Blood thirsty savages

We’re finally getting some sunny days here in swamp-east Arkansas. It’s so flat here, water doesn’t run off.  Luckily, we get lots of sun to dry up the pools from the latest rains. The sun brightens spirits just as it evaporates excess water.  But this sun cannot brighten the souls of the miseducated.

Before the sun came up this morning, I put on the hat of a peer-reviewer.  I opened the food systems paper I’d been asked to review and found a new example of one of the foremost areas where America’s youth have been  miseducated for generations.  Our textbooks for a hundred years have been doing an excellent job of educating the young on the cruelties inflicted on the “indigenous” peoples of the Americas.  What has gradually been scoured from the textbooks is anything related to indigenous blood-thirstiness—which often matched and exceeded that of Europeans.

The highly educated authors of the paper I reviewed today ignorantly parroted the idea of indigenous peoples as peaceful stewards of Nature, spiritually and culturally devoted to man’s oneness with Nature. They are blindly or willfully ignoring the facts of Aztec (also called Mexica) rule prior to the arrival of the Spanish. 

When the Mexica invaded the highland plateau now known as the Valley of Mexico and present site of Mexico City, they brought with them their gods’ need for human sacrifice.  About once a month, every holiday, the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, selecting their victims from the tribes they had conquered in the Valley.  They incurred the hatred of surrounding tribes by such practices as skinning the daughters of other tribes’ nobility and wearing the skins at ceremonies their fathers were required to attend.

Hatred of the Aztec/Mexica led surrounding tribes to assist the Spanish in their lightning conquest of Central America.

In North America, examples of human sacrifice include a mound in Cahokia, Illinois which contained 272 teenage girls ritually sacrificed.

The Cahokia mounds were the center of a city of 20,000 people. Smaller cities centered on mounds were encountered by early explorers in Mississsippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.  The powerful mound-building cities routed the early explorers and kept the Spanish from making inroads from the south and west.  However, horses escaped from the Spanish and were adopted by many tribes.  Especially when combined with guns from the English invading from the east, new raiding and hunting cultures arose.

These new cultures raided and destroyed the mound-builder cities.

The mound-building Caddo were run out of most of Arkansas due to the gun and horse-fueled raids of the Osage.  When English speaking settlers arrived, they encountered the fierce, semi-nomadic Osage and the abandoned mounds of the Caddo.

Further North, the Lakota used horse and guns to invade the Black Hills and almost exterminate the agricultural Crow at the Massacre at Tongue River in 1820.

The cities and intensive agricultural systems of the mound-builders of the 1500s had been destroyed by a far less sophisticated hunting and raiding culture by the time settlers arrived in the 1700s.

The fact of disciplined, violent societies with new weapons conquering more peaceful, advanced, diverse agricultural peoples has recurred throughout history. Let’s look at the territory now known as Syria, Iraq and Iran. Sumer invented agriculture and writing in today’s Southern Iraq, but was overrun by the more warlike Assyria, then the even more warlike Babylon took over. 

To Babylon’s east were the previously peaceful Persians.  They followed the world’s first monotheistic religion and governed a vast network which other tribes willingly joined, keeping their traditions while following the Zoroastrian rules of peaceful coexistence.  Despite being the more advanced civilization, they were defeated by the more militaristic Babylonians.  From them the Persians eventually adopted the spirit of militarism and empire.  When they did, the Persian swept west to conquer the Babylonians and let the Jews return to Judea.

Later Alexander the Great found the spirit of militarism and empire and moved east to conquer the territories that Persia got from Babylonia who got it from Assyria, who got it from Sumer.  And then Alexander’s territory was taken by the Romans.  Along this violent path were lost many methods of agriculture, engineering and construction. What was left was mostly desert and ruins.

Similarly, the violent in America have taken over classrooms and cities from the peaceful and educated who sent a man to the moon in 1969. The decline of education and America will continue until the violent culture is understood and conquered.  Sometimes only fire can fight fire.

A prophecy for Kyiv amid the decline of America.

It’s cold in the house.  I let the fire die down too far and need to build it up. But before I do that I must address the fire which has almost died out in America. Led many to give up on America. I am going to go Old Testament on you.  And, please, remember the Psalm: “Do no harm to my prophets.”

A prediction hides its admonitions. A prophesy’s admonitions stare you in the face. When I predicted last year that the present de facto borders of Russia and Ukraine will remain so for the near future, I also included some admonitions to the government in Kyiv and NATO.  Kyiv should accept negotiations which accept these borders, much as South Korea accepted their present borders in the 1953, but never ended their state of war against the Northern aggression.

