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Category: Central Africa
Repost: Get Small Or Die
Repost from the old site. Discusses why people in very hot climates evolve to be short and dark-skinned. It's that or die, real simple.
Get Small Or Die
Why are Pygmies (a tiny Negroid people living in Central Africa) so small?
Same reason folks living in tropical rainforests all over the world tend to be small. In that environment, it's get small or die. Real simple. Understand, pilgrim?
A tropical rainforest is an unusual place. It's not 115 in the shade like the deserts of the Middle East. It's more like 80-90 all year round. While it's not extremely hot, it does have very high humidity – close to 100%. That creates a serious problem with cooling off.
At lesser humidity, you sweat like a pig and the lesser humidity allows the sweat to evaporate. As it evaporates, the sweat cools. That's how you cool off. A similar cooling by evaporation mechanism is used to cool off your refrigerator.
When the humidity gets near 100%, your sweat stops evaporating. You can sweat all day and nite and it doesn't do much good. Our body temperature of 98.6 runs the risk of rising, even past the survival point of 107-108.
It's true that Pygmies sweat a lot, but not enough to save their hides.
As the website explains better than I can:
First, the surface area of a small body is greater in relation to its volume.
It is a mathematical fact: if cube A in Fig. 1.4 is 1 centimeter along each side and cube B is 2 centimeters, then A's surface area is one-quarter that of B, but its volume is eight times smaller.
Heat is produced in the mass of the body, particularly in the liver and muscles, and is lost through the surface; if the latter is larger relative to body mass because a person is small, heat loss is easier and cooling more efficient. In a warm and humid environment, it is best to be small.
Next, Pygmies extend less effort because they are smaller. If you need to use have lots of energy, it's better to be smaller, because you need to utilize less energy to keep moving if you are smaller. Marathoners tend to be short. It takes less effort to move a smaller body around than it takes to move a big body around, which is why smaller cars get better mileage than bigger ones.
If you are transporting small loads, a pony is a better way to do it. You need a horse for a large load, just like you need an 18 wheeler for big hauls. The fact that a pony is better for the small stuff is why it was used in the Pony Express. They produce more energy per food unit consumed, the same way a Honda gets more energy miles per unit of food gas than a Hummer does.
Pygmies are excellent at dissipating heat and expertly adapted to living in the jungle where there is low carbohydrate and protein reserve. They're sort of the human Priuses of the jungle.
No one knows how long Pygmies have been evolving. Some say that tropical rainforests have only been around for 5,000 years or less. I disagree. Some gene studies show that Pygmies and other Africans may have split as far back as 70,000 years before present (YBP).
The main problem here is a lack of fossils in the rainforest. Things decay so fast there that we hardly find the bones of anything there. However, there have been skulls found around Central African Republic and north into the Sahel. Here Negroids (modern Blacks) evolved over the past 6-12,000 years. Prior to that, Africans looked like either Khoisan types or Pygmy types.
Pygmies are very athletic and graceful. A Pygmy can shimmy up a tree 100 feet with striking agility.
Pygmies are not necessarily stupid, though some IQ researchers think that their IQ's are quite low; there has been only one study, done in 1910. Richard Lynn, a racist but generally a good researcher, feels that the Pygmy IQ may be lower even than the African Black average of 67.
Although Pygmy heads are small, their heads are about as big as ours. Nevertheless, the relationship between head size and IQ is weak. Vietnamese have some of the smallest heads on Earth, and their IQ is 99.5.
Pygmies have the widest noses in the world. A small nose is only useful in cold weather. With a small nose, the air inhaled has time to heat up before it reaches the lungs. Air is already warm in the rainforest, so there is no need to heat it up with a nose filter, so a wider nose is better. The wide noses of other Africans may have a similar evolutionary explanation.
Racist idiots like to dog on people for being short. There are short people everywhere there are tropical forests. Examples are the peoples of southern India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Central American and Amazonian Indians. But the Pygmies are the smallest of all.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on December 24, 2020 December 25, 2020 Categories Africa, Amerindians, Anthropology, Asia, Biology, Blacks, Central Africa, Central African Republic, Central America, India, Indonesia, Intelligence, Latin America, Philippines, Physical, Psychology, Pygmies, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, Reposts From The Old Site, Science, SE Asia, South AsiaLeave a comment on Repost: Get Small Or Die
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 little if any Australoid, or even Melanesian influence in existing SE Asian populations. It is common amongst Internet anthropologists to lump Melanesians in with Australoids. This is the case anthropomorphically, but not genetically.
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 She were included because they are close to the Zhuang. The Santhal and Ho were included on the basis of this Y-DNA chart (Reddy 2007). This group is best thought of as an outlier Austroasiatic group.
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 12% Black.
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 57% African and 43% Caucasian – Amhara are 57%, Cushitic are 56% and Tigreans are 53% Black. Since the Beja are a Cushitic group, on that basis, I put the Beja into Africans.
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 Micronesian tribe that lives primarily in the Carolines and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.
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, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia, and possibly even New Guinea and Australia. For instance, the Semang go back an incredible 50,000 years in Malaysia.
The 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 50,000 years ago, making them the most ancient Caucasian race of all.
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 own major grouping entirely, on a par with Africans, Europeans – Middle Easterners – West and South Asians, Oceanians, East Asians and Amerindians.
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)
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. Austro-Asiatic Tribes of Northeast India Provide Hitherto Missing Genetic Link Between South and Southeast Asia. PLoS ONE 2(11): e1141.
Useem, John. 1948. Human Resources of Micronesia. Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 17, No. 1. pp. 1-4.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on December 24, 2020 December 31, 2020 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: How the US Staged Fascist Coups in Many Countries the World Over in the Last 70 Years
After World War, the Cold War was started and the murderous Dulles Brothers Installed the Policy known as Containment. This was implemented between 1946-48. As part of this policy, the US overthrew nationalist, social democratic, and even liberal democratically elected governments all over the world as part of the "War on Communism." We replaced them with rightwing dictatorships. Although it is arguable, in general all rightwing authoritarian regimes or dictatorships are probably fascist. Rightwing dictatorship = fascism.
These regimes were found most of Central America in Guatemala after 1954, in El Salvador and Honduras since forever, and in Nicaragua under the Somozas.
They were found in all of South America at one time or another. We can see them in the generals after 1964 in Brazil, the democratic facade duopoly regimes in Venezuela in Colombia (especially after 1947 and again in 1964, Ecuador, Peru until the generals' revolt in 1968, Bolivia under Banzer after 1953, Paraguay under Strausser, Argentina and Uruguay under the generals in the late 80's and early 90's, and Pinochet in Chile.
They were also seen in the Caribbean in Cuba under Bautista, the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, and Haiti under the Duvaliers.
In Southeast Asia, they were found in Thieu in South Vietnam, Sihanouk in Cambodia, the monarchy in Laos, the military regimes in Thailand, Suharto in Indonesia, the Sultan in Brunei, Marcos in the Philippines, and Taiwan under Chiang Kai Chek.
In Northeast Asia, a regime of this type was found in South Korea from 1947-on.
They were found South Asia with Pakistan under Generals like Zia, in Central Asia in the Shah of Iran, and in a sense, the Arab World with Saddam (Saddam was installed by the CIA), King Hassan in Morocco, the Gulf monarchies, and Jordan. Earlier, they were found in the monarchies in Libya and Egypt that were overthrown by Arab nationalists. Also, Israel played this sort of role with a democratic facade.
We also found them in the Near East in the military regimes in Turkey (especially Turgut Ozul) and for a while in Greece under the colonels in the late 1960's and early 1970's.
NATO formed the backbone of a "rightwing dictatorship" in the background of Western Europe (especially Italy), where Operation Gladio NATO intelligence essentially ran most of those countries as a Deep State behind the scenes. These regimes were found in Spain under Franco and in Portugal under Salazar along with its colonies.
These regimes were not so much in evidence in Africa except in South Africa and Rhodesia and most prominently, Mobutu in Zaire and Samuel Doe in Liberia.
The fascist forms of these rightwing dictatorships varied, most being nonracist fascism but a few being racist fascists (Turkey), and others being Mussolinists (Suharto in Indonesia with his "pangesila")
Author Robert LindsayPosted on December 22, 2020 December 23, 2020 Categories Africa, Arab Nationalism, Argentina, Asia, Brazil, Cambodia, Caribbean, Central Africa, Central America, Chile, Cold War, Colombia, Conservatism, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Europe, Fascism, Government, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, History, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Libya, Marxism, Middle East, Morocco, Nationalism, NE Asia, Nicaragua, North Africa, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, Political Science, Portugal, Regional, SE Asia, South Africa, South America, South Asia, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, West Africa, Zaire8 Comments on Alt Left: How the US Staged Fascist Coups in Many Countries the World Over in the Last 70 Years
Alt Left: How the Cold War Against Communism Ended up Being a War against Nationalism, Social Democracy, and even Liberalism
All of these liberal Democrats signing on to this media war on Venezuela need to recognize that the corporate media is using the Venezuelan example as part of a "war on socialism" to discredit the very word socialism and everything associated with it.
Remember when Trump said before Congress that the US will never be a socialist country? Here, socialism refers to social democracy in either in name/action, which exists in 95% of the countries in the world in the form of ruling parties, strong opposition parties and governmental structure/programs/ideology either in writing or action.
Remember how the entire Congress, including the vast majority of Democratic Congressmen, gave that fascist a standing ovation when he said that? And liberal Democrats dare to claim that they are on the left! They're not on the left of anything, except maybe the left wing of Republican Party.
The corporate media and the US money/government elite (The Deep State, basically) despises anything that even smacks of socialism, especially social democracy which they truly hate because it is most likely to be implemented. This started during the Cold War but it was already going on in the Depression, when US fascists nearly staged a military coup against FDR, who they said was a Communist.
But during the Cold War the demonization of anything smacking of socialism, no matter how mild, really got under way with two bloodthirsty killers, the Dulles Brothers, who initiated the policy of Containment and created the CIA out of the wartime US intelligence agency, effectively turning the US into a militarized, national security state.
In other words, they initiated what boils down to the US Deep State or the foreign policy establishment of the United States. Note that the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about is absolutely part of this Deep State too, as it and the national security state are each part of each other.
It was during this era when the US overthrew countries all the time for the tiniest movements towards social democracy and a lot of times simply for implementing social liberalism, the ideology of the US Democratic Party!
For instance, Aristide in Haiti was overthrown for the simple reason that he raised the minimum wage.
The US Democratic Party gave complete support to both of these coups, without a single dissenting member. My "liberal Democrat" father, actually a "Cold War liberal," a truly awful group of people, gave his complete support to the fascist coup that overthrew Aristide. Why? Because Time Magazine told him it needed to be done. My father foolishly believed that Time Magazine was a liberal or at least Centrist project though it's never been either.
So the Democratic Party supports raising the minimum wage, sure, but overseas, if you do it, the Democratic Party will call you a Communist and overthrow you in a fascist coup! Disgusting or what?
Nationalist, Social Democratic, and even Liberal Governments Overthrown by the CIA in the Last 70 years
Arbenz in Guatemala was overthrown in 1954 simply for implementing a mild social democracy. About 3% of his administration was made up of Communists, and this was the stated reason for overthrowing him. United Fruit also played a huge role because he nationalized their banana plantations.
Juan Bosch came to power in the Dominican Republic in 1965 and started to implement a mild social democracy. The US media demonized him as a Communist, and soon LBJ staged a fascist coup to overthrow him.
The Mossadegh government in Iran was elected in 1953 for electing a nationalist who nationalized British Petroleum's oil and set about to implement a mild social democracy with nationalist overtones. He was overthrown by the US and UK and a fascist monarch called Reza Shah was installed and held power for the next 26 years.
A leftwing government was elected in Guyana around 1970, and the Western media went into hysterics. In reality, he was just a social democrat. The "liberal" UK soon overthrew him in a fascist coup.
The US waged economic war against Manley's government in Jamaica in the late 80's and early 90's. He was never anything but a social democrat.
The Left took power in Brazil in 1964 after they won an election. In truth they were just social democrats. They were quickly overthrown in a fascist coup by generals in the military a year later.
A social democratic government that contained a few Communists was elected in 1960 in Iraq. The CIA overthrew that government in a bloody coup and installed Saddam Hussein with specific instructions to get rid of and crack down on the Communists.
Patrice Lumumba in the Congo came to power in 1964. I believe he was never anything more than a social democrat. Nevertheless, the Western media went insane, calling him a Communist. A year later he was overthrown with the help of US intelligence. It is a proven fact that Donald Rumsfeld, then working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, helped set up his arrest and subsequent execution by being tied to a tree and shot.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on December 22, 2020 December 24, 2020 Categories Africa, Asia, Brazil, Britain, Caribbean, Central Africa, Central America, Cold War, Colombia, Congo, Democrats, Dominican Republic, Economics, Europe, Fascism, Geopolitics, Government, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, History, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Journalism, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Liberalism, Marxism, Middle East, Nationalism, Political Science, Politics, Regional, Republicans, Socialism, South America, US Politics, USA, Venezuela2 Comments on Alt Left: How the Cold War Against Communism Ended up Being a War against Nationalism, Social Democracy, and even Liberalism
Alt Left: America's Salad Days, or When America Ran the World, 1945-60
The UN has been an American province for a long time. Let's take after World War 2 for example. Sure, there was a UN. But from 1945-1960, the UN and the US were pretty much synonymous. Hence the pussilanimous and disgustingly murderous behavior of the US proxy called the "UN" in the Korean War. After World War 2, we had not only defeated all of our adversaries but most of our allies lay in ruins too. We weren't running the world before the war – Germany and Pax Brittanica were vying for that honor – but we sure were after the war.
Some people think we allowed our allies to get destroyed on purpose so we could, in our usual slimy way, end up sidelining our allies and running the world, the World Dictatorship Ruled by the US being the main US project since 1945. I don't know why Americans think it is groovy for the US to be this swaggering, belligerent, out of control outlaw organized crime gang that rules the world.
Do Americans really think that's cool or something? Because that's exactly what we are. We aren't even a country. We're an Outlaw Empire ruled by an Organized Geopolitical Crime Gang that happens to be the top gang in the world right now?
Anyway from 1945-60, the world was our oyster. Of course, we fucked it up like we fucked up everything. Even the Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Japan reportedly had sleazy Mafia-like subplots going on. After that, we finally started getting some good hard pushback from China and the USSR (Thank God and it was about time!), first in Cuba, next with the Missile Crisis and the Gary Powers affair, and especially in Vietnam.
The cycle of anti-imperialist revolutions followed in Algeria, the Philippines, Indonesia, Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, India, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Palestine, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Dominican Republic, South Africa, Ireland, and Guyana. Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Mozambique, Angola, Rhodesia the Basques followed suit. Arab nationalist revolutions took Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq by storm.
The Shah fell in Iran in what was actually very much an anti-imperialist revolution. A revolution rocked Afghanistan.
But 1945-1960 were the America's salad days.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on September 20, 2020 September 24, 2020 Categories Afghanistan, Africa, Algeria, Arab Nationalism, Argentina, Asia, Brazil, Cambodia, Caribbean, Central Africa, Central America, China, Cold War, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, East Africa, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethnic Nationalism, Europe, Geopolitics, Guatemala, Guyana, History, Honduras, Imperialism, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Kenya, Laos, Latin America, Left, Libya, Malaysia, Middle East, Mozambique, Nationalism, North Africa, Peru, Philippines, Political Science, Regional, SE Asia, South Africa, South America, South Asia, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, USA, USSR, Venezuela, Vietnam, War, West Africa, World War 2, YemenLeave a comment on Alt Left: America's Salad Days, or When America Ran the World, 1945-60
Identity Politics or Tribalism Was Behind Many of the Most Horrific and Genocidal Crimes of the 20th Century
Zamfir: "Having a collective interest is not the same thing as a hard and fast identity like race, ethnic group, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, or even religion."
Okay, I didn't understand that "identity" for you has to do with only these kinds of characteristics. But then I'd put it this way: Any group of people that share collective interests can have good reasons to organize politically in defense of their interests. It doesn't matter whether the reason has to do with their "identity" in your sense or instead something less "hard and fast" such as economic class.
Because people who organize around more banal everyday political issues are typically not as insane and flat out deranged, homicidal, paranoid, hypersensitive and even genocidal as IP types? I mean do you see Democrats running around screaming about the Republicans "They hate us! They hate us! They're out to kill us! We need to fight back!" Do you see environmentalists or pro-abortion people saying that anti-environmentalists and anti-abortion people, "They hate us! They hate us! They oppress us and dominate us! They're out to kill us!"
Ordinary politics is not tribal like IP is. Few people would say they are member of a tribe called Democrats, Social Democrats, Bolivarians, Sandinistas, environmentalists, gun control activists, anti-free trade types, anti- or pro-immigration activists, liberals, workers, or poor or low income people? Hell no.
And the people in the paragraph above don't scream, carry on, act paranoid, have a huge chip on their shoulder and accuse everyone of hating them all the time.
Haven't you noticed that IP people are all insane? They all say my group is completely innocent and good, and we are being persecuted, oppressed and dominated by this evil other group. They're all hypersensitive to any slights, always accusing everyone of hating them. They hate us! They hate us! They hate us! They're trying to kill us!
And there's often genocidal language, sometimes towards the hated group and other times it's, "They're trying to kill of us!" Often it's "they're trying to kill all of us…we need to kill all of them!"Haven't you noticed that IP people are all insane?
They all say my group is completely innocent and good and we are being persecuted, oppressed and dominated by this evil other group. They're all hypersensitive to any slights, always accusing everyone of hating them. They hate us! They hate us! They hate us! They're trying to kill us! And there's often genocidal language, sometimes towards the hated group and other times it's, "They're trying to kill of us!" Often it's "they're trying to kill all of us…we need to kill all of them!"
Before the Tutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis, the radio played non-stop that the Tutsis had just murdered the Hutu president and were organizing a war to kill all the Hutus. The solution? Kill them first. Remember Hitler said the Jews are trying to kill us all? Solution? Kill them first. Notice how the Israelis are always screaming that their enemies are exterminationist Nazi type anti-Semites? They're out to kill us all! Solution? Oppress them, dominate them, wage war on them, kill their soldiers and their politicians, assassinate their leaders.
Can't you realize that almost all of the horrible things that are going on today are all based on IP to some degree or another. In the ME, they are slaughtering each other over religion or even factions of a religion or even factions of factions.
In Turkey, this is behind Turkey's war on the Kurds and their conquest and annexation of Syrian land to expand the "Turkish nation." The ethnic cleaning wars of the Balkans were all wrapped up in IP. The Islamist insurgencies in the Caucasus, Turkestan, Thailand, Sudan, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Egypt, Nigeria, India and to some extent Syria and Iraq are Islamist jihads against the infidels; in the cases of Nigeria and Sudan, take exterminationist proportions.
The Hindu Buddhists wage an exterminationist jihad against the Hindu Tamils. The Myanmar Buddhists wage an exterminationist jihad against the Rohinga.
The Hindus oppress the Muslims of Kashmir and wage war on them. The Jews oppress the non-Jews of Palestine and wage war on them and conquer and annex their land. Muslims and Christians wage exterminationist wars against each other in the Congo. In Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire, Hutus, and Tutsis wage exterminationist wars against each other.
Saddam said the Persians were plotting to kill all the Arabs (and most Sunni Arabs still say that the Iranians are plotting to at least conquer all the Arabs). Solution? Kill the Iranians first. The Young Turks started their jihad against the Armenians by saying that the Armenians were plotting to kill all the Turks. Solution? Kill the Armenians. Similar things were said of Greeks and Assyrians. Solution? Kill 500,000 Greeks and Assyrians before they can kill us first.
Nazism was nothing but Aryan Germanic IP against non Aryans such as Gypsies, Jews and Slavs.
The war in Northern Ireland is a pure IP war.
Notice how all of these groups employ the IP extremism – "They're trying to kill us all so we need to oppress/kill of them first!" Our tribe is 100% good, theirs is evil. We are defensive; they wage offensive war against us. They are haters and racists and we are not. They hate us! They hate us! They hate us! You hate us! You hate us!
Notice how paranoid they all are and how hypersensitive they are to any slight and how they all immediately accuse you of hating them if you even look at them wrong? Notice the insane, "They hate us! They hate us!" all the while when the people screaming about people hating them are horrific haters themselves. But their hate and racism/bigotry is good and justified and the other people's hate and bigotry is evil. We just want liberation and to be free! They want to oppress us and dominate us!
IP turns genocidal and exterminationist or at least slaughtering quite easily.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on June 22, 2018 Categories Africa, Anti-Semitism, Armenians, Asia, Assyrians, Buddhism, Caucasus, Central Africa, Christianity, Democrats, East Indians, East Timor, Egypt, Europe, Europeans, Fascism, Germans, Greeks, Hinduism, India, Iranians, Iraq, Ireland, Islam, Israel, Jews, Judaism, Kashmir, Kurds, Middle East, National Socialism, Nazism, Near East, Near Easterners, Nigeria, North Africa, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Political Science, Politics, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Radical Islam, Regional, Religion, Republicans, Roma, SE Asia, South Asia, South Asians, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Turks, Tutsi, US Politics, War, West Africa, World War 2, Zaire28 Comments on Identity Politics or Tribalism Was Behind Many of the Most Horrific and Genocidal Crimes of the 20th Century
Alt Left: Why Does Albania Have the Lowest Average IQ in the Whole of Europe?
