubble

Found at Tales to tell - from Gaza 2009 (there are more photos of Jabalia).



This is the Palestine the Zionists are "building": children barely surviving in shacks with almost no clothes in the midst of the winter, with no edible water, with the land polluted by depeleted uranium... and with a persistent blockade that does not allow nearly any sort of humaniatrian aid to arrive.

And they still call them "terrorists". As someone said: if they would not fire any rockets now and then, nobody would respect them. The only terrorists here are all those accomplice with Israel, in Palestine or elsewhere. And they are many: our governments are accomplices of this terrorism, the European Union is accomplice of this terrorism, the media are accomplices (often) of this terrorism.

Why is nobody imposing sanctions against Israel? Why is nobody simply invading Israel after all these terrorist actions? Why is nobody at least opening a sea and air corridor into Gaza to send the much needed humanitarian aid? Israel is not all powerful, you know, after all it's just a tiny country of some 3 or 4 million colonists and like 5 million native denizens. If someone with some power like the EU would really want to do something about it, Israel would have to swallow. But our politicians are just corrupt cowards, at least most of them, and they don't care at all about the lives and dignity of the Palestinian children.
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After the storm

Just a quick snap from Plentzia. When an unprecedented storm like this hit your homeland, you cannot just ignore it. Though we did try.

More, often impressive, pics at EITB.
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Gaza genocide: BBC on the spotlight

Once again the Zionist Lobby has managed (to some extent) to silence not just dissident opinions on the abhorrent high-spheres' consensus on Israel but even a plea for aid to the victims of Israeli murders and systematic genocide in Gaza.

Some British media broke the consensus and aired the charitable ad but the public broadcaster, BCC, boycotted the ad. This has arisen notable indignation, naturally. Nevertheless a member of the Stop the War Coalition managed to air the adress for donations in a quite heated interview at the BBC:



More at PULSE and Filasteen.
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Basque Country: arrests with March elections in mind

In a yet new epysode of the crusade that the Great Inquisitors, in this case they hyper-controversial B. Garzón, are holding against democracy in the Basque Country, eight nationalist politicians were arrested last night.

The arrested are: Arantza Ukarregi (Bilbao, University professor), Eli Zubiaga and Iker Rodrigo (both from Getxo), Imanol Nieto (Sestao), Amparo Lasheras (Gasteiz, speaker of the electoral platform D3M), Inaki Olalde (Agurain), Hodei Egaina (Donostia) and Agurtzane Solaberrieta (Usurbil).

Protest in the Basque Autonomous University in solidarity with the arrested

The Great Inquisitor Garzón claims that these arrests and the related search orders in very disparate places (private homes, civic associations, language academies...) are meant to prevent the reorganization of Batasuna, left-wing nationalist political party historically representing some 15% (12-18%) of the southern Basque People, until they were declared illegal. But most politicians have declared that they think this new spate of arrests are intended to provide cover for the illegalization Demkorazia 3 Milloi (D3M - Democracy 3 Million, for the approximate number of Basques), that is meant to be the list for which Basque independentists could vote in these upcoming elections (only affecting the Western Basque Country), and to favor this way the Spanish nationalist bloc, which already enjoys the advantage provided by the federative structure of the autonomous parliament, where all three provinces provide equal number of deputies (25 each), regardless of their population (that ranges from 250,000 to more than a million).

Sources: Gara, EITB.
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Gaza genocide: around the Web

Largely because I have recently subscirbed to Palestinian Blogs aggregator, an index of blogs on Palestine, in nearly any language you can imagine, I can offer here some snippets of what people is thinking, denouncing, reporting, crying... in regard to the Gaza genocide and the Palestinian struggle against colonial apartheid.

