Wars are the clock ticking off the time of Israeli history: World War I; the "riots" of 1929 and 1936; World War II; the War of Independence, 1948; the Sinai Campaign, 1956; the Six Day War, 1967; the War of Attrition, 1969-1971; the Yom Kippur War, 1973; the Labanon War, 1982; the Gulf War, 1991. Not all these conflicts were equally significant in their cultural impact, and surely not in the same way, but together they create a ghastly rhythm in which every calm period is seen in Israel as a pause before future violence.

[Editor's Note: I would say this explains a great deal about Israel...and I would add that a similar statement could be made about Palestine]

— Ariel Hirschfeld, in his chapter in Cultures of the Jews, edited by David Biale

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This is funny beyond words.

That.

Is.

All.

H/T Elephant Journal

I have had some contact with Kalyn Free since I support and blog about her organization, Indigenous Democratic Network (INDN List). INDN is an excellent organization that has been organizing Native Americans on the grassroots level.

Kalyn Free is also a Superdelegate and has just endorsed Obama. This, on top of the Native American Times endorsement, may be showing robust support for Obama among Native Americans. Endorsement statement below:

Statement from Kalyn Free:

DNC Superdelegate, INDN's List Founder and
USW (United Steelworkers) Associate Member Kalyn Free
Endorses Senator Barack Obama for U.S. President

CHICAGO, IL -- Kalyn Free, an at-large member of the Democratic National Committee, today announced that she supports Illinois Senator Barack Obama for the party's presidential nomination. As a DNC member, Free will serve as a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention. Free is also founder and President of INDN's List, an organization dedicated to recruiting and training American Indian candidates.

This brings the total number of superdelegates to endorse Barack Obama to 258. Senator Obama is 276 delegates away from securing the Democratic nomination.

Free said she was excited to see two qualified candidates emerge from the field of Democratic contenders. "Today, I am casting my support for a new kind of leadership and a new possibility of what America can be. Barack Obama is a once-in-a-generation kind of leader and the best hope the American people have to rebuild the erosion our collective foundation has endured the last eight years. In 2008, we must elect a President who will restore our faith in the possibilities of each and every American, including the First Americans.

"As a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, I am proud of what it means to be an American Indian. I am proud Barack Obama is committed to our unique issues and willing to tackle our toughest problems, from historical inequities and injustices to contemporary issues, like protection of our right to tribal self-determination, access to health care for our elders, and education for our children. Despite the threats that have faced our culture and our people, hope has lifted Indian people through the most difficult times. Because we remain connected to our past, our culture and our communities, we never gave up that hope. American Indians need not just progressive ideas but new and visionary leadership that inspire us to build a better future for all Americans. No President alone can rebuild the American public after eight years of George Bush's disastrous policies and poisonous politics. I support Senator Obama because I believe the only way to rebuild America is to rebuild what makes us great - the hope and drive of the American people.

"Senator Obama is committed to bringing American Indians into the national discussion and into the political process as voters, organizers, and leaders. He will start a two-way dialogue with Tribes by coming to Indian Country to seek solutions for our unique issues and by bringing Indians into his administration.

"For centuries the First Americans have had politicians talk to them, not with them. That kind of politics-as-usual leadership hasn't worked for Indian Country, and it isn't working for America. Senator Obama will forge a new era for the First Americans by looking for answers in Indian Country, not from Washington lobbyists.

"I am proud to stand in solidarity with another DNC Indian superdelegate Frank LaMere (Winnebago) in support of America's best hope for a better tomorrow, Senator Barack Obama."

Senator Obama said, "Kalyn is an effective and compassionate leader in the Native American community, and I'm proud to have her support. I admire the work she has done to build a grassroots movement, elect Native Americans to public office, and mobilize voters in tribal communities to become part of the political process. And as President, I will work with tribal leaders and Kalyn to ensure that they have a true partner in the White House. With Kalyn's support, we're going to bring about real change not just for the Native American community, but for all Americans."

I should note that originially only Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel were paying any attention to the Native American vote with Hillary Clinton possible setting the tone. It seems Barack Obama has now done enough to satisfy the Native American vote and is picking up their support.

It is Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day. This is the time we remember the 11 million people (including he 5 million non-Jews too often left out of our remembrance) who were killed by the Nazis in WW II.

Written in Pencil in the Sealed Freight Car

Here, in this freight car,
I, Eve,
with my son Abel.
If you see my older boy,
Cain, the son of Adam,
tell him that I…

--Dan Pagis, as quoted in Ariel Hirschfeld’s chapter in Cultures of the Jews, David Biale (ed.)

I read this poem, evoking the emotions of a woman crammed into a freight car on her way to the death camps during the Holocaust, right before I read Elie Wiesel's most recent edition of his book Night, describing his own experiences in the Holocaust. His book is, needless to say, chilling. But the additions in the latest edition make it even more so. If you read earlier editions, you might want to read the intro to the new one because he mentions things edited out of the original.

