People losing everything. Worried.

Yesterday night two different people with whom I play at classical online game said they were financially bankrupt (in real life) and were being evicted from their homes within a month. The word "homeless" was used, with all it implies.

They are from the USA, a state that has a very weak welfare. It made me suddenly realize how deep in the crisis we are already and also that the people I play with are not just friendly toons in a virtual reality, that they may have serious issues in real life and that these issues are right now primarily of economic nature.
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Survival of the weakest?

There is an intriguing article at Science Daily: researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (Munich) have found, both in simulaions and real experiments, that the "weakest" species seems to be the survivor within cyclical competition, contradicting somewhat the usual interpretations of Darwinian evolution and emphasizing the random (or hidden) factors at play. Read more...
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Shaking images from the Gaza Holocaust

Warning: the images are terribly shaking, children brutally killed and horribly injured. Still everyone should see them to know, to feel, what is really happening under the Zionist boot and why every single human being who is not an undercover Nazi must stand against Israel with all our power and rage.

Photos of some of the more than 300 children assassinated in Gaza by the Zionist SS (aka "Israeli Defense Force") - at La Voz de Atlatl.
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Yes we can... end Apartheid

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This ad has been prohibited in several TV channels.

Found at EAAZ.
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It's official: Basques won't have democratic elections

Tonight at 21:00 CET, the especial political tribunal of Spain, Audiencia Nacional, has decreed that Demokrazia 3 Miloi and Askatasuna are illegal and will not be able to run in the upcoming elections in the Western Basque Country.

Nevertheless, the decission was already made: the violent attitude of the Basque Autonomous Police against, then perfectly legal, campaigners was a clear signal that all who mattered was in agreement to make sure that the Basque Nationalist Left could not run to these elections either.

The sentence also rules that the online site of Demokrazia 3 Miloi must be shut down as they were offering ballots to be downloaded online and casted in the upcoming elections (would be considered "null" ballots legally).

The Basque Nationalist Left has a historical support ranging from 12% to 18% of the effective voters, being at times the second largest party nationwide and always among the four largest ones. With this expected, yet pathetic, decission, a major sector of Basques is in practice excluded from the electoral process again, delegitimazing the institutions.

This hurts particularly when the Basque Country is one of the oldest democracies (if not just the oldest one) of Europe, with representative goverments dating from the Middle Ages (if not before). It has to be a foreign invader who deprives us of our traditional democracy.

Source: Gara.
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Police attacks Basque electoral campaigners

After the banishement of Demokrazia 3 Milloi (D3M) from the upcoming Western Basque elections and their statesment that they will campaign like anybody else because "it is our right", Basque autonomous police agents have attacked people who were placing posters of the nationalist platform, using abusive language and threats and in some cases physical violence.

In Sestao, some 15 policemen ganged upon a group of activists and, after mocking them, smashed two of them agains the posters' board, leaving one bleeding. Another person was beaten by several policemen in a separate inccident in the same town.
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Shoe throwing against Israel (in Argentina)

Funny video... and full of rage 'n hope at the rythm of anti-fascist, anti-zionist, anti-yahvistic music of Ska-P:



Found originally at Gaza; Peace n' Freedom.
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No democracy for Basques (again)

The Spanish political tribunal Audiencia Nacional has declared illegal the formations Askatsuna (Freedom) and Demokrazia 3 Miloi (Democracy 3 Million), in practice banning some 15% of Basque citizens (12-18% historically) to freely choose their representatives in the upcoming autonomical elections in the Western Basque Country.

At this point there is absolutely no doubt that "democracy" under the Spanish boot means absolutely nothing: it's only for the fascists and their cowardly allies.

Protests were held against the ruling

Source: Gara.
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Zionist troops shooting at peaceful demnstrators

Source: Maan News Agency, found originally at Filasteen.

Every Friday people demonstrates across Palestine against the Apartheid Wall. Every Friday, Israeli snippers shoot at their legs. They use silencers to create even more confussion and they shoot with special ammunition intended to break inside the body of the victim, filling the injury of shrapnel.

How does anybody expect Palestinian resistence to be pacific?, I wonder.

Boycott Israel! Boycott Coca-Cola, Nestlé, McDonalds, etc.
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Repeats, deletions and other rare mutations separate humans and chimps

Found at News Daily. Original paper by H. Huges et al. published in Nature.

