Epipaleolithic bow and paddle found at Sweden

Archaeology in Europe points me to this news story of central Sweden, where archaeologists have found particularly interesting artifacts belonging to the Epipaleolothic ("Mesolithic") period.

The artifacts, dating to 9000 BP (when early European Neolithic was still coalescing in Greece) include the wooden parts of a bow, a paddle and the shaft of an axe. These findings of wooden materials are very rare for this period but some similar ones (including parts of a logboat) were already known of in nearby Denmark (Maglemose culture).

These new discoveries were found at Motala, near Lake Vättern, where the paddle would have seen some use, I can imagine.
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Bilin or Berlin

I was reading this news item at TAANS and, still sleepy from my long nap, I was understanding

... separation barrier in Berlin...

One of the many useful properties of the twilight zone is to blur time and space and reveal unusual truths that way.
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UK: Brown gets rid of honest drug advisor

The last highly questionable move by the erratic and rather arrogant British PM, John Brown, has been to re-classify cannabis from class A drug to class B, so the police can more easily persecute users and small traders.

This is of course a highly controversial move and his chief advisor on drugs was clearly against. Prof. D. Nutt actually even dared to criticize his boss, declaring openly that the psychotic risk derived from cannabis was virtually inexistent (same as I commented here) and questioning that alcohol and tobacco are treated separately from illegal drugs (both drugs are highly addictive and dangerous).

Well, he got fired right away.

For Prof. Nutt, this is "disappointing". And he warns of increasing conflict between politics and science. He argues that he was not prepared to mislead the public on behalf of the government.

And it seems that's what governments and corporations want scientists for these days: to lie in their behalf.

While the conservatives support the government, the liberal-democrats do not. "What is the point of having independent scientific advice if as soon as you get some advice that you don't like, you sack the person who has given it to you?" C. Huhne declared.

Meanwhile cannabis users in Britain will see their scarce rights even more restricted, risking as much as five years in prison for mere possession.

Source: BBC.

Update (Nov. 5): there is an interesting short article by David Nutt on the issue today at New Scientist: Governments should get real on drugs.
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The perpetuation of poverty: analyzing Bangla Desh

Now and then seems wise to recall why poverty exists and is perpetuated in spite of the overproduction we have, including many countries that pay farmers to produce less, not more.

Vicenç Navarro picks one of the poorest countries in the world, Bangla Desh, as case study. Why is Bangla Desh poor? Does it not produce enough food? It does and even exports it because their inhabitants don't have enough money to pay for it. The crucial problem, like elsewhere, is that wealth is concentrated in very few hands: 16% of rural Bangladeshis own 75% of the land and this olygarchy rules the country (75% of parliament members own huge land swaths). These have absolutely no interest in redistributing even a fraction of that wealthin order to increase the internal demand: they are just interested in perpetuating their power and wealth.

So constitutionally land redistribution, what is just a self-evident need in order to create a "middle class" that can drive demand and serve as backbone of the country's sociology, is just illegal. No matter who wins in the polls (the usual clone-party pseudo-democratic regime, with the occasional military intervention), nothing can change. Only a violent revolution can in fact change things in such a country but the odds are against it and keeping people semi-illiterate and ignorant, and stranded in religious false promises, helps the olygarchy to perpetuate the status quo.

This is of course not just the case of Bangla Desh but of so many other countries through the world, in dire need of a revolution with some blood and specially some good wealth redistribution. And this applies, in my opinion, also to supposedly wealthy countries like the USA, that are in dire need of some wealth redistribution too. By the moment, all they got is further taxes to pay the bankers who suck their blood. Why not put them in jail, as they deserve?
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Corrupt African dictators remain impune in France

A court case against the corrupt dictators of Equatorial Guinea, T. Obiang, Gabon, O. Bongo, and Congo, Republic, D. Sassou-Nguesso, who own many luxuries in France, has been halted on demand from the public attorneys on ground that the NGO that initiated the prosecution has no ability to do so.

Transparency International will appeal to the supreme court.

This seems just another move by the ultra-conservative French government to prevent the prosecution of their loyal puppet tyrants in Middle Africa. When people asks where is "neocolonialism", it's there: in undemocratic corrupt tyrants appointed and protected by the metropolis who suck the blood of their countries.