In Night Wiesel describes in considerable detail the experience of the freight car taking him to the Auschwitz. Everything about the experience was dehumanizing, mile by mile stripping away the humanity of the Jews not only in the eyes of the German guards, but even in the eyes of the Jews themselves. In many ways Dan Pagis’ poem is rehumanizing those who went through the experience, by framing it in terms of a Biblical incident that supposedly frames human origins. When I read the description of the freight cars in Night I kept returning to this poem, contrasting these two portrayals of the same experience in my mind. Both are born of the same experience but in many ways they are mirror images: the dehumanizing, “humans as freight” experience, and the experience that encompasses all of humanity, thus rehumanlizing those who experienced those freight cars. They are not contradictory versions, but are two sides of the exact same experience: the narrow one of what the experience meant right at the time to those directly involved, and the expansion of that highly personal experience to put it into the context of human nature and human history in general. What we do to each other now replays the family tragedy of the Biblical myth.

“We are Jewish because there are people out there who would kill us for being Jewish.”

At a time when I was simultaneously becoming more agnostic/atheist AND more Jewish (perhaps in the tradition of Isaac Deutcher who recognized a place within Judaism for non-believing Jews), I quite naturally posed the age-old question of just what it means to be a Jew. Parts of my quest to answer this question for myself have become diaries on various blogs. Genetic, cultural, tribal, religious, nationalistic and historical definitions of Judaism all combine into a mishmash (a phrase named for the biblical city of Michmash the same way we get “Armageddon” from the name of the ancient city of “Megiddo”) that must be confusing to non-Jews, but that I have come to see as a very key aspect to Jewish identity. I have come to see this identity crisis as one core part of Judaism that goes back as far as we can trace. Even within the Old Testament Jews have an ongoing identity crisis.

That’s how I think. I immerse myself in the complexity and maybe even add to that complexity some paradoxes: atheists can be perfectly good Jews, identity crisis can be a defining feature of identity, etc.

My wife thinks differently than I do. And her response to the question of Jewish identity was characteristically terse and to the point:

“We are Jewish because there are people out there who would kill us for being Jewish.”

That definition has stuck with me over the years since she said it. Because it defines Jews probably more than my identity crisis as identity does.

The Spanish Inquisition (which still exists today in a more benign form) had several targets. Jews and Protestants could be brutally killed at will. But their main target was neither. Their main target was generally the Conversos, Jews who had been forced to convert to Catholicism by the Spanish. Somehow these ambiguous people, once Jewish, now not, were seen as the biggest threat by the Spanish Catholic Church. At first the Papacy did not agree and was happy to welcome converted Jews, but some Popes, like Paul IV, took the attitude of the Inquisition and saw these converts, no matter how Christian, as suspect and was known to burn them alive from time to time. In fact, it didn’t even matter if your family had been good, practicing Catholics for generations, the taint of having once been Jewish remained and the Inquisition was always a threat. No surprise that many Conversos left Spain.

“We are Jewish because there are people out there who would kill us for being Jewish.”

The intellectual underpinnings of Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitism partly came from a British author named Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Supposedly a historian (yet seemingly ignorant of much history) Chamberlain hypothesized that civilizations and great nations rose by expelling Jews and fell when they became “polluted” by Jews. Needless to say, people like Himmler pissed themselves with glee when they read this and used it as one basis of their policy towards the Jews.

The 1935 Nuremburg Laws enshrined what many Jews already knew. It didn’t matter who you were, what you believed or what you worshipped, if you had any Jewish ancestry you were Jewish. Or, put more popularly in 1930’s Germany:

“Was er glaubt is einerlei
In der Rasse liegt die Schweinerei.”

Translated in Melvin Konner’s book Unsettled as:

“It doesn’t matter what his faith,
the piggishness is in the race.”

Which, in effect, says the same thing my wife says:

“We are Jewish because there are people out there who would kill us for being Jewish.”

The first step towards genocide is to define your target as less than human. The dehumanization of perfectly normal and nice human beings is the first step to exterminating those perfectly normal and nice human beings. This is a common motif in all of human history. Hindus and Buddhists in Sri Lanka have done this during their terrible civil war, despite the fact that both religions preach ahimsa, which translates roughly to “non-violence”. Hutu and Tutsis have done this quite infamously, despite the fact that the original designations of Hutu and Tutsi were formulated by a white colonial government based on how many cattle a family owned. Americans did it regarding blacks and Native Americans. Japanese have done it regarding Koreans and Chinese. And, of course, many have done it regarding the Jews.