Answered on Quora.
I am thinking that perhaps the IQ of Albania or of the Balkans as a whole is in error. A lot of Lynn's data has not held up well. His figures on Vietnam, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea, Croatia, and Northern Italy vs. Southern Italy are all false. Dr. Lynn seems to cherry pick his data to go along with his "latitude = IQ" hypothesis.
Someone sent me an article in a recent journal testing the IQ of Croatia. I forget what the score was, but it was ~100. That's much higher than Lynn's 90. I have a feeling that Lynn's scores for those other Balkan lands may be off too. Maybe it is time to do some more testing.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on May 12, 2018 August 31, 2020 Categories Africa, Albania, Asia, Central Africa, Equatorial Guinea, Europe, Intelligence, Italy, Philippines, Psychology, Regional, Scholarship, SE Asia, Vietnam1 Comment on Alt Left: Why Does Albania Have the Lowest Average IQ in the Whole of Europe?
Setting the Record Straight About Pre-Contact Africa
John Engelman: Agriculture and civilization select a race for intelligence. Caucasians began agriculture about eleven thousand years ago. We began civilization about five thousand years ago. Negroes only adopted agriculture about four thousand years ago. They never developed their own civilizations. They have only recently been exposed to White civilization.
Agriculture was probably developed by Africans before it was developed by anyone else. There is evidence for agriculture or pre-agriculture in Africa (West African Guinea Highlands) as early as 12,000 YBP. You must realize that Africans originated many things that we as humans do. The next to develop agriculture were the Mayans (corn), the Chinese (rice) and the Papuans (yams), all at 9,000 YBP. The Egyptians and Mesopotamians were not far behind. Africans even had plantation agriculture as early as 900 CE in Tanzania.
I doubt if Caucasians developed agriculture 11,000 YBP. Are we referring to Mesopotamia, the Levant or Egypt here?
Animal husbandry was also developed very early on in Africa. It may have been developed in the Western Sahara before anywhere else on Earth. A figure of 9,000 YBP is suggested for animal husbandry in the Sahara. However, pigs may have been domesticated in Papua around this time also. Animal husbandry was widespread in Africa, particularly in the Sahara, the Sahel and Ethiopia, on contact. I don't know much about animal husbandry further south, but I have heard there was a shortage of animals to domesticate.
At any rate, the invention of the hoe and subsequent hoe agriculture along with the spear played a major role in the history of Africa. Both derived from the early development of metallurgy in the form or iron. Indeed, the Iron Age came to Africa before it came to Europe. The development of iron metallurgy and the subsequent creation of those two iron tools allowed the Bantus to expand massively all over Central and South Africa in only the last 2-3,000 years.
Africans definitely had civilizations, that's for sure. Mostly in West Africa but quite a few in the Sahel too. There was even a civilization in Rhodesia. Early European explorers drew drawings of large African cities. Looks like civilization to me. Civilizations were especially common in Nigeria. They had manufacture, trade, agriculture for export, all sorts of things.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on May 12, 2018 Categories Africa, African, Agricutlure, Amerindians, Anthropology, Antiquity, Asians, Blacks, Central Africa, Chinese (Ethnic), Cultural, East Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Europeans, History, Livestock Production, Near East, Nigeria, North Africa, Papuans, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, South Africa, Tanzania, West Africa5 Comments on Setting the Record Straight About Pre-Contact Africa
Gabon – Africa's Shining Star
Chinedu writes:
As for Africa, it's a large place, and some regions have higher GDP per capita and better living standards than Eastern Europe. We'll see what the future holds.
There is one country that has a higher standard of living than Eastern Europe. It is Gabon, and the high PCI is all due to oil. It's $20,000/yr PCI. However, Gabon is still one of the most horrific shitholes in all of Africa.
Apparently all of the money is being stolen by an elite of ~10-20% of the population, which is what happens in all Black African countries. It is being stolen by a group associated with the government and maybe the tribe or ethnic group that is represented in the state. Everyone else is getting fuck all. The medical care statistics are horrific (about as bad as India's), and at least 40% of the population is actually starving (malnourished). For medical figures, look at maternal mortality in particular. Gabon's maternal mortality figures are off the charts.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on July 15, 2016 Categories Africa, Central Africa, Death, Economics, Gabon, Government, Health, Nutrition, Regional, SociologyLeave a comment on Gabon – Africa's Shining Star
"Problems" and "Solutions"
Discuss Severaid's quote and my examples given below, agreeing, disagreeing or expanding on the notion.
The chief cause of problems is solutions
– Eric Sevareid
I think this guy is onto something.
War on Terror – Solution was all out war on "terrorism" – really just disobedient Muslim states and some international guerrilla/terrorist groups.
The "solution" did not solve the problem at all, and in fact it made it much worse and introduced quite a few new problems.
The "solution" to the "Muslim terrorism problem" did nothing to alleviate the problem, and the problem only expanded massively, in the process destroying much of the secular Muslim world and replacing it with ultra-radical, armed and ultraviolent fundamentalists. Several new failed states were created out of functioning but authoritarian secular regimes.
A wild Sunni-Shia war took off with no end in sight. A new Saudi-Iran conflict expanded to include all of the Sunni world against Iran and some Shia groups.
The policy was incoherent – in places (Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Libya) secular nationalists were overthrown and replaced with radical fundamentalist regimes (Iraq, Palestine) or failed states teeming with armed fundamentalist actors (Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Mali). In other places, fundamentalist regimes were overthrown and secular nationalists were put in (Egypt).
We alternately attacked and supported radical groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. An awful Russia-Turkey conflict took off on the Middle east with the US and NATO siding with Al Qaeda and ISIS supporting Turks. The US attacked and armed fundamentalists to attack Shia Iranian, Hezbollah and Houthi armies waging all out war on Al Qaeda and ISIS. In Yemen we actively attacked the Shia who were fighting Al Qaeda while supporting Al Qaeda and fundamentalist Sunnis with intel and weaponry.
Some Kurds were called terrorists and support was given to those attacking them. Other Kurds were supported in their fight against ISIS. In actuality, all of these Kurd represented the same entity. There really is no difference between the PKK, the YPG and the rulers of the Kurdish region. Meanwhile, Kurds fighting for independence were supported in Iran and Syria and attacked in Turkey though they were all the same entity.
Billions of US dollars and thousands of US lives were wasted for essentially no reason with no results or actually a worsened situation. Russia, one of the most effective actors in the war against Al Qaeda and ISIS, was declared an enemy and attacks on them by our allies were cheered on.
A horrible refugee crisis was created in Europe.
Muslim populations in the West were substantially radicalized.
Instead of ending Islamic terrorism, Islamic terrorist, conventional and guerrilla attacks absolutely exploded in the Middle East and to a lesser extent in Europe, Canada, Australia and the US. It also exploded in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Thailand, the Philippines and of course Syria and Iraq. There was considerable fighting and terrorism in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Morocco and Jordan. The Palestinians ended up much better armed than before and the conflict exploded into all out war on a few occasions.
Terrorism and guerrilla war exploded in Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, Somalia and Kenya with some new attacks in Niger, Mauritania, Chad and Uganda. Somalia took a turn for the worse as a huge Al Qaeda force set up shop there and the country turned into the worst failed state ever with nothing even resembling a state left and the nation furthermore split off into three separate de facto nations.
The "solution" failed completely and simply ended up creating a whole new set of problems that were vastly worse than the original problem for the which the solution was directed.
Technology: Technology itself could be regarded as a lousy fix to many problems.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on December 7, 2015 Categories Afghanistan, Africa, Asia, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Central Africa, East Africa, Egypt, Eurasia, Europe, India, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Jordan, Kenya, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Middle East, Military Doctrine, Morocco, Nigeria, North Africa, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Radical Islam, Regional, Religion, Russia, Saudi Arabia, SE Asia, Shiism, Somalia, South Asia, Sunnism, Syria, Terrorism, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, War, West Africa, Yemen10 Comments on "Problems" and "Solutions"
The Future According to ISIS
ISIS 5-year expansion plan. Parts of Europe are not included on this one.
The map below includes parts of Europe.
This map labels the various vilayets of provinces of the future ISIS Caliphate. Yaman is Greater Yemen, Hijaz includes much of Saudi Arabia. Sham is Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Sinai and parts of Arabia. Iraq includes Iraq and parts of Arabia and Kuwait. Kordistan is Greater Kurdistan, in this case extending far down into eastern Iran. Anathol is the western half of Anatolia. The Maghreb is a well known term for northwestern Africa, usually applied to North African states such as Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria but in this case, also includes all of the Sahel and West Africa.
Andalus includes all of Spain. Khurasan is an old term for Iran and Afghanistan. On this map it also includes Tajikistan,Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kirghistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal at the very least. I am not familiar with the terms Alkinana (northeast Africa), Qoqzaz (apparently means the Greater Caucasus as you can see in the spelling), Orobpa (southeastern Europe) and Habasha (much of Central Africa above the Equator. There is an unnamed province in Southern Iran.
I honestly do not see how they conquer India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Armenia, Georgia, all of Eastern Europe, all of West Africa, Spain, Iran, Azerbaijan, or even Lebanon and Israel for that matter. I am just not seeing this, sorry. If I were an Indian though, I would be frightened of these maps.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on July 16, 2014 Categories Afghanistan, Africa, Asia, Bangladesh, Central Africa, Europe, India, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Middle East, Nepal, North Africa, Palestine, Radical Islam, Regional, Religion, Saudi Arabia, South Asia, Spain, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, War, Yemen23 Comments on The Future According to ISIS
HIV Subtypes Around the World
Nice map shows HIV subtypes around the world.
In the US, the Caribbean, most of South America, Europe and Australia, subtype B is predominant. This subtype is very hard to spread heterosexually from woman to man. Such a transmission is possible, but it is not very likely. For instance, even if you had sex with an HIV positive woman, you would have to have sex with her ~700 times over a ~5 year period to even have a 20% chance of getting HIV. Even then, you have an 80% chance (an overwhelming chance) of not getting it. Men in the Subtype B areas are acquiring HIV via receptive anal sex with other men or sharing needles with other IV drug users. Those are mostly the only way transmission is going to men in these regions. Women are getting it from vaginal or receptive anal sex with men and sharing needles with other IV drug users.
In the rest of the areas, the picture is much murkier.
Russia is a mixture of A, B and AB recombinant. Most spread in Russia is going via needle sharing.
In China, B, C and BC recombinant is most prevalent. Much transmission here is also going via needle sharing.
In Southeast Asia, B and CRF_o1AE are common. Much spread here is also going via needle sharing and needle-using men giving it to their wives, but there is also some going via gay male sex, and prostitutes have a high rate of being HIV positive. In addition, there has been a lot of transmission from women to men in this region, mostly prostitutes giving it to their clients. However, this seems to have been associated with vaginal bleeding on the part of the prostitutes. Once that matter is cleared up and the clients use condoms, very little transmission is occurring.
In India and East and Southern Africa, Subtype C is prevalent. Reports indicate that much transmission is occurring heterosexually, either through normal heterosexual sex with either a man or a woman or via prostitutes giving it to their clients. The role of long distance truckers acquiring it from truck stop prostitutes and then spreading around the region is important in both regions. Other than that, little is known about spread in this region, but it does look like Subtype C is being spread pretty easily heterosexually both male to female and female to male, so this subtype is looking like a scary type of HIV.
Subtype D is found in Central Africa and may well be spread heterosexually as easily as Subtype C is.
Subtype A is found in both Russia and coastal East Africa. It seems to be going heterosexually both ways in Africa, but in Russia, there seems to be little heterosexual transmission. This doesn't really make sense, and it is a mystery that needs to be cleared up.
Brazil is home to Subtypes B and BF recombinant. The type of transmission here is little known, but male homosexual transmission seems to be very important.
In West Africa, CRF_02AG, similar to the SE Asian subtype is the main subtype. Transmission routes are not known, but it looks as if some heterosexual transmission is occurring both ways, however, the rate of heterosexual transmission seems to be much lower than with subtypes C and D.
In West Central Africa, HIV is prevalent but probably not as high as in the C and D areas. A huge variety of subtypes are found here, including subtypes F, G, H, J, K, CRF_01 and various recombinations of these subtypes. There is little information available, but heterosexual transmission both ways seems to be occurring here, higher than with CRF_02AG, but lower than with subtypes C and D.
People keep saying that other subtypes are bound to show up in the US and therefore straight men are bound to be at risk in the future, but it hasn't really happened, although some different subtypes are occurring in gay men, who sometimes get infected with different subtypes. This is because HIV positive men figure once they are HIV positive, they can fucked all they want to, as they can't catch HIV now as they already have it. Unfortunately, although they can't catch HIV per se, they can catch a new strain of it. Infection with more than one strain at once makes HIV more virulent. These cases are nastier and progress more quickly. Death often comes after not too long a time has passed.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on June 13, 2014 Categories Africa, Americas, Asia, Australia, Brazil, Caribbean, Central Africa, China, East Africa, Eurasia, Europe, Health, Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, Illness, India, Intoxicants, Latin America, Regional, Russia, SE Asia, Sex, South Africa, South America, South Asia, USA, West Africa7 Comments on HIV Subtypes Around the World
Tribalism and Chieftainship: Why the Modern African State Fails
Jason Y writes:
A tiny elite steals from people in many nations, not just African (or New World African) states.
The Blacks generally just sit there and take it though in Africa. And in Africa it is particularly nasty because of the dire poverty of so many of the people. For instance, Gabon has a per capita income of $20,000/yr. Should be a nice place. But the malnutrition rate is sky high, most of the people are horribly poor and/or starving and the health indicators are complete shit. Apparently some little elite, probably one tribe, monopolizes the state and steals all the money leaving everyone else with jack. With all that oil wealth, Nigeria should be a rich country. Instead it's one of the most nightmarish places on Earth with horrific poverty and crime.
You want to know why Blacks just sit there and take it in Africa? Because they are used to this crap! African Blacks have always lived in tribes under a chief. Generally the chief and his pals monopolized most of the best women and apparently a lot of the money, but I would assume that they doled out enough for the tribe to live by. They still sort of do that in a way. One tribe gets into office and steals all the money and gives it to their tribe and all the other tribes get jack. The other tribes don't revolt because they are used a thieving all powerful chief. Instead they plot for their tribe to take over public office so that they can enrich their tribe and fuck over everyone else!
I will say that I like what Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe though. The capital society is pretty peaceful and nice and even the slums are not that bad by African standards. Mugabe is a populist and a socialist, and he has done a lot of great things for his people.
Botswana is said to more or less function also.
The takeaway point is that Africans don't rebel against their leaders even when they suck because they are used to living under an autocratic thieving chief who could not be challenged. Instead they opt for zero-sum games of replacing one tribe's oppression with another's.
I do not know about this tropical diseases holding Africans back thing. There are a lot of tropical diseases in the Caribbean, Brazil, Vietnam and Singapore and those places are doing all right.
It is not at all typical for a small oligarchic elite to steal everything and leave everyone else with jack. It's hardly the case in Europe except maybe in the Ukraine and possibly in Russia and Kazakhstan. That model does exist in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Burma. Further east, this is the model in Indonesia and the Philippines. This is also the typical model in most of Latin America, though things are finally changing now.
However, in India, Nepal, Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines and now most of Latin America, one can at least say that there is a loud and angry Left made of the masses who are getting screwed by the oligarchs. In a number of places, the Left is even armed. But there seems to be no such thing in most African states. It is if Africans simply expect to be ruled by a thieving autocratic bastard and do not see any other alternative.
In most of Asia it is not the case – Mongolia, China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Taiwan are relatively equitable places. The entire Arab world is more or less run according to a socialist model as is Iran. Most of the former SSR's are relatively socialist places such as Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kirghistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The oligarchic model is pretty much nonexistent in traditional Europe and in the Anglosphere of the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, though the US is starting to resemble the model somewhat.
Trust me that nowhere else on Earth would you find a country that had a PCI of $20K/yr where the majority of the people wallowed in horrific poverty, starving and sickly. That sort of lunacy would only be found in Africa.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on May 15, 2014 Categories Africa, Blacks, Central Africa, Culture, Economics, Gabon, Health, Illness, Left, Nigeria, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, Socialism, Sociology, West AfricaLeave a comment on Tribalism and Chieftainship: Why the Modern African State Fails
Possible Environmental Factors in the Black IQ
Johan Mayer writes:
Have you tried correlating the IQ scores with local lead poisoning? The main gains from the Flynn effect ended by the late 1970s (birth years), suggesting that fuel lead didn't play a role (as both whites and blacks would experience higher intelligence, thus raising the intelligence that 100 represents—rather, it was probably the elimination of malnutrition), and that some of the remaining gap should arise from differential lead paint.
The calculation might look as follows:
Deficit = sum(over n) Distribution of lead level(n) x IQ_deficit_from_lead(n)for each neighborhood.
Add the deficit to the mean IQ calculated from the composition of the neighborhood, then re-estimate the (before lead) IQ of each group, fitting to composition and reevaluated IQ; re-normalize the black IQ to the white (raised) IQ.
Elevated black blood lead (much more common than elevated white blood lead) suggests that at least another 3 IQ points can be gained for blacks on that count, using Detroit data.
I did a similar calculation for national IQ and malnutrition (using 1991 data), on the basis that malnutrition knocks off about a standard deviation of IQ (15 points, although I also found a source that claimed 11), multiplying by the malnourished proportion of the population. This pushes sub-Saharan African National IQ to the range upper 60's to upper 70's.
Black African skin bleaching tends to be between 30 and 70% among women historically, although men are also using such products; the products are notorious for mercury content, suggesting that childhood exposure via the mother should cost another 11 points on average (mercury ppm in mother's hair on the order of 150, with 0.15 IQ loss per ppm—products sold to Africa typically have much higher mercury content). I couldn't find much by way of statistics for US black women. For Asians, there has been much growth of the use of these products since the early National IQ estimates were made.
African leaded fuel use will also greatly harm urban populations (who will dominate National IQ estimates), although they were phased out by 2006; the time to affect primary schools is about nine years, although the IQ estimates are based on the the 90's. South Africa should suffer 7 points, and Nigeria probably the same.
Thus the pre-environmental expected IQ of blacks is well within a standard deviation of whites.
East Asian cities are often near coasts, and historically held much smaller portions of their respective countries' populations, as elsewhere. Thus their early (for the third world) industrialization would tend to have a lower impact on IQ.
Lead has been studied, and childhood lead is substantially lower than adult lead, which may account for much of the national IQ achievement of Chinese versus other societies; child rearing practices that avoid putting unknown objects in the mouth might play a role, but then again, given the relatively small family sizes and involvement of grandparents, more supervision might also play a role.
As to the topic of your post, another possible cause for the lack of black achievement considering IQ is racism.
The author makes a strong case that US Black IQ's can increase 3 points and African Black IQ's can increase 10 points due to environmental interventions. This is certainly plausible.
I have no problems with any of these environmental efforts. All the power to them. A gain of even 3 IQ points for Detroit Blacks would be a fantastic thing indeed. A 10-point IQ gain for African Blacks would be a great thing for them and for Africa as a whole. Many of Africa's most serious problems would surely ameliorate with a 10-point IQ gain. An IQ in the upper 70's would put Africa on a par with the IQ's of some Gulf states such as Qatar that have created highly evolved civilizations. However, even US Blacks with IQ's a full 9 points higher than the Qataris fail miserably at creating the highly evolved society that the Qataris created.
One argument is that Qatar only exists in its current form due to oil wealth. Give Black people oil wealth, and they will create a Qatar.
However, this has not happened in Africa. Nigeria has tremendous oil wealth, and it is one of the evil and diabolically failed states on Earth. Nearly all of the wealth has been stolen by a tiny elite and the rest of the population flounders in monstrous poverty. Gabon is a much better case, and oil wealth has allowed them to have a $20,000 per capita income. Gabon is basically a middle income country. However, almost all of the wealth has been stolen by a tiny elite, ~50% of the population is starving, and and the vast majority of the population live in horrifying poverty.
Give a Black society money, and the most cruel and sociopathic Blacks will steal almost all of it for a small elite group, leaving the vast majority of the population to suffer in terrible poverty (the African model).
Alternatively, give another Black society money, and income will be much better distributed, but the most cruel and sociopathic Blacks will create in monstrous violent crime rate, destabilizing a prosperous society.
The African wealth distribution style is also seen in Haiti and was seen until the 1960's in the Dominican Republic. The rest of the Caribbean has a much more equitable distribution system. Trinidad and Tobago has a PCI or $20,000/yr due to oil wealth, but they have one of the highest violent crime and homicide rates on Earth. A Trinidadian woman I spoke to said it was because local young men had imported gang culture from the US, and it was now spread all through the country. Still, a country with a $20,000 PCI and that high of a homicide rate nearly qualifies as something like a failed state right there, at least on that one variable.
Although we have shown that Blacks can create wealthy societies (at least in the case of oil), those societies show significant problems either in democratization or extremely high violent crime.
In the African model, a tiny elite will steal all the oil wealth and leave most of the people scrounging for scraps.
In the Caribbean model, wealth will be distributed much better, but society will still be saddled with a horrific violent crime rate.
As the comparison with Qatar and the US shows, there is a lot more holding Black people back than just a low IQ. With an IQ of ~83, the Arabs can create Dubai, along with a highly civilized state with a shockingly low crime rate. With an IQ of 87, US Blacks still cannot create anything like Dubai even with an IQ advantage.
