California Wolverine Re-discovered After 86 Years

Note: Repost.

In stunning news, researchers at Oregon State University snapped a photo of a possible California Wolverine (Gulo gulo luteus) north of Lake Tahoe between Truckee and Sierraville in the Tahoe National Forest. This is the first proven detection of a wolverine in California in 86 years – the last one was shot dead in 1922.

According to new data, the wolverine in the photo at the top of the page is from the Rocky Mountains and is not a California wolverine. Reginald Barrett, dean of furbearer studies in the West, told me in an in a recent interview that he felt that this wolverine had come down from Idaho through the Great Basin into California.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, California wolverines never left this state.

The actual location was on Sagehen Road in the Sagehen Creek area at the Sagehen Creek Field Station. This station is in the Sagehen Creek Experimental Forest. The field station itself, where the photo was taken, is at 6,375 feet.

California wolverines seem to exist more at lower elevations as one travels north in California. Towards the south in the Sierra Nevada, they are found more at 8,000-9,000 feet if sightings are any guide. It is 8.4 miles north of Truckee and 20 miles north of Lake Tahoe. Sagehen Basin itself ranges from 5,900 to 8,700 feet.

Despite much theory stating that wolverines hate any human presence, the area where the photo was taken is only 1.5 miles away from a major highway, Highway 89.

An excellent brochure about the Sagehen Creek area, listing hydrology, geology, geography, botany and biology, including insects, reptiles, amphibians and mammals, is here. Katie Moriarty, the graduate student who took the photos, was probably staying at the field station, which has excellent lodging facilities for researchers and has served as the study area for more than 80 theses and dissertations.

A photo of the first California Wolverine documented since 1922. This wild region where they were found in being proposed as a wilderness area by Senator Barbara Boxer. The probable proposed area is the proposed Castle Creek Wilderness Area . The photo shows the wolverine from the rear view.
It is probably next to a Red Fir.
In the background is what appears to be a White Fir and the tree in the foreground looks like some kind of pine. In this part of the Sierras, the Red Fir Zone (where this photo was probably taken) starts around 7,000 feet elevation.A much larger version of this pic, too large to put on this blog, is available here on the researchers’ website.

The area is in the central Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California.

What they mean by confirmed sighting is that it has to be backed up by a photo or a specimen. They say fur or scat also counts, but apparently that is not true, as California wolverines were confirmed via fur samples from Del Norte Siskiyou and Shasta Counties by the California Department of Fish and Game in the late 1980’s.

I know that a wildlife biologist saw one above Bishop, California in 1980, and I understand that there have been a number of other sightings by biologists. There have been quite regular sightings of these very elusive animals in California down through the years.

Live wolverines have also been trapped in far Northern Washington state in the Cascades near the Canadian border in the past couple of years.

The natural range of the California wolverine extends in California only and has been separated from wolverines in the Washington Cascades for at least 2,000 years, according to genetic studies. As a subspecies, it is controversial and is not yet accepted across the board by the scientific community.

The first description of a California wolverine was published in the Field Colombian Museum of Zoology Zoological Series in 1903 (rare online copy here). You can see in the description of the type specimen from Mount Whitney that the California wolverine was much paler than the wolverine normally found in the rest of North America.

The California wolverine is a subspecies of wolverine that split off from other branches about 2,000-11,000 years ago. The California wolverine formerly ranged into the Cascades of California and even over towards the Coast in the Northern Coast Range all the way down to San Fransisco.

It then ranged down the Sierra Nevada Mountains all the way down to the southern end of the range at the Southern Sierra Wilderness, where they were last sighted in the 1950’s. Monache Meadows is usually given as the southern end of the range, but the Southern Sierra Wilderness is south of there.

Based on sightings, it was felt that the California wolverine had declined to a very low level near extinction in the early 1930’s and then the population had been increasing slowly ever since. William Zielinski is an expert on wolverines who participated in this study.

Thomas Kucera, a researcher at San Fransisco State University, undertook a wolverine survey in the state in the early 1990’s with bait stations and cameras.

They saw quite a few animals, including many martens, a few fishers, coyotes, bears, bobcats, and mountain lions, but they found no wolverines in the exhaustive survey. The guarded conclusion then was that California wolverines were extinct in the state. I did a web search on the California Wolverine recently and most experts were saying that the the general conclusion was that they were gone from the state.

Wolverines in the Sierra Nevada

I never thought this animal went extinct in the state because I was aware of regular sightings, mostly around the Sierra National Forest, which is near where I lived for 16 years.

There has been an undated sighting of a wolverine four miles west of the Snow Canyon Research Natural Area on the Amador Ranger District of the El Dorado National Forest. This area is near Highway 88 about three miles south of Carson Pass, and part of it is in the Mokelumne Wilderness.

There have also been undated wolverine sightings in the Pacific Valley area north of the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness, an area that connects the Carson-Iceberg with the Mokelumne Wilderness on the El Dorado National Forest. Pacific Valley (map) is being considered as an addition to the Carson-Iceberg. The date of these sightings is not known.

There have been sightings at Green Island Lakes, a National Forest Service Research Station at 6,100 feet in the Lassen National Forest in Plumas County.

Wolverines have also been sighted around Eagle Lake on the Lassen National Forest.

There have been two sightings on the Collins-Almanor Forest, a large commercial forest northwest of Lake Almanor. This area is where the Northern Sierra Nevada meets the Southern Cascades.

There was also an unverified sighting of a California wolverine four miles west of Truckee on Highway 80. It had scavenged road kill from this busy interstate highway and was dragging it down into the rocks to eat it. I traveled over Donner Pass in Summer 1979. It’s quite a beautiful area.

 

Approaching Donner Pass from the east. Highway 80 does not actually cross Donner Pass itself anymore but actually goes two miles to the north at Euer Saddle. Donner Pass gets 415 inches of snow a year, making it one of the snowiest places in the US. Wind gusts of over 100 miles an hour are common during winter storms.

North and east of Yosemite, in the Hoover Wilderness Area, wolverines are said to persist. One was spotted there near the Virginia Lakes in the 1970’s.

In 1978, there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine near Disaster Peak (10,047 feet) in the Sonora Pass area in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness. I went through the Sonora Pass area in 1987.

In 1979, a wolverine was spotted at Hilton Creek Lakes near Mt. Stanford (map). This area is east of Lake Edison and west of Tom’s Place in the John Muir Wilderness on the Sierra National Forest.

Hilton Creek Lakes in the John Muir Wilderness, elevation 10,705 feet. This area is near Stanford Peak. Access is out of the Rock Creek Trailhead on the East Side of the Sierras. A wolverine was seen here in 1979.

In 1980, a wildlife biologist saw a wolverine in the Robinson Flat area of the Foresthill Ranger District on the Tahoe National Forest.

In 1984, the district ranger of the Sierraville Ranger District, near where this photo was taken, saw a California wolverine running down a road in the middle of the day.

 

California wolverine tracks were seen here, at Courtright Reservoir, in 1990. The tracks were verified by a Forest Service biologist, but this counts as an unverified sighting, since tracks don’t count (Go figure!)
On the Downieville Ranger District on the Tahoe National Forest, a wolverine was sighted in 1989 in the Haskell Peak area.
Also on the Downieville District, another wolverine was seen in 1990 in the Upper Sardine Lake area.

Around 1990, tracks were sighted near Courtright Reservoir at 8,200 feet near Kings Canyon National Park in the southern Sierra National Forest. A local Forest Service biologist had seen the tracks.

Around 1990, a wolverine was spotted on the back side of Lembert Dome in Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park the middle of winter.

North of Yosemite on the Stanislaus National Forest, there was a wolverine sighting in the Emigrant Wilderness in 1990.

There are wolverine sightings near South Lake Tahoe. In 1990, a wolverine was sighted two miles from where Highways 50 and 89 meet in South Lake Tahoe and the southern end of the lake (map). This area is close to Emerald Bay, DL Bliss, and Sugar Pine Point State Parks. I have been to all of these parks on the shore of Lake Tahoe, but that was 45 years ago. It’s a beautiful place.

A wolverine was sighted in 1991 in the Euer Valley on the Truckee Ranger District in Tahoe National Forest.

A wolverine was seen in 1992 in the Harding Point area on the Tahoe National Forest northeast of Sierraville, and this sighting was confirmed by tracks.

In 1992, as wildlife biologist saw a wolverine in the Granite Chief Wilderness Area on the Tahoe National Forest.

In 1992 and 1993, a Biology teacher at the local high school in Oakhurst, Gary Spence, saw them two years in a row at Spotted Lakes (9,100 feet) in the far southeast corner of Yosemite National Park near the National Forest border. Spence is a good biologist and he used to go out on field surveys with the local Forest Service biologist.

Also on the Downieville District of the Tahoe National Forest, a wolverine was seen in 1993 in the Gold Lake Road and Salmon Lakes Road area.

In 1993, a wildlife biologist on the Lassen National Forest sighted a wolverine in a den near the headwaters of Deer Creek at 5,000 feet (note that even sightings by wildlife biologists are said to be unconfirmed). This area is near Child’s Meadow and is next to the southern border of Lassen National Park.

Lassen National Park’s draft management plan proposes to reintroduce wolverines to the park.

 

Child’s Meadow at the headwaters of Deer Creek near the southern boundary of Lassen National Forest. A wildlife biologist spotted a wolverine in a den here in 1993.

Those who keep saying that California wolverines no longer exist ought to note that all sightings are regarded as unconfirmed, even those by wildlife biologists.

Tracks are also regarded as unconfirmed sightings. This area was in private hands and was recently purchased by the Nature Conservancy. Incredibly, the private landowner wanted to put a golf course in here!

There was also a sighting in 1994 in Kaiser Pass near Huntington Lake at about 9,200 feet in the Sierra National Forest. The local Forest Service biologist said she believed the man who saw it.

 

Kaiser Pass east of Huntington Lake in the High Sierras. I was here in the summer of 1991 when I drove a relative and a friend to a drop-off at Florence Lake further on down the road. The road across Kaiser Pass was truly horrid and terrifying at the time, and I doubt if it has been improved. It’s beautiful up there though, and if you get the chance, check it out. A unverified sighting of a California wolverine was reported here in 1994.

 

The area to the west of Lake Tahoe continues to get sightings. A sighting was reported from Island Lake in the Desolation Wilderness Area just southwest of Lake Tahoe in 1994.

Another sighting was from the north shore of Loon Lake Reservoir near Lake Tahoe on the El Dorado National Forest on July 7, 1994. This is a few miles to the west of the Desolation Wilderness.

 

A Panorama of Loon Lake Reservoir west of the southwest shore of Lake Tahoe. A wolverine was seen here in 1994.

Another was seen in Lyell Canyon at 8,900 feet in eastern Yosemite in 1997.

 

Lyell Canyon in Yosemite National Park, where there was an unverified California wolverine sighting in 1997. This area is east of the Tuolumne River and southeast of Tuolumne Meadows. The Pacific Crest Trail runs through here, and Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep are known to exist in this area. Bighorns have been being devastated lately by mountain lions. This is poorly understood.
It appears that Bighorns are staying up high to avoid the mountain lions instead of migrating downslope as they normally do. Hence, they are being killed by avalanches when they stay in the high elevations for the winter. Bighorns and mountain lions evolved together, and it is not known why this dynamic is occurring. Domestic sheep grazing in this area is totally pointless and is ongoing.

Also in 1997, there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine off Highway 120 just after it passes Tioga Pass to the east, looking down into Lee Vining Canyon. The wolverine was sighted running away about 1,000 feet down below.

 

Lee Vining Canyon just east of Tioga Pass. I was near Tioga Pass in August 2003, but I did not continue down the road a ways to the pass itself. In 1997, there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine running away over a snowy ridge about 1,000 feet below near where this photo was taken. Tioga Pass is at 9,943 feet, so the wolverine was at about 9,000 feet.

In 1998, a wolverine was seen once again on the Downieville District on the Tahoe National Forest near Bassett’s Station.

The very wild area north of Lake Tahoe, especially the Granite Chief Wilderness, was considered to be one of the most likely places for the California Wolverine to be found due to the very high number of sightings in the area. In 2000, there was an excellent sighting of tracks in this area.

In 2001, a biologist spotted a wolverine somewhere on the Stanislaus National Forest, but the location was not given.

Donner Pass is where the famous Donner Party tried to cross into California in the winter of 1846-47, became trapped, turned cannibal, and ate half of their own party due to starvation. There was an unverified sighting of a California wolverine here in 2004 dragging roadkill off the highway to eat it. There have also been sightings north of Tahoe National Forest.

In 2004, there was a reported sighting north of Polly Dome Lakes at 8,500 feet near Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park.

 

The Polly Dome Lakes near Lake Tenaya, where there is an unverified California wolverine sighting from 2004. I was here in the Summer of 2003. I stayed at White Wolf campground and paid money for a cabin. Any lazy, old or out of shape person can do this, even you!
You drive your car into the campground and stay in a cabin! All you need is money. I even, at age 46, hiked up the murderous trail to Lukens Lake. You can do this too! All you need to do is get off your butt. Along the way, I saw a shrew running along the forest floor. Come on, when do you ever see such a thing?
I took a drive one day down the Tioga Road to Tuolumne Meadows and went by Lake Tenaya, where the scenery looks about like this. This part of Yosemite is beautiful! If you are in the area, take a drive up there in the summertime. There’s a nice highway, you don’t have to worry about a thing, and you are in the most beautiful scenery on Earth.

In 2004, apparent wolverine tracks were photographed on the trail up to Possible wolverine tracks photographed in July 2004 at Gabbot Pass on the Sierra Crest west of Bishop by Australians David Noble and Lizzy Went. There have been consistent sightings in the area west of Bishop and east of Courtright Reservoir and just north of Kings Canyon National Park over a 28-year period now.

The view from Gabbot Pass is at 12,240 feet, where an unverified sighting of wolverine tracks was made in July 2004.

In 2005, a wolverine was spotted in Tuolumne Meadows, again in winter. The observer had taken zoology courses at UCLA for seven years.

Forest Service employees have made quite a few wolverine sightings in both the northern Tahoe National Forest and in the southern Plumas National Forest in recent years.

In addition, in the Duncan Canyon Proposed Wilderness Area on the Plumas National Forest, there have been two wolverine sightings in recent years. This area is near French Meadows Reservoir.

Also on the Tahoe, in 2006, a wildlife biologist saw a California wolverine at the San Fransisco State University’s San Fransisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Station, 32 miles northwest of the Sagehen Creek photo site. There was an unverified sighting of a California wolverine here by a wildlife biologist in 2006.

In September 2010, a wolverine was seen on the Pacific Crest Trail near Red Cones, which is near Devil’s Postpile and Mammoth Mountain.

Wolverines on the North Coast and in the California Cascades

On the North Coast and in the California Cascades, there have been wolverine sightings in Del Norte and Trinity Counties east through Siskiyou and Shasta Counties.

There have been sightings in the lower Pit River watershed near Carberry Flat and on the Lassen National Forest at Bald Mountain and Kosk Creek Basin.

There were a number of sightings in this area from 1960 to 1974. For instance, there was a The very deep forest on the road between Hyampom and Hayfork in Trinity County. A wolverine was spotted here in 1974.

In 1980, Forest Service personnel on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest observed a wolverine on the Lower McCloud River at Chatterdown Creek several miles downstream from the Nature Conservancy McCloud River Reserve. This sighting was in Shasta County.

 

The Lower McCloud River at Ah-Di-Nah near the Nature Conservancy Reserve. Note the very deep forest here. A wolverine was sighted near here by Forest Service workers in 1980. Photo by Lily G. Stephen.

 

Dillon Creek on the Klamath National Forest is a Class V+ rapids stream. This area is extremely rugged, and it is almost impossible to hike out of this canyon. A wolverine was sighted in this area fairly recently.

There were numerous wolverine sightings in the Klamath Mountains of California in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

A wolverine was seen in Corral Bottom, 10 miles north of Hyampom, in the winter of 1989. It ran along the road in the snow for a hundred yards or so, then disappeared into a water cave in the three-foot deep snow.

Wolverine tracks were seen two times in Hyampom in the winter of 2010. Hyampom is located east of Eureka in the Trinity Alps.

The most recent sighting of a wolverine on the Klamath River was at Dillon Creek on the Klamath National Forest, 20 miles below Happy Camp (map) in 2000. This sighting occurred in Siskiyou County. The elevation here appears to be only 500 feet. Wolverines occur in deep forest at much lower elevations on the North Coast.

In Shasta County, recent sightings around 2009 are known from the secure and not endangered in the Idaho Sawtooths at the moment.

They were formerly present in many other states in the US, including Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, South Dakota, Nebraska (!), Iowa (!), Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland (!), New York, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. A good historical and present range map is here (Figure 2).

There are 14 different subspecies of the wolverine. The species is more or less circumpolar, ranging from northern Canada to Alaska across Siberia to Finland, Sweden and Norway. There are 500 wolverines in Scandinavia and 1,500 in Russia. They formerly occurred all through Norway and into Southern Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Northeastern Poland.

Wolverines in Europe

The southern populations have been extirpated except for a wolverine recorded in Estonia in 1986, which means they may be reclaiming former habitat there.

In Sweden they are limited to the far northwest where their numbers are growing but their distribution is irregular. There are 265 wolverines in Sweden. The population declined from 1870 to 1970 when they received protection. Since 1970, the population has been growing.

There are 150 wolverines in Norway. 100 years ago, they ranged through the whole country, but since then, they have been aggressively hunted to where they were limited to the north. Since 1970, they have recolonized the south-central area and remain in the north. Protections are in place.

In Finland it is an endangered species with a population of about 115. At the turn of the century, 50 wolverines a year were killed there. They then declined until they were protected in 1982. A good report on wolverines in Scandinavia is Wolverines in Eurasia

They are still common, though declining, in Russia, where they are common in the far east. The are most common in the Komi region (population 880). With the return to capitalism, they have undergone radical declines in the Kola (population 160) and Karelia (population 80) regions. The chaos and insanity of the return to capitalism have probably resulted in unrestricted hunting in Russia.

Wolverines in East Asia

There is estimated to be a population of 200 wolverines in the Wolverines in Canada

They were formerly found through much Canada but are now uncommon in Ontario (though increasing), extremely rare in Quebec, and extirpated from Labrador. An excellent report on wolverines in Ontario can be found on the Internet on theWolverines in Alaska

They are common in Alaska but sporadic on the islands of the southeast.

Some Interesting Facts about Wolverines

Wolverines have a reputation for being solitary and antisocial creatures. It is said that they are barely social enough to reproduce. Nevertheless, there is a good bond between mothers and kits. Kits are known to stay with the mother for up to 14-15 months. That is a very long time for a mammal.

The notion that wolverines are like orangutans in being antisocial loners is being challenged. Findings out of research in Idaho’s Sawtooths have shown a three-year old male traveling with a male juvenile, showing him the ropes and how to avoid predators and find food. They also saw a grown male playing with a juvenile female in a meadow.

Previously it was thought that females alone raised kits, and males had nothing to do with their offspring like mountain lions and so many other mammals. Females reportedly remember their natal dens and recover them when their mother dies. Males may assume the role of patriarch by fathering kits with multiple females and may visit the females periodically. The legend of wolverine unsociability may have to be rewritten.

In the West, dens are made very high in the mountains near treeline. Denning is probably the major risk to wolverines in the US, as mothers readily abandon dens at the slightest disturbance. Hence, we may need to limit snowmobiling and cross-country skiing to help preserve American wolverines.

I do not think logging has much of an effect on wolverines since they live at such high elevations. It may even be beneficial if it increases the numbers of rodents, which they prey heavily on.

Wolverines are said to be scavengers, and there is something to this, but they are also omnivores who eat just about anything. They cover amazing distances in their never-ending search for feed. They are so ferocious that they have very few enemies.

There is a recorded instance of a wolverine stealing a mountain lion’s kill and then chasing the puma away. However, a black bear was recently recorded killing a wolverine in Yellowstone National Park. The intrepid and ferocious wolverine had tried to steal the bear’s elk kill right out from under the bear’s paws.

The wolverine is member of the weasel family, and it is best described as a weasel on steroids blown up to King Kong size. They have a reputation for ferocity and viciousness. This reputation is derived in part from the tales of fur trappers.

Wolverines were notorious for following fur trappers along their lines and destroying and eating any animals caught in traps. To trappers it often seemed that the wolverine was doing this out of pure spite. Wolverines also had a reputation for entering trapper’s cabins when trappers were away and destroying everything inside. To top it off, they would spray their foul scent from their glands all over the cabin.

A wolverine is hardly man’s best friend. Here a sweet, cuddly wolverine purrs and spreads the love around. Old-timers in the Truckee area, near where the photo was shot above, say it takes only two swoops of those claws to kill a dog. The old-timers said that wolverines in that area “lived in holes.” I have seen the claws on a road-killed badger, though, and those were just amazing.

It is often said that wolverines love wilderness and refuse to have anything to do with humans. This is not necessarily true.

In Northern Ontario, many sightings were made by trappers within 1/2 mile of Amerindian settlements.

In the Yukon, wolverines frequently raid garbage dumps on the outskirts of towns.

In Scandinavia, they prey quite heavily on sheep and reindeer such that they are becoming a major predator problem. Further, they are recolonizing former territory that is now inhabited by humans, with homes, towns, roads, etc.

Wolverine fur is very valuable. It is the only fur that has the ability to withstand frost without freezing over. Hence it is often used to line the areas of parkas right around the mouth where the breath comes out. Otherwise, moist breath tends to cause frost buildup around the parka wearer’s mouth.

The low elevation record for a wolverine in California is an unbelievable 1,300 feet in Tulare County.

Conservation organizations have repeatedly petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service over the past decade to list the wolverine in the lower 48 as an endangered species. The petitions are constantly returned on a Catch-22 basis – the wolverine has to be studied, especially population dynamics, to determine if it qualifies as an endangered species, and it is so rare that it is almost impossible to study it.

Earlier, a wolverine petition was returned by the Bush Administration as invalid. After that, on March 11, 2008, the Bush Administration denied listing the wolverine in the Lower 48 on the basis that healthy populations in Canada and Alaska should be able to keep the wolverine from going extinct even if the wolverine is extirpated from the Lower 48.

In this, the Bush Administration took a new tack. Under Clinton and probably under all previous Presidents, a number of species were listed even though they had healthy populations in Alaska and Canada. After all, most of us live in the Lower 48, not Alaska, Canada or Mexico. And it seems odd to depend on the kindness of nations to the north and south of us to keep species from going extinct.

One problem of the lack of listing of wolverines is that wolverines can still be trapped. 8-18 are trapped every year in Montana, and biologists feel that none should be trapped anymore in the state. It appears that trapping in Montana is untenable based on new evidence.

A great wolverine article is here. It’s written by Physical Geography Professor Randall J. Schaetzl of Michigan State University. Among many other fascinating observations, he notes that the last Michigan wolverine was killed in 1860, not the early 1800’s. So the Ubly sighting was the first in about 150 years, not 200 years as most references state.

References

Armentrout, S. et al. (Watershed Analysis Team). 1998. “Watershed Analysis For Mill, Deer, and Antelope Creeks.” USDA: National Forest Service, Lassen National Forest, Almanor Ranger District.
Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Predator Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, and Superior Wilderness Action Network. 2000. “Petition for a Rule to List the Wolverine (Gulo gulo luscus) as Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act within the Contiguous United States.” Submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service on July 11, 2000.
California Department of Transportation. 2007. “ED-89 PM 8.6-13.8 Water Quality Improvements U.S. Highway 50/State Route 89 “Y” to Cascade Road. El Dorado County, CA. Initial Study with Proposed Negative Declaration.” Marysville, CA: Caltrans Office of Environmental Management.
Devine Tarbell & Associates, Inc. Sacramento Municipal Utility District. 2004. “Upper American River Project (FERC No. 2101). Mesocarnivore Technical Report.” Sacramento, CA: Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
Elliot, Daniel Giraud. 1903. “Descriptions Of Twenty-Seven Apparently New Species And Subspecies Of Mammals. All But Six Collected By Edmund Heller.” Publication No. 87. Volume Fieldiana Zoology 3:14. Chicago: Field Colombian Museum.
Groves, Craig R. 1988. “Distribution of the Wolverine in Idaho as Determined by Mail Questionnaire.” Northwest Science 62, 4:181-5.
Hesseldenz, Thomas F. 1981. “Developing a Long-Term Protection Plan for the McCloud River, California.” Paper presented at the California Riparian Systems Conference, University of California, Davis, September 17-19, 1981.
Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. 2005. “Heavenly Mountain Resort Master Plan Amendment 2005.”. USDA: USFS.
Lassen County Planning Department. 1981. “The Eagle Lake Area Plan, A Part of the Lassen County General Plan 1990.” Lassen County, CA.
Moyle, P.B., P.L. Randall, and R.M. Yoshiyama. 1996. “Potential Aquatic Diversity Management Areas in the Sierra Nevada.” In Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project: Final Report to Congress, Vol III, Chap. 9, p. 15. Davis: University of California, Centers for Water and Wildland Resources.
Nachlinger, Janet and Miller, Connie, eds. 2002. “An Ecological Survey Of The Snow Canyon Research Natural Area, Eldorado National Forest, California.” Berkeley, CA: Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experimental Station.
Pace, Felice. 2008. “Protecting Far Northern California’s Unprotected Wilderness – Time to Rethink California Wilderness Strategy?” Sierra Club California/Nevada Regional Wilderness Committee. Words of the Wild XI: 1. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club.
Predator Conservation Alliance. 2001. Predator Conservation Alliance’s Literature Summary – Draft – January 24, 2001 – Draft Conservation Status and Needs of the Wolverine (Gulo gulo) .
Randla, T. 1986. “On a New Occurrence of Wolverine in Estonia.” Eesti Ulukik 4: 77-78.
Schempf, P. F. and M. White. 1977. “Status of Six Furbearer Populations in the Mountains of Northern California.” USDA: Forest Service, California Region, San Francisco.
Shasta County Board of Supervisors. 1993. Shasta County General Plan. Redding, CA: Shasta County Department of Resource Management, Planning Division.
Stanislaus National Forest. 2001. California State Parks Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division, 2001/2002 OHV Grant and Cooperative Agreement Application, Wildlife Habitat Protection Plan. USDA: USFS.
Southern California Edison Company. 2001. Final Technical Study Plan Package (FTSPP) for the Big Creek Hydroelectric Projects (FERC Project Nos. 67, 120, 2085, and 2175). Terrestrial Resources – Chapter 13 – Mesocarnivores. Rosemead, CA.
Tahoe National Forest. 2002. Final Environmental Impact Statement. Red Star Restoration Project. USDA: USFS, Pacific Southwest Region, Forestville, CA.
TC Dot and Hughes Environmental Consultants. 2003. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

Alt Left: The Latest Lies of the Russo-Ukrainian War

Civilians Being Targeted: False. I have yet to see one single of case of civilians being deliberately targeted by Russia. Sure, there have been civilian deaths and injuries. These always happen in wars no matter how hard to try to avoid them. Civilians typically get targeted in wars nowadays, but I haven’t seen any cases of the Russians doing it.

On the other hand, Ukraine has targeted civilians many times in the Donbass and in Mariupol. Ukraine considers them to be enemy civilians and hostile. After they withdraw from an area, they often shell it and level the whole place. They abuse the civilians in the cities they control. They won’t even let them go outside. When they go outside, sometimes they are targeted by Ukrainian snipers. When people try to get out of these pro-Russian areas, the Ukrainians shoot at them.

We have a number of videos from citizens of Mariupol. All of them are blaming Ukraine for everything and the Russians for nothing. And many say that Ukraine shot at people who were trying to leave. They also told residents that they were not allowed to leave and if they tried to leave they would be shot at “by Russians.” Much of the structural damage in Mariupol is being caused by Ukraine just shelling the buildings, especially as they withdrawal. Once again this is from testimony from Mariupol civilians.

I have no information about Ukraine targeting their own people when they try to flee in pro-Ukrainian areas. That would seem to be stupid. Armies target hostile civilians, not friendly ones.

Russian bombing of Mariupol theater: False. Three days before this incident occurred, pro-Russian sources announced that according to civilians in Mariupol, the Azov Battalion had wired the theater with explosive and were going to blow it up to blame Russia. Sure enough, three days later, an explosion occurs at the theater exactly as predicated and Russia was blamed. But there were no Russian aircraft active anywhere in Mariupol on that particular day.

Furthermore, Russia was aware of the situation in the theater where Azov was holding people as human shields and using the upper floors for firing, and the theater had been removed from the target list. Yes, Azov had written CHILDREN in huge block letters outside the theater, but they wrote that in front of every large building in the city no matter who was in there. They did this to make it seemed like Russia bombed a theater even though CHILDREN was written outside, apparently just to be evil.

Russia knew there were civilians in there and said so and  removed it from the target list. However, 9

Azov told people to leave before they blew up the theater. But there were still many people in the bomb shelter in the basement which was not damaged in the attack. Nevertheless, there are still people down there buried under the rubble. Russia knew they were in that basement. Why do they blow up their own supporters and bury them in rubble? That makes no sense.

We now have videos coming out from people who were in the theater saying it was indeed full of civilians and Azov had mined the roof and wired the ceiling. As they withdrew, they told people to leave, and everyone left except for the people in the basement. Then Azov withdrew and blew up the theater. We also have another video from a woman in Mariupol who also says, “The Ukrainians blew up the theater.”

