For those who are still considering the debate on whether men prefer blondes, a study may have provided proof in favour of the flaxen-haired, if only because they appeal to the “caveman” within.

Academic researchers have discovered that women in northern Europe evolved with light hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to stand out from the crowd and lure men away from the far more common brunette.

Blond hair originated through genetic necessity at a time when there was a shortage of both food and males, leading to a high ratio of women competing for smaller numbers of potential partners, according to the study published this week in the academic journal, Evolution and Human Behaviour.

Until these shortages about 10,000 to 11,000 years ago, humans had uniformly dark hair and eyes.

The physical ardour required with hunting bison, reindeer and mammoths in some regions meant many male hunters died and left women with a shrinking pool of breeders.

Flaxen-haired women arose out of a rare mutation but increased in numbers because their chances of breeding turned out to be better.

Peter Frost, a Canadian anthropologist and author of the study, published under the aegis of St Andrews University in Fife, said hair colour became popular as a result of the “pressures of sexual selection on early European women”.

Human hair and eye colour is unusually diverse in northern and eastern Europe … [and their] origin over a short span of evolutionary time indicate some kind of selection. Sexual selection is particularly indicated because it is known to favour colour traits,” he said.

He added that the environment skewed the sex ratio in favour of men “to leave more women than men unmated at any one time”.

Such an imbalance, he said, would have increased the pressures of sexual selection on early European women, one possible outcome being an unusual complex of colour traits: hair and eye colour diversity and, possibly, extreme skin de-pigmentation.

There are at least seven different shades of blond hair in Europe and the question of how such a large variation developed in a relatively short period of time in a geographical region has always remained a mystery. Dr Frost concluded that the lighter shades of blond hair evolved as a response to food shortages in areas where women could not collect food for themselves and were utterly reliant on the male hunters, as they were in some parts of northern Europe.

But while blondes may have had more fun at the dawn of time, researchers at City University in London last year found that modern men responded more positively to pictures of brunettes and redheaded women than to their blonde counterparts.

Experts said that as relations between men and women have evolved, men may have become more attracted by brains, represented in their psyche by brunettes, than the more physical charms of blond hair.

Peter Ayton, professor of psychology at City University, who led the research, said dark hair could now be more a potent symbol than blond.

“As the role of women has evolved, men’s expectations of women have changed,” Professor Ayton said. “They are looking for more intense, equal partnerships and appearance has a large role to play. It is even possible that certain hair colours can indicate wealth and experience.”
independent.co.uk

When disaster visited them in Zimbabwe it had a name, Robert Mugabe. Now disaster has followed white farmers into exile in Zambia but this time there is no villain, just bad luck.

Hounded from Zimbabwe, things went well at first for the 200 farmers who crossed the border to Zambia. Welcomed by the government, they leased tracts of fertile land and borrowed money to buy equipment and seed. Within two years the new arrivals were producing bumper harvests of maize and tobacco, helping to transform a hunger-stricken nation into a breadbasket and exporter.

In this peaceful corner of southern Africa the settlers, part of the diaspora from one of the continent’s last white tribes, thought they could start anew. Now that dream has withered. A fickle economic wind has gusted through Zambia, scattering the farmers’ calculations and driving many to the brink of ruin.

HOUNDED? One of the continent’s LAST WHITE TRIBES? BRINGING PEACE AND PLENTY TO THE POOR ZAMBIANS? Sick sick sick

IN THE NIGER DELTA, Nigeria, Feb. 24 — They have, by all appearances, just a handful of boats, some machine guns and grenade launchers and, perhaps equally important, an e-mail address.

But with just those tools the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has managed to shut down nearly a fifth of this nation’s vast oil production, briefly push global crude oil prices up more than $1.50 a barrel and throw Nigeria’s government into crisis over the group’s demand that the oil-rich but squalid region be given a greater share of the wealth it creates.

“They have marginalized us for many years now!” shouted a machine-gun-wielding member of the militant group, his face covered in black cloth. “We are taking the bull by the horns now. Niger Delta is ready.”
nytimes.com

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Feb. 26 — Venezuela’s oil minister, in blunt comments published in a Caracas newspaper on Sunday, warned the United States that it could steer oil exports away from the United States and toward other markets.

The minister, Rafael Ramírez, said Venezuela, which is the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter and supplies more than 10 percent of American oil imports, could act in the face of what he described as aggression by the Bush administration.

Although such warnings have become part of President Hugo Chávez’s verbal arsenal against the Bush administration, the comments by Mr. Ramírez, coupled with the increasing sale of oil to China, are seen by oil experts and political analysts as a signal that Venezuela is serious about finding new buyers.

“Physically it’s very feasible, and politically it’s very feasible,” said Lawrence Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, a New York policy analysis group financed by the industry. “It comes with an economic penalty, but apparently Chávez is willing to pay that price.”
nytimes.com

…here has been so little discussion in Washington of a gas deal between Russia and Ukraine this winter that, in its own way, may be as significant as the Palestinian vote. Here is a terribly dense tangle of a half-dozen contracts that involves hidden partners, disputed pricing arrangements, and esoteric side agreements about transit fees and storage facilities. It is mind-numbingly boring — and it may tip the balance against democracy in much of the eastern half of Europe.