So obviously the problems of Black people extend beyond IQ, and a rising Black IQ is not a cure-all.
What these problems are is unknown, but there appear to be genetic factors predisposing Blacks to greater crime and antisociality. What these factors are is unknown, but I am convinced that they exist. Antisociality will create thieving elites in Africa and Caribbean societies with better income distribution but extremely high violent crime rates.
Getting a handle around Black problems involves not only raising Black IQ but dealing conclusively with whatever it is that is crimogenic or psychopathogenic in Black biology or Black genes.
Once IQ is high enough though, whatever Black criminogenic issues are involved tend to wash out. I have read that setting Black IQ at ~113, the Black and White crime rates are equal. High intelligence often washes out criminal tendencies due to greater forward thinking, possibly greater empathy, guilt and worry and lessened impulsiveness. As IQ rises in any race of humans, empathy, guilt and worry tend to rise and impulsiveness tends to decline.
I do not agree that racism affects Black IQ scores very much. Instead, moving from a non-racist country (Jamaica) to a racist country (the UK) results in a gain of up to 14 IQ points in the second generation. Blacks living in "highly racist" White societies typically have IQ's ~13-18 points higher than Blacks living in non-racist societies such as the Caribbean and Africa.
Skin bleaching products sold in the US probably do not have much mercury in them.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on August 13, 2013 Categories Africa, Americas, Arabs, Blacks, Caribbean, Central Africa, Crime, Dominican Republic, Flynn Effect, Gabon, Haiti, Health, Intelligence, Latin America, Middle East, Nigeria, Nutrition, Psychology, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Social Problems, Sociology, Trinidad and Tobago, Urban Studies, USA, West Africa, Whites31 Comments on Possible Environmental Factors in the Black IQ
Arabs Are Stupid, Backwards, Low IQ Morons Who Can't Create Anything
I must admit that I don't understand US Blacks. I believe that the UAE has an IQ of ~83 or so. That is ~4 points lower than US Blacks. Based on IQ alone, there is no reason why US Blacks should not, theoretically, be able to produce something like this, if they had the income to do so. But does anyone think that they would?
Black oil states in the Caribbean have sky high murder rates. Black oil states in Africa have utterly failed to redistribute the income in a fair and reasonable way; instead, it's a zero-sum game with everyone for my tribe and my favored group and nothing for anybody else. The nation of Gabon has a PCI of $20,000/yr, yet has some of the worst health and nutrition figures on Earth. Most of the population is sick, starving, unemployed and barefoot.
I don't get it. Arabs are dumber than US Blacks, and they create Dubai. US Blacks are smarter than Arabs, but they create Detroit. What gives?
Whatever is wrong with US Blacks, it ain't IQ. Their IQ ought to be sufficient to create scenes like the above.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on September 27, 2011 January 14, 2019 Categories Africa, Arabs, Blacks, Central Africa, Gabon, Intelligence, Psychology, Race/Ethnicity, Regional692 Comments on Arabs Are Stupid, Backwards, Low IQ Morons Who Can't Create Anything
Does Multilingualism Equal Separatism?
Repost from the old site.
Sorry for the long post, readers, but I have been working on this piece off and on for months now. It's not something I just banged out. For one thing, this is the only list that I know of on the Net that lists all of the countries of the world and shows how many languages are spoken there in an easy to access format. Not even Wikipedia has that (yet).
Whether or not states have the right to secede is an interesting question. The libertarian Volokh Conspiracy takes that on in this nice set of posts. We will not deal with that here; instead, we will take on the idea that linguistic diversity automatically leads to secession.
There is a notion floating around among fetishists of the state that there can be no linguistic diversity within the nation, as it will lead to inevitable separatism. In this post, I shall disprove that with empirical data. First, we will list the states in the world, along with how many languages are spoken in that state.
States with a significant separatist movement are noted with an asterisk. As you can see if you look down the list, there does not seem to be much of a link between multilingualism and separatism. There does seem to be a trend in that direction in Europe, though.
Afterward, I will discuss the nature of the separatist conflicts in many of these states to try to see if there is any language connection. In most cases, there is little or nothing there.
I fully expect the myth of multilingualism = separatism to persist after the publication of this post, unfortunately.
St Helena                        1
British Indian Ocean Territories 1
Pitcairn Island                  1
Estonia                          1
Maldives                         1
North Korea                      1
South Korea                      1
Cayman Islands                   1
Bermuda                          1
Belarus                          1
Martinique                       2
St Lucia                         2
St Vincent & the Grenadines      2
Barbados                         2
Virgin Islands                   2
British Virgin Islands           2
Gibraltar                        2
Antigua and Barbuda              2
Saint Kitts and Nevis            2
Montserrat                       2
Anguilla                         2
Marshall Islands                 2
Cuba                             2
Turks and Caicos                 2
Guam                             2
Tokelau                          2
Samoa                            2
American Samoa                   2
Niue                             2
Jamaica                          2
Cape Verde Islands               2
Icelandic                        2
Maltese                          2
Vatican State                    2
Haiti                            2
Kiribati                         2
Tuvalu                           2
Bahamas                          2
Puerto Rico                      2
Kyrgyzstan                       3
Rwanda                           3
Nauru                            3
Turkmenistan                     3
Luxembourg                       3
Monaco                           3
Burundi                          3
Seychelles                       3
Grenada                          3
Bahrain                          3
Tonga                            3
Qatar                            3
Kuwait                           3
Dominica                         3
Liechtenstein                    3
Andorra                          3
Reunion                          3
Dominican Republic               3
Netherlands Antilles             4
Northern Mariana Islands         4
Palestinian West Bank & Gaza     4
Palau                            4
Mayotte                          4
Cyprus*                          4
Bosnia and Herzegovina*          4
Slovenia and Herzegovina*        4
Swaziland                        4
Sao Tome and Principe            4
Guadalupe                        4
Saudi Arabia                     5
Cook Islands                     5
Latvia                           5
Lesotho                          5
Djibouti                         5
Ireland                          5
Moldova                          5
Armenia                          6
Mauritius                        6
Lebanon                          6
Mauritania                       6
Croatia                          6
Kazakhstan                       7
Albania                          7
Portugal                         7
Uzbekistan                       7
Sri Lanka*                       7
United Arab Emirates             7
Comoros                          7
Belize                           8
Tunisia                          8
Denmark                          8
Yemen                            8
Morocco*                         9
Austria                          9
Jordan                           9
Macedonia                        9
Tajikistan                       9
French Polynesia                 9
Gambia                           9
Belgium                          9
Libya                            9
Fiji                             10
Slovakia                         10
Ukraine                          10
Egypt                            11
Bulgaria                         11
Norway                           11
Poland                           11
Serbia and Montenegro            11
Eritrea                          12
Georgia*                         12
Finland*                         12
Switzerland*                     12
Hungary*                         12
United Kingdom*                  12
Mongolia                         13
Spain                            13
Somalia*                         13
Oman                             13
Madagascar                       13
Malawi                           14
Equatorial Guinea                14
Mali                             14
Azerbaijan                       14
Japan                            15
Syria*                           15
Romania*                         15
Sweden*                          15
Netherlands*                     15
Greece                           16
Brunei                           17
Algeria                          18
Micronesia                       18
East Timor                       19
Zimbabwe                         19
Niger                            21
Singapore                        21
Cambodia                         21
Iraq*                            21
Guinea-Bissau                    21
Taiwan                           22
Bhutan                           24
Sierra Leone                     24
South Africa                     24
Germany                          28
Namibia                          28
Botswana                         28
France                           29
Liberia                          30
Israel                           33
Italy                            33
Guinea                           34
Turkey*                          34
Senegal                          36
Bangladesh                       39
New Caledonia                    39
Togo                             39
Angola*                          41
Gabon                            41
Zambia                           41
Mozambique                       43
Uganda                           43
Afghanistan                      47
Guatemala                        54
Benin                            54
Kenya                            61
Congo                            62
Burkina Faso                     68
Central African Republic         69
Solomon Islands                  70
Thailand*                        74
Iran*                            77
Cote D'Ivoire                    78
Ghana                            79
Laos                             82
Ethiopia*                        84
Canada*                          85
Russia*                          101
Vietnam                          102
Myanmar*                         108
Vanuatu                          109
Nepal                            126
Tanzania                         128
Chad                             132
Sudan*                           134
Malaysia                         140
United States*                   162
Philippines*                     171
Pakistan*                        171
Democratic Republic of Congo     214
Australia                        227
China*                           235
Cameroon*                        279
Mexico                           291
India*                           415
Nigeria                          510
Indonesia*                       737
Papua New Guinea*                820
*Starred states have a separatist problem, but most are not about language. Most date back to the very formation of an often-illegitimate state.
Canada definitely has a conflict that is rooted in language, but it is also rooted in differential histories as English and French colonies. The Quebec nightmare is always brought up by state fetishists, ethnic nationalists and other racists and nationalists who hate minorities as the inevitable result of any situation whereby a state has more than one language within its borders.
This post is designed to give the lie to this view.
Cyprus' problem has to do with two nations, Greeks and Turks, who hate each other. The history for this lies in centuries of conflict between Christianity and Islam, culminating in the genocide of 350,000 Greeks in Turkey from 1916-1923.
Morocco's conflict has nothing to do with language. Spanish Sahara was a Spanish colony in Africa. After the Spanish left in the early 1950's, Morocco invaded the country and colonized it, claiming in some irredentist way that the land had always been a part of Morocco. The residents beg to differ and say that they are a separate state.
An idiotic conflict ensued in which Morocco the colonizer has been elevated to one of the most sanctioned nations of all by the UN. Yes, Israel is not the only one; there are other international scofflaws out there. In this conflict, as might be expected, US imperialism has supported Moroccan colonialism.
This Moroccan colonialism has now become settler-colonialism, as colonialism often does. You average Moroccan goes livid if you mention their colony. He hates Israel, but Morocco is nothing but an Arab Muslim Israel. If men had a dollar for every drop of hypocrisy, we would be a world of millionaires.
There are numerous separatist conflicts in Somalia. As Somalians have refused to perform their adult responsibilities and form a state, numerous parts of this exercise in anarchism in praxis (Why are the anarchists not cheering this on?) are walking away from the burning house. Who could blame them?
These splits seem to have little to do with language. One, Somaliland, was a former British colony and has a different culture than the rest of Somalia. Somaliland is now de facto independent, as Somalia, being a glorious exercise in anarchism, of course lacks an army to enforce its borders, or to do anything.
Jubaland has also split, but this has nothing to do with language. Instead, this may be rooted in a 36-year period in which it was a British colony. Soon after this period, they had their own postage stamps as an Italian colony.
There is at least one serious separatist conflict in Ethiopia in the Ogaden region, which is mostly populated by ethnic Somalis. Apparently this region used to be part of Somaliland, and Ethiopia probably has little claim to the region. This conflict has little do with language and more to do with conflicts rooted in colonialism and the illegitimate borders of states.
There is also a conflict in the Oromo region of Ethiopia that is not going very far lately. These people have been fighting colonialism since Ethiopia was a colony and since then have been fighting against independent Ethiopia, something they never went along with. Language has a role here, but the colonization of a people by various imperial states plays a larger one.
There was a war in Southern Sudan that has now ended with the possibility that the area may secede.
There is a genocidal conflict in Darfur that the world is ignoring because it involves Arabs killing Blacks as they have always done in this part of the world, and the world only gets upset when Jews kill Muslims, not when Muslims kill Muslims.
This conflict has to do with the Sudanese Arabs treating the Darfurians with utter contempt – they regard them as slaves, as they have always been to these racist Arabs.
The conflict in Southern Sudan involved a region in rebellion in which many languages were spoken. The South Sudanese are also niggers to the racist Arabs, plus they are Christian and animist infidels to be converted by the sword by Sudanese Arab Muslims. Every time a non-Muslim area has tried to split off from or acted uppity with a Muslim state they were part of, the Muslims have responded with a jihad against and genocide of the infidels.
This conflict has nothing to do with language; instead it is a war of Arab Muslim religious fanatics against Christian and animist infidels.
There is a separatist movement in the South Cameroons in the nation of Cameroon in Africa. This conflict is rooted in colonialism. During the colonial era, South Cameroons was a de facto separate state. Many different languages are spoken here, as is the case in Cameroon itself. They may have a separate culture too, but this is just another case of separatism rooted in colonialism. The movement seems to be unarmed.
There is a separatist conflict in Angola in a region called Cabinda, which was always a separate Portuguese colony from Angola.
As this area holds 60% of Angola's oil, it's doubtful that Angola will let it go, although almost all of Angola's oil wealth is being stolen anyway by US transnationals and a tiny elite while 90% of the country starves, has no medicine and lives unemployed amid shacks along former roads now barely passable.
The Cabindans do claim to have a separate culture, but language does not seem to be playing much role here – instead, oil and colonialism are.
Syria does have a Kurdish separatist movement, as does Iran, Iraq, and Turkey – every state that has a significant number of Kurds. This conflict goes back to the post-World War 1 breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The Kurds, with thousands of years of history as a people, nominally independent for much of that time, were denied a state and sold out.
The new fake state called Turkey carved up part of Kurdistan, another part was donated to the British colony in Iraq and another to the French colony in Syria, as the Allies carved up the remains of the Empire like hungry guests at a feast.
This conflict is more about colonialism and extreme discrimination than language, though the Kurds do speak their own tongue. There is also a Kurdish separatist conflict in Iran, but I don't know much about the history of the Iranian Kurds.
There is also an Assyrian separatist movement in Iraq and possibly in Syria. The movement is unarmed. The Assyrians have been horribly persecuted by Arab nationalist racists in the region, in part because they are Christians. They have been targeted by Islamo-Nazis in Iraq during this Iraq War with a ferocity that can only be described as genocidal.
The Kurds have long persecuted the Assyrians in Iraqi Kurdistan. There have been regular homicides of Assyrians in the north, up around the Mosul region. This is just related to the general way that Muslims treat Christian minorities in many Muslim states – they persecute them and even kill them. There is also a lot of land theft going on.
While the Kurdish struggle is worthwhile, it is becoming infected with the usual nationalist evil that afflicts all ethnic nationalism. This results in everyone who is not a Kurdish Sunni Muslim being subjected to varying degrees of persecution, disenfranchisement and discrimination. It's a nasty part of the world.
In Syria, the Assyrians live up near the Turkish and Iraqi borders. Arab nationalist racists have been stealing their land for decades now and relocating the Assyrians to model villages, where they languish in poverty. Assad's regime is not so secular and progressive as one might suspect.
There is a separatist conflict in Bougainville in New Guinea. I am sure that many different tongues are spoken on that island, as there are 800 different tongues spoken in Papua New Guinea. The conflict is rooted in the fact that Bougainville is rich in copper, but almost all of this wealth is stolen by Papua New Guinea and US multinationals, so the Bougainville people see little of it. Language has little or nothing to do with it.
There are separatist movements in the Ahwaz and Balochistan regions of Iran, along with the aforementioned Kurdish movement. It is true that different languages are spoken in these regions, but that has little to do with the conflict.
Arabic is spoken in Khuzestan, the land of the Iranian Arabs. This land has been part of Persia for around 2,000 years as the former land of Elam. The Arabs complain that they are treated poorly by the Persians, and that they get little revenue to their region even though they are sitting on a vast puddle of oil and natural gas.
Iran should not be expected to part with this land, as it is the source of much of their oil and gas wealth. Many or most Iranians speak Arabic anyway, so there is not much of a language issue. Further, Arab culture is promoted by the Islamist regime even at the expense of Iranian culture, much to the chagrin of Iranian nationalists.
The Ahwaz have been and are being exploited by viciously racist Arab nationalists in Iraq, and also by US imperialism, and most particularly lately, British imperialism, as the British never seem to have given up the colonial habit. This conflict is not about language at all. Most Ahwaz don't even want to separate anyway; they just want to be treated like humans by the Iranians.
Many of Iran's 8% Sunni population lives in Balochistan. The region has maybe 2% of Iran's population and is utterly neglected by Iran. Sunnis are treated with extreme racist contempt by the Shia Supremacists who run Iran. This conflict has to do with the fight between the Shia and Sunni wings of Islam and little or nothing to do with language.
There is a separatist movement in Iran to split off Iranian Azerbaijan and merge it with Azerbaijan proper. This movement probably has little to do with language and more to do with just irredentism. The movement is not going to go very far because most Iranian Azeris do not support it.
Iranian Azeris actually form a ruling class in Iran and occupy most of the positions of power in the government. They also control a lot of the business sector and seem to have a higher income than other Iranians. This movement has been co-opted by pan-Turkish fascists for opportunistic reasons, but it's not really going anywhere. The CIA is now cynically trying to stir it up with little success. The movement is peaceful.
There is a Baloch insurgency in Pakistan, but language has little to do with it. These fiercely independent people sit on top of a very rich land which is ruthlessly exploited by Punjabis from the north. They get little or no return from this natural gas wealth. Further, this region never really consented to being included in the Pakistani state that was carved willy-nilly out of India in 1947.
It is true that there are regions in the Caucasus that are rebelling against Russia. Given the brutal and bloody history of Russian imperial colonization of this region and the near-continuous rebellious state of the Muslims resident there, one wants to say they are rebelling against Imperial Russia.
Chechnya is the worst case, but Ingushetia is not much better, and things are bad in Dagestan too. There is also fighting in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia. These non-Chechen regions are getting increasingly radicalized as consequence of the Chechen War. There has also been a deliberate strategy on the part of the Chechens to expand the conflict over to the other parts of the Caucasus.
Past rebellions were often pan-Caucasian also. Although very different languages are spoken in these areas, different languages are still spoken all across Russia. Language has little to do with these conflicts, as they have more to do with Russian imperialism and colonization of these lands and the near 200-year violent resistance of these fierce Muslim mountain tribes to being colonized by Slavic infidels.
There is not much separatism in the rest of Russia.
Tuva reserves the right to split away, but this is rooted in their prior history as an independent state within the USSR (Tell me how that works?) for two decades until 1944, when Stalin reconquered it as a result of the conflict with the Nazis. The Tuvans accepted peacefully.
Yes, the Tuvans speak a different tongue, but so do all of the Siberian nations, and most of those are still with Russia. Language has little to do with the Tuvan matter.
There is also separatism in the Bashkir Republic and Adygea in Russia. These have not really gone anywhere. Only 21% of the residents of
Adygea speak Circassian, and they see themselves as overrun by Russian-speaking immigrants. This conflict may have something to do with language. The Adygean conflict is also peripherally related the pan-Caucasian struggle above.
In the Bashkir Republic, the problem is more one of a different religion – Islam, as most Bashkirs are Muslim. It is not known to what degree language has played in the struggle, but it may be a factor. The Bashkirs also see themselves as overrun by Russian-speaking immigrants. It is dubious that the Bashkirs will be able to split off, as the result will be a separate nation surrounded on all sides by Russia.
The Adygean, Tuvan and Bashkir struggles are all peaceful.
The conflict in Georgia is complex. A province called Abkhazia has split off and formed their own de facto state, which has been supported with extreme cynicism by up and coming imperialist Russia, the same clown state that just threatened to go to war to defend the territorial integrity of their genocidal Serbian buddies. South Ossetia has also split off and wants to join Russia.
Both of these reasonable acts prompted horrible and insane wars as Georgia sought to preserve its territorial integrity, though it has scarcely been a state since 1990, and neither territory ever consented to being part of Georgia.
The Ossetians and Abkhazians do speak separate languages, and I am not certain why they want to break away, but I do not think that language has much to do with it. All parties to these conflicts are majority Orthodox Christians.
Myanmar is a hotbed of nations in rebellion against the state. Burma was carved out of British East India in 1947. Part of Burma had actually been part of British India itself, while the rest was a separate colony called Burma. No sooner was the ink dry on the declaration of independence than most of these nations in rebellion announced that they were not part of the deal.
Bloody rebellions have gone on ever since, and language has little or nothing to do with any of them. They are situated instead on the illegitimacy of not only the borders of the Burmese state, but of the state itself.
Thailand does have a separatist movement, but it is Islamic. They had a separate state down there until the early 1800's when they were apparently conquered by Thais. I believe they do speak a different language down there, but it is not much different from Thai, and I don't think language has anything to do with this conflict.
There is a conflict in the Philippines that is much like the one in Thailand. Muslims in Mindanao have never accepted Christian rule from Manila and are in open arms against the state. Yes, they speak different languages down in Mindanao, but they also speak Tagalog, the language of the land.
This just a war of Muslims seceding because they refuse to be ruled by infidels. Besides, this region has a long history of independence, de facto and otherwise, from the state. The Moro insurgency has little to nothing to do with language.
There are separatist conflicts in Indonesia. The one in Aceh seems to have petered out. Aceh never agreed to join the fake state of Indonesia that was carved out of the Dutch East Indies when the Dutch left in 1949.
West Papua is a colony of Indonesia. It was invaded by Indonesia with the full support of US imperialism in 1965. The Indonesians then commenced to murder 100,000 Papuans over the next 40 years. There are many languages spoken in West Papua, but that has nothing to do with the conflict. West Papuans are a racially distinct people divided into vast numbers of tribes, each with a separate culture.
They have no connection racially or culturally with the rest of Indonesia and do not wish to be part of the state. They were not a part of the state when it was declared in 1949 and were only incorporated after an Indonesian invasion of their land in 1965. Subsequently, Indonesia has planted lots of settler-colonists in West Papua.