According to this research it was not normal mutations (i.e. the change of G into T or similar, known as SNPs) which caused the rapid divergence between great apes and monkeys and, later on, also humans from great apes. Instead these were apparently caused by copy number variations, including sequence repeats, deletions and even reversions. These kind of mutations are often associated to dieseases in humans but may have also been the origin of species divergence.

As expected, they found humans and chimps were very close in terms of overall sequence. The main differences lie in copy number variations -- repeats of the same genetic sequence over and over, deletions of the sequence, or even instances in which a sequence runs backward.

Among humans, these variations have been associated with diseases ranging from AIDS to autism. They may also underlie the differences between species, Eichler said.

The analysis suggested that in the ancestral branch of primates leading to humans and the African great apes, the number of these duplications began to increase at the same time that the more classic genetic mutations were slowing down.

Humans and chimps, in particular, tend to have extra copies of these sequences, they reported.

British high officials acknowledge this crisis as the worst ever

Found at BBC.

Ed Balls, former financial advisor to Gordon Brown, admits that this crisis is worse than in the 1930s. He made these declarations at a Labour meeting at Yorkshire and are reported by the media as follows:

The economy is going to define our politics in this region and in Britain in the next year, the next five years, the next 10 and even the next 15 years.

These are seismic events that are going to change the political landscape.

I think that this is a financial crisis more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s and we all remember how the politics of that era were shaped by the economy.

We now are seeing the realities of globalisation, though at a speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before.

The reality is that this is becoming the most serious global recession for, I'm sure, over 100 years as it will turn out.

Also the deputy governor of the Bank of England, C. Bean, admitted in October that:

This is a once in a lifetime crisis, and possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind in human history.

So here is the truth. And it is the moment of truth for Capitalism as whole: globalization, extreme productivism and even more extreme consumerism, as well as totally deregulated markets were its goals. They achieved them as much as they could and now we are facing the logical conclussion.

It has been a very short lived this phase of Toyotism: just some four decades, but that's the same as my whole lifetime. It is very possible that I may die in a post-capitalist world but that new reality is yet to be created and the uncertainties are immense. In fact we are now entering in a chaotic multifurcation where maybe everything is possible: a unique moment of opportunity, the chance for human creativity and willpower to shape the future, a chance probably not seen since the late 18th century, when there was also an old regime collapsing everywhere.

Brace yourselves: it's going to be very tough, tougher than you probably ever imagined. But the window of opportunity is being opened and that is good news in itself.

Basque sepherds of California

Found at Eusko Blog - Ingeleraz, originally from BBC. Worth a look.




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Interview with Mordechai Vanunu in Gara

Gara: «El poder nuclear de Israel se volverá algún día contra los mismos que lo crearon» (interview with Mordechai Vanunu, in Spanish).

It is a long interview with the man, that true Jewish hero, that unveiled the nuclear arsenal of Israel and paid for it with his freedom and almost with his life. I can't really translate it all but here there are some excerpts:

My revelation helped the world to wake up and prevent that Israel could use the bomb. That was my contribution.

Here [in Israel] democracy is not like in the USA or Europe. Israel has a very special legal system that allows it to do as it wants. A very peculiar democracy as it can be seen in my case: they do not let me to leave the country or talk with foreigners. Democracy means to have human rights: freedom of speech or movement. Nothing like that exists in Israel. Besides the government does not tell the truth to the people. What kind of democracy is this one? (...) The USA confronts Iran because they say that they have the bomb. But Israel also has it and nothing happens to them. So I am happy and proud of being considered a traitor.

For 18 years in prision I was alone in a room. A cell of two by three meters.

For 18 years I was alone. After twelve years they told me I could go out and mix with other prisioners. I said I wanted to be with Palestinian prisioners. They said no. So I was other six years alone.

For the two first years the light was always on, 24 hours a day.

Where did you got the strength from? It is a big question. I do not know. I believe in freedom, in Humankind, in freedom of speech and in following the dictates of our consciousness.

I was not worried about my life. When I took the decission I assumed the risk.

The problem with my liberation is that I cannot leave Israel. I do not feel free in Israel. I used to be in a small jail and now I live in a huge prision. (...) I feel that at any moment they can arrest me and do whatever they want with me. This is not real freedom.

