Origin of small dogs in West Asia

New genetic research suggests that the alleles causing small size in certain dogs may have evolved early in the process of domestication and be derived from the wolf of West Asia (Canis lupus pallipes), of smaller size and tamer behavior than its more common relative Canis lupus lupus.

Melyssa M. Gray et al., The IGF1 small dog haplotype is derived from Middle Eastern grey wolves. BMC Biology, 2010.

See also the commentary by C.A. Driscoll and B. Macdonald: Top dogs: wolf domestication and wealth. Journal of Biology, 2010, arguing for a true origin of the dog in West Asian Mesolithic and later introgression of large size genes from the common wolf.

Mordechai Vanunu does not want Peace Nobel

For the first time in the history of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a preemptive request to withdraw a nomination—by the nominee—was made.

This nominee is no other than Israeli Peace activist Mordechai Vanunu, the man who has been so severely punished for letting the World know of the nuclear arsenal of the Zionist regime, the only such arsenal in West Asia so far, the man whom I described once as the only true Jewish hero... even if he is a Palestinian by choice now.

The main reason seems to be that Vanunu doesn't want his name mixed to that of Shimon Peres, the creator of the Israeli nuclear arsenal, who was given this discredited "Peace Prize" without any merit whatsoever other than being a leading Zionist.

Read more at Counterpunch.

Vanunu was arrested again in December for allowing himself to be interviewed by Basque newspaper Gara. Exceprts from that interview can be read, translated to English, here at Leherensuge.

Missing ETA member... at a French morgue

For almost a year different people have asked openly or just wondered in the privacy of their their own minds where was Jon Anza, the ETA member who had gone missing. Most of course suspected he had been killed by the Spanish police, either intentionally or "accidentally" in an "excess" of torture. Some were surely happy about it, others indifferent, others worried, sad or angry. But the question was there.

He had not disappeared in Spanish territory though but in French lands. ETA itself announced it: Jon Anza had not arrived to an expected meeting: he had disappeared while at the train.

Now Jon Anza, what is left of him, appears at at the morgue of Tolouse. The details are yet unclear but everybody is wondering how is it possible that the French Police could not know earlier, much earlier, that the corpse was that of a "most wanted" man, whose medical file they had in their hands all the time.

The news was filtered by the French police to France 3 yesterday afternoon, seemingly just after informing his family that they believed so but were yet in wait of the DNA tests, which should be finished by today.

According to the "official" version, Jon Anza arrived normally at Tolouse on April 18th, and, in April 29th, eleven days later, he "fainted" or "was injured, disoriented and had a heart attack" and was brought to a hospital where he remained until his death, 13 days later.

In spite of the huge mediatic echo at both sides of the border, the detailed information provided by ETA itself (that even informed the French police of the fact that the fingerprints from a hideout were those of Anza, and, of course, of the Bayonne-Tolousse train journey he realized and where he went missing), the protests demanding to know what had happened to the militant... the French Justice system was apparently unable to even take a look at the corpses in the morgue of Tolouse?

I don't know what to think but it's really incredible.

Gara, which is the source of this information, reports that the website of the Ministry of Interior where such information is displayed, shows Jon Anza as still missing (one among 42 adult individuals) and only one unidentified corpse: that of a woman at Marseilles.

How has the corpse of Jon Anza remained unidentified at the morgue of Tolouse and yet never figured in that list? Or has been all the time identified and someone gave order of not reporting? Or...?

Update:

The state prosecutor, Anne Kayanakis, says she did inquire at Purpan Hospital of Tolouse (where the corpse has been all this time, according to what is said now) and she was told that there was no corpse without identification. Error or conspiration?

According to her, Jon Anza was brought to the hospital with a cardiac-respiratory arrest on April 29th. He stayed at the hospital after reanimation and died on May 11th.

His corpse remained at the hospital's morgue for all this time, when in a "merely casual" way, a member of the Legal Medicine Institute commented to a police friend that there was an unidentified corpse there.

Not just she did inquire the hospital but also the law obligues all medical centers to report any unidentified corpse to the police. But this didn't happen either.

Also Anza's relatives have been denied access to the corpse by the prosecutor, after order directly from the Ministry of Justice of Paris. What are they trying to hide?

Source: Gara.

Update:

The largest Basque labor union (an important referent in this undemocratic situation we suffer), Basque Workers' Solidarity (ELA) has declared that the official version is just unbelievable and demands an independent investigation.

T. Fernánez at Gara (among other similar opinions) emphasizes that if the official version has anything to do with reality, then Jon Anza should have been identified some 10 months ago or, otherwise, be buried at the cemetery of Cornebarrieau. He illustrates the situation with two real examples of unindentified victms attended at the same hospital facility as supposedly was Jon Anza.

Relatives and friends of Jon Anza, along with their attorneys, insist that the only believable version is that the ETA militant was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Spanish policemen in French territory, in a death-squad style action as used to happen with the GAL. They make a call to go to the Tolouse morgue on monday at 8:30 am to demonstrate against the imposition that no physician with the trust of the family is present at the autopsy.

Update (Mar 14):

All political parties, even the Spanish nationalist ones, have declared that an investigation must happen. The differences are in the details: the Spanish bloc rejected accusations of "dirty war" and declared their trust in the official version, although they did agree that the matter deserves investigation. On the other side, the Basque Nationalist Party suggested that it looks like a work from the Spanish police.

Update (Mar 15):

Thousands of people demonstrated at Donostia (San Sebastian) under the slogan "End epression and dirty war". For a change police did not show up and the demonstration could end without inccidents.

Dark matter, dark energy and... dark flow!

I'm starting to think that cosmologists are truly in the dark about what's really going on in our Universe.

But it's intriguing anyhow.