There is also a conflict in the South Moluccas , but it has more to do with religion than anything else, since there is a large number of Christians in this area. The South Moluccans were always reluctant to become a part of the new fake Indonesian state that emerged after independence anyway, and I believe there was some fighting for a while there. The South Moluccan struggle has generally been peaceful ever since.
Indonesia is the Israel of Southeast Asia, a settler-colonial state. The only difference is that the Indonesians are vastly more murderous and cruel than the Israelis.
There are conflicts in Tibet and East Turkestan in China. In the case of Tibet, this is a colony of China that China has no jurisdiction over. The East Turkestan fight is another case of Muslims rebelling against infidel rule. Yes, different languages are spoken here, but this is the case all over China.
Language is involved in the East Turkestan conflict in that Chinese have seriously repressed the Uighur language, but I don't think it plays much role in Tibet.
There is also a separatist movement in Inner Mongolia in China. I do not think that language has much to do with this, and I believe that China's claim to Inner Mongolia may be somewhat dubious. This movement is unarmed and not very organized.
There are conflicts all over India, but they don't have much to do with language.
The Kashmir conflict is not about language but instead is rooted in the nature of the partition of India after the British left in 1947. 90% of Kashmiris wanted to go to Pakistan, but the ruler of Kashmir was a Hindu, and he demanded to stay in India.
The UN quickly ruled that Kashmir had to be granted a vote in its future, but this vote was never allowed by India. As such, India is another world-leading rogue and scofflaw state on a par with Israel and Indonesia. Now the Kashmir mess has been complicated by the larger conflict between India and Pakistan, and until that is all sorted out, there will be no resolution to this mess.
Obviously India has no right whatsoever to rule this area, and the Kashmir cause ought to be taken up by all progressives the same way that the Palestinian one is.
There are many conflicts in the northeast, where most of the people are Asians who are racially, often religiously and certainly culturally distinct from the rest of Indians.
None of these regions agreed to join India when India, the biggest fake state that has ever existed, was carved out of 5,000 separate princely states in 1947. Each of these states had the right to decide its own future to be a part of India or not. As it turned out, India just annexed the vast majority of them and quickly invaded the few that said no.
"Bharat India", as Indian nationalist fools call it, as a state, is one of the silliest concepts around. India has no jurisdiction over any of those parts of India in separatist rebellion, if you ask me. Language has little to do with these conflicts.
Over 800 languages are spoken in India anyway, each state has its own language, and most regions are not in rebellion over this. Multilingualism with English and Hindi to cement it together has worked just fine in most of India.
Sri Lanka's conflict does involve language, but more importantly it involves centuries of extreme discrimination by ruling Buddhist Sinhalese against minority Hindu Tamils. Don't treat your minorities like crap, and maybe they will not take up arms against you.
The rebellion in the Basque country of Spain and France is about language, as is Catalonian nationalism.
IRA Irish nationalism and the Scottish and Welsh independence movements have nothing to do with language, as most of these languages are not in good shape anyway.
The Corsicans are in rebellion against France, and language may play a role. There is an independence movement in Brittany in France also, and language seems to play a role here, or at least the desire to revive the language, which seems to be dying.
There is a possibility that Belgium may split into Flanders and Wallonia, and language does play a huge role in this conflict. One group speaks French and the other Dutch.
There is a movement in Scania, a part of Sweden, to split away from Sweden. Language seems to have nothing to do with it.
There is a Hungarian separatist movement, or actually, a national reunification or pan-Hungarian movement, in Romania. It isn't going anywhere, and it unlikely to succeed. Hungarians in Romania have not been treated well and are a large segment of the population. This fact probably drives the separatism more than language.
There are many other small conflicts in Europe that I chose not to go into due to limitations on time and the fact that I am getting tired of writing this post! Perhaps I can deal with them at a later time. Language definitely plays a role in almost all of these conflicts. None of them are violent though.
To say that there are separatists in French Polynesia is not correct. This is an anti-colonial movement that deserves the support of anti-colonial activists the world over. The entire world, evidenced by the UN itself, has rejected colonialism. Only France, the UK and the US retain colonies. That right there is notable, as all three are clearly imperialist countries. In this modern age, the value of retaining colonies is dubious.
These days, colonizers pour more money into colonies than they get out of them. France probably keeps Polynesia due to colonial pride and also as a place to test nuclear weapons and maintain military bases. As the era of French imperialism on a grand scale has clearly passed, France needs to renounce its fantasies of being a glorious imperial power along with its anachronistic colonies.
Yes, there is a Mapuche separatist movement in Chile, but it is not going anywhere soon, or ever.
It has little to do with language. The Mapudungan language is not even in very good shape, and the leaders of this movement are a bunch of morons. Microsoft recently unveiled a Mapudungan language version of Microsoft Windows. You would think that the Mapuche would be ecstatic. Not so! They were furious. Why? Oh, I forget. Some Identity Politics madness.
This movement has everything to do with the history of Chile. Like Argentina and Uruguay, Chile was one of the Spanish colonies that was settled en masse late. For centuries, a small colonial bastion battled the brave Mapuche warriors, but were held at bay by this skilled and militaristic tribe.
Finally, in the late 1800's, a fanatical and genocidal war was waged on the Mapuche in one of those wonderful "national reunification" missions so popular in the 1800's (recall Italy's wars of national reunification around this same time). By the 1870's, the Mapuche were defeated and suffered a devastating loss of life.
Yet all those centuries of only a few Spanish colonists and lots of Indians had made their mark, and at least 70% of Chileans are mestizos, though they are mostly White (about 80% White on average). The Mapuche subsequently made a comeback and today number about 9% of the population.
Because they held out so long and so many of them survived, they are one of the most militant Amerindian groups in the Americas. They are an interesting people, light-skinned and attractive, though a left-wing Chilean I knew used to chortle about how hideously ugly they were.
Hawaiian separatism is another movement that has a lot to do with colonialism and imperialism and little to do with language. The Hawaiian language, despite some notable recent successes, is not in very good shape. The Hawaiian independence movement offers nothing to non-Hawaiians (I guess only native Hawaiians get to be citizens!) and is doomed to fail.
Hawaiians are about 22% of the population, and they are the only ones that support the independence movement. No one else supports it. It's not going anywhere. The movers and shakers on the island (Non-Hawaiians for the most part!) all think it's ridiculous.
There are separatists in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, but I doubt that language has much to do with it. Like the myriad other separatist struggles in the NE of India, these people are ethnically Asians and as such are not the same ethnicity as the Caucasians who make up the vast majority of the population of this wreck of a state.
This is another conflict that is rooted in a newly independent fake state. The Chittagong Hill Tracts were incorporated into Bangladesh after its independence from Pakistan in 1971. As a fake new state, the peoples of Bangladesh had a right to be consulted on whether or not they wished to be a part of it. The CHT peoples immediately said that they wanted no part of this new state.
At partition, the population was 98.5% Asian. They were Buddhists, Hindus and animists. Since then, the fascist Bangladesh state has sent Bengali Muslim settler-colonists to the region. The conflict is shot through with racism and religious bigotry, as Muslim Bengalis have rampaged through the region, killing people randomly and destroying stuff as they see fit. Language does not seem to have much to do with this conflict.
I don't know much about the separatist struggle of the Moi in Vietnam, but I think it is more a movement for autonomy than anything else. The Moi are Montagnards and have probably suffered discrimination at the hands of the state along with the rest of the Montagnards.
Zanzibar separatism in Tanzania seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with language, but has a lot more to do with geography. Zanzibar is a nice island off the coast of Tanzania which probably wants nothing to do with the mess of a Tanzanian state.
The conflict also has a lot to do with race. Most residents of Zanzibar are either Arabs or descendants of unions between Arabs and Africans. In particular, they deny that they are Black Africans. I bet that is the root of the conflict right there.
There were some Talysh separatists in Azerbaijan a while back, but the movement seems to be over. I am not sure what was driving them, but language doesn't seem to have been a big part of it. Just another case of new members of a fake new state refusing to go along for the ride.
There were some Gagauz separatists in Moldova a while back, but the movement appears to have died down. Language does seem to have played a role here, as the Gagauz speak a Turkic tongue totally unrelated to the Romance-speaking Moldovans.
Realistically, it's just another case of a fake new state emerging and some members of the new state saying they don't want to be a part of it, and the leaders of the fake new state suddenly invoking inviolability of borders in a state with no history!
In summary, as we saw above, once we get into Europe, language does play a greater role in separatist conflict, but most of these European conflicts are not violent. In the rest of the world, language plays little to no role in the vast majority of separatist conflicts.
The paranoid and frankly fascist notion voiced by rightwing nationalists the world over that any linguistic diversity in the world within states must be crushed as it will inevitably lead to separatism at best or armed separatism at worst is not supported by the facts.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on June 24, 2011 Categories Abkhazia, Aceh, Adygea, Africa, African, Americas, Amerindians, Applied, Arab Nationalism, Arab Racism, Arabs, Asia, Asian, Asians, Assyrians, Azerbaijan, Azeris, Bangladesh, Bangladeshis, Basques, Belgium, Blacks, Britain, Buddhism, Cameroon, Canada, Caucasus, Central Africa, Chechens, Chechnya, Chile, Chileans, China, Christianity, Circassians, Colonialism, Culture, East Africa, East Indians, Ethiopia, Ethnic Nationalism, Eurasia, European, Europeans, Fascism, France, Georgia, Hinduism, Hispanics, History, Hungary, Immigration, Imperialism, India, Indonesia, Inner Mongolia, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Israel, Kashmir, Kurds, Linguistics, Mestizos, Middle East, Mixed Race, Morocco, Multilingualism, Nationalism, NE Asia, Near East, Near Easterners, New Guinea, North Africa, North America, Pacific, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Political Science, Polynesia, Quebec, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Religion, Reposts From The Old Site, Romania, Russia, SE Asia, Serbians, Settler-Colonialism, Shiism, Siberia, Sociolinguistics, Somalia, Somaliland, South America, South Asia, South Asians, South Ossetia, Southern Sudan, Spain, Spaniards, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Sunnism, Sweden, Syria, Tanzania, Turkey, USA, USSR, Vietnam, War, West Africa, West Papua, Whites, Zanzibar11 Comments on Does Multilingualism Equal Separatism?
An Interesting NE Asian Phenotype
White Nationalists like to go on and on and on about the glorious color of their skin: white. For some odd reason, this white skin is superior to darker-colored skins of folks who evolved in hotter zones. Truth is, darker skin color is a perfectly rational evolutionary response to high rates of UV radiation in areas where it is very hot.
And in some areas of the globe, people can have fairly light skins if they stay out of the sun, but they get dark quite easily if they go out in the sun. Italians and Greeks come to mind. Here are photos of Italians, Greeks and Spaniards who have stayed out of sun, and then the same folks after they got tanned.
The same page also shows identical phenotypes commonly seen as European-only, like Nordics, Mediterraneans and Alpines, in both their European and extra-European forms from Arabia, North Africa and Central Asia. Often the darker skin you see in a lot of Southern Europeans is nothing but a tan.
On the other hand, Northern Europeans, and possibly other Northern types, don't tan very well (they often burn) and even when they do, they don't get all that dark. The very dark skin of Blacks, Papuans, Melanesians, some Aborigines and some South Indians is simply a result of evolving in those parts of the Earth where the sun shines brightest of all.
But Whites ought to give up the fantasy of about their white skin being best of all – because other races have some very white skin too. See the Korean woman in the photo below for example.
A Korean woman. She has a shade of White on her skin that is lacking in almost all Caucasians – it is probably only seen in Ireland and Scotland and it's probably even lacking in Sweden and Norway. But this very White phenotype seen in some Koreans and Northern Chinese differs from that of European Whites in that it is more glossy. European White skin looks more chalky or powdery.
This phenotype also has skin that looks more like porcelain and is reflective of light. The very light European skin tends to be less light-reflective.
Here's a pretty cool chart showing degrees of skin lightness versus darkness around the world.
UV radiation chart along with zones of skin color. Zone 1 has the darkest skin of all . Zone 2, which includes Italians and Spaniards, has skin that tans easily. Zone 3 contains light skin that enables residents to absorb as much Vitamin D as possible from the sun due to lack of sunlight at higher latitudes.
Note that there is also pretty high UV radiation in parts of South America (Peru), in the heart of Mexico, in Southwest Arabia (especially Yemen), in Southern India and Sri Lanka and in Indonesia, Malaysia, Southern Philippines and New Guinea. Indonesians and Malaysians are known for being darker than many other SE Asian groups.
According to this chart, the darkest people of all are Blacks from Mozambique and Cameroon in Africa and Aborigines from Darwin in North Australia. A look at the same chart, much expanded, in the original paper, shows that the next darkest are Blacks, the Okavango in Namibia and the Sara in Chad (Table 6, p. 19). The chart shows that the lightest people are in Netherlands, followed by Germany and then the northern parts of the UK.
Note on the map that Tibet and parts of the Amazon should have some very dark-skinned people, but those who live there are lighter than you would expect based on UV. The paper suggests that the Tibetans are lighter because it is so cold there that most of their body is covered up all the time and only the face is uncovered.
The face is lighter to collect what Vitamin D it can as so much of the body cannot collect Vitamin D due to clothing. The Amazonian Indians are known to be shade-seeking and the paper suggests that this may account for their lighter skin.
Most Whites don't really have White skin anyway. I am looking at my own skin here as I type, and it looks more pink than White.
Jablonski, N. and Chaplin, G. (2000) The Evolution of Human Skin Coloration. Journal of Human Evolution. Available on this blog here.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on January 23, 2011 Categories Aborigines, Africa, Americas, Amerindians, Anthropology, Asia, Asians, Blacks, Britain, Cameroon, Central Africa, China, Chinese (Ethnic), Europe, Europeans, Germany, Greeks, Health, India, Indonesia, Indonesians, Italians, Koreans, Latin America, Malays, Malaysia, Melanesians, Mexico, Middle East, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, New Guinea, North Africa, Northeast Asians, Nutrition, Oceanians, Papuans, Peru, Philippines, Physical, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Reposts From The Old Site, SE Asia, SE Asians, South Africa, South America, South Asia, South Asians, Southwest Africa, Spaniards, Sri Lanka, Tibet, White Nationalism, Whites, Yemen3 Comments on An Interesting NE Asian Phenotype
There Be Cannibals!
My understanding of cannibalism is not good. It's well-known that starving people in just about any society will eat their own dead. Clearly, the Anasazi Indians of Arizona and New Mexico, ancestors of today's Pueblo Indians, engaged in cannibalism during the 1300's. I don't care what the Indians say. Indian tribes are notorious liars when it comes to denying anything that makes them look bad.
The cannibals and head-hunters of New Guinea are well-known, and some were said to continue to engage in the practice until the mid-1960's. Cannibalism was well-known in other parts of the world, especially Polynesia and Fiji. It was legendary in New Guinea and widely practiced in Australia too.
The cannibals of the Congo below were not the only ones in Africa, just some of the more notorious. There were also cannibals in the Brazilian Amazon and a few in North America here and there.
But Polynesia, especially New Zealand, had some of the worst cannibals of all. A Maori wife of a chief killed in combat would offer herself to be killed and eaten by her enemies, becoming dinner to show her love for her husband. A Fijian husband's power over his wife was such that he could kill her and eat her at any time for any or no reason at all.
In some societies, people were eaten if they were loved. In Australia, people ate the corpses of their relatives and friends in order to pay tribute to their lives.
In New Guinea, old folks, having a hard time straggling through life, were hanged from trees or killed in other ways, often by their own kids, in a big party with the whole village gathered around. After they were dead, they were chopped up and eaten. Beats mortgaging your house for Mom's nursing home, eh?
Smoking a fish is a good way of making it more flavorful, and logically it follows that it adds a little zest to roast human. Humans waiting to be eaten were "tenderized" in water or other liquids to make the flesh less beef jerky-like.
Tribes from Africa to Polynesia went out on hunting parties, like armies of Jeffrey Dahmers, looking for human prey to kill and cook up.
Although women definitely are better looking then men, some cannibals insist that we guys are more delectable. Others prized female flesh most of all and went to great woman-chasing lengths to obtain it.
Dying in battle is bad enough if you are to be a meal afterwards, but being wounded and then hauled away to be served on the dinner table must have been a particular horror.
Slaves were captured, kept in chains and horribly mistreated for long periods, knowing all the while that one day that would serve as a main course.
What is interesting is that so many cannibal societies insist that Roast Human tastes great, even better than many or most domesticated or wild animals. One wonders why we taste so great. Did we evolve to be good eatin'?
In many places, White explorers were told, "Of course we eat people! Don't you?" One New Guinea tribe had a legend about how they became cannibals. One day the men went out hunting. They came back with some wild pigs and whatnot. The women berated them, "Is that all you can give us – that lousy stuff?
The humiliated men, their masculinity at risk, figured that the women wanted people to eat, not some dirty animals. So they took off to a neighboring village and came back. They came back with humans to eat, the women danced all around and their manliness was intact.
Biting off the nose of a corpse is pretty horrible, and cannibals deny that they do this. They only bite off the noses of those others kill, not those they kill themselves! They do have some class. If boiling a dead man's heart is too much for you, just get your daughter to do it, and then drink the delicious juice. A rack of rib sounds pretty good, but would you eat it if it came from a seven year old girl?
Now, I like pork myself, but "long pig" is said to be more delicate, and it never makes you so full you feel ill. We all like to get together with the family for Thanksgiving, but how about the New Guineans, a woman and her two daughters, who dug up the corpse of one of the daughter's baby and consumed it? Gives a new meaning to three generations at the table for dinner, eh?
The Dobudura in New Guinea liked to keep a fresh supply of meat on hand. So they would capture a man and keep him alive for up to a week, cutting off bits of his flesh any time they felt hungry. They used a plant medicine to keep the food supply from bleeding to death. When he is nearly dead, they would poke a hole in his skull and scoop the brains out with a spoon, brains being a major delicacy and all.
One way to ensure a delicious meal is to roast a man while still alive, for the meat tastes better when prepared this way. Deboning a chicken makes for better eating, and humans may be similarly deboned. What to do with the giblets? Well, with human giblets, just give them to the kids, who roast them in the fire and eat them up.
With the coming of "evil Western colonialist missionaries" all of this quaint "indigenous" cultural behavior was laid to rest once and for all, or so we thought (but see below). Many cultures became ashamed of their former cannibalism and refused to discuss it.
The Aborigines were puzzled at why it had been outlawed. Why were we not allowed to eat our friends anymore, to have a party and say what a great guy he was? None of it made sense.
I suppose the Cultural Leftists, in love with all cultures, wicked, sublime and in between, as long as they are not White and Christian or Jewish, want to resurrect all this delectable human-chomping.
As the Congo War devolves, we are receiving reports that Congolese militias are once again reverting to old habits of cannibalism. In particular, they are killing the Pygmies (the Bantus have waged a long genocidal campaign against both Bushmen and Pygmies) and cooking them up for chow.
Almost all roads in the Congo built by those evil colonialists are now in disrepair – not due to weather or abuse, that is normal. It is that in the Congo now, when a road falls apart, no one ever fixes it. Never. Ever. Hence, roads just pretty much do not exist.
The apartheid Whites of Southern Africa, of paternalistic mind, always said that when the White man left Africa, Africans would "go back to the bush", in every conceivable way.
That's not necessarily the case in all Africa. See an optimistic post about a disaster zone called Nigeria, and note the good economic growth the continent has been experiencing, with the sole exception of Zimbabwe, which is disgustingly tossed out by White racists as an exemplar of all of Africa. Yet in Congo, it appears that this depressing forecast is being borne out.
Delicious quotes follow, from Troubled Heart of Africa: A History of the Congo. Check out the title – I suppose the anti-racists assume it must be "racist", no? Dark continent, heart of darkness, the horror, the horror, and all that?
Racists salivating over this post as an exemplar of "nigger innate savagery" be warned: cannibalism was not generalized over all of Africa. It was a cultural phenomenon primarily confined to the Congo, which then grew, strangely, in the 1800's, to encompass more of the colony via cultural transmission.
For their part, the Malela were delighted by their diet of human flesh, describing it as "saltish in flavour, and requiring little condiment." Unfortunately for their neighbors, their search for human flesh led to widespread slaughter. Edgerton, 85
But the Basongye, or Zappo Zaps as they were often known, sold slaves to their neighbors knowing that they would be eaten; they also ate their own dead. Soon after the end of the Arab War, they would work for the Free State and spread cannibalistic terror across the Congo.
Other societies such as the Baluba, for example, ate the hearts of virtuous or brave people to gain their strength, but they also ate the bodies of criminals and slaves to prevent them from doing evil to their masters or haunting them. Ibid, 86
In some Congolese societies, people ate human flesh only occasionally to mark a particularly significant ritual occasion, but in other societies in the Congo, perhaps even a majority by the late nineteenth century, people ate human flesh whenever they could, saying it was far tastier than other meat and, perhaps surprisingly, that male human flesh tasted better than female.
Persons to be eaten often had both of their arms and legs broken and were made to sit up to their necks in a stream for three days, a practice said to make their flesh more tender, before they were killed and cooked.
Teeth filed to sharp points were widely thought by Europeans to be the mark of cannibals, but in some societies whose people actually were cannibals, teeth were not filed at all, and in others that did not practice cannibalism, people nevertheless filed their teeth to sharp points.