• Chet, at Just Wondering mentions some of the criminal weapons used against Gazans and how Israel and Israeli political and war leaders can be sued at the International Court of Justice.
• Yasmin at The Angry Arabs' Comments Section narrates just another epysode in which SS, I mean Israeli, soldiers murdered several children gratuitously.
• Ramallah Online denounces the BBC for its complicity with the Israeli genocide by giving a twisted and biased pro-Zionist version of events, not just now but always.
• Sharon Dolev at Jewcy reports on how difficult is to be a leftist and pro-Palestinian activist in Israel, where some ask these "traitors" to "be killed even before Hamas".
• Le Café Politicien informs that French multinational Veolia has come to the limelight because of cooperating with Zionist genocidal colonization. The Swedish NGO Diakonia has denounced it, making the unscrupulose company to lose a contract worth 1.9 billion euros in Stokholm.
• Palestine Think Tank tells on how the Greek Antiauthoritarian movent, itself engaged in widespread conflict with the Greek right-wing government and the police forces, has managed to block, or at least divert to some other port (probably one of the British bases in Cyprus) a shipment of weapons from the USA to Israel in the midst of the genocidal war against Gaza.
  

Additionally it's very much worth mentioning the Global BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Movement, with wide info on how to do and expand the boycott against Israel and their associates worldwide. I'll surely write more on it later on.

The Israeli codebar begins with 729
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Gaza genocide: toxic munitions everywhere

As mentioned in previous threads it seems pretty clear by now that Israel has massively and indiscriminately used extremely controversial and toxic weapons in Gaza: white phosphorus (which is illegal to use in civilian areas) and DIME bombs (whose heavy metal particles are very toxic). Now it seems apparent that depleted uranium bombs were also used (they are also toxic and carcinogenic with long term effects) against the Gazan people.

It is becoming more and more obvious that this attack against Gaza is nothing but another attempt of genocide directed primarily against the civilians that survive in what has been called the largest concentration camp on Earth.

Hopefully global mobilzation against Zionism will make this colonial tyranny to fall some day. Please boycott Israeli products, Israeli sport teams, Israeli artists and anything that may be suspect of financing Israel in any way. The only way to peace and freedom is the supression of racist genocidal Israel.
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ETA assumes controversial attacks

In its last public communication, armed Basque group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) assumes the latest attacks against media outlets and businessman I. Uria.

On the latter they argue that he was not just involved with the highly controversial fast speed train (AHT-TAV) developement but that he also rejected to pay the revolutionary tax (extortion money reclaimed by ETA to Basque business). They say that they will continue to attack those involved with the TAV (in spite of the anti-TAV platform having asked them to step away), on the grounds that it is a project that goes against the interest of Basque people and that it has been used to criminalize the Basque Nationalist Left.

On the attack against media outlets, they argue that they were directed against two different kind of media: on one side the "Spanish fascist" ones, which apparently need no further explanation, and, on the other side, against Basque public broacasting group EITB. In this case they argue that, by means of "political comissaries" and chief editors the content of this media corporation is being put to the service of the Spanish government and used against Basque independentism. They claim not to be their intent to tell anybody "how to do journalism" though.

While the attacks on media may be controvesial, the ratified intervention in the conflict of that TAV is rather worrying. It must be mentioned that in the 1980s, ETA intervened rather succesfully against the construction of a nuclear reactor near Bilbao (at Lemoiz), kidnapping and eventually killing one engineer of that project. For some, ETA's intervention was what actually stopped the highly controversial developement, while for others it was a disruption of nonviolent resistence against Lemoiz nuclear plant.

The current intervention against the TAV is clearly reminiscent of that historical epysode and may be an atetmpt by ETA of claiming leadership of the Basque popular struggles. Nevertheless the ETA of the 2000s is hardly as strong as used to be in the 1980s and it's very possible that its intervention will be useless. In any case, the TAV line is already being constructed and it doesn't seem as the widespread opposition was going to be able to stop it, so I cannot exclude that, if ETA shows to be able to deploy sufficient power in this issue, it may be able to stop it. What is clear is that with ETA's intervention the popular platform that has been workking hard for more than a decade to block this project is rather sidelined.
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The right of blasphemy

Today controversial right wing Dutch politician G. Wilders is being charged for hate speech for making a (bad, simplistic and useless) film that compares Islam with Nazism, or something of the like.

While I think Wilders is a total jerk I also think that persecuting freedom of speech to protect any stupid religion is an act of state terrorism, an act against human rights. Talking about "hate speech" to silence freedom of speech is again a dangerous slippery fall towards totalitarism, restricting freedom in favor of "political correctness" is the way to fascism.