If I had been a little more alert, I would have been very happy at that 1953 conclusion; It brought my father home.  So, the Ukrainian and American people should be happy at this conclusion which keeps more of my Ukrainian friends’ children and brothers from being killed.

Included in last years’ more-admonition-than-prediction was that NATO should expand to include Ukraine.  Then Polish and German and American and Latvian pilots and trainers should be installed in bases right on the Russian border.  Ukraine’s young men should not bear the sole burden of defending Europe from Russian aggression.  This need not be a public agreement, but probably should be. given the history of Western promises made to Ukraine, such as: give up your nuclear weapons and we will defend you.

In 2010, I spent many happy months in Eastern Ukraine at a University now totally under control of the Russians. I hate what has happened to the people and towns of eastern Ukraine.  But all of us must recognize that Eastern Ukraine did chafe under pressure from Kyiv to be more Ukrainian and less Russian.  Russian was the lingua franca of all the Eastern Oblasts.  Professors at my University in Melitopol did not want to be forced to teach and publish in Ukrainian.  Many families spoke only Russian in their homes.  They were as Russian as those living a few miles across the border.

In fact, that border was only established in 1954. Before that Crimea was part of Russia and had been since the Ottomans were driven out around the time of the American Revolution.  All Ukraine East of the Dnieper River had been mostly Russian territory since the Poles and Lithuanians were driven out in 1686.  Russians have been acting like Russians in Eastern Ukraine since before the Caddo Indians were driven from my part of Arkansas by the Osage.

Therefore, the last admonition is that Ukrainian should accept a territory which is more Russian than Ukrainian in the Eastern Oblasts. This doesn’t not mean giving up any more ground to reform the previous Oblast borders.  Just keep the borders as they are now, with some refinements such as the nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia.

In sum, the prediction/prophesy/admonition has three main parts:

• Ceasefire along the present battle lines;
• Ukraine west of the lines becomes a part of NATO, including brining in planes and troops from Europe and the US, though mainly Poland, Lithuania and Germany;
• Ukraine and NATO recognizes the Russian-ness of far Eastern Ukraine, including the Crimea and recognizes an independent state.

I wish I had a long Solzhenitsyn beard and could bellow like Jeremiah and Isaiah, then maybe I would have the standing to push this prophecy on Kyiv, Moscow and the nations. Because the prophecy does include a fourth component which is all important: the West must admit that Russia is right about the decadence of the West.  First undermining Ukrainian democracy with the color revolution, then using Ukrainian boys to fight a proxy war in Ukraine is just one of many signs of the West’s declining adherence to traditional Christian values.  Doing so with borrowed money is a further sign of American decline. 

Here in early 2024, there is some hope that a devout Christian Speaker will enable at least part of this prophecy by withholding money for Ukraine until the border is straightened out. But that’s another topic for another late-night screed.   Right now, I need to put another log on the fire.

A forbidden text

The New Testament tells us of Jesus’ life, his teachings and the activities of his apostles in the early church. My favorite books are attributed to the only apostle to have a peaceful death: John, a former fisherman. John was called a son of Thunder by Jesus and cared for Mary, mother of Jesus, after the crucifixion. You can visit the graves of Mary and John at Ephesus. Five books of the Bible are attributed to John. One, the Gospel of John, is recommended by many as a good way for new Christians to begin the process of knowing God and his will and purpose for us. 

The writings of Paul, on the other hand, are harder nuts to crack. His thirteen books have provided many scholars with enough conundrums for lifetimes of study and inspiration. I especially like his first letter (Galatians) for a very helpful verse (5:22): “the letter of the law kills and the spirit of the law gives life.” I’ve used the verse many times to loosen up the bureaucracies in developing nations.

After Galatians, the second epistle Paul wrote was his first to the Thessalonians. After helping establish a new church in Thessalonica, Paul was run out of town. Later he learned that the Thessalonians remained enthusiastic Christians. Paul wrote the letter to encourage them to stand strong despite the pressures and persecution they faced.

Beyond general encouragement, Paul briefly addresses several theological issues. He urged his readers not to grieve at the funerals of believers since they have eternal life with Jesus. Paul also contradicted many modern preachers by saying Jesus will return to Earth “like a thief in the night.”

I especially like Paul’s concluding comments: 5:16 Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all.

However, watch out for one passage in Thessalonians: (4:14)

For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last

Thessalonians 4:14

In modern America, especially so soon after the horrible attack on the Jews on October 7 2023, these words are not welcome. Nonetheless, they are the words of our Lord and we must take them to heart.