A large are of the sky is affected by it: galaxies in that zone are moving at incredibly high speeds ("a million miles per hour") apparently towards something that is beyond our horizon (that is: farther than 13.5 billion light years, which is the age of the Universe). The opposite sense of the motion is not totally ruled out but seems quite less likely.

More details at Science Daily.

So what is it? Is it some sort of sink hole by which this universe gets lost into some other universe (of whichever number of dimensions)? Is it the coalescing big crunch, the super-huge-macro-giga-ultra-giant black hole that would suck the universe in order to create a new Big Bang in a parallel reality (time only seems to exist within our universe, not clearly outside it)? No damn idea!

Mutation rate is "less than half"

From Science Daily.

Jard C. Roach et al., Analysis of Genetic Inheritance in a Family Quartet by Whole-Genome Sequencing. Science, 2010. Pay per view.

By comparing the parents' DNA sequences to those of their children, the researchers estimated with a high degree of certainty that each parent passes 30 mutations -- for a total of 60 -- to their offspring.

Scientists long had estimated that each parent passes 75 gene mutations to their children.

That means an effective mutation rate of just 2/5 the usual estimates.

The early expansion of H. sapiens in Africa (mtDNA)

As you probably know, I have been working as of late on the puzzle of the early human mtDNA, in the context of Africa, using particularly Behar 2008 as reference.

I published some stuff previously (L0, L1, L2 & L5, L3'4'6 and considerations on Arabian L(xM,N)) and went into a lengthy discussion with Terry about where exactly did the various L lineages coalesce and, of course, human prehistoric boating abilities (an impossible for him before the arrival to almost mythical archipelago of Wallacea, aka Eastern Indonesia).

So I took my time to estimate the composite centroids of each lineage, at every level, from bottom up. Some centroids are plainly valid as likely origins for the major clades, while a few others are more questionable (see below). After a subjective but common-sensical revision of these I came up with the following maps that reconstruct early human expansion:


First expansion:

There seem to be basically two moments of demographic expansion, the first one happened at about 9 (coding region) mutations downstream of the most recent common ancestor (mitochondrial Eve), where the nodes of L0, L1 and L2"6 are in the phylogenetic tree, maybe corresponding with some favorable conditions, which are hard to unravel.


This map shows the earliest expansion at the very phylogenetic origin of the species (purple arrow) and the subsequent three populations generated, defined by the mtDNA lineages L0, L1 and L2"6, all three showing some sign of expansion around the 9th CR mutation (i.e. approximately at the same time, if the molecular clock makes any sense whatsoever).

Of course, L1 and L2"6 shared phylogeny for 5 CR mutations (L1"6), what seems to mean that they had reached Central Africa by that time.

The location that may cause more controversy is that of L0 around Lake Tanganyika, because this lineage is most commonly associated with Khoisan people. However only the L0d1'2 subslineage is totally exclusive of this macro-ethnicity and other L0 lineages are scattered towards the Nile and even as far as Kuwait. The overall centroid, as well as those of L0d and L0a'b'f'k, showed up around there, so I decided that it stands that way, even if admittedly origins around Ethiopia-Sudan or Southern Africa can also be argued for (as did Doron Behar).


Second expansion:

The second major expansion is located at around the 20th CR mutation downstream from "Eve" and in my opinion may be correlated with the Abbassia Pluvial, some 120-90,000 years ago, which probably improved living conditions allowing for significative demographic growth.

It is also the prelude of the migration out of Africa into Asia.


At this moment we see L0 finally splitting up clearly between a northern and a southern group, the latter leading to the Khoisan peoples.

We also see signal of expansion of L1c (but not yet L1b), which correlates best with Pygmies (and also some other peoples of the jungle belt essentially).

And we see the split of L2'3'4'6 (the branching of L5 is earlier, just marked it for the record), first between Western (L2) and Eastern (L3'4'6) populations, centered at Central Africa and what seems to be Eritrea respectively. Then L3'4 split up, with L3 expanding rapidly in Ethiopia, Sudan and towards Lake Chad and L4 scattering along the Rift Valley down to Tanzania, where it is still the most important lineage among the Hadza and Sandawe. L3, of course, also expanded eastward towards Asia where its sublineages M and N would find enormous opportunities.

The minor lineage L6 would not expand till a later moment, so at this time it was yet some "private" L3'4'6*. I suspect that it also benefited from the Out of Africa migration, along with L4b and some L0 subclades, because it's highest basal diversity is in Yemen, suggesting it coalesced there.

A word of caution must be said about the area of origin of L2. The actual composite centroid happens to be at the Niger but this location is the product of basal sublineage L2e, which is only represented by one individual in Behar's data, who happens to live at Guinea Bissau. But the major subclade, only diverged from L2 by a single CR mutation (unlike L2e, which has a very long stem), is L2a"d and this one has a clear center at Chad and, secondarily, the CAR.

Similarly, I ended up with a composite centroid at Yemen for L3 after considering M and N. But I can't ignore the absence of basal L3 sublineages in South Arabia, so I decided that the result without M and N is much more likely to reflect the reality.


The actual centroids:

Prior to the above maps, and after hard work, I came up with this preliminary map. The composite centroids here are the "raw" ones, without further consideration:



But, as said above, I have serious caveats about L2, L3 and L6 specially. I think that the areas depicted in the other maps reflect better the likely reality, with L2 coalescing at Chad, L3 at Sudan and L6 most probably at Yemen after the out-of-Africa episode.

As said before, I also have some caveats about the coalescence area of L0 but I can't come up with a clear alternative (it'd be either Ethiopia or Southern Africa but both weight about the same), so I left it that way.

Of course, the ultimate place of origin of Humankind (Homo sapiens), or at least of the most recent common ancestor (mtDNA Eve), remains a mystery. But guess that somewhere in the vast geography of Eastern Africa is a quite reasonable conjecture (Southern and Central Africa are also possibilities).