So it’s settled. The whole attack was faked. Why would Russia announce that Azov was going to do a false flag in the theater and then go ahead and bomb it anyway, just because they really, really wanted to bomb a theater full of civilians? It makes no sense! On the other hand, Azov is highly motivated to blow up a theater full of hostile civilians who support Russia in order to blame Russia.

Russia has been shooting at people trying to leave Mariupol and other locales in the Donbass. False. We now have interviews on video of Mariupol residents and residents of Volnovakha. The Mariupol people are all saying that Ukraine shot at people trying to leave and forbade people to leave. They even shot at buses of people trying to leave. There’s video testimony from the victims themselves! What more do you need?

The majority of Mariupol refugees are fleeing to Ukrainian controlled areas near Dnepropetrovsk. False. In fact, only

Russia won’t allow aid convoys to come into Mariupol. Unknown. I have no information on this, but it seems odd as those convoys are made up all of Russian vehicles. Is it possible the situation is still too dangerous?

Russia is kidnapping people from Mariupol and putting them in camps in Russia where they are torturing them. False. I have no idea what they are talking about. As noted, 9

Russia has mined the Black Sea, which is dangerous as the mines have done loose and now threaten shipping in the Bosporus in Turkey. False. Ukraine laid a lot of sea mines which have now come loose and are floating around the Black Sea.

Russia will throw Russians in prison for 15 years if they criticize the invasion or call it a war. False. First of all, “Putin the dictator” did not do that. The Duma did and it was democratically elected. To date the worst offender has been an anchorwoman who jumped behind a newscaster and waved a sign saying, “Stop the War.” She was just sentenced to pay a $300 fine for this rather grievous offense.

18 million Russians openly oppose the war. They can’t arrest 18 million people. They will have to triage.

I am on pro-Russia Russian sites, and pro-Russians call this a war all the time on there. I got tired of counting how many times they said. Those sites are also full of either Ukrainians or antiwar Russians. The antiwar Russians are pretty bad, and they’re practically traitors. There are many of them on these forums. Nothing is done to them. They’re not even banned! People just insult them.

The woman demonstrating with the sign on Russian TV fears for her safety and that of her child. False. Give it up.  She had to pay a whole fine of $300. Now they’re going to murder her? No way.

All opposition media in Russia is shut down. False. Depends what you mean by opposition media. The media that was shut down represents a section of society that gets

Russia is running out of manpower, fuel, and food, and its supply lines are badly stretched. Hence it has stalled out and can go nowhere. False. Progress indeed is slow as it is supposed to be when you are trying to minimize civilian casualties. Keep in mind that this nonsense is coming from the Pentagon, “US intelligence” (glowies), and military analyst media talking heads, all of whom are worthless in my opinion. They’re all lying to spin this as badly as possible for Russia. I haven’t found any good evidence that anything in the first sentence is true.

Ukraine is winning the war; Russia is about to be handled a humiliating defeat. False. The Western media features endless stories about Ukrainian success on the battlefield, how they are winning or are going to win and how Russia is losing or is going to lose.

On the contrary, Ukraine is losing the war and Russia is winning the war as best I can tell. The Ukrainian Air Force is gone. The Ukrainian Navy is gone. There are desertions. In some places, soldiers have run out of food and are raiding local homes to get enough to eat. I will grant that the Ukrainians are fighting very hard and well, and I credit them for that. They are being very brave and noble in many places on the battlefield.

Russia has lost 7,000 men KIA in this operation. False. This is from US intelligence glowies. Not buying it. That’s way too high. Try 2,000 KIA. I will agree with that figure.

Russia has lost 18,000 KIA and Ukraine is trying to repatriate 14,000 Russian KIA to Russia for burial. False. Forget it. Get out. It can’t be more much more than 2,000, and I doubt if many of them are in Ukrainian hands.

Ukraine conducted a counterattack in NE Kiev and Russia suffered major losses. False. On the contrary, the counterattack was fought off by Russia, and Ukraine sustained serious losses.

15 killed, 21 wounded by Russian shelling in Kharkiv. Unknown. I suppose it’s possible. These things happen in urban warfare.

1 killed, four wounded in Kiev when Russia targeted an elementary school. False. Ukraine shot down a Russian missile, and it landed on an apartment building, hence the casualties. There was an elementary school right nearby, but the missile was not targeting either the school or the apartment building.

Russia is deliberately targeting schools and hospitals. False. I’ve seen no evidence of this, and this goes against Putin’s directive to spare as many civilians as possible.

Zelensky made a video with a backdrop of Kiev, proving he is still in the capital. False. All of my information is that he is in Poland, and he has been there for a while.

Zelensky made a video showing a conference between him and leaders of Poland, Slovakia, and Czechia taking place in Kiev. Russia was warned and cleared the way for the train. False. This entire video was faked. We know this from analysis of the film and also from sources inside Poland. None of them ever left Poland. Instead it took place in Poland on the border with Ukraine.

The train was a train parked at that city. The part of the video where they are having a conversation in a train while going to Kiev is faked. The train is standing still. In the video there are journalists present but we believe there were no journalists at this fake meeting. Instead those men are Polish Secret Service posing as journalists. One of them ended up next to Zelensky in the meeting but he forgot to take his bulletproof vest off.

A number of Western stenographer-whores, I mean journalists, know full well that this whole video was faked but they reported it as it happened anyway. Sickening.

Russia will soon run out of lifesaving medicines. False. They have enough for 3-6 months and the foreign companies that supply them will continue to do so. Also many of them are made in Russia, and the Russian government is now forcing these companies to produce these drugs, and they will not be allowed to stop.

Russia will be thrown off the GPS system. False. You can’t just throw a country off of the GPS satellite system. There’s no way to do it. Also Russia has its own alternate GPS system that works just fine anyway.

China is embarrassed by their alliance with Russia; the US will be able to separate Russia from China with sanctions on China. False and probably false. The first part is not true at all. They have a strong alliance, even stronger now because they both know they are in the same boat. I do not think the US will be able to throw a wedge between the two countries.

Putin is a dictator. False. The Duma passes most legislation and if they won’t pass bills, they won’t get passed. Putin is not Stalin. Putin is quite limited in how he can act towards his political enemies because he has to follow the law, and this limits him a lot. The Russian people do not want to have a dictator anyway and do not think Putin is one. To them a dictator is Stalin.

Putin is a fascist. False. He seems to disagree with this movement pretty strongly. I’m having a hard time understanding how it is that Putin is a fascist. Can someone clue me in here? He’s coming from the anti-fascist tradition of the USSR. Remember this guy is former KGB.

Putin is a Nazi. False. He hates Nazis and he has nothing against any ethnic group. At any rate these groups have much greater rights in their country than they do in ours. The Russian Empire has long been multiracial and multi ethnic. Yes, there are Nazis in Russia, but Putin doesn’t like them, and a number of those organizations have been made illegal.

That’s about all for now! I’ll have more tomorrow when Ukraine, the US, the West, and NATO will dole out another huge helping of lies! See you then!

Alt Left: Who Supports Who in the Russo-Ukraine War

Contrary to what the media tells you, the whole world is not turning on Russia over this war. It’s only the Anglosphere, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and most of Europe. That’s it!

Pro-Russia

Arab World: Unknown but there seems to be a lot of support for Russia because Arabs will take the opposite of whatever side the US is on because they hate the US.

Syria: Strong support for Russia because Russia helped them in the Civil War.

Iran: Similar situation. Most seem to support Russia because they support the opposite of the US because they hate the US and because Russia is an ally.

Pakistan: My limited understanding is that a lot of people support Russia because they hate the US so much.

Africa: Unknown. No country has sanctioned Russia. The Central African Republic is strongly supporting Russia because Russia helped them.

Latin America: Unknown. No government has sanctioned Russia. The media are all fulminating against Russia but the opinion of the average person is not known.

South Ossetia: This new country supports Russia because Russia helped them, and in fact they are sending a contingent of troops there.

China: The Chinese people support Russia completely. In part this is a legacy of the Cold War when both countries were allies. Plus China is starting to realize that once the West gets done taking down Russia, China is next on the chopping block.

Armenia: People support Russia. Armenia is sending a contingent of troops.

Serbia: Most Serbs support Russia due to ancient roots and Serbs’ hatred of the US and NATO. The Serbian government is anti-Russia, so the people and the state are at odds here. There have been large pro-Russian rallies.

Bulgaria: Most Bulgarians are supporting Russia due to common Slavic Orthodox heritage. There have been large pro-Russian rallies.

Brazil: All of the media is fulminating against Russia but comments on news articles are now running majority pro-Russia. The media and the people are at odds.

Belarus: Most are pro-Russia.

Trending Pro-Russia

Spain: The government and media are anti-Russia but comments on news sites are now running ~4

Unknown

India: Unknown, ally of Russia.

European countries not mentioned: Unknown, media and governments are mostly Russophobic.

Anti-Russia, Pro-Ukraine

Romania: Many years of anti-Russian propaganda have created a Russophobic population. Most are ignorant of the situation though. Extremely Russophobic media.

Sweden: Similar situation as Romania. Many years of Russophobic hate propaganda have created a country of Russia-haters. However, most people don’t understand the issue well. Media is strongly Russophobic.

Germany: Most are supporting Ukraine and the population is Russophobic. However, ~1

Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Georgia, US, and the UK: Strongly pro-Ukraine and Russophobic in media, state, and population. In Georgia the population is anti-Russia, but the government is more neutral. In Czechia and Slovakia, the governments are extremely anti-Russian, but the opinion of citizens is not known. Reports indicate that Russophobic hysteria is so extreme in the US that people are getting fired from their jobs for supporting Russia.

Alt Left: The Russian ‘Denazification’ PR Disaster: How, Why and What To Do

The Russian ‘Denazification’ PR Disaster: How, Why and What To Do

by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker blog

Maybe it’s worked in Russia, but a military operation in Ukraine based on “denazification” has been a total public relations disaster everywhere else. Quite simply: Russia should have known that the use of the word “Nazi” totally shuts down any discussion in the West. Russia is waging a new type of military operation but they lazily or foolishly thought that “denazification” was a new enough concept to base its justification around for non-Russians — they have paid a price of total intellectual defeat so far in the battle for hearts and minds.

They could have known it was coming – I wrote about this issue just two weeks prior to the start of the Ukraine operation, in an article on France’s elections titled, France’s conservatives cry out for National Socialism – Zemmour’s response?:

“Ah, old Adolf – we can’t bring him up in the West, can we?

Many have heard of Godwin’s Law, or the rule of Nazi analogies: an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches. However, an important corollary is that whenever someone compares someone or something to Nazism – that person has lost the argument and/or the argument is summarily over.

Essentially, the world is to accept that all discussions of Western politics cannot discuss the anti-Western Liberalism ideology which was German Nazism.”

Yes, Russia should have accepted that in February. Practically nobody west of the Oder River understood what Moscow meant by “denazification”, and they still don’t after a month of Russian explanations.

Russia’s military operation has made much harder by failing to recognise the iron Western cultural reality of Godwin’s Law, and the reality that the West only associates Nazis with anti-Semitism and – not at all! – with Russophobia, despite the 20+ million Russian deaths at the hands of the Germanic Nazis.

This is how iron that law is: Political science PhD holders have responded to me with, “But… Ukraine’s president is Jewish – how can there be Nazis?” If you cannot even get Western political science PhD holders to see where you are coming from – even remotely – you have zero chance to get the average Westerner to understand you.

Thus it’s a total, ongoing public relations catastrophe.

It’s not an easy problem to fix

It’s such a huge problem I actually have to discuss it in detail in my new book on the Yellow Vests, in a chapter titled: “Where the West is stuck: The fascism of the 1930s and the ‘fascism’ of the 2020s”. The West is stuck in misunderstanding what fascism is, and in 2022 Russia has not solved this problem; they have maybe even made it worse?!

It’s not an easy problem to fix, but in April 2014 I must say that I was farther along than Russia is in 2022 – well, at least I tried to propose some solution in a column for PressTV titled, “Ukraine: The Rise of the ‘Nalis’”.

I can’t find a link for it anywhere – I’d complain about how Iran’s PressTV has been so deplatformed but – thanks in part to the awful Russian public relations campaign – Russia has now become even more deplatformed than us, wow! If someone finds a link, great, but these highlights show the idea still holds up: the combination of rabid Nationalism and far-right Liberalism (in economics, politics and in anti-socialism) is still the problem in Ukraine. The column began:

“The combination of ultra-nationalists and ultra-liberals who have overthrown the Ukrainian government is indicative of a new type of political party in the region: National Liberals, or ‘Nalis’. They are to be differentiated from ‘Nazis’ – National Socialists – only by the economic ideology of liberalism (otherwise known as free-market capitalism).

But it is a mistake to call the protesters in Ukraine “Nazis”. Yes, at Maidan Square there was plenty of footage taken of neo-Nazis, fascists, violent anarchists and other types who showed up to a political protest in camouflage and armed with a firearm. But they are actually “Nalis” – National Liberals.

That’s why not all of Ukraine’s protesters should be called Nalis: There are true progressives who were calling for legal, constitutional changes to the corrupt Yanukovych government. Unfortunately, they have been outgunned by the Nalis, who have deposed a president unconstitutionally, voted to ban the Russian language and whose violent tactics have created the real possibility of civil war.

Many of these people are true Nalis: economic nationalists who do not even want to join the EU.

But the moneyed set of the Nalis certainly do. They want to work with the US and the EU to institute IMF-led austerity reforms. They want to reduce pensions, reduce government subsidies on things like heat, reduce wages and increase corporate protections to foster a capitalist society. All you need to do is look at their proposals and it’s clear: they want free market liberalism…but of course for the benefit of themselves and the other moneyed Nalis.

Two things are certain: Western politicians will back the Nalis to the hilt. Of course, always putting the best interest of the EU or US or Germany (or many others) well-before the interests of the Ukrainian people.

And two: The Western media, passionately pro-Nali and just as passionately anti-Russian and anti-Putin, will also be unquestioningly backing the Nalis until the bitter end.”

Did “Nali” catch on? No, but did Russia come up with anything better?

Are they even strenuously pushing the term “Ukrainian Civil War”, which is no longer just a “possibility” but today’s reality, in my estimation?

I understand how Russians would use “Nazism” synonymously with “Russophobia”, just I understand how Jews would use “Nazism” interchangeably with “anti-Semitism”, but clearly most Westerners do not understand the former and only the latter. Given that the “Nalis” have been around since 2014, and given that the US has used shameless Russophobia to distract from the political failures of the two mainstream parties in their 2016 election, I’m surprised that Russia couldn’t come up with a better way to express “pathological and murderous hatred towards Russia”?

“Anti-Russianism”, “Russophobic paramilitaries”, “Nalis” – somebody better come up with something better than “denazification” because it takes more than hating Russians or Jews to make a Nazi, and because “denazification” has clearly not worked. If they don’t come up with something – anything – other than “denazification” they will never explain the situation in Ukraine correctly. Take Nali, or improve upon Nali, but come up with something to increase diplomatic understanding.

However, Russia needs to not only admit they got it wrong, but they need to get at the root of why they got it wrong, and this is actually much harder for Russia.

Russians need to ask why they get – as their failed PR campaign proves – “Nazi” as wrong as the West does

It’s not really that the times have changed and “Nazi” is outdated – it’s that “Nazi” was never accurate to begin with in Ukraine, as I wrote back in 2014.

Racism or xenophobia – the hating of Russia – isn’t enough to make one a Nazi, merely a racist. Germanic Nazism had political and economic components, and to ignore them is only ignorance and only causes more ignorance. The West only associates Nazis with anti-Semitism, and that’s foolish, but some Russians think associating Nazis with anti-Russianism is a complete picture, and that is just as foolish.

Incorrectly believing that it does is to totally ignore the economic factor, and the factor of political structure, and to merely make ethnic/identity politics the only factor – it is also to lay the foundation for total PR failure outside of Russia, and that cannot be denied.

The obvious difference is that Russia is on the right side of being against the “Nalis”, but… they don’t even know what that means, or what being anti-Nail implies for their society going forward – and the implications are revolutionary-big.

The Western and Russian elite leadership both misuse “Nazi” because it serves them – cui bono applies here too.

Both Russian and Western elites do not want to seriously talk about the economic/political aspects of socialism – of any variety – whatsoever. This is because post-1991 both regions’ elites began to wrongly take for granted that Socialist Democracy is a failure (China has emphatically disproven this, thankfully) and thus Russia adopted many aspects of what I term “Western Liberal Democracy”.

I can list a half-dozen synonyms: liberalism, neoliberalism, ultra-liberalism, English parliamentarian oligarchy, Western democracy, Nali-ism, etc. It all comes down to the same thing: liberalism, which is the ideology that emerged after the downfall of absolute monarchy in 1789 and before the establishment of socialist democracy in 1917.

The West is fighting for Western Liberal Democracy, and thus they do not permit honest discussion and honest critiques of Western Liberal Democracy. This explains why there is no admission regarding the historical reality that Nazism and 1930s European fascism won power precisely because so many people realised that Western Liberal Democracy was nothing but awful oligarchy. Most of Russia does not understand this either – not since 1991 – and thus they are stuck between aping Western Liberal Democracy and rejecting Socialist Democracy.

Putin definitely doesn’t want to talk about socialism honestly – or even acknowledge its achievements in Russia – because socialists are not just an ideological rival but an actual political one, unlike in the West: The Communist Party is the main opposition party in Russian parliament. Clearly, Western Liberal Democracy still has plenty of detractors in Russia.

But Putin is thus at an absurd and contradictory place in his political outlook: He wants to oppose Western Liberal Democracy’s surprising counter-attack on Russia with… more Western Liberal Democracy in Russia? It’s illogical, and thus it can’t work, and here’s why:

Putin is essentially saying that he wants Russia to take the Iranian road of taking total sanctions war head-on, but… without the influence of 1917? It won’t work. In 1979 Iranian political leaders were aware of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism, and they were also aware that Western Liberal Democracy was an awful economic and political model, and as a result they nationalised the economy to a degree only surpassed by North Korea and (maybe, I contest) Cuba – that’s the only way to beat sanctions!

What Russia is proposing in response to the Western counter-attack is truly radical for them in the sense that it is a total overturning of the economic and political choices of Western Liberal Democracy, and thus of many Russian choices post-1991. I don’t think Russia realizes how radical what they are proposing to do in response to sanctions really is, and how much it requires a complete rethink in political terms and interpretations of history – is Putin willing to embrace the USSR’s political and economic past?

What’s certain is that if Russia wants true sovereignty and independence as a response to the Western sanctions war – if they want to follow the Iranian road, as I first posited here, in an article which deserves way more attention, given that Russia now has 5

Yes, the EU isn’t sanctioning Russian fossil fuels, but France just announced they want no more Russian gas by 2027. The EU sanctions and what they portend are serious.

The Iranian road led to sovereignty – and maybe even an actually-signed JCPOA which would be more proof its correct choices – because Iran rests on totally different (i.e. revolutionary) economic power and political power structures than those of Western Liberal Democracy. Russia cannot defeat a sanctions campaign with Western Liberal Democratic structures – it’s a system geared to protect oligarchs, of course.

Does Russia have oligarchs? Of course, to Western Liberal Democrats west of Russia “oligarchs” only exist in Russia, never in the West – absurdly and falsely. Listening to Westerners, “oligarchs” must only be a region in Siberia, perhaps? But oligarchs are not going to help counter sanctions; they are not going to accept mass nationalisations; they are not going to accept price controls, profit limitations, central planning, etc. and etc. and etc.

If Russia continues to face off with the West a la Iran they can either have a revolution in thinking or they can fail. Western Liberal Democracy will not save them, as Russians were told in 1991.

Perhaps Putin is just bluffing about his totally anti-capitalist response to the Western sanction war? Or perhaps it’s truly a new world, with China-Russia-Iran leading the way?

But the fact that no one in the West can easily grasp Russia’s intellectual campaign for the war indicates a major problem. Russia needs to think and talk honestly about political terms, and I recommend starting with “denazification”. This will, I think, necessarily take them into bigger issues, such as how a “bring on your sanctions” stance necessarily reacquires very revolutionary (or perhaps return-to-revolutionary, for Russia) changes.

Should Russia fail to realise this, it may reveal that they are as intellectually stuck as the West: If the conflict in Ukraine is only about Russia-hating, then they have succumbed to the same identity politics worldview of the West – they have made “race” the end-all be-all of their political-economic discourse. It will be proof that they have ignored the class warfare lens, the imperialist lens and 1979’s “maybe we do need some spiritual morality in our socioeconomic policies?” lens. These are all lenses which came around between 1917-1991, which current Russian leadership has rather disavowed.

These are strong, serious ideas, but they are motivated by the catastrophic failure of the “denazification” idea outside of Russia, which seems like thus far the biggest failure in Russian planning for their military operation.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

Alt Left: This War Is Literally An Existential War for Russia

Jason: With people this nationalist, I’d advise the Russians to leave them alone. It’s not worth it. I mean, Ukraine is far too weak to do anything on Russian soil, not to mention Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

It seems like Russia is trying to reform Ukraine out of ultra-nationalism. It’s just not worth it.

They can’t leave them alone. The West has been using Ukraine as a stick to beat Russia over the head with. They have been arming them with the latest NATO weaponry and in a few years, they would have been near to par with the Russian Army. They were also being trained to NATO standards.

And they were totally integrated into the NATO command and control structure. So you see Ukraine was already a de facto member of NATO without being one. Also NATO built a number of bases for itself in Ukraine. They said they were Ukrainian bases, but NATO forces used them a lot. And Ukraine just said they were going to join NATO and get nuclear weapons. That was a last straw for Russia.

This really is an existential fight for Russia. It’s a fight for the very existence of Russia. As you can see, the West is trying to use this as a pretext for completely destroying the Russian economy so it is not competition anymore. Also they are trying to keep Russia out of Europe and prevent an alliance between Germany and Russia.

After they take out Russia, the next target is China. This really is a last ditch thrashing about wildly of a declining empire determined to retain its world hegemony at almost any cost. Instead of being on top of the world, we are actually very desperate. We are also determined to stop the integration of Russia and China with Russia’s Eurasian Union and China’s Belt and Road linking together. We have to stop both of those from coming together at all costs. And China’s Belt and Road simply must be destroyed.

Francis Miville: The Third World War Will Not Be Fought (a Stage Production)

I 10

First of all, such a false flag would be rapidly debunked, with many Asian media posing as impartial. Second, there would be a civil war in the US between Liberals and Trumpists in the US with foreign intervention on each side. Third, whenever Russia or China is in any real danger of receiving rockets, the Russians have already opted for a quite different strategy.

Russian nuclear charges have already been installed where they have to explode in very deep tunnels, mostly in the US coastal cities plus two or three placed so as to rend open super-volcanoes already due to erupt soon. Before dealing such a blow they would have kept the US army busy with repression in the course of the civil war.

There is no horror the American elites will recoil from, and judging by their behavior in Ukraine, they are perfectly capable to dress up fake Russian intervention troops to attack and destroy their own cities. But most probably America will commit suicide with drugs and lies, and China is watching over the process until there is no longer any authority. Then they and other allies can proceed to a boots on the ground invasion plus partition of such a degenerate people.

A big mistake commonly committed by Americans is comparing their decadence with that of Rome. Their idea is that for them having the privilege of four centuries more of decadence enjoying the growing suffering of the plebs still caught under their sway is inebriating. If a comparison is to be made with antiquity, America is Carthage, not Rome, by far more similitudes than you would have first thought of. Rome, while cruising along its decadent course like a carousing pontoon in a slow, tranquil river, left behind a worthwhile civilization nevertheless.

Carthage had nothing interesting to be salvaged except a few technical works about big domain agricultural technology, glass manufacturing, and boat-building. They didn’t leave one statue of worth bearing their signature, no building except purely utilitarian ones, though tons of mass-produced stirred glass figurines of no interest are regularly unearthed in the cities they built for their commercial empire.

Now Americans are at the point where they are about to abandon technology for more new-age magic except when dealing militarily with external foes or domestic terrorists, and where all believers in facts or experimental sciences will be denounced as carriers of negative vibrations.

The problem for them is that a few powers like China and Iran won’t follow them along that route, and won’t wait until their adversaries have turned their peoples into entities that no longer want to believe in facts but in myths and are as easily conquerable as India was when the East India company moved in.

Alt Left: For the Hundredth Time, There Was No Holodomor

Igor: A couple of ‘Nazis’ in a town here or there doesn’t justify a full scale invasion of the whole country.

All Ukrainians hate Russians though. And rightly so. Remember the ‘Holdymor’? Or all the other bulking tactics Russia did on them?

Russia are a plague to their neighbors, and Ukraine wants nothing to do with ten and that is their right.

Luckily, the Russian army are getting flogged at time of writing.

Russia is a plague to its neighbors? It has an excellent relationship with Armenia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan, Mongolia, China and especially Belarus, which is right next door. It’s true that nationalists in Ukraine and the Baltics hate Russia because the USSR thwarted their drive for independence. They also moved a lot of Russians into the Baltics, or perhaps the Russians moved themselves into the Baltics.

The Baltics and Ukrainians complain that Russia suppressed their national languages but I do not think that is true. They got to go to K-12 school all in their native language, there were newspapers, magazines, journals, TV and radio stations and literarure in their national languages. They even had universities where the language was that of the republic. And the USSR did set all of them free at the end. How many other nations would have set them free? None! You see any other countries setting their separatist regions free elsewhere in the world? Of course not.

The Germans came in and promised the Baltics, Belarus, and Ukraine independence from the USSR, so they were popular with  the nationalists in these places, all of whom still love Nazis to this day. In the Baltics and Ukraine, all of the statues to the nationalist heroes were of Nazi collaborators. All four countries have a serious Nazi problem.

I’m not sure why Poles hate Russia. Poland has always been a football in between Poland and Russia. She has felt bullied by those two countries. Poland attacked Russia in 1919 for no good reason. Poles are also angry about Communism because it never went over well there. I think the Poles are just too Catholic for Communism to work well.

Stalin himself said that trying to impose Communism on the Poles was like “trying to put a saddle on a horse.” The Russia-hatred in these places is due to nationalism and the drive for independence, which they saw as thwarted by the USSR. Finns hate Russia too. The USSR attacked Finland and annexed some of their land in the Winter War in 1940. I’m not sure why the USSR did that.

The Fake Holodomor That Never Happened

Holodomor was fake. It never even happened! There was a famine but there was no terror famine. 2-3 million people died in Ukraine but they were concentrated in Eastern Ukraine where they were Russian and loved Stalin. It was even worse in the Volga region where Stalin was very popular. In addition, 1 million people died in Siberia. People died in Moscow. And lots of people died in Kazakhstan. And plenty of people died in the parts of Poland next to Ukraine.

In order to believe the crazy Holodomor myth, you have to believe

  1. Stalin deliberately starved Ukraine because he hated Ukrainians. But why? Why did he hate Ukrainians?

And why did his terror famine focus on Eastern Ukraine where they supported him. If he only wanted to starve Ukrainians, why did he starve people in the Volga too where they supported him. Stalin also had a lot of support in Kazakhstan. Why did he starve people there” That was almost as bad as Ukraine. Did he hate them too? How come they get left out of this debate? Why did he starve 1 million people in Siberia? Did he hated Siberians? Why did he starve people in Moscow? Did he hate Moscovites?

Wow, it looks like Stalin hated everyone because he starved the whole damn country! Why did people starve in Poland? Were the Poles in bed with Stalin in a plot to starve Ukrainians? Then why did they starve themselves? Are they retards?

None of that makes sense!

Or…

2. Maybe the terror famine story of a bumper harvest crop that was confiscated by Stalin just to starve Ukrainians is fake?

Which is more likely, one or two?

The whole story of a bumper harvest confiscated by Stalin just to kill Ukrainians has now been proven wrong. 1932 was a famine harvest. It was only 5

There was also a long insurgency versus the kulaks which centered in Ukraine. 390,000 people died in the anti-kulak campaign, which was a very vicious war.

In early 1932, Ukrainian kulaks were raiding collective farms up to 20 times a day, murdering the men and raping and then murdering the women and then destroying the crops and killing the livestock. The Ukies were piling their crops in the fields to get rained on or setting them on fire!

The Ukie morons destroyed their own crops and then said, “Duh, whoa we have a famine, dudes! Maybe we shouldn’t have set our own crops on fire!”

The moron kulaks killed half the livestock in the USSR! “Duh, we killed all the farm animals. Now we don’t have any meat to eat!” Fields were plowed with horses back then, and they killed so many horses that this contributed to the famine harvest.

The famine occurred for a variety of reasons. In part it was stupidity on the part of the USSR. They shut down the old system before they were able to get the new one going very well, and this contributed to a bad crop. But most of it was natural. There was a wheat rust epidemic that swept through the entire region from Poland to Kazakhstan. True, Ukies suffered the worst losses, but that was where the epidemic was worst and the harvest collapsed the most.

Most people died of disease, not starvation. The USSR still had rudimentary sanitation at the time, and many people died of cholera. You can often survive this disease, but in their malnourished weakened condition, it proved fatal. A reporter drove through Ukraine during the famine but he saw little out of place. There were long but orderly lines outside some clinics. There were no dead people lying in the streets. All of the Holodomor photos you see of starved people lying in the streets were put out by Ukies. Those are photos from another famine that occurred during the Russian Civil War.

The next year though, 1933, was a bumper harvest so it was just one year. The USSR never had another famine. In the days of the Czar, famines used to sweep through feudal Ukraine on a regular basis. The USSR ended the regular tradition of frequent famines in Russia.

