dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja: 03/08/14

Saturday, March 8, 2014

this is a really irresponsible article. not because it's wrong, exactly, but because it's completely speculative - and not in an academic sense. it's just "well, maybe white people come from asia". maybe they come from uranus.

or maybe it's completely ridiculous to think that a single dna sample describes the entirety of genetic diversity in western europe 7,000 years ago. maybe there was a gradient.

maybe it's actually even totally obvious that there was a gradient.

europe has never been entirely white in the historical era. most spaniards, italians and greeks are of a tanned complexion. this is a combination of genetic drift from the south and plasticity, rather than any kind of selection. to understand the plasticity look at a californian of scandinavian ancestry. pasty white? hardly. why think europe would or even could have been of a homogenous skin tone 10,000 years ago? there's an implicit purity myth underlying that. and, that's not a myth that required further debunking.

so, there was a gradient. they found somebody on one end of it. they'll find people on the other end of it as time goes on. and the understanding will be a continuity of high variation deep into the past, not implications about some kind of fantastical past that had these ideal types living in some abstracted racial purity.

in actuality, there's no such thing as white people - and no such thing as black people. there's a lot of people that exist in a spectrum. that is all.

it's interesting that he cites sforza, though, because his data really isn't consistent. what sforza demonstrates is what remains - to my knowledge - the dominant theory of the origin of caucasian peoples in general, namely that they developed in isolated packets on the other side of the ice sheets and moved south when the sheets started melting (not just into europe, but also into central and eastern asia. that creates a common light-skinned ancestor between europeans and both west and east asians dating to about 15000 years ago). he sees three general migrations. that first migration was starting around 10,000 years ago - enough time that it would have penetrated spain, but not eliminated all variation with skin type. but it was about superior hunting technology,not skin colour. as far as we know, spain has never been homogenous in regards to skin tone. ever. and it's always seen substantial migration coming from the south. the second migration came with agriculture, which moved near eastern peoples into europe. what colour these people were is an interesting question, but i think it's almost certain that they weren't white in the scandinavian sense. the third migration brought indo-european languages in through the dominance of horse domestication. we can isolate the indo-european homeland quite well to the area north of ukraine, which makes it seem as though they were probably white. there's some debate over whether that means pasty white or more of a turkish white.

so let's carefully understand what i just said. that's a movement of white people south, and then the replacement of those white people by "swarmy" people moving north from the middle east, followed by another movement of white peoples. that is to say that the dominant understanding of the migration of european peoples is not related to racial dominance or skin colour evolving to an environment (the vitamin d thing is bollocks), but to technological innovation. if skin colour had anything at all to do with it, it was merely coincidental.

but it moved back and forth. that's what i'm getting at: brown, white, tanned, white. and, again, that would have created a spectrum full of diversity, not something homogenous.

another place to see this variation is iran. skin colour has a wide spectrum in iran, because it's been invaded by many different peoples. but you'll note that there's no pattern regarding one colour being more dominant than the other. lighter skinned iranians defeated darker skinned elamites, then darker skinned arabs defeated the iranians, and lighter skinned turks and mongols defeated the arabs. today, they're all there in iran, all mixed up. so, there's a great amount of diversity.

where you see the homogeneity develop is only in areas with very small amounts of gene flow. that would include scandinavia, as well as central africa - but not eastern africa, where a gradient also exists.

so, we can drop the silliness. this discovery neither backs up the silly and blatantly racist idea that vitamin d absorption provides an evolutionary advantage (one would expect the inuit and eastern native americans to be pasty white, and yet they are not), nor does it demonstrate much of anything at all about the diversity of the population in spain 7000 years ago.

it's just one sample.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/07/where-did-white-people-come-from/

the way to abolish the perceived racial hierarchy isn't to wave it away with a lot of shoddy science.

it's simply to point out that the idea that white people have been dominant throughout history is nothing more than a myth in the first place.

similarly with the eyes...

finding a dark skinned person with blue eyes 7000 years ago doesn't say anything about where the mutation developed. it's just as plausible that it developed in central europe and drifted south as it did that it developed in africa and drifted north.

but, that offends american sensibilities regarding "inter-racial" offspring. there's an assumption that white and black could not have interbred. it's implicit, unstated - because it's perceived of as obvious.

but it's not obvious at all. and, yes, it's completely fucking racist.

yes. spectacularly.

http://fpif.org/nonviolence-fail-egypt/

the article doesn't get the point, though, that if they want any long term success then the masses of people should be focusing on building new economic relationships, seizing productive capacities for the people, etc rather than recreating the perpetual disappointment and failure that is parliamentary democracy.

the better conclusion is that movements must be spontaneous, focused on changing living conditions outside of government structures and constantly vigilant against co-option from political forces. there was a critical mass assembled in egypt. had they stormed the factories and the fields instead of the parliament, they might have actually accomplished something.

hrmmn.

or maybe keynesian war spending might do wonders for russia.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/condoleezza-rice-will-america-heed-the-wake-up-call-of-ukraine/2014/03/07/cf087f74-a630-11e3-84d4-e59b1709222c_story.html

Kiev must have no participation in any anti-Moscow alliance, writes Zbigniew Brzezinski

As chaos explodes in Ukraine and the threat of Russian intervention persists, the responsibility of the west to help attain a constructive outcome becomes more self-evident.