_______________

Erratum: there is an error with minor lineage L5 (thanks to Terry for noticing) but luckily doesn't affect much the overall picture. I made a meaningful error when calculating the centroid of L5a, what, in the maps here pushes the centroid of L5 significantly but not dramatically to the south, to South Sudan at the border with SW Ethiopia to be precise. In turn this affects the centroid of L2"6, L1"6 and "Eve", pushing them also proportionately southwards (not too much but something anyhow). The rest of the nodes are not affected, as they depend only of the downstream geography.

I think it's no big deal but I might correct the maps later on... if my perfectionist side prevails over my lazy one.

Official report on radioactivity and dioxin pollution in Iraq

The Iraqi government has issued a much worrying report on the radioactive and dioxin pollution generated by the two wars the country has suffered in the last decades. The use of low grade nuclear weapons (depleted uranium bombs) and the destruction of oil facilities are apparently the main causes of this horrifying landscape but the report fails to mention the dropping of a 5 kiloton nuke near Basra, as reported by Desert Storm veteran Jim Brown.

The generalized radioactive pollution is causing a major increase of birth defects. Another environmental problem of Iraq today is the drought and the low quality of the water that Turkey and Syria, which use the Euphrates for their own purposes, allow to flow.

Full story at The Guardian.

Northern Basques will vote on "territorial collectivity"

The referendum is not backed, and even doubtfully claimed to be "anti-constitutional" by the French Republic but has the support of 90 majors and many other people.

Making it coincident with the upcoming regional elections in March 14 and 21, 91.5% of Northern Basques will finally be able to express their opinion on whether the country should become a territorial collectivity within the French Republic or not.

At the moment and since two centuries ago, when the historical provinces were abolished and replaced by a centralized and arbitrary administrative structure imposed by Paris, Northern Basques have enjoyed no self-rule whatsoever (other than municipalities), what has severely damaged the economy and the culture of the country.

The recent creation of a distinct Chamber of Commerce, out of private initiative, also seeks to revert this awful situation.

Source: Gara.

How to get life from the primordial ooze

While the potential for the basic bricks of life to form was demonstrated early in the history of modern science, how could these organic molecules get together to become the long chains of RNA or DNA, and hence life, has remained a mystery.

The problem is that oligonucleotides react and don't bind together under normal conditions. However researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have found now that certain "midwife" molecules, known more technically as "intercalators" cause such binding, creating longer polymers, RNA or DNA, the kernel of life.

Hence one of the main problems of paleo-biology seems to have been solved.

Read more at Science Daily.

March 8: a century of struggles.

It seems that the first March 8 demonstrations were held on this day in 1913, with women all across Europe marching for peace. There had been some attempts earlier to create an International Working Women's Day by the incipient feminist movement but it was this event which started the tradition, later revived in the 1960s.

Working women's demonstrations on this day in 1917 were one of the main triggers of the Russian Revolution, and hence the festivity became official in the USSR.

8 March 1932 Soviet poster

Today women across the World still use this day to meet each other and state their demands. It is not yet a holiday in most countries though. It should.

8 March 2010 Basque demo (Gasteiz)

In this little country today, the major unions have stated that the draconian "reforms" promoted by the FMI, EU and local capitalists (with total subservience of the "socialist" government and parliament majority) are to only cause more precariousness among working women, already a very discriminated sector.

The struggle continues. Today like a century ago social justice remains to be implemented.

Spanish Inquisition avoids to prosecute fascist armed band

I have mentioned before the shadowy paramilitary fascist group Falange y Tradición (see: here, here and here), which has been trying to terrorize the Basque people. And I have not been the least exhaustive, as the neonazis have taken hold particularly in Navarre and seem to act in clear connivence with Spanish nationalist parties, notably the Popular Party (essentially fascists dressed up as "christian democrats"), which basically "calls the targets" that they attack soon after.

Five members were arrested in October but two were released later and the identities of the three sent to prison have been hidden (in a very odd move) by the tribunal, causing indefension among their victims.

Manifesto of the fascist death squad welcoming the non-democratic government of López in the Western Basque Country (that they call "Vascongadas" in their rancid Francoist slang).

Now Tribunal number 3 of Pamplona is asking the Spanish Audiencia Nacional (aka Neoinquisition, special state tribunal in charge of most political and "terrorist" matters) on who is legally competent to judge these nazis. The AN has in the past declined to accept the trial, forcing the provincial tribunal to ask for this clarification of competences.

In her request, the judge states that "we are before a plurality of violent actions of clear subversive intentionality, originated at an organized, armed group with a will of persistence and hierarchical organization", what makes it a clear case to be judged by the Neoinsquisition and not just a provincial tribunal. However neither politicians nor judges are too willing to get committed in this case of fascist terrorism, showing again their true faces at the service of the Neo-Francoist state.


Update (March 9):

A new version of the same "breaking news" article at Gara, adds some details, known only because of the appeal: the names of the neonazis are now known all five are free under parole, the weapons found are exactly: a hunting rifle, and old military rifle, a bayonet and a saber, as well as some paint sprays, their actual weapons, which they used to make death threats and damages with political intent.

They are accused of:

• Damages to the Amaiur Monolith to the heroic last resistents of Navarre in 1521.
• Death threats in Lesaka, also against councilors.
  
• Xenophobic graffiti at an Islamic exposition at Doneztebe.
  