As Sydney L. Hinde noted during the Arab War, the Batetela were such devoted cannibals that children actually killed and ate their parents "at the first sign of their decrepitude," but they did not file their teeth. Ibid.
In 1907, the Bankutu people were seen by a European traveler to hunt people for food as other Congolese hunted animals. They served human flesh in "little rolls like bacon." As late as 1923, American traveler Hermann Norden reported that cannibalism was commonplace.
One Congolese man reprovingly scolded him for not eating some human flesh when he was offered it: "You know the flesh of man tastes better than the flesh of a goat." A Belgian companion of Norden's admitted that he had probably been served human flesh and had eaten it unknowingly.
In 1925, Hungarian anthropologist Emil Torday reported an encounter with a Muyanzi man who boasted about cooking human brains with a pinch of salt and red peppers, then dipping his bread in it. "Then he would smack his lips and run away like an imp."
Missionary and explorer A.L. Lloyd reported that when a European told a Bangwa tribesperson that eating human flesh was a "degrading habit," the man answered, "Why degraded? You people eat sheep and cows and fowls, which are all animals of a far lower order, and we eat man, who is great and above all; it is you who are degraded." Ibid, 86
While in the Congo, Livingstone saw human parts being cooked with bananas, and many other Europeans reported seeing cooked human remains lying around abandoned fires.
British captain and medical officer Sydney L. Hinde, who would take part in the Free State's war with the Arabs in 1892-93, reported an incident in which a Basongo chief asked a Belgian officer's tent to cut the throat of a little slave girl he owned. He was cooking her when soldiers seized him.
British adventurer Herbert E. Ward once asked a group of Congo tribespeople whether they ate human flesh. Their immediate answer was "Yes, don't you?"
Later, Ward witnessed cannibalism on numerous occasions and was often offered human flesh to eat. He recalled an occasion when a young Bangala slave was killed. Soon after, the chief's son, a boy of sixteen or so, "nonchalantly" said, "That slave boy was very good eating – he was nice and fat." Ibid, 88
Several European officers in the Force noted with a mixture of horror and approval that because Congolese on both sides of such battles cooked and ate all of the dead and wounded, burial parties were unnecessary and diseases were kept under control. Cannibalism had become so routine that one Force Publique officer admitted he had become quite "bland" about it." Ibid, 100
At least a thousand Arabs were killed – then smoked and eaten. Ibid, 102
While some Free State officials were exploiting Congolese and others tried to care for them, a constant concern of these Europeans was cannibalism. It was not simply the eating of human flesh that repelled them, but that so many people were murdered expressly so that others might feast upon their bodies.
Early in the 1660s, Englishmen Andrew Battell escaped the Portuguese who had enslaved him, to spend sixteen months among the Jaga people near the Congo's Atlantic coast. He reported that they preferred human flesh to their own cattle.
Later, as we have seen, healthy children were stabbed to death to provide a feast for their owners, and men were known to help sick coworkers "die," then smoke their body parts for later consumption.
Six Bangala men on the Stanley, a thirty-ton, stern-wheel steamer, were suspected by the ship's captain of killing two crewmen who fell ill. They pleaded innocence, but smoked human body parts were found hidden in their lockers.
Some men showed no restraint in their appetite for human flesh. When one of Gongo Lutete's wives was killed in battle, his own men ate her. Enraged, Lutete ordered these men killed the next day and eaten. None of the Europeans were surprised that Africans on both sides of the war with the Arabs routinely cooked and ate not only the dead they found on the battlefield, but the wounded as well." Ibid, 108
Edgerton, Robert B., The Troubled Heart of Africa: A History of the Congo. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002.
Harris, Marvin, Cannibals and Kings: The Origin of Cultures. Glasgow, 1978, p. 69.
Hogg, Garry, Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice, quoting The Rev. James Chalmers, Life and Work in New Guinea. RTS, 1895.
Lange, Algot, In the Amazon Jungle. Putnam, New York, 1912.
MacGregor, Sir William, Foreword to Murray, Papua, or British New Guinea. Faber Unwin, 1912.
Maynard, Dr. Felix & Dumas, Alexandre, The Whalers. Hutchinson, 1937.
Métraux, Alfred, Easter Island. André Deutsch, 1957.
Murray, J. H. P., Lieutenant-Governor and Chief Judicial Officer, "Papua", Papua, or British New Guinea. Faber Unwin, 1912.
Rice, A. P., in The American Antiquarian vol. XXXII, 1910.
Seligmann, C. G., "South-eastern New Guinea", in The Melanesians of British New Guinea. Cambridge University Press, 1910.
Simpson, Colin, Adam in Ochre . Angus & Robertson, 1938.
St Johnston, Alfred, Traveller, Fiji Islands, Camping Among Cannibals. Macmillan, 1883.
Walker, H. W., FRGS, Wanderings among South Sea Savages. Witherby, 1909.
Wallace, A. Russel, Travels on the Amazon. Ward Lock, 1853.
Williams, F. E., Orikaiva Society. Clarendon Press, 1930.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on January 7, 2011 Categories Aborigines, Africa, Americas, Amerindians, Anthropology, Arabs, Australia, Blacks, Brazil, Cannibalism, Central Africa, Colonialism, Congo, Cultural, Culture, Depravity, Europeans, Latin America, Left, Maori, New Guinea, Nigeria, North America, Oceanians, Pacific, Political Science, Polynesia, Polynesians, Pygmies, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Reposts From The Old Site, South Africa, South America, USA, West, West Africa, White Racism, Whites6 Comments on There Be Cannibals!
The "Nazis and Soviets Were Friends" Lie
Wade writes:
The hatred between Nazi and Bolshevik was just a surface conflict. The real underlying conflict was between German and Russian which had been going on for long before WWII. 30 million dead is just a result of more advanced technology and policies based on Nazi race hatred.
In the beginning of WWII the Nazis and communists had actually signed a pact. When Hitler invaded the northern part of Poland, the Soviets went into the south. Hitler eventually turned east not because he didn't trust Bolshevism, but because he didn't trust the Soviet Union (the new Russian state).
You can't have it both ways. Fascists and the Left have always been the deadliest of enemies. Sure, there are some crossover 3rd Position type groups like National Bolsheviks, but those are based on a faulty reading of history. You have to pick one or the other. Are you a fascist choosing the Right or an anti-fascist on the Left. You can't order both.
Fascists and the Left don't hate each other just because they think alike and are having a lover's quarrel. They really are polar opposite ideologies in many ways.
Fascism is best seen as a "popular far rightwing authoritarian movement against the Left."
I've spent a lot of time on Left sites. One group they will not abide is the fascists. I've also been on a fascist sites. What they hate more than anything else is the Left. They want to kill us.
This is complete nonsense about the Nazis and Soviets being allies. The Nazis raison d etre was the wipe Bolshevism off the face of the Earth. They were an anti-Communist party to the core.
They put people in the camps in this order:
1. Communists
2. Socialists
3. Trade unionists
4. (Last) Jews
If you read Hitler's writings and those of other top Nazis, it's all about the danger of Bolshevism to Europe and how it had to be wiped out. The Jews were tied in with Bolshevism, so that is why the Jews were targeted. They were out to wipe Judeo-Bolshevism off the face of the Earth. All the other fascists were like this too. Their deadly enemies were the Communists, socialists and union members everywhere, all through Europe. There was a hot war in Spain. When fascists came to power in Europe everywhere in WW2, they immediately went after the Communists.
Rightwingers the world over supported the fascists, including the Nazis, as the biggest, baddest Commie killers that ever lived.
Stalin knew that Hitler was out to wipe out the USSR from the very start. That was the reason for the breakneck collectivization and industrialization, and frankly for the paranoid purges of the 1937 – Stalin suspected a Nazi plot to overthrow him.
The 1940 pact was just a means of buying time temporarily in the war that Stalin knew was going to happen. The US and UK had been egging Hitler from 1938-1941, trying to get him to attack the USSR and take them out. In 1938 Chamberlain gave Hitler Austria not for peace in our time but as deal for Hitler taking out the Soviets.
For a long time, rightwingers in the US and UK had been hoping to use and control Hitler long enough so that he could be used as a weapon against the USSR. When Hitler first came to power in 1933, the NY Times praised him as an anti-Communist.
If the Left loved fascists so much, why was there a deadly hot war in Spain?
Mussolini came to power as a coup against a resurgent Left in Italy. In the early 1920's, landless peasants were rioting in the streets and marching in the fields all over Italy.
The rich use fascism as a last ditch effort to save capitalism in the face of an overwhelming threat from the Left.
The postwar fascists of Latin America, the Philippines, Fiji, Ethiopia, Morocco, Indonesia, Turkey, Greece, Zaire, Spain, Portugal, Iran and many other places were admirers of Hitler, Mussolini and all of the other European fascists. The Indian Hindutva fascists hate no one so much as the Left and also admire Hitler.
Fascism is all about "exterminate the Left."
The conflict is more nationalism versus internationalism than anything else, but it's also about wealth and priveleges.
Fascists declare the class war dead in the name of class solidarity, but then it goes on nonetheless. All classes are locked into position forever as part of the eternal blood and soil national pact. The rich are rich, the poor are poor, and that's that.
Especially after WW2, rightwing authoritarianism and fascism has been all about everything for the rich and corporations and screw the people. As the class war grinds the masses into the dirt, the fascists march them off to anti-Communist rallies and have them wave flags. They seek to negate the class struggle but prioritizing nationalism over class. With the cloak of nationalism, they seek to make the class struggle seem to disappear under the flag of the nation.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on December 22, 2010 Categories Africa, Americas, Asia, Austria, Britain, Capitalism, Central Africa, Conservatism, East Africa, Economics, Ethiopia, Europe, European, Europeans, Fascism, Germany, Greece, History, India, Indonesia, Internationalism, Iran, Italy, Jews, Journalism, Labor, Latin America, Left, Marxism, Morocco, National Socialism, Nationalism, Nazism, North Africa, Philippines, Political Science, Portugal, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, SE Asia, Socialism, South Asia, Spain, Turkey, USSR, War, World War 2, Zaire14 Comments on The "Nazis and Soviets Were Friends" Lie
Is Conservatism Always Bad?
In my opinion, conservatism is always bad. Conservatism is always and everywhere at all times elite rule and only elite rule. Some support elite rule. I don't. I support popular rule. I say elite rule is bad. Since elite rule is always bad, conservatism is always bad. Real simple.
In addition, conservatism is almost always dishonest. As an elite philosophy, you can either be honest about your goals and say you are working to better the elite and harm everyone else – say, the top 20% will benefit and the bottom 80% will be harmed, or you can lie and say you are out for everyone when you are not. It usually doesn't work for conservatives to tell the truth, but now and then they do. Most people are not so stupid as to vote for an elite party when they are members of the non-elite group who will be harmed by the elite party. So conservatives, always and everywhere at all times, lie. They lie about their project. They have to, because often that's the only way to get in.
But this continuous lying results in a destruction of Politics. There's not much of a democracy left when almost the entire media is lying their fool heads off day and night. The population is bewildered at best or brainwashed at worst. This is the sort of "democracy" we have here in America. It's hardly a democracy at all!
Erranter asks if we should not be bashing conservatives.
Doesn't a conservative just mean someone who is fine with the way things are going, the status quo? There are places where the status quo is democracy and none of those above things. I don't think it's fair to attach "bad" to the very definition of conservative and "good" to progressive. That's changing the definitions which people use to communicate and permanently attaching a moral judgment. It's also unequivocal that conservatives are bad, because a part of this new definition is that they are bad.
Someone who is fine with the way things are going, the status quo – No, that is not what conservatism means.
Conservatism is elite rule. It always has been, it is now, and it always will be. Some things never change. Elites hate democracy. The Republican Party hates democracy. Notice how they are always trying to repress voter turnout. Heavy turnout is always bad for the elite Republicans. Given half a chance, sane electorates generally vote for popular rule (the Left) and against elite rule (the Right). Why would any electorate voluntarily vote against popular rule and for elite rule? They would have to be out of their minds (like the US electorate).
It's hard to vote in elite rule. People don't like it too much. So conservatives usually need to rule by dictatorship in one form or another. Once Latin America got rid of the dictatorships, the first thing the people did was vote in the Left.
There are only a few places on Earth where US style hard rightwing conservatives are actually voted into power, and those elections are problematic because the popular, anti-elite candidates of the Left are typically murdered.
El Salvador (though the Left is starting to win now)
That's about it.
The conservatives in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Turkey and the Philippines all rule by terror. They all run death squads and slaughter the Left.
In the Philippines, conservatives run as populists who will fight and get rid of poverty, so that's not really US conservatism.
In Colombia, Guatemala and El Salvador, conservatives usually run on a platform of "kill the Communists (the Left)."
Everywhere else on Earth, people generally vote in some sort of a liberal to socialist type government.
All of Africa has generally been run by popular Leftwing parties, with a few exceptions in Zaire and Kenya. They haven't done a very good job of popular rule, but US style conservatism simply does not exist there.
In North Africa, most of the governments are socialist. Morocco was always the outlier, as it was ruled by a rightwing king, but he's a dictator.
All of the Arab World is generally run by some type of socialist party or other. US style conservatism never takes power there.
All of the former Soviet Republics are now run by some type of socialist government or other.
All of Europe is being run by some type of socialist government or other, with the possible exception of Great Britain. The UK was always the outlier. US style conservatism ruled under Thatcher, but she was probably the most hated ruler in the 20th Century UK, and she couldn't get much done.
Russia is run by a socialist regime under Putin.
The Iranian religious government has always been socialist in nature.
It's hard to characterize the Karzai regime, but it is not US conservatism.
The Pakistani government is very hard to characterize, but it is not US style conservatism. The recently assassinated leader, Benazir Bhutto, was a socialist. The President, her widower, is also a socialist.
Since Independence, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka have generally been run by socialist regimes of one type or another.
Myanmar is run by a regime that calls itself socialist.
Singapore has a social democracy.
SE Asia has been run by socialists since 1975. Thailand typically had rightwing military government. Recently, a progressive, Thaksin, was elected. He was extremely popular, but the conservative elite threw him out in a coup like they often do. At any rate, US style conservatism does not exist in Thailand.
China is run by a socialist party.
Mongolia is run by socialists.
Japan has been a social democracy since 1945.
True, South Korea was always a rightwing regime, but recently they elected a leftwinger.
Taiwan was always ruled by a rightwing dictatorship, but I am not sure who is in power since independence. They have had a social democracy for a while now.
Indonesia was always run by a rightwing dictatorship, but they recently went to democracy. The present leader has begun a number of socialist programs.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on October 8, 2010 Categories Afghanistan, Africa, Americas, Asia, Britain, Central Africa, Central America, Chile, China, Colombia, Conservatism, East Africa, El Salvador, Eurasia, Europe, Guatemala, Indonesia, Inner Mongolia, Iran, Japan, Kenya, Latin America, Left, Morocco, NE Asia, Nepal, North Africa, Pakistan, Philippines, Political Science, Politics, Regional, Republicans, Russia, SE Asia, Singapore, South America, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, US Politics, ZaireLeave a comment on Is Conservatism Always Bad?
Why America Sucks
All the voters are White. Of course the country is a reactionary nightmare.
As you can see, the overwhelming majority of US voters are White. It is US White voters and only US White voters who have sent America down the conservative and reactionary sewer pipe in the last 30 years. An operation that is yet ongoing, and that seems to be gaining quite a bit of steam. In the 2006 election, it was even worse. 79% of the voters were White.
The electorate also is overwhelmingly White.
The voter pool is also overwhelmingly White. So the argument that Blacks and Hispanics don't turn out to vote is washed up. Even if they all turned out to vote, it wouldn't matter much. It would only shift the electorate maybe -3% away from the reactionary Whites.
As long as America is overwhelmingly White, it will be a terrifyingly reactionary and backwards place, the laughingstock of the Western World. There is nothing inherently reactionary about White people. In Europe, they are reliably socialist. Someone show me a reactionary and non-socialist country in Europe please? In New Zealand and Australia, Whites are quite socialist, whatever their limitations in recent days with the horror specter of Mr. Howard.
In Latin America, it is true, Whites are reactionary, extremely so. Even in Uruguay and Argentina, they are reactionary. But these countries also have a revolutionary White Left that in the past has given the White elites the bullets and bombs they so richly deserve.
Argentina today, though a reactionary and Third World mess like the rest of the continent, at least has a Leftist President. A real Leftist, not an Obama rightwinger. The Argentine elite is alarmed about the Communist takeover of Argentina, Commies being coded as "fascists," and are openly calling for the return of the fascist dictatorship. Fascist Argentines bashing Left opponents as fascists while calling for the return of Argentine fascism. Typical fascist obfuscation and mind-warping.
They claim that Kirchner had Commie "brownshirts" in the streets who have taken over entire zones. The Commie Kirchner is supposedly trying to "censor the media" by breaking up the reactionary media monopolies that own nearly the entire media of the land. But why should the Right own 90% of the media? By what rights? Capitalist rights? Hell with that.
Media should be delineated democratically according to predilection. If 30% of the population is Left, then 30% of the media should be Left. If that can't be done, part of the Right media should be confiscated, at gunpoint if possible, and then turned over to folks representing 30% of the population. It's only right and proper.
Uruguay elected a former Left wing guerrilla, but I'm not sure how much will change, as he is dedicated to following the neoliberal suicide model. Is Uruguay a more socialist state than the USA? An interesting question.
Costa Rica is a pretty socialist place, which is interesting since anti-Communist fools and liars always uphold Costa Rica on their social figures, comparing it to Cuba on the grounds that Cuba is not so hot. What these congenital liars don't realize (Or maybe they do!) is that all of Costa Rica's great figures are attributable to Costa Rican social democracy.
Those are the countries in which Whites are a majority.
In the rest of Latin America, Whites are a minority, and they are frighteningly conservative to reactionary. They have generally stayed in power through repression, fraud, imprisoning, assaulting, kidnapping, torturing and murdering the opposition. White elites have done this in most countries in the region: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico.
The implication is that Whites will only support any kind of socialism where they are a good, solid majority. They are only 65% of the US now, so this may be why they are headed this way.
The entire rightwing movement in the US for the last 30 years has been coming from Whites. Has it been coming from Hispanics? Of course not. Has it been coming from Blacks? Please. Has it been coming from Jews? Pull the other one. Has it been coming from Asians? Forget it.
So when you read that "the voters" are furious with Obama and support all sorts of reactionary monstrosities in opposition to him, it's US Whites, and only US Whites, who are leading this Tea Party opposition wave to Obama. And much of it is undoubtedly racist, no matter how much they scream that it's not.
US Whites, as a % of the population, are declining. Every 2-3 years, they decline another 1%. That's a pretty shocking decline. Progressives ought to celebrate White decline, in spite of all the negative consequences that go along with it. If Whites were progressive people, we could reliably oppose White decline. But they aren't, and they will never be.
The other day, my mother (smartest women on Earth) told me that in the lifetime of my brother and I, we will live to see the US become a more progressive country. If all goes according to plan, I will take off around 2035 or so. The reason for this, she said, is the decline of Whites.
White nationalists have told me that a declining White America will lead to a more progressive place. Their reasoning for this is curious, and doesn't make much sense. One guy told me that as Whites decline further and further, they will get more and more radical. As they dip below 40%, they will take up arms against any progressive regime seen as non-White. What he's saying is that Whites will grow more violent and militant as they decline. I find this dubious. He also said that a majority non-White American government would be too incompetent to install a reliable and functioning sort of socialism. I find that dubious as well.
Will Hispanics, Blacks, Jews and Asians continue to be reliably progressive into the future? It's an interesting question. Majority-Indian, mulatto and mestizo places like Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Panama are quite backwards and rightwing. A White minority in all places continues to rule to the detriment of everyone else. Usually they enforce their rule at gunpoint and often with deadly force. But they get the votes of mestizos, Indians and mulattos to do this.
In the Caribbean, Black and mulatto elites have treated their own people horribly. This is particularly the case in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Most of the Black Caribbean is not very socialist, with the exception of Cuba. But Dominica is an equitable country, and Trinidad and Tobago has a decent amount of socialism. Socialism was arrested in Jamaica with the US assault on Manley, a White socialist.
The record in Black Africa is not good in terms of socialism. North African Arab states are much more socialist than Black Africa. True, there is not much to divide in the first place, but still. Even Black African countries that have fallen into some money are still horribly rightwing. Gabon, a wealthy African country, has nightmarish levels of poverty, malnutrition, maternal mortality, child and infant mortality. Apparently, as has always been the case in Africa, a tiny Black elite has grabbed control over the economy for themselves and possibly their tribe and is locking out everyone else.
Given that mestizos, mulattos and Blacks have a poor record of setting up socialist systems in their own lands, one wonders just how socialist they will be here in the US as they grow in numbers. So far, they have been realiably socialist, but what will the future bring.
The model in mulatto, mestizo and Black countries is typically astounding gaps between the rich and the poor, horrifying levels of poverty, and often an enraged, militant and sometimes armed but cash-starved Left minority battling the elite for power. In these countries, poverty is a big deal, the opposite of the US. So there, all parties, from Right to Left, run on reducing poverty and fighting for the poor, with a few overtly fascist exceptions in Guatemala, El Salvador, (Honduras?) and Colombia and a strange overtly rightwing government in Chile, increasingly a US model state in Latin America.