Jews themselves are quoted directly in Matthew 27:24-25: So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

But any search engine you try won’t lead to these passages. Enter “jews killed jesus” and you will learn that such a sentiment should not be spoken. You will find a sanitized set of websites all asserting that Jesus was killed by Romans. Even Christian websites say: “Jesus was crucified as a Jewish victim of Roman violence. On this, all written authorities agree.” All written authorities except the Bible and the church fathers until recent years.

Of course, all of these arguments are rendered moot by that fact that Jesus gave his life willingly (Mark 10:45; John 18:11). Jesus sacrificed himself for us. Let’s remember that and put on the back burner the inconvenient truth that, technically, the Jews killed him and gladly took responsibility.

You may think you can skirt Nature’s laws

No matter how far our government or popular culture strays, Nature’s laws do not change. The law of gravity doesn’t care how you feel.  My grandson in his highchair loves to test the law of gravity by throwing his food, spoons and bowls on the floor.  Gravity is consistent whether it is the toddler and his food, the Earth and the Sun, or all the galaxies in the Milky Way. Objects are attracted to each other according to their mass, as Sir Isaac Newton put into mathematical language which first Russian and then US engineers used to put objects into orbit around the Earth and land on the Moon.

Any government instituting laws contradicting the law of Gravity, or any natural law, will not be in power for long and not just because their satellites won’t work any longer. King Canute in 1035 ruled a kingdom encompassing England, Scotland Norway, Denmark and parts of Sweden.  To demonstrate his powers, he decreed that the tides not come in.  To enforce his decree, he had his throne placed in the sand just above low tide and made the decree. The tale is usually told to illustrate the arrogance of kings and all those in power.

The original version of the tale contends that Canute was making a point for this court and his people, that kings are not above natural law, they are not omnipotent and divine.  After his feet and throne got wet, he said: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”

After failing to hold back the tide, King Canute removed his crown, hung it from a crucifix and never wore it again in honour of Almighty God.

In a third telling of the tale, King Canute’s piety led to the weakening of his kingdom and the defeat of his heirs when the Normans invaded England in 1066.

Whichever version you prefer, the lesson is that Nature ultimately wins, not the wishes of any tyrant, benevolent monarch, Congress or Marx.

Feelings and desires do not define truth, Nature’s reality defines truth.  When a government’s laws contradict Nature, the government will not last.

The laws of Man must be consistent with the laws of Nature or they will not last. Apply this, if you like, to the insistence that biological men who call themselves women can compete against women in boxing and ju-jitsu and all sports or who insist that armies must enlist women to go into combat with men, or that gender affirmation surgeries can actually change your gender or that you or your government can regularly spend more than its income. Any governing authority will fail which pushes laws inconsistent with Nature.

Strange attractors of Uganda

Many systems, including all living systems, are unpredictable; but their chaos is not random. Many of these systems are deterministic but highly responsive to the conditions which create them. This is called path dependency or the “butterfly effect.” Children, created and nurtured by loving parents, are inherently unpredictable yet almost always turn out to be good kids.

In chaos theory, an attractor is a set of states toward which a system tends to evolve for a wide variety of starting conditions of the system.  The concept of strange attractor was developed by Edward Lorentz when he tried to model and predict thunderstorms. He found that thunderstorms follow a set of deterministic paths, but are wholly unpredictable.

A couple of days ago I was watching a thunderstorm form over the city of Kampala from the rooftop of the Zara Garden Hotel. The Zara is located on a quiet street atop one of the many hills on which Kampala has been built. This particular hill overlooks Lake Victoria.

After the thunderstorms had flashed and boomed for awhile, a rainbow appeared over Lake Victoria. This was my first night at the Zara and what a wonderful greeting.

This was just one of the many welcoming greetings I received in Uganda. Warm greetings are one of the many strange attractors of Uganda.

I first came to Uganda 10 years ago to help with a maize project. The project was located in one of the hottest and most humid parts of Uganda. Toward the end of the project I was left in an isolated resort hotel for several days. This resort was not exactly the Zara. The food was boring, the AC didn’t work well, the staff didn’t seem to want to be there. After a few days, my hosts remembered me and sent a vehicle to bring me back to the capitol. I was never happier to leave a country and swore I was never coming back.

Then I discovered the Rwenzori Mountains. These mountains support some of the last native habitat of the mountain gorillas. They have glaciers on top and cold rushing rivers in the spring thaw. The tallest non-volcanic range in Africa, they host hundreds of unique species and likely others yet to be discovered.