Because freedom is not about politeness (even if it may help) , it's about speaking your mind freely even if you have the most absurd and psychotic of thoughts. When a society can tolerate the exposition of plastified corpses and sadomasochistic literature and cinema but cannot accept a piece of art just because some sector of society considers it blasphemous and responds in some cases with death threats, there is something very wrong in that society.

And I'll tell you what it is: a too high contempt for religion, be it chrsitian, muslim or whatever. Religion is nothing but superstition and brainwashing ideology and deserves no further respect than any other human opinion. Is it blasphemous to depict Muhammed, Moses or Jesus masturbating or in whatever other unidealized pose? So be it. Get used to it, your icons do not belong to you: anybody can do with them whatever they want.

You don't like it? Well, go to some extremist stinky hole like Saudia or the Vatican, where you can be praying 24/7 until you die from starvation, hopefully.

Is this hate speech? Nah. I wish I could really hate anyone. It's more like compassion speech and punk therapy by direct exposition to truth. If you're brainwashed, keep it to you, and respect people who say you are a nuthead the same they have to put up with you. But don't go hysterical and start making death threats because then the logical thing to do is either to preventively kill you or, more benevolently, to put you in a mental asylum.

The problem is that people who just came from, say, Pakistan, seem to have missed all the Punkster phenomenon. What were they doing when here everything supposedly above criticism was being teared up? Praying? Don't make me laugh.

The problem is that culturally Islam is the most backward society on Earth because one cannot spit on the Quran and get alive with it. That is a problem that those societies must adress and the only real way to go is old good Maoism. Of all historically Muslim countries in the world only one has become agnostic and tolerant: Albania. Not an easy task but if Punk cannot work, maybe the spirit of Enver Hoxa, so to say, has the answer.

And not just for Islam. I've heard that in the USA, most people still are Christians, can you believe that?! Worse: many are against scientific knowledge because it conflicts with the Jewish mythology. If you watched the oath ceremony of Obama (I did just briefly) you can't but help notice how it's all full or religious elements that would rather belong to teh 15th century.

But again it's not just the USA nor the Muslim World. Here in Europe, many countries still foot the bill of the one offcial church with poublic money. This happens in Sweden and Spain, Russia and Britain. Totally obsolete medievalist absurd remnants like the Vatican or Mt. Athos (where women are not allowed to enter, outragingly enough) are allowed to persist, in spite of being products of fascism.

These medieval remnants are given overall special privileges. Not just discussing god appears to be impossible without someone reciting his/her "holy" book of choice but this credulous behaviour is favored institutionally. Maybe the situation is worse in Egypt, Saudia or Iran. But in the West either we cannot be satisfied with the legal situation of religion and anti-religious criticism. Unlike the Soviet constitution that did grant, at least on paper, both freedom of religion and freedom to criticise religion, western constitutions hardly ever mention the latter.

And I wonder, why should I respect religious people if anti-religious beliefs and behaviour is not tolerated?

Wilders is a jerk, sure. His emphasis on "Judeo-Christian" culture only demonstrates it. But he has the right to insult Islam or whatever other religion. And if you don't like it, ask your god to throw thunder on him... and wait patiently for that to happen.

Too many people, from Rushdie to van Gogh have suffered persecution for being critical of Islam, the same that others, suffered in their struggle agains Christian totalitarism. Religion is just like any other ideology and is totally subject to criticism. Get used, grow up.
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Amnesty International accuses Israel of war crimes

The reputed (maybe because of its technocratic and lawyer style) watchdog Amnesty International has finally said that Israel comitted war crimes in the attacks against Gaza in the last days. Specifically it has been the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas what is considered a war crime by international treaties.

Ironically AI does not mention other weapons that are as dangerous or even more for civilians, like DIME explosives or depeleted uranium shells, as well as conventional ammunition when fired against civilian homes or directly to their bodies, as has been the norm in this democide.