The Right has the entire media spectrum. In Honduras, a 99% mestizo country, a reactionary and murderous elite owns 99+% of the media. This is typical across the region. The assumption is that the non-White masses are simply badly brainwashed.
The ignorant mestizo, mulatto and Black electorate tends to vote for parties that often have progressive sounding names. In many cases, these parties are said to be overtly socialist parties. This is especially the case in the Caribbean, where almost every party has a socialist-sounding name. So down there, the Right calls themselves socialists, progressives and populists fighting for the poor while they implement reaction.
A similar dynamic is seen in Africa, where most parties have socialist-sounding names.
In other words, the US model of reactionary parties having open reactionary images, programs and politics is nonexistent in most of Latin America and Africa. No one would vote for it. In fact, it's anathema in most of the world! It's nearly nonexistent also in Arabia, South Asia, Europe, SE Asia and NE Asia. Turkey does have an overtly rightwing government.
Other than Turkey, show me one overtly reactionary party along the lines of the US Republican Party in power in any of these places.
One wonders if the model of the US reactionaries will change in the future with White decline. Will we see the rise of a backwards mestizo, mulatto or Black elite looking for votes possibly on an ethnic basis. Will we see the rise of fake populism and fake socialism, where the Right will operate rightwing parties with socialist and progressive sounding names campaigning on poverty reduction and helping the have-nots, to get the non-White vote? Will the Republican Party model of an openly and brazenly reactionary party become nonviable as non-Whites refuse to support it, according the model in the rest of the world?
Author Robert LindsayPosted on September 17, 2010 Categories Africa, Americas, Amerindians, Argentina, Asians, Australia, Black-White (Mulattos), Blacks, Brazil, Caribbean, Central Africa, Central America, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Democrats, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Economics, Ecuador, El Salvador, Europe, Europeans, Fascism, Gabon, Guatemala, Haiti, Hispanics, Honduras, Jamaica, Journalism, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Marxism, Mestizos, Mexico, Mixed Race, North Africa, North America, Obama, Panama, Peru, Political Science, Politics, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Republicans, Socialism, South America, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uruguay, US Politics, USA, White Nationalism, White Racism, Whites16 Comments on Why America Sucks
Musings on Dual Loyalty, Judaism as Zionism, and Anti-Semitism
Always-perceptive commenter James Schipper makes some astute, terse and cut to the chase comments on my post, The "New Anti-Semitism." In it, he moves beyond the typically vulgar anti-Semitism that much modern anti-Zionism descends into and offers a perfectly logical explanation for the dual loyalty accusation leveled at Jews.
He also brings up some very difficult questions about the differences between Judaism and Zionism and whether there is really any difference at all.
Schipper:
If criticism of Israel = anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism, then we should be proud to call ourselves anti-Semites.
What is really wrong with Israel? It is not such a bad country for Jews, or even for the Arabs in Israel proper. I would rather be a Jew in Israel than an Arab in any Arab country. Israel was born in sin, but so was every country in the Western hemisphere. Israel is oppressive in the occupied territories, but by historical standards, this oppression is hardly unique.
The real reason for opposing Israel is that it does not see itself as the country of its citizens but as the country of all the Jews in the world. According to Israel, Jews in other countries are living in exile, are really Israelis and should be loyal to Israel.
In other words, Israel expects the Jewish citizens of other countries to behave like Israel's fifth-columnists, and that is exactly what Zionists outside Israel are.
No political party outside Israel should accept Zionists as members, and no government outside Israel should appoint Zionists to a senior government job. Instead, Zionist should be encouraged to put their bodies where their loyalties are: in Israel.
Suppose that Italy saw itself as the country of all Catholics in the world and expected Catholics everywhere to defend Italian interests, then it would be behaving exactly as Israel does. That would also be a good reason for non-Catholics in other countries to look at Catholics with suspicion and to regard Italy with hostility.
The late Arthur Koestler wrote in an essay that after 1948 all Jews should choose one of two options: go to Israel or abandon Judaism altogether. He is right insofar as Judaism implies Zionism.
Judaism has always posited that Jews are a people and that Israel is their promised land, which is also the position of Zionism. If Judaism implies Zionism, then Jews outside of Israel, it they want to remain Jewish, should emigrate to Israel or else detribalize and deterritorialize Judaism, which may be denaturing it.
Theological question: Why does Obama allow bad things to happen and evil people to prosper?
More seriously, why did Obama appoint a hard Zionist as his chief of staff? It is not a good sign.
I agree with several things in this post.
First of all, he attacks some of the usual broadsides leveled at Israel and dismisses them.
What I find disturbing, and many Zionists have noted this, is the particular vehemence many Israel-critics level at Israel's oppression of Jews inside Israel, while they are silent or even supportive of even worse oppression by states against minorities outside Israel.
White nationalists think it's awesome for Whites to treat non-Whites like shit, except when it comes to White Jews versus "muds" in Israel. Kurds in the Arab World are treated awfully bad, Berbers less so but still poorly, and the Shia are oppressed all over the Arab World. There is open oppression and violence against Christians in Egypt and Iraq.
Baha'i are treated horribly in Iran, Sunnis less so but still poorly, and the Ahwaz have some good beefs. Turks treat Kurds horribly in Turkey. Russia has massacred 20% of the population of Chechnya in what can only be termed a genocide. China's treatment of the Uighurs and Tibetans is disgraceful. Treatment of Hindus in Pakistan is shameful, and NE Indian Asians are treated poorly by the Indian state.
Japan treats its Koreans, Burakumin and Ainu pretty badly. The Hmong are still treated like shit in Laos, and the Montagnards are not done well by Vietnam. Pygmies are openly genocided and cannibalized as a matter of custom in Zaire, and the Khoisan are nearly murdered at will in SW Africa.
There is a real genocide of Arabs against Africans in Darfur, and another one, Arabs versus Christians, has just ended in South Sudan. Africans are routinely enslaved by Arabs in the Sahel.
We could go and on, but you get the picture. What is disturbing about all of this is that most Israel-critics are either indifferent to, ignorant of or even supportive of, the maltreatment of minorities above. Zionists are correct that this is either ignorance or anti-Semitism.
All, or most all, modern nations were born in sin.
This was due to the nature of the modern nation-building exercise, which typically involved ethnic cleansing or some sort of mass killing or genocide of any existing indigenous people, sidelining, subjection, forced assimilation (cultural genocide) or outright genocide against anyone not part of the dominant nation of the nation-state, and forced destruction of all languages but the one chosen by the nation-state or that is the dominant nation.
The Modern Left in the West, which has adopted Third-Worldism, minority-hugging and European hatred with gusto, errs in singling out Europeans for particular abuse in terms of nation-building. It's been bloody and awful everywhere and at all times.
Schipper also points out that although Israel is oppressive in the Occupied Territories, by comparative standards, they are relatively mild. Considering the outrageous provocations and attacks of the Palestinians, I am amazed Israel has gone as easy on them as it has.
Arabs do not believe in fighting wars in a civilized manner, and the Geneva Conventions are regarded by them as Western comedy. Any Arab state faced with Palestinian-type provocations by non-Arabs would have been vastly worse than Israel.
Truthfully, just about every nation fighting an insurgency has been more horrible that Israel by orders of magnitude.
Consider this: according to counterinsurgency doctrine, enshrined by the US military and state and promoted by the US media and both US political parties, any civilian who "supports" an insurgency needs to be arrested, beaten, tortured and killed. All counterinsurgencies supported by the US have routinely massacred, mutilated and tortured to death insurgency "supporters."
This has been true in every counterinsurgency in Latin America, in Indonesia in 1965, the US counterinsurgencies in SE Asia during the Vietnam War, the counterinsurgencies in Mozambique, Algeria and Angola, Russia's counterinsurgency in Chechnya, India's counterinsurgencies in India proper and Kashmir, in Sri Lanka against the Tamils, in Indonesia against the Acehese and East Timorese, in the Philippines against the NPA, and in Nepal's recent Civil War.
In these counterinsurgencies, hundreds of thousands of "supporters" of insurgencies were murdered, tortured and mutilated, while the US cheered, poured in money and looked the other way.
In contrast, almost 100% of Palestinians seem to support the Palestinian insurgency. Clearly, Israel has not been going around killing "supporters" of the insurgency. If they did, they would have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians so far.
Considering the provocations of the Palestinians, Israel has fought one of the cleanest counterinsurgencies in modern times.
Zionists are correct that these criticisms of Israel, combined with support for to indifference to much worse behaviors by non-Jews, are evidence of either ignorance or anti-Semitism.
But Schipper does hit it on the head.
The reason to oppose Israel is that it is not a state of its citizens. Israel openly says that it is the state of all Jews on Earth, not of its citizens. Hence, it is perfectly reasonable for non-Jews in every nation on Earth containing Jews to look upon their Jews as possible traitors and dual-loyalists. Dual loyalty, rather than being an "anti-Semitic canard" as many Jews shrilly screech, is actually grounded in immaculate reason.
Schipper also suggests that the wall between Judaism and Zionism may be little more than a wall of sand, and one that has been hit by so many waves that there's almost nothing left.
Although anti-Zionist Jews offer various reasons for their non-support of Israel, the fact remains that Judaism has always said that Israel is the land of the Jews. Assuming the Messiah returns tomorrow, even Naturei Karta is willing to head to Israel and become fervent Zionists.
Hence the uncomfortable notion, typically parroted by ferocious anti-Zionists and some vulgar anti-Semites, that it is not just Zionism that is the problem, but Judaism itself, is lent some troubling weight. I don't want to go near this thesis because to be honest, I'm a pussy when it comes to the Jewish Question.
Schipper finally suggests that the Jews of the world either renounce Judaism or practice what you preach and head to Israel. Once again, troubling stuff.
There's nary a trace of anti-Semitism in Schipper's comments, but the issues he raises are toxic as Hell.
Just some thought-meals.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on July 30, 2010 Categories Africa, Ainu, Algeria, Anti-Semitism, Arabs, Asia, Asians, Baha'i, Blacks, Chechens, Christianity, Darfur, Democrats, Ethnic Nationalism, Europeans, Hinduism, Hmong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Jews, Judaism, Kashmir, Koreans, Laos, Latin America, Left, Middle East, Mozambique, Nationalism, NE Asia, Near Easterners, North Africa, Northeast Asians, Obama, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Political Science, Politics, Pygmies, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Religion, Reposts From The Old Site, SE Asia, SE Asians, South Africa, South Asia, Southern Sudan, Southwest Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, The Jewish Question, US Politics, Useless Western Left, Vietnam, West Africa, White Nationalism, Zaire, Zionism99 Comments on Musings on Dual Loyalty, Judaism as Zionism, and Anti-Semitism
Does Dumb Population = Dumb Government?
A new commenter, Portland Bus Driver, suggests that the IQ of a general population is reflected in the IQ of its top state officials. I beg to disagree. He also points to some behavioral differences between his Hispanic and Black passengers and suggests that it's not all IQ. In fact he's correct. Illegals probably have lower IQ's than Blacks. Race realists typically bandy about the "Blacks act bad because they're stupid" thing. In the case of US and UK Blacks anyway, I'd just as soon chuck this theory.
There is most definitely a causal relationship between higher IQ and a potential economic situation. Look at predominately East Asian and white countries compared to any black country, and South Africa does not count. Brazil is 50% white I read somewhere, and South Africa is like 12% white.
The point is that the commanding heights of the economy and government must be in the hands of higher IQ people. Once the lower IQ masses take over –See: Haiti, Rhodesia, the US after George Bush 🙂 — the country declines.
That being said, environment and culture and all of that can still play a role.
In my experience Hispanics ride the bus to work early in the morning with lunchboxes, they show me respect and pay their fare (or have counterfeit fare). Blacks start getting on later in the afternoon in comfy workout style clothes to go "chill". Then the Hispanics come home from work.
Later that night the blacks get back on in expensive clothes and jewelry and watches and flash their bus pass which is right next to their food stamp card, they give me a dirty look and use obscene language right next to children. I could go on, my point is that it is not just IQ, Hispanics may have some other trait that predisposes them to work. Every black run society, with a few exceptions that are easily explained, is economically "disadvantaged."
I would say it is the IQ of the population that matters. Yet South Africa was able to work pretty well as long as the high-IQ Whites were running the state. S. African White IQ = 94.
But I bet that in the present South African government, at the highest positions, you have folks with high IQ's. Same in Latin America, South Asia, SE Asia, Arabia, North Africa, the Caribbean. Even though the general population may be dumb as rocks, the folks at the top of government are typically well-educated and bright.
So I don't think low IQ country = low IQ idiots in government. I just don't buy it. Besides, past a certain point, IQ just does not matter. It's "high enough."
More than the state, it is the IQ of the general population that matters in terms of how the society functions. Let's not place too much emphasis on government here! In Haiti, I imagine that those at the stop of the state are bright folks. I have met some of the Haitian elite, and they were not stupid at all. I've also met some of the African elite, and they were not dumb either. I have met very bright Africans from all over Sub-Saharan Africa. Surely there are enough bright folks to form a competent state at the highest levels.
You may start running into problems at the local levels, but I still say that it's the composition of society, not the state, that matters. If your society has an IQ of 67 or 72, I am sorry, but chances are you are going to have lots of problems functioning in the modern world no matter how bright your officials are. This is what is really going on here when we compare say Africa with East Asia and the US.
The "Obama is in charge so dumb Blacks rule" thing is a fallacy. I don't know Obama's IQ, but it has to be higher than George Bush's. Obama's administration is full of bright folks of all different races. They are certainly intelligent enough to run a modern state well. He is conflating a relatively lower Black IQ with "Obama" and his admin. But Obama is very smart, and so is his Cabinet and his aides.
The IQ of Mexican immigrants is probably ~85. The IQ of US Blacks is 86.8. The illegals are less intelligent than the Blacks. But look at the behavioral difference. Let us not place too much weight on IQ.
Also, let us not conflate US and UK Black IQ = 86.8 and 86, with African IQ = 67. The IQ's of US and UK Blacks are about 20 points higher. That alone almost makes them a separate race.
There are many societies that function quite well and have IQ's of 86-87. US and UK Black IQ is certainly adequate to function in modern society. That they don't seem to do too well has its reasons I'm sure, but IQ can't possibly be one of them.
He suggests that every Black society is economically disadvantaged. However, there are some Black nations in the Caribbean and even in Africa that are doing quite well. Equatorial Guinea and Gabon have per capita incomes of ~$20,000/yr.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on April 8, 2010 Categories Africa, Blacks, Britain, Caribbean, Central Africa, Equatorial Guinea, Europe, Gabon, Government, Haitians, Hispanics, Intelligence, Latin America, Mexicans, North America, Psychology, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, South Africa, USA66 Comments on Does Dumb Population = Dumb Government?
Map of the Romance Speaking World
Here is a very nice map of the parts of the world that speak a Romance language, in whole or in part. The main languages covered here are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian.
Nice map of the Romance languages of the world. Click to enlarge.
The heavy Spanish speaking zone is Spain, Rio Muni, New Mexico and Latin America except for Brazil, the Guyanas, Haiti and some Caribbean islands that speak French. To a lesser extent, it is spoken Spanish Sahara and Belize. To a much lesser extent, it is spoken in parts of the US and in the Philippines where it is a dying colonial language.
The heavy Portuguese speaking zone is Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, other parts of Africa and East Timor. In the latter countries, it is a lingua franca.
French is heavily spoken in France, Quebec, French Guyana, French Polynesia, Belgium and Switzerland, less heavily in much of Africa, especially Congo, the Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Mali, Togo, Cote d'Ivorie, Burkino Faso, Senegal, West Africa, Central Africa, Djibouti and Madagascar, less in the rest of Canada, and even less in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Louisiana, where it is a dying colonial language overtaken by national languages in Southeast Asia, Arabic in Northwest Africa and English in Louisiana
Italian is spoken heavily in Italy and less so in Libya and Albania.
Romanian is spoken heavily in Romania, Moldova and Serbia.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on March 14, 2010 Categories Africa, Algeria, Americas, Belgium, Belize, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central Africa, Central African Republic, Central America, Congo, Europe, France, French, Grenadines, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Italian, Italic, Italy, Ivory Coast, Laos, Latin America, Lebanon, Libya, Louisiana, Madagascar, Mali, Middle East, Morocco, Mozambique, North Africa, North America, Pacific, Philippines, Polynesia, Portugal, Portuguese, Quebec, Romance, Romania, SE Asia, Senegal, Serbia, South, South America, Spain, Spanish, Switzerland, Togo, Tunisia, USA, Vietnam, West Africa, Western Sahara, Zaire6 Comments on Map of the Romance Speaking World
AIDS began in Africa in 1904
That's a lot earlier than I thought.
I knew about the HIV-tainted blood and tissue from Kinshasa, Congo, in 1959 and 1960. Sequencing those samples back, it turns out that they were born around 1904.
Previous research has shown that HIV jumped from monkeys to man in Southeastern Cameroon. Contrary to what the racists say, no one thinks it was due to Black guys screwing monkeys. Racists are so stupid! African guys will just about screw anything, I think, but I've never heard of them boning monkeys. The traditional thinking is that Africans kill monkeys for food and butcher them up before they eat them. They get monkey blood all themselves when they do this. Presumably, this is how the species jump (SIV -> HIV) occurred.
HIV must have gone on very low simmer for decades until it finally started breaking out in the Kinshasa region around 1960.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on December 18, 2009 Categories Africa, African, Cameroon, Central Africa, History, Illness, Medicine, Modern, Public Health, Racism, White Racism, Zaire13 Comments on AIDS began in Africa in 1904
Flaws in the Genetic View of Racial Behavior
As you can see in this horrible article, Blacks in Zaire*, including all parties in the war there, think it's pretty cool to kill Pygmies and eat them for food. They've even set of Pygmy Meat stalls in the local market so you can pick out the choice cuts for yourself and save yourself a Human Hunting Expedition.
The article is six years old, but I understand that this behavior is ongoing. This is part of a long-standing slow-motion genocide against the Pygmies that the Bantus have been waging against them since they conquered them 2,000 years ago. Bantus have also been slo-mo genociding the Khoisan in Southwest Africa for about 800 years ago. That's also ongoing in places like Botswana.
Blacks in West Africa have also been eating their enemies in the recent wars there. It seems to be sort of an Africanism to eat your enemies in wartime. Actually, this is common tribal behavior not just in Africa but in New Guinea, the Philippines, Polynesia, Melanesia, the Amazon and probably other places.
White nationalists on sites like American Renaissance love articles like this and always use them to point out the innate depravity of Blacks. I think this theory is in error. Perhaps if you want to make a case for the innate depravity of African Blacks, you might be on slightly better grounds, but even there, the theory would probably bite the dust.
A good example of why theory is flawed can be seen in US Blacks. Racist posters on Amren are always talking about how American Blacks "would probably try to eat you" after they killed you in some street crime assault.
This is faulty thinking because it conflates US Blacks with African Blacks and assumes that the behavior of both is identical because it is genetically encoded.
But as much as we complain about US Blacks here, but they don't do stuff like those below, and they probably never will.
But if US Blacks had never come to the US and were still in Africa, they would probably still be running around:
1. Consuming other humans in backyard barbecue get-togethers,
2. Slaughtering each other by the millions in insane, cruel and stupid wars,
3. Killing other humans to cook up their body parts as voodoo recipes,
4. Burning witches,
5. Launching pogroms against albinos,
6. And all sorts of other charming and highly evolved behaviors.
It's not only US Blacks, but all Blacks in the West that don't do this stuff, including Blacks in the Caribbean and South America.
But as I've noted, the Western Hemisphere Blacks would probably be doing all this sick stuff if they were still back in Africa. Why? Because that's what Blacks do in Africa. And why don't they do it here? Because Blacks in the Western Hemisphere have lost a lot of their African traditions and have become culturally a part of Western Hemisphere cultures instead. So, the reason US Blacks don't do 1-6 above is because they are Americans, and Americans don't do things like that.
Have they genetically changed in America, and is this the reason they don't do these things? Probably not. But they have culturally changed, and that culture change has been so long-lasting that behaviors like 1-6 above have been wiped out in the US for centuries.
Using this behavior as an argument for the innate depravity of Africans is also difficult. Because quite a few of the folks doing 1-6 above will quit doing it at some point if you take them out of Africa and put them in, say, the Western Hemisphere.
Racialists are always bashing culture, but it's much more important than you think. They bash culture at their peril.
*The Blacks in Zaire cannibalizing the Pygmies include many Rwandans also. There' also a long tradition of cannabalism in the Congo, dating back centuries.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on September 29, 2009 Categories Africa, American, Americas, Anthropology, Blacks, Caribbean, Central Africa, Cultural, Culture, History, Khoisan, Latin America, Pygmies, Race Realism, Race/Ethnicity, USA, West Africa15 Comments on Flaws in the Genetic View of Racial Behavior
The "Negro" – A Product of 300 Years in America
A commenter argues that American Blacks (Negroes*) were bred with brawn and not brains and this explains a lot of their problems:
The US only imports the top tier of, for instance, Indian and Chinese immigrants. So from an American perspective, Indians and Chinese seem very clever, even though in their home countries there is a broad variety of ability. It's the same with Africans. Just look at Obama's father.
But Africans descended from slaves had a different selection criteria – physical ability. Not only were they selected for this, but they were bred for this. The Atlantic passage weeded out the weak ones, the institution of slavery encouraged physicality over intellect. The results, in both culture and gene expression, are plain to see.