The Germans used freight cars, stuffed to overflowing with perfectly normal and nice human beings, given little food, water or bathroom facilities, to dehumanize the Jews as completely as possible on the way to the camps. When the Jews arrived they had not bathed, they were half starved, dehydrated, weak, smelling of urine and feces that they were not allowed to dispose of properly. This made it so much easier for the Germans to send them to death…and so much easier for the Jews to go quietly.

Here, in this freight car,
I, Eve,
with my son Abel.
If you see my older boy,
Cain, the son of Adam,
tell him that I…

“Never Again”

That is the refrain I grew up with as a Jew. No more genocides. And yet we have not lived up to this refrain. And, in fact, the very first reaction the world had to the Holocaust was denial. Even in Israel the act of intentional forgetting played out from 1948 through 1961. Many Israelis down played the Holocaust or in part blamed the victim for remaining in the unsafe Diaspora rather than joining the aliyah, the return. It was the 1961 public trial of Eichman that led many Israelis (as well as Americans) to realize the full scope of the Holocaust and to face it honestly. But in the longer scheme of things, as, not only survivors, but, just as importantly as witnesses, the liberators die off, Holocaust denial and downplaying revives. It isn’t just the President of Iran who loves to downplay the Holocaust. I hear similar downplaying by Americans as well, usually with some kind of political agenda (for example, the Institute for Historical Review and the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust). To fulfill “Never Again” we have to never forget. How are we going to keep the memory strong enough as those who were first hand witnesses and survivors die?

(As an aside, I should note that beyond even Holocaust denial, we have here in America people willing to accept the Nazi ideology, including a Republican running for office in Indiana)

There is also a more insidious form of forgetting: forgetting that “never again” should not mean JUST never again to the Jews, but also should mean a deliberate opposition to such atrocities in all contexts, from Burma to Darfur to Rwanda to Bosnia to anywhere where people begin to play out the original biblical family tragedy on a grand, horrifying scale. We should never forget that for every Jew exterminated by the Nazis there was, more or less, one non-Jew also exterminated in similar camps with similar brutality and with similar stupid reasons.

It is in this context that I choose this Yom HaShoah to donate to provide solar stoves for Darfur refugees through Jewish World Watch. These refugees are exposed to violence every time they go out to collect firewood. Solar stoves reduce their need for firewood and makes their life safer. You can read more about this and donate here.

And here is a video on the project.

In this small way I can help face another genocide going on right now.

“Never again,” can never be literally fulfilled, because humans are humans and genocide has been part of our civilized story from the very beginning of “civilization”. But “never again” CAN mean never again turning a blind eye, never again LETTING it happen without opposition. It is in this context that Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize (remember, that thing that so many right wing extremists on Fox News denigrated because Jimmy Carter and Al Gore are recent recipients) is so meaningful.

And speaking of Nobel Prizes (in Medicine, not Peace), I will end with an experience I had at work some 6 months ago. The NYU School of Medicine has many excellent seminars. One of them is the annual Menek Goldstein memorial lecture in Psychiatry. Last year Eric Kandel, a Nobel Prize winner, was the speaker, and a damned good one at that. What caught my attention separate from the science was that the three scientists highlighted, Menek Goldstein (being honored), Eric Simon (who introduced Eric Kandel) and Eric Kandel (the speaker) all experienced the Holocaust. If I got the stories straight, Menek Goldstein lived through the concentration camps while Eric Simon and Eric Kandel both lived through Kristalnacht but escaped before the full force of Nazism could hit them. Three such distinguished and famous scientists, all Jews targeted by the Nazis for extermination, all survived to old age, and one won the Nobel Prize. Meanwhile, those Nazis who targeted them for extermination are now dead and/or despised, becoming one of the political schoolyard taunts thrown around by left and right to describe those they don’t like, and admired by almost no one except a handful of outcast nutjobs. Those targeted are among the most admired members of our society…those who did the targeting are recognized as some of the biggest and most pathetic losers of history. Even if “never again” is never achieved, at least we know that those who committed genocide were solidly defeated at least once and therefore can be again.

LAST WEEK we watched a young man (whom one person wrote me and called "arrogant") engage the democratic process as he questioned Hillary Clinton during her Town Rally at the South Eugene High School (April 4, 2008). The bold student wanted to know if when all was said and done the Senator was more interested in her own candidacy than preserving or encouraging the viability of the Democratic Party's eventual as-of-yet-unselected nominee. In Part 4, this conclusion to our four part series, she responds.

(Please excuse the audio buzz that can be heard for aprx. the first 50 seconds.)

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

The latest video by Oregon's Official MTV Choose or Lose Street Team 08 Citizen Journalist, Nezua.

Clicking the picture above will take you to the video page.

Crossposted to The Unapologetic Mexican and OpEdNews.

This man is running for Congress and he hangs out with Nazis:

From CBS News:

Tony Zirkle, who is seeking the Republican nomination in northern Indiana's 2nd District, stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastika armbands and with a swastika flag in the background for the speech to the American National Socialist Workers Party in Chicago on Sunday.