FMLN wins elections in El Salvador

In yet another epysode of the leftist tendency that is swapping Latin America, specially where fair democratic elections can be held (remember the vote-rigging in Mexico and the situation of state terror in Colombia, as well as the foreign occupation of Haití), the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front of El Salvador obtained a majority of the votes at national level in parliament and municipal elections in this small Central American country. With 55% of the votes already accounted, the FMLN achieved 42%, while the guvernamental right-wing ARENA got 38%. The difference is nevertheless much lower than what opinion polls had predicted and the socialists appear to lose the capital San Salvador, where they governed.

Presidential elections are scheduled for March 15th.

Source: Gara.
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Jewish British MP on Gaza genocide (video)

My grandmother did not die [at Nazi hands] to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palstinian grandmothers in Gaza.

Sir Gerald Kaufner, British MP (Labour)
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Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism.

Sir Gerald Kaufner, British MP (Labour)

Even many Jews are nowadays questioning the legitimacy of Israel, what certainly honors them.

Found at Just Wondering.
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Latest: Basque town occupied after ecologist protest

The town of Urbina is right now under total police occupation (both Basque and Spanish police corps). There was a large demontration today against the High Speed Train (AHT-TAV by uits Basque and Spanish acronym) which developed peacefully under massive police control. After the demnstration ended, a group tried to enter the work area, not using violence at any moment, and then anti-riot police charged, injuring many. So far, "normal". But since then the town has been totally occupied by the Ertzantza, with support of the Spanish military police known as Guardia Civil, who is running around arresting people (at least four confirmed so far, all them injured by the police and arrested in the ambulances) and entering gastronomical societies where people tried to refuge. Nobody apparently can get out of the town right now.

Source: Gara.

The High Speed Train, also known as "Basque Y" is a highly controversial developement that would connect by bullet train all three western Basque capitals and eventually these with the French and Spanish networks. This is being done at a high cost for rural areas and their inhabitants. It has raised strong opposition along the years but it is being imposed anyhow. Recently ETA intervened militarly and was demanded by the Assembly against the TAV to step aside. But even before this inoportune military intervention, the ecologist platform was already being criminalized by the media and the Spanish courts.

Right: poster calling for the national demonstration that has been brutally repressed (source).

Update: listening to Hala Bedi Irratia (a free radio from Gasteiz) right now in wait of news. The last figure of arrested is of at least 16.

A direct witness and victim has been just now telling that the Ertzaintza has been forcing people to the ground and beating them gratuitously, those beaten more brutally have been later arrested. When the policeman was asked "you arrest me because you beat me before, right?", the reply was "yes".

While there are many police controls all around the town, the news of strict siege appear now to be exaggerated. At least the person speaking in the radio could make it to Gasteiz but maybe it was the case for the first minutes.
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From inside Gaza (videos and more)

Found at Al Jazeera English: white phosphorus, destroyed homes, etc.





Also a must read: Gazans tell of ordeal as war rages.

Gaza is on fire. Everyone on this piece of land is under attack. In this time and age, I can't believe the world is watching and no one is doing anything.

Moussa el-Haddad, doctor

I saw him [the solider] hiding next to the shop. I looked around for my mum, then he shot me. One bullet hit my hand and the other penetrated my stomach through my back.

A four years old girl.

My three daughters went out with my mother. All of a sudden, Israeli soldiers started shooting at them from a very close distance. My eldest was hit by 17 bullets in the chest and my two-year-old was hit by 12. They both died, of course.

A father.

Also, on the side of the very few good news in this genocide, it seems that the campaign to boycott Israeli products is beginning to have effect. The trend seems to have become quite widespread specially in Scandinavia but also fruits desinied to Jordan have been blocked at the border. Zionist farmers lament the growing losses.

Also Chet mentions that a Parisian fair of Israeli tourism has been suspended on popular outrage.

Let's keep up with the boycott, let's force racist Israel to become democratic Palestine. No Zionists in European competitions, no agreements of any sort with the Zionazi monster! Towards the total isolation of racist Israel.
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Martian life? Methane may suggest it.

Found at BBC.