Alt Left: As a Rule, In Civil Wars, Nations Never Say They’re Own People Are Rebelling against Them

NATO and Ukraine have been lying and saying it’s been the Russian Army fighting in Donbass all these years. The Ukrainians are lying because they don’t want to admit their own people are fighting against them. The US and many other countries always do this in any civil war. The state never admits that it’s own people are rebelling against it.

It’s always just some outsiders who came in and stirred things up. The Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Thai, Filipino, Greek, Turkish, Salvadoran, Peruvian, Brazilian, Chilean, Argentine, Colombian, Nicaraguan, Guatemalan, Honduran, Venezuelan, and Dominican people were never revolting against their leaders. They were fat and happy.

It was all just evil Soviets going in there and starting revolutions. The locals weren’t revolting at all. In the Western Hemisphere, it was always Cubans who were doing the revolting. Later on it was Nicaraguans. And now in Colombia it’s Venezuelans attacking the state. In Asia it was all China and the USSR. The Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, and Lao people were happy as clams. They weren’t fighting. We were always just fighting Russians and Chinese over there.

Our enemies do this crap too. Syria says all the people fighting against it are foreign fighters. That’s not the case. There are quite a few foreigners over there, but 7

The Lebanese people are perfectly happy and they love Israel so much. There’s no such thing as Hezbollah. It’s all just Iranians. Same thing in Yemen. There are no Houthis waging a popular rebellion. It’s all nothing but Iranians. Iraqis love us so much that they ordered us out of the country. Of course we refused to leave and Trump threatened to have the president killed if he pushed the issue. Of course those Iraqis attacking our bases couldn’t possibly be Iraqis because Iraqis love us. It’s all just a bunch of Iranians. Same thing in Syria.

Syrians love the US. We’re over there stealing all their oil and a lot of their wheat and burning what wheat fields we don’t steal. We bomb their bakeries and water tanks. We bomb their factories so they can’t rebuild. We occupy their land against international law. Isn’t all that just wonderful? How could any Syrian be upset by that? They could not of course. So the people attacking our bases in Syria are all just a bunch of Iranians. Boy those Iranians sure get around, don’t they?

As you can see there is a human need for peoples and states to lie every time there’s a civil war and insist that their people are happy as kings. They couldn’t possibly be taking up arms against  the wonderful country! It’s always just a bunch of evil foreigners.

The Ukrainians are doing the same thing. They won’t admit that their own people in the Donbass have taken up arms against them. How could that be possible. Top Ukrainian figures have gone on the biggest Ukrainian TV stations and openly called for the extermination of 1.5 million Russians in the Donbass. How could people not love a group that wants to kill 1.5 million of your own people? They couldn’t! So it’s always just these evil Russian foreigners invading their land and killing Ukrainian soldiers.

India won’t admit that Kashmiris are miserable in India and want to go independent. They’re fat and happy. Turns out all the fighting is nothing but Pakistan trying to steal Indian land.

Repost: Alt Left: The Indian Personality: Superiority and Inferiority Complexes Intertwined

Another old post getting posted around the Net:

A fine new Indian Hindu commenter named Janardhan has appeared on our blog, and he repeats some of the same things that other insightful Hindus such as ILOR, Rahul, and Pranav have said. This shows us that not all Indian Hindus are bad people and that some of them are capable of looking inwards and trying to better their society. I consider both Rahul and Pranav at least to be strong Indian patriots who simply want the best for their country. As they see it, getting the best for India is going to require some massive changes, hence their critical patriotism.

Hindus have a strange mix of superiority and inferiority complexes. Deep down they massage their ego about how their civilization was ‘da greatest’ with a total ignorance about other civilizations and their achievements.

According to Hindus, Ancient India compared to the rest of the world is equivalent to comparing the city of Vienna during Mozart with highlanders in Papua New Guinea. As if Ancient India was like this huge Vienna while the rest of the world was primitive.

But during the last centuries they were first enslaved by Muslims from Central Asia/Persia (whom they consider savage bloodthirsty barbarians, ignoring the intellectual side of Islamic civilization, which itself was plagiarized to a good extent from Greek learning) and then by Europeans.

One difference was that in the case of Islamic invaders they could hide under the carpet the invaders’ intellectual side, and they are thus dehumanized as savage bloodthirsty monsters (this label is justified though, as the Islamic rulers were quite brutal). But when the Europeans, especially the British, came they could not ignore their obvious technological superiority with their steam engines and telegraphs.

Thus the conflicting superiority/inferiority complex feelings.

They were as per their myth Numero Uno Civilization in the world, but now they are nearly at the bottom. White people with their strange but seeming superior looks and behavior give us an inferiority complex.

Besides, even the Japanese/ Koreans are way ahead of us, and now the Chinese are racing ahead. Mainland Indians just cannot accept the rise of China:

“Those Chinkis like the Chinkis of Nepal and North Eastern Indians going ahead of us, not possible,” we say.

Thus the desire to prove ancient India being as technologically advanced as the modern world, since the modern technological world is 9

I think this is same with the Arabs with their Islam. Islam, the last word of God and having an Arab as its last and greatest prophet, has fallen behind the White nonbelievers. Oh, the horror.

Blacks? Well, most Indians consider Blacks as some savage monkey people anyway.

I would say we Indians are some of the most racist people in the world, but our racism is very subtle.

As someone who works in mental health, I would like to point out the obvious. A person with both a massive superiority and inferiority complex going at the same time is a common creature.

This is typical for Cluster B personality types: especially Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorders. But it associated more with narcissism than anything else. In fact, all proper analyses of narcissism begin with the supposition that what is going on in narcissism is often a huge inferiority complex which is apparently being compensated for by its opposite, a huge superiority complex.

My view is that the worse the narcissist’s inferiority complex, the greater their superiority complex must be to compensate for it. Whereas if one feels only a bit inferior, one has only to feel a bit superior to compensate, as all human beings are trying to equalize things and get at what I call the “zero state” of perfect equilibrium where everything is ok.

Many analyses of the Indian personality on this site have noted the profound narcissism apparent in most Indian Hindus. In many cases, this also looks like solipsism, but then narcissism and solipsism tend to go together anyway (Look at the Jews, the most solipsistic people on Earth).

Japanese Versus Chinese Influence in Southeast Asia

Polar Bear: I’ve always wondered why Japanese don’t have the stranglehold Chinese have in SEA?

Your answer, among other reasons,  may be found in your second sentence:

Polar Bear: They have the potential and did so in a fascist way during WWII.

There ya go. Furthermore, none of those countries have any Japanese blood. There is little to no Japanese blood in Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, the Philippines, Indonesia, or even Southern China for that matter. There is quite a bit of Chinese blood in all of those places, in particular in Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, and of course Taiwan. There is also a fair amount of Chinese blood in the Philippines and Indonesia. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma all have heavily Sinicized cultures, some dating back thousands of years in the case of Vietnam.

If we want to go even further back, all speakers of Austroasiatic languages came out of a homeland in Yunnan, China 5,000 years ago. This includes almost all Cambodians, Vietnamese, Laotians, Thais, and Burmese, and also includes Northeast Indians and some Indian aboriginals.

All speakers of Austronesian languages came out of Taiwan 4,000 years ago. Before they were in Taiwan, they were in the part of China across the strait. This includes all Filipinos and Malays, most Indonesians, the Papuans who live along the coast, and all residents of the Pacific Islands. Although it’s uncertain how much Chinese culture was retained after thousands of years, all of these people have an ultimate homeland in China. Really all of Asia came out of a Chinese homeland!

Even Japanese and Koreans came out of a Chinese homeland in the parts of China around the Bohai Sea and the Shandong Peninsula where they had their homelands 8,000 years ago.

The Vietnamese language itself is 7

Vietnam and Thailand were also largely settled by Chinese invaders, 2,300 years ago in the case of Vietnam and 900 years ago in the case of Vietnam. Both nations are about half Chinese genetically.

By contrast, Japan has been an inward hermit Kingdom forever. They didn’t even bother invading and conquering other lands. That’s how inward they were. They only opened up to most of the world in the 1870’s and even then most reluctantly. They think they are better than any other race of humans. Why conquer inferiors? Why even visit their lands, if only on vacation? Why trade with inferiors? What could you possibly learn from inferiors, other than how to be more stupid?

It’s an inward attitude similar to the one that the Ottoman Empire had towards Christian Europe for millenia. Visitors would come to the royal court and show the Emir the great inventions from Christian lands. He would look at them or hold them in his hands and study them and then give them back to the visitors and shrug his shoulders.

Anything invented by the infidels couldn’t possibly be any good and besides, why would we wish to learn anything from infidel inferiors anyway? Let the infidels make their fancy toys. These things are of no concern to us superior Muslims. It’s an unfortunate attitude that set the Muslim world back for many centuries and left them mired in backwardsness.

The only place on Earth with a good amount of Japanese blood is Hawaii. Some of the other islands in Polynesia or especially Micronesia may have some Japanese blood too. I am thinking of places like Guam and Saipan.

And, yes, when the Japanese finally decided to interact with the rest of Asia, they did so in a totally fascist manner, invading, conquering, and in many cases, mass murdering or even genociding the natives who they saw as utter inferiors. Most of the places that were conquered by these fascist Japanese militarists are not real happy about being treated like that, and the Chinese, Taiwanese, and Koreans are still pretty pissed off.

I’m not sure how the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Burmese, and Filipinos felt. I doubt if they were happy but they don’t seem to have made a big deal out of it. The Chinese are stark raving furious about it to this day, especially when they are made aware of atrocities like the Rape of Nanking. Further, the Japanese have not been real great about saying they were sorry.

Alt Left: Fascism, In Its Many and Varied Forms, Continues to Rampage Across the Planet

Rambo: Your friend there is wrong, Highbrow. Fascism is NOT dead. Just look around the world. Trying my best not to spout clichés, it’s very much alive and well. Maybe that’s what Highbrow has been trying to remind people of.

Yes, and fascism now is taking dramatically different forms than it has in the past. In general, fascism is political process set up by capitalists when they are facing a serious threat from the Left. Any rightwing authoritarian regime or dictatorship against the Left, especially a popular one, can only be seen as fascist.

Therefore, there were many fascist regimes in the world in the last 75 years. States in bold house current fascist regimes. States in normal print indicate past fascist regimes:

In Latin America in Guatemala until 1995, El Salvador until 1992, Honduras, Nicaragua until 1979, Haiti, Colombia, Brazil, Peru under Fujimori in the 1990’s, Ecuador, Bolivia under Hugo Banzer in the 1950’s and briefly last year, Argentina under Videla and Uruguay under the generals in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Paraguay, and Chile under Pinochet, but also in Spain under Franco until 1975, Portugal under Salazar until 1974, Croatia and Serbia after the Balkans War, Greece under the generals in the late 1960’s, Ukraine, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan under Zia in the 1980’s, India, Iran under the Shah until 1979, Liberia under Samuel Doe in the 1980’s, Zaire under Mobutu, South Africa under apartheid, Rhodesia under Ian Smith, Morocco under the king, Brunei under the Sultan, the Philippines, Vietnam under Thieu and Diem, Thailand Burma under the generals, Indonesia under Soekarno, South Korea under Singhman Rhee in the 1950’s until 1980, Taiwan in the 1950’s until 1980 and China in the late 1940’s under Chiang Kai Chek, and Fiji.

Incipient fascism is creeping in the US, the UK, Israel, Poland, and Hungary.

There is presently strong fascist opposition in Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Belarus, Lebanon, and Hong Kong.

Pro-fascist democracies exist in the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Georgia in particular and frankly, in the entire EU and NATO because the EU and NATO are supporting the fascist opposition in Latin America, the fascist government in Ukraine, and the fascist opposition in Belarus these days.

There are arguments that the Taliban is fascist, but I’m not buying it. I’m also not buying arguments about “Islamo-fascism.” Nor do I think China, North Korea, Belarus, or Russia are fascist.

Alt Left: Nothing Worse Than a Fed

Tamerlane: FBI is even worse when compared to the police.

They definitely have more psychopaths than sociopaths in their ranks, possibly due to being 1 SD more intelligent than cops in terms of IQ, on average.

They enjoy using the powers the state gives them in creating plots and targeting vulnerable members of society. Sometimes the sick fucks run COINTELPRO just for the fun of it.

They also seem to employ a different kind of psychopath, the more sneaky and cowardly variety.

I’m not ecstatic about cops in general. I guess I feel about them the way I do about Jews and Blacks. I don’t really like them as a group, but I like a lot of individuals from the group. I just don’t like the group as a whole, as a collective. But all of those groups have perfectly fine people in them. And my longest relationship of 5 1/2 years was with a Jewish woman. And she agreed with most everything I said about Jews too. There are cops and there are pigs. There are Blacks and there are niggers. There are Jews and there are kikes. Two different things.

I really hate feds. There are some who only go after serial killers and child killers and murderers in general and whatnot, and I’m just fine with those.

Not real keen on the rest of them.

Not only that, but the FBI works with the CIA on their shenanigans. The FBI framed Libya for the Lockerbie bombing. Libya absolutely did not do that Lockerbie bombing. That’s settled by now. But the FBI deliberately framed Libya because the FBI is like the CIA in that they are crooked spooks who work for US foreign policy.

In Brazil, the FBI assisted in the “lawfare” that took down Brazil’s Lula. They made up false charges about him out of whole cloth and put him in prison for made-up charges. The FBI worked directly with Brazil’s fascist government (fascists love fascists) to frame Lula.

The Feds and the FBI worked with the Venezuelan fascist opposition to cook up the fake drug trafficking charges against the Maduro administration in Venezuela.

They were the ones who arrested the Chinese head of Huawei, Ms. Meng, on completely fabricated charges that wouldn’t matter even if they were true because she’s accused of violating US sanctions against Iran whereby US law somehow extends all over the globe! The US is trying to extradite a top ranking member of the Maduro administration for violating US sanctions against Venezuela. Since when does US law extend to Venezuela? Or Iran? All of those “violating US sanctions charges against foreigners are insane and in my opinion against international law.

I believe that a lot of these Muslim “terror plots” were frame-ups where the federal informants cooked up plots in order to entrap people. I wonder how many of those plots were even real as in not cooked up the fed pig informant.

The FBI was deeply involved in the assassination of Martin Luther King. That’s just a fact. J. Edgar Hoover was a crook. If he wanted you dead, you were dead.

Federal laws are ridiculous and stupid, way worse even then chickenshit state laws. The sentencing guidelines are insane. The recommended terms are far in excess of anything sensible.

Besides, if those fed pigs want to get you, they will get you. You do not want to have the FBI or any fed pigs for that matter coming after you in life. Local cops are bad enough, but you can often live with them, or at least I can. They’re negotiable. You can’t negotiate with feds. If they want you gone, you’re gone. I’ve never had any dealings with the FBI or other fed pigs in my life and I never want to. The farther away you stay from those guys, the better. I hate federal prosecutors too. I can’t believe that chickenshit charges they cook up against people all the time. Ridiculous.

They will come into your home, turn it upside down, and then sift through your whole life going back forever. I figure most people are breaking some sort of chickenshit law most of the time. And if you do a data dump on a lot of people’s lives, you can probably cook up some chickenshit charge against them. And if it’s a federal crime, I guarantee that the sentence for that crime is absurdly excessive.

I really despise all feds (except the homicide detective feds discussed above). Those are the worst pigs of all by far. Can’t stand them!

More on Moral Differences Between Christianity and Judaism

*Except where otherwise noted, “the Jews” below means Israel or the Jews of Israel, not the Diaspora. Diaspora Jews will be referred to as such.

Mungamunga: I’ll point out the obvious: A look at European history reveals that Christians aren’t any more merciful than anyone else. Its main use in this context is to give Christians the assumed moral authority to be appalled at other people doing what they themselves have been doing for centuries. I’d point out examples like King Leopold of Belgium in historically recent times, but that would be piling on.

I will admit that the NT valorizes mercy, etc. for those who want to practice it, and the OT basically doesn’t. If anything, the fact that Christians had a founder and a text teaching mercy and yet still failed spectacularly to practice it makes them look worse if anything.

At least we are supposed to be merciful. Are the Jews? Look at how they act!

I’m thinking though that that’s why the West has been so appalled at the behavior of the Jews (Israel). The way the Jews act offends our sensibilities. Robert Fisk was reporting from there one time and he said it’s about a difference in values – the Jews value Old Testament values of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This is where I got the whole idea for this essay – from his article.

I’m having a hard time understanding why the West is so terrible and unmerciful these days.

The West is leading edge of all sorts of rights-based movements that could be argued are based on mercy. Do the Jews believe in equal rights? Hell no. Look at how they act.

The most humane prison conditions are found in the West. Do the Jews believe in humane prisons? Are you kidding?

There are countries in the West that literally have no homeless. Do the Jews believe in helping the homeless? Hell, no. One could argue that the Palestinians are the ultimate “homeless” people – the Gods of Homelessness as it were. Are the Jews building houses for these homeless folks? Hell, no. They are tearing them down and stealing everything of theirs that isn’t tied down.

Even the Jewish “Left” in Israel is shot through and through with OT values. Granted the Jews in the Diaspora act pretty good, but they are secularized and largely removed from the Jewish religion. Their behavior is based on Reform Judaism, a bake your own cake approach to Judaism where you pick and choose what you want to believe and and throw out in the Jewish religion.

“Reform Judaism: Leading the Way to a Better World”

This has resulted in a lot of Diaspora Jews pushing a Left idea that the Jews were chosen by God to lead Gentiles to a better world. I believe this is a bit insulting as it implies that we Christians can’t do it on own, but maybe that’s true and anyway I’m not one to quibble with the idea of leading the way to a better world. The basic concept is great. This is the Judaism of, say, Bernie Sanders. He’s been quoted many times to that effect. It is this impulse that has been behind most of the Jewish-led rights movements in the Diaspora for the last century.

It’s pretty obvious that the behavior of the Jews in Israel – “Jewy” Jews or Super Jews if you want to call them that because they are really Jewish – is not based on such an expansive “lead the Gentiles to a better world” way of thinking. However the Jewish Left in Israel is “progressive except for Palestine” – that is, they buy into the basic package of Reform Judaism of leading the way to a better world when it comes to everything else, but they are fascist monsters when it comes to their treatment of the Arabs. These Left Jews are already heading outside of standard Orthodox Judaism, which one can argue is the true or at least pure Jewish faith undiluted.

Marxism as an “Additive Factor” to the Rights and Mercy Based Approach to Christianity

Another huge justice-based approach has come from Marxism, which in a lot of ways has mirrored a Christian rights-based approach to mercy and fairness. No society ever treated national minorities as well as the USSR did and China does. Sure, Europe is doing this too, but this is also flowing out not just Christianity but the extent to which the Christian-based societies have had their Mercy quotient doubled by the addition of right-based Marxism to rights and Mercy-based Christianity. This is particularly powerful.

I think the Marxists were wrong to attack Christianity. It is the only religion that seems compatible with Marxism. The Jews? Forget it. They can’t do it. The Jewish Marxists in the West and the USSR all left the religion. Muslims? Muslims and Marxism don’t mix real well. It hasn’t worked out very well there, although those societies are based on “socialism for Muslims” as you point out. To that extent, the Jews also have done very well at pushing a “socialism for Jews only” in Israel.

To the Extent Christian Societies are Unmerciful, This Impulse Is Backed Up by Quoting the OT, not the NT

Our failures in the past are not particularly relevant, especially since most of that shitty behavior was backed up by quoting the Old Testament.

If you notice, all of the unmerciful stuff is being pushed by Republicans, who base it on – guess what? The Old Testament! When do you hear a Republican quoting the OT?

The Christian societies of Latin America have been deeply unmerciful, but the Left there has been based on an extreme rights and justice based approach. A lot of this is coming out of an extremely NT-based Catholic philosophy called Liberation Theology that prioritizes “the preferential option of the poor.” You see any of that in Israel? The darling of the Jewish “Left” in Israel now is fully behind Prime Minister Bennett, who openly brags about how many Arabs he has killed and says that the Palestinians will never be free. He’s as reactionary as Netanyahu.

Mungamunga: I would also note that to the extent that mercy, etc. was an ideal in Christian societies, it mainly was practiced among members of the in-group. Jews and Muslims do the same things for each other. That’s the nature of humans as a social species.

Nowadays the West is very merciful towards Muslims, Jews, etc. They have more rights in the West as minorities than they do anywhere else, where they are sometimes not treated real well. How about the Jews and the Muslims? How do they treat religious minorities? Not real well! The Christians are the only people who even try to treat religious minorities well.

A Strictly Theological Argument

In fact, I would argue that the OT isn’t even Christianity anymore. If you asked me, I would say the OT is simply Judaism. It’s not even our religion. And this is true in a theological sense.

I was mostly arguing in a theological sense and I’d prefer to keep it to that. By Christian doctrine, all of the Christians were originally Jews, bound by the Law. We also had Israel. Israel and the Law. The greatest Jew in history, Jesus Christ, came to us, possibly from the spiritual world above, to free us from the Law. In place of the Law, Jesus brought Mercy with a capital M.

The Jews, now Christians, were freed from the Law and ordered to live according to the new religion, the Religion of Mercy. At the same time as they lost the Law, they also lost Israel. So the Jews don’t get Israel anymore by Christian thinking. Instead of them getting, the “Church became the New Israel” in a theological sense. The promised land, the homeland, instead of Israel, became the Church itself. Instead of “next year in Jerusalem,” it became “next year in the Church.”

In addition, with the advent of Jesus and Mercy, the OT itself was “replaced” by the NT. That’s what Replacement Theology is all about. The OT isn’t even relevant to us Christians anymore, except perhaps as an historical document about our less than civilized roots. To me, Christianity is just the NT. We might as well throw out the OT. It’s just Judaism anyway.

Mungamunga: Its main use in this context is to give Christians the assumed moral authority to be appalled at other people doing what they themselves have been doing for centuries.

Sure, but we don’t do this anymore is the argument. And we don’t. Rest of the world following suit? Not so much. But where they are, many of them are aping the West, to their credit.

Mungamunga: I can’t really blame anyone for this, because the Christian ethic demands complete self-abnegation, or you’ve already failed. Turn the other cheek. If someone steals from you, give them more than they stole.

This part of Christianity does not fly. I’ll give you that all right. The problem with Christianity is that it requires you to be “too good.” Most of us are just not “good” enough to be these good Christians that we are supposed to be. We are too sinful in a Christian sense or one could argue survival-based instead of subjection and surrender based. For those who could not be good Christians, they had other options. Atheism, Judaism perhaps, Islam, or a warped OT version of Christianity that frankly doesn’t require you to be nearly as good or at least not so self-destructive and supplicant.

Alt Left: The Republican Right Resembles the Latin American Oligarchic Right More than Anything Else

From a discussion I am in on Academia: Instead, so much of what is found out there on the Internet is rhetoric, propaganda & misinformation. And, of course that has fed into the Trump cult and others who seem to have reverted to a kind of feral being that can no longer be reasoned with and/or who cannot engage in a civil conversation.
These people remind me of nothing so much as the Latin American Right, and in fact, the US Right is now very much like the oligarchic Right of Latin America. I can’t think of any other rightwing movements elsewhere in the world that resemble the US Right.
Of course, the Right in Canada, the UK, and Australia are similar but much less virulent.
There is no evidence of this sort of a Right anywhere on the Continent, nor in the former USSR, nor in the Middle East.  The ferocious unreasonableness of the US Right resembles the Lebanese Right and Gulf politics, but both are much more sectarian and even bigoted and racist.
It is absent in Central Asia except among Shahis and the Iranian opposition.
It also looks something like the armed Syrian Islamist opposition in terms of its wild irrationality and addiction to lying as a matter of course.
It is absent in South Asia.
It is not present in SE Asia. It is not present in the Philippines or Indonesia, nor does it exist in China, although the anti-Communist Chinese around the Epoch Times resemble the US Right a lot.
Really, the US Right is a fascism of the Latin American oligarchic authoritarian type. It’s all about the money, the loot, and class politics reign supreme.The extreme hatred of liberalism, the Left, social progress of any kind, and even democracy is also typical of the Latin American Right. I hate to use the f word but Trumpism is US fascism, period. Sinclair Lewis said when fascism came to America it would look exactly like this. That was 85 years ago.

Alt Left: Repost: Interview With a Bhutanese Maoist Leader

This is a repost from some time ago. The old posts are nor formatted properly, so they are very difficult to read. A lot of them are pretty cool for reposts though. This is an interview with a leader of the Bhutanese Maoists who are beginning an armed insurgency against the Bhutanese state.

A little background: Actually, in some ways, this is a racial conflict. About 100 years ago, many Nepalese moved into Southern Bhutan as immigrants. Apparently this immigration was completely legal, as in they were not illegal immigrants. The majority of the people in Bhutan were more Mongoloid Asian types, Buddhists who phenotypically resemble Tibetans and speak a Tibeto-Burman language. The Nepalese were Hindus speaking Nepali, an Indo-European language.

Phenotypically, Nepalese are very unusual. They are on the border between Caucasians and Asians. Some more resemble Caucasians and some more resemble Asians. Most of the ones who moved into Southern Bhutan were more Caucasian types. Anyway, at some point, they become 6

A few decades ago, for some unknown reason, the monarchy simply ethnically cleansed most of the Nepalese out of the country and so ended up with a more mono-ethnic and monocultural state. Furthermore, the Nepalese were forbidden from returning. They have been festering in refugee camps ever since, and have been growing more and more radical.

Soon a Maoist party was born and it developed a huge following in the camps. Very huge! In the past few years, they have began an armed struggle inside Bhutan, but there have only been a few incidents. Apparently they are laying the groundwork for people’s war, which they claim they have not yet began.

Sushil claims that the Bhutanese state is feudal or semi-feudal, and I think he is probably correct. The entire region remains feudal to semi-feudal – India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and even Afghanistan. The feudalism tends to cut across ethnic and religious boundaries and seems to be a regionalism. Recall that Tibetan was actually feudal until the Maoists took over in 1949 and overthrew the feudal monarchy.

In this region, the feudal monarchs usually use religion, as such folks always do and have always done, to enforce feudalism. The Hindu monarchs in Nepal claimed tied closely into their Hindu Gods. More or less the same with the Dalai Lamas in Tibet, similar to the divinely appointed religous-political monarchs that ruled in Europe for so long.

I figure if you throw a bunch of humans on an island, after a while, the strongest will kill and or subject the weaker ones. Some total prick will rise up, call himself ruler – king – whatever, somehow gather up 9

This group has connections to Maoists in Nepal who now form a huge portion of the government (4

An Interview with Comrade Sushil of the Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist-Leninist- Maoist), the party which is waging armed struggle against the Monarchy in Bhutan. Talks about tactics, strategy and aims of the party.

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Saturday, May 23, 2009

The following Interview was conducted at some point in the previous few weeks. It occurred somewhere in the area of the Indian-Bhutan border.

Lal Salam Blog: Thank you very much for meeting with me. So are you from Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Yes, from Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: From the Bhutanese refugee camps?

Comrade Sushil: Uhh, actually people think that all our party are from the refugees, but i am from Bhutan. I have spent allot of time in India, working, but then also in Bhutan and then in Nepal working for the party as well.

Lal Salam Blog: So you are a cadre of the Communist Party Bhutan (Marxist Leninist Maoists)?

Comrade Sushil: Yes i am a member of the Communist Party of Bhutan (Marxist Leninist Maoist). I have been a member since 2003 and i have worked actively as a whole timer since the same year. I joined the party from within Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: What is the history of the Party?

Comrade Sushil: The CPB (MLM) was established on the 7th of November 2001, and the announcement of the Party was on the 22nd of April 2003. From this time the party has been working with the exploited people in Bhutan. The people are all exploited by the regime, so our party has been working with all the people, mainly in rural areas, but in urban areas also. Mostly we work with the people in the villages.

Lal Salam Blog: So what are the problems in Bhutan? What sort of oppressions are forced on the people of Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: The biggest problem is the feudal monarchy. Because of this monarchy the problems are created. Peoples standard of living has been kept backwards because of the Monarchy. In a third world country like Bhutan, this is because of feudalism. This feudalism is the main problem of Bhutan. This is why the Communist Party, our glorious party, is working to overthrow the regime, and to overthrow feudalism.

Lal Salam Blog: So the goal of the Party for now is to throw out feudalism from Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Definitely. The main aim of our party is to overthrow feudalism and to establish the peoples rule in Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: So you would like to establish a People’s State in Bhutan? Is that what you would have replace the King?

Comrade Sushil: We should not understand like this. We should replace the king with a Proletarian Dictatorship. Our aim, our hope, no our dream is to establish a New Democratic Socialism. Only after that can we achieve our ultimate goal, which is to achieve communism. It is not only our goal to throw out the king and overthrow feudalism in Bhutan, but to establish a peaceful society that can achieve socialism and communism.

Lal Salam Blog: Last year your party started a Peoples War in Bhutan…

Comrade Sushil: No. We have not initiated a protracted peoples war in Bhutan. Since our parties establishment we have however had many rural peoples class struggles and these struggles have used different means. In different ways we have launched many struggles and programs, and we have the aim of reaching a level where we can launch a Protracted Peoples War.

Last year we did initiate some armed struggles, which is only a factor of the rural class struggle. Much of the media proclaimed this as the beginning of the Peoples War, but we are not at that phase. We are trying to reach the level of Peoples War, but we have not yet reached it, and are preparing for it. We do not know how long this will take, it will depend on many factors.