The event Zirkle attended was in celebration of Hitler's birthday. These people are real Nazis, losers who still believe in Hitler's ideology more than 60 years after Hitler got his ass kicked.

Of course this is no surprise coming from a Republican who is pro-segregation.

Republicans are not Nazis. But the ties between Republicans and white supremicists and their willingness to accept intolerance is disgusting to me. Also in Indiana, Republican Speaker of the Indiana House Brian Bosma told a group of Jews they didn't matter because only 2% of the population is Jewish. Ann Coulter has attacked Judaism and Islam. Racism is a frequently used and well-documented tactic by the Republican Party in electoral politics. A Republican in Montana has been openly racist towards a Native American politician. Right-wingers in Delaware have even carried out a genuine pogrom against a Jewish and a Muslim family. Prominent Republicans even blame Jewish conspiracies for their problems. Anti-Semitism, racism and intolerance are rampant in the Republican Party these days.

Unlike the Nazis, there is nothing inherantly racist or anti-Semitic in the Republican ideology. But the right-wing fanatics that have taken over the Republican Party under Bush are racist, anti-Semitic and intolerant. The more open acceptance of Nazism by Republicans like David Duke and Tony Zirkle is only the tip of the iceburg.

For those who want to reject Republican racism in Indiana, Joe Donnelly is the Democratic Congressman Tony Zirkle wants to go up against. Show him your support against right wing Republican fanatics by donating or, if you live there, volunteering for Donnelly. And write letters to the editor expressing your disgust with Tony Zirkle, Brian Bosma and Republican intolerance.

It is now five years since Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. Five years since Bush gloated that we had won...and yet almost every day brings more casualties. We are STILL mired in Iraq, still have no exit strategy. And Osama bin Laden, who has never set foot in Iraq, remains free and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization is stronger than ever.

Bush has failed.

And John McCain has vowed to continue Bush's Iraq Quagmire for as long as 100 years. Yes...he said he would be fine with continuing this failure for 100 years. Let's look at McCain's views of Bush's failed Iraq Quagmire: (thanks to MoveOn.org)

* John McCain recently said, "No one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have."1 He was Bush's strongest ally in the march to war in Iraq. McCain consistently repeated the same misjudgments made by Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and President Bush. More than 4,000 American troops have lost their lives because of these misjudgments.2
* McCain says we could be in Iraq for 100 years, and has consistently opposed any plan to withdraw troops from Iraq.3 He'd rather dump billions more in Iraq than invest it in our economy back home.
* McCain accuses folks who want to bring our troops home of "surrender."4

1. "McCain: 'No one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have,'" ThinkProgress, April 2, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3621&id=12542-5690110-f9Hedu&t=6

2. "Senator McCain's Real Record on the War in Iraq," VoteVets.org, February 8, 2008
http://www.votevets.org/mccain.html

3."McCain's Century Of War," Progressive Media USA, April 29, 2008
http://www.mccainsource.com/security?id=0004
"Senator McCain's Real Record on the War in Iraq," VoteVets.org, February 8, 2008
http://www.votevets.org/mccain.html

4. "McCain Says He Could Lose Over War Issue," Associated Press, February 25, 2008
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080225/D8V1KDH84.html

"Senator McCain's Real Record on the War in Iraq," VoteVets.org, February 8, 2008
http://www.votevets.org/mccain.html

And let me remind you of the video put out one year ago, on the fourth anniversary, by Americans United for Change:

Barack Obama was there on 1 May 2006. Will you join in on 2008?

AfterDowningStreet.org has an amazing historical overview on why tomorrow there will be massive demonstrations and labor union strikes all across the country : 122 years of the 8 hour week and end of child labor, 5 years of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, 3 years since the discovery of the Downing Street Minutes, 2 years since the nation-wide immigration rallies of 2006, almost 2 years ago when Nanci Pelosi and Democrats in Congress and the Senate took the impeachment of George Bush for misleading the country to war, "off the table". Yet in one of the most mindboggling examples of the Bush Administration's information war against Americans, May 1st has been declared Loyalty Day.

And here's the thing : You and I know that when it comes down to it, the war against immigrants is a war against labor which is part of a larger attack from the only people who benefit from the other kind of corporate-led violence like the occupation of Iraq.

As my friend Roberto Lovato said earlier, paraphrasing ActUP, "Silence = Death". If you are like me, you hate marches but you go to them because you know that as a symbol of solidarity in dissent you need to go.

So dust off your walking shoes and get your arse to the streets and square.

MARCH
on
MAY 1, 2008
International Workers' Day
Join us in a May Day march to unite ALL workers!