Source: Al Jazeera.
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Proteins that control genes

An interesting breakthrough in how the human genome actually works: many proteins are in fact controlling what genes do.

Of course, these proteins are ultimately a encoded by some genes, so the DNA code would still be the ultimate arbiter, but now it seems that the key may not be in the gene alone but also in those proteins that control its behavior, which in turn are generated by other "master genes".

This complex interaction beyond the simple "DNA rules" axiom may explain how humans, allegedly much more complex that other organisms like plants, have not more genes than them.

Source: Science Daily.
The original paper seems to be this one (paywall).
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Genes for bad driving, genes for drinking, genes for all...

Not sure how solid are these news items but today Science Daily publishes two articles on how genes make you this or that.

One quite common genetic variant (30% in USA) makes you apparently a worse driver, and a worse learner in general. However it is very advantageous to overcome neurodegenerative diseases. It is probably one of these cases of dynamic equilibrium in which two alleles offer different adaptative advantages, each one at a different cost.

Another of these allele variants has been found to increase the like for alcohol and make people drink more, however it is independent on the gene that predisposes to alcoholism (alcohol-addiction). This does not change that drinking frequently is the leading cause of alcoholism, of course, just mentions genes that predispose to drinking and to alcohol-dependence as distinct.

I just wonder what adaptative advantage does the gene for alcoholism has, sincerely. There must be something or would have gone extinct.
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Research on most recent Neanderthal remains blocked by red tape

Flippant with the latest news from Mundo Neandertal: the Andalusian Government (Junta de Andalucía) is impeding the research of one of the most interesting sites for late Neanderthal research on no reason at all (source: Público).

In the 1950s a male Neanderthal skull was found at the site but was recently dated by palinology to as late as 21,500 BP, much later than the last Neanderthals are known to have lived. Such shocking datation requires further research but, while they have the money, they can get a mere administrative permit. And the worst is that no explanation at all is even given.

The situation anyhow seems widespread in the backwards semicolonial latifundist region, with local researchers being forced to migrate (to Gibraltar for instance) for lack of any archaological interest by the administration. This in spite of the archaeological wealth that Andalusia surely hides in its earthy folds. One wonders if is some sort of unspoken policy not to disturb the latifundia or maybe that they have been secretly storing nuclear waste in archaeological sites.

In any case, it is a scandal that a country that should be able to shed so much light on European prehistory, virtually no archaeological excavations are allowed as if it was some sort of taboo.

Where is Tartessos?!
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New Anthropology Forum

Update: I'm out of this project.

I got out of there only a couple of days after: among other things, someone had the great idea of appointing certain Zionist maniac, who I know is very bad person and can't moderate (and whom I personally hate to death, btw) , as mod and even to place him in the same forum that was assigned to me. See here and here for background.

This was a cruel joke, a manipulative trick that certainly says nothing good about the new space. Also it seems these issues can't be even discussed in the mods' room. I feel clearly scammed. and used.

_____________________

Old post follows

Today is a day of change for my links. On one side today is the day that Yahoo! kills the free website service Geocities and hence I lose my old site (not that I paid it too much attention, admittedly, but was handy) .

On the other hand a new Anthropology Forum is born. Today Anthrocivitas begins its life, apparently after gathering the best people you might have found in old and ill-fated anthropology forums, whose names I prefer not to recall.

At the moment, with just a few hours of existence, the site is rather empty but I am sure that this won't be the case anymore in just a few days. My expectations for this new site are very high: hopefully the sad prevalence of racist trolls in such kind of forums will be addressed properly and the quality of discussion and information shared should be very good.

But of course it all depends on who participates, so here I want to invite all among my readers who have a genuine interest for anthropology, genetics, prehistory and history, to join the site and make it fructify.

Enjoy.
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30 years of Western Basque "autonomy": empty celebrations and demands of self-determination

The statute of autonomy that grants to the Western Basque regions certain self-rule within Spain, is now 30 years old. After more than a decade of such "birthdays" not being celebrated at all, the new undemocratic government of López has resuscitated the day but getting nearly no audience.

The pro-Spanish parties, that rule without popular support, thanks to judicial manipulation of the electoral scenery, have been the only ones to join the official events. Even the "open doors" day at Ajuria Enea, the residence of the Lehendakari (President), has only raised the interest of a few hundred individuals.