Then, ten years later an invitation came to work on an agroforestry/carbon credit project in the Rwenzori. I could barely pack my bags quickly enough.

I’m now finishing three weeks working on the project and it has given me a wholly new perspective on Uganda. Maybe Uganda has changed. Maybe I am a different person from 10 years ago and Ugandans are responding to the new me. Whatever it is, I have never felt more welcome.

Leaving the Entebbe airport, my driver drove onto an expressway as modern as any in the US and occupied by very few cars. What a wondrous greeting! This was the first of many new highways I was to enjoy traveling on. The highways between cities are amazing. How did they get such good roads? They are in better shape than many parts of the US interstate system.

Traffic and roads got crazy when we got off the freeway and into Kampala; but the driver fought his way through and got me to the Fairview Garden Hotel. I’d stayed here 10 years ago and the open air restaurant with lots of tall trees was just as inviting and food/drinks just as delicious as then. I ate my favorite snack, garlic naan, twice in two days as I decompressed from the long flights.

Then I began meeting the Ugandans I was working with. Sure nice to meet Robbinah for the first time in person. George was here on my previous visit and is just as kind and gentle and helpful as ever.

My traveling companions were Peter and Augustine. We were soon laughing and joking our way toward our home for the next week: Fort Breeze Hotel in Fort Portal. Fort Portal is the ancient capital of the Tooro kingdom. The British established a fort there to protect the Tooro from raids from a mean neighbor tribe from what is now Congo. The palace of the king is still there on top of the highest hill around and a king still lives in it. Not sure what power if any he has. One of the employees at Fort Breeze is a granddaughter of the previous king. Her father, a son of the king, had 35 children from several wives.

She was a real help with so many things, including going with Augustine and I to a lodge called Top of the World, which overlooks two of the 44 crater lakes which dot the area west of Kibale National Park.

Forty-four crater lakes dot the region west of Kibale National Park.

She had advised us not to go because the restaurant served lousy food once when she went with some Dutch friends. So I asked her to go with us and make sure the food was good. She went with us, took over the kitchen and she and all the kitchen staff made us a great meal. Some poor Englishmen had been waiting for dinner long before we got there and were a little put out that we got served first. But when I explained we had brought our own chef, they understood.

This visit was on Sunday after Augustine and Peter had gone to church. Peter then stayed in the hotel to work while Augustine, Juliet and I played.

Our week in Fort Portal region went by quickly with daily treks to the surrounding districts to meet tree nursery operators and farmers who had planted trees. It’s a big mango and coffee region, but lots of other trees are grown including the prized red stinkwood tree whose bark is a cure for prostate problems, including cancer, according to some peer-reviewed papers and lots of testimonials. It grows 3 feet a year and gets as tall as 120 feet, meaning it is a great true to use to accumulate carbon credits.

Our next stop was Kasese for one night, but we did managed to see elephant, hippo and water buffalo, vanilla production and a couple of youth-run tree nurseries.

Then it was on to Hoima where we stayed at Miico Eco Resort Hotel-where everything was just perfect. Breakfast and dinner were on time and luscious. And I had garlic naan four happy hours in a row. We spent our days visiting nurseries and on last day ended up at the Northern end of the huge Lake Albert where we watched three local boys cast a huge net and come up with at least one impressive fish.

Pretty reluctantly we left the Miico and headed back to the traffic jams, the pungent odors of the slums surrounding Kampala and the unexpected delights of Zara.

The chaos of Kampala is certainly unpredictable and likely deterministic, but the west of Uganda is the strange attractor for me.

Africans we adore

Most people like flowers and trees. Very few like the Latin names for flowers. But I may be able to get you interested.  Stick with me. If you wanted to name a tree, you would probably go with some interesting character of the tree, right?  So a tree which smelled a bit after you cut it and which had reddish wood might be called red stinkwood. Or, if the fruit looked a bit like a cherry and was found in Africa, call it African cherry.

A botanist would name it after a species it appears related to.  When Gustav Mann with explorer Richard Burton found a new species in the mountains of Cameroon during our Civil War, he shipped it back to William Hooker at Kew Gardens for classification.  Hooker decided that the fruit looked similar to those in a genus called Pygeum.  The name pygeum comes from a Greek word, πυγή, “rump, buttock”, because the two lobes of the fruit resemble the human gluteus maximus muscles.