Lal Salam Blog: So there will be more attacks, more bombs and more armed actions in the future?

Comrade Sushil: Certainly. We are preparing for this. There will be more armed struggle. Without the armed struggle, we cannot change the situation in our country. We cannot change the state power. We will one day take the state power, but for now we are in preparation, making networks with the peasants and in the cities, training, preparing for the struggle.

Lal Salam Blog: Do you think Peoples War can be successful? Bhutan is already a very brutal state. As many as a sixth of the population lives in exile and the state has beaten, attacked, arrested and even raped and murdered those it perceives to be political activists?

Comrade Sushil: Our parties thought is that only by waging the armed struggle and the Peoples War can we win the liberation of our exploited people. I believe so. Thousands of people have been evicted from Bhutan, we are very aware of this. Why were they evicted? They were evicted after political activism and movements. They were evicted because the people in the southern belt had a high political consciousness. This is totally not a refugee problem, this is a political problem. It is a problem of a brutal monarchy and a restrictive feudal system. Without destroying these institutions we cannot solve these problems.

Our party is launching this armed struggle to liberate the exploited people and we know that one day we will be successful. This is a long term plan, it will take many preparations, and without this and without correct politics we cannot be successful. We have this ideology, the Marxist-Leninist- Maoist and this is a political weapon. With this weapon we believe that one day we will be successful.

Lal Salam Blog: So have you learnt much from the experiences of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and their experiences in Nepal? Are there close or special links between your parties?

Comrade Sushil: We do not have special or direct links with this party. But, and also like communists all around the world, in Peru, India or the Philippines we have ideological links. These places all have communist parties leading revolution through the armed struggle, and with all of them we have ideological links and an ideological relationship.

That means we support them ideologically and they support us ideologically. We have a relationship with the CP Nepal (Maoist) , but also with the CP India (Maoist) who are also waging an armed struggle. We don’t receive any physical support, or anything like that, but we should understand that we are all communists, and we are all internationalists, and we receive and give moral support.

Lal Salam Blog: What does your party think about Prachanda Path and the Nepali Maoists synthesis? It has been controversial to some international communists.

Comrade Sushil: About this Prachanda Path. It is something we should study. And also it is not only a thing to be studied, it has shown it has the ability to guide workers actions. I don’t want to comment more because the ideological things i have had not sufficiently studied, and till now our party has not discussed at length Prachanda Path.

Lal Salam Blog: The Maoists in Nepal have given up their Peoples War and taken a new tactic in pursuing the Constituent Assembly elections. Is this a correct tactic in your parties opinion?

Comrade Sushil: In regards to the UCPN (M) we do not think that they have given up their goals. We think they are pursuing another way, another tactic to establish a peoples state. We don’t think they have established the proletarian dictatorship. So we, our party, does not think that they have achieve state power. We too will go for a Constituent Assembly at first, and only after that can we step or jump or leap forward to a New Democratic revolution.

In the context of the Maoists we don’t think they have state power, and are still struggling for it. It is a fact that the future shows you which path you must take, you can only pick your path depending on the concrete situation you face. We will also move for a constituent assembly elections and a new state, but without establishing the proletarian people at the center of this new state then it cannot reach higher and improve the lives of the people. We think that the Maoists of Nepal face similar situations to us, and have similar actions, so we will continue to watch closely.

Lal Salam Blog: So a Constituent Assembly is a tactic that you are interested in for change in Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Actually it is the tactics and strategy of communist parties in the third world. Third world countries are semi-colonial and semi-feudal. So without a New Democratic Socialism stage we cannot reach socialism. So we are in this revolution, it is a peasant revolution we can say. So to reach our aims, to some extent we should aim for a Constituent Assembly, and this is our main slogan and the main aim of the present situation in our revolution.

That is not our only slogan, and out only goal, and it isn’t the only thing that we campaign around with the peasants and people of Bhutan. And we don’t want or aspire to another bourgeois constitution, but we need a constitution that is in favor of the oppressed and poor people of Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: Last year the government of Bhutan held elections, in a very restricted and controlled way, but the western media still presented this as a opening up and of “democracy”. If there was to be a more open electoral system, would the CPB (MLM) pursue peaceful politics through elections?

Comrade Sushil: WE think there is only one path to real democracy in Bhutan. We don’t believe in the current “democracy” this is well known. And we don’t think that this system can lead to real democracy. The international community has its formula and they see votes and call it democracy- but there is no such thing in Bhutan and it is not possible to impose a real democracy from the outside into Bhutan.

Any “democracy” that the regime brings into practice itself will be done in such a way so that real power continues to be restricted and kept in the hands of the old order, and not in the hands of the mass of exploited people, so that this “democracy” could not be used against the regime. Even if the regime cast out the king, it would not fundamentally change it. Our party will not make compromises with that order. We wont co-operate with their agenda, we have another agenda that is contradiction to theirs.

We are going to establish the rule of all the people while they just want to exploit them. There is this contradiction between the people and the regime. Our party struggles because of that. If they were to try and set up a “democracy” for then when we should not be a part of it. When i say this it does not mean that we are militarists. The people want peace, and don’t want to live in terror but this regime suppresses and exploits the people, they already live in terror. It is not a hobby to carry out armed struggle, it is our only option the liberation of our people.

Lal Salam Blog: Bhutan is such a tiny country, and it has very close relations, with India in particular. If you care to reach peoples war, do you think India would interfere to defend its interests?

Comrade Sushil: On this the whole party is very much conscious. But in the present situation India is not so dangerous to Bhutan. China is quite dangerous. 11,500 square kilometers of Bhutan’s lands have been occupied and taken by China. So we are surrounded by two very large and powerful countries, who are always looking to interfere into Bhutan. They have two ways of interfering. Political intervention and direct intervention. There are Indian Army camps established in Bhutan. There are several big barracks. We have known this but we don’t think they will intervene directly.

Maybe at some point in the future. There will be political intervention, and we can try to counter this with our allies by rousing grassroots support for our cause in India. We are already doing this. If they try to intervene militarily it will be a heavy cost for them, a bloody and long civil war. Also the regime and the fuedalists don’t want this. They want to defend their borders, protect his kingdom. We also want to establish the sovereignty of Bhutan, so we will always fight foreign influence, from India as well as China.

Lal Salam Blog: I understand that your party has allot of support amongst the refugees in Nepal.

Comrade Sushil: We are not just a party for the refugees. We have support where ever our people are.

Lal Salam Blog: So in India, Nepal and Bhutan?

Comrade Sushil: Yes.

Lal Salam Blog: And your party does work amongst all the communities of Bhutan and across the whole country, not just in the southern Belt that is largely Nepali speaking?

Comrade Sushil: The southern belt is not only Nepali speaking, but there are people from many communities there as well. Myself i haven’t been to the north as yet, our party does work there, but i have been working in the south and also in the east. In allot of people, and in the media there is allot of confusion. The CPB (MLM) is not just a party in the refugee camps, and not just Nepali speaking. We have cadres of many ethnic backgrounds, and our party works all over Bhutan.

Lal Salam Blog: For the refugees in Nepal is it true your party favors repatriation in Bhutan rather then resettlement in third countries?

Comrade Sushil: It is not that our party policy is just to return people to Bhutan. It is not a solution. Liberating the people of Bhutan is the only real and long term solution to this problem. We are not for resettlement, and we are not for repatriation in Bhutan without changing anything else. Moving people around like they are animals is not a solution. That is our position. There needs to be a political solution to this, and only then can the refugees get their rights.

Some people have said our party was created to agitate for the repatriation of refugees, this is not the case. Our party was established within Bhutan and amongst the people. We are in favour of all the oppressed people.Only understanding the problem of the refugees as a problem of the political structure of Bhutan that we can find a solution. Our party was not established for the refugees, but for all the Bhutanese.

Alt Left: Malcolm X on Gusanos (Worms) or Anti-Castro Cubans

Alt Left: Why We Fight (PFLP version)

Alt Left: Rural Land Reforms: An Overview

What’s odd is that imperialism went along with land reforms in a lot of other places such as Europe and the Middle East. All of the Middle East has done a land reform.

That was one thing the wave of Arab nationalist leaders who came to power in 1950-1970 did right away, including the Baath in Iraq and Syria, Yemen, Nasser in Egypt, the FLN in Algeria, Tunisia, and Qaddafi in Libya.

I believe there was some type of land reform done in Palestine too. If you read Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian Leftist, in the 1930’s, he talked about how terribly exploited the Arab fellahin or peasants were in Palestine.

If you went to Yemen in the 1960’s, there was a portrait of Nasser in every house.

I’m not sure if a land reform was ever done in Morocco. It’s been ruled by a fairly rightwing king for a long time.

A land reform was probably done in Lebanon, but I don’t have details. Likewise with Jordan.

Nothing grows in the Gulf anyway, so there’s no need for a reform.

I’m not sure about Sudan or Mauritania, but I doubt much grows in Mauritania except date palms.

In all of these places, land reform was a very easy sell for whatever reason, probably because neoliberal capitalism seems to be antithetical to Islam itself. The feudal lords of the former Ottoman Empire had tried to justify feudalism on the basis that in the Koran it says something like, “Some are rich and some are poor, and this is a natural thing” but that never went over too well.

The idea that in an Islamic country, the rich Muslims were viciously exploit the poor Muslims is nearly haram on its face. You just can’t do that. All Muslims are part of the ummah. All the Muslim men are your brothers and all the Muslim women are your sisters. Also individualism never made it to any part of the Muslim World other than the Hindu variety in Pakistan and Bangladesh, but that’s not really the same radical individualism that we have in the West. It’s just an ancient caste based system.

The first thing the Communists did in Eastern Europe was to do a land reform. You will never hear it here in the West, but until 1960, the Communist regimes in the East were very popular with industrial workers and also with the peasants.

In most of the world, peasants and rural dwellers are leftwingers. This is even the case in Western Europe in France.

The US is odd in that it’s farmers are so reactionary. That goes against the usual trend.

Yes, farmers are said to be conservatives, but that usually just means social conservatism. In most of the world, peasants are literally Alt Left: left on economics and right on social and cultural issues.

A land reform was definitely done in Iran.

Obviously one was done in the USSR, and the large landowners have not yet consolidated themselves in the former USSR, mostly because everybody hates them. Large landowners have taken over some of the state farms in Russia, but for whatever reason, they are not very productive. In fact, many of the state farms are still in existence. I am not sure what sort of arrangement they have now.

5

After World War 2, the US supported land reforms in some places as a way of heading off a Communist threat. This is one great thing about the Communists. So many great steps of social progress were only done out of fear or terror that if these were not done, the Communists would take over. Now that that threat is gone, one wonders what motivation the oligarchs have to give up anything.

In particular, land reforms were done in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. They went over very easily. And in fact, the subsequent economic growth occurred right on the back of these reforms. There is a good argument that you can never develop a proper economy without first doing a land reform.

First of all, you need to get rid of the problem of rural poverty.

Second of all, you need to feed your own people. Large landowners in these countries typically grow food for export or simply fallow the land and keep it as an income base or a source of wealth.

When crops are grown for export, there is a problem in that the nation does not grow enough food to feed its people. This is a problem in Cuba and Venezuela right now, and it should not be. These are very fertile countries and there is no need to import food, but they have gotten hooked on some sort of “crack” of importing their food for whatever reason, possibly because most of their farmland was being used to grow crops for export.

When a nation can feed itself, this means it can feed its urban workers. This is extremely important and it is part of the reason that Stalin went at such breakneck speed in his collectivization. He had to feed his urban workers so he could industrialize because even back then, he was looking into the future and seeing that he was going to have to fight Hitler.

I’m not quite sure why, but no country seems to be able to properly industrialize and develop as long as the problem of rural poverty exists.

And once you are feeding your own people, you have solved a lot of other problems. Money that would be wasted importing inferior food from the West, especially the US, can now be spent on actual development of a national economy. The elimination of rural poverty gets rid of a constant revolutionary bur in the side of the state.

The US has always opposed land reform in Latin America because large US corporations are usually involved in growing foods for export down there. See Dole Pineapple in Guatemala. We want all of their agricultural land to go for export crops so US corporations can grow those crops or make money importing them. And we do not want them to grow their own food. That way there won’t be so much land for export crops which we need to make money off of.

Also, we want them to spend all of their food money importing lousy processed food from the US. So we make money on food both ways – importing food from crops grown for export to the US and in exporting processed food to the Latin America. This processed food is not very good for you and it is implicated in a lot of health problems in these places.

This is why the US opposes most efforts at land reform in the Americas.

An exception was made in El Salvador. After 200,000 people died, the US and the Salvadoran oligarchs were forced to the negotiating table and a land reform was one of the first things they pushed. I recall a piece written soon afterwards where the reporter went out to the rural areas and interviewed recipients of the land reform. They basically said, “Well, at least we can eat now. It wasn’t like that before.”

In semi-feudal countries, there is debt bondage whereby large landowners rent out their land to sharecroppers or peasants who never seem to get out of debt. This is a very primitive form of development.

The Philippines is notable that there has never been a land reform. And of course they have a vicious Communist insurgency.

Nor has there been one in Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Paraguay, Honduras, or Argentina. The first five countries are horribly screwed up. Colombia and Paraguay have active armed leftwing guerrillas, and Guatemala did for many years. Haiti is a disaster. Honduras has a vicious rightwing dictatorship that has murdered over 1,000 people.

Argentina is mostly urbanized, but the landed rural elite still runs the country. Any talk at all of land reform or even taxation of large estates as was done recently under Christine Fernandez, and the ruling class starts making ominous threats of a coup. I assume something similar is going on in Uruguay. Those countries are urbanized though, so large landownership is not such a problem.

I’m not sure if there has ever been a land reform in Brazil, but there is no dearth of large landowners.

The fact that Colombia, Guatemala, and Haiti are so backwards is largely because there has never been a land reform.

The land reform was incomplete in Venezuela.

It is interesting that every country that fails to do a land reform seems to end up with a Communist or Leftist insurgency at some point or another. It’s almost without fail. This goes to show you that most Communist insurgencies in the Third World are over the most basic things dating all the way back to French Revolution: land and bread (food).

As far as land reforms go, they were done in Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Peru.

I’m not sure about Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, Jamaica, Belize, the Guyanas, Chile, and most of the Caribbean.

And I’m not sure if one ever got done in the Dominican Republic after Bosch.

In El Salvador, 200,000 had to die in order for a land reform to take place. Roberto D’Aubission, the godfather of the Salvadoran death squads and the most favored visitor at the US Embassy, once said that “We will have to kill 200,000 people in order to prevent socialism in El Salvador.” What he meant by socialism was land reform.

It is notable that no land reform was ever done in India, nor in Pakistan or even Bangladesh. I had a friend whose parents were large feudal landowners in Pakistan who rented out land to farmers who ended up in debt peonage. In 1986, 14 million people a year were dying of starvation related diseases in the capitalist world. Most of that was in South Asia in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. Most of these deaths were attributed to the problem of the private ownership of land.

There is a problem with the private ownership of land. In the US, we think this is sacrosanct, but on a worldwide basis, it doesn’t work very well. What do you need all that land for? What do you need more than, say, an acre and a house? Nothing, unless you are a farmer.

In China, all land is owned by the state. All homeowners lease the land, often on 100 year leases. I’m not sure how it works in the countryside.

In Mexico, much of the land is owned by the state also, a product of the land reform that occurred after the Revolution. One of the major demands of the Revolution was land reform. Pre-revolution, most peasants usually lived like serfs. The state land in Mexico is called ejidos.

If you ever can’t make it in the city, if you become unemployed or homeless, you can always go out to the countryside and take up residence in an ejido, which are something like communal lands that are formed by the group that makes up the ejido. You join this group, work the land, and get a share of the crop. At least you have enough food to eat. So in Mexico the ejidos are a stopgap measure.

In China too, if you can’t make it in the city, you can always go back to the rural areas, take up residence, and work the land. At least you will have enough to food to eat. It is illegal to be homeless in China. If you are homeless, the police pick you up and put you in shelters, which are something like college dorms. They also encourage you to go back to the countryside if you have relatives back there. In recent years, many people have moved from the countryside to the cities to make more money. Those that don’t make it can always move back to the farm.

There was debate a while back about privatizing state land, but it ran aground on the idea that the state ownership of land was necessary as a stopgap measure in the event of urban poverty. In addition, state ownership of land has prevented the development of a national oligarchy or plutocracy.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been adamant that the  development of a national oligarchy or plutocracy must be prevented at all costs. Once they develop, they are sort of like an infection in that they soon spread and take over society. The CCP has billionaire party members who are members of the People’s Assembly.

Guess what these “Communists” are advocating for? Reduction or elimination of taxes on the rich, massive reductions in social spending, state repression of labor, and the privatization of land along with most of the rest of the economy. I think this goes to show you that billionaires are the same everywhere. Whether in a Communist or capitalist country, a rightwing or leftwing country, billionaires always have precisely the same class interests that barely vary at all. It’s usually something like this:

Reduction or elimination of taxes on the rich, massive reductions in social spending, state repression of labor, and the privatization of land along with most of the rest of the economy.

This goes to show that class interests of various classes are nearly a  law in a mathematical sense and not even a theory of social science. This was what Marx was getting at when he spoke of the laws of economics. They are so predictable that we can almost class them with the laws, theorems, and corollaries of mathematics instead of the typical “true for now” theories of most of the sciences.

I have a feeling that a Hell of a lot more things are laws, too, especially in terms of basic human behavior. So many of these things seem almost unchangeable. Of course they would never apply to everyone, but it’s pretty obvious that they are general tendencies.

Alt Left: Right and Left in Islamic and Catholic Societies

If you’re not careful, the media will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and cheering the people doing the oppressing.

Malcolm X

This is precisely the function of the media in a capitalist society. The Chinese media is not like this because, duh, China is not a capitalist country! Nor is the Iranian media because Iran is not a capitalist country. In fact, Iran is almost something like “Islamic Communism.” I’m not wild about Ayatollah Khomeini, but he did have a strong social justice streak.

The Revolution was populist, pro-independence, and anti-imperialist. Iran is almost based on a Muslim version of Liberation Theology or “the preferential option of the poor.” The social safety net is huge in Iran. Also, much of the economy is run by the state. It’s actually run by religious charities, often with ties to the military and the IRGC. I believe these religious charities do not operate at a profit. Small businesses are not bothered at all, as in all Muslim countries. I was reading Ayatollah Khameini’s tweets for a while on Twitter, and I could have been reading Che Guevara. Basically the same message.

Islam is just not friendly to neoliberal economics or radical individualism. It is a very collectivist religion in a very collectivist society.

Neoliberalism hasn’t caught on much of anywhere in the Muslim world other than Indonesia and the Southern Philippines, and they had to murder 1 million Communists in cold blood to get there in Indonesia and the Moros have always rejected Catholic rule in both a political and economic sense. it is notable that the Maoist NPA are also huge in Mindanao, home of the Moros.

Pakistan, too, has inherited the selfish economics and even feudalism in land tenure straight from Indian Hinduism. They even have caste, which would be considered an aberration in any decent Muslim society.

All of the Arab countries are basically socialist at least in name, and that was never a hard sell there. It’s true that 100 years ago, the Arab lands were mostly feudal in nature, with big landowners and peasants in debt bondage. They rich had co-opted the religious authorities like they always do, and the mullahs preached that Islamic feudalism was right and proper because the Prophet had said, “It is normal that some are rich and some are poor.” But it was always a hard sell, and it had a very weak foundation.

After independence, socialism was instituted in most if not all Arab countries at least in name. In particular, huge land reforms were done in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Palestine. I assume something like that was done in Algeria too. It was a very easy sell, and everyone went along with it without a hitch. The mullahs quickly changed from support for feudalism to support for socialism.

Hamas rules Gaza and I was shocked at how huge the social safety net is. The many religious charities run the safety net, which is distributed under the rubric of Islam. This is done instead of the state doling it out.

Mohammad himself didn’t have much to say about economics, but he wasn’t a neoliberal capitalist or a feudalist.

In Christian societies, the rich have utter contempt and hatred for the poor, who they regard as little more than human garbage. If you want to see this philosophy in action, look at the classism in Latin America. As all Muslims are part of the umma, and hence, as all are brothers and sisters, it is simply unconscionable that wealthy Muslims would be able to openly hate poor Muslims. You simply cannot treat your fellow Muslims like that. It’s not officially haram but it might as well be.

European Style Fascism in the Middle East

It is instructive that the only place in the Arab world where neoliberal economics and in particular Libertarianism took hold was in Lebanon, and even there, it was only among Catholic Maronites. Most Arab Christians look east to Antioch (and before that, Constantinople) to the Eastern Orthodox church, which is really just the eastern wing of Catholicism.

The Maronites, though, deride Antioch and instead look to Rome. They see themselves as European people instead of Arabs. Many deny that they are Arabs and instead refer to themselves as “Phoenicians.” It is interesting that the only real classical fascism in the Arab World  took hold in the Lebanese Maronites, where the Gameyels imported it from Europe in the 1930’s.

The Jews of Israel also developed a very European form of fascism starting with Jabotinsky and his book The Iron Wall in 1921. This man was an open fascist. He is considered to be the spiritual father of the Likud Party. During the 1940’s, the armed Jewish rebels split into leftwingers who were almost Communists and rightwingers who were more or less fascists.

The Kahanists today look a lot like a European fascist party. And in fact, the entire Israeli rightwing around Likud, etc. looks pretty fascist in a European sense. So Israeli Jews are really Jewish fascists or fascist Jews. It has never been an easy ride for liberal and secular US Jews to support the Orthodox religious fanatics and rightwingers if not out and out fascists in the Likud, etc. in Israel. This was always completely unstable, and after that latest war, it’s finally starting to fall apart. But the seeds of destruction were already there.

But note that the Jews of Israel very much look to the West and see themselves as Europeans (which many are for all intents and purposes). They align themselves with the Judeo-Christian European society that many of them came from.

Half of Israeli Jews are Mizrachi Jews from the Arab World, and they have always had a Judeo-Islamic culture. However, when they moved to Israel, this was dismantled by perhaps not entirely. They rejected it due to the association of Arabs and Islam with the enemy, which is correct.

Economics and Catholicism

This radical classism and near-feudalism in Latin America was supported by the Catholic Church, which was always a very rightwing institution because they were always in bed with the rich. There were always Left splits in Catholicism like Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker. The Catholic clergy in the US has tended to be quite leftwing.

There is a long history of “Catholic Communism” in the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, the Basque Country, France, Italy, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Cuba, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay. The IRA was a leftwing Catholic armed group. A lot of priests were caught hiding IRA cadre. So was the ETA in the Basque Country of Spain.

Catholic Leftism never caught on in Poland and Lithuania due to hatred of Russia and the USSR. Nevertheless, both are more or less socialist countries.

Even today there is an active “Catholic Communist” movement in Cuba that is very lively. In Honduras and Colombia, Catholic priests actually led guerrilla bands. Liberation Theoloy is something like “Jesus Christ with an AK-47.” The Leftist who recently took power in Paraguay was a former Catholic priest.

The ELN was founded by a priest, Camilo Torres, and many Catholic clergy even supported the Shining Path! Edith Lagos, a 20 year old woman, was the leader of a very early Shining Path column in Peru. She was killed in 1980 and the entire town of Ayacucho, 30,0000 people, came out for her funeral which was held at midnight. The lines of mourners stretched through the whole city. All of the priests in town blessed her body, and she was given a proper Catholic funeral.

I believe that the PT or Workers Party of Brazil has a large Liberation Theology component. The Catholic clergy had an excellent relationship with the FARC in Colombia. Of course, the Catholic clergy played a big role in Venezeula, and Hugo Chavez himself was a practicing Catholic. The FMLN Salvadoran rebels were explicitly Catholic, as were the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. One of the Sandinists’ top leaders, Tomas Borge, was a Catholic priest. Jean-Paul Aristide in Haiti was a Catholic priest. Catholic believers are now allowed to join the Communist Party in Cuba, and near the end of his life, Fidel Castro said he was a “cultural Catholic.”

After Vatican 2 and Liberation Theology began to spread out via the seminal documents written by Gustavo Gutierrez in Brazil, “A Theology of Liberation,” otherwise known as “exercising the preferential option for the poor,” it began to spread in Latin America. It started with local priests and especially Catholic lay workers in impoverished areas and then slowly spread. Even today, Catholic layworkers and especially seminaries are very leftwing, while the Vatican itself is not. A lot of seminaries are hotbeds of homosexuality, and the gay priests and lay workers are quite open about it. It is estimated that 1

“Oranges and Lemons,” by Alpha Unit

Humans are among the few mammal species unable to synthesize Vitamin C from glucose. All of our Vitamin C has to come from our diets. If you were somehow to end up with no Vitamin C in your diet whatsoever for a prolonged time – say, three or four months and counting, indefinitely – it is no exaggeration to say that the repercussions could be dire.

Without Vitamin C we can’t make collagen, and without collagen your body can’t repair your skin, bone, cartilage, ligaments and tendons, blood vessel walls, and teeth. You need fresh food in your diet, either from plant or animal sources, to get this done.

Wherever you find people going without fresh food for long periods, you’ll find Vitamin C deficiency, or scurvy.

Scurvy has been prevalent throughout much of human history. It likely began to occur in humans during the development of agriculture. According to biologist Thomas Jukes, once people in temperate zones adopted an agrarian lifestyle they were able to store grains for use during winter. They were also able to spread into other temperate regions previously uninhabitable due to the lack of food supply during winters.

But because stored grains are extremely low in Vitamin C, it is likely that these ancient peoples developed scurvy during the long winter months because grain dominated their diets.

During long journeys or overland campaigns, such as the Crusades, scurvy inevitably appeared.

The first written account of a disease likely to be scurvy comes from the Eber Papyrus of ancient Egypt, dated to 1550 BC. The Papyrus not only diagnosed scurvy but prescribed that its victims be given onions, which contain Vitamin C.

Throughout maritime history, people had to figure out not only how to transport themselves across seas and oceans but how to stay healthy along the way. They were clearly relatively successful at both. Millennia ago, Austronesians were the first humans to invent oceangoing vessels; they colonized a large part of the Indo-Pacific region. Early Polynesians were superb seafarers and traveled thousands of miles exploring and settling the region we know as the Polynesian Triangle (drawn by connecting the points of Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island).

Somali seafarers developed extensive trade networks, and Somali merchants at one time led commerce between Asia and Africa. Chinese merchants sailed the Indian Ocean and traded throughout Southeast Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and East Africa.

How did ancient seafaring peoples deal with scurvy?

Stefan Slater writes that Polynesian seafarers relied on freshly caught fish, crustaceans, and octopi, and would sometimes slaughter some of the animals they were transporting for breeding stock. Jin Ding, Chaojan Shi, and Adam Weintrit report that the diet on Chinese sailing ships included green tea, which contains more Vitamin C than black tea. They also say that Chinese ships began to carry gardens with them, growing soybean sprouts, which are high in Vitamin C.

So there is some evidence that ancient seafarers knew the importance of keeping fresh vegetables and meat in their diets on long voyages.

For Europeans, it wasn’t until the Age of Sail that the problem of scurvy truly came into focus. Wealth and national interest were at stake in ways they hadn’t been before.

Advances in naval technology and a rush for exploration and conquest brought Europeans the “plague of the sea.” Scurvy was the main occupational disease of what historians call the European Age of Exploration. More sailors died of scurvy than all other causes combined, including battles, storms, and other diseases.

Jason A. Mayberry makes the case that a unique confluence of conditions made scurvy and seafaring a deadly combination for Europeans. In his essay “Scurvy and Vitamin C,” he draws upon the work of Stephen Bown, author of Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail.

First, countries had difficulty maintaining sufficient crews for their naval vessels, so they relied on impressment: the taking of men into the military by compulsion, with or without notice. It had been legally sanctioned in Britain since the time of Edward I.

It was basically kidnapping. Gangs of men would go into port towns looking for “recruits.” They would club a man and drag him back to the ship. The man’s family might have no idea what happened to him, and many of the men never made it back home.

Some had experience at sea, some didn’t. Some were in poor health to begin with, being homeless, convicts, or elderly. On average a third of a ship’s crew was made up of impressed men.

Even the men who volunteered for naval service were often in poor health. Many would volunteer in order to secure a place to sleep and get regular meals. Sometimes boys who were orphans or runaways would join.

A second reason that Vitamin C deficiency was hastened during this period were the working conditions on ships. Discipline was harsh and included flogging, keelhauling, and starvation. The body needs more Vitamin C when it is under stress, and sailors had heightened stress in the form of physical exertion, exposure to the elements, fear of battle, and sleep deprivation.

The third and main factor in the development of scurvy was clearly the diet onboard ships. What mattered most for food supplies was that the food be storable for long periods without spoiling. The nutritional content of the food was of little concern for those in charge. What was most important to them was to maintain a suitable labor force at the least possible cost.

A typical weekly ration for a sailor, according to Bown:

  • 1 lb. hardtack (biscuit) daily
  • 2 lbs. salted beef twice weekly
  • 1 lb. salted pork twice weekly
  • 2 oz. salted fish 3 times weekly
  • 2 oz. butter 3 times weekly
  • 4 oz. cheese 3 times weekly
  • 8 oz. dried peas 4 times weekly
  • 1 gal. beer daily

Sometimes the rations included dried fruit or barley meal. But the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables left the diet almost completely devoid of Vitamin C.