2:00pm
RALLY at ROOSEVELT PARK in CHINATOWN
(Grand St. between Forsyth and Chrystie St.)
(B/D Train to Grand St. Station)

3:00pm
MARCH to UNION SQUARE

JOIN US TO DEMAND:
Repeal of the Employer Sanctions Provision
Legislate Equal Rights for All Workers
Establish a genuine path to citizenship for the undocumented

Equal Rights for All Workers! Don't Crimilinalize Immigrants
EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL WORKERS!
DON'T CRIMINALIZE IMMIGRANTS!

May Day originated in the United States when native and immigrant workers united to fight for the 8 hour day. Today we are calling all workers to come together -- not just to fight for survival, but to fight for better lives, and control over our time and our lives.

Corporations reap billions off the backs of working people by pitting immigrant against citizen. At the same time, the government and elite call for strengthening of the Employer Sanctions Provision -- a modern-day slave law -- to create and expand the underclass of labor this law created. They are also pushing guestworker and legalization programs that will legalize a few, while criminalizing many more.

We march to forge unity among immigrant and native born workers, and build a movement to make equal rights for all workers a national priority this year.

For more information, contact: Break the Chains Alliance, c/o NMASS 212-358-0295 | info@breakthechainsnow.org | www.breakthechainsnow.org

There's going to be a lot of noise here in the next week to ten days. We're doing some major repairs and upgrades on the site that will fix the comment and posting problems we've been having in the last month.

And with that, I leave you with a time-lapse video of a construction site of 1 Bryant Park, on 4nd Street and Sixth Avenue.

Enjoy.

Norm Siegel, candidate for Public Advocate, has a new website and a new Youtube video:

For those who aren't familiar with Norman Siegel, he has been defending the Civil Liberties of Americans decades. From his website:

Norman Siegel, raised in Brooklyn, has been an advocate for New Yorkers throughout his 40 year career. He has been a leader in the fight for freedom, justice, and equality for all, issues that have pulled at our city’s fabric for too many generations.

Norman Siegel began his career as a civil rights/civil liberties lawyer when, following his graduation from Brooklyn College and New York University Law School, he joined the American Civil Liberties Union's Southern Justice & Voter Law Project in 1968. There, he was co-counsel in numerous lawsuits challenging the systemic exclusion of blacks and women from juries in various counties in South Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Alabama. Two voting rights cases in which he was involved are :

Hadnott v. Amos (U.S. Supreme Court case allowing 89 mainly black candidates to run for political office in Alabama), and

In re: Herndon (civil and criminal contempt conviction under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 of Probate Judge of Greene County, Alabama for not placing black candidates on the ballot).

He was also co-counsel in Levy v. Parker (challenged the constitutionality of the court martial of Dr. Howard B. Levy).

In 1972, as Executive Director of the Youth Citizenship Fund, Inc., he led an effort to register thousands of young, newly eligible voters. In 1973-74, as the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) Field Director, Norman spearheaded the New York campaigns for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon and the New York State Equal Rights Amendment. He was also co-counsel in the historic Holtzman v. Schlessinger United States Supreme Court case, an effort to halt the bombing of Cambodia.

In 1978, Norman became Project Director for MFY Legal Services, Inc., which assists poor people in neighborhoods in Manhattan. As Executive Director of the NYCLU (1985-2000), Norman was involved in some of the City's most critical civil rights and civil liberties struggles: the creation of an independent Civilian Complaint Review Board; the successful defense of the Brooklyn Museum’s right to exhibit controversial art; the fight for citizens' access to the steps of City Hall; the involuntary hospitalization of people with mental illness; the struggle for improved community-police relations and greater accountability on the part of the NYPD.

Over the last five years in private practice, Norman has continued his work in civil rights - civil liberties law in the process expanding his practice throughout New York. Norman has represented the Williamsburg 7, a group of community activists in Brooklyn who were arrested protesting the closing of their local firehouse, and the Nyack 10, a group of New Yorkers who brought a lawsuit for the right to obtain marriage licenses for same sex couples. Norman also is counsel to the West Harlem Business Group in its fight against the possibility of eminent domain in Columbia University’s expansion plan, and was counsel for Develop - Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, the group of community residents who are fighting the use of eminent domain to condemn private property in Atlantic Yards. Norman also advocated for and represented the following groups:

* The Skyscraper Safety Campaign and Firefighters Families who seek the implementation of a skyscraper safety program and provisions for our firefighters to guarantee they have proper working communications equipment;

* Families who lost a loved one on September 11, 2001, as they successfully sought the public record of materials from that day, including 911 emergency tapes and transcripts (co-counsel)...

* Republican National Convention arrestees held for more than 24 hours – filed habeas corpus petition (co-counsel); and

* The World Trade Center Families for A Proper Burial (co-counsel).

I know Norm and he is one of my top candidates for 2009. If you want to find out more about him, please visit his new website.