I am not alone, I have many friends. All who live with me now and all who support me are now my family. (...) I live here, in East Jerusalem, in the Palestine area of the city. Besides I have many friends through the world, everywhere.

I feel abandoned by the USA and Europe. Nobody has worried about me. Would I have been a Jew from Europe or Russia, then France, Sweden, England, everyone... would have fought for me. But I am here in Israel with nobody to defend me. I feel abandoned because in all those 18 years they could have taken me out of prision but nobody even tried.

And in a separate comment:

I support the independence of the Basque Country. I agree that all nations in the world, large or small, have the right to self-determination by means of political activism and non-violence.
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Rapidly evolving speciation gene found.

From Science Daily.

New research on fruit fly's different species' genome has found some immunity related genes that have evolved quickly causing that hybridation among these two species often fails (the offspring die).

It seems that they evolve as response from viral threats as well as defense against the animals' own "malicious" genes (those that are not really of any use other than replicating themselves but that can condition the carrier species' evolution). In the long run this has caused that the two species, isolated from each other by some 3 million years, have not anymore compatible genomes.

After all, like with technology, this seems to be mostly a matter of compatibility and we all know that what works in Windows, seldom does in a Mac (and viceversa).
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SE Asia before Hoabinian (just a note)

Searching a bit in the Net on Asian Paleolithic, specially Southern and SE Asian because of their importance regarding the early human expansion in Eurasia, found this e-book: Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipielago by P. Bellwood (p. 159-161).

My interest focuses in what existed prior to Hoabinian (c. 17,000-3,000 BP):

1. Sonviian: N. Vietnam, S. Thailand and peninsular Malaysia (c. 23-11,000 BP uncalibrated). Somewhat different from Hoabinian but also a "cobble culture". Both cultures overlap in space and time.

2. Kota Tampan (peninsular Malaysia): c. 31,000 BP (dated by fission racks in zircon) over a Toba explosion ash layer. Resembles Sonviian. Unlike further north, there is a blank between Kota Tampan and full Hoabinian (c. 13,000 BP)

3. Lang Rongrien (southern Thailand): c. 38,000-28,000 BP (uncalibrated), and related site Moh Khiew (c. 26,000 BP), with a bifacial retouch industry. Distinct from the other "cobble cultures". The author suggests it could be similar to another culture in Sabah. Lang Rongrien also has a Hoabinian of later date, with a thick sterile layer in between.

The LGM hiatus seems unique to the Malay peninsula and southern Thailand and does not exist furthern north in SE Asia or China.

...

I'd thank any reader who could point me to useful links (not books) on Asian Middle and Upper Paleolithic, very specially those that provide synthetic data with dates (and, yeah, I love maps and illustrations too)
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UN warns of the lack of political rights in Spain

The Special Relator for the Promotion of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in the Fight Against Terorism, Martin Schenin, has issued a new report on his mission to Spain where he denounces that:

• Political parties and electoral lists can be forbidden without guarantees of any sort thanks to a very vague law that allows almost any reason to declare a party illegal and to the lack of guarantees in the trials where all is decided.
• That terror scare is used to repress NGOs, media and political activities, without respecting the principles of proportionality and necessity.
• That the term "terrorist organization" lacks of any rigorous definition and is used as a blank clause for political repression.
• That incommunicated arrest, trials in a especial tribunal, arrests without trial for as long as four years and the increment of punishments pose too many risks for human rights and legal guarantees to be acceptable.
• That totally new electoral lists are being repressed without any evidence of legal breach.
• That political pluralism is essential for a society to be truly democratic and therefore any restriction should be exceptional and be clearly regulated.

Source: Gara.
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Capital-driven decodification. Or the so-called "westernization".

In 1972 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari published which is probably the most important philosophico-political book of the 20th century: L'Anti-OEdipe, Capitalisme et schizophrénie (known in English as Anti-OEdipus). In it, the French authors dissected the processes unleashed by Capitalism in the collective (and individual) psyche.

The central process that defines Capitalism as schizoid, is decodification.

Capitalism buys all and corrupts all. What actually works within Capitalism is actually pre-Capitalist, what has not yet been rotten by the drive of profit. Hence the old morals (conservative-reactionary drag) are used by Capitalism to keep the system working for still a few years more but these are simultaneously annihilated by the mere generalization of free market economy.