The largest Basque political formation, the conservative Basque Nationalist Party, declined again to participate in the calculated choreographies of the unionists and has instead asked again for the fulfillment of the statute in its integrity, something they have been demanding since the 1980s. The extremely "moderate" (pro-Spanish) speaker of this party, I. Urkullu, called instead for "a pact built on a new model of relationship, as is defined by the New Political Statute [Ibarretxe Plan] approved by the [Western] Basque Parliament", law that included the right of self-determination for Basques and that was blocked at the Spanish parliament without any second thoughts.

The PM by Eusko Alkartasuna (Basque Solidarity, center-left), J.M. Larrazabal, stated that the statute is impossible to recycle, as it is such a "disfigurated and deteriorated" legal frame cannot be revived. He asked for a wholly new legal and political structure that includes the right to self-determination.

The so-called Gernika Statute was approved in 1978-79 and was only half-way to the huge self-rule that Basque provinces enjoyed before the Carlist Wars and id not acknowledge the right of Basques to self-determination. For these reasons, more than 40% of Western Basques chose abstention in the referendum of 1979. Additionally many of its capacities have never been fully implemented, as the Spanish government has made an issue of retaining such competences. In many cases the Basque Government had to act unilaterally in order to partially transfer such attributions.

Nowadays only the unionists support it, as even the most moderate of Basque nationalist formations is demanding to move over into a new more democratic frame, truly representative of Basque collective will. The more or less legal fraud in the latest elections, putting a unionist proconsul in Ajuria Enea, clearly against popular will, has only aggravated the "constituional crisis" that the Basque Country is going through.

Source: Gara.
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Interview Ahmed Zakayev, exiled PM of Chechnya

Again I find a most interesting interview at Gara newspaper, this time with the leader of the Chechen government in exile, A. Zakayev. I translate it here to English as I think it is quite interesting:

Gara: 20 years have passed since the Berlin Wall was demolished and 10 since the beginning of the Second Chechen War. Would have changed anything if Gorbachev would have managed to fully implement the Perestroika?

Zakayev: No doubt. The catastrophe of Chechnya began with the collapse of the USSR, Yeltsin recognized the republics that broke apart (Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan...) but decreed that the Republic of Chechnya-Ingushetia would remain under control of Moscow. If Gorvachev would have managed to introduce all his reforms, both economical and political, today the USSR would be something like the European Union.

G: You were Minister of Culture in the government of Djokhar Dudayev until his death in 1996. What kind of leader was he?

Z: Many lies have been said of him. He has been called "bandit", "fanatic", "intransigent"... But in fact Dudayev was an intelligent and dialogant person, nothing like the image that Moscow has been trying to "sell". In November 1994 promised me that he would do everything possible to prevent the war and in December he received a telegram from the Kremlin calling for a negotiation round at Vladikavkaz (North Ossetia). Against the opinion of many in his cabinet, who were against any sort of negotiation, Dudayev confirmed his assistance. But Moscow canceled the meeting and the war began soon after that.

G: In any case, you won the First Chechen War (1994-96), and enjoyed then of som form of self-rule until the second war began. How was that period?

Z: I beleive that you should re-formulate your question. Who told you that we won the war? 80% of Grozny was destroyed but I never saw even a single broken window in Moscow. Those three years were some of the darkest ones in the history of Cechnya: more than 100,000 people died and as many were left homeless too. The Republic was completely ruined, people lived at the edge of desperation because mere survival was a huge challenge. In the peace agreement, the indemnizations to be paid by Moscow were determined, but none was ever fulfilled. We were the true victims of that war and even then it was said that we had won.

The Chechnyan government of that time, including myself, was guilty of excessive relaxation. In such situation it was easy for Moscow to manipulate its members. The situation reminded of how an adult in kindergarten manages the children at whim: conducting them, making them argue...

Sergei Primakov, the then Foreign Minister of Russia, anounced that they would break relations with anyone recognizing the independence of Chechnya. Nobody did, nor was there any European organization that would send a single ruble to Chechnya.

G: Can you describe in further detail that interference from Moscow?

Z: Since the very moment when the ceasefire was signed in September 1996, Russia began getting ready for the next war. It was not the end of a conflict but the beginning of the preparations for another one. The Russian secret services initiated a campaign to divide the Chechnyan people and prepare everything for the war to come.