Recently I wrote a piece kind of throwing together the ideas of human evolution and personal genealogy, two things that clearly are ultimately connected because they both come down to simple genetics and who begat whom, but in reality are so separated in time that we cannot properly connect them. But those who accept genealogies and DNA tests for paternity have to accept evolution, because the concepts are the same. Ultimately genes work a certain way and we understand how they work quite well. Evolution is no great mystery or controversy. What is amazing is that Darwin, with no concept of genes, came up with a system that once genes were studied was found to fit very well how genes actually work. Genetics and Evolution started as separate fields, but amazingly the two separate fields merged almost perfectly. To me genealogy is simply what we can see up close of our evolutionary path. Once we get a few generations back, the branches of our ancestry become quite tangled and hard to see...but they are there. And their imprint is in our genes.

Recenly some new developments occurred in studying human evolution that I now want to fit into my previous thoughts on the subject. Slowly it seems like the path of human physical and cultural evolution is being outlined, and I am enjoying each new piece of information.

I am fascinated by the development of humans first as a species, then into the variety of cultures, ethnicities, religions, etc that we are today. History, archaeology and biology all feed into this. I am by profession as biologist (currenly in Developmental Genetics, but previously mostly Cell and Molecular Biology), so evolution and how genes work is very familiar to me. I also love archaeology and history as a hobby. I spend a great deal of time reading and thinking about these subjects.

One issue I encounter is the idea that the study of human genetics and the evolution of humans as ethnically diverse opens the door to racism. I do not believe this is true even though I know that people who misunderstand or misuse the science can sometimes reach conclusions that are clearly racist. An extreme example of this was an early theory of human evolution that hypothesized that Africans were descended from gorillas, Europeans from chimpanzees, and Asians from Orangutans. This theory was based on almost nothing except racist beliefs. In the end science showed this was absurd and we moved on to realizing humans are merely, to borrow the term from Dr. Jared Diamond, a third species of Chimpanzees, closely related to the common chimp and the Bonobo.

I also remember the relatives of a woman I used to date challenged me with a very racist theory that generations of adverse conditions would mean that blacks had become inferior to whites. These people prided themselves on their intelligence, but they were ignoring two very basic ideas. First off, their concept of evolution sounded amazingly like the discredited theories of Lamarck who believed acquired characteristics were inheritied (something that MIGHT account for a small part of bacterial evolution, but not any other evolution). And second, they ignored the fact that adverse conditions often mean a greater selective pressure, quite possibly selecting for intelligence, strength, whatever it took to increase survival. Trying to bend the concepts of genetics and evolution to fit a racist idea of superiority will not work because this is not how evolution or genetics works.

One of the difficulties in all of this is that when genetic differences are found between different groups of people, too often people think of it in terms of "superior" and "inferior," or "normal" and "abnormal." But genetics doesn't work like that. A healthy species is a genetically diverse species and any concept of a "master race" is not only unfounded based on the clear genetic mixing of human populations, but is actually undesirable. Another term for "master race" would be inbred. Genetic diversity is pretty much ALWAYS a good thing. The same goes with culture. Cultural isolation historically leads to societies that lose technology, rather than perfecting technology. Cultural diversity, like genetic diversity, is almost always a good thing.

With that in mind, genetic and cultural differences do exist within the human species and we can learn a lot about our history, genealogy and evolution from these differences. Genes, languages and cultural traits often can be analyzed in similar ways. These analyses do not give identical results because languages, genes and cultural traits change differently. But similar analyses can be used and overlapping information can be obtained by applying all these methods. One can compare the development of pottery between two cultures, compare it with linguistic differences and similarities between those two cultures, and compare the genes of the people living in those two cultures and can from all that come up with some pretty good hints about how those two cultures developed over time and in relation to eachother.

One of the foremost expertis in doing this, using statistical methods I am unfamiliar with in my own work, but which my wife uses in studying climate, is Dr. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. He has done wonders analyzing the relationships between modern languages and the genes of modern populations and correlating the two to study human history and evolution. Some of his books are way beyond me, but I found Genes, Peoples, and Languages (2000) to be an amazing introduction into this field. I will refer a little bit to his work later.

First I want to start with some new research that indicates that our species, Homo sapiens, came very close to evolving into two distinct species in Africa right at the beginning of our common acestry.

Too often I hear people claim that humans have somehow gone "beyond" evolution or are "above" evolution or "escaped" evolution. Of course that is completely wrong. We are just as much a part of and affected by evolution as any species that has ever existed. The same hubris that has allowed us to ignore the impact of the environmental degradation we cause leads us to think our species isn't affected by the same natural rules that every other species that has ever existed is affected by. But we are animals and the same rules apply to us. And we can be studied in pretty much the same way any animal can be studied. And human evolution prior to the dominance of Homo sapiens was full of various human and human-like species that coexisted for millenia. The most recent coexistence was in Europe where the Neanderthals and our species lived side by side for tens of thousands of years. In Asia Homo erectus and Homo sapiens coexisted. And in Africa countless Australopithecine and Homo species coexisted for millions of years. The fact that there is only one human species alive today is very unusual.