The result is a society that has no values other than profit and hedonism. In the extreme such society cannot survive because any social organization needs of cooperative values of some sort but Capital is incredibly versatile and dynamic in this its own peculiar "cultural revolutionary" process and normally manages to get sometheing else serving its purposes and keeping the social order for yet another decade or generation.

D. and G. described a psycho-social pendulum that has "progressive" schizophrenia in one extreme and "conservative" paranoia in the other. Capitalism in this context is seen as "progressive" becuase it destroys the old order, the conservative pole belongs always to the past and gets most of its imaginary from pre-Capitalist elements and times. Nevertheless now and then the pendulum goes back and fascisms and the like take over... for a while. This paranoid reaction is a desperate attempt to balance the movement "to nowhere", nowhere with solid ground at least, that Capital generates. But it's a doomed reaction: they can't live without Capitalism and can't offer an alternative, hence they are again decodified, corrupted and annihilated by the dominant schizoid trend.

These are historical processes, of course, and therefore can take decades to complete. And they are anything but simple, of course.

We are now witnessing some reactionary paranoid trend, especially in some areas of the so-called developing world. Of course, Islamism is the one that comes to mind first of all... but there are many others. Actually I was set to think (again) about all this by an apparently shallow news article on the conflict in India about kissing. It is a good example of the decodifying pulse of Capitalism and the paranoid reaction that tries, in vain, to preserve the old morals.

It is also a good example of the (surely intentonal) confusion between decodification and "westernization". If you think about it, 100 or 150 years ago the same moral conflict existed in the West. Only gradually, in the 20th century, the attitudes changed. A lot of people surely had to suffer fines and moral scolding, maybe even jail, for expressing their feelings freely in the West too. So, calling these kind of things "westernization" (or "westoxication") is actually a tendentious argument. That the West has been going one step ahead in this cultural revolution is only because of greater and earlier Capitalist developement.

Decodified societies, where they exist, have weak morals and weak family ties. It happens in some colonial societies, it happens to some extent among some huntergatherers and it happens in modern "western" Capitalist societies. In a sense, one can think of this as a celansing therapy, where all the moral toxins accumulated by centuries are eliminated to allow the body, the human society, to exist as it is: pristine and without pre-determined rules other than the basic genetic frame.

Nevertheless, as this process is dominated by the "virtual" reality of money, it does also arise some very nasty processes like human trafficking, drug abuse, etc. Also people used to live in a moralistic set, when confronted with the final result of decodification: only you and the world, no rules... often panick.

Of course there is an answer to this void. But it does not lay within Capital-driven decodification, unable to build anything in the social realm except piles of virtual "wealth", nor it lays within any paranoid reactionary panick, that is unable to build the new society and also unable to escape the corrupting paws of Capitalism.

The answer is outside the dialectic pendulum: in our ability to create a new ethos and to build a society and an economy that trascends Capitalism. Humanism is the path and is already building a new ethos that belongs to no culture other than that of Naked Humankind. But the process to make this a solid achievement by building the new society and economy is still in its infancy.

Importantly, without morals and without the rotting true "invisible hand" of Capitalism, there is nothing predefined. It is the moment for willpower, for free collective creation. We are the ones that will build the future, that are building it. And no, we cannot look back or, as in the Jewish legend, you will become a salt statue.
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Smallest exoplanet found

The European Space Agency informs that a new very small, less than twice the size of Earth, rocky planet has been found orbiting a star much like our Sun. Nevertheless the planet is in a very close orbit to its parent star, so much that a whole local "year" happens in only 20 of our hours. The temperatures in the exoplanet therefore must be around 1000-1500ºC.

The planet has been named COROT-exo-7b and no information is provided in the news release about where it is.


How many civilzations share the Galaxy?

In a somewhat related news article at the BBC, on a recent report at the Journal of International Astronomy by Duncan Forgan. He has simulated a galaxy like our own under different premises and the results are:

1. If life was difficult to form but evolves easly into intelligent forms, then the likely number of civilizations in the Milky Way is of 361

2. If life evolved easily but intelligence was difficult to achieve, then the likely number of civilizations is 31,513.

3. If life could migrate between planets and solar systems via asteroid collisions, then the number of civilizations would be something like 37,964.

So guess there are some 30-40,000 "alternative humankinds" out there and, more importantly, that this number is only conditioned by the difficulties that life could find to form, not by the difficulties of its evolution into intelligent (i.e. human-like) forms.