• Death threats against two taverns.
• Threats against a neighbor of Arraiotz.
• Undescribed sabotage at Orkoien.
• Graffiti and destruction of a plate at a cemetery in Artika.
• Death threats against town councilors and the major in Arbizu.
• Death threats in graffiti on the official car of a municipal worker in Orkoien.
• Graffiti in three taverns at Pamplona.
• Damages in the monument to the slaves of Francoism in Igari.
• Graffiti in the cemetery of Berrioplano.
• Sabotage in the cemetery of Aizoain.
• Sending a bullet to the txupinera of Bilbao Fiestas, Sonia Polo.
• Telephone threat against the town hall of Artika.
• Mail threat to councilor Koldo Pla.

Update (March 10): a new article gathers more details of the intricacies of the neonazi gang, only now known to the public. Most significative is that they happened to meet twice with Rogelio Taboada, the regional leader of the legal fascist party Spain 2000, a self-described National-Socialist (nazi) party, which just opened an office in the town of Zangotza (Sanüesa) in Navarre, much to the worry of its neighbors. One of their meetings happened at the swimming pool facility "General Mola" (notice the persistence of fascist names) in Pamplona, that belongs to the Spanish Army and have restricted access (however both neonazi civilians were in them). This meeting was secretly recorded by the police, including a request of weapons by J.I. Irusta, the leader of FyT, to Taboada.

They then proceeded to tap the phones of the implicated, though the details of this surveillance is not yet known.

The victims have declared that they want to be able to take a more direct role in the prosecution and feel outraged that the five nazis are free on bail, when the crimes (repeated death threats on ideological grounds, organization as "terrorist group" in order to murder) are in other cases punished with outmost severity by the Spanish legal system. If these people were Basque independentists instead of Spanish nationalists, they'd be in jail after due week of tortures and would not expect to get free in at least 10 years. I know people who has been that much in jail for far less.

But I'm munching on another question. Why is judge Ismael Moreno so reluctant to judge this gang, in spite of being clearly his competence (state prosecutors think so)? Does he fear to bother some of the real shadowy powers of Spain, which are after all who have placed him where he is?

Iceland massively rejects to pay private debt

93% of voters chose NO in the referendum to validate or reject the bill that approved massive payments to foreign investors for debts acquired by a private bank, Icesavings, now nationalized after going bankrupt.

The Parliament had approved the bill agreeing to pay 5 billion dollars in exchange for a loan of 10 billions and support for an entrance into EU that Icelanders do not seem to desire anymore. However the President of the small republic, in a rare show of politic honesty of the kind you seldom see anymore in this rotten old Europe, vetoed the bill and demanded a referendum that has finally ended in a total defeat for the government. I commented on this neocolonialist abuse in a previous post.

Source: Rebelión, BBC, etc.

Indonesian Y-DNA is mostly Paleolithic

Found at Dienekes'.

Tatiana M. Karafet et al., Major East-West Division Underlies Y Chromosome Stratification Across Indonesia. MBE 2010. Pay per view.

While I don't have at the moment access to this surely interesting paper and hence to the likely substantial details, the abstract sounds highly interesting:

The early history of Island Southeast Asia is often characterized as the story of two major population dispersals: the initial Paleolithic colonization of Sahul 45 thousand years ago and the much later Neolithic expansion of Austronesian-speaking farmers 4,000 years ago. Here, in the largest survey of Indonesian Y chromosomes to date, we present evidence for multiple genetic strata that likely arose through a series of distinct migratory processes. We genotype an extensive battery of Y chromosome markers, including 85 SNPs/indels and 12 Y-STRs, in a sample of 1,917 men from 32 communities located across Indonesia. We find that the paternal gene pool is sharply subdivided between western and eastern locations, with a boundary running between the islands of Bali and Flores. Analysis of molecular variance reveals one of the highest levels of between-group variance yet reported for human Y chromosome data (e.g., ?ST = 0.47). Eastern Y chromosome haplogroups are closely related to Melanesian lineages (i.e., within the C, M and S subclades) and likely reflect the initial wave of colonization of the region, while the majority of western Y chromosomes (i.e., O-M119*, O-P203, and O-M95*) are related to haplogroups that may have entered Indonesia during the Paleolithic from mainland Asia. In addition, two novel markers (P201, P203) provide significantly enhanced phylogenetic resolution of two key haplogroups (O-M122, O-M119) that are often associated with the Austronesian expansion. This more refined picture leads us to put forward a four-phase colonization model in which Paleolithic migrations of hunter-gatherers shape the primary structure of current Indonesian Y chromosome diversity, and Neolithic incursions make only a minor impact on the paternal gene pool, despite the large cultural impact of the Austronesian expansion.

Bad news in any case for the Neolithicists, again confirmation for the Paleolithicists like myself. This in a context like SE Asia where it's been argued more than anywhere else in favor of a massive population replacement in Neolithic times (based on craniometric data mostly). It seems it was not the case after all.

I wonder how does Karafet and colleagues treat the issue of the proposed MNOPS macro-haplogroup downstream of K, or if just limit themselves to describe the sublineages (such as M, S and O) regardless of upstream affiliation.

Notice that the discovered divide goes exactly along Wallace line, a major ecological divide, which exists because the continent reached in the Ice Age, when sea levels were much lower, as far East as Bali and Borneo, while the islands east of that line remained separated.

Understanding the ecological divide at Indonesia (from Wikipedia)

This divide only makes sense if navigation was limited at the time and makes no sense whatsoever if one wants to explain it within the context of Austronesian expansion, because for these formidable oceangoing sailors, who colonized as far as Hawaii, Easter Island and Madagascar, such barrier would have never been any obstacle at all.

Update (March 10):

I got a copy of the paper (thanks to Argiedude again) and the four phases proposed are as follows:

1. Early colonization reaching to Sahul. Lineages: C*, K*, C2, M and S. Dated to c. 45 Ka ago.
2. Second flow affecting only Sundaland. Lineages: O1a1, O2a, O3(xO3a3) and O1a. Dated to 30-15 Ka.
3. Austronesian colonization. Lineages: O1a2 and O3a3(xO3a3b). Dated to 4-3 Ka.
4. Late arrivals from India, West Asia and China. Lineages: H, L, J and O3a3b.