Latest data and research on the Martian atmosphere has determined that the methane is produced seasonally at certain regions of Mars (and not others). Methane degradates fast in the thin Martian atmosphere and therefore its presence means that it's being replenished all the time.

There are three known processes that may naturally produce methane: two are geological and the other is life. The geological processes are vulcanism (but Mars is thought to have no more active tectonic processes) and serpentinization, a mineralization process that requires water, olivine and pyroxene.

Seasonality suggests that water temperatures and state (liquid water at whatever depths this process is taking place) is crucial to the formation of methane. The article doesn't explictly says this but it does look to me that vulcanism is not the cause in any case, also for this reason. So what we have left? A somewhat rare minerlization process that requires water... and life of some sort.

It's proverbial that "where there's water, there's life". Water is there, it's confirmed, even if it's mostly ice at surface levels, it seems. I am almost sure that there is some form of life in Mars, even if it's now restricted to some specific areas, maybe under the permafrost.

We'll find out for sure eventually.

Update: another news article at Science Daily, providing some slightly different details.
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Thailand mass murders immigrants

Survivors report that Thai authorities are sending refugees from Myanmar and Bangla Desh, who arrive by boat, back to the sea, with no engine, and often with no supplies and their hands tied as well, in an obvious attempt to kill them.

Many have been rescued from a certain death by Indian coastguards near Andaman islands.

Source: BBC.

Update: also from BBC. Further details have emerged: at least 800 people were left adrift that way and many hundreds may have died. Some were simply exemplarily thrown overboard with hands and feet tied to persuade the rest to get on the barge. The macabre operation was done by the highly secretive and powerful Internal Security Operations Command, which is, contitutionally, under the direct control of the Prime Minister.
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Palestinian-Israeli thoughts

I am not an immigrant. I didn't come to Israel - Israel came to me.

Ameer Markhoul

At the street, or at the supermarket, people are supporting the killing of children. And we are living among these people.

Anonymous Galilean woman

Hamas is struggling for the Palestinian people. I'm not supporting everything they do. But I'm supporting the struggle.

Anonymous Palestinian-Israeli young man.

Found at the BBC.

The Nakba, the first phase of the Palestinian genocide (1949), left many natives still living within the borders of Israel (most just fled, many were killed) and these were granted citizenship. Nowadays they are 20% of Israeli citizens and growing. Some of these people's thoughts, people with an Israeli passport but who obviously belong to the native Arab Palestinian culture and ethnicity are those reflected above. Some politicians from this group are being forbidden to particpate in Israeli elections alltogether.
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Gaza Genocide (4): Israel massacres fleeing civilians

Consistent and aboundant reports from inside Gaza denounce that Israeli troops have systematically fired at civilians trying to leave the combat areas by waving white flags (as demanded by Israeli loudhailer messages), killing many, mostly women and elderly people.

Longer accounts of the genocide at BBC and B'Tselem.

For how long is the World going to watch this second Holocaust indifferent and even in complicity with the Zionazis?!
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Global warming de-stabilizing North Atlantic climate

Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have used coral as direct reference for climatic oscilations within the North Atlantic ocean. The results show that atmospheric global warming does not directly just warm up the ocean but that it rather de-stabilizes it causing much more intense oscilations in its natural tension between the Azores high and Icelandic low pressure nodes. This means that, as global warming increases, both storms and droughts are becoming and will become more extreme and insidious in the affected areas (Europe, Eastern North America, North Africa).

More at Science Daily.
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Gaza Genocide (3): Israel uses criminal weapons

It's been rumored since the beginning but the informational blockade had made close to impossible to confirm it. Now a Norwegian physician deployed in Gaza (Dagfinn Bjorjlid, NORWAC) claims that he is watching injuries that are caused by non-conventional weapons such as white phsophorus (sometimes known as napalm) and the new Dense Inert Material Explosive (DIME) ones.

We would need months of research to analyze the samples and have scientific evidence, but the injuries we are treating here are identical to the ones that we treated in Lebanon in 2006, which were related with white phosphorus and DIME weapons.

He explains that the kind of injuries he has seen so far are most likely caused by DIME weapons and napalm. He also mentions unconfirmed reports on the use of toxic gas.