They soon realized that the most effective way to split Chechnyan society was through religion. It was then when the Arabs began arriving to the country. All them brought money, money that never reached the leader of the Republic, who was then Masjadov, but that ended in the pockets of whoever was able to raise a combat unit. Most of them were opposed to the government.

A second area of intervention were the media. In the First Chechnyan War, journalists from all around the world had direct access to the country and said the truth about what happened there. Moscow wanted to prevent that at any cost, and the murders and kidnaps of journalists became common currency, in order to scare them. Then it came the turn of NGOs, beginning by the Red Cross itself.

Finally it was necessary for Russia to supress those who wanted to invest in Chechnya without passing through Moscow. I recall now those British Telecom engineers who arrived to the Republic to restore telephone lines: they were kidnapped and beheaded.

Our only achievement in that period was to prevent civil war among Chechnyans, something that Moscow wanted to provoke through the usual means.

G: You have denounced the alleged "close cooperation" between Arabs and Russians. Which are the grounds for that claim?

Z: In the USSR years there were many more foreigners from the Middle East than from anywhere else. Chechnyans are traditionally Sufi Muslims, while Wahabbism is a current only recently imported by Arabs and Russians, outside of genuine Islam. If all that money that came with the Arabs would have dropped directly from Moscow, Chechens would not have accepted it because it would mean treason. There were like 1500 Arabs in Chechnya and all of them had a visa stamp at Moscow. No one of them had entered the Republic illegally as it was claimed. The Kremlin knew perfectly who went to Chechnya and what for.

G: Do you still mantain that Putin killed Litvinenko?

Z: For Moscow there is people who just must be suppressed, regardless of whether these are Aslan Masjadov, Sergei Litvinenko or Anna Politovskaya. And Putin is so cynic that he doesn't even bother hiding that! They killed Politovskaya in October 7th, Putin's birthday. The press talked a lot about the "gift" for the Russian President. Putin was in a foreign country but did not took long for him to declare that, effectively, he did not like Politovskaya but that he had no connection with the murder.

G: When Litvinenko died you made another declaration in which you described him as "meaningless traitor" and when you said that there was no evidence that connected him with the FSB. Putin never thought that the British would find out that this death had been caused by polonium.

Z: Everybody knows who Putin is. We all know that he was the one who ordered the kids of Beslan killed, gas the crowds at Dubrovka Theater or blow up those apartment buildings that were the pretext for the Second Chechnyan War. What is most scary is that Putin is still a key piece of international politics, who is treated with respect by so many European leaders. Chechnya will be the first one, Georgia the second one and I can assure you that the third one will be Ukraine.

G: Last February, the president of pro-Russian Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov offered you to return to Grozny. In what stage are the negotiations at this moment?

Z: The press has speculated a lot about the negotiations on my suppossed return to Cechnya. I have been in fact in discrete but continuous contacts with representatives of the Russian Government since 2001. In the last two meetings in Oslo and London with Abdurajmanov (Kadyrov's delegate), I insisted in making public these meetings if what we want is in fact to find a peaceful solution to the conflict. On this day anyhow the conditions for my return to Chechnya do not exist. Returning to Chechnya now would be becoming accomplice of a regime whose decissions are made in Moscow.

G: Which is the current situation of insurgency, both in Chechnya and the rest of the Caucasus?

Z: Doku Umarov (self-proclaimed "Emir of North Caucasus") is just another victim of the provocations of the FSB but not for that reason can I agree with his ideology nor his view of the conflict. Suicide bombings are totally alien to Chechnyans. Dudayev and Masjadov said that in the past and we have been repeating the same for all these 20 years: at the beginning of the 1990s, Russia had a problem with Chechnya, 20 years later the problem is spread from the Caspian to the Black Sea. This is the result of trying to solve a political problem by force.
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New megalithic find at Devon, Britain

Archaeology in Europe points me to this brief press note where a new archaeological discovery of some significance in, Devon, SW England.