Of course, the dates attached to the two Paleolithic phases are to be taken with some caution.

Some F* (East Indonesia) and R (West Indonesia) were also detected and should be associated to phases 1 and 4 respectively.

The remnants of the first phase are found particularly in East Indonesia, Melanesia, Polynesia (as partial genetic extension of Melanesia) and Philippines, where K* still constitutes almost 50% of Y-DNA. There's also some C* and K* in West Indonesia (and notably, different source, some 25% K* among the Orang Asli of peninsular Malaysia) but it's much more patchy and diluted.

Of the second phase, I'd read that O2a and O3 are arrivals from mainland SE Asia but that O1 may have coalesced at Sundaland and flowed northwards to as far as Taiwan, where O1a2 constitutes some 90% of the Aboriginal Y-DNA, being the main haplogroup that can be directly linked to the Austronesian expansion in phase 3.

___________

Addendum (March 12): map by Argiedude showing the frequencies of the lineages belonging to the first colonization wave of Karafet, here described as "Australasian lineages" and also showing current distribution of Austronesian and Papuan languages (the latter a paraphyletic group):

Larger version

_________________

Important update (Mar 14): rare H and J lineages:

Thanks to the keen eye of Ebizur and Argiedude (see the discussion here and at Dienekes' blog), two rare Y-DNA lineages have been spotted in the Karafet samples: these are H(xH1,H2) and J(xJ1,J2).

H(xH1,H2) is found in Bali (17/641 = 2.65%) along with some H1 and H2 (one case of each). This paragroup seems rare even in India.

J(xJ1,J2) is found in Bali too (2/641 = 0.3%) along with some J1 (6/641) and J2b (4/641). It is also found in Vietnam (1/70 = 1.4%), along with some J2(xJ2b) (1/70), this last one also found in Java, Sulawesi, Vanuatu and Han Chinese. J* is, according to Argiedude not really found anywhere else.

Someone by the name Finn uploaded the paper and supplements at Zoho Viewer and you can (at least by the moment), find them at these links: main, PDF supp, XLS supp.

_____________

Update July 3: Natsuya has got some further details via private communication with Tatiana Karafet. Specifically the distribution of haplogroups among the four different Han samples and STR haplotype sequences for O3b3b-M7. LINK.

Geopolitics of today (or "BRICs are heavy")

I finally made a satisfactory map that reflects as well as possible the imperfect multipolarity of today's geopolitics:

Click to expand

Legend:

• Red shades: The Empire (dark red: USA and dependencies, bright red: other NATO members, other "central" US allies and their colonies, pink: other important US allies/EU members, stripes: under military occupation).
• Turquoise: Russia (stripes: under military occupation), Cyan: main allies
• Blue: China, lighter blue shades: under Chinese influence
• Orange: India, lighter orange shades: under Indian influence
• Green: Brazil, light green: other Mercosur countries, dark green: ALBA
• Dark Grey: other regional powers
• Regular Grey: other countries

Notice that I could not mark all US/NATO allies on risk of almost all the map becoming pink and that way maybe exaggerating the influence of The Empire even more. On the other hand I may have maxed the areas of influence of China (excepting Pakistan) and India. Many countries, of course, play multilateral diplomacy and try to keep a pretense of independence, what makes more difficult to decide what side are they in. The use of similar colors for Brazil/Mercosur and ALBA is somewhat justified but was mostly chosen to underline the differences between the USA/NATO bloc and the "Latin-Americanist" powers in the American continent. Anyhow, the latest developments in Honduras, Colombia and Haiti have clearly pushed Venezuela and Brazil closer in a joint bid to support the independence of Latin American and Caribbean nations, which obviously plays in their interest rather than in that of the USA, as imperialist power.


Overview:

There are two basic elements in the reality reflected in this map: The Empire and the BRIC.

The Empire is incredibly large (even if I tended to reflect only its strongest influence) and is clearly based on naval hegemony, which is supported by proportionally large navies, not just from the USA but also from France, UK, Italy, Spain, Australia and Japan in particular.

BRIC is an acronym that stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China. Even if it's an informal group, it has no other entity that reflect the four major powers that are still independent from The Empire. Each one of them has its own geostrategical interests and also different cultures and political systems. The only thing in common they may have is that they all are more or less confronted with The Empire... with one exception: India.


India:

It seems that India and China perceive each other as most direct rivals. Also India has a large maritime facade and hence clear naval interests in the Indian Ocean specially, which is also the ocean where The Empire has an arguably weaker presence. However India has with good reason distrusted The Empire in the past and instead kept stronger ties with the former USSR. The China-USA entente and the conflicts with Pakistan (an ally of both USA and China) on Kashmir, led the South Asian republic to act that way. However it has played both sides and has always kept major ties with Israel and other members of the Western bloc.

In the current circumstances, India still keeps good relations with Russia but the approach between Moscow and Beijing is pushing the old friend somewhat apart and throwing India in the arms of The Empire.


China and Russia:

But, of course, the most important power of all BRIC countries is nowadays China. And it is the growing conflict between China and the USA what really describes the scene. We can't still talk of a new Cold War, very specially because the Chinese take due care in no pushing the conflict to military but economic and diplomatic terms but, in any case, the conflict is clear and growing stronger, as knows anyone who reads the news.

China however is relatively weak in the military aspect, even if less so than in the past, and hence its growing alliance with the decadent but heavily armed Russia is of crucial importance. The "thirdworldized" Russia with loads of ICBM nukes, offers China an almost ideal ally: China does not dispute Russia its political and military clout on Central Asia but rips many of the economic benefits, not just of Central Asia but also of Siberia. It also offers China a military shield that prevents a direct conflict with The Empire.