These pygeum fruits might be called callipygian if they are extremely good looking buttocks.  Or they might be called steatopygian if they are extremely big.  These are the names used to describe the hind end of humans.  The earliest known human inhabitants of the area where red stinkwood grows (the Khoi or bushmen) just happen to often be extremely steatopygian.  In fact they are so steatopygian that some were displayed like zoo animals in Europe in the 1800s. So that is why the African cherry was initially classified as a species in the Pygeum genus.

Gorillas love the fruit of Pygeum and it grows in the mid-altitude 3000-6000 mountain forests where gorillas like to hang out.

Lowveld Botanical Gardens

Pygeum africanum used to be widely dispersed in Africa—wherever there are high enough and wet enough mountains.  But the bark contains medicines which Europeans covet. European money and African corruption led to the near extinction of the species.  Today it is protected by international law and sustainable harvesting techniques have been developed.

When you strip the bark off a tree to dry, grind and sell, just leave half to two thirds of the bark in place.  This will enable the tree to continue to move water from the soil up to its leaves and so survive.  When the bark grows back in 3-5 years, you can strip off the side you left.  This is only profitable to the harvester if he can be sure the tree will be safe until he comes back in a few years to harvest the next time.  Otherwise, the sensible approach is just to strip all the bark off and maximize profits.

Since land tenure is tenuous where P. africanum grows, most harvesters just strip off all the bark and kill the tree.  Until commercial plantations are established, this is likely to continue to be the case.  Until more profit can be made by keeping the trees alive, they will be killed.

It’s similar with gorillas.  Gorillas were killed for meat and medicine until they grew so rare that people would pay huge bucks to see them.  They became worth more alive than dead.

It happens that one of the most interesting studies of Pygeum africanum relied on data from the Bwindi (“impenetrable”)) Forest in Uganda, where more than half the surviving mountain gorillas live.  Marchant and Taylor (1997) did a pollen analysis on and radiocarbon-dated two core samples from montane Mubindi Swamp in Uganda at 2,100 m (6,900 ft) altitude between mountain ridges in Bwindi Forest National Park. They found that Pygeum africanum has been in the catchment continuously since their Pollen Zone MB6.1, dated about 43,000–33,000 years ago.

If you read the article, you will find them using the name Prunus africana because botanists now believe red stinkwood is more closely related to plums and peaches than to other pygeums.  DNA studies have not yet been reported to confirm the relationship.  So until then, I will continue to use pygeum, just because I like the word.

By the way, steatopygia has not been found in gorillas or any other ape, just as a colorful tail is found in peacocks but not in woodpeckers. However, baby gorillas do look very human.

Springtime means wildflowers at Scattering Fork

Around here (the deciduous forests of the temperate latitudes), wildflowers are the first to announce Spring. Harbinger of Spring (Ereginia bulbosum) is the very first. It’s a barebones flower. Hardly any petals at all, just dots of the reproductive parts: stamen and pistil. Hence the common name “salt and pepper.”

But since it is already April, you won’t see salt and pepper at the Wildflower Day from 2-5 today, Sunday April 16 at Scattering Fork. You might spot its leaves. Even more likely, you’ll spot the distinctive “trout lily” leaves that look like spotted trout and the lovely leaves of bloodroot and the aptly named “Dentaria” leaves which look like sharp teeth. But their flowers are about all gone.

What you will see are three species of violets: yellow, purple and, my favorite, blue-eyed Mary.

You’ll be lucky if you get to Scattering Fork today, you’ll see huge colonies of blue eyed Mary. The purple and even yellow violets are more adapted to open ground, but you have to go to the deep woods to get the best.

A rival in uniqueness is wake robin (Trillium sessile). It is most often three deep purple petals which look like three hands folded in prayer. There is also a white variant, but it’s rare.

Another spring wildflower with a great name is “sweet William.” It’s genus is Phlox, but its been domesticated and turned into dozens of species you can see in gardens everywhere. The wild variety at Scattering Fork is Phlox divarcata–a lean version of the showy and plump garden varieties.

Besides the ubiquitous spring beauties, the only white flower you’ll find at Scattering Fork in early Spring is false rue anemone (Enemoim biternatum). It looks a lot like rue anemone, but always has 5 white petal-like sepals, while rue anemone always has far more.

Another white species like ground less wet than Scattering Fork, but one spectacular one you can see it on higher ground nearby: Dutchman’s britches (Dicentra cucularia). All the kids and many adults love this one. Many have related Dicentra species in their gardens. They all have distinctive flowers. This one looks like pants hanging on a clothesline.

Dutchman’s britches with a few spring beauties thrown in.

The only yellow flower at Scattering Fork this time of year is swamp buttercup (Ranunculus septentrionalis). A long name for a flower good for rubbing yellow pollen on friend’s noses.