White phosphorus is legal only if used as smoke curtain but not when used as weapon in civilian areas (even against military targets). It causes extensive deep burnings and secondary toxic effects of phosphorus itself (which can be deadly).

DIMEs include an inert metal (normally a tungsten-nickel alloy) that is not consumed in the explosion itself. Being a new experimental wepon it has not yet been included in any convention especifically but it is clear that the metal particles cause brutal amputations among survivors and are strongly carcinogenic.

Toxic gas, while still unconfirmed, requires little comment. It's the kind of weapon that Nazis used to exterminate Jews, Roma and all those people who they considered unfit in the infamous death camps of the 1940s. It was used extensively in warfare in WWI and thereafter forbidden by international conventions mostly because it showed to be ineffective in combat situations (though has been used now and then against civilians in genocide operations like this one).

These criminal activites add up to the humanitarian blockade of the strip, deprived of water, food and largely medical aid, that has made it a true death camp that would make Hitler blush. It is a criminal genocide operation against civilians. But we will only hear cries of "terrorism" when the prisioners of the death camp dare to strike back. Meanwhile it's all licking the boots of the Zionist paradigm and its democidal practices.

And if anything this has shown is that Obama is more of the same (what a deception for so many good hearted US citizens, I guess). As someone put it, Obama is not the first black president of the USA, but the first Jewish one. All his career has been extremely close to the Zionist lobby and there's no reason why he would bite the hand that feeds him. He may be avoiding the issue while he's inaugurated but the fact is that in his campaign he did go farther than any former US president in their complacency towards Zionism by declaring that Jerusalem is the indivisible capital of Israel. He's also delaying the end of the criminal Guantanamo prsion and the retreat from Iraq. Like always whith non-revolutionary politicians: all talk and nothing done.
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Evolution only partly reversible

Interesting article at SD (and presumably interesting original paper too, available for Nature subscribers only, by H. Teotonio et al.)

The researchers reverted a population of lab-bred fruit flies to their natural state, state from which their ancestors were removed in 1975, and observed if and how "reverse evolution" happened through 50 generations. The results are that some traits and genes did reverse fast, while others did slowly and yet others did not de-evolve at all. Overall the flies got only like 50% of their genome back to their ancestral state only, while the phenotype instead in some cases fully reverted to the feral state.

The first conclusion is obvious: history cannot be fully reversed, not even in the field of genetics. Historical accidents may change the future indepently of enviromental conditions.

The second conclusion is the somewhat shocking fact that different genetics can encode the same phenotype.

This is most interesting also in regard to humans, I'd say, because people with different genetic backgrounds may happen to converge to a similar phenotype, which is not necesarily just the average of the genes involved. This phenomenon, if my memory doesn't fail, has been noticed in some areas of significative admixture, like Mexico and Sudan, where the resulting phenotype of admixed populations was not merely the simple "hybrid" type but a rather new local phenotype of its own (a new "race" so to say). In different contexts it is very possible that people of varied genetic backgrounds, say Askhenazis and Germans, may converge to similar phenotype without massive admixture (I don't mean here to say that Askhenazis and Germans/Poles are not mixed with each other, they obviously are, but that the resulting phenotype modification of so many milennia of co-residence may be much greater than the mere genetic input, whatever the exact enviromental reasons (climatic, social, whatever).
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Earliest "life form" created in lab, by "in vitro evolution".

This is really bad news for anti-evolutionists (creationists and the like): finally something similar to the earliest form of life has been created artifically: a self-replicating RNA molecule that needs nothing else to perpetuate itself, except molecular bricks (i.e. food).

But even "worse": as scientists failed miserably once and again when using "intelligent design" to do it, the succesful method actually was "in vitro" evolution: let Nature do it in a controlled enviroment.

Of course, the superstitious fanatics will not be persuaded so easily but for all those with an open mindset truth is out there.

It is also important for a true scientific debate: wether the earliest life forms were RNA or DNA based. It is an important piece of evidence in favor of the RNA world model.
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Black holes preceded galaxies

New research has determined that black holes are the seeds around which galaxies were formed. While "modern" (nearby) galaxies all have a 1/1000 mass ratio black hole in their center, it seems that this standard is only the end result of a long process of galaxy formation that began with the formation of their core black holes.