…It was not until more than a month later that the Bush administration and other key allies of Ukraine’s pro-Western government — elected after the popular Orange Revolution of 2004 — learned more about what was in the Russian-Ukrainian contracts. When they did they were stunned. Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yushchenko, and Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov had agreed to purchase Ukraine’s gas through a Swiss trading company whose owners and beneficiaries are publicly unknown — but are rumored to include senior officials and organized crime figures in both Russia and Ukraine. They granted this same shadowy company a 50 percent share in the business of delivering gas to Ukrainian consumers. They accepted a price deal on gas delivered to Ukraine lasting only a few months but guaranteed that rock-bottom rates charged by Ukraine for the storage and transit of Russian gas to the West would be frozen for 25 years.

What does this have to do with democracy in Europe? In effect, some U.S. experts concluded, the Ukrainians may have sold to Putin that which he was prevented from stealing: a Kremlin stranglehold on Ukraine’s government. The Russian leader poured money and men into his huge neighbor in late 2004 in a blatant bid to install a pro-Moscow strongman as president and make Ukraine’s political system a mirror of the new authoritarian Russian order. His overreach triggered the Orange Revolution and the subsequent democratic election of Yushchenko, whose goals include leading Ukraine to membership in NATO and the European Union.

Putin sees the fragile new democracy in Ukraine, and an allied government in the tiny Black Sea nation of Georgia, as dire threats. If Western-style freedom consolidates and spreads in the former Soviet republics of Eastern Europe, his own undemocratic regime will be isolated and undermined. What’s more, Ukraine and its neighbors are likely to integrate with Europe rather than remaining economic and political vassals of Russia.

…How to save democracy in Ukraine, and the chance it will someday spread back to Russia? As in the Middle East, the Bush administration faces some difficult choices. If pro-Western parties lead the next government — something that is far from certain — President Bush could press them to scrap the gas deal as a condition for taking the first step toward membership in NATO, a “membership action plan.” But that would probably lead to a new face-off between Ukraine and Putin, in which Kiev would require U.S. and European support — at a moment when those same allies are pleading for the Kremlin’s help with the Palestinians and Iran.

Or the administration could decide to sidestep Putin’s gas-fired imperialism, leaving a complicated issue to its present obscurity. The Ukrainians might eventually find a way to free themselves from Russia’s chokehold. But they also might allow one of the signal democratic breakthroughs of the Bush years to suffer a crippling reverse.

Ukraine and Georgia’s choice is whether to be vassal to Russia or to the U.S. How can a story about this fail to mention U.S. influence behind the ‘Orange Revolution’ or Georgia’s virtual coup? Or the Unocal pipelines? Or where the gas is coming from (Iran, Afghanistan, and other ‘Stans’)?

CAIRO — On a dirt lane in the poor Arba wa Nus neighborhood, Malles Tonga, a Sudanese refugee, spoke loudly about the brutality of Egyptian police and blamed President Hosni Mubarak for their behavior.

Suddenly, an Egyptian merchant emerged from a nearby dry-goods store, shouted an Egyptian slur for black Africans and yelled: “If you don’t like it here, go home!”

The use of the expletive exemplifies the plight of Sudanese who come to Egypt as refugees: They fear going home, but the welcome mat in Egypt, always thin of resources and tolerance, is almost threadbare.

The situation of Sudanese in Egypt brings to light the special difficulties refugees face when they flee a war-ravaged and impoverished land for another poor country. Egypt is in many ways an inhospitable place for its own citizens. In Arba wa Nus, Egyptians share with the Sudanese arrivals the neighborhood’s open sewers, dusty alleys, lack of plumbing and precarious chockablock housing.

But dark-skinned Sudanese Christians stand out among the Egyptians, typically lighter-skinned Muslim Arabs. Human rights workers say the Sudanese are subject to taunts, discrimination and violence.
washingtonpost.com

aka Mr. Stench of Brimstone

The image of Ariel Sharon lying comatose in an Israeli hospital has a haunting quality. There is the poignancy of the warrior who fought — occasionally ruthlessly — in all of Israel’s wars, incapacitated when he was on the verge of proclaiming a dramatic reappraisal of Israel’s approach to peace. And, there is the prospect that this combative general has transcended his implacable past to show both sides the sacrifice needed for a serious peace process.

Well Henry should know about ‘haunting’ being a ghoul himself. Ask the massacred people of Sabra and Shatila, his and Sharon’s little project, about “poignancy.”

…The Palestinians have yet to make a comparable adjustment. Even relatively conciliatory Arab statements, such as the Beirut summit declaration of 2003, reject Israel’s legitimacy as inherent in its sovereignty; they require the fulfillment of certain prior conditions. Almost all official and semi-official Arab and Palestinian media and schoolbooks present Israel as an illegitimate, imperialist interloper in the region.

Fancy that! “Fulfillment of certain prior conditions,” which, if not met, render a Palestinian state in name only.