On its side Russia also feels threatened by The Empire, which has been growing towards its borders and even threatens it with new missile deployments. The latest developments (defeat of Georgia, pro-Russian government in Ukraine, restive Turkey) may imply that Russia is scoring some goals but still it does feel threatened by NATO and siding with China is the best alternative it has (as together they control most of non-tropical Asia, while divided they would only play in the hands of their common rival).

China's worries are mostly a fear of being blockaded out of the oil supplies from the Middle East. Hence it's following two parallel strategies: on one side, cooperation with Russia to keep The Empire out of Central Asia (and as much as possible of The Middle East as well, for example protecting Iran) and, on the other side, securing as much as possible the shipping lines to West Asia (for which it has recently obtained bases in Bangladesh and Sri-Lanka).

In parallel, China is painfully working to weaken the imperial bloc in its immediate area of East Asia itself (seducing South Korea and even Japan and Taiwan as much as possible, supporting little Cambodia against Thailand, etc.), as well as gaining random friends in Polynesia and Africa and, specially, making business even where The Empire makes military alliances.


Brazil:

The other BRIC power is Brazil, whose confrontation with the USA has been growing hot in the last year. Brazil has been playing, even more than China, a soft diplomatic game, gradually strengthening its position both internally and internationally. While it has got its bad moments with the Bolivarian bloc led by Venezuela, the crisis of Honduras seems to have eventually opened its eyes. And if that did not, the growing US military presence in Colombia and the unbelievable massive invasion of Haiti have put things clear for Brazil: there's no room for two powers in America... unless they fight each other. Surely Brazil would like to grow in power more gradually and without conflicts but it seems that those days are now gone and The Empire is striking back. That situation obviously pushes the Bolivarian bloc (the ALBA) and the Brazilian-led bloc (Mercosur) into each other's arms.

The latest growing tensions around the Falklands/Malvinas disputed archipelago, as well as the repeated protests of Venezuela against the US-Colombia-Netherlands siege, show that the issue is serious.

However Brazil in comparison with the Asian BRIC countries has three disadvantages:

• Like India, it is a naval oriented country with a large maritime facade. Hence it's potentially more exposed to the Imperial naval hegemony. But, unlike India it's much closer to the USA and its area of immediate interests.
  
• It competes with the largest global power for Latin America, which the USA still considers its "backyard".
  
• It is the only BRIC power that has no nuclear weapons. It might develop them (as did India not long ago) but that would mean breaching international agreements (NPT) and giving hence a pretext to the USA to behave even more aggressively.
  

On the other hand it has some major advantages:

• Latin America in general is fed up with the USA and is clearly willing to try something new. Brazil has the potential of playing a leading role in this aspect and the recent formation of a distinct Latin American and Caribbean association without the USA nor Spain is a clear step in this direction.
  
• Not only Latin America but eventually even large parts of Africa, very specially South Africa (particularly sympathetic to Brazil and India, and leader of a large bloc, not represented in the map) and the former Portuguese colonies, could be interested in some sort of cooperation with Brazil and other Latin American nations with common goals of emancipation and development.
• The legitimacy of the people: unlike the other US rivals (China and Russia) and unlike most US allies (vassals) in the region, Brazil and its allies (excepting Cuba) are clear democracies, with more or less "progressive" leaning. Machiavelli himself would applaud that as a great asset.
• Oil: Venezuela seems to have become the largest oil reserve in the World, replacing Saudi Arabia in this position. Brazil itself has discovered large deposits offshore and there are others in Cuba, Haiti and the Falklands, fueling the confrontation with the USA and Britain. But also allowing for some decent bargaining as well.
  

The Empire:

The Imperial bloc lead by the USA has clear advantages: the largest share by far of the global GDP, a huge military, presence almost anywhere on Earth, lots of nukes, total naval hegemony... But it has also some disadvantages, namely: overextension, huge debt (largely caused by military overexpending), being dominated by a small oligarchy with very peculiar interests, often conflicting with those of the people and even The Empire itself (particularly Zionism), and now a brutal overproduction crisis that might well seal its fate once for all.

Overgrowth crisis are not alien to large empires. Rome itself faced one after consolidation and languished for centuries in it, while the British Empire decayed largely because it was too large to be defended against its own peoples. But the closest parallel is surely the Habsburgian Empire of Charles V and Philip II, who similarly were forced to overexpend in military adventures, often ill fated, almost everywhere (Germany, the Mediterranean, Britain...). At the time there was no larger empire and the Habsburgs thought they had no rival... but soon they had to experience a harsh reality check and declare bankrupticy, as well as making huge concessions to their rivals.

This is in fact what The Empire is facing today: the crisis is, as we all know, far from over and it is affecting severely both major pillars of the bloc: the USA and EU. It is primarily an structural overproduction crisis but it's also a debt crisis (with China getting rid of less and less solid US bonds) and an overextension crisis as well.

Just count the unfinished major wars The Empire is involved in: Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia-plus, Yemen, Somalia. Not to mention the never accoplished threat of attacking Iran, the extreme instability of most US vassals in Latin America (Colombia, Mexico, Honduras and poor occupied Haiti at least), which can any day turn against their master by popular acclamation, and those of other regions (Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Thailand and even some European countries like Greece).

And then count the cost: the nominal US public debt is of almost 8 trillion USD but, in fact, more than 5 trillion are excluded from these accounts. Only counting the nominal fraction, the US public debt has never been so high since the late 1950s (as percentage of GDP, c. 70%) and, when we count all the real debt, it's as high as at the height of WWII (again as percentage of GDP, c. 115%). This kind of heavy indebtment, paid with the booty of conquest maybe but not without serious economic implications, is again another striking parallel with the Habsburgian Empire of Charles V and successors, very specially as most of it is wasted in both cases in military expenses.