Contacting with them would be another issue, because of the huge distance involved any "conversation" could only happen in the course of centuries or even milennia, the shortest time needed for light (radio signals included) to travel between our respective planets.

Another issue not yet sufficiently pondered is wether there is really intelligent down here on Earth. I have some doubts, honestly.
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Victim of terrorism plaza name is "offense to victims of terrorism"

J.M. Beñaran Ordeñana, Argala ("Slim" in English), was a leader of ETA(m) in the 1970s who was killed by Spanish paramilitary groups, something that caused political upheaval in the Basque Country back in the day. Since then there is a plaza in his hometown, Arrigorriaga, named "Argala Enparantza / Plaza Argala".

Argala

Yesterday a tribunal ordered it to be renamed because it is "offensive" to "victims of terrorism". One wonders if these "victims" are not but a subset of all victims of this war, and that some "victims" have more rights than other victims in this long war.
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Breaking news: Neanderthal genome fully sequenced

Found at A Very Remote Period Indeed (and thanks to Tim for mentioning it at supper) : the full Neanderthal genome from Vindija Cave (Croatia) has been sequenced and will be published later this year. The same team of the Max Plank Institut is already working on other five different Neanderthal genomes.

Once this is published and analyzed the claims of Neanderthal introgression in modern humans will be finally proven or disproven.

More at Nature News.
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Portuguese ancient DNA

Via Mathilda's Anthropology Blog, one of my favorites because even if she often dwells in non-recent papers, these are almost always very interesting for those who, like myself, are fascinated by human prehistory. Also is probably the only anthropology blog that dedicates a lot of articles to North Africa.

The paper is: Using ancient DNA to examine genetic continuity at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Portugal (H. Chandler, B. Sykes and J. Zilhao, 2005). More than two years old but still a novelty for me.

There's an interesting introduction on Zilhao's view of the Epipaleo-Neolithic transition in central and southern Portugal and then the interesting stuff comes all in figure 4:

What do you see? I see continuity. Sure: some unexpected N* has vanished and some V has appeared. But this variance is normal between any two different samples and the rest remains all the same: H dominance and some U (U5 and U* that is surely all U6)

Chandler et al. instead read discontinuity: immigration from some nearby West Mediterranean (European) source and population replacement. Well in the line of Zilhao's vision of Portuguese Neolithic transition.

Whatever the case, it is noticeable that none of the so-called Neolithic clades (especially but not only J) were present then. J, T, K, X and W must have arrived to Portugal (and presumably to all SW Europe) later on, at least in the Chalcolithic, maybe even later. These clades are also the smallest ones (together with U6) among Basques (of all modern samples). This would seem to ratify the generally accepted belief that Basque people are among the least influenced by post-Neolithic genetic influx in Western Europe and that H, V, U5, U6 (along with some mysterious N*, maybe R*, and U8a in the Basque case) constituted the Paleolithic mtDNA pool of SW Europe.

Haplogroup U* (U6):

It is noticeable that U* (U6) was already important in southern Iberia in pre-Neolithic times, what may contradict Maca-Mayer's rather forced interpretation of the U6 variability and spread. She argues for Iberian U6 to be not older than 10,000 years ago but she fails to provide an archaeological mechanism for that migration (while disregarding as merely accidental the fact that the highest variability of U6 is in Iberia and Western Berbers, and not in her alleged urheimat of the Nile). All that reasoning is founded in two factors:

1. That U6 is almost not found in Europe outside Iberia (though in fact it is occasionally found in France and Italy, with an unnamed distinct subclade unique to Sardinia)

2. That Oranian (Iberomaurusian culture) expanded from East to West (against the C-14 actual datations).

I suspect (and this suspicion grows stronger the more I read on the matter) that Oranian does actually honor its original name of Iberomaurusian and is derived from the Gravetto-Solutrean of southern Iberia, expanding from West to East in North Africa, bringing with it European haplogroups like U6, H and V (and maybe also Y-DNA R1b, rather common in Sudan and Upper Egypt) as well as technlogical and artitistic manifestations. U6 would then be the product of an early UP founder effect in southern Iberia, much like U8a among Basques. The counter-tide would belong to Capsian culture, which would have brought Y-DNA E1b1b (maybe together withmtDNA L, too common in North Africa to be just product of the rather minor trans-Saharan slave trade) as well as Afroasiatic languages.
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Chimpanzees, politics and alpha males

If you're a fan of nature documentaries you have surely watched now and then the real adventures of our chimp cousins at the Gomba reservation. In that case, the names and even personality of these chimpanzees will be very familiar, as thanks to modern media you have become for a brief but intensive time a guest in their home.