The site, found under an old reservoir in Dartmoor National Park, has produced so far, a 27 m. wide stone ring, burial mounds and remains of walled buildings dated to c. 4000 BP. The oldest findings are anyhow from the Epipaleolithic (Mesolithic) era.
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Cannabis highly unlikely to cause schizophrenia

A new research paper by Matt Hickman and other researchers from several English universities, highlights that, if cannabis use could trigger schizophrenia, in order to prevent a single such case, ten thousand male cannabis users and thirty thousand female ones would be needed to be taken out of the consumption routine. The figures are half that for the stronger transgenic varieties of cannabis, every day more common, but still totally disproportionate and statistically irrelevant.

Matt Hickman et al., If cannabis caused schizophrenia—how many cannabis users may need to be prevented in order to prevent one case of schizophrenia? England and Wales calculations. Journal for the Study of Addiction, 2009. (paywall)

A divulgative article can be found at Science Daily.

Cannabis consumption may hence very very slightly favor the trigger of such mental problems but it is obviously not any major cause but rather a scapegoat. In my opinion, research should focus on anti-natural birth giving practices instead, which are very likely to cause traumas for all life and may hinder normal development, as well as on exposure to industrial toxins and electromagnetic fields.

Also these kind of studies do not seem to consider the cross influence of other drugs, like LSD,, MDMA, cocaine or alcohol, which also seem to have some psychosis dangers, probably more intense.
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Interview with Manuel Zelaya

A whole month has passed since the return of the constitutional President Manuel Zelaya to Honduras, where he is still refuged in the Brazilian embassy. With this occasion, there is an interview with Mel, as the president is popularly known in his country, in Basque newspaper Gara that I am translating here:

Gara: After a month since your return to Honduras, which is the current situation?

Zelaya: Honduras is living an unprecedented struggle. It is the first time that in our country an action of this nature is being carried on to revert a coup d'êtat. Today we are fighting to ammend, to rectify, the error they comitted. All this constitutes a challenge to us and the International Community.

G: In what stage are the negotiations now?

Z: They are paralyzed, suspended. They have been obstructed by Micheletti and the de facto regime. With this boycott and this obstruction to dialog, they have become a totalitarian regime that is challenging all Humankind. They are a clone of the regime that Idi Amin established in Uganda or that of Mobutu in Congo. That same thing is what they are applying in Central America these days.

G: Do you believe that the fact of blocking the negotiations could be a strategy by the coupists to gain time until elections?

Z: What they are doing is insulting the intelligence of the whole World, because it is not possible that all countries of planet Earth are wrong and they are right.

G: If the coupists do not present any other proposal, what decision will you make?

Z: We will continue in our determination of fighting for justice. In this we are being supported by all societies, all the governments and the Honduran people. We know that reason and truth accompany us, so we are spiritually calm.

G: Have you thought of any alternative to revert this situation?

Z: The struggle that is happening in Honduras has several fronts: national, international, political, social, economical, technological, juridical... At this moment we are working in all those fronts to try to produce an exit to this situation.

G: Do you think that the International Community has done all they could?

Z: I think that they have done up to where they could. Now there is still another stretch to be transited and I do hope that they will keep the support for the government of this country.

G: The USA condemned the coup but later qualified of "irresponsible" your decision of returning to Honduras and did not even raise this issue in the 64th Assembly of the United Nations. What do you think of their position?

Z: Those are isolated incidents of some officers that do not correlate with their official position of reverting the coup. I am in agreement with the stand of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton.

G: Do you believe that the coup in Honduras can set up a precedent and favor that a similar situation could happen elsewhere in Latin America?

Z: Yes. Just with the coup having resisted more than 100 days, it is already causing serious weaknesses in the American democratic system. This happens precisely because of the impotence of international organizations like the OAS or United Nations when faced with an act of force that violates the state of rights, the Democratic Charter of the OAS, the United Nations' Charter and the International Declaration of Human Rights.

Faced with the impotence of international organizations, this coup is actually weakening the image of Latin American democracy. If this coup would be legitimized by means of the electoral fraud that is being prepared, with repression and media suppression, we would be at the doors of the death of Latin American democracy.

G: One of your delegates at the negotiation table, Víctor Meza, alerted that the failure of negotiations could lead to a "social conflict". Do you share this idea?

Z: If you review the social and economical indicators, and those related to social conflict, you will notice that there is already a social conflict. There is in fact a major and widespread social conflict because of the coup. All that is being suffered already by Honduras and all Central America.

G: Do you believe that the level of confrontation will grow if no agreement is reached?