One plant which has just emerged and will flower soon is mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum). Huge colonies have sprung up in the last few days from their tubers. They grow one year as single leaves. In the second year they get two leaves and a flower bud emerges from the axil where the two leaves come together. You’ll find the buds today at Scattering Fork and the flowers soon.

Buds emerging between two leafed Mayapples.

Wildflowers aren’t all you’ll find at Scattering Fork today. You might see the brown swirling flowers of paw paw on small trees. There will be lots of deer and raccoons, though you may only see tracks. If you get really lucky you might find a box turtle just emerged from hibernation. No matter what you find, you’ll be glad you came.

When healing is impossible, try transformation

To the young, a small cut is nothing. It heals up in no time. Older organisms get cuts which don’t heal. Cells within the wound work against healing. The whole area must be cut out so that the organism can heal.

We are at that stage as a nation. The nation has a deep wound which is festering. Two vociferous camps each are convinced they have the truth and their opponents are evil and must be eradicated. One of these camps has dug out a niche in our universities and from there has infected government and business. This camp is known by the acronym DEI, though DIE is more apropos since its goal is to destroy an evil nation. The legions of diversity, inclusion and equity folks do begin with one correct assumption.

Four stages of the adaptive cycle of ecologically resilient systems.

America has many flaws and has made many mistakes. We must not forget those sins and insure they never happen again. But the DIE folks take “never forget” to an entirely new level. DIE folks pick at the scabs of slavery and colonialism and regime change and won’t let them heal. They want these wounds to be wider and deeper. They encourage people to see themselves as victims, not as healers.

They are a power of destruction, similar to the Indian god Shiva. Shiva’s role is to destroy the universe in order to re-create it. But the re-creation cannot be done by Shiva or the DIE destroyers. The only thing they create is a powerful alliance of DIE trainers and administrators who feed on healthy tissue created by others. Their common goal is subversion of the present system to make all sectors of society feed the beast which is DIE. They have much in common with authoritarian zealots in many countries who have hijacked nations for their own benefit.

I saw that first hand in an organization I worked with for thirty years. For most of those years, it was a creative force, moving our agriculture and food systems toward more resilience, sustainability, diversity and opportunity. But the forces of DIE gradually seeped in from academia until the focus of all its programs was undermining all white farmers and the incurably racist agricultural institutions of America. Since the vast majority of US farmers are white and male, their overt denigration has created a less and less effective organization.

The destroyer god Shiva is countered by Vishnu, the preserver and protector. He is conservative. His counterparts in America sees the good in America and seek to preserve it. These folks have dug in their heels and revile and reject the DIE folks at every turn. They are convinced that the DIE folks are evil and must be eradicated.

But Shiva and Vishnu, destroyer and preserver are both aspects of Brahma, the creator god. In ecological resilience, preservation, destruction and creation are united in a cycle which leads to continued adaptation to disturbances. All organisms and species have periods of rapid growth, followed by maturity, which is interrupted by disruption. Then reorganization/rebirth/re-creation brings the cycle back to rapid growth.

The trimurti of Hinduism: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, three aspects of ultimate reality (Brahman).

In India today thousands of temples are devoted to Shiva and Vishnu, but only two to Brahma. Similarly in the US, we have many devoted to DIE and many devoted to conservatism, but few devoted to building a “more perfect union.”

Our nation has a wound which cannot be healed. The rift between the DIE crowd and the conservatives is too wide. And their mutual demonization insures that neither group can heal the rift.

A third force of reorganization and re-creation is needed. It will recognize the wrongs done in the name of America, but it will not vilify most of the nation as irredeemable. Instead, new institutions will be created based on the assumption of redemption. And DIE folk who vilified other races and groups must also repent in order to be a part of the redemption.

Redemption and repentance are a part of Christianity, but they are present in all religions and in the science of ecological resilience. Resilience is achieved only when past mistakes are recognized and transformation achieved which mitigates and adapts to disturbance. The DIE disturbance can be overcome only through new institutions which are more effective than DIE-infected entities.

Of course, its also possible that the DIE crowd and the conservatives will continue to demonize each other and make the wound fester and no creative new institutions arise. Then the nation continues its descent into the extinction which occurs for all non-resilient species, cultures and organizations.

We are all Ethiopians?