But the researchers were not just filming documentaries, they were researching chimpanzee sociology and, by extension, also ours.

They have found that alpha males among chimps are not always the largest more brutish guys. Sometimes they are: Frodo a very large male, weighting 51 kg, never ever groomed others and yet he was the alpha male for some time. In contrast, Wilkie, weighting only 37 kg. (under male chimp average) became the alpha male with a most diplomatic strategy, grooming others almost compulsively. Freud, an intermediate guy weighting 44 kg (above average) used both strategies, grooming at times and imposing himself by force in other occasions.

Source: Science Daily, based on materials of the University of Minnesota.
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The rich enviroment of Southern Iberia in the Ice Age

Just a quick note: a new study led by J.S. Carrión (behind paywall) concludes that the area near Gibraltar, and overall in southern Iberia, was very rich and quite warm in the Upper Paleolithic, with a vegetation that included pines, oaks and other deciduous trees.

While Carrión emphasizes before the media this as the enviroment of the last Neanderthals, the dates given, 32,000-11,000 years ago, rather suggest the period of AMH (H. sapiens) occupation of the area, who arrived there c. 28,700 BP (uncalibrated oldest date for Gorham's Cave Aurignacian).

Gorham's Cave today (above) and as it could have been in the Ice Age (below),
as reconstructed by the Museum of Gibraltar .

Direct source: divulgative article at Science Daily.
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Brands that support Apartheid in Palestine

Some of them:

Boycott them!
Boycott Israel!

Why? If you have still the slightest doubt:




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Some 85% of US Jewish are Zionazis

I did not made up this, nor took from any "angry Arab" site... I found it (via Body on the line) at a Zionist entity: the Anti Defamation League, self-described as "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people... to secure justice and fair treatment to all".

Well, according to their own data, only 14-17% of US Jewish are critical of Israel in relation with the Gaza genocide. The rest, either by ignorance, complacency, ethnocentrism, hypocrisy or a little bit of all, support Israel unconditionally.

There seems there is no need to defamate anyone: they are bluntly admitting to be Jewish Nazis. Only a small minority seems to have feelings beyond their own ethnocentrism and honor their people with some dignity and free thought.
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Around the Web: Palestine Genocide goes on

Lots of news and analysis. Can only make a short mention of some of them:

Genocide by thirst: Israeli authorities block a French water purification system for Gaza and force it back to Marseilles (from Sabbah's Blog). Water is one of the main problems faced in Gaza right now.

Genocide by starvation: the destruction of farmland in overcrowded Gaza strip is dramatically increasing the hunger in the open air prision (from Annie's letters).

Widespread and disabling torture in the West Bank (by the forces of kappo Abu Abbas) financed by British (found at Sabbah's Blog and Filasteen, originally from the Daily Mail).

Spain will ammend the War Crimes' Law after several Israelis are charged (found at Palestine Free Voice).

Also, Joachim Martillo argues that Israel is nothing but another Ponzi Scheme. Such a tiny country with such a limited economy can't really afford the payments of its huge foreign debt and that, if massive direct aid would stop flowing from the USA, Israel would just collapse in a matter of days.

And there's also some info at Palestine Video on the important gas reserves offshore of Gaza, surely one of the elements behind the genocide.

The complicity with the criminals is all around us. Can we make it stop, can we make it reversed into zero tolerance, into active boycott for the most racist regime of our times? We can at least try, we must try.

If not you, who? If not now, when?
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The plain truth

Found at EAAZ, originally from Mondoweiss.

And be prepared for the worst, not passively but taking action as much as you can. Olmert is again making murderous threats. No matter that Israel is the one that has borken the truce not once but many times, the Zionazis still feel impune to murder indiscriminately.

This has to stop. And has to stop now. Why do all the "democratic" leaders of the West remain silent or even supportive before these crimes? Shouldn't they be preparing to intervene militarly against Israel, like they did in Kosovo or Bosnia?

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The dance of the Eurasian haplogroups (mtDNA)

Updated and bumped: Feb-1-09. New paragraphs in ochre red.