I read about the recent discovery that modern humans nearly diverged into a South African and an East African species on BBC today:

Although present-day people carry a signature of the ancient split in their DNA, today's Africans are part of a single population.

The researchers compiled a "family tree" of different mitochondrial DNA groupings found in Africa.

A major split occurred near the root of the tree as early as 150,000 years ago.

On one side of this divide are the mitochondrial lineages now found predominantly in East and West Africa, and all maternal lineages found outside Africa.

On the other side of the divide are lineages predominantly found in the Khoi and San (Khoisan) hunter-gatherer people of southern Africa [sometimes called Bushmen].

Many African populations today harbour a mixture of both.

The scientists say the most likely scenario is that two populations went their separate ways early in our evolutionary history.

This gave rise to separate human communities localised to eastern and southern Africa that evolved in isolation for between 50,000 and 100,000 years...

The genetic data show that populations came back together as a single, pan-African population about 40,000 years ago.

This renewed contact appears to coincide with the development of more advanced stone tool technology and may have been helped by more favourable environmental conditions.

"[The mixing] was two-way to a certain extent, but the majority of mitochondrial lineages seem to have come from north-eastern Africa down to the south," said Spencer Wells.

Most people know about "mitochondrial Eve." As I wrote in my earlier diary, all human beings today can trace their mitochondrial DNA back to a common ancestor living in East Africa some 100-150,000 years ago, the so-called mitochondrial "Eve." What is striking is that this is almost the same timing of the near-split of humans into two species. So we have a common ancestry, going back to the ancestral Eve, then relatively soon afterwards we had a major split into the Koisan (Bushman) ancestors, and the ancestors of the rest of us (roughly speaking...but remember these two groups did come back into contact before any of our ancestors left Africa).

In retrospect this isn't too surprising to me. I had long ago realzied taht the divergence of the ancestors of the Bushmen (Southern African) and the ancestors of the African Pygmies (Eastern African) seemed to be be the very first ethnic division in human history since we first started diversifying after mitochondrial Eve. And the rest of us probably share that ancestor of the Pygmies. The new data just shows far more clearly what was previously noticed more roughly.

A similar analysis using modern Y-chromosomal DNA (traced only through the male lineage) showed that all men alive today can be traced back to a common grandpappy in East Africa some 60-90,000 years ago. Interestingly, the common male ancestor of all humans was from DURING the South/East Africa split. This suggests that we share a common female ancestor from before the split, but our common male ancestry may come from only one of the two groups, Southern or, more likely, Eastern African. An alternative is that the split was only among females and males intermixed, but this seems highly unlikely.

There is nothing special about analyzing the Y-chromasomal and mitochondrial DNAs. Truth is, you can do the same kind of analysis with ANY piece of DNA in the body...it just is much harder to do than with the mitochondrial or Y-chromosomal DNA. But statistical analyses have shown that all of us can trace our DNA molecular patterns back to some 86,000 common ancestors. Those roughly 86,000 people, from different places and different times (though mostly probably from Africa since that is the place of our common descent) are our shared genetic heritage.

Another interesting aspect of this was that the reunification of the South and East African branches coincided roughly with a sudden surge in human creativity around 50,000 years ago. When the split happened, the humans of 150,000 years ago weren't quite what we are today. Physically they would pass. But culturally, and presumably in terms of how the brains worked, they were different. Stone tools made from our earliest tool using ancestors, Homo habilis, some 2.4 million years ago, up to even early Homo sapiens, tended to be slow to change and tended to be similar over wide areas. This doesn't mean things stayed the same throughout that period. Far, far from it. Over nearly 2.4 million years things changed a lot, but the pace of that change was slow and regional variation was small. It was almost as if we were doing simply a glorified version of Chimpanzees removing leaves from a twig to use the twig as a tool to get termites from a termite nest.

Then starting sometime around 50,000 years ago, well after we physically evolved, and right about the reunification of the two branches that nearly diverged into two species, something changed. Suddenly there were many more innovations in tools and far more regional variations. Complex culture seemed to suddenly evolve. Art started to evolve, culminating in the Cro Mangon art of Alta Mira and Lascaux. (As an aside, one theory, though one I consider shaky so far, is that the modern Basque are fairly direct descendants of this Cro Magnon culture...there is some genetic evidence for this, but...). Some kind of goddess or fertility cult seemed to start to appear, with widespread appearance of carved female figures called Venus figures. This was the start of a tradition that seems to have been carried even into the Bronze Age. And people started spreading out over the globe. To me it seems like we suddenly evolved imagination starting around 50,000 years ago. Was it a change in our brain structure? Was it a breakthrough in language? No one knows. But maybe simply the mixing of the South and East African branches brought together two separate culural traditions sparking something of a cultural competition or mutual inspiration between the two traditions. After all, like I said earlier, genetic and cultural diversity is almost always a good thing. You can almost think of it in terms of capitalist ideas of competition. A population in isolation has little reason to innovate. Add rival groups and the need to innovate becomes a matter of survival.