Compounding this problem was that even the food sailors had access to wasn’t always fit to eat. Spoilage was a huge problem on ships. Ships were a dark, damp, and sometimes waterlogged environment for sailors and their food, and this led to moldy, worm-eaten bread, or other dried foods. Meat would begin spoiling almost as soon as it left port, no matter how salt-laden it was.

European navies did provide surgeons and surgeon’s mates on ships, but most of a surgeon’s time was spent caring for battle wounds instead of focusing on the treatment and prevention of disease.

All of these factors made scurvy the leading cause of death during the Age of Sail.

The onset of scurvy is a slow progression, Bown and others inform us, usually appearing after 60 to 90 days of a Vitamin C-deficient diet. This is when the body’s lingering stores of Vitamin C are depleted. The initial symptoms are fatigue and muscle aches. Upon waking, a scurvy victim’s joints will ache.

During the second stage, his gums begin to swell and will bleed with slight pressure. The teeth become loose at the roots. He also feels pain throughout his joints and muscles.

During the third stage, the gums begin to rot. They also bleed profusely. The victim’s flesh becomes gangrenous and will spontaneously hemorrhage. His skin, especially on the legs and feet, develop ulcers that turn gangrenous. As connective tissue fails, long-healed broken bones begin to refracture, and long-healed wounds begin to reopen. The legs cramp so severely that the person cannot walk.

At this point the person is in excruciating pain.

In the final stage of scurvy, the person gets a high fever. His skin develops black spots and he begins having tremors. He will drift in and out of consciousness for a while, and then he dies.

An estimated two million sailors died of scurvy between the 15th and 18th centuries. The science at the time was of very little use in treating them – even though various people throughout European history had made the connection between citrus fruits and the prevention of scurvy.

On July 8, 1497, Vasco da Gama set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, in search of a passage to India. On January 11, 1498, the fleet anchored off Mozambique. After five weeks at sea, the crew began showing the symptoms of scurvy.

Fortunately, some weeks later, they arrived at Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya, where they met local traders who traded them oranges. Within six days of eating them, the crew recovered. Da Gama left Africa and began his voyage across the Indian Ocean to Kozhikode (or Calicut to Westerners).

After staying in India for four months, da Gama left for a three-month journey at sea in which scurvy killed many of his sailors. On January 7, 1499, the ships anchored at Malindi, Kenya, where the sailors, remembering their previous cure in Mombasa, asked for oranges. Still, more sailors died of the disease “which started in the mouth.” Six months later the survivors made it back to Lisbon.

Did Vasco da Gama alert any ship owners or controlling authorities of what he had discovered about treating scurvy? No one knows.

Sir Richard Hawkins had discovered a cure for scurvy in 1593 when it appeared in his crew in southern Brazil. He reported that oranges and lemons had been a remedy for his men. To whom did he report this? What did they do with the information?

The Dutch had known about the value of citrus fruits since at least the late 16th century. According to J. Burnby and A. Bierman, who wrote “The Incidence of Scurvy at Sea and Its Treatment,” the Dutch East India Company bartered for lemons in Africa and also established vegetable gardens and orchards in their colonies to provide fresh citrus to their ships. How did the Dutch manage to keep this knowledge to themselves? Was that their intention?

Burnby and Bierman also write about an Elizabethan merchant, Sir Hugh Plat, who had an interest in botany and gave bottled lemon juice to the commander of the first fleet of the English East India Company. It was only the crew of the flagship, Red Dragon, which received a daily allowance of lemon juice. It was also the only crew that remained relatively free of scurvy. What did the English East India Company do with this information?

In the early 1600s John Woodall, a surgeon for the same East India Company, described the symptoms of scurvy and recommended that ships’ surgeons inform Governors of “all places they touch in the Indies” that the juices of oranges, lemons, limes, and tamarinds be used as medicine for scurvy.

The East India Company actually supplied “lemon water,” as it was called, for its ships until 1625, when the Company chose not to provide it because “the woman supplying it wanted 12d. a gallon above the usual price.” The return voyage of 1626 was badly afflicted with scurvy because they had bought tamarinds in the East Indies which they presumed to be as effective as lemons. All sour fruits and even acids such as vinegar were erroneously thought to be cures for scurvy.

J. F. Bachstrom, a Lutheran theologian and physician, wrote in 1734 that there was only one cause of scurvy – the absence of fresh fruits and vegetables for a long period. No drugs would help, nor would mineral acids. Were any companies or government entities aware of his findings? If so, did they take them seriously?

Europe was slowly making headway against this problem nevertheless. In 1739 James Lind, a former physician’s apprentice, volunteered for the Royal Navy and was designated a surgeon’s mate. After seven years in that position, he was promoted to surgeon on HMS Salisbury. It was on this ship that he performed his famous scurvy experiment.

Lind showed an insight ahead of his time by understanding that, to develop a cure, treatments must be compared simultaneously in similar patients. He had envisioned the concept of clinical trials, as rudimentary as his idea might have been.

After eight weeks at sea, and when scurvy was beginning to take its toll on the crew, Lind decided to test his idea that the putrefaction of the body caused by the disease could be prevented with acids. He divided 12 sick patients into six pairs, and provided each pair with a different supplement to their diet: cider, vitriolic acid (diluted sulfuric acid), vinegar, sea water, two oranges and one lemon, or a purgative mixture.

Only the pair who took the oranges and lemons improved.

You would think that Lind had established a clear connection between citrus and scurvy and that the Navy would have taken immediate action. But neither happened.

Lind continued to believe that there were multiple causes of scurvy. He also advocated a method of preserving the virtues of oranges and lemons that involved boiling the juices. Unbeknownst to Lind, boiling destroyed the active ingredient in citrus juices – Vitamin C. When the boiled juice was tried on ships as a preventative measure and found lacking, people began to dismiss the whole idea that citrus fruits were effective against scurvy!

In 1753 Lind published his Treatise on the Scurvy, considered a classic of medical science. But it took the Royal Navy over 40 years to adopt Lind’s recommendations. This happened under the direction of Sir Gilbert Blane, who had been appointed Physician to the Fleet.

Blane was familiar with Lind’s work and had the power and initiative to bring about change, Mayberry states. He organized an experiment on HMS Suffolk on a 23-week trip to India. The sailors were given a mixture of rum, water, sugar, and lemon juice. A few sailors developed a slight case of scurvy. They were given additional rations of lemon juice and the scurvy was quickly cured.

With the results from the HMS Suffolk and the power of his position, Blane was able to ensure that fresh citrus juice became a staple in the British Navy. For the British, scurvy had finally been conquered.

The question remains: why did it take so long, when so many had found the cure time and time again?

Burnby and Bierman note that there was the view among ship owners and government authorities that seamen were expendable. They also suggest that seamen themselves might have been reluctant to take part in experiments that might have settled the issue. But they mention other considerations, mainly the problem of “sheer impracticability.”

How does one store many thousands of oranges and lemons on an overcrowded man-of-war laden with guns, gunpowder, and shot? Using the juice of citrus fruits was certainly a space saver but it readily became moldy, especially under poor storage conditions, which were usually the case.

Speaking of practical considerations, how long can it be practical to treat your work force as if they are expendable? There were no sailors’ advocates at the time to make it impractical for businessmen and governments to do so. Nothing stopped or even slowed Europe’s exploration and colonization, so losing sailors to scurvy was just one of the costs of doing business.

Alt Left: Fascism and National Socialism: An Attempt at Some Definitions

Fascism:  An Attempt at a Definition

You can define a fascist country as an ultranationalist ethnic nationalist nation founded on a blood and soil mindset with an ideology based on Lazarus, the bird that rises from the flames. In fascism, there is a nationbuilding effort whereby the nation is seen to have fallen apart, typically by too much liberalism, pacifism, degeneracy, chaos, or economic problems.

The fascist comes in saying that they are going to bring back the glorious days of the founders of the land. So from the ruins of the present, the past will be mined to create a national myth and this mythos will be used to rise the country up from the ashes of ruin to the greatness it deserves.

Typically the unfortunate present moment is blamed on others, minorities or other countries that are singled out for hostility and blame.

Military missions of conquest are not unusual as the nationalist myth often if not always says that the borders of the land used to extend further than they do. Hence the project is Greater Ruritanian and reuniting all of the former Ruritanian lands which were stolen by the Other, the non-Ruritanians. In addition, if there are any Ruritanians residing in nearby lands, the project will be to reunite those areas with the homeland.

Fascism is typically conservative as the present moment is seen as tainted with modernism and democracy, both of which are associated with cultural degeneracy. Traditional sex roles are reinstated and the woman’s role is resigned to the kitchen, church, and home.

There is an exaltation of heroism, aggression, raw power, and even brutality, often in defense of the homeland. There is a self-sacrificing tendency where to die for one’s land is the greatest honor. And there is an exaltation of violence, usually for repression or invasions but sometimes in a Sorelian sense, violence simply for the sake of violence because violence is seen to have a mythic cleansing power especially over the permissive, excessively free, and degenerate present.

The military is exalted, battles of the past are discussed and exalted,  and often defeats are spun as victories as in the Battle of Kosovo with the Serbs in 1389. Men are exalted to be masculine, heroic, and sacrificing. Effeminate men, sexual outliers, crossdressers, and homosexuals are typically persecuted as grotesque and degenerate aberrations from tradition sex roles, which are seen as nearly divine.

School curricula are rewritten and often you end up with textbooks full of lies from front to end as in the nationbuilding in Poland after WW2. Statues are built to the greats of the land. Often there is Garden of Eden effect such that humanity is seen to have arisen exactly in the country.

At other times, the land is seen as the center of the Earth around which all other lands revolve. Examples in the Land of the Rising Sun in Japan and the land of the Four Winds in China.

The Land of the Rising Sun implies that when the sun rises in the morn, it first shines on Japan, hence Japan is the first nation to be brightened and in a sense becomes a satellite around which other lands revolve.

The Land of the Four Winds in China refers to the belief that the north, south, west, and east winds all arise directly in China itself and flow outward to the rest of the world from there. So China is the source or ground zero for all of the wind and moving air in the land. It’s literally the center of the world if not of the universe.

Trumpism is indeed fascism. Make America Great Again. See how that is talking about the ruins of the present and going back to an earlier time when the nation was great.+

A lot of out and out nationalist lying about history, minorities, languages – Hell, you name it, nationalists lie about it – usually goes into the construction of this mythological great past.

It’s called blood and soil because the ethnicity is seen as the “sons of the soil” or land itself, land that has been fertilized with the blood of the ancestors especially in n nationalist impulses where they fought invaders or minorities.

The blood also refers to the fact that there is only one ethnicity in fascism.

In Ruritania, all of the minorities have to become Ruritanians. Stop wearing minority clothing, practicing minority festivals and and lifestyles, give up the minority religion and especially stop  speaking the minority language.

Hence all minorities will become Ruritanians simply by assimilating to Ruritanian culture. Standard fascism gives minorities a break in that they are merged with the ethnic group even though they are a different ethnicity.

Racist Fascism or National Socialism

Racist fascism or Nazism is much worse because the minorities don’t stand a chance as their very blood itself itself is tainted, hence there is no way to escape minority status and become a Ruritanian. They are dealt with by segregation, expulsion, or murder, which can be genocidal.

They will be repressed, arrested, beaten, impoverished, uneducated, and often the state will move Ruritanians into their neighborhoods to drown them out. They will be tortured, their homes will be demolished and their neighborhoods will be bulldozed. Often their churches and monuments are targeted for destruction.

The intelligentsia  and the leadership of the land may be attacked and even killed, sometimes in  large numbers. This is done so the minority will be leaderless and even without thinkers.

They will also be killed, often in small numbers, but sometimes in much larger numbers, into the tens and hundreds of thousands or even a million as in National Socialist Rwanda. There were millions, 15 million, exterminated by the Nazis in World War 2. You keep hearing about the 6 million Jews, but did you realize that another 9 million people were also murdered? Well, they don’t count because they’re not Jews so they’re not special, as only Jews are special or “chosen.”

They are also often expelled from the land as their presence is seen as a literal toxin upon the body politic. Hence words like cockroaches, vermin, rats, infection, disease, virus, plague are used to describe the minority group. Nazis referred to Jews as rats and vermin and disease metaphors were also often used.

It is often stated that the nation has an “infection” – that is, it is literally infected with the minority group, which is a plague upon the land itself. Look around you and see how people act during plagues. Also, what do you do with a tumor? You cut it out. So you cut the minority out of the land, slicing them away with a scalpel. How do you treat an infection. You pour drugs at it to kill the infectious agents. Hence mass killing  of minorities is can be seen as germicidal and even a measure of positive public health.

The dehumanization makes it easier to mistreat them or even kill them.  After all, in Rwanda they were not killing humans. They were literally killing cockroaches. Six foot tall cockroaches with two arms and two legs, but cockroaches nonetheless. What do you do if you see a cockroach? You stomp on it and grind it into the floor. Hence “grinding the minority into the floor” is transferred to the minority group and mass murder is nothing more than squashing bugs on floors. Human bugs but bugs nonetheless.

Repost: Englishes, Portugueses, and Chineses

In the comments to a previous post, Goyta made several comments. First of all he noted that the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese are considerable, especially when a Brazilian hears a less educated, working class or rural Portuguese.

He also said that when European Portuguese are interviewed on Brazilian TV, Brazilians wish they had subtitles. Wanting to have subtitles when you see a video of someone speaking is actually a symptom that you are dealing with another language. He said the differences are particularly severe when it comes to IT. He said he cannot understand 9

It does appear that the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are pretty significant, more significant than the differences between US and British English.

On other hand, I find Hibernian English spoken in Ireland to be nearly incomprehensible, though it is said to be just a dialect of English. It’s clearly been influenced extensively by the Irish language. Scots, the regional English spoken in Scotland and exemplified by the movie Trainspotting , is actually a completely separate language from English. That movie actually needed subtitles. On the other hand, there is a Scottish English dialect that is not Scots that is pretty intelligible.

We can always understand British English no matter who is writing it. Same with understanding spoken Australian and New Zealand (Kiwi) English. British English is often written a bit differently in slang expressions, but we pick them up. The formal writing is totally understandable.

There have been huge fights on Wikipedia between British English and US English speakers with complaints from the Brits of bullying by the Americans. There was an attempt to fork the English Wiki into Br and US versions but it failed. Wikipedia demands that you have an ISO code in order to get a Wikipedia and ISO codes only come from SIL, who publishes Ethnologue. I petitioned for a few new languages a couple of years ago and they all got shot down.

There is an ongoing war between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese on the Portuguese Wikipedia with complaints from the European Portuguese of bullying on the part of the Brazilians. Gotya noted that he, a Brazilian, could not read Portuguese IT materials. This is unfortunate. All written British is intelligible to us. We can read anything written in the UK, though most of our reading material here is from the US. I can read The Economist and The New Standard and The Spectator with no problems at all.

As a Californian, I speak completely normally, of course, and have no accent whatsoever! Haha. We can understand the Midwest accent perfectly, though it can be different. It sounds “flat”. They also insert rhotic consonants before some consonants at the end of a word and the raising of the preceding vowel – “wash” becomes “worsh”.

The Oklahoma accent is different and sometimes it can be hard to understand. I heard some people speaking Oklahoman in the doctor’s office the other day for a minute or so I thought they were speaking a foreign language! Of course they were mumbling too. Then I asked them where they were from and they said Oklahoma. At that point, I had caught onto their accent and could understand them perfectly.

I do not know why the Texan accent is said to be hard to understand. We understand it perfectly, but it sounds funny. We make a lot of jokes about it. George Bush has a strong Texan accent. There is also an Arkansas accent (Arkies) that is different but understandable. This is also the source of jokes. In this part of California there are many Whites who still speak Arkie and Okie. They are the descendants of those who came out here from the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s. Steinbeck wrote a book about this called The Grapes of Wrath.

Other than that, there are no accents in the West.

There is some sort of a Kentucky-Tennessee accent, but I am not sure if they differ. This is also a source of jokes. It’s sort of a general Appalachian accent, and it’s the source of jokes about inbred hillbillies and whatnot.

The Southern accent is well-known but usually understandable. My brother went to live in Alabama though and he said that the workers in the factory he worked at were often completely unintelligible. The Blacks were worse than the Whites, and they had separate accents. He has imitated their incomprehensible accent to me and it’s pretty hilarious.

I have heard poor Blacks from Memphis on the Cops show who were completely unintelligible to me. People with more money and status tended to be more comprehensible. I sometimes have a hard time understanding a Mississippi or Alabama accent, but it’s no problem. Our Southern politicians all have thick Southern accents.

Cajun English from Louisiana is often unintelligible to us, but the people with more money and status are quite intelligible.

There is also a Black accent from the coast of South Carolina called Gullah that is hard to understand. The Blacks from around there speak something like it and you can pick it out if you are sharp. It has a pretty, lilting sound to it. It’s different from the standard Southern accent and is sort of charming. Moving up the coast, there is a Virginia accent that is softer, pleasant and charming.

There is the famous New York accent, which to us laid back Californians sounds horribly rude, obnoxious, loud and belligerent. Some forms of it also sound ignorant – these tend to be associated with working class Whites in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

One thing they do is to glide and lengthen rhotic consonants – “New York” becomes New Yawwk” “Brooklyn” becomes “Bwwoklyn”.

A similar accent seems to be spoken in New Jersey, but it may be different. One again, it involves lenition of rhotic consonants, in this case turning them into dipthongs with long vowels. “New Jersey” becomes “New Joiisey”. This is also a source of jokes. There is a Boston accent which is completely understandable. Ted Kennedy speaks that. It involves the lenition of hard consonants into glides and the end of a word – “car” becomes “caw”.

I believe there is a sort of a slow drawl from Vermont and New Hampshire too. Those people, especially the older men, are known for not talking much. Men of few words.

Some Blacks around here still talk with thick Black accents that sound Southern even though they were born in the Central Valley. There is also an “Ebonics” English (for lack of a better word) that is spoken here by sort of ghettoish or semi-ghettoish Blacks. It is frankly, almost completely unintelligible. They seem like they are talking with their mouths full, mumbling and speaking extremely fast, running all of the sounds together.

Everyone who talks like this can also speak Standard English thank God, and they can quickly move in and out of that Ebonics talk when you talk to them. It’s sort of a language for them to talk so that we can’t understand them, I think. To us, it sounds sloppy, low class and ghetto, but it reportedly a full-fledged language. The Blacks in the Caribbean do not speak English! That makes me feel good because I can hardly understand a word they say. Each island has its own form of Creole English which is a completely separate language.

I think that Indian English (Chichi derogatorily) and West African English need to be split into separate languages because they are often incomprehensible to us. This is a case of regional Englishes evolving on their own. Further, West African English often differs a lot in its written form.

Indian English is often so mangled in its written form that it is incomprehensible, but more educated writers are comprehensible. The tendency to drop articles is very annoying and makes written Indian English sound ignorant to us. Don’t mess with our damned useless articles!

Reading about the Chinese languages, there are efforts underway to get speakers to speak proper Putonghua, whatever that means. Speakers from different parts of China still speak Putonghua with an accent that can be heavy at times.

Here in the US, we do not have this problem. Even our politicians still speak in heavy regional accents, and no one cares. We can always understand them. There is no national effort to get everyone to speak proper English that involves wiping out regional accents, though I understand that in the corporate world, they are offering classes to help people get rid of Southern accents, which are stereotyped as sounding backwards, ignorant and racist. I think this is sad. Our regional accents are what makes this country great.

Goyta also notes that Brazilians are starting to speak Spanish and the neighboring Spanish speaking countries are starting to speak Portuguese. When I was dealing with them 5-10 years ago, most Brazilians did not speak much Spanish (They acted like it was extremely low on their list of priorities) and Spanish speakers had zero interest in learning Portuguese (In fact, they regarded the suggestion as offensive and preposterous!)

Goyta notes that with regional integration, more Portuguese are speaking Spanish and more Spanish speakers from nearby countries are learning Portuguese. Spanish is becoming a prerequisite to getting a good job in Brazil. This is good as it’s good to see Latin Americans getting together.

It is also true that in China there has been a big fight over Chinese language classification. The unificationist – fascist types, associated with the Communist government (and actually with the Nationalist government before also – this is really a Chinese elite project) insist that there is only one Chinese language. This goes along with racism of Northern Chinese against Southern Chinese and to some extent vice versa. This racism is most evident in the Cantonese vs Mandarin war in China.

Cantonese speakers say that they speak the real Chinese and that Northern Chinese speak a bastardized tongue derived from the old Manchu language. Cantonese speakers also resent that a Northern Chinese was turned into the national tongue and imposed on them against their will. They also say that Northern Chinese are really from the South and that the real NE Asians are the Mongolians, Koreans, Manchu, Japanese, etc. Genetic studies show that this is not the case.

Northern Chinese say that Southern Chinese are not real Chinese and their blood is “contaminated” with Tai types like the Tai, Zhuang, Vietnamese, etc. There is probably something to this. Although Putonghua is the only official language in China and there is a war going on against the regional Chineses, enforcement has been held off against Cantonese. And Cantonese  areas are still where you will hear the least Putonghua and the most regional Chinese in all spheres of life. Cantonese is also allowed on the radio and TV, whereas regional Chineses had previously banned from the media.

The Putonghua-only campaign has been too successful and regional Chineses are being wiped out. There is now a regionalism movement arising in China to promote and retain regional Chineses.

I think that the Putonghua campaign has been good, but that China should promote bilingualism. The Putonghua campaign has not yet been successful. As of 2001, only 5

China clearly needs a language that they can all speak. For its entire history, many Chinese have not been able to speak to each other, including folks from one village to the next if you go to the southeast and the central coast. Provinces like Fujian, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Henan and Hunan are notoriously multilingual.

Most of these places have a lot of very high mountains, and transportation was typically very poor. Even today, you can scarcely get around by vehicle and you sometimes have to walk from one place to the next, sometimes for dozens of miles! Bottom line is they were very isolated from each other.

These places also retained a tradition of being hideouts for “hillbilly” types where there was a lot of unemployment and many folks turned to crime. Also criminals fled to the mountains where they could hide. Upshot was that due to all of this, and people seen as backwards, lazy, stupid and thieving, people from the rest of China had no interest in going to these places anyway. When people left these parts of China to go to big cities, they were stereotyped in a way similar to how ghetto Blacks and Browns are in the US. This made them want to stay in their mountains.

Alt Left: Repost: Mao Messed Up

I think an assessment of Mao ought to be made on a scientific basis, beyond politics. Anti-Communists and rightwingers have an extremely poor record as far documenting this sort of thing, so I almost want to dismiss everything they say.

Probably the best sources would be leftwingers or even Communists who also happen to be some sort of China scholars. To the detriment of Mao, a number of Leftists, socialists and Communists who are also China scholars are starting to contribute some very negative things about Mao.

The good side is quite clear. Life expectancy doubled under Mao, from 35 to 70, from 1949 to 1976, in only 27 years. Supporters of fascism and Hitler are challenged to provide evidence that Hitler’s rule benefited anyone. Nazism was at core a death cult. Life expectancy collapsed in Germany under Hitler and in all of the regions that were occupied by Nazis. Nazism wasn’t about improving life for the common man at all; it was about war and endless war and endless extermination of the less fit.

Communism, with the exception of Pol Pot’s rule, where life expectancy collapsed in Cambodia and 1.7 million died, has been quite a bit different. Most Communist regimes have killed people, but at the same time seem to have saved many lives, often millions of lives. So it gets hard to tally things up.

I suppose pro-Communists would say that the many deaths were necessary in order to save so many lives. That’s an interesting argument and ought to be taken up. Was there a way to save so many lives without killing millions of people? I hope there would be, but I’m not sure.

Pre-China Mao was vastly deadlier than China under Mao. The life expectancy figures make this clear. Czarist Russia was 3 times deadlier than the USSR under Lenin and Stalin. This is where this “greatest killers of all time” crap runs into the mud. If the death rate was 3 times higher per year under the Czar than under Stalin, just how was Stalin the worst killer of all time?

Same with Mao. I don’t have good figures, but once again, it looks like Nationalist China in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s was 3 times deadlier per year, or maybe more, than Maoist China. If the death rate collapsed under Mao, how was he the worst killer ever? The truth is there are plenty of ways to kill a man. You can kill him with a bullet or by sending him to a camp, or you can kill him by disease and lack of food, the silent and uncounted method that the capitalists prefer.

Nevertheless, an accounting of deaths under Mao needs to be done. Just glancing at the data here, it’s already looking like Mao was way worse than Stalin. Way worse.

The initial consolidation of power in China was brutal. Whether the landlords were killed by the party or by the peasants is not that relevant. Mao said that 700,000 landlords were killed, and even he thought that was too many. China scholars think it is higher, from 1-4 million. I would dismiss the 4 million figure, but anywhere from 700,000-3 million is possible. Further research is needed here.

The Anti-Counterrevolutionary Drive of 1950 followed, an attempt to uncover supporters of the Nationalists and counterrevolutionaries. Tens of thousands were killed, or possibly up to a million, let’s call it 20,000-1 million. Further research is needed.

Anti-Christian Campaigns of the 1950’s. These were launched against mostly Christians, but also other religions. “Many thousands” are said to have died. Definitely some further work is necessary here.

Anti-Counterrevolutionary Campaign of 1953. Mao said, “9

The Great Leap Forward Famine happened between 1959-1961. Unlike the fake Holodomor of 1932-33, it’s looking more and more like most of the blame for this horrible catastrophe can be laid at the feet of Mao himself. The man was a fanatic. He was told that there was a famine, and in early 1959, he backtracked on some of his crazy ideas, while he blamed subordinates for the famine.

Then there was the Lushan Conference in May 1959. Mao accused Peng Dehuai, a critic of the Great Leap, of conspiring against him. Peng was purged, and the Great Leap went was ordered to go ahead full speed. If there had been no Lushan Conference, there would have been no famine. There followed two years of catastrophe, in which there was overprovisioning of grain from the peasants which was then stored in warehouses in cities, where it rotted or was exported for scarce foreign currency.

Much of the problem was that local officials were wildly exaggerating harvests, hence the overprovisioning at the state level. They thought that with bumper harvests, they could take grain from the countryside to the cities without problems. But there were no bumper harvests. Harvests had collapsed. Finally in 1961, the state figured out that it had screwed up royally and started mass importing grain. Caravans of grain trucks flowed to the countryside, and the famine was over. But many were too weak to even walk to the trucks to get the food.

Mao is blamed for an atmosphere of terror that led underlings to fake bumper crops where none had occurred. With no democracy in the party, no one wanted to contradict Mao. Mao himself had some utterly idiotic ideas, which he was allowed to implement due to lack of party democracy. After the Great Leap, the party realized it had screwed up bad. Even Mao knew that. The Cultural Revolution was in a lot of ways Mao’s attempt to regain face after getting egg on his face in the Great Leap.

As far as deaths during the Great Leap, this is still up in the air. Even Maoists admit that there were 15 million excess deaths in the period. Some of the higher figures use preposterous accounting techniques whereby people who had never even been born were counted as “deaths.” Tell me how that works. Nevertheless, the figure may be higher than 15 million. At any rate, it’s the worst famine in modern world history, and it’s a permanent blot on Mao’s record.

The Cultural Revolution was sheer insanity. Many received poor educations as schools were shut down. Many cultural relics and buildings were destroyed, and a good part of China’s cultural heritage was smashed up.

People were killed and hounded all over China for little or no reason. Red Guards rampaged all over China, torturing, humiliating, imprisoning and murdering all sorts of people, including local party officials, teachers and even university professors. When someone was hounded, the humiliation went on every day and there was no escape. No one would dare to come to your side, not even your spouse. Deng Xiaoping’s son was tossed out of a window and paralyzed from the waist down.

Red Guard factions battled each other in cities across China with weapons looted from local Army depots. Sometimes Army units joined in. Red Guards in one city would attack Red Guards in another city. Women and children were murdered and kids were even buried alive. Enemies were cannibalized in one area. Ridiculous, insane and anarchic, right? Sure.

In some parts of China, victims of the Red Guards are still angry. The Red Guards are still around, older now, but still living in the villages alongside their victims. Their former victims hate them. Lawsuits have been brought against former Red Guards, but the courts have thrown them out.

From a Communist POV, one of the most tragic things about all of these persecutions and killings, when one reads the details of the individual cases, is that many of the victims were not even counterrevolutionaries. Many were dedicated, hard-working Communists and revolutionaries, often devoted Maoists. Lord knows why they were purged and victimized.

The insanity and anarchy of the Cultural Revolution is one reason why the Party wants to keep a tight reign on power. China descends pretty quickly into wild and deadly anarchy.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of Chinese Communist Party publications and the theses and dissertations by students at Chinese universities, which tend to toe the party line. As a rule, the Cultural Revolution is regarded as a big mistake by ultra-Left forces, and the Party definitely wants to avoid such messes in the future. I’ve even some some Party critiques of the Great Leap, though not much is said about that. It’s clear that the high ranks of the Party regard the Great Leap as a disaster.

There continue to be some very serious human rights abuses in China, as this 89 page report from Human Rights Watch reports. Even from the POV of a Communist, some of the abuses of these petitioners seem just flat out wrong. There doesn’t seem to be any legitimate Communist reason to be attacking a lot of these poor petitioners.

Surely in a Communist system, petitioners should have the right to protest uranium pollution of rivers, corrupt officials abusing their posts and stealing land, etc. In what way are these folks counterrevolutionaries?