Viktor Yanukovich has shown himself to be a mendacious schemer, a coward and a thief. His palatial personal residence in an impoverished country speaks for itself. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin would be making a fatal mistake by backing him.

But Russia can still plunge Ukraine into a destructive and internationally dangerous civil war. It can prompt and then support the secession of Crimea and some of the industrial eastern portions of the country.

Mr Putin may choose to ignore the fact that such aggression would guarantee the enduring hatred of Russia by the majority of Ukrainians, irrespective of the short-run outcome of any civil war abetted by Moscow.

That in turn would also mean his nostalgic dream of heading a Russian “Eurasian Union” would be exposed as an enterprise based on intimidation and coercion – not exactly an attractive vision for any of the recently sovereign components of the former Soviet Union.

It is probable Ukrainian national self-assertion is already fortifying the post-Soviet republics of central Asia, notably Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, to stiffen resistance to Moscow’s continuing effort to deprive them of sovereignty. The newly assertive and increasingly nationalistic political and business elites of these states have no desire again to become part of a Russian empire named by Mr Putin the “Eurasian Union”.

The west, however, needs to play a constructive role in forestalling the potential explosion of regional violence in Ukraine abetted from Russia. That will take concerted action by the US and the EU.

The US could and should convey clearly to Mr Putin that it is prepared to use its influence to make certain a truly independent and territorially undivided Ukraine will pursue policies towards Russia similar to those so effectively practised by Finland: mutually respectful neighbours with wide-ranging economic relations with Russia and the EU; no participation in any military alliance viewed by Moscow as directed at itself but expanding its European connectivity.

In brief, the Finnish model is ideal for Ukraine, the EU and Russia in any larger east-west strategic accommodation.

But to be credible to the Kremlin, the US needs also to spell out privately that attempts to destabilise the emerging democracy in Kiev or detach parts of Ukraine – not to mention even overt or covert Russian participation in its neighbour’s domestic conflicts – would compel Washington to use its influence internationally to prompt steps that would be economically costly to Moscow.

Options to that effect can range from unilateral individual and state-to-state financial sanctions to a review of Russia’s status in the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the Group of Eight leading industrial nations.

Obviously, the EU would need to be a solid partner in any such effort, since it is a significant trader with Russia. Contemporary Russia is not economically invulnerable to the consequences.

But even more urgent is the need for the EU to formulate a significant financial emergency package for Ukraine. Otherwise, the country will plunge into destructive financial chaos.

The lead in Europe should be taken by Germany and the UK. The latter’s role as a haven for Russian and Ukrainian financial oligarchs gives London special leverage. But every EU country should make some sacrifice in an effort to avert a potentially catastrophic Ukrainian economic collapse.

The Europeans and especially the UK might be more inclined to undertake such a collective effort if the top 10 Ukrainian oligarchs ¬– principal beneficiaries of the country’s stunningly widespread corruption – were all “persuaded” to donate $1bn each to their country’s financial rehabilitation.

Mr Yanukovich’s fabulously wealthy dentist son should be able to match the resulting $10bn. The Ukrainian public would certainly welcome such a collective contribution.

Obviously the US and the EU, hopefully with Russia’s constructive co-operation, should continue to press the dominant democratic forces in Kiev to adopt a stance not of revenge and retribution but of national unification and political moderation. That is achievable given the crucial leaders who emerged in Maidan Square are moderates.

Irrespective of what happens in the near future, I continue to believe that sooner rather than later Ukraine will be truly a part of democratic Europe. Later rather than sooner, Russia will follow unless it isolates itself and becomes a semi-stagnant imperialistic relic.

The writer was national security adviser to US president Jimmy Carter and wrote ‘Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power’

that cia deal bezos whipped up has got his paper pulling in all the decision makers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/zbigniew-brzezinski-after-putins-aggression-in-ukraine-the-west-must-be-ready-to-respond/2014/03/03/25b3f928-a2f5-11e3-84d4-e59b1709222c_story.html

free media my ass...

so, the sun is finally coming up at an almost reasonable time and you want us to push it forward another hour? 8:00 sunrises in march? fuck that.

i've been on cst for the last few weeks, and absolutely sticking to it.

israeli colonization of the region has made this the only option. there isn't a palestine left to form a state with....

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/02/america_plan_israel_two_state