But, of course, The Empire remains as of today as a mighty power, the only real superpower on Earth. Meanwhile, the Frances, Englands and Ottoman Empires of our day (the BRIC and particularly China) bid their time as much as they can avoiding direct confrontation as much as possible.

And this is the scenario we have now. Though admittedly it may well be obsolete in a decade or less.


Addendum: naval might:

Aircraft carriers may well reflect with some approximation the real naval might of each of the powers at play. They are as follows:

NATO and allies:

• USA: 11 ships in use, 1 projected
• Britain: 2 ships in use, 2 projected
• Italy: 2 ships in use
• Spain: 2 ships in use
• France: 1 ship in use
• Australia: 2 ships projected
  
• Japan: 2 ships projected
• Thailand: 1 ship projected

Total Empire: 18 aircraft carriers in use, 9 projected

BRIC:

• India: 1 ship in use, 2 projected
• Russia: 1 ship in use
• Brazil: 1 ship in use
• China: 1 ship projected
  

Total BRIC: 3 aircraft carriers in use, 4 projected


Sources: most data freely adapted from diverse Wikipedia articles and maps. See also this post on the China-US competition, this one on the latest US invasion of Haiti and its geostrategical implications and maybe this one on how Venezuela is being surrounded by US military deployment.

Note: of course, the secondary title is a silly wordplay with the superb record of L7, Bricks Are Heavy.

Behind the "religious conflict" in Chiapas: a fundamentalist army

It has been presented by the Mexican government and some media as conflict between "Protestant" and "Catholic" natives but what is in fact going on? According to La Jornada the real issue is the formation of paramilitary militia of Evangelical (fundamentalist Protestant) ideology self described as El Ejército de Dios (God's Army).

This "religious" death squad has already been involved in many violent actions, including the murder of a local politician. They are apparently in connivance with the police, both at state and federal levels, as well as to the Evangelical groups that perturb neighboring Guatemala (there as well in connivance with the army and the totalitarian and genocidal regime of Ríos Montt, who was preacher of these cults).

"Orangist" marches in Chiapas, what else?

This God's Army is not indigenous and has as program to de-indianize their adepts. Recently they marched through the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas with the music of the Imperial March of Star Wars (the music associated with Darth Vader, you get the point, right?) Their aggresive discourse is similar to that of the undemocratic Mexican government, opposed to the Zapatista bloc, against whom they act essentially.

Snowball Earth confirmed

New geological research has confirmed the theory that Earth went through a phase of extreme cooling some 717 million years ago, with all, absolutely all the oceans covered in ice, at least seasonally, as well as the land. This extreme ice age is known technically as the Sturtian glaciation.

This mountain, now at Yukon, was once a tropical coral reef (light grey area) and shows cover by glaciar deposits (darker top).

However there is some discussion on how could life survive such extreme circumstances, more so when it's the period when the earliest animals are thought to have appeared first. It is possible that even in such extreme conditions, there would be seasonal patches of open water allowing for photosynthesis. Another possibility is that this early life was in fact adapted to hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, not needing of solar input (extremophiles).

Was Earth once like Enceladus?

Source: Science Daily.

Greece becomes a colony... in exchange of nothing

Greece has got just "good words" (and "not a cent" as the German economy minister put it) in exchange of ceding the control of its whole economy to the IMF and Brussels. The, ahem, "socialdemocratic" government is now approving the so-called "austerity measures" which include massive cut of social spending and high tax raises.

Naturally, this has caused some serious street warfare between police and revolutionaries, reminding of the serious conflict that took place last winter, still under conservative rule. Though divided, Greece has one of the strongest revolutionary traditions in modern Europe, so I still have hope that the people will overturn these abusive ultra-capitalist and colonialist measures for which, in the very words of PM Papandreou, they did not vote the socialdemocrats to power.

James Petras, whom I just now realize is Greek by ancestry, declared to Uruguayan Radio Centenari that "the worst in Greece is what the imperialist European countries like Germany, and also the USA, demand: that the control of the economy is transfered to the IMF, Germany and France. This is the colonization of the economy".

Source: Gara.

Ice deposits on Moon's poles

The finding by NASA's miniSAR aboard Indian probe Chadrayaan-1 has detected ice deposits at the Moon's poles, making the presence of water in the Moon even more official (see previous posts on this matter: here and here).

More at Science Daily.

The real obstacles for more or less permanent human presence on the Moon are then others, notably the lack of a natural shield against solar radiation (and cosmic radiation in general).

Spanish Inquisition attacks Chávez now.

Spanish Attorney General, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, has declared that the Spanish government will follow "till the end" with the trial opened at the Audiencia Nacional (aka Neoinquisition) against the Venezuelan government for allegedly promoting cooperation between the Basque armed organization ETA and the Colombian guerrilla FARC.

It must be said that the allegations of collaboration between the two militias pre-date the Bolivarian government in Venezuela.

For the Venezuelan President this trial, along with the accusations by the Interamerican Comission of Human Rights and the visit of Hillary Clinton to several Latin American capitals this week, are the counter-offensive of Washington and Madrid to the formation of the Community of Caribbean and American States, which undermines their role as colonial powers.

I would go further and suggest that it is the first clear attempt to list Venezuela as "terrorist rogue dictatorship" as means to justify an already planned invasion of the rebellious but strictly democratic country.

Source: Gara [es].

Update: See also Venezuela Analysis [en] and this other article at Gara [es]: even members of the undemocratically imposed "Basque government", of the same party as Conde-Pumpido ask to treat this matter "with prudence". Apparently an individual named Arturo Cubillas Fontán (never heard of him before), who has held positions in the Venezuelan government, is accused of being "ETA member", all based on the "magic laptop" of FARC negotiator Raúl Reyes, ambushed and murdered by the Colombian army at Ecuadorean soil in 2008, which has been manipulated by the Colombian Army at whim.