Twenty years ago, I realized all Northern European peoples are Ukrainian. When the ice age descended and glaciers covered most of Europe, a small section of Ukraine, now the disputed Crimea, was a place of refuge for Europeans. As the glaciers retreated, this remnant spread out over the whole continent. Later waves of migration brought genetics from other regions, but Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Scotland remain mostly descendants of people originating in what is now Ukraine. We know all this because of a unique Y chromosome. Unlike all other chromosomes, the Y does not undergo exchange of genetic material in meiosis. It remains pure and intact. And the Y chromosome which originated in Ukraine during the depths of the ice age is the same one most Northern Europeans have today. So we are all Ukrainian, in one small part at least.

Reputed human ancestor Lucy as reconstructed at Cleveland Museum by their Ethiopian director, Yohannes Haile-Selassie.

But from whence came those people living in Ukraine in the ice age? If you believe many prominent paleontologists, all members of our species came from the same place: Ethiopia. I’m back in Ethiopia now in February 2023 and the wonderful and efficient Ethiopian Airlines used that theme on a commercial played before every one of its huge collection of great movies. I heard it so many times that I decided to check out the evidence.

I’d love it if all airlines were as efficient and friendly as Ethiopian is. And I’d love it if all peoples were are friendly and welcoming as the Ethiopians. But is this country the source of all humans? In one of their great museums here, they do have Lucy, a famous skeleton of any early hominid which some say is an ancestor of man. But no one contends Lucy is really human, even though she is more famous than most of us. She is even painted on many of the new cabs driving around Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa..

To find the first humans, most scientists rely on DNA and try to trace back changes in the human genome as far as they can. Two types of DNA are most useful. The Y chromosome noted above and the mitochondrial genome. Both of these do not change through recombination in meiosis. So they have remained relatively intact and pure compared to the rest of the genome which gets mixed up every time a human produces sperm or eggs. All mitochondria we have come from our mothers. Our Y chromosome comes from our fathers.

If you trace the Y and mitochondrial DNA back, there is a most recent common male and female ancestor. So all humans have a common maternal ancestor of our mitochondrial DNA (“mitochondrial Eve”), as well as a common paternal ancestor for Y-chromosome DNA (“Y-chromosome Adam”). Its fascinating that the most recent research indicates both originated around 200,000 years ago in the lands inhabited by a tribe which still exists; some living much as they did back then.

Ancestors of the San people were the Y chromosome Adam and mitochondial Eve.

Both were members of the group today known as the San–hunter-gatherers who once inhabited all of Southern and Eastern Africa. These folks were made famous in the 80s and 90s by the box-office hit movie series “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” The main character of the series was a hunter/gatherer tribesman, played by Nǃxau. The San are of short stature and have caramel skin–much lighter than most modern Africans–and the epicanthic eye folds of Oriental eyes. They speak in a “click” language, which uses as many different clicks as it does the sounds we use in English. Many of the San tribes boot out any members who marry non-San, so their genetics and culture have remained pure.

The San have always said they were the oldest people. Now science is catching up. Not only were they the source of the mitochondrial Eve and Y chromosome Adam, they were also the most populous group of humans on the planet for 150,000 years. Only about 1700 years ago did the much bigger and darker Bantu speaking farmers come from the North and take over the San territory. Many Southern and Eastern Africans today have significant San genetic heritage included South African President Nelson Mandela whose lighter skin and epicanthic eyes reflected DNA from the San.

The ancestors of today’s San people migrated North and East out of Africa into the Middle East and throughout the world. There they encountered Neanderthals and Denisovians and other species and interbred with them. After gradually changing appearance, language and culture while facing the challenges of settling the entire world, many came back to Africa.

World map of the various Y chromosome groups, all originating from the Y DNA Adam in Southwest Africa, expanding across the world.

Just as today’s Ukrainians have not the same genetics as the remnant which survived the ice age, today’s Ethiopians are genetically far removed from the original Homo sapiens. Today’s Ethiopia is dominated by peoples who arrived relatively recently from the Arabian peninsula. Perhaps including the reign of the Queen of Sheba, these people controlled both sides of the gulf of Aqaba including today’s Yemen, parts of Saudi Arabia and Djibouti and Eritrea and the highlands of present day Ethiopia.

In fact, the most common Y chromosome lineage in Africa didn’t start in Africa; it likely originated in the Middle East and was taken back to Africa by counter-migration.

So we have a common maternal ancestor of our mitochondrial DNA (“mitochondrial Eve”), as well as a common paternal ancestor for Y-chromosome DNA (“Y-chromosome Adam”). The diversity of our regular chromosomal DNA, however, shows us that these individuals were part of a large, genetically-diverse population and exchanged genes with many other populations including Neaderthals and Denisovians and likely others.