Robert Lindsay often claims that the mere presence of blacks degrades a society. However, would it not be better to import University-level Africans to raise the standard of American blacks? Any white would be happy to live in a suburb of Obamas.
This doesn't make the tiniest bit of sense. Negroes have IQ's vastly higher than the Blacks of the Caribbean or Africa, so your thesis doesn't add up at all. Plus, I think they are a lot more civilized to boot.
I don't think that Negroes are capable of the mass insanity of The Lord's Army in Uganda, Charles Taylor's rebels, the horrors of Zaire where 4 million have died and mass rapes often with extreme violence, are committed against women, where cannibalism is still common especially in the context of war where one's enemies are eaten after being killed, where humans are murdered for being witches, where people are murdered to get body parts for witchcraft ceremonies!
Good God!
Whether they are less criminal in general is up for grabs, but South African Blacks seem to be much more criminal than Negroes, just looking at figures. Further, many African cities are virtual no-go zones for Whites. A friend used to work for the UN in Nairobi. They had high fences topped with razor wire and armed guards to keep the rabble at bay, plus strict rules about going outside.
I also think that Negroes are less corrupt than Africans. Africans do not seem to be capable of creating a non-corrupt society. Even in Equatorial Guinea, which is wealthy at $21,000 PCI, most of the people are horribly poor, malnourished, and the maternal mortality rate is insanely high.
Nigeria is a a very oil-rich nation. Any other country, especially an Arab country, should have made something decent of the place. Yet a tiny elite has stolen every other nickel and left the average Joe with pennies. The maternal mortality rate is ridiculous, the poverty and crime is horrible, and the place is basically a failed state.
The corruption experiment can be done by looking at the Obama Administration. He's a Negro President, and he has lots of Negro staffers. Further, reporters on his campaign noted a "basic Black mindset" about the Obama campaign that differed from your typical White POTUS campaign. So, in many ways, the Obama Administration really is a Black administration. If Negroes were naturally corrupt, it should show through. Yet the Administration seems to have markedly low levels of corruption.
Along with corruption, we also find in Africa what seems to be a very low rate of altruistic behavior at the societal level. African states simply don't do the slightest damned thing for their people. The leadership steals nearly everything, lives in gilded palaces with multiple wives and leaves the populace to sicken and die.
On the other hand, the Obama Administration seems to be quite altruistic. Many of their projects seem intended to provide for the betterment of all, in particular the workers, the low-income, the poor and the most vulnerable. The assumption is that Negroes have culturally evolved a higher level of altruism than their African brethren, possibly from a being discriminated minority that relied on mutual aid and self-help to get by, and the resulting sympathy for the underdog and the oppressed – the preterit as it were.
I have no doubt that Negroes used to act in these ways (see description of Africa above) when they were in Africa, and that they would still act like Africans if they were there. The 15% White genes in your average Negro are not enough to automatically create a much more civilized, altruistic and honest person.
A good argument can be made that Negro is a product of US civilization, which has always been a White civilization. 300 years of this have changed Negroes, probably culturally in the main, and apparently also in terms of intelligence. Living in the US has been great for the Negro's brain. He is remarkably more intelligent than his Caribbean and African cousins.
An 87 IQ (average IQ of Negroes) is not particularly high, but it's not that low either. It's just a bit below the world average of 90. Further,many states with average IQ's of 87 and even a bit lower have created quite nice and civilized countries. On an intelligence basis alone, Negroes are certainly intelligent enough to create a nice, civilized society. That they often do not is a bit of a mystery, but it's not because they are stupid!
Give a basically decent Negro man a good job, a suit and a tie and a nice car, and he often acts pretty darn good. You see him walking down the sidewalk and he's just another regular guy.
Negroes and Whites have co-evolved in the US whether we like it or not. Negroes are culturally part White, and surely we Whites are culturally part-Negro. We're like an old married couple whether we like it or not. Old married couples sometimes fight a lot, but they're stuck with each other and neither one is going anywhere, besides, they are sort of part of one another by now.
Race relations in the US cannot be properly analyzed until we realize the extent to which Negroes are part Whitened and US Whites are part-Negrified. Like the old married couple, we are now part of each other.
*I will use the often-racist term "Negro" here to distinguish US Blacks from African Blacks.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on September 9, 2009 Categories Africa, Blacks, Intelligence, Nigeria, Obama, Race Relations, Regional, South Africa, US, West Africa, Zaire26 Comments on The "Negro" – A Product of 300 Years in America
Native Peoples Adrift in the Modern World
Note: This post has been accused, as usual, of racism. See here for my position statement on racism.
Recent news articles on the disgusting degeneration of many Polynesians in New Zealand into US Black-style gangbangers seems to be the case with many "indigenous peoples" in the world today.
They just do not seem to be cut out for modern, Western, high-tech society. In most cases, Whites came into their lands and either invaded and conquered them or merely colonized them, and took away their old way of life, which, limited as it may have been, was at least working for them.
A description of the Micronesians of Saipan from the interesting Saipan Sucks website (my notes) is instructive. Note this is just one American expat's point of view, and does not represent my feelings about Micronesians, but instead represents those of the author of Saipan Sucks. I know nothing of Micronesians; I have only met one in my life, and he was just fine.
There is a very high rate of sexual molestation on Saipan, along with a very high rates of women having several kids, all by different men, and men fathering children by different women and never bothering to support any of them.
The locals basically refuse to work in any sort of productive occupations, and family-based corruption in politics is endemic. School performance is abysmal.
Spousal abuse is common. There is more incest and cousin marriage on Saipan than anywhere in the US. The police hardly bother to investigate any homicide cases, apparently since they are too incompetent to complete an investigation. The locals are profoundly racist against all Americans – especially White Americans.
The wealthy Micronesians on Saipan are almost all notorious thieves who stole every nickel they made. Theft and lying in all of the Mariana Islands is endemic, and the stealing is so bad that locals actually resort to bolting their furniture to the floor.
Micronesians feel they are racially superior to everyone, especially Filipinos, who are the most talented and hardest working people on the islands, as they are in much of that part of Asia.
Interestingly, the Filipino IQ of 89 is the same as the Micronesian IQ of 87. The suggestion is that the Micronesian IQ of 87 plays little or no role in much of the pathology above.
Although I have never been to Micronesia, I assume that this description is representative of the behaviors of far too many native Saipanese. Why do I think this? Because I have seen this same pattern here in the US with Native Americans and the Black and Hispanic underclasses.
This panoply of attitudes and pathologies is not limited to the Micronesians, but is common amongst many native peoples in our world, based on my observation.
These people used to hold traditional occupations at which they functioned well. Now, they can no longer do these jobs, and they are either not able to do or are not interested in doing modern work.
The following set of pathologies (in whole or in part) seems to be common amongst far too many indigenous peoples today:
Unwilling or unable for work in the modern economy, they become chronically unemployed, and are often regarded by others as lazy people who refuse to work, collect every welfare program they can, spend days sitting around doing nothing, and often drink to excess, or nowadays, take drugs. When they do work, their working style is often seen as irresponsible or lackadaisical.
They often do not do well in school, in part because many of them are not even used to being inside four walls, since they are used to spending much of their time outdoors. In their traditional life, there was no formal schooling, just learning by observation.
The family structure has typically been badly broken up for whatever reason, and child abuse of various forms is common. Women have kids by various different men and do not bother to marry any of them. Men for their part have children by various women and then refuse to support any of the kids.
Politics is characterized by a tribal, clan-based, often vicious and immoral scheme of ultra-corruption. Police and government officials are often lazy and incompetent.
Things like roads in Congo and water treatments plants in Saipan either never get built, as in Saipan where the natives apparently can't figure out how to build one, or don't get repaired, as in Congo where 90% of the country's roads have vanished due to lack of repairs.
Bilingual programs founder when students are said to be literate in neither English nor their native language.
Crime spirals out of control as traditional village-based law enforcement systems are no longer operative, and impoverished and often unemployed natives are often confronted with mass wealth, waved right in their face.
Virulent anti-White or anti-East Indian racism takes hold due to resentment that these groups may have a higher standard of living, or may have settled or colonized their land in the past, along the painful realities of their own culture's failure to succeed in the modern world combined with their observation of the others' great success in negotiating that same modernity.
Indigenous people, selected via repeated famine to survive on very little food, are hit like a ton of bricks with the Western high-calorie, high-salt, high-fat diet, which they are not physiologically adapted for. The result is mass obesity, diabetes, hypertension, at least with some groups – Micronesians, Melanesians, Aborigines, Polynesians and North American Native Americans in particular.
The set of pathologies above is quite evident in many indigenous cultures, including Native Americans in the US and Canada, some Native Americans in South America (Amazon tribes in particular), native Siberians in Russia, Inuit in Canada, Alaska and Russia, Sub-Saharan African Blacks, Negritos in the Andaman Islands and the Philippines, Aborigines in Australia, Micronesians, Polynesians and urban Melanesians in New Guinea.
Some suggest that IQ may be a factor in this situation. These groups have the following average IQ's (world average is also included):
Siberian Natives: 102.5 (est.)*
Inuit (Eskimo):   94
World Average:    92
Amerindians:      89
Polynesians:      88, but varies**
New Guinea:       86
Micronesians:     86
African Blacks:   70
Aborigines:       65
*Native Siberian IQ is not known, but Mongolian IQ is 102.5, and Siberians may be similar.
**Some Polynesian groups have higher IQ's. The New Zealand Maori IQ is 93, the Cook Islands Maori IQ is 92 and the Samoan IQ is 90.5 The first two are right at the world average IQ, and the Samoan IQ is close to the average. Interestingly, the first two islands were settled later in the Polynesian expansion.
Siberian difficulties in adapting to modern life cannot be explained by IQ, nor can the problems of the Maori or the the Inuit. Average Polynesian, Micronesian, Amerindian and New Guinea IQ's are not remarkably low, being only 3 points below the world average.
Many countries that seem to function quite well with the modern world, such as Cuba, Iran and many Arab and Latin American countries, have average IQ's in the 86-88 range, but most of these peoples have been living in a more modern way for quite some time now. Few could be considered "indigenous peoples".
It is true that the IQ's of Aborigines and African Blacks are quite low.
In short, IQ is not sufficient to explain the problems that each of the groups above have in adaptation to our modern world.
In New Guinea, people living traditional lives in the mountains seem to do well, while the capital of Port Moresby is a crime-flooded, drunken urban catastrophe. In Samoa, traditional Western Samoa seems to do a lot better with their traditional lifestyle than American Samoa, where a Western way of life holds sway along with a very high crime rate.
Cook Islanders and New Zealand natives are both Maori. Cook Islanders have a functional society, as they still live a traditional life and have not yet been deluged with tourists. In contrast, the Maori situation in New Zealand is often regarded as catastrophic, with very rates of crime and the sorts of pathologies described above. Biologically and IQ-wise, the two groups are identical.
A few Andaman Islands Negritos have barely been contacted much at all (Sentinel Island), and they are doing quite well. Others have been contacted but still mostly live a traditional life, and they are doing less well but are still generally functional (the Onge and Jawara).
Some Andaman tribes who have been removed from traditional life seem to have completely lost their way, live on government reservations, are mired in the most deplorable pathology and even seem to be slowly going extinct (Greater Andamanese). For an overview, see George Weber's great website.
A roughly similar situation holds with a number of tribes in the Amazon – the more they are left pretty much alone, the better off the are.
In regard to the difficulties in adaptation described above, let us note that in their traditional societies, these people typically never had vehicle roads (or vehicles), water treatment plants, schools, money-based societies with paid government employees and cops nor written languages.
In addition, marriage and divorce may have been a casual affair in many pre-contact societies. An excellent study1 of the pre-contact Northern Ache of Paraguay found that by age 30, the average Ache woman had been married and divorced 10 times (see page 13).
For decades, the Left has been offering an intellectually vapid, yet appealing, reason for these pathologies. "Western imperialism" or some such evil invaded and settled their lands, or colonized them, or looked at them wrong, or something. A long time ago. Like over 100 years ago.
Like most arguments of the Crazy Left, this argument sounds really cool until you start to look into it.
Many of these groups here never really got colonized in any real way, or at all, and in many cases, Whites did not even "take their land." Lots of folks who were "colonized" or "got their land taken" recently still get on fine with modernity, including Basques, people of the Caucasus, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Ahwaz, Berbers, Tamils, Kashmiris, Assamese, Karen, Shan, Acehese, Saami, on and on.
Jews even got 75% of their population killed in Europe in one of the crimes of the century. Sure it was horrible, but the Jews picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and are now possibly the most successful ethnic group on Earth.
The pattern above raises interesting questions. A pattern of having multiple children by different men, where the men refuse to support the women, is the bane of many of these cultures above. Does it have roots in tribal society?
Was the Ache pattern of repeated marriages and divorces described above the norm in many tribal societies? Early travelers to Africa did report that marriages often did not seem to last long and that marriage, divorce and sex seemed to be all be casual enterprises.
In a tribal culture, where all food just gets tossed into the pot for everyone to eat, maybe it does not matter if a man does not provide specifically for his wife and kids, as long as the village provides for them. Children were often raised by groups of women while the men went off and hunted, fished or did whatever all day. By evening, the men would return, and then the intact families would spend some time together.
Since the children were being raised collectively by large groups of women – mothers, aunts, older cousins and sisters, grandmothers – there was little chance to get into trouble. At the first sign of trouble, one of the many women would be right there to put an end to it.
Curiously, studies in Israeli kibbutzes have shown that children raised this way have the lowest rates of antisocial behavior of any child-raising style.2
In our modern world, with many incompetent females raising children with no father around, or a father around only sporadically, with the woman overwhelmed, absent, working or on drugs or alcohol, kids are free to run wild. Lack of father figures and modern extended adolescence means the young males drift towards gangs in an effort to act like men.
I don't really know what to do about any of this.
One idea is that a lot of these groups are not really cut out for modern life. Many of these people may do better if they lived more traditional lives, in traditional villages, with traditional styles of behavioral regulation (chief, elders, family or clan). Of course, the decision of whether to live a more Western or less Western life should be left completely up to the people themselves.
Western life is not for everyone, and we need to consider that for many indigenous peoples, it is not only harmful, but it is also deadly.
We can still provide them with medical care, make sure their structures and infrastructure are functional and intact, insure that they have water, plumbing and electricity, and provide them with food or supplementation if they need it. In many cases, they may need to return to a native diet or risk early death eating a Western diet.
1. Hill, K. and Hurtado, A.M. 1996. Ache Life History: The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
2. Lykken, D.T. 1995. The Antisocial Personalities. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on July 12, 2009 Categories Aborigines, Africa, American Samoa, Americas, Amerindians, Andaman Islanders, Anthropology, Asians, Blacks, Central Africa, Congo, Cook Islanders, Cook Islands, Criminology, Cultural, Inuit, Israel, Latin America, Maori, Melanesians, Micronesia, Micronesians, Mongolians, Negritos, Oceanians, Pacific, Paraguay, Polynesia, Race Realism, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, Saipan, SE Asians, Siberians, Sociology, South America, The Jewish Question, Urban Decay, Urban Studies, Useless Western Left, Western Samoa18 Comments on Native Peoples Adrift in the Modern World
Bad Place to Visit, Wouldn't Want To Live There
Repost from the old site. This article has produced a tremendous amount of controversy, angry comments, and even, oddly enough, virulent hate mail. I guess I hit some raw nerves. I stand by my comments that these cities are some of the worst in the world, and, in doing further research on the Net, have found only further support for my thesis.
Some of these cities, such as Bogotá, for instance, have large wealthy districts that are apparently quite pleasant. If one is rich, one can make a nice life just about anywhere on the globe. But this is not important – what is important is how the majority live.
The title is a play on the line, "Nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there", said about many less-than-desirable tourist locales. This post is about the worst places on Earth to visit, and probably to live too. The ratings were based on research done on the Internet in various places, including here and here.
I'm going to focus on the places that are dirty, smelly, crime-ridden, trashy, rip-off havens, unsanitary and dangerous (Third World), and avoid places that are merely depressing, unsightly, rude, etc. (First World). Why? Because I live in the US, and those Third World qualities are going to be the most disturbing to me. I'm also avoiding active war zones because everyone knows they are horrible.
To be fair to the "Third Worldists" out there, I noted that many people slammed various places in France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Finland, South Korea, Ireland Italy, the US, Great Britain and Australia for various reasons, mostly because they are said to be unfriendly, depressing, tacky, cheesy, boring, etc.
Detroit seemed to top the list as worst US city, along with Newark (though it had one fan), East St. Louis and New Haven (though some liked New Haven) were runners-up. Various small towns in the Rockies (especially Idaho) and Texas also were listed. For some reason, a lot of people hate Vancouver, BC in Canada.
To my thinking, many of the horrible cities below point out the catastrophe of Latin American, Indian, Indonesian and Philippine capitalism. In much of Africa, capitalism doesn't seem to working very well.
For all its faults, impoverished Cuba certainly does not resemble any of these Latin American hellholes in any way, shape or form. I don't think that capitalism in the First World is failing, but looking at many of the cities below, it's hard to argue that capitalism is doing anything but failing in those places.
Some of the winners in the Loser Destination Contest:
Colon, Panama: A dirty, crime-ridden disaster of a city. The most dangerous city in Latin America, full of residents who seem like they would just as soon knife you as say hello. Other than the free trade zone, the entire city seems to be sprawling slum. Colon has no redeeming qualities. This city topped many worst lists.
Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador: Guayaquil is horrible. A stinking, steaming, downright dangerous heap of a city with miles of slums. With armies of glowering gang members, this place is dangerous even in mid-day. There are garbage dumps everywhere with corpses laying out in plain sight and guns going off all the time. Quito is similar. Guayaquil topped many worst city lists.
Johannesburg, South Africa: How sad that this country now has one of the worst violent crime rates on Earth. Although popular with tourists, this city is downright dangerous. This city also topped many worst lists. This blog supports the Mandela government, but the problems of this tragic nation seem insurmountable.
Lagos, Nigeria, or the whole country: This city, and even the whole country, seems to top everyone's list. Garbage is everywhere, the city stinks, the poverty is horrible, animals are slaughtered on the streets, and it seems that at least half the population wakes up every morning thinking, "Who can I rip off today?" Up to 90% of the economy may be "underground", off the books, or crime-related in some way or another.
Nigeria has what must be the worst government on Earth and the country is rated the second most corrupt on Earth. The national airlines are dangerous and not recommended. The ripoff attempts often start as soon as you land at the airport and won't let up until you leave.
It's best to assume that most, if not all, Nigerians you meet in Lagos are out to rip you off in some way or another and then proceed from there. The city is full of impostors, and you really do not know if anyone is really who they say they are. The police and Customs officials are all crooks and so is 99% of the government.
Most bank and post office employees are also crooked. Imagine waiting in line at the post office, and a group of swaggering gangsters with fake ID's strut in to pick up their stolen goods reshipped from overseas. They go straight to the front of the line ahead of everyone else, pick up their stolen property, and walk away laughing, having paid off the Post Office clerks. Welcome to Nigeria.
There are Internet cafes all over the city, where 150,000 full-time Internet scammers ply their trade in plain view of anyone to see, and the government doesn't bat an eye or lift one finger to stop them. In many cafes, 80% or more of the patrons are Internet scammers. Nigeria is now world-famous for Internet scams. Even out-of-work TV newscasters scam away in the cafes, trying to steal from Americans.
The scammers started out with the famous 419 email scams but have now branched out into lottery, romance, auction, roommate, orphanage and check-cashing scams. The scams are continuously evolving, and Nigerian con artists are widely acknowledged to be some of the best in the world, as they have been practicing the art for decades now.
On highways outside of Lagos, you can see numerous vehicles wrecked on the side of the road, or even in the middle of the road, some with dead bodies still in them or beside them. Thieves pick through the wreckage and rifle the corpses looking for stuff to steal. All of the roads are dangerous, as armed robbers often set up roadblocks to shake down travelers.
Nigeria is now a world center for counterfeit pharmaceuticals, credit card fraud and drug dealing, and a district of Lagos, Oluwole, is now a world center for top-notch forgery.
The FBI and the US Merchant Risk Council recently came to Nigeria and inspected 40 packages coming into the country from the US to check for stolen goods. 39 of the 40 packages contained stolen property.
When the agents arrived at a Lagos neighborhood and tried to arrest an 18-year-old boy for reshipping scams that targeted US merchants, much of the neighborhood – up to 100 people – rushed out of their homes to defend the local punk from Big Bad Whitey.
Although the country is awash in oil, the power goes out all the time because the government power company is so crooked. The power company has either stolen all of its own budget money or the power comes in, but the crooked company resells it on the side.
As with elsewhere in Africa, Whitey is blamed for all the troubles here. Hatred of Whitey is higher in Nigeria than in much of the rest of Black Africa and the White visitor will definitely feel it.
The degeneration of Nigerian society is complete, and the culture appears near collapse. Mobs lynch thieves in the street and kill them in public for as meager a crime as stealing a cellphone, yet crime rages on anyway. Anyone can just up and say they own your house, put it on the market and sell it and you are out a house. Law enforcement, courts and anything resembling government seem to be nonexistent.
Lima, Peru: When they tell you to visit Peru, they don't mean the nightmarish capital. There are teeming slums as far as the eye can see, horrible crime (although not a lot of violent crime), pickpockets everywhere, and on top of all that, the sun never comes out. The fog mixes with the smog and the filthy streets to make a toxic brew. Lima made many worst lists.