…To the Palestinians, “fair and just” signifies a return of refugees to all parts of former Palestine, including the current territory of Israel, thereby swamping it. To the Israelis, the phrase implies that returning refugees should settle on Palestinian territory only.

Territory agreed upon by whom? It’s really an unreasonable demand to shut down those refugee camps in Lebanon, right Henry? Israel was established to gather a scattered people. Why should Palestinian attempts to do the same be condemned?

…A return to the 1967 lines and the abandonment of the settlements near Jerusalem would be such a psychological trauma for Israel as to endanger its survival.

The most logical outcome would be to trade Israeli settlement blocs around Jerusalem — a demand President Bush has all but endorsed — for some equivalent territories in present-day Israel with significant Arab populations. The rejection of such an approach, or alternative available concepts, which would contribute greatly to stability and to demographic balance, reflects a determination to keep incendiary issues permanently open.

Well we all know how irrational the Arab nature is…

…A serious, comprehensive negotiation is therefore impossible unless Hamas crosses the same conceptual Rubicon Sharon did.

Yes Sharon the mostly-dead visionary leads the way. He would have crossed the Rubicon and slaughtered man, woman, child, and dog.

…Hamas may in time accept institutionalized coexistence because Israel is in a position to bring about unilaterally much of the outcome described here.

Yes, with brute force.

…A diplomatic framework is needed within which Israel can carry out those parts of the road map capable of unilateral implementation, and the world community can strive for an international status that ends violence while leaving open the prospect of further progress toward permanent peace.

In other words, the world should turn a blind eye to the bloodbath that ‘unilateral implementation’ will mean on the ground, and for all the phony striving for permanent peace, there will be permanent war. Nothing like that scary, oh-so-reasonable Harvard rhetoric.

One mostly-dead irredeemably evil war criminal idealizes another.
washingtonpost.com

02/26/06 “The Independent” — — Everyone in the Middle East rewrites history, but never before have we had a US administration so wilfully, dishonestly and ruthlessly reinterpreting tragedy as success, defeat as victory, death as life – helped, I have to add, by the compliant American press. I’m reminded not so much of Vietnam as of the British and French commanders of the First World War who repeatedly lied about military victory over the Kaiser as they pushed hundreds of thousands of their men through the butchers’ shops of the Somme, Verdun and Gallipoli. The only difference now is that we are pushing hundreds of thousands of Arabs though the butchers’ shops – and don’t even care.

Last week’s visit to Beirut by one of the blindest of George Bush’s bats – his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice – was indicative of the cruelty that now pervades Washington. She brazenly talked about the burgeoning “democracies” of the Middle East while utterly ignoring the bloodbaths in Iraq and the growing sectarian tensions of Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the key to her indifference can be found in her evidence to the Senate Committee on International Affairs where she denounced Iran as “the greatest strategic challenge” facing the US in the region, because Iran uses policies that “contradict the nature of the kind of Middle East sought by the United States”.

As Bouthaina Shaaban, one of the brightest of Syria’s not always very bright team of government ministers, noted: “What is the nature of the kind of Middle East sought by the United States? Should Middle East states adapt themselves to that nature, designed oceans away?” As Maureen Dowd, the best and only really worthwhile columnist on the boring New York Times, observed this month, Bush “believes in self-determination only if he’s doing the determining … The Bushies are more obsessed with snooping on Americans than fathoming how other cultures think and react.” And conniving with rogue regimes, too, Dowd might have added.

Take Donald Rumsfeld, the reprehensible man who helped to kick off the “shock and awe” mess that has now trapped more than 100,000 Americans in the wastes of Iraq. He’s been taking a leisurely trip around North Africa to consult some of America’s nastiest dictators, among them President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, the man with the largest secret service in the Arab world and whose policemen have perfected the best method of gleaning information from suspected “terrorists”: to hold them down and stuff bleach-soaked rags into their mouths until they have almost drowned.
informationclearinghouse.info

Iran and Russia signalled agreement yesterday on a joint uranium enrichment project aimed at reducing suspicions that Tehran is bent on building a nuclear bomb.

But the agreement had few long-term prospects of surviving. Its timing and vagueness looked geared to forestalling Iran’s referral to the UN security council when the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, meets next week to discuss Iran’s nuclear plans.

The IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, is about to issue a major report on three years of nuclear inspections in Iran. The Iranian moves – agreement with Russia plus access and information this week for senior IAEA officials – looked intended to influence and water down his findings.
guardian.co.uk

…There is growing anger among farmers in Helmand at the imminent destruction of their crops and, with it, their livelihoods. And some of this backlash is likely to be directed at British troops who have begun deploying in this area.

“Why shouldn’t people be angry? For three years the government has said they will compensate us for cutting our crop, but they have given nothing,” said 77-year-old Agha Nour, the mayor’s cousin, patriarch of the hundred-strong extended family, and poppy farmer.

“We are not rich people and we must fight to protect our crop. We have fought the army and police in the past and if the British come with them then we will fight them too. We have had this land for 40 years. If we cannot sell our crop we shall have to lose this land to pay for everything else.”
independent.co.uk