Z: If there is no solution to the problem, it is clear that the level of unhappiness among the people towards the military regime that now appoints the presidents will grow more and more.

G: How do you evaluate the struggle kept by the people in these 116 of resistence?

Z: Extraordinary. It has always been a utopy for Hondurans that the people gets organized, that the people manifests itself and acquires a consciousness of its rights. Now we are living all that in our flesh.

G: Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega, said that the Honduran people is acquiring weapons for their struggle. What do you tell him?

Z: The resistence of the Honduran people is a peaceful resistence, and that has been demonstrated in all these more than one hundred days: there is not a single casualty among the military nor the policemen, no resister has been captured having weapons. It rather happens the opposite: more than 89 soldiers with plain clothes have been captured among civilians making violent actions.

The Honduran resistence is peaceful. If there is any expression out of these parameters, it will be particular individuals or groups but they are outside of the terms in which we are defining the struggle, peacefully and democratically through active nonviolence: public demonstrations, strikes... but not armed movements. We oppose radically armed movements and that is why we have not asked for blue helmets nor any military intervention in Honduras.

Our triumph will be to defeat the troops that disrupted the democratic process in a pacific manner. If we could not achieve this, we would keep struggling until achieving some day our main victory: to know that ethical and peaceful struggles can defeat armies and violence.

G: How many people has died at the hands of the police and the army?

Z: More than 100 people have been murdered in these days. We have the names and we have the evidence. But, besides, there are more than 3000 arrested and more than 600 have required hospitalization: people who have been beaten, and even tortured and raped.

G: This last Sunday the High Commissioner of the UN arrived to Tegucigalpa to investigate the human rights' violations since the coup. Have they already contacted you?

Z: We have kept occasional contact but we have not met yet. But of course that we will meet.

G: Do you expect that the investigation ends up with a strong enough report?

Z: Yes. All their declarations have been coherent with reality and have been strong in the condemnation of the regime. Because here they went from a coup to a dictatorial regime that decrees measures against the human rights of the people, that suppresses liberties and media.

G: After a month living in the Brazilian embassy, how do you feel?

Z: In spite of all the tension that we are living through, I have a strong spirit and keep my consciousness standing. I am peaceful, spiritually optimistic and a democrat. But also I have much faith in my formation and that is why I am in politics: because I believe that it is a path that creates strength and hope. We have to stand up through all that path until the societies from the various parts of the World make their rights to be respected.
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Kenyan tool discovery could push Homo age back to two million years

Just a quick mention of these interesting findings. The tools found by Thomas Plummer's team in Kenya are the oldest Olduwayan style tools found in what used to be a savannah habitat (there are older ones but belong to jungle ecosystem). For this reason the researchers are quite confident that they do belong to members of the genus Homo. The oldest dates considered at the moment were of some 1.8 million years.

Thomas W. Plummer et al., Oldest Evidence of Toolmaking Hominins in a Grassland-Dominated Ecosystem. PLoS ONE, 2009 (free access like all PLoS materials).
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Ardipithecus, chimps, bonobos and christians

Martín Cagliari has uploaded at his most interesting blog Mundo Neandertal, the full documentary of Discovery Channel on the Ardipithecus Ramidus. A must view (while the blog is in Spanish, the film is still only available in English).

I was watching it yesterday and is most educative, specially for the amateur with just a side interest in ancient hominins, as is my case. But, as always they have to outline a theory, a Christian-sounding one, of course.

So I was not too persuaded that the two most surprising features of aunt Ardi and her kin, the grasping but bipedal feet and the very short and blunt canines responded too well to the theory suggested at Discovery Channel. They argue that this means two things: bipedalism in forest area (this last ratified by botanical and zoological research of the sediments - excellent job with that too) and lack of the kind of male competition we see among chimps for group dominance and hence reproductive advantage (they talk about controlling females but it's in fact more as I describe it here, as chimps are polyamorous, even if in a hierarchical manner).

So far sounds good. But the hypothesis launched is that these new bipedal males with low aggresivity responded to a new kind of bond (couple) sort of reproductive economy, in which the males could go farther looking for "quality food" (whatever that means) and carry it on their backs sounded kind of implausible and too moralist to be real. I was not persuaded.