But it’s not true that everyone who protests in China goes to jail. There are around 100 public protests every single day in China, often involving large groups. Only a few of them get arrested, harassed, beaten, tortured or jailed. But I guess you never know when your card will come up.

The fact that some of the harshest critiques of Mao’s crimes, excesses and stupidities are coming out of the Chinese Communist Party itself shows that slamming Mao can be done within a socialist, Leftist or Communist framework.

Can it be done in a Maoist framework? This I’m not so sure of. The Party will not come out and make public its findings on Mao as the USSR did with Stalin because the party continues to wave the banner of Mao and practically rules under his name and visage. It’s possible that slamming Mao would so delegitimize the party that it might be fatal for the CCP. It’s a tough call. For the anti-Semites, I have a homework assignment for you. Since Mao was a Communist and Communism is Jewish, obviously Mao was a Jew. Please uncover the secret Jewish connections of Mao and his closest supporters in the CCP.

Repost: Are Amerindians Related to Polynesians?

Are Amerindians Related to Polynesians?

Regarding the post on the Moriori, a commenter asks if any of the Amerindians, in particular the South American Amerindians, are related to Polynesians. They are not.

All of the Amerindians go back to the area where Mongolia, Russia, and China all come together – the Altai Mountains east to Lake Baikal. Another smaller group comes from the area around the mouth of the Amur River where China, Russia, and North Korea meet.

Click to enlarge. The Lower Amur region of Russia can be seen to the left of Sakhalin Island. On this map, tribes residing in the Lower Amur region include the Negidal, Ulchi, Nivkhi, Oroch, Udeghe and the Nanai.

Click to enlarge. There is no evidence that South American Amerindians, or any Amerindians, are primarily Polynesian. As you can see in this chart, Pacific Islanders and Amerindians are on completely different ends of the evolutionary spectrum. Amerindians are closer to NE Asians (Japanese, Koreans and Northern Chinese) and Caucasians than they are to Polynesians. Polynesians are closer to Aborigines and Papuans than they are to Amerindians or NE Asians.

However, a Polynesian gene has been found in some tribes on the Pacific Coast of Peru and Chile. It’s theorized that Polynesians must have landed there at some point, but it wasn’t a big settlement. Going back 7-9,000 years ago, all Amerindians looked like Polynesians. The closest match to the Kennewick Man’s (Who is not Caucasian!) skull is nothing other than the Moriori whom we just discussed.

However, that does not mean that Polynesians were in the New World then. 9,000 yrs ago, there were no Polynesians. We are talking about races that no longer exist.

It’s probable that some of the Ainuid ancestors of the Polynesians resembled the Ainuid ancestors of these ancient Amerindians. In the chart above, the Ainu are one of the links between the SE Asians, NE Asians, Australians and Amerindians.

The Ainu types are really the clue to this whole puzzle. Ainu types or Ainu types transitioning to pure Mongoloids were generalized over much of Asia back in those days.

References

Powell, Joseph F. and Rose, Jerome C. 2004. “Chapter 2, Report on the Osteological Assessment of the “Kennewick Man” Skeleton (CENWW.97.Kennewick),” in McManamon, F.P. Kennewick Man. Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Archeology Program.

Repost: Berber Genes in Europeans

Interesting stuff about Berber

Berber Genes in Europeans

It seems reasonable that Southern Europeans especially would have a considerable amount of Berber genes in them. This has been disputed by certain Southern European White racist bloggers like Dienekes Pontikos and Racial Reality. These bloggers are vociferously opposed to the notion that Southern Europeans are anything but pretty near pure White.

For instance, here Dienekes states gives Berber percentages in Europeans as follows:

Nation          Berber

Spain           
Italy           1.7
France          

I am going to disagree with this assessment, though I admit I am not an expert on the subject. Looking at this journal article (table here). we come up with something a lot different. From Cruciani et al 2004:

Ethnic Group                Berber

Spain (Cantabrian Pasiegos) 3
Spain (Cantabria)           1
Southern Portugal           12.
Northern Portugal            
Spain (Basques)              3.
France                       3.
Spain (Asturias)             2.
Southern Spain               1.
Northern Italy               1.
Central Italy                1.
Italy (Sicily)                .
Sardinia                      .

The Berber genes seem to have come to Europe for the most part in the past 3,000 yrs. Cantabria is an interesting place. The Cantabrians, in particular the Pasiegos, are said to be quite distinct genetically, almost like the Basques. No one really knows what this is all about.

During the Moorish invasion, they conquered all the way up to the southern mountains of Cantabria, a province in the far north of Spain on the coast next to the Basque region. Perhaps this is where the Moorish (Berber) genes came in.

Looking at the figures above, most Berber genes appear to have gone into Iberia in tandem with the Moorish conquest. Strangely, they are concentrated in the North of Spain. This doesn’t make much sense to me.

The Cantabrian language is still spoken here. It is said to be a dialect of Spanish, but actually it is part of the Extremaduran language spoken in Caceres in Extremadura. People say it is dying out, but in the mountains children are still being raised speaking Cantabrian. They show up in school as Cantabrian monolinguals and their teachers cannot understand them.

Extremaduran-Cantabrian is really just Eastern Leonese, which got cut off from the rest of Leonese ~400 years ago and came under heavy influence from Old Castilian. Nowadays East Leonese proper scarcely exists in either Asturias or Leon. Extremaduran itself spoken in Caceres is endangered, has no official status, and but has 500,000 speakers, including monolinguals (!). A Spanish informant who grew up in the region told me that Extremaduran has only 1

Leonese has only 50,000 speakers, is considered very endangered, but does have special status in Castile and Leon. And children are still being raised speaking Southeastern Leonese or Porteno. Leonese is part of the Asturian-Leonese language, with Asturian spoken in the north in Asturias and Leonese spoken to the south in Castile y Leon.

Asturian has 550,000 speakers, but is considered endangered.

A related language is Mirandese, spoken in Portugal. This language looks a lot like Portuguese, but it is actually a branch of Asturian-Leonese. It has 8

About the Berbers, I consider them to be one of the most ancient, if not the most ancient, Caucasian groups in existence. Berbers go back at least 20,000 years and possibly up to 50,000 years in North Africa. Much of the Berber group may have come from the Middle East in the past 10,000 years. There is a huge split between Berbers and Sub-Saharan Africans.

The Mozabites, the Tuaregs and the Chenini-Douiret are quite different from the rest of the Berbers. Why? Probably genetic drift.

These men are Mozabites, possibly some of the most ancient Caucasians on Earth, with a genetic line going back up to 50,000 years. Though White nationalists probably freak out if you say these people are White, they are most definitely Caucasians. The fellow in the right forefront also looks Caucasian – he looks somewhat East Indian.

The two men standing at the top could be East Indians or some strange Mediterranean type. Given that East Indians are also one of the most ancient Caucasian groups on Earth, it figures that these Berbers resemble Indians. Both groups came out of the Middle East – the Berbers probably 42,000 years ago, and the East Indians about 17,000 years ago.

There are few genetic differences between Berbers and North African Arabs, which means that North African Arabs are simply Arabized Berbers. There are lots of great photos of Berbers at this link.

The origin of the Berbers is nevertheless quite obscure. This article suggests that both Berbers and Europeans came out of the Levant about 40-45,000 years ago. Obviously, prior to that, they came out of Africa. A date of 40-45,000 years is about right for the genesis of the Caucasian race. The homeland of the Caucasians is often said to be located in the Caucasus itself.

This line rose in Southwest Asia (the Caucasus) and then moved to Africa along the Mediterranean, not via Somalia – Yemen as the Out of Africans went. They moved first into the Levant, and from there went to Europe and to North Africa, both at the same time. This line went to the Cro-Magnon as well as the Berber, and both came out of the Levant about 40-45,000 years ago.

Another very interesting looking Mozabite fellow. There are some Mediterranean types who look something like this, but I have a hard time pinning this phenotype down. Clearly, they are Caucasians, but other than that, they look pretty sui generis. A recent genetics study, though poorly done, seemed to show the Mozabites as one of the most ancient ethnic groups on Earth and a source population for many other groups outside of Africa.

The Uighurs in Central Asia were also a source population for many diverse groups all over the place. The Uighurs may be the remains of ancient Caucasian-Asian hybrids that go back up to 40,000 years.

The first Caucasians were probably a mixture of 1/2 Africans (possibly Maasai and Tutsi types from Central Africa) mixed with ancient proto-Asians from China (who may have resembled the Ainu). From this strange mixture arose the original Caucasians, probably in the Caucasus and southern Russia, but maybe also in Iran.

There is good evidence that the first Caucasians, including the Cro-Magnons, looked a lot like Black Africans, in particular the Caucasoid-appearing Africans such as the Maasai and the Tutsi. Cro-Magnon skeletons look like the Masai more than any other modern skeleton. Cro-Magnon skulls are more likely to be confused with Negroid skulls than any other.

References

Cruciani, F.; La Fratta, R.; Santolamazza, P.; Sellitto, D.; Pascone, R.; Moral, P.; Watson, E.;  Guida, V.; Colomb, EB.; Zaharova, B.; Lavinha, J.; Vona, G.; Aman, R.; Cali, F.; Akar, N.; Richards, M.; Torroni, A.; Novelletto, A.; and Scozzari, R. 2004. “Phylogeographic Analysis Of Haplogroup E3b (E-M215) Y Chromosomes Reveals Multiple Migratory Events within and out of Africa.” American Journal of Human Genetics 74:1014-1022

Repost: Genes and Language Match Well

Genes and Language Match Well

This post will look into whether or not genes and language line up well. The question may seem academic, but it is important for linguists in the battle for whether or not there is anything to the large macro-families that the “lumpers” are creating.

It’s yet another skirmish in the lumpers versus splitters battle in Historical Linguistics. Historical is the branch that deals with language families, language relationships, and reconstruction of old languages that are no longer spoken.

The debate has heated up in recent years due to the prominence of lumper theories publicized by the late Joseph Greenberg and his disciples, notably Merritt Ruhlen at Stanford University. Ruhlen and Greenberg use a technique called mass comparison which has come under a lot of wild and irrational abuse but seems to be a valid scientific method in the hands of an expert.

Greenberg used it to come up with the four major language families of Africa a long time ago, and his classification there has remained pretty solid ever since.

He since published a book called Language in the Americas, which broke down all Amerindian languages into three large families – Amerind, Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut. I have read that book many times, and I concur with its analysis. Unfortunately, a detailed examination of the evidence goes beyond the scope of this post.

Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut are not very controversial, though the position of Haida within Na-Dene is regarded as unproven. However, looking at evidence mustered by Alexander Manaster-Ramer, I believe that Haida is definitely Na-Dene, though possibly a sister to the entire group as it is so distant.

In the same way, the ancient Indo-European Anatolian language is now regarded as a separate branch of Indo-European – Indo-Hittite or Indo-Anatolian. My Indo-Europeanist sources told me that Indo-Hittite or Indo-Anatolian is now regarded as consensus in the field.

Bengston promotes a family called Dene-Caucasian that involves the North Caucasian languages of the Caucasus, Basque, Edward Vajda conclusively proved that the Ket language is related to the Na-Dene languages.

A Ket man in Siberia. His phenotype looks a bit Japanese. He doesn’t look like an Amerindian. The situation of the Ket is deplorable, as most live in serious poverty and do not see any hope for improving themselves. The Ket language is also in bad shape, as hardly anyone under 35 can speak it well, and 3
The USSR did a better job with minority tongues than Putin.
Relating to the Ket, along with the Selkup nearby, the theory linking these groups to the Amerindians supports a single migration to the Americas 16,000 years ago, but it’s not at all definitive. According to Click to enlarge. I believe that the latest evidence is showing that all of the various Altai peoples – Northern Turkics would be the various Altai groupings – the Altai, the Tofalar, the Khakass and the Shor – are related to the Amerindians. These are often referred to as Northern Turkics. They aren’t really Turks per se as in people from Turkey, but even the Turks from Turkey are thought to be partly related to these Northern Turkic tribes.

Northern Turkics are right on the border between Asians and Caucasians on gene charts, and some Amerinds are not so far genetically from that border either. If you look at the Cavalli-Sforza gene chart below, you can see that next to the Eskimo-Aleuts, the Chukchi, and the Northern Turkics are the people most closely related to the Amerindians.

It also looks like the Ket and Selkup came from what is now the Northern Turkic Altai region. Anthropologically, these various groups are either Uralics, South Siberian, Central Asian or North Asian Asiatics. The Altai region is where Russia, China and Mongolia all come together.

This is the first connection of a New World language family with an Old World language family.

Here is a Nenets woman from Siberia. She definitely looks Northern Chinese or Korean. They have a population of 44,000, and there are 31,000 speakers of the language. It’s really two languages – Here is a rare photo of Ed Vajda with two Ket women in Siberia described as “experts in the Ket language.” I’m not good at judging ages, but these women look to be about 40-60. If so, that is good, as I thought all of the speakers were elderly, and hardly anyone spoke the language well anymore. Ket has anywhere from 537-1,000 speakers. A related language, Yugh, is thought to have recently gone extinct. The rest of the Yeniseien languages went extinct about 150-250 years ago.

Greenberg and Ruhlen are the most vilified of the lumpers, but there are others who are following more orthodox methods of reconstruction to prove the existence of ancient language families, such as the late Sergey Starostin, his son George Starostin, John Bengston, the late Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych (a prodigy, dead at the young age of only 32), Aharon Dolgopolsky and Vitaly Victorovich Shevoroshkin.

The Starostins, Illich-Svitych, Dolgopolsky, and Shevoroshkin all worked on Nostratic, a vast family consisting variously of Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Kartvelian, Nivkh, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian, and Eskimo-Aleut. I now think that Afroasiatic and Dravidian are sisters to Nostratic instead of part of the family per se because they are so far removed from the rest of the family.

I would accept IE, Uralic, Altaic, Chukotko-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut in Nostratic. The Altaic family is itself controversial, but I regard it as fact, having studied it. Altaic also includes Japanese and Korean. I would toss Yukaghir in with Uralic.

Nostratic has a lot more going for it than some of the other long-range proposals, and since these scholars are using classic reconstruction, it gets respect from splitters. Starostin’s webpage is a great resource for looking into long-range theories, especially Nostratic and Altaic.

Bengston, Shevoroshkin, and the Starostins all worked on Dene-Caucasian. This hypothesis seems a lot more controversial.

Click to enlarge. Here is a tree of Luigi Cavalli-Sforza’s human genetic families on the left and various human language families on the right, including some big families. The only one that is seriously out of place is Tibetan. This is because the Tibetans are a genetically North Chinese people who have moved down into Southern China in recent years. They cluster with South Chinese linguistically but NE Asians genetically.
All the rest lines up pretty well, including super-families like Nostratic and Eurasiatic (a Nostratic-like family created by Greenberg).
The hypothesized Austric family is interesting. I’m not sure if I buy this super-family or not, but I have not really looked into it.
With recent genetic evidence linking Indonesians and Vietnamese to Daic peoples of South China and SE Asia, it seems worth looking into. At the very least Austro-Thai, a language family consisting of the Austronesian and Tai-Kadai families. seems to have been proven in the last 10 years with the publication of a couple of important articles. Laurence Sagart is doing good work in this area.

References

Campbell, Lyle & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.) 1979. The Languages of Native America: An Historical and Comparative Assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Campbell, Lyle. 1988. “Review of Language in the Americas, by Joseph Greenberg.” Language 64: 591-615.

Campbell, Lyle. 1997. American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Greenberg, Joseph. 1987. Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Greenberg, Joseph. 1989. “Classification of American Indian languages: a reply to Campbell.” Language 65:1, 107-114.

Repost: Update to Races of Man Post

Update to Races of Man Post

 

My earlier piece, The Major and Minor Races of Mankind, has been given a major update. The previous incarnation was:

3 Macro Races

Caucasian (Caucasoid) Asian (Mongoloid) African (Negroid)

I left the three macro races intact. I have debated whether or not to include new macro races but I haven’t been able to come up with anything. The main problem is that all of the potential splits – Kalash, Pacific Islander, Papuan, Amerindian and Aborigine are all part of the macro races. The Kalash are part of the Caucasian race and the rest are all indisputably Asians (yes, even Aborigines).

Previous version:

6 Major Races

Northeast Asian Southeast Asian Papuan Aborigine Caucasian African

Revised version:

9 Major Races

Northeast Asian Southeast Asian Papuan Aborigine Caucasian African Kalash Pacific Islander Amerindian

The result looks something like this:

African Macro Race

General African Major Race

15 minor African races

Caucasian Macro Race

General Caucasian Major Race Kalash Major Race

19 minor Caucasian races

Asian Macro Race

Northeast Asian Major Race Southeast Asian Major Race Amerindian Major Race Papuan Major Race Aborigine Major Race Oceanian Major Race

53 minor Asian races

The last three above, Kalash, Oceanian and Amerindian, were added, giving me a 9-race theory in addition to the standard 3-race theory. Genetically, the Kalash are extremely bizarre. On one chart, they form a As you can see, very European looking phenotypes are not rare at all in the Kalash. This 2 year old girl could well be German, except for the strange “elf-ears”, which supposedly are very common among these people. The elf ears are probably a consequence of genetic drift. Drift occurs when a population is isolated for a long time without many outside inputs.The Kalash, unlike all other peoples in the region, have little or no South Indian or Asian genes.

More than anything else, this indicates a West Eurasian origin for the Kalash. West Eurasia is a term that is hard to define, and some say that the region does not even exist. There are some hazy definitions of West Eurasia out there, but in the way it is most used by population geneticists, it appears to mean the Near East and the Caucasus.

As West Eurasia is in the area of the purported homeland of the Caucasian race (Caucasus), we once again deal with the question of the Kalash being an ancient Caucasian tribe, perhaps one of the most ancient Caucasian stocks on Earth.

I saw one genetic map that had all proto-Caucasians (and all proto-NE Asians for that matter) coming out of the Borogil Pass on the border of northern Pakistan and the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan 35,000 years ago. Originally the group was something like Pre-Caucasian–NE Asian. The group went north and one line went to proto-Caucasians and the other went northeast to Proto-NE Asians.

We don’t have the foggiest idea of what these people may have looked like, but skulls from India 24,000 years ago look more like Aborigines than anything else.

The Borogil Pass in the area of Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. As you can see, it is pretty tough going. This is the lowest pass leading out of South Asia and up into the steppes, so it is logical that early men may have migrated in this way.

Actually I think the genesis of NE Asians is more complex than that, but the article was interesting. The genesis of Caucasians is one of the least understood of all the major races. The homeland of the proto-Caucasians is either in the Caucasus or in Central Asia and the Middle East and North Africa seems to be a major staging ground. At this time, the most ancient Caucasians seem to be South Indians and Berbers.

South Indians go back about 15-20,000 years and have been evolving right there with few outside inputs for all that time. Before 20,000 years ago, the Proto-South Indians are thought to have come from the Middle East. They probably bred in with or displaced an Australoid people resembling Aborigines who were the original people of India.

The Berbers may go back even further than that and there are suggestions that they may have had an origin in northeastern Africa near Ethiopia, Sudan and Eritrea. That area was the jumping off point for the human race to leave Africa 60-70,000 years ago, pointing once again to very ancient Berber origins. European-like skulls only go back 10,000 years or so and white skin only goes back 9,000 years.

All humans originally were dark-skinned. The people with the darkest skin evolved in the areas where the UV rays were the brightest. It was thought at first that dark skin was an adaptation to prevent sunburn and melanoma, but a there are problems with this analysis.

Sunburn does not usually kill you, and melanoma tends to hit older in life, after one has already produced offspring. A better explanation may be that intense UV rays cause destruction of folic acid stores in the body. Then pregnant women, with their folic acid destroyed, have a high potential of giving birth to deformed babies.

White skin was actually a depigmentation process to enable people to get more Vitamin D, which is scarcer at northern altitudes in Northern Europe due to weak UV rays. Lighter skin is necessary to grab all the Vitamin D that one can. An argument against this is that Vitamin D deficiency does not occur in areas of low UV radiation.

But this is not true. Even today, darker skinned people, such as South Indians, who immigrate to the UK are coming down with various Vitamin D deficiency syndromes, including rickets. It is probably necessary for darker-skinned people who live at high latitudes to take Vitamin D supplementation.

The proto-Caucasians may have split off as early as 35,000 years ago. Some NE Asians are quite close to Caucasians and vice versa. The groups straddling the Caucasian-Asian border form a sort of a line from Turkey to Korea and then up to the Chukchi Peninsula. Along the way we have Turks, Iranians, Jews, West Asians, Central Asians, Northern Turkics, Mongolians, Northern Chinese, Koreans and Chukchi.

West Asians include Punjabis and Pashtuns and live in Pakistan, NW India and Afghanistan. Central Asians include Kazakhs, Turkmen and Uzbeks. Northern Turkics include the Altai, the Yakut and other groups. Many of them live around where China, Mongolia and Russia all come together. Interestingly, this seems to be exactly where most Amerindians came from – the Altai Mountains.

The Chukchi are an Eskimo-like people who live on the Chukchi Peninsula on the far eastern end of Siberia where the Bering Straight separates Russia from Alaska.

What’s curious about the Chukchi is that Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s Principal Coordinates chart in his 1994 book The History and Geography of Human Genes (chart here) puts the Chukchi in with Caucasians. Yet by appearance and apparently also genetics, the Chukchi cluster with Asians.

So there are some groups that are really on the border. I had a hard time knowing what to do with Turkics, Northern Turkics and Central and West Asians, as the genetics was so hazy. I usually just dropped them in either NE Asians or Caucasians based on appearance.

The Kalash are a group of about 3,000 people living in Chitral Province in Pakistan on the border of Afghanistan.

The valleys of the Kalash. The villages are at about 6,000 feet and as the soil is very rich, they grow many crops. They also do a lot of herding, mostly of goats it seems. They do observe a menstruation taboo, where the women have to go off to special hut during that time, but this is a very old taboo in many human tribal groups. The Kalash bury their dead above ground in caskets. Burial of the dead above ground is a very ancient human tradition.

The Negritos of both Papua and the Andaman Islands, one of the most ancient human groups, bury their dead above ground in little tree houses. The Zoroastrians, one of the most ancient human religions, bury the dead on rooftops and let the vultures eat them. This is getting to be a problem in parts of India where they live as the neighbors are starting to complain!

They still retain an ancient pagan religion. The are remarkably egalitarian for that part of the world, and women work in the fields side by side with men. They have somehow managed to resist Islamacization for centuries, possibly due to the remote and multiethnic nature of the Chitral region.

Four Kalash students. The fellow on the right is a dead ringer for a European. He could be a German or an Englishman. The fellow on the left could easily be an Italian, a Greek, an Armenian, an Iranian or a Turk. The other two are awfully hard to classify. They almost look a little Amerindian.

There are some similar phenotypes across the border in Afghanistan in Nuristan amongst people called Nuristanis. They were converted to Islam at the point of a sword by a genocidal Pashtun maniac named Amir Abdur-Rahman during Afghanistan’s nation-building process in the 1890’s. His genocide of the Hazara was similar proportionally to the Jewish Holocaust.

A Kalash woman with some children, apparently her own. She and her kids do not look quite so Caucasian; they look more Asian. Actually the woman is hard to classify as belonging to any known race that we are familiar with. In California, you might think she was an Amerindian from Latin America.

The legend is that the Kalash and the Nuristanis were the remnants of Alexander the Great’s army that invaded and conquered the region 2000 years ago. This was the reason for all the European phenotypes in the area. Recently, this was thought to be a legend with no basis in fact, but recent controversial genetic testing suggests that the Kalash may have up to 2

Macedonian and Kalash female costumes compared – note the similarity in costumes. Also the Kalash continue to worship a creator God cognate with the Greek Zeus. I cannot help but think that some of those Macedonian phenotypes are also present in Kalash females. And the terrain looks rather similar too.

Maybe some of Alexander’s men did stay here, thinking they were home away from home. This story is definitely widespread in that part of the world. I had an Afghan doctor from Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan who insisted it was true.

This has been challenged since although there is one Greek marker in the Kalash, the other major marker that ought to be there, since it is apparently present in all Greeks, is not there. One counter-suggestion is that the Kalash got the Greek marker by chance through genetic drift. This seems dubious. The question remains highly confused .

A Kalash man, possibly with his wife by his side. He could easily be an Italian, an Albanian, a Spaniard or a Portuguese. She’s harder to classify, but could be an Italian.

The Kalash worship a God called Dezau, which is from the Indo-European sky God *Dyaos (reconstructed form), from which the Greeks derived Zeus and the Romans Jupiter. So the Kalash are the last practitioners of ancient Indo-European mythology.

A Kalash woman with Caucasian features and somewhat Asian eyes. It’s hard to place her into a known ethnic group, but there are Kurds who look something like this. The Kalash probably originated in an area near Kurdistan, but no one really knows. The child looks more Asian. Love the costumes.

They have some odd customs.

One I particularly love is called the Festival of the Budalak. A strong teenage boy is sent up in the mountains for the summer with the goats. He practically lives on goat milk, which supposedly makes him even stronger.

When he comes back there is a festival, and at the festival he gets to have sex with any woman he wants, even his own mother, a young virgin or another man’s wife, but he only gets to rampage like this for 24 hours. Any child born of these encounters is considered to be blessed. They supposedly quit practicing this custom recently due to bad publicity, but many think that they still practice it in secret.

Definitely one of the world’s greatest customs!

A beautiful Kalash woman who eloped with a man recently to get married. Although many times the couple who do this are single, in quite a few cases a married woman can elope with another man. The new husband just has to pay double the bride price. The cuckold just takes it all in stride, or at least he doesn’t get homicidal. It’s amazing the kind of rights women have in this group. Too bad so many of them convert out to Pakistani Islam where women are pretty much chattel.

This woman obviously resembles some European phenotype, but I don’t know my European racial types a la Coon, etc, very well. I almost want to say Norwegian?

The Kalash are coming under pressure from radical Islamists recently and several villages have been converted by force (I thought Muslims never do this!) Also radical mullahs incite local Muslims to go into Kalash villages and smash their religious idols.

A Kalash shamaness or female shaman. It is amazing that in this misogynistic part of the world that women are granted such a high religious position. Druze women in Lebanon and Syria are also allowed to become high religious leaders. The costume is amazing. Shamans are one of the oldest aspects of human religions, characteristic of animist type religions.

As the world is full of spirits (or Gods in a polytheistic world) the shaman works via human psychology to manipulate the spirit world to the benefit of the patient. It is hard to say how much there is to it, but areas of the world where humans have been practicing this sort of thing for a long time can do some pretty amazing things.

There are reports out of the South Seas that whole villages would get together to cast evil spells on leaders of neighboring islands. In a number of cases, the leader died soon afterward. The cause of death was typically massive and multiple organ failure. It was as if he simply exploded inside. There are persistent reports that saying a prayer over water or a meal makes it taste better.

There are many reports of dying people communicating over long distances with loved ones just before they die.

And there are also many reports of people sensing nearby tragedies as they are occurring. All of this needs to be investigated by science but there are good reasons to think that this sort of thing is compatible with modern science, especially particle physics where we are all part of each other.

I am also convinced that clairvoyance and sharing of hallucinations are possible, having experienced both of these things. Of course, we were tripping on LSD-like woodrose seeds at the time, but still.

Pacific Islanders and Amerindians were also added, as there is good evidence that these two groups form valid major groupings. Cavalli-Sforza’s eight-race theory listed Amerindians and a group he called Pacific Islanders that apparently also included Papuans.

Rosenberg et al’s six-race grouping also included Amerindians and a group he called Melanesians, consisting of Papuans and Melanesians. Since other evidence indicates significant distance between Papuans and Melanesians and Papuans and Pacific Islanders in general, I decided to leave Papuans as a separate major group.

Yet a good case can be made to split off Polynesians, Micronesians and Melanesians in a compact grouping. The creation of the Polynesians is a result of the spread of the Lapita culture, one of the world’s greatest sea journeys undertaken by Austronesian mariners, Taiwanese aborigines (Chinese people) who left Taiwan 1000’s of years ago to settle Island SE Asia. First they went to the Philippines, then to Indonesia.

From Central Indonesia, they left and settled coastal New Guinea, bringing an advanced culture to New Guinea. They also may have settled as far east as the Solomons.

The Trobriand and Solomon Islands are said to be one of the centers for Proto-Papuan culture in the region, and may have been settled as long ago as 35,000 years ago.

Later, a new wave of Austronesians came out of Central Indonesia (near the Wallace Line) and moved through Melanesia, picking up only a few Melanesian genes along the way. These mariners then went off to populate the entirety of Polynesia in the past 2000 years.

So, according to this theory, Polynesians are mostly Chinese (Taiwanese aborigines) with some Melanesian in them.

One interesting question is why the Polynesians got so huge. First of all, they are not all huge. I have taught a lot of these people in the LA schools and there are a variety of phenotypes, including one that is short and thin.

One theory is that the journey to populate Polynesia was so harsh that only the strongest survived and the weakest died. It may have been necessary to eat the dead for the survivors to go on. Perhaps they fought to the death for scarce resources. Anyway, on many Polynesian islands an extremely brutal culture of continuous, potentially genocidal warfare was the norm and this was probably the world center for cannibalism.

Finally, the last wave to move out was the Micronesians. This group consisted of Polynesians who moved out of Polynesia to populate Micronesia. According to the theory above, they are mostly Chinese (Taiwanese) with only a small amount of Melanesian in them.

The suggestion above was that both the Polynesians and the Melanesians are mostly-Chinese (Taiwanese) people. That conclusion is based on a recent paper that has not yet been widely distributed.