Today Europeans usually have about 2 percent of Neaderthal genes and some Asian peoples have up to 6% Denisovian DNA.

Most scientists hypothesize that Neaderthal and humans had a common ancestor long before the San and modern humans arose. Some of these left Africa and inhabited Europe and much of Asia for 500,000 years with little to no contact with the modern human/San. They developed distinct attributes including light skin and reddish hair as well as a larger brain than humans and a huge muscular body. Modern humans and Neaderthal did not cross paths until perhaps 50,000 years ago. Neanderthals went extinct in Europe around 40,000 years ago, roughly 10,000 years after first meeting Homo sapiens. This was enough time, however for plenty of mating between Neaderthals and modern humans. In modern humans, Neanderthal genes are associated with an increase in body size, lighter hair color and skin and a tendency to be a “morning person”.

While most research has assumed no Neanderthal genes in sub Saharan Africa, recent research indicates there is a small (0.01 per cent) portion of African DNA which is Neaderthal. The picture emerges is one of multiple migrations between Africa and Eurasia, with early humans making the intercontinental hop possibly several times over. When migration out of Africa hit its peak between 10,000 and 60,000 years ago, subsets of this group then trickled back into Africa in the last 20,000 years, mixing Neanderthal heritage into the continent’s human genomes. Today even one of the tribes called San which is open to out-marriage, now has some Neaderthal DNA.

So the Ethiopian Airlines slogan, “We are all Ethiopian”, is maybe a bit true, but we are all also Neaderthal and above all, San.

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For some fun maps, go see these of European Y DNA d

Freedom through excommunication

Being banished can be a good thing. If the group banishing you is heading into eternal hellfire. And even if they aren’t quite that bad.

Recently a very close friend was banished by a national advocacy group which he helped found and served in various leadership positions for nearly 30 years. The group has become fully woke and gone from serving farmers and rural communities to serving the woke ideology. Banning fertilizer and taking land from white farmers are now among their goals. They begin meetings by recognizing the native tribes who once inhabited the lands we now live on. Neglecting to mention the native tribes who owned the land before being massacred by the tribe the liberal elite now kow-tows to.

He’s relieved to be kicked out of this group. As the group moved toward woke, his perspective had long been denied validity, other founders left, and he was increasingly isolated. He should have resigned much earlier, but the group had been so effective and productive for so many years. Somehow, he couldn’t just leave a group he’d devoted decades to.

Only after they banished me did he realize how constrained he had been. He was the frog in the pot of water on a hot fire. The water was getting hotter and hotter, but he stayed. Until finally the other frogs threw him out because he wasn’t praising the water temperature enough.

It reminds me of how I used to be a Democrat. And a McGovern Democrat at that. George McGovern was the one who gave Richard Nixon a landslide win in 1972. Today McGovern’s positions are almost mainstream Republican. I have friends who have remained Democrats. It’s amazing how their strong beliefs are now the opposite of their strong beliefs thirty years ago. Today’s Democrats are the Autocrats of Anarchism. They support antifa and suppression of free speech. They spend like drunken sailors and call a reckless and wasteful spending bill the Inflation Reduction Act.

The purging group used to be nonpartisan but now follows the Democrats like blind sheep. It loves the huge expenditures in the IRA, especially those labelled climate initiatives. Now he’s free. He can castigate inflation-inducing spending. He can even express doubt about wind and solar farms and most of the climate change dogma.

It’s amazing how you can stop yourself from thinking when the group you belong to allows thought only on tactics not on basic principles.

Luckily some of his less-than-woke opinions bubbled out uncontrollably and got him kicked out.

The ones which caused the most trouble were on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or DEI. It began when he first realized DEI could easily become DIE and that DEI is a sure recipe for the death of organizations and nations. The ecological literature is replete with examples where Diversity undermines ecological resilience. Rabbits were introduced into Australia to increase wildlife diversity and caused wholesale destruction of ecoysystems. Kudzu was introduced into the United States to increase forage diversity and literally smothered entire ecosystems. Likewise, DEI is destroying businesses, institutions and nations. When a diverse workforce is more important than a competent and excellent workforce, the organization is killing itself.

He’d quit attending the mandatory anti-white “diversity” trainings at every meeting of the organization and that was bad enough. But then he posted blogs about When diversity, equity and inclusion become DIE and followed it with Universities DIE on the altar of equity. Some diversity sleuth discovered them and he was banished. Diversity of thought is not permitted in the current diversity dogma.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned the name of the organization. No need to. It will die soon enough. All non-resilient systems do.

Sure nice of them to set others free on their way down.