Update (March 4): Also reported at La Haine [es], where we are informed that the said Antonio Cubillas is exiled in Venezuela because of the agreements between Felipe González and Carlos Andrés Pérez in the 1980s (I guess that in the frame of the negotiations of Algiers). Insisting in the lack of credibility of the "magic laptop" that the Colombian Army claims to be of murdered guerrilla negotiator Raúl Reyes.

In a parallel development, you may be interested in knowing about the whereabouts of former star judge of the Neoinquisition, Baltasar Garzón. He is facing a rough trial himself, formally for challenging the Amnesty Law of 1978 and attempting to judge the crimes of fascism but in fact, it seems that this move has been triggered by another even more daring cause opened by Garzón against members of the Bush administration for crimes against Humanity in relation to the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp.

Read more at Voltairenet [en].

Spanish Inquisition: 'Mandela never used violence'

It would be laughable if one had not too present the aphorism of that Nazi propagandist who stated "a lie repeated one thousand times is a truth". And in Spain what the authorities say, specially in regards to Basques, is parroted by all the media without any criticism at all.

This single-discourse regime is incredibly said to be a "democracy" just because now and then they allow for ritual elections where nothing is decided at all.

Just in case anyone happens to do as the Spanish media and believe such nonsense, I must remind here that Nelson Mandela was a founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) an armed organization that fought by military means against the "democratic" racist regime that existed in South Africa.

This absurd claim that pretends to alter the historical reality of the South African struggle for democracy and human rights in order to adequate it to the reactionary ideals of a weakened regime, as is that of post-Francoist Spain, was made in the context of yet another inquisitorial trial against Basque citizens, in this case the rather well known speaker of the Basque Nationalist Left Arnaldo Otegi.

The trial, which concluded with a condenatory sentence of two years of prison and 16 years of absolute inhabilitation to exert public office for Otegi but acquitment of the other four prosecuted, was engineered around some declarations of the Basque politician, which neither the prosecutors nor the tribunal had any idea initially what they might mean, as they were said in Basque language and they had not even bothered to order a translation.

Otegi had dared to speak, in June 2005, in the homage to Basque prisoner Joxe Mari Sagardui, Gatza, who had been in prison for 25 years already (i.e. since 1980).

A. Otegi in the 2005 homage meeting.
Behind the photos of Gatza in 1980 and today.

In his defense Otegi mentioned that Nelson Mandela was also a political prisoner, to what the tribunal, that showed shamelessly its lack of neutrality all the time, replied in the sentence that the South African leader "never used violence nor supported it in order to achieve the suppression of apartheid".

This is blatantly false. Nelson Mandela was a founding member of the armed group, which the racist regime naturally used to dismiss as terrorism and that was the main justification for his life sentence, now so much regretted by all. Also Mandela has often defended that resorting to violence was the only thing that they could do in that time.

In his own words:

Firstly, we believed that as a result of Government policy, violence by the African people had become inevitable, and that unless responsible leadership was given to canalize and control the feelings of our people, there would be outbreaks of terrorism which would produce an intensity of bitterness and hostility between the various races of this country which is not produced even by war. Secondly, we felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy. All lawful modes of expressing opposition to this principle had been closed by legislation, and we were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the Government. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.

Besides of this convenient falsification of history by a supposedly objective and well informed tribunal (ahem), the, eventually translated, evidence against Otegi is summarized in the sentence as the following fragment:

... we proposed two [negotiation] boards and those boards, we don't know when, but will exist.

And, finally, in these two boards, like in South Africa, the future of this people will be built in agreement, with compromise, freedom, democracy and justice. Acknowledging the territoriality and the self-determination of this people, but this cannot be built without struggle, without organization and without compromise.

Gatza has been 25 years in prison, Mandela came out after 27 years. But Mandela did not leave prison to meet a South Africa of the past, Mandela came out of prison with aprtheid overcome, with democracy built and with freedom achieved. And that is the way that will come out in this people ["nation" or "country" meant in the original surely] the Collective of Basque Political Prisoners.

We still don't know if it will be long, short or breve, what we know is that in South Africa they achieved after 27 years. And what we know is that, if we keep the political lucidity, intelligence and prudence that Jon Idigoras told us about, maybe in 27 years will also be achieved in the Basque Country through negotiation the democratic national scenario is owed, that is deserved, that is needed. We owe that to the Basque political prisoners, refugees and so many comrades we have left behind in the struggle and we will achieve it. We are going through the good path, we are in the good path, the conditions are being created and we are going to manage those conditions within the will of the people. Territoriality and self-determination, democracy and justice.

And all the repressed Basques building the Basque Country with us at home, at the streets, in the Basque Country. Forward the Nationalist Left! Forward the Basque Country!

Sorry about some punctuation issues and some confusing sentences but I've tried to follow to the word the version reported (in Spanish, not the original Basque one) by the tribunal in its sentence, which, no doubt, is just a poor translation of the original discourse.

This new attack comes in the context in which the Nationalist Left is pushing forward yet another proposal for a democratic solution to the Basque-Spanish conflict and when Basque independentists of all colors are gathering into a wider movement.

Source: Gara [es].

Update (March 8): even the president of the Western Basque section of the ruling Socialist Party, Jesús Egiguren has declared that "is somewhat strange what has happened because they have applied the maximum possible penalty" (...) "it seems all exaggerated but who dares to criticize the judges!". Meanwhile the tories are proposing even further measures to make sure that the Nationalist Left cannot take part in Basque institutional politics in any way under any scenario. Source: Gara.