As it happens often checking with your pillow helps to clarify thoughts and when I woke up I came with fresh ideas: they had been all the time ignoring bonobos!

Bonobos have relatively large canines but are much more bipedal than chimps, ability that they use to carry things around or just to walk, either on ground or on branches (someone pointed out recently too that even gibbons, the most distant ape, are sort of arboreal bipedal animals, that arboreal bipedalism is not that rare among our kin). Bonobo males also do not compete for the females (so their canines may well be somewhat redundant) but that is not because they live in couples and males have any enhanced role looking for food in far away places but because they are even more polyamorous than chimpanzees but females tend to lead the groups up to a point.

And when you look at Ardi after considering the bonobos, she looks very much like one in fact, right? In fact it is then when she stops looking like some sort of ape-ish chimera and starts making sense. At least for me.

Bonobos are more closely related to chimpanzees than to us but they share with us some traits that chimpanzees do not: they have a clear sense of empathy and compassion and the females are sexually available all the time, not just when ovulating. This allows them to have much more cohesive and horizontal societies, where males do not need anymore to compete for females' favors.

As I said before, they are also more bipedal than regular chimpanzees. They look like a much better comparison than regular chimpanzees for our evolution, at least in many aspects.

So my hypothesis is that Ardi and her kin were to some extent like bonobos in the social aspect. What do you think?
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Anti-feminist trials as example of the Spanish madness

The madness of "all is ETA", I mean, by which nearly anyone has been repressed one way or another in the last many years.

On March 8th 2008, International Women's Day, the then delegate of the government in Navarre, Vicente Ripa, after apparently much legal insecurity and doubts, decided in the last minute to forbid a feminist demonstration in Pamplona, called by more than 40 associations. The pretext was given by Spanish court that decided that, as feminist claims such as the right to abortion are not shared by all Spanish political parties, feminism is partisan and hence the demo could be forbidden.

The demonstration was then met by the force of the Spanish police at its arrival to Gazteluko Plaza, and protesters reacted mostly (some just run away) with nonviolent resistence, putting up with the "democratic" beatings.

Now 15 women are facing trial for misdeamanors, being asked to pay fines between 300 and 600 euros each. For that reason a demonstration has been called for tomorrow at the historical Basque capital.

Source: Gara.
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Basque Nationalist Left debates new strategy

This seems to be a good deal of what was going on behind the scenes when the latest inquisitorial round up happened in Donostia a week ago: Batasuna is launching an internal debate with what seem to be quite novel proposals and the Spanish government is just stuck and content in its process of Turkish-style repression and undemocratic administration.

According to Gara this new proposal talks in terms of a new cycle headed to the resolution of the political conflict, process that should be democratic and centered in the decission of the Basque citizenship and that, importantly, should happen without any violence or external interference.

It is notable that the document makes a self-criticism of the previous failed peace process of 2005-07 in the sense that they used to follow the so-called "Argel parameters" (for the also failed negotiation of Argel in the 1980s): concession in the armed struggle issue in exchange for a democratic frame (self-determination). In other words: weapons for freedom. They argue that this happened because the political bloc had issues of cohesion during the truce, specially as it was quite obvious that the Spanish government was not making any concessions.

They also mention that while there are positive new elements, there are also negative ones, like social evolution itself. They warn that the speed of such changes is faster than that of the liberation process. The positive elements are said to be the international context (crash of globalization and speculative capitalism, advance of the Left in Latin America, acceptance of some independentist proposals like those of Greenland, Scotland or Quebec), as well as the local one (exhaustion of the autonomical frame, weakening of the political hegemony of the Basque Christian-Democrats or the unity of action acheieved in the North, as well as the increase of independentist initiatives in specially Catalonia but also in the Basque Country itself). The labor unions' support of the essentials of the Nationalist Left's goals and proposals is also percieved as a very important supportive element that should not be wasted.

The new proposed focus seems to be in the so-called democratic process, which is vaguely defined as the procedure to change the current "game rules" and to carry the confrontation to parameters in which the Nationalist Left will be stronger and more efficient. Emphasis is made in that such democratic process is not limited to negotiation and does not depend on it but that it follows its own dynamics that are described as gradual.

The pillars for such process would be accumulation of forces, change in force correlation and national construction. This is further detailed as four steps: rally the Nationalist Left, build an independentist bloc, create a popular wall against the attacks from the state and re-create negotiation.