However, another paper suggests that the major Haplogroups in Polynesians – C and F – are indigenous to the region, meaning they are related to the original Melanesian and Papuan settlers.

That paper, and many others, suggests that Micronesians and Polynesians are about 5

Interestingly, the vast majority of the Chinese genes in Melanesians and Polynesians seem to have come from one group of Taiwanese aborigines – the Ami.

A group called the Alor in far eastern Indonesia clusters with Melanesians and a group called the Toba Batak of northern Sumatra in Indonesia clusters with Micronesians.

Alor of far Eastern Indonesia after a major disaster. They are Melanesians who speak Papuan languages. The languages are endangered and very poorly documented. There is a major undertaking underway right now to at least document these languages.

Some very interesting looking Alor women. Although they are Melanesians, they look a bit different from many other Melanesians. The woman on the left has some pretty Asian looking eyes. This may be because they speak an Austronesian language. Melanesians who speak an Austronesian language have some Chinese (Taiwanese) genes, but never more than 2

Both White Nationalist and Afrocentrist varieties of ethnic nationalist idiots keep trying to insist that these folks are either Black or closely related to Blacks.

These people are some of the furthest away from Africans on the planet. You can’t go by phenotype or appearance or even behavior. None of that means much. You have to go by genes. As these people were some of the first to split off from Africans, they have been evolving away from them for the longest. Whites are much closer to Blacks than these Melanesians.

An Alor man who is working with a linguistic team that is documenting Alor languages. Alor is a major diving site for commercial recreational diving crews. The water is still nice and clear here and the coral reefs are still intact. The fish population is good too as there are not a lot of people living in this part of Indonesia. The famous Komodo Dragon lives near here on Komodo Island in far eastern Indonesia.

The reason these people, who are much less related to Black people than I am, are always called Black, is due to the color of their skin! But that has nothing to do with anything. A bobcat and coyote are similarly colored too. Truth is that if you evolved in the areas of the Earth with the highest UV radiation, you often ended up with very dark skin, which does resemble that of Africans.

But this is just convergent evolution and has nothing to do with relatedness. This guy is a lot more closely related to Chinese than to Black people. The Alor do seem to have about 2

The Toba Batak of Northern Sumatra. The guys in this photo actually do look Micronesian – I have seen photos of Micronesians. How these Micronesians ended up on the north coast of Sumatra is news to me. The Toba Batak live west of Medan in the area around Lake Toba, especially on Samosir Island. Their elaborately carved wooden houses are a popular tourist attraction.

A photo of a Toba Batak family. I had a hard time finding quality pics of the Toba Batak. You can see that they are extremely dark – much darker than most people living in this area. Also I think that some Micronesians may have wavy hair like that. The Toba Batak are Micronesians who somehow ended up in northern Sumatra.

This shows that Indonesians are not any particular race, although most are more general SE Asian types fairly close to Filipinos.

Classification of races is a tricky business. In my post, I went by genetic distance alone and not phenotype, culture, behavior, etc. I also treated very gingerly all contributions by ethnic nationalists, who are known to be profoundly dishonest about this stuff. Despite PC nonsense, there clearly are races of mankind. In fact, my classification scheme posits 87 minor races, and it is still undergoing revision.

References

Capelli, C.; Wilson, J. F.; Richards, M.; Stumpf, M. P. H.; Gratrix, F.; Oppenheimer, S.; Underhill, P.; Pascali, V.L.; Ko, T. M.; and Goldstein, D. B. (2001). “A Predominantly Indigenous Paternal Heritage for the Austronesian-Speaking Peoples of Insular Southeast Asia and Oceania”. American Journal of Human Genetics 68:432-443.

Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., P. Menozzi, A. Piazza. 1994. The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Jablonski, N. and Chaplin, G. (2000) “The Evolution of Human Skin Coloration”. Journal of Human Evolution.

Repost: The Major and Minor Races of Mankind

The Major and Minor Races of Mankind

Repost from the old site that was shut down. This post is very long and complicated – it runs to 83 pages – but I have tried to make it as easy to understand as possible. Please feel free to dip into it at your leisure. Updated January 28, 2013. Regularly updated.

As you can see by the title, this is an awfully ambitious post. Those who believe that race does not exist, or that Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid and Australoid are outdated terms of no use, might as well bail out right now and save yourself the exasperation.

Recent prior attempts include the usual Mongoloid – Caucasoid – Negroid Three Race Theory, which is discussed below. The main problems with this theory are twofold: that it fails to classify a group called Australoids and that it fails to note the huge split between SE Asians and NE Asians.

From Cavalli-Sforza’s recent work comes an eight-race theory: European Caucasoids, South Asian and North African Caucasoids, Northeast Asian Mongoloids, Southeast Asians extending from Thailand to Indonesia and the Philippines, Pacific Islanders, Australian Aborigines, Negroids and American Indians.

This is not bad, but I would argue that there is no reason to put both Arabs/Berbers and South Indians in one race (see Cavalli-Sforza’s own map below). Genetically, they are quite distant.

From my World Book Encyclopedia 1990 comes a nine-race theory: Negroids, Caucasians, Asians, Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians, Aborigines, South Indians and Amerindians. To this I recently added three more very distinct groups, Khoisan (Bushmen), Pygmies and Negritos, to come up with 12 races.

But we can go further than this. If Polynesians and Melanesians are widely regarded as separate races, we should be able to distinguish races based on any other major grouping at least as genetically distant as Polynesians and Melanesians. When I finally found two hapmaps showing the distance between Polynesians and Melanesians, I got the idea for a new race theory based on genetic distance alone.

This theory in most cases is based only on genetic distance, and not physical appearance of physical anthropology. In a few cases, races were grouped into a major group based on appearance – for instance, genetically, Chukchis are in the Caucasian square below, yet they look anything but Caucasian.

Though many distinguish Melanesians and Papuans, Capelli’s (see below) genetic analysis puts them in one race. But see Figures 1-4 below which clearly put them in separate groups. Also, Melanesian and Papuan teeth are very different from each other.

Some people are likely to be upset by this theory.

Surely the Japanese will not be happy to learn that they are virtually identical to the despised Koreans. White Nationalists will not be happy to learn that Turks, Jews, Kurds and Iranians are included in the European race and that they cannot include South Indians with Australoids.

NE Asians and ignorant amateur anthropologists will be unhappy to learn that there is no reason to lump SE Asians with Australoids and that the hated Filipinos (which some refer to as the “niggers of Asia”) are very close to the high-IQ, high-achieving Southern Chinese and the Filipinos haven’t a trace of Negrito in them.

It is standard of NE Asian racialists and amateur anthropologists on the Net to say that the Filipinos are heavily-Negrito.

There are traces of Australoid (Papuan) genes in the Malay, some Indonesians, the Southern Thai and the Coastal Vietnamese, but these admixtures are not large, and the Filipinos haven’t any observable Australoid traces.

Filipinos are closer to Southern Chinese than any other race below, although they are also close to the Aeta Negritos. This is because the Aeta and Ati Negritos are not Australoids genetically but instead are related to SE Asians. Anthropomorphically, they are Australoids.

There is also a more substantial Melanesian component in many Indonesians (except those in Western Indonesia), but there is In fact, as Figures 1-3 below indicate, they are Asians and are most closely related to other Pacific Islanders. In fact, the distance between SE Asians and Australoids is greater than the distance between NE Asians and Caucasians.

Afrocentrists will be unhappy to learn that various dark folks like South Asians, Melanesians, Papuans and Negritos cannot be considered to be “Black” by any sane definition of the word.

This theory creates nine major races and 113 minor races. It is a work in progress.

Most of this document comes from Cavalli-Sforza’s haplogroup gene map of the human race below.

Figure 1: Cavalli-Sforza’s Principal Coordinate (PC) autosomal DNA haplogroup gene mappings of major human ethnic and racial groups. There are differences between a PC mapping and the tree mappings below.Much of the racial grouping below is based on this map – on genetic distance between groups, not on superficial resemblances between groups. The upper left square can be called NE Asian. The lower left square can be called SE Asian. The upper right square can be called Caucasian. The lower right square can be called African.Figure 2: Another Cavalli-Sforza map showing general genetic distance, with tremendous overlap with the map above. This map clearly separates out Papuans and Melanesians and also Filipinos and Thais. There is some confusion here regarding the placement of Northern Turkics with Amerindians and whether NW Amerindians should be cleaved off into a separate race.

This map is actually interesting because it implies that there are six major races of humans – not three – NE Asians, SE Asians, Oceanians (Australoids), Pacific Islanders, Caucasians and Africans. As you can see, the distance between NE Asians and SE Asians and between SE Asians and Pacific Islanders is greater than that between NE Asians and Caucasians. SE Asia is clearly an area of profound genetic diversity.

Figure 3: Yet another map, in this case a genetic tree. Once again, Papuans must be cleaved from Melanesians and Thai, and Chinese are clearly separated. This is the first tree that shows the Northern Chinese, and it seems clear it wants to put them with the Koreans and Japanese. This map shows five major races – Caucasians, NE Asians, SE Asians, Africans, Papuans and Aborigines.

Figure 4: More from Cavalli-Sforza showing genetic distance. This was apparently used to map one or both of the maps above. Based on this, I split the Thai off from the Filipinos. This map also shows that Aborigines are most closely related first to Mongolians and Siberians and second to Japanese and Koreans.

I usually wanted about 150 points difference to split off into a separate race, but in some cases I split off closer groups if they were distinguished somewhere else, like in any combination of Figs. 1, 2 or 3. You need to click on it to read it properly.

The initial impulse for this post was this paper in the American Journal of Human Genetics, A Predominantly Indigenous Paternal Heritage for the Austronesian-Speaking Peoples of Insular Southeast Asia and Oceania (Capelli et al 2001). If you look at Table 4 in Capelli, you can see that they carefully delineate out Polynesian and Melanesian groups based on Haplogroup mapping.

Since many scholars of race include both Melanesians and Polynesians as separate races, this table serves to delineate what the proper genetic distance between genetic groups needs to be in order for them to be separate races.

Based on Polynesians and Melanesians as separate races in Table 4 in Capelli, I was able to sort out four more groups in that table, if only to get some idea of the distances between racial groups.

First, an Indonesian Race was separated out, including all but the easternmost island groups such as the Alor that go into Melanesian. Javanese and Sarawak were later included based on Figure 5. Later, based again on Figure 5, the Toraja and Mentawi were separated out, each into their own groups. The Toraja are an ancient farming group in South Sulawesi. The Mentawi are the indigenous peoples of the Mentawi Islands west of Sumatra. They still live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

A Lesser Sunda Race was also split out (see Figure 5), but the Alor were not covered, as they lumped more with Melanesians. The Lesser Sunda Race included the Lembata, the Lamaholot, the Manggarai and the Kambera. These people have mixed Indonesian and Melanesian ancestry. The Lembata and Lamaholot live on Lomblen Island east of Flores Island. The Kembara live on Sumba Island and the Manggarai live in the West of Flores Island.

Second, a Filipino-Ami Race, composed of Filipinos and the Ami, a Taiwanese aborigine group (the Filipinos are almost genetically identical to the Ami and are quite close to the Southern Chinese – see Figure 1 in Capelli) was split off.

Third, a South Chinese Race consisting of unknown groups that was later expanded below was split off.

Based on the distances between these clearly differentiated races in Capelli, I was able to plot plot racial distances in Figure 1 above to infer major and minor races based on distance.

All of the groups created via Capelli were then further chopped up based on Cavalli-Sforza here (p. 234-235). An Indonesian Race consisting of Sulawesi, Borneo and Lesser Sunda survived the cut, while the Alor of Lesser Sunda went into Melanesians. Malays themselves are distinct enough to create a Malay race.

The proto-Malay or Temuan, who have some of the most ancient genes on Earth of all of the Out of African peoples, are an ancient aboriginal group in Malaysia. They have an extremely diverse genetic signature (See Figure 5), enough to split off a category all of their own.

The Bidayuh or Land Dayaks are the indigenous peoples of Sarawak. Their genetics are wildly divergent (Figure 5), as we might expect from such an ancient people, hence, they form their own stock.

Some comments are in order.

Although separate NE Asian and SE Asian Major Races were created in order to account for both the vast differences between NE and SE Asians (the distance between NE and SE Asians is greater than the distance between Caucasians and NE Asians) it should still be noted that at a deep level, this is clearly one race.

The Gilyak and Ainu are leftovers from the original Proto-Northeast Asians. The Proto-Northeast Asian homeland was around Lake Baikal maybe 35,000 years ago. The Ainu themselves may go back 18,000 years to the Jomons, who arrived from Thailand. These people resembled Australoids.

In Figure 1 above, Northern Turkic forms a clear race with various Amerindians, yet in Figure 4, they seem to be quite distant. The Buryat have also been linked to Amerindians, even though anthropologically, they are linked to Mongolians and genetically they are close to Koreans.

The North Turkics are closest to the Northern Chinese and the Nepalese, both of which were split off into separate groups. The Manchu and Qiang were added to the Northern Han based on genetics for the Manchu and the fact that the Qiang have an origin in the north. The Yunnan Han, a southern group, oddly cluster with Northern Chinese, as do the Hui.

The Oroqen, a Siberian Tungusic tribe in northeast China that is genetically very divergent, was split off into its own group.

The Nepalese, consisting of Nepalis and Newaris, are genetically Asians, though they resemble Caucasians. They pretty much straddle the line between Caucasians and Asians. A lot of groups close to them – Turkics, Mongols, Northern Chinese, and Altaics, straddle the line between Caucasian and Asian.

Nepalis are closely related to South Indians. They are also close to Central Asians. The Central Asian Race includes the Kirghiz, Karalkalpaks, Uzbeks, Turkmen and possibly others. Although they are mixed Caucasian-Mongoloid people, genetic analysis shows that they can be included with Asians. However, other analysis (Table 2) shows that they are best placed in with Caucasians, though only barely.

Others, such as Kazakhs, are closer to Tuvans and also Mongolians (Table 2). The Kazakhs were placed into a Mongolian Race, somewhat arbitrarily.

The Sherpas were then further split off and placed in with the Yakut (p. 231). All of these splits were based on this data (p. 229). The Tuva were given a separate race based on data showing them splitting away from the Yakut-Sherpas (p. 229)

Northeastern Indians were put into the Mon-Khmer Race somewhat arbitrarily, since this is who they cluster with. There was some confusion. In one paper, the Naga, Apatani, Nishi and Nemang cluster with the Mon-Khmer, and the Adi go in with Tibetans.

The situation is somewhat contradicted by this Y-DNA graph (Reddy 2007), which puts the Apatani, Nishi and Adi, along with the Tripuri, Jamatia, Mog and Chakma, in a single Indian Tibeto-Burman Race. Because of this cluster, and because this group tends to separate somewhat from General Tibetan, I created an Indian Tibeto-Burman Race.

Note that the Tibeto-Burman Tujia, Yizu and Shan cluster away from Indian Tibeto-Burman to some extent. The Mizo and Yizu, Indian Tibeto-Burman groups, cluster more with General Tibetan. However, the Mizo are far enough away from the rest of General Tibetan to warrant their own stock (chart). The Garo also cluster with General Tibetan on Y-DNA, but on Mt-DNA, they are very different (chart) (Reddy 2007).

A group of the Mundas was split off as a Meghalaya Race on the basis of their differentiation on MtDNA (chart) (Reddy 2007). Some Indian Tibeto-Burman groups such as the Bai and the Pnar were included. This race includes the War Jantia, Bhoi, Maram, War Khasi, Kynriam, Nishi, Pnar and Bai. All of these groups are found in Meghalaya or over the border into China.

A group consisting of the Santhal, Naga, Munda, Kurmi and Sudra were split off from this group due to their dramatic difference on MtDNA (chart). This group also lives in NE India.

There is a group of Indo-European speakers in NE India that can be differentiated from the rest of the groups on Mt-DNA. This NE India Indo-European Race consists of the Mahishya, Bagdi, Gaud, Tanti and  Lodha.

The Mon-Khmer are close enough to Thai and Southern Chinese in Fig. 4 to be included with the Tai, but they were split off due to the obvious distance in Fig. 1. The Mon-Khmer, Southern Chinese and Thai groups are clearly all closely related.

The Zhuang were split off from Mon-Khmer into a Munda Race on the basis of this autosomal DNA table (p. 235) (Cavalli-Sforza 1994). The The Austroasiatic Race consists of the Mon, Zhuang, She, Santhal, Ho and Lyngngam. Most of these groups are found in NE India, but the Mon are in Burma. Most speak Austroasiatic languages, but a some speak Tibeto-Burman or even Indo-European languages. The Nongtrai group with this race in Y-DNA (chart) but not on MtDNA (chart), where they may well form their own group.

The Zhuang are a group in Southern China. They left Central China for Southern China 5000 yrs ago. This group was originally thought to be part of the proto-Tai group in Southern China that later moved down into SE Asia and gave rise not only to the Thai, but also helped form many other SE Asian groups.

At the time of the split from proto-Tai to Tai, the Zhuang went to Guangxi Province and the Tai went to Yunnan. In 1200, the Tai moved down into Indochina and mixed with local groups, becoming the Thai, Lao and Shan.

The Senoi are an ancient group in Malaysia dating back about 4,000-8,000 years. From the close genetic relationship, it seems that the Senoi may have split off from the proto-Zhuang or an earlier group soon after the group left Northern China for Southern China. The Santhal, Ho and Shompen may also have been early split-offs.

The Shompen at least are thought to be a very old group. Originally it was thought that they were remnants of the early people (Negritos) who settled the area, but further research indicated that they are an Austroasiatic group, albeit an ancient one.

Although there is much controversy about the origins of the Senoi (Are they Negritos?) a variety of points of inquiry converge on the notion that they are related to SE Asians.

The Senoi are Veddoids, an ancient group with possible links to the Negritos and the original settlers of Asia 70,000 years ago. There is fascinating evidence for this as Senoi skulls cluster with skulls from the Andaman Islands, Coastal New Guinea and Tamils. Andaman Islanders are Negritos, the New Guinea population is Melanesian and the Tamils are thought to be Veddoid.

The Senoi speak an Austroasiatic language and are also thought to be related to the Vietnamese and the Khmer. Senoi teeth resemble SE Asian and Polynesian teeth. It is thought that the Senoi came down from Southern China and bred in heavily with the Negrito Semang in Malaysia. The Senoi have wavy hair like most Veddoids, though some have straight hair and a few have woolly hair like Negritos.

I recently split the Greater Andamanese and the Onge into two separate major races each based on new data showing that they are profoundly different from all other humans. Whether or not they get separate major races of their own each is open to debate and is determined by the depth of their differences.

However, the data does show that they are each completely separate branches on the human tree. As the Andaman Islanders were the first people to split off after we left Africa and they have been evolving for ~70,000 years in isolation, it figures that they would be extremely different.

I also decided to split Australoids into a macro race alongside Caucasians, Africans and Asians due to charts showing that they are extremely different from all other humans. This group would include for now Papuans, Aborigines and Andaman Islanders.

The Tungus, a group of mostly reindeer-herding tribes, including the Even and the Evenki, were given a separate group based on this map (p. 227). The Evenki are also close to various Tibetan groups, because these Tibetan groups came from NE Asia also.

Amazingly, the Yenisien (of which Ket is the last surviving member) Language Family has now (in 2004) been conclusively tied to the Amerindian Na-Dene Language Family, the first conclusive linking of a New and Old World language family. Even though the Ket presently reside quite a bit to the north of the Altai region where most Amerindians came from, the Ket used to live down near the Altai thousands of years ago.

Northern Turkics include such groups as the Altai, Hazara, Shor, Tofalar, Uighurs, Chelkan, Soyot, Kumandin, Tuva and Teleut. They are located around the Altai Mountains where China, Mongolia and Russia all come together. This is where most of the Amerindians came from.

Evidence for including the Hazara, who speak a language related to Persian, in the Northern Turkic group is a chart that shows the Hazara clustering with the Uighur.

Malay Negritos (the Semang) were given a separate race based on a recent study finding them highly differentiated from other Asian populations. The Jehai and Kensui are related Negrito groups in Malaysia (Figure 5).

Though Cavalli-Sforza includes Berbers barely into the African square, I include them with Caucasians due to their greater resemblance to Caucasians than African, and also due to genetic analyzes that show that they have little Black in them. However, some Berbers are clearly African. Analyses of the more-Caucasian Berbers find that, across the board, they are on average Tuaregs were given separate races because they are clearly separate from Berbers and all of the African groups in Fig. 1.

However, Tuaregs do cluster (p. 169) with Algerians and Bejas. Since Algerians are Caucasian and most Tuaregs are Africans (though they vary considerably), I had to separate them into major races based on appearance. This is one of those cases where genes flies in the face of physical anthropology.

Bejas are a mixed-race people living in northeastern Africa and speaking a Cushitic language. They look like Ethiopians. Ethiopians are about 5

Similarly, Nubians are grouped (p. 169) in with the Caucasian Berbers, although most people consider them to be Black people. With examples like this, you can see why Fig. 1 has Berbers on the border of African and Caucasian.

Figure 1 also puts the Chukchi in the Caucasian square, though they clearly resemble Asians. I lump them in with Asians due to their obvious resemblance to Asians. I included Aleuts with Chukchis due to a recent paper showing a linkage.

Siberian Eskimos were included for the same reason. The entire group was called the Beringian Race. The Koryaks were split into a separate group due to Cavalli-Sforza’s data. The Itelmen were later added to the Koryaks due to evidence showing that they are related. Both were combined into a Paleosiberian Race. The Reindeer Chukchi, apparently a more Siberian group, was split off due to its great (p. 228) genetic distance from other groups.

The Uralic Race was split into a Siberian Uralic Race including the Samoyed, Ket and Nentsy subgroups (p. 227). The Nganasan are an outlier (p. 229) in this group, and there was barely enough evidence to split them into a separate group.

Northern Na-Dene speakers were split from the North American Eskimos whom they resemble (p. 323), on the basis of this tree (p. 227). Similarly, Ge and Tucanoan (linguistic groups) Amerindians were split off from the rest due to great distance (p. 322) between them and the others.

A Fuegian Amerindian Race was created based on evidence that they exhibit extreme genetic differences with all other Amerindians. They are probably the ancestors of the original peopling of the Americas.

The Nootka, or Nuuchahnulth, were also split off due to the finding of a fifth major haplogroup lineage (p. 1166) in them in addition to the main four lineages – A-D – usually found in Amerindians. This line links back to ancient Amerindian remains and goes back to Mongolia.

I started out with a General Amerindian Race, but I decided to split it into four races – Northwest American, Northern, Central and Southern, based on Figure 2. It is true that I could not make these splits on the basis of Figure 1 or the genetic distance charts, but as most serious splits on Figure 2 went into separate races, I decided to split the Amerinds in the same manner.

Further, the Amerinds have some of the greatest internal genetic distances of any geographical group, far more, for instance, than the Europeans and Iranians, so the splitting seemed valid.

South Indians are included with Caucasians based on a general consensus that these are an ancient group of Caucasians. The reason being their resemblance in facial and body structure to Caucasians. In addition, Figure 1 clearly puts them in the Caucasian square, and the other three figures clearly show that they are most closely related to Caucasians.

Although genetic studies say that South Indians are all one race and there is good reason to believe this, Figure 1 delineates South Indians and North Indians into separate groups, though there is a clear transition from one to the other. Figures 2 and 3 reiterate the distinction between South and North Indians.

There is data linking Vietnamese genetically with Cantonese. Vietnamese genetics are very complex and it is all being worked out. They are clearly an Austronesian-Tai mix with heavy S. Chinese admixture and some undetermined amount of Khmer and Cham mixed in. Vietnamese does not include the Montagnards, who are the indigenous people and seem to be related to Negritos.

There is good evidence also linking the Vietnamese and related groups to the Tai, however, there seems to be better evidence linking to them to a small group of mostly Mon-Khmer speakers. The Deang or Paluang,  the Jinuo and the Blang lump together with the Vietnamese (Lĭ 2006). The Mon-Khmer speaking Deang live in Yunnan, Burma and Thailand,  the Tibeto-Burman speaking Jinuo live in Yunnan and the Blang also live in Yunnan. So the closest living relatives to the Vietnamese people are in Yunnan, and next in Burma and Thailand.

Since there is quite a bit more distance between Filipinos and Thais than between Filipinos and Southern Chinese, I split off Thais into a separate race. I also kept the Filipino-Ami Race above, but added the Guangdong Han (Guangdonren in Chinese) to the group based on evidence that they are linked to the Ami.

Based on Fig. 5, I further refined the Filipino portion of this group into Tagalog, Visaya and Ilocano speakers, while splitting off the Manobo into a separate group, as they are divergent (Fig. 5). Tagalogs are an ethnic group who live mostly in Luzon and Oriental Mindoro, while Visayan languages are spoken in the Visayas region in the central Philippines, encompassing the islands of Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, Samar and Palawan. Ilocano speakers are located in the far north of Luzon.

A race called the Southeast China Race was created based on a tight clustering of the Minnan Nan, Hakka, and overseas Chinese of Singapore and Thailand. Based on Figure 5, the Cantonese Han (outside of Hong Kong) were added to this race.

A separate Taiwanese Aborigine Race was split off, based on Cavalli-Sforza’s work. This group, best seen as the principal Taiwanese Aborigine Race, consists of the Atayal, Bunun and Yami. Another Taiwanese Aborigine group, the Paiwan, was split into an Island SE Asian Race based on Cavalli-Sforza. Interestingly, the Paiwan, Atayal and Yami are also somewhat close to the Tai Race (see below).

The Taiwanese Aborigines have an interesting background, and their prehistory is in need of further research.

In addition to the Thais proper, I also include other Tai groups such as the Tai Lue, Tai Kern, Tai Yong and Tai Yuan on the basis of Figure 5. All are found in Thailand. Many groups are related to the Thais. They are the Lao, Shan, Dai, Lahu, Aini and Naxi. The Lahu, Dai and Aini were included on the basis of this report. All of them are found in Yunnan. This group is found in Southern China (especially Yunnan), Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Burma. The Buyei are also related to the Thai.

Two aboriginal groups of Thailand are so different as to warrant a separate stock each.

The Htin, or Mal, are ancient aborigines of Thailand speaking a Khmuic language. In Figure 5, they are different enough to constitute their own stock.

The Mlabri are a very strange group of hunter-gatherers in Thailand who are very poorly understood. They live very primitive lives. Their genetics is wildly diverse and suggests that they were founded from a small stock only 800 years ago or so. That is, they went through a genetic bottleneck. Some think that they are former farmers who went back to land for some reason. They are one of the most genetically wildly diverse people in Asia (see Figure 5).

Although Fig. 4 suggests that Southern Chinese and the Thai should be grouped together, Figs. 1-3 suggest otherwise. Clearly, the two groups are very close, but I decided to break Southern Chinese off due to the other figures above, especially Figure 1, that suggest they are a separate grouping.

I lumped a number of groups into a Southern Chinese Race, including the Dong, Yi and the Han living in Henan Province, China, based on evidence that they form a group with the Southern Chinese. These groups are found in the Southern Chinese provinces, including Henan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Guizhou, Hainan and Fujian.

I created a Hmong-Mien Race for the Hmong and the Mien, since, while they are close to the Southern Chinese Race, they are different enough to merit their own category (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: Click to enlarge. A good chart of many of the Asian races, showing how well genes and language line up.

The Li is a genetically divergent Chinese ethnic group that forms it’s own outlier between the Southern and Northern Chinese. However, it trends more towards Southern Chinese. They also link up very closely to the Khmer. The suggestion here is that the ancestors of the Khmer were the Li.

What we are learning about Negritos is that instead of forming a distant group, they are often closest to the people they are living around. So the Philippine Negritos (Aeta) are closest to other Filipinos, and the Veddas are closest to other South Asians.

The Mamanwa, a Negrito group on Mindanao Island in the Philippines, are highly divergent from the rest of the Philippine Negritos. The Mamanwa are thought to be remnants of the original Negrito population in the Philippines.

The Palau, a Micronesian group, curiously cluster with Aeta and Agta Negritos, indicating that they may be the remains of the original settlers of SE Asia. The Agta and Aeta cluster together also (Fig. 5). The Aeta and Agta Negritos both live in mountainous areas of Luzon.

The Iraya Mangyans of the Philippines are also quite different, but they are close to the Ati Negritos, also of the Philippines (Fig. 5). The Ati live on Panay Island, in the Visayas Group. The Iraya are a Mangyan group living on Mindoro Island. The Mangyans are not Negritos, but they are still an indigenous group in the Philippines and are different from most Filipinos.

The Toba Batak, a tribe in northern Sumatra, curiously clusters with the Kanaka and Yap Micronesians. On Figure 5, the Karo Batak line up with the Toba Batak. They may be leftovers of the original Melanesian-Polynesian mix that populated Micronesia. The Kanaka is an old name for a The Veddas are clearly related to the Negritos as one of the sole remaining leftovers of the group that left Africa 70,000 years ago and populated all of Asia. There are interesting links between them and the Toala of Southern Sulawesi and the Senoi of Malaysia. Nevertheless, almost all Veddas except the Kerala Kadar cluster with the South Indian Race.

North Indians include the Punjabis, Central Indic, Punjabi Brahmins, Rajputs, Vania Soni, Mumbai Brahmins, Jats, Kerala Brahmins, Pakistanis and Koli.