Source: BBC.
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European Tribunal decries Spanish human rights abuse

17 years ago, Mikel Iribarren was a young healthy man who happened to suffer a brutal agression by anti-riot police while demonstrating in Pamplona. He was so badly injured by the direct shot to his face of a smoke canister that was even considered dead. Since then he's been attempting recovery with continuous surgical treatments that can only do so much. But he's also been fighting legally for that agression to be punished. All these years he's been going to court to no avail, with the trials continuously delayed and finally absolving the defendants. Typical Spanish, typical Spanish "democracy".

But outside Spain they seem to see these issues with different eyes and much more legal rigor. Yesterday the European Tribunal of Human Rights ruled that Spain has violated articles 3 and 6 of the European Convention by imposing Iribarren an unjust and degrading treatment and by delaying the trial. It sentences Spain to pay 170,000 euros to the Basque citizen in compensation. It is a rather historical ruling, as there appear to be very few sentences of this kind.

But it is extremely sad that in order to get justice one has to be fighting for 17 years. The case could never be brought to a criminal tribunal because the Spanish police simply rejected to determine who was the author of the aggresion (they normally go masked and never show identification of any sort - but, if the judges would have insisted, rejecting to report that would be contempt of court and complicty with a presumpt criminal).

This case of police terror was not isolated in that time. In that same demonstration, another young man was severely injured as well. Two years later, Txuma Olaberri was brought to coma and disabled for life, and in the same period a smoke canister entered a private home by the window and killed an elderly man, Alejandro Gorraiz.

Source: Gara.
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Venezuela, first Western country to do something about Gaza

Venezuela has expelled the Israeli ambassador as well as a good deal of the Zionist diplomatic representation in Caracas. This was done in response to the agression against Gaza, that Chávez decried as a "holocaust".

The Venezuelan foreign minister said that the Israeli attack are "flagrant violations of the international law" and "state terrorism".

On monday, President Chávez accused the USA of poisoning Yasir Arafat in order to further destabilize the region and allow the criminal Zionist plans to go ahead.

An applause for the Venezuelan people and its democratic and socialist institutions. This is the America and the West that we dream of. This is the future, Israel and the still powerful bloc that supports it belong to the past.
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Coconut fibre to replace plastic

Found at SD.

Baylor University researchers have found how to use the most aboundant coconut fibre (normally a wasted byproduct of coconut production) to make polyester-like fibres, with the specific intention of using them in automobiles' interiors.

Obviously this developement still awaits implementation (like so many other technological discoveries it may take decades before it's widespread) but it's certainly cheaper and more eco-friendly than the typical plastic parts. It also fits safety standards for such products.

Let them come. We use too much plastic.
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Genocide in Gaza (2)

Basque newspaper Gara reports (link1, link2) that the situation in Gaza is dire and desperate as the Zionist keep terrorizing the population with their cluster bombs.

Yesterday a clearly identified UN school, that housed 400 refugees, was bombed , killing three. Israeli ships opened fire against a beach at Deir al Balah, murdering 10. A hospital was also bombed destroying many ambulances packed with injured victims (the exact figure of casualties in this attack is not known yet).

But the worst is not directly caused by bombs, but by the destruction of all infrastructures. The lack of electricity is causing extreme death risk for people, specially children, at a time of the year when the temperatures often drop close to 0ºC. Food is also extremely scarce and also poses a major threat for the health and survival of young children. Hopsitals are working with emergency generators that will soon stop working because of lack of fuel. UNRWA has been forced already to close 4 of its 18 emergency health centers, Red Cross personnel has been forbidden from entenring the besieged strip. No humaniatrian aid is arriving at all.

Water is also extremely scarce with 70% of the population having no access to it. The residual water processing plant of Beit Lahiya is being bombed with heavy risk of causing a poisonous flood in that town.

In many cities around the world protests have been held. In Egypt and Morocco these have been brutally repressed, with at least one person killed in Marrakech.
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