The first of these pillars is described as urgent, and leaves a feeling of wanting to rebuild ties with the breakaway party Aralar, which has improved somewhat its electoral results (while not even remotely approaching the historical levels of the Nationalist Left before ilegalization). The emphasis in being legal as central goal around this pillar makes me think that they are feeling nostalgic of the time when they could still rule towns and be decissively influential in other elected bodies.

The overall tone of this proposal seems to be in leaving somehow the armed struggle out of the equation and in emphasizing political action. However, in my opinion, the democratic process seems to be lacking in any specific plan of action, such as switching to a strategy of nonviolent disobedience or mere wishful parliamentarism that will probably go nowhere?

It is my impression that this debate could cause some greater loss of cohesion within the Nationalist Left. After all, most followers are there because ETA has been and still is, sadly enough, the only one really facing the state, while the parliamentary action so far has been totally powerless and pissed at by Madrid, where the will of the Basque People has no legal currency (after all Basques are only some 6% of the Spanish population).

I suspect that while Spain does not offer a realistic alternative to ETA as expression of the Basque popular will for self-rule, it may not matter what debates are held, because there will always be an important sector that just finds making politics in such a restrictive frame as something meaningless and idiotic.
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People punish for social acceptance

Interesting experimental sociology item that I found at Science Daily. Sociologist Christine Horne, author of The Rewards of Punishment: A Relational Theory of Norm Enforcement, found experimentally that people is much more likely to scold a bad-spoken kid when they were in company of the right people, like a group of like-minded friends, than when among people who may not support that stance.

Apparently people do that not just because such like-minded allies would back them but specially because expressing such shared views will gain them the respect and admiration of those allies.

This is interesting because it offers an unusual insight on how traditional views hold sway in closely knit societies, like those of prehistory and even modern less impersonal ones, and how social consensus is created, kept and also eventually broken.
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On Nobels and "Alternative Nobels"

While we are still digesting the absurdity of giving the Peace Nobel prize to Barack Obama, who has done nearly nothing to deserve it. I find in Rebelión a couple of articles that seem indicated to mention.

On one side, Mario Ramírez-Orozco analyzes the insides of the Peace Nobel committee, that by now are already quite public at least in Norway. This committe is no any council of wisemen or anything of the like but just a politically appointed board that includes veteran members of the Norwegian political scene. These politicians are of course like any other: not particularly wise and rather short-sighted, machiavellian and with their own agendas.

So it seems now that most members of the committee were rather quite against the candidature of Obama, logically, but that the president of the board, Thorbjörn Jagland, of the social-democrat party (Arbeiderparti) seems to have managed almost solo to force the choice of Obama as this year's Peace Nobel. Even if he was apparently able to make his party colleague, Sissel Marie Rönbeck, follow his lead, the article does not explain clearly how he managed to overcome the apparently tough opposition of the other three members.

Guess we will find out in due time.


Alternative Nobels

Meanwhile the "alternative Nobel prizes" or Right Livelihood Awards have gone almost unnoticed once again. Canal Solidario (mirrored at Rebelión) tells us of this year winners, who get 50,000 euros each (except the honorific prize):



René Ngongo of the D.R. Congo got the prize for his dedication to protect one of the largest natural ecosystems on Earth: the Congo rainforest. Ngongo created in 1994 OCEAN, an organization that promotes sustainable practices and reforestation.



Alyn Ware of New Zealand got another award for more than two decades promoting peace education and elimination of nuclear arsenals. He even was advisor to the Wellington government and the UN on these areas.



Catherine Hamlin, a gynecologist from Austria, was awarded as well for her work in Ethiopia creating health infrastructures, specially those oriented to women with obstetric fistula, a disease that breaks the lifes of many women through the world even if it can be easily operated because they just cannot afford it.



The honorary prize was given to someone maybe better known for the average reader: David Suzuki, for his work oriented to broaden the conscience on climate change.

The RLAs have no specific categories and anyone can in principle propose candidates for them.

Sincerely, my personal choice would have been for the campaigns to breach the Gaza blockade, that have shown the courage and determination to challenge one of the most inhuman and criminal abuses against a population of mostly powerless refugees by one of the most mischievous and influential regimes on Earth. Maybe the next year?
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