Let's try to approach the issue of the human Eurasian expansions (adressed in previous posts via analysis of mtDNA structure) visually. Lines are used instead of dots when the geographical scope of a clade is large and the core of it can be argued.

1. 1st expansive pulse (maybe soon after Toba super-eruption, c. 74,000 BP):

This map shows the clades that (at their diversification moment) are separated from the L3 node by 5 or 6 SNPs (i.e. right after the formation of M and N). Clades in red are descendant of M, while those in blue are descendant of N. M and N as such are not shown but can be infered from their derivates.

If we could divide this pulse in fine detail following strictly the number of SNPs (something I am not sure it's realistic), we would get:

1.1. M node (preliminary M expansion/diversification).

1.2. N node. Simultaneously expansion of 5 M subclades, notably in SE Asia (M21 and M9-E). Other haplogroups expand (avant-guards?) in each of the three neighbouring regions.

1.3. Expansion mostly in South Asia (4+ subclades) with offshots also in all neighbouring regions: East Asia (M7), Australia (S) and West Eurasia (macro-X-N1).

The whole pattern argues for a homeland either in South or SE Asia. Or maybe at both regions at the same time.

There is no clear difference between M and N patterns, except that, at this stage, M is clearly present in SE, East Asia and Melanesia, while N is not (but is in Australia and West Asia). This could suggest a more westward tendency for N since the beginning and maybe an association with A blood type (most common in West Eurasia and among Australian Aborigines precisely).

In any case both macro-haplogroups moved through South and SE Asia. There is no clear barrier.

2. Interlude: brief pause of expansion and formation of haplogroup R:

This map shows the clades separated from L3 by 7 SNPs. They seem to form a narrow valley in the process of expansion/diversification (see previous post) and the moment is also worth a separate snap because it is when macro-haplogroup R was formed.

This is the first moment we see any N-derived presence in East Asia. This fact would argue for a South Asian (or at most SE Asian) origin for the R-N9 super-clade.


3. 2nd expansive pulse (some 60-50,000 years ago?):


This map shows the main clades that are separated from the L3 node by 8-10 SNPs. There is a peak of haplogroup nodes at 8-9 SNPs, which I understand as the second expansive pulse or early Eurasians. The 10 SNPs mark would rather be the end of that pulse and, in general, of the main expansive period.

In this and the next map, R derivated clades are marked in green, while blue is reserved for the N(xR) haplogroups.

We can again take a risk and divide this epysode in three possible "moments":

3.1. The first and main expansion of R (5 clades) reaches from India (R30 and R31, the latter reaching also to Australia) to New Guinea (P - seems I forgot to draw it in the map, sorry), including quite naturally SE Asia as well (B and macro-F). Simultaneously, in the M family, there is expansion in East Asia (M8-CZ) and of a rare clade (48) found at least in Saudi Arabia.

3.2. This subphase (the most expansive "instant" of the whole process) would rather belong to M, with four clades expanding in South Asia (M2, M35, M39 and M40), one into Andaman islands (M31), one in East Asia (G) and yet another one in all Sahul (Q). The expansion of R0-HV into West Asia also appears to happen in this moment. In East/NE Asia we also see the expansion of CZ (separated already from M8)

3.3. Less important "photogram". It includes three apparent haplogroup expansions: M34 in South Asia, M42 in Australia and U (R-derived) between South and West Asia. It seems to be fully within the line of the previous "moment" and includes the last significative expansion into Sahul before Modern Age.

Overall the phase appears to show a fast expansion of R from India to Sahul, followed by an even more impressive second expansion of M in all the regions except SE Asia. Also R-derived clades begin making clear inroads into West Asia.


4. Aftermath, more diffuse expansion through a longer period:


This map shows the main events between 11 and 15 SNPs after the L3 node, including most of the expansion into West Eurasia and North Asia. Events after that I'm ignoring here.

The most eye-catching features here are that Eastern Eurasia and Sahul appear now disconnected from South Asia, which still shows some (weak) connections with West Eurasia. We can consider this phase as the beginning of "racialization" therefore, once the different Eurasian regions appear to have become mostly autonomous from each other.

It is also noticeable the inroads into Europe and North Africa by West Asian lineages at this rather extense phase.

Enjoy.

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Reference: most global mtDNA structure can be found at Ian Logan's mtDNA site.
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