South Indians include the Munda, Bhil, Maratha, Rajbanshi, Oraon, Parji, Kolami-Naiki, Chenchu-Reddi, Konda, Kolya, West Bengal Brahmins, Parsi and Gonds. Although many of these groups are thought to be related to Veddas or Negritos and part of the original people of India, they now resemble other South Indians.

Kerala Kadar are a highly diverse Vedda group who are probably the ancestors of the original people of India. They live in the forests of Kerala and resemble Australoids.

The Gurkha and Tharu are two highly diverse groups in Nepal. In Figure 5, the Ladakhi are close to them, so a Himalayan Race was created to encompass them.

The Kanet live in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat and probably have some Tibetan mixture. The inclusion of the Uttar Pradesh Brahmin with these people in unexplained.

The Nicobarese and the Senoi cluster with the Munda Race on Y-DNA, but on Mt-DNA, they are extremely different (chart here) (Reddy 2007), which is suggested by their ancient origins. Each got a separate race due to their extreme divergence.

The Khoisan were divided into three groups, the San, Khoi and Hadza. The Khoi are probably a creation of intermarriage between SW Bantus and San. The Hadza are an ancient group in Kenya and Ethiopia. The San form a separate race with the Somalis.

The Sandawe are another Khoisan group that was also divergent, but not enough to form a separate group, on the table here (p. 176), but was split off due to its divergence on the tree here (p. 169) .

The Sara are a a very divergent Nilotic group from Chad, who form a race with Biaka Pygmies from Central African Republic. All of the African splits are from here (p. 169).

The Funji, a Nilo-Saharan group, was both split off due to their diversity (p. 169). The Bedik, a small group of 5,000 in Senegal, are also divergent. Though they are not divergent enough to be a race on the distance chart, they are on the PC and tree charts. The Funji, or Gule, live in Sudan on the Blue Nile near the Ethiopian border (p. 170). The Bedik are a small group in Senegal.

Three groups in Senegal, the Peul, Serer (650,000) and Wolof (2 million), were split off into a separate group although they they do not have enough distance in the distance chart to warrant that, similar to the Southern Chinese, Thai and Khmer. However, like these three groups, the Senegalese groups are quite different on the PC Chart and on the tree chart, so they were split off (p. 181-182).

The Peul (700,000) speak Fulani (Peul is just French for Fulani), but are settled African farmers, unlike the more pastoralist Caucasian – Berber group that roams across the Sahel.

Figure 1 appears to divide humanity into four racial squares – Northeast Asian, Southeast Asian, Caucasian and African. Although the difference between SE and NE Asians is deeper than that between Asians and Caucasians, it is clear that this is all one race – the Mongoloids. Inside of that group, all of the Chinese are related.

The homeland of the proto-Asians dates back over 60,000 years and is in northern Vietnam and southern China. We know this because the Vietnamese have the greatest genetic diversity in all of Asia. The split between the NE Asians and the SE Asians is at least 53,000 years deep. There is a Hmong-specific line alone that may date as far back as 26,000 years.

The traditional tripartite system favored today by racial minimalists – Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negroid – is appealing, but I could not reproduce it. As there is as much difference between Asians and Caucasians as between SE Asians and NE Asians, why should I create a Mongoloid Race?

Instead, I split it into nine separate major races. This enabled me to account for the fact that while Australoids are Asians (genetic analysis of various Australoids has proven this), they are definitely an extremely divergent group.

This analysis also recognizes the deep diversity of Australoids – the Aborigines are more distant to Africans than any other race (once again despite physical appearance), due to genetic drift in Australia for millenia.

At first I put Papuans into an Australoid Race with Aborigines, but later I split them off. The distance between Aborigines and Papuans is as great as between Caucasians and Asians, so why lump the two Oceanians together? At the same time, we should recognize that there is a Mongoloid super-group that does encompass Aborigines, Papuans and both NE and SE Asians.

Figure 1 puts Aborigines barely into the NE Asian square, Papuans on the line between SE and NE Asians and Melanesians further down in the SE Asian square. Figure 4 shows that Aborigines they are mostly closely related first to Mongolians and Siberians and next to Japanese and Koreans. This is due to the Ainu substructure in these groups.

I also reluctantly split off the Kalash into a separate major race, inside of Caucasians, based on a stunning paper that differentiated the Kalash among groups such as Africans, East Asians, Oceanians, etc.

Based on Cavalli-Sforza’s six-race theory above in part, I split off Amerindians into a separate race inside of Asians. I also split off Pacific Islanders into a group called Oceanians, but contra Cavalli-Sforza, I did not include Papuans with the rest of the Pacific Islanders.

My Pacific Islander group includes Melanesians, Micronesians and Polynesians. Note that one group of Indonesians is included in each of the Melanesian and Micronesian subgroups. Therefore, there is no Indonesian race per se, as Indonesians encompass a variety of groups, although most can be put into a few SE Asian minor races.

That is based on genes. If you go by anthropometrics, you can get a group called Australoids that includes Negritos, Melanesians, the Ainu, Papuans, Aborigines, the Senoi, Tamils and Fuegian Amerindians.

The Andaman Islands Negritos are also profoundly different from other groups, and are said to have the “purest” genetic profile of any group, once again due to genetic drift and lack of outside inputs. Papuans, Melanesians and Negritos are also extremely distant from Africans, once again despite physical appearances.

The Khoisan (San and Bushmen) in Africa are the oldest race on Earth based on genetic signatures dating back 53,000 years, and this is what the original humans who came out of Africa 70,000 years ago may have looked like.

The various Negrito groups, the Aborigines and possibly the Papuans are also very ancient.

Mongoloids as we now know them are only 9,000 years old – previous groups in Asia looked more like Australoids – of which the Ainu and Gilyak are the last remaining descendants.

Australoid types and their ancestors are the original peoples of India , Burma, ThailandThe Bantu (or the Africans that we are familiar with) may go back much further – it has been up to 40,000 years since they split off from the Pygmies. There is a suggestion that they were distinguishable from Khoisan (Bushmen) even 100,000 years ago (p. 160). The ancestors of all Africans seem to have come from West Africa at least 35,000 years ago (p. 160).

Amerindians at the tip of South America are very different in head shape than the rest of the Amerindians – looking more like Australoids – and their genetics is also profoundly different.

The proto-Caucasian homeland may have been in the Caucasus about 45,000 years ago. Another theory says it was in Central Asia.

The most ancient Europeans are the Saami and an ancient, isolated group of Sardinians. Among Caucasians, the Berber and South Indian Races appear to be very ancient, and both are extremely divergent within the Caucasian group. They may be surviving remnants of the most ancient Caucasians.

The South Indians are actually midway between Caucasians and Asians genetically and are only lumped with Caucasians because this is who they most resemble.

Europeans proper only go back 10,000 years or so, but the Saami (best seen as proto-Europeans) seem to go further back than that.

South Indians have been evolving in considerable isolation for about 15-20,000 years in the subcontinent. Prior to that, they appear to have come from the Middle East. The Berbers of today appear to be continuous with Berbers of up to The rest of the groupings mostly follow from Figure 1. More tables like Table 4 in Capelli would be very helpful in order to tease out more minor races.

A single asterisk indicates considerable genetic difference from related groups, two asterisks indicates a highly divergent group, and three asterisks is a profoundly divergent group. Major races are in red.

Some groups are not represented. I was not able to classify many groups with Negrito or Veddoid affiliations, such as the Tamils of South Asia and the Montagnards of Vietnam.

Mien and Qiang are Northern Chinese tribes, but the Mien have moved to the South lately. I could not find any good genetic data on the Qiang. The Nu were arbitrarily included in the Tibetan Race because they came from Tibet, but I don’t have good genetic data to prove that this is really a single unit. The chart here does not clarify things much.

The Bhutanese, though most closely related to Tibetans, were given their own race based on data showing that they are nevertheless considerably distant from Tibetans.

The Barya are a mixed-race group in Western Eritrea.

The Gilyak or Nivkhi are an ancient tribe living on the border between Korea, Russia and Japan that has ties to the Ainu. Ryukyuan is another name for Okinawan. They were given a separate race based on studies showing them intermediate between the Ainu and modern Japanese.

The Va (or Wa) are an ethnic group in Yunnan and Burma that seems to be distinct from the Northern, Southern and Tibetan Chinese groups. The Va seem to be about equally related to the Northern and Southern Chinese, indicating some sort of a dual origin. The Jingpo, or Karen, another Yunnan group that also occurs in Burma, were included with them based on this paper. The Lawa of Thailand were added to this group based on Figure 5. Interestingly, the languages of the Lawa and Va are also closely related.

A Southern Japanese Race was split off from the Japanese, Ryukuyans and Ainu. This group is made up of Kyushu Island, the southernmost island, and the Kinki region of Honshu, near the city of Kyoto. The Japanese in this area are highly divergent (p. 232).

The European-Iranian Race includes almost all Europeans except the Saami, Basques and Sardinians. The Saami and the Sardinians are very distant and the Basques much less so from the rest of the Europeans.

Although Cavalli-Sforza classes the Basques, Yugoslavs and Greeks as genetic outliers, there was not enough distance between the Yugoslavs and Greeks and other Europeans to split them into a separate group on the basis of genetic distance. Furthermore, the Greeks are clearly in the European group in Fig. 1 – they are quite close to English and Danes in the PC analysis.

However, I did split the Basques off based on their lying outside the European-Iranian cluster on the PC chart in Fig. 1. Most groups that were distinguished as independent units outside of clusters on Fig. 1 were given separate races.

The Greeks are interesting in that, while they are obviously a part of the Europeans on all charts, they are also the only Europeans that are are also close enough to most Middle Easterners to be included in their group. So the Greeks are a link between the European and Middle Eastern groupings inside the Caucasian Race.

The Iranian branch includes Jordanians, Iraqis, Assyrians, Druse, Lebanese, Kurds, Georgians, Caspians, Turks, Jews, and related groups in the area. It was difficult to decide whether to put the Turks in the Iranian subgroup or in the Central Asian subgroup, as they are close to both.

It was also very difficult to decide whether to put the people of the Caucasus, the Kurds, Turks, Caspians and Jews in the Iranian group or the Central Asian group as they cluster with both. I decided on sheer geographic grounds to put them in the Iranian group. The Russian Saami are closer to the Tungus and were included in that group.

Although some Arabs, West Asians and all South Indians were split off, this was somewhat arbitrary. Although they form separate groups on the Fig. 1, the Arabs are closely enough related to various Europeans, including Greeks, to be included with Europeans (Fig. 4). However, the Arabs were not as close as the Iranians.

Likewise, South Indians are close to Iranians, who are in turn close to Greeks and Italians – note that Iranians are also somewhat close to Danes and English (Fig. 4). As the Greeks link Europeans genetically with Middle Easterners, the Iranians link Europeans genetically with India. Arabs and South Indians were only split off due to the distance observable in Fig. 1.

West Asians were also split off due to their divergence. Based on this chart, they seem to be a compact grouping. This group includes the Pashtuns, Brahuis, Balochis, Makranis and Sindhis.

Further research shows that the Tajiks and Hunza, who at first appear to group with the West Asian group above, actually compose two groups divergent enough to be split into 2 different races. The first group is made of the Hunza of the Karokorams, the Bartangi of the Pamir Range and the Roma or Gypsies of Europe. So the Gypsies have a Himalayan origin.

The second group is made up of Tajiks, the Shugnan of the Pamirs, Bukhara Arabs and three groups in India – the Kallar of Kerala, the Sourashtran of Tamil Nadu and Yadhava of various parts of the region.

The Kalash, a strange, ancient, tiny tribe with Caucasian roots in northwest Pakistan in Chitral Province, are so diverse that they could very well form their Since making a macro race out of a tiny ethnic group in Pakistan is absurd, I decided to throw them as a major race subsumed under Caucasians, albeit on the grounds that they are an extremely divergent race. They were classed with Caucasians because there is a general consensus that this is what they are (last two links are racist).

Due to their divergence, Kuwaitis and Arabians – consisting of Saudis, Yemenis and Bedouins – were split off into separate groups.

The are numerous groups that are more or less recent combinations of various groups and do not yet deserve their own racial category.

Hispanics are in general a mixture between Caucasians (typically Iberians) and Amerindians. They have been evolving for a short time and have not had time to differentiate into anything suggesting a race yet (despite nonsense from La Raza demagogues).

There are other Hispanics who are heavily mixed with Blacks, Caucasians and Amerindians. This is especially seen in South America in Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia, and even in Central America and Mexico.

There are large Black-White mixed populations in the West Indies. In Singapore and Hawaii, there are rapidly mixing populations that defy categorization.

This paper is basically just a shot in the dark and is more properly termed a pilot or exploratory study. I welcome evidence-based inputs from any knowledgeable persons who wish to add to this preliminary grouping of the human races, major and minor. All suggestions coming from nationalists of various types, ethnic or otherwise, typically lacking evidence, will probably be rejected outright.

There are 4 macro races of man, 11 major races of man and 115 minor human races of man.

* = significant genetic distance from most other groups

** = major genetic distance from most other groups

*** = extreme genetic distance from most other groups

Asian Macro Race

Northeast Asian Major Race*

Japanese-Korean Race (Japanese – Korean)

Southern Japanese Race (Honshu Kinki – Kyushu)

Ryukyuan Race (Okinawans)

Ainu Race*** (Ainu)

Gilyak Race** (Gilyak)

Northern Chinese Race (Northern Han – Qiang – Manchu – Hui – Yunnan Han)

Oroqen Race (Oroqen)

Sherpa-Yakut Race (Sherpa – Yakut)

Nepalese Race (Nepali – Newari)

Mongolian Race (Mongolian – Inner Mongolian – Buryat – Kazakh)

Northern Turkic Race*** (Dolgan – Altai – Shor – Tofalar – Uighur – Chelkan – Soyot – Kumandin Teleut – Hazara)

Central Asian Race (Kirghiz – Karalkalpak – Uzbek – Turkmen)

Tuva Race (Tuva)

Tungus Race (Even – Evenki – Russian Saami)

Siberian Race

Beringian Race** (Chukchi – Aleut – Siberian Eskimo)

Paleosiberian Race (Koryak – Itelmen)

Reindeer Chukchi Race (Reindeer Chukchi)

General Tibetan Race (Tibetan – Lisu – Nu – Tujia – Akha – Burmese –  Yizu)

Mizo Race (Mizo)

Bhutanese Race (Bhutanese Buddhist)

Siberian Uralic Race (Nentsy – Samoyed – Ket – Mansi – Khanty)

Nganasan Race (Nganasan)

Uralic Race (Komi – Mari)

North American Eskimo Race (Inuit)

Amerindian Major Race*

Northern Na-Dene Race

Northwestern American Amerindian Race

Northern Amerind Race

Central Amerind Race

Southern Amerind Race

Ge Amerindian Race (Ge Language Group)

Tucanoan Amerindian Race (Tucanoan Language Group)

Nootka Amerindian Race (Nuuchahnulth – Makah)

Fuegian Amerindian Race (Ona – Yaghan – Kaweskar – Aonikenk – Alacaluf)

Southeast Asian Major Race*

Southern Chinese Race (Dong – Henan Han – Yi – She – Punu – Naxi)

Hmong-Mien Race (Chinese Hmong – Thai Hmong – Mien)

Li-Khmer Race (Li – Khmer)

Southeast China Race (Hakka – Min Nan – Singapore Chinese – Thai Chinese – Cantonese Han)

South China Sea Race (Tagalog – Ilocano – Visayan – Ami Taiwanese Aborigine – Guangdong Han)

Manobo Race (Manobo)

Philippines Negrito Race (Aeta – Agta – Palau Micronesian)

Mangyan-Ati Race (Iraya – Ati)

Mamanwa Philippines Negrito Race (Mamanwa)

Tai Race (Thai – Tai Lue – Tai Kern – Tai Yong – Tai Yuan – Lao – Lahu – Aini – Shan – Dai – Muong – Buyei)

Vietnamese Race (Vietnamese – Deang – Jinuo – Blang)

Mlabri Race** (Mlabri)

Htin Race (Htin)

Kachin Race (Kachin – Karen – Va – Nung – Lu – Lawa)

General Taiwanese Aborigine Race (Ayatal – Bunun – Yami)

Island SE Asian Race (Paiwan Taiwanese Aborigine – Sea Dayak – Sumatran – Balinese)

Bidayuh Race** (Jagoi)

Indonesian Race (Sulawesi – Borneo – Lesser Sunda – Sarawak – Javanese)

Mentawi Race (Mentawi)

Toraja Race (Toraja)

Lesser Sunda Race (Kambera – Lembata – Lamaholot – Manggarai)

Malay Race (Malaysia Malay – Singapore Malay)

Proto-Malay Race** (Temuan)

Austroasiatic Race (Mon – Zhuang – She – Ho – Lyngngam)

Nongtrai Race (Nongtrai)

Santhal-Naga Race (Santhal – Naga – Munda – Kurmi – Sudra)

Meghalaya Race (War Jantia – Bhoi – Maram – War Khasi – Kynriam – Nishi – Pnar – Bai)

Senoi Race (Senoi)

Shompen Race (Shompen)

Garo Race (Garo)

NE Indian Indo-European Race (Mahishya – Bagdi – Gaud – Tanti – Lodha)

Indian Tibeto-Burman Race (Apatani – Nishi – Adi – Tripuri – Jamatia – Mog – Chakma)

Semang Malay Negrito Race*** (Semang – Jehai – Kensui)

Oceanian Major Race*

Micronesian Race (Yap – Kanaka – Toba Batak Indonesian – Kora Batak Indonesian)

Polynesian Race* (Tonga – Western Samoa – French Polynesia – Cook Islands)

Melanesian Race (Fiji – Vanuatu – New Ireland – Papuan Melanesian – Nasioi – Alor Indonesian)

Australoid Macro Race

Australian Major Race***

General Australian Aborigine Major Race***

Queensland Aborigine Race***

Western Territory Pama-Nguyan Aborigine Race***

Papuan Major Race***

General Papuan Race***

Motu Papuan Race***

Sepik-Ramu Papuan Race***

Greater Andaman Islands Major Race***

Greater Andaman Islands Negrito Race***

Onge Andaman Islands Major Race***

Onge Andaman Islands Negrito Race***

Caucasian Macro Race

General Caucasian Major Race***

European-Iranian Race (Most European – Caucasus – Armenian – Jewish – Turk – Kurd – Iranian – Jordanian – Iraqi – Assyrian – Druze – Lebanese – Georgian – Caspian – Palestinian)

Basque Race (Basque)

Norwegian-Swedish Saami Race*** (Norwegian Saami – Swedish Saami)

Finnish Saami Race** (Finnish Saami)

Sardinian Race** (Sardinian)

Kuwaiti Race* (Kuwaiti)

Arabian Race (Saudi – Yemeni – Bedouin)*

West Asian Race (Pashtun – Brahui – Balochi – Makrani – Sindhi )

Tajik Race (Tajik – Bukhara Arab – Shugnan – Kallar –  Sourashtran – Yadhava)

West Himalayan Race (Hunza – Bartangi – Roma)

Berber Race*** (Berber)

Egyptian Race (Egyptian)

North African Race (Moroccan – Libyan – Tunisian – Canarian)

Algerian Race (Algerian)

North Indian Race** (Punjabi – Central Indic – Punjabi Brahmin – Rajput – Vania Soni – Mumbai Brahmin – Jat – Kerala Brahmin – Koli)

Himalayan Race*** (Gurkha – Tharu – Ladakhi)

Karnet-Uttar Pradesh Brahmin Race*** (Karnet – Uttar Pradesh Brahmin)

South Indian Race** (Munda – Bhil – Maratha – Rajbanshi – Oraon – Parji – Kolami Naiki – Chenchu Reddi – Konda – Kolya – West Bengal Brahmin – Parsi – Gond)

Kerala Kadar Race*** (Kerala Kadar)

South Dravidian Race*** (Sinhalese – Lambada – Irula – Izhava – Kurumba – Nayar – Toda – Kota – Malayaraya – Tamil)

Kalash Major Race***

Kalash Race*** (Kalash)

African Macro Race

African Major Race***

Tigrean Race*** (Tigrean)

Amharic Race*** (Amharic)

Sudanese-Barya Race*** (Sudanese – Barya)

General Nilotic Race (Shilluk – Masai – Nuer – Dinka – Luo – Turkana – Karanojo – Mabaan)

Funji Nilotic Race (Funji)

Tuareg-Beja Cushitic Race*** (Tuareg – Beja)

Nubian Race*** (Nubian)

Wolof-Peul-Serer Race (Wolof – Peul – Serer)

General Bantu Race (Most Bantus)

Bedik Bantu Race (Bedik)

West African Race (Most West Africans)

Mbuti Pygmy Race

Sara Nilotic-Biaka Pygmy Race (Sara – Biaka)

San Khoisan-Somali Race*** (San – Somali)

Khoi Khoisan Race*** (Nama – !Ora)

Hadza Khoisan Race*** (Hadza)

Sandawe Khoisan Race (Sandawe)

References

Capelli C., Wilson J. F., Richards M., Stumpf M. P. H., Gratrix F., Oppenheimer S., Underhill P., Pascali V. L., Ko T. M., and Goldstein D. B. 2001. A Predominantly Indigenous Paternal Heritage for the Austronesian-Speaking Peoples of Insular Southeast Asia and Oceania. American Journal of Human Genetics 68:432-443.

Cavalli-Sforza L. L., Menozzi P,. Piazza A.. 1994. The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chu J. Y., Huang W., Kuang S. Q., Wang J. M., Xu J. J., Chu Z. T., Yang Z. Q., Lin K. Q., Li P., Wu M., Geng Z. C., Tan C. C., Du R. F., and Jin L.. 1998. Genetic Relationship of Populations in China. Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). 95:11763-11768.

Harihara S., Saitou N., Hirai M., Gojobori T., Park K. S., Misawa S., Ellepola S. B., Ishida T. and Omoto K. 1988. Mitochondrial DNA Polymorphism Among Five Asian Populations. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 43:134-143

Jablonski, N. and Chaplin, G. 2000. The Evolution of Human Skin Coloration. Journal of Human Evolution. Available on this blog here.

Lĭ H., Pan S., Donnelly M., Tran D., Qin Z., Zhang Y., Cheng X., Yin R., Lin W. and Hoang V. 2006. Dermatoglyph Groups Kinh Vietnamese to Mon-Khmer. International Journal Of Anthropology 21:3-4, pages 295-306.

Lin M, Chu CC, Chang SL, Lee HL, Loo JH, Akaza T, Juji T, Ohashi J, Tokunaga K. March 2001. The Origin of Minnan & Hakka, the So-called “Taiwanese”, Inferred by HLA Study. Tissue Antigens:57(3):192-9.

Omoto, K. (1984). The Negritos: Genetic Origins and Microevolution. Acta Anthropogenetics 8(1-2):137-47.

Omoto K., Ueda S., Goriki K., Takahashi N., Misawa S., and Pagaran I. G. (1981). Population Genetic Studies of the Philippine Negritos. III. Identification of the Carbonic Anhydrase-1 Variant With CA1 Guam. Am J Hum Genet. 33(1): 105-111.

Reddy BM, Langstieh BT, Kumar V, Nagaraja T, Reddy ANS, et al. 2007. Useem, John. 1948.  Robert LindsayPosted on Categories Aborigines, Africa, Ainu, Americas, Amerindians, Andaman Islanders, Anthropology, Arabs, Asia, Asians, Assyrians, Australia, Basques, Bedouins, Berbers, Black-White (Mulattos), Blacks, Cambodia, Caribbean, Central Africa, Central African Republic, Central Asians, China, Chinese (Ethnic), Chuckchi, Dene-Yenisien, East Africa, East Indians, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Europeans, Filipinos, Genetics, Georgians, Greeks, Hispanics, Hmong, India, Indonesia, Indonesians, Inuit, Iranians, Iraqis, Italians, Japanese, Jews, Jordanians, Kazakhs, Kenya, Khmer, Khoisan, Koreans, Kurds, Kuwaitis, Language Families, Lao, Laos, Latin America, Lebanese, Linguistics, Malays, Malaysia, Melanesians, Mestizos, Micronesians, Mixed Race, Mongolians, Na-Dene, Near Easterners, Negritos, North Africa, North Africans, Northeast Asians, Oceanians, Oroquen, Pacific, Pakistanis, Papuans, Philippines, Physical, Polynesians, Pygmies, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, Reposts From The Old Site, Roma, SE Asia, SE Asians, Siberians, South Asia, South Asians, Spaniards, Sudan, Taiwanese Aborigines, Tajiks, Thai, Thailand, Tibetans, Turkmen, Turks, Uighurs, Uzbeks, Vietnam, Vietnamese, Yemenis2 Comments on Repost: The Major and Minor Races of Mankind

Alt Left: No, China Is Not Engaging In Imperialism or Colonialism in China

It’s not doing either. Vijay Prashad here tells us what imperialism and colonialism are and lays out how China, a Communist country, is of course neither because imperialism and colonialism both violate Communist principles. In addition, much of the investment is from Chinese state firms or public enterprises and these firms by their nature do not exploit people or plunder resources as they do not operate on an extreme profit motive.

Yes, they like to make money but instead of the money going into the owners’ and shareholders’ pockets, it goes into government coffers, where it is then given back to the people in various ways. A firm with that sort of orientation is not going to be rapaciously profit above all else oriented. Few state enterprises are. This nonsense is all just Western propaganda against China. China has done more for Africa than the West ever did. All we ever did is exploit Africans and plunder their resources.

China, being Communist, operates on the basis of solidarity, not imperialism. And it’s orientation is win-win. The orientation of Western capitalists is zero sum game. As much as possible for me (profits) and as little as possible for you (cuts into profits hence minimized. Western imperialism, by its very nature, is I win – you lose. It can’t be any other way. That’s the air that capitalism breathes.

As I noted, China is not without self-interest and they want something out of all of these operations in Africa. And public firms do operate on a modified profit motive. I like this system better than the “profits uber alles” (maximize profits) motivations of capitalist corporations.

Profits aren’t everything. Many nonprofit enterprises do just fine. They hire lots of workers, pay them well, and stay above water. Cooperatives operate on a profit basis, but the cooperative mode of development is not a capitalist mode because there is no exploitation. All profits go back to the firm and management decides how much to plow back into the firm. Whatever is left over goes into the pockets of the workers.

There has to be a disinterested management layer above the workers because when you leave these decisions to workers as was done in Yugoslavia, they failed to reinvest enough in the firms and instead opted to put much of that money into their pockets. Predictably, as reinvestment was not kept up, the firms tended to deteriorate and collapse.

This can be avoided as in the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque Country in Spain by having the workers hire and fire disinterested management. Furthermore, decisions regarding how much to reinvest and how much to dole out in salaries are made at the level of huge community-wide banks. These banks are not stuffing their pockets with the profits of these firms, hence they are able to rationally allocate resources to reinvestment or profits as required. There’s no self-interest on their part.

Nevertheless, the Mondragon cooperatives have to compete with bottom line uber alles capitalist firms so they too are subjected to the laws of capitalism – successfully compete with the competition or go under. The result is that this form of development ends up being less utopian than it could be.

Instead, China is engaging in commerce, or in a word, capitalism. Furthermore, Chinese loans are given to Africa on very favorable terms and many loans are out and out forgiven. China is building an incredible amount of infrastructure in Africa. Nor is China only hiring Chinese and not hiring locals. In fact, 9

Alt Left: Ever Wonder Why North Koreans Hate the US So Much? Here’s Why

Only half a decade after the WW2 armistice, we got involved in the Korean War. Before that war started, we turned a blind eye to and even directly assisted South Korea’s Syngman Rhee’s genocidal massacres via execution of 800,000 “Communists” from 1945 until the start of the Korean War.  These were actually leftwing guerrillas and their civilian supporters waging a legitimate war against Rhee’s repression.

The guerrilla was set off by the massacres of peaceful civilian protestors on Jeju Island in 1947. Outraged, the islanders took up arms. Rhee, with close US support, waged a brutal counterinsurgency, razing most of the capital city, killing 30,000 people, mostly civilians, and forcing almost the entire rest of the population to flee the island in terror.

During the Korean War, the US committed the most unspeakable crimes against humanity, including using chemical and biological weapons against North Korea, similar to what Japan had done to China 10-15 years before. In fact, we got the idea for this directly form Japanese war criminals, most of whom were immediately hired by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies after the war, in part for their knowledge of WMD’s.

Even the bombing campaign against North Korea was probably one of the most criminal acts of the 20th Century. A general bragged that every human being walking openly and any standing building in Korea was a target to be destroyed or killed. General MacArthur (I always hated him) demanded and almost received permission to drop 40 atom bombs on China after the Chinese entered the war.

Pyongyang was burned to the ground with incendiary weapons like napalm similar to the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945 in which we murdered 100,000 Japanese civilians with firebombs in only a few days. Most of the houses were actually made of a form of paper, so the firestorms caused by the firebombs raged wildly through the city.

We actually killed 3 million North Koreans in that war, which was 1

If you want to know why North Koreans hate and especially fear us so much, there’s your Goddamn reason. General Mattis was terribly worried that he would have to implement a war plan involving dropping 40 nuclear bombs on North Korea in case of a North Korean attack, so you can see that if we  fight another war against North Korea, we will just as vicious and evil as before, if not much worse. This why you see the near-fanatical hatred and fear of the US, along with the frenzied mass buildup of one of the  impressively militarized North Korean army, the 4th largest military in the world.

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