But it has its fans, and the upscale Miraflores district is said to be nice. The execrable Shining Path took up their nihilistic, deranged war in this country for a reason – because Peru is a rotten heap of a country.
Medan (Sumatra), Jakarta, Surabaya, Indonesia: Jakarta is a reeking city with terrible pollution, open sewers and wrenching poverty.
Medan seemed to top many lists for worst city on Earth, though it has a few fans. It's hot, dirty and polluted, with factories, thieves and leering, menacing men everywhere. There is also nowhere to stay, not that you would want to stay anyway. Besides Medan, the rest of Sumatra is much better.
The river running through Surabaya is so polluted you might vomit walking across the bridge. As you suppress your gag reflex, you will look down and notice that people are actually washing their clothes in this river.
Mumbai, Patna (Bihar), Calcutta, all large Indian cities, India: Indian cities are very dirty and teeming with some of the most miserably poor and wretched people you will ever see, but at least there is not a lot of crime. The Hindu religion keeps crime down because believers fear they will be punished by returning in the next life as something terrible, like one of the huge rats you see scurrying about.
Mumbai has pollution that is so bad that people actually get lung cancer from breathing the air. Mumbai, a stinking and sometimes dangerous city, made many worst city lists.
Patna is the sorry capital of Bihar, the poorest state in India. It's dirty and miserable, and it's almost impossible to even get a taxi to get you out of town, which means it's hard to leave the place.
Calcutta is generally agreed to be one of the worst cities in India.
Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenyang, China: Deadly pollution, mostly from coal.
Bucharest, all of Romania: Stalinist pollution covers the whole country and everyone seems depressed.
Bali (in particular Kuta Beach), Indonesia: Hopes so high, reality so low. It seems everyone is out to rip you off. Surly locals hungry for money. Dangerous roads, nightmarish traffic, rude, leering men. When it rains, the sewers flood into the streets. Very high crime rate, hustlers everywhere. Most of the rest of Indonesia is pretty nice. Kuta is a tourist trap gone to Hell.
Manila, Philippines: A crime-ridden hellhole. There are armed guards everywhere, especially in front of banks due to constant bank robberies. Their nemeses, criminal gangs armed to the teeth, roam streets filled with prostitutes and transvestites.
It's a town where everyone seems like they are out to rip you off in one way or other, and the hotel workers and cab drivers are all crooked. The latest advice is to have your Filipino friend meet you at the airport and head straight to their place, thereby avoiding all the ripoffs and con artists that seem to descend on every tourist. Traffic is horrible, and pollution is so bad it kills people. But some people don't mind it.
Gdansk, Poland: Combine a high crime rate and daylight robberies with totally crooked, thieving officials, and you get this Polish city. However, a number of others said it's just fine.
Mexico City, Villahermosa, Mexico: Mexico City is a dirty, polluted city suffering an insane, surreal epidemic of street crime, especially violent crime. Add 20 million people, stir well, bring to a boil, cover with a lid of otherworldly smog, and simmer.
Reportedly, tons of human waste are blown into the air every day, and much of the population has constant respiratory infections. The sewer system is reportedly above ground and more or less runs through lots of neighborhoods where many people are residing.
Villahermosa is a Mad Max-style, violent, crime-ridden disgrace of a city. There are stabbings and shootings galore here, even with a 10 PM curfew in place.
Tangier, Morocco: This is a dangerous place with lots of street crime. That's unusual for a North African country, but Tangier is so close to Europe that it is almost a part of Europe.
Cairo, Egypt: Cairo has horrible pollution, smells terrible, there is trash everywhere, nothing works, there are armies of miserably poor people and it boasts some outrageously awful traffic. In the souks there are huge rats and wild, mangy scavenging dogs running about in plain sight. There seems no escape from aggressive, pestering hawkers. On top of all that, all the Customs officials are criminals.
The crime rate is fairly low, though. Thank President Hosni Mubarak. 25 years ago, Cairo was one of the great world cities.
Bangkok, Thailand: This gigantic city has pollution so bad you need to wear a mask over your face. However, some folks like this city and say it has many positive attributes.
Brindisi, Naples, Italy: No one seems to like Brindisi. It's a sad, dirty, polluted and ugly city, with hostile, brawling, drunken locals, hungry stray dogs, belligerent drivers, horrible traffic, and miles of soul-killing tenements.
You would think that despite all of that, being genuine Italians, they could still manage to make a decent pizza. Forget it: even the pizza is terrible. Brindisi topped many worst lists, although it has a couple of fans.
I had never even heard of Brindisi and had to look it up on a map. It's located in southern Italy on the East Coast, southeast of Naples. Naples has a great deal of crime, and many think this city is overrated as a tourist destination, although others say that, despite the drawbacks, it has its joys. All of southern Italy has a lot of crime, but it's mostly property crime.
Athens, Piraeus, or the whole country, Greece: Greece, especially Athens, gets mixed reviews. A lot of people really hate Athens; others don't. The detractors say the city is dirty, ugly, depressing, polluted, and covered with garbage and traffic. I was surprised that Athens made the list, as I had always thought it was a wonderful city.
The port city of Piraeus is a nasty place. The whole city smells like a giant sewage treatment plant, and the ocean offshore has a sickening color to it.
Suburbs of Paris, France: These tragic towns, full of hostile Arab immigrants angrily refusing to assimilate to French culture or join French society, are a sign that the French model is not working well, at least for some folks.
There is a terribly high crime rate here, and cops and firemen often won't go there because they get attacked as soon as they show up. These mournful towns are packed with angry, unemployed young Arab men who like to seriously riot every year or so, or even more often if the mood strikes them. Lately, they have been staging mini-riots every night. If only 100 cars are burned, that's a good night.
Otherwise, Paris, of course, is one of the world's great cities. But that doesn't mean you might not walk into a subway station reeking of urine and see junkies shooting up in plain sight. But still, Paris is a must on any serious travelers' list.
Brussels, Belgium: As with Paris, the districts with many Arab immigrants are quite dangerous and unpleasant, but the rest of the city is as nice as any big city.
Abidjan, Ivory Coast: With one of the worst crime rates in Africa (although it has plenty of competition), this city topped many worst lists.
Bangui, Central African Republic: One of the worst cities in Africa, as bad as Lagos. The crime rate is totally insane. The locals will try to steal everything you own and even a contingent of armed guards will not be enough to protect you.
Your hotel room will feel like a war zone. This fiendish city made a number of worst city lists. Lonely Planet's guidebook more or less tells you to avoid this city altogether. Here is a harrowing report of a visit to Bangui.
Bamako, Mali: Mali has one of the worst governments in Africa, admittedly a race with a lot of competition. Bamako is a sick joke of a town, where the tourist surcharge is rigorously enforced, and the ridiculous, potholed streets are undriveable by any vehicle.
Guatemala City, Guatemala: A totally dangerous, dirty, polluted, terminal patient of a city, full of scary, heavily armed teenage soldiers. The soldiers are there to keep the teeming, crime-ridden slums that stretch as far as the eye can see, from overrunning the place. But this city has a few fans.
Belize City, Belize: This sweltering, miserable, impoverished, crime-ridden, very dangerous city is built on a swamp, with a jungle for a backyard. The beggars are aggressive and even menacing, and shady characters shadow you on the streets as you walk about. Cops are nowhere to be seen. This is one of the worst cities in the Americas. But the rest of the country is a great place to vacation.
Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Sao Paulo is the industrial engine of Brazil. This major city is full of garbage and very dangerous. There are hustlers as far as the eye can see, chaotic streets that render maps useless, not enough cops and Godawful traffic.
Rio de Janeiro, the popular tourist destination with the killer skyline perfect for any postcard, is a deceptive place. It's a very dangerous city with lots of violent crime. Street gangs armed to the teeth regularly shoot it out in military-style wars with the cops.
Death squads of off-duty cops funded by local businessmen roam the streets at night, murdering homeless, drug-addicted street kids and petty criminals with impunity in a sickening "social cleanup" campaign.
There are pickpockets and muggers all about, often in menacing, youthful gangs (especially on the famous beach) and they frequently operate in broad daylight. A dystopian horrorshow of a city.
Nairobi, Kenya: Unfortunately, this city is seriously crime-ridden. Even locals admit that violent crime has reached catastrophic proportions.
Caracas, Barquisimeto, or the whole country, Venezuela: The crime is very bad here, sadly, and there is garbage everywhere you look. This blog supports Hugo Chavez, but crime in Venezuela is a tragic, long-standing problem with no quick fixes.
Guinea-Bissau: There is no water, no electricity, no place to stay, and the only hotel is half-demolished.
San'a', Yemen: In a Dickensenian touch, children are actually chained up here in order to beg!
Moynaq and Nukus, Uzbekistan: These two cities broiling in a merciless desert have been ruined and turned into ecological dead zones by Stalinist pollution.
San Pedro Sulu, Honduras: This sad town has a horrible amount of crime. Swarms of locals will attack you on the bus, trying to steal your luggage. You will have to fight them off if you wish to retain your suitcase.
Like the rest of this wreck of a country, it's full of US gang members gone home to Honduras. People here are very poor and desperate. If you can make it to the nice part of town and afford to stay there, though, you can be quite safe.
Dakar, Senegal: According to some, this large West African city has horrible street crime – it is very dangerous. They say if you don't have armed guards with you, don't even go outside your hotel room.
However, others report that they spent a week there and found it to be safe, in fact safer than many American cities. Violent crime is reportedly rare, and the country is one of the most stable in Africa, and has been that way since independence.
Port Au Prince, Haiti: This filthy, degraded, extremely dangerous and desperately poor mess of a city is best avoided at all costs. It sports open sewers, enslaved children, riots, killings and lots of other fun things. This blog did support President Aristide's efforts to improve the tragedy of a nation called Haiti.
Lome, Togo: Criminals are as common as mosquitoes here, walking around fearlessly in broad daylight in this terrible city full of miserable people and crooked taxi drivers.
Istanbul, Turkey: The 200% tourist markup is fully in force in this dirty, ugly city full of harassing, hawking, hostile locals and crumbling buildings, and you can scarcely find a merchant who does not enforce it. There is also a lot of crime here, including some violent crime, unusual for a Muslim city. The weather is lousy, but there are some pretty mosques to visit. However, Istanbul does have a fan or two.
The rest of the country is a great place to visit, has many fans and is one of the world's top tourist destinations. Best bet for Turkey is just to head to the tourist spots and blow off Istanbul altogether.
Phnom Penh, Kampuchea: This city has become a very dangerous, crime-ridden place. The gangs of little girl prostitutes add a particularly poignant touch.
Bogotá, Colombia or really the whole country: Bogotá is one of the most dangerous places in the Americas but there seems to be agreement that Colon, Lima and Guayaquil are worse. Really, all of Colombia is dangerous as Hell, to be honest.
This comment about Bogotá was recently rebutted by a Bogotán blogger, with more comments here. His post aggressively taking issue with this entry is in Spanish, but my Spanish is good enough to get the gist of it. Also I am getting a lot of comments coming in from Bogotáns on the Internet aggressively objecting to the content.
The sole issue that these Defenders of Bogotá are taking issue with is my contention that the city is a very dangerous place. To be honest, Bogotá used to have a truly horrible reputation for crime, but in recent years, there has been a huge effort put into cracking down on street crime. For some more agreement that Bogota is dangerous, see here, here, here and here.
I will now attempt to prove that. There are twice as many murders in Colombia as in the US, and the US has seven times as many people. That means that the murder rate in Colombia is an outrageous 14 times that of the US, and the US is considered to have a high murder rate for the developed world.
Colombia has the highest murder rate on Earth, with Washington, DC and Johannesburg not far behind, but in the case of Colombia, we are talking about a whole country, not some festering city. Out of every 100,000 people, 60-70 will be killed every year. Defenders may try to argue that this is due to a simmering civil war, but 75% of the 25,000 homicides are merely of the criminal variety.
On an average day in Colombia, there are 2 bank robberies, 8 highway robberies, 72 murders and 204 assaults or muggings. You have a greater chance of being murdered in Colombia than you do of dying of cancer! Death squads made up of soldiers and off-duty cops roam the streets, murdering drug-addicted, petty criminal street kids, transvestites, homosexuals and prostitutes.
In fact, probably more prostitutes and homosexuals are murdered per capita in Colombia than even in the most barbarian parts of the Muslim World. Want to fly a plane in Colombia? Don't. There have been 138 plane crashes since World War 2, with 2,745 deaths.
One of the most popular things in Bogotá is scopolamine. This drug is used by crooks to disable their victims so they can rip them off. It is sprayed in the face, dumped in your drink or spiked into a cigarette. Bogotá hospitals receive an incredible 2,000 scopolamine victims every month, or an astounding 66 a day. The drug knocks you out and can cause medical problems.
Colombia has one of the world's worst road systems. Many roads are not even marked. Drivers are reckless and many cars don't have headlights at night. Cows have a tendency to wander into the road.
Taxis are totally dangerous and are best avoided, if possible. Women are advised to avoid all taxis at night. Anyone is advised to avoid any taxi that already has someone in it.
In many cases, this is a criminal accomplice of the thuggish driver. In addition to getting scopolamine sprayed in your face, another popular scam is the "jump-start": you are told that the taxi has stalled and asked to get out and help push. As you do so, the taxi driver leaves with your luggage.
Buses are also best avoided. Thieves haunt the buses, waiting for you to fall asleep, at which point, they rip you off. Certain bus lines are frequented by thieves offering drugged gum, sweets, food and cigarettes. After the drug knocks you out, they rob you blind. In addition to theft and druggings, kidnapping and extortion are also rife on buses.
In view of all of the above, it is nothing short of amazing that all of these Colombians are angrily protesting my characterization of their country as dangerous. Or perhaps they doth protest too much?
Managua, Nicaragua: This dirty, crime-ridden, dangerous disaster of a city has a bombed-out look about it. This blog supports Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista Party and prays that they can ameliorate this mess.
San Salvador, El Salvador: See Managua. Full of dangerous former LA gang members. Death squads roam the streets, slaughtering gangsters by the dozen, but for every one you kill, it seems five more pop up in his place.
This blog supports the FMLN's efforts to reform this ruined land, but the crime here has become so terrible, one wonders if anything short of an act of God could make things better. In fact, I used to make contributions too the FMLN's weapons fund via an FMLN agent in Los Angeles during the 1980's.
Detroit, New Haven, Newark, Gary (Indiana), Hammond (Indiana), USA: Detroit topped all lists as the worst city in the US. An ugly, dangerous, depressing and filthy city with a downtown that looks like a war zone – a despairing district surrounded by miles of crumbling, abandoned industrial buildings, torn-down fences and rusting cars.
Newark is similar, with few to no redeeming qualities. It's a frightening, polluted city with a postwar look of miles of weedy, trash-strewn vacant lots where crumbling apartment buildings have been torn down. It's also a dangerous city with a high crime rate.
New Haven, despite the presence of Yale University, is similar. There are legions of homeless, begging drug users clogging the streets, and the crime rate is very high due to hordes of crack-dealing gangs shooting it out on the streets. Congress and Columbus Avenues are notorious for drive-by shootings, drug dealing and muggings.
It is reportedly the HIV capital of the East Coast due to IV drug use. A lot of the more respectable people have been moving out for some time now. Although much of the city is quite ugly, New Haven does have its bright spots, thanks to Yale. There are nice parts of town, parks, trees, etc.
Gary is yet another postindustrial Rust Belt train wreck of a town. A grimy town full of abandoned factories, overgrown lots, rusting fences, graffiti, barred windows and vomit. Go downtown and see tall buildings all boarded up, with no vehicles in sight and unhinged stoplights swaying in the wind – for all practical purposes, a ghost town. This was once a vibrant, working-class city, and now it looks like Road Warrior.
Hammond is similar, a suicidally depressing city lined with shuttered factories on the shores of Lake Michigan. Yet another Rust Belt post-industrial ruin.
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: A collapsing, dirty, crime-ridden hellhole.
Osaka, Japan: I never would have thought that this city would make the list but according to my friend Tumerica, she says it is the worst city she has ever lived in. I tagged her with the title of this story. In blogging, tagging mean you are supposed to write on the topic – kind of like, "Tag, you're it." I will let her explain why Osaka is such a crappy place in her post here.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on June 10, 2009 Categories Africa, Americas, Asia, Belgium, Belize, Brazil, Cambodia, Caribbean, Central Africa, Central African Republic, Central America, China, Colombia, Crime, Dominican Republic, East Africa, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Europe, France, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Humor, India, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Kenya, Latin America, Mali, Mexico, Middle East, Midwest, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, North Africa, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Regional, Reposts From The Old Site, Romania, Scams, Senegal, South Africa, South America, South Asia, Thailand, Togo, Travel, Turkey, USA, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, West Africa, Yemen147 Comments on Bad Place to Visit, Wouldn't Want To Live There
Africa Addio
Repost from the old site. Africa Addio is an incredible movie, must watch for anyone who wants to understand post-colonial Africa. Tragically, the movie is now banned in a number of European countries as a racist flick, but it is nothing of the sort. This just shows you where PC insanity leads.
A great movie. I just got through watching it. Africa Addio or Farewell Africa is an Italian documentary film shot in 1964 and released in 1966. The film, by famous Italian documentary film directors Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi, is about the decolonization of Africa. There's some great music by the Italian composer Riz Ortolani.
The directors had earlier become famous with the release of Mondo Cane, a famous shock documentary.
It was released in the US in a censored version called Africa Blood and Guts, with all the fine music cut out. Jacopetti and Prosperi disassociated themselves from this American perversion of their film.
The film has English subtitles so you can follow right along.
Tragically, the film was condemned by the PC Orthodox anti-racist idiots who rule our Western world. It has subsequently been banned in Italy and the UK as "racist." Much criticism nowadays has centered on the movie being racist, misleading, exploitative, or staged. In particular, film critic Roger Ebert has singled the film out as racist.
Jacopetti was tried in Italy on charges of murder on the grounds that one of the executions in the movie was staged for the film. He was acquitted.
All of this is quite unfortunate. 1964-1966 was not exactly the height of racial liberalism in the West.
A friend in Italy tells me that Jacopetti and Prosperi were both liberal and progressive men, and neither one was racist or fascist in any way. He described them both as "open-minded". He also said that in Italy it is understood that the directors blamed colonialism for creating the conditions that led to much of the violence depicted in the film.
The film simply tells the truth about decolonization in Africa. It was brutal, horrid, stupid and genocidal. In quite a few ways, colonialism did seem better. Immediately after decolonization, there were horrible tribal wars. In the course of these tribal wars, there was horrible massacres of men, women and children of opposing tribes.
Arabs, up to 30,000 of them, were singled out and massacred in Zanzibar. In some cases, Whites were killed, even as they were trying to flee the country. In at least one case, the Simba Rebellion in Congo, the Simbas committed mass cannibalism on the opposing forces. Hutus slaughtered 18,000 Tutsis.
There are scenes all through the movie of scores or hundreds of bodies lying all over beaches, towns and jungles, or piled in mass graves. We watch the killers as they do their dirty work.
It's not a pretty movie.
At the same time as humans were being slaughtered, so were animals. Under colonialism, great game reserves had been set up, and men had scarcely been allowed to enter at all. If they did, they were to keep their voices down to not disturb the animals.
With decolonization, all Hell broke loose. At one point, the animal slaughter was so bad that the Africans called the British Army back in to set up the game reserves again. This was quickly amended, and every Friday was kill the animals day. We watch helpless as hunters, White and Black, massacre animals – hippos, elephants, gazelle, cape buffalo, crocodiles, by the thousands.
Apparently at some point later on, some sane people came to power and the animal slaughter drastically tapered off. Because if the animal slaughter depicted in this movie would have been allowed to continue, there would not be one large wild mammal left in the continent.
The animal slaughter has continued, but the grim scenario predicted in the movie has not come to fruition. Large game reserves have been set up, and large mammals still in general have decent populations, except for a few like rhinos.
44 years after decolonization, it's amazing that there are any large mammals left in Africa at all. I think we should give Africans some credit. It's been 44 years, and they haven't killed all the big animals yet.
The horrible tribal wars seem to have tapered off, though there are still some horrible wars in Sudan and the Congo. For most of Africa, there is peace or relative peace; the horrible, insane and stupid massacres of the decolonization period have not continued or rematerialized. This is good.
In 1964, it seemed that Africa was going to continue in racist and tribal genocide and mammal slaughter until most of the people and all of the big animals were gone. This has not occurred. Africa has proved better than our worst fears, and it's been nearly a half century.
Let's give them some credit.
In part, I think that the horrible leaders and parties of the decolonization period have been followed by much better leaders and political parties in most nations.
The film also discusses South Africa, and predicts that it will not last. They were right.
The film is being distributed now on the Net at least in part by White Supremacist assholes, but that figures, and it doesn't make it a bad movie, except if you're an anti-racist loon.
The truth just hurts sometimes. During the decolonization period, a lot of Africans were acting really bad. That's history. Now a lot of Africans are acting a lot better. That's progress.
Author Robert LindsayPosted on June 7, 2009 Categories Africa, Anti-colonialism, Blacks, Central Africa, Congo, East Africa, History, Left, Modern, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, Reposts From The Old Site, South Africa, Whites3 Comments on Africa Addio