Or it could be the similar timing of the reunification and the cultural innovation was mere coincidence. But somehow I doubt it.

After this reunification of the diverging populations and the sudden surge in creativity, humans spread across the globe, creating a much larger diversity of cultures and eventually ethnicities. This led to the near isolation of some populations while the core population remained fairly genetically mixed. However, the process of expansion of population and geographic distribution led to another period of genetic diverification which could have led to another period of near speciation. This second period of more rapid human diversification was much more recent and much shorter lived.

Evolution is driven by two things: population size (since the larger the population the greater the genetic diversity) and distance (since larger population distribution allows greater divergence). It used to be thought that once we evolved to be Homo sapiens we largely stopped evolving. Recent data shows this isn't true. It seems that around 5000 years ago human evolution, presumably because it had reached a critical size and large distribution over most of the globe, suddenly sped up. We can't tell if we are diverging more than ever right now, or if, once again, perhaps due to the bridging of those large distances through modern transportation, we are evolving slowly. The techniques used can't see events closer than about 5000 years ago. I suspect that as empires grew, steppe nomads swept across continents, and transportation improved, genetic exchanges increased across our entire population, more or less, to counter act the speed up in human evolution. However, some pockets of people in places like Australia and New Guinea would have been largely genetically isolated for millennia up until around the 18th century. So perhaps any slow down in the pace of human evolution would only have started a few hundred years ago.

This means that from a common ancestor some 150,000 years ago, we went first through about 100,000 years of divergence almost into two species (perhaps heading towards, but not quite reaching, something like the split between the Chimpanzee and the Bonobo). Then from about 40-50,000 years ago until about 5000 years ago, population size was small enough and our global distribution narrow enough, at least early on, that we were evolving slowly. Then around 5000 years ago our population size and distribution becames such that we began diverging again, probably towards (but never actually becoming) several subspecies. This second period of divergence probably was short lived because of innovations in transportation (starting with the horse, then sailing ships then airplanes) which probably (though this cannot be currently tested) have stopped this second divergence within the last several centuries.

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza's studies of languages and genes almost certainly reflects all of these trends: the near divergences 150,000 years ago, the reunification, the second divergence 5000 years ago, and whatever is happening right now. But we don't yet have enough information to connect his studies with these more recent, and broader, studies. Cavalli-Sforza points out that you can statistically distinguish the genes of people in to neighboring villages in Italy. This is an amazing level of resolution, even if at that level the information is nearly meaningless. But it shows how powerful the technique is. But the same techniques can show genetic affinities among larger groupings. Almost every population on earth can be fitted into genetic groups and the timing of the divergences can be calculated. This is the meat of what he covers in Genes, Peoples, and Languages. Here is an image of a "family tree" (a version called a "rootless tree" generally favored by modern evolutionary biologists) of modern human populations based on a statistical analysis of their genes (from Cavalli-Sforza's book via Wikipedia):

A similar analysis is also covered in much a more popularized and less scientific manner in The Seven Daughters of Eve (2001) by Bryan Sykes looking only at mitochondrial DNA. (Sykes also has a sequel about the Y-chromasomal DNA, but I haven't read it yet). I am betting that if studied carefully, the earliest divergences seen in the Cavalli-Sforza analyses could fit well into the divergence 150,000 years ago, and one can find some of the more recent divergences would fit into the more recent period of divergence 5000 years ago. There may also be hints of other divergences between the two that have not yet been detected.

I love how the rough outlines of human development are being filled in. But there is still a long way to go. Ultimately we all come from the same pool of about 86,000 common ancestors. And humans could still evolve into separates species if conditions for genetic isolation ever occurred (reminding me of very interesting science fiction books like Hyperion by Dan Simmons, and Skaith trilogy by Leigh Brackett, who also was a scriptwriter for movies like The Big Sleep and The Empire Strikes Back). It isn't likely to happen right now when people can meet on the internet, then hop on jet planes and have sex with people across the globe. But human evolution is still an ongoing story.

In 2006 I pushed hard to elect Jennifer Brunner as secretary of state for Ohio. Luckily we won that hotly contested race, replacing a corrupt Republican secretary of state with an honest Democrat. This means our chances for fair elections in Ohio in 2008 are looking good.

Jennifer Brunner has done such a good job cleaning up the messed up Ohio election system that she has actually won an award. From the Springfield News-Sun:

Brunner to be honored for her political courage

Study of Ohio's election system earns Secretary of State prestigious award.
By Bridgette Outten
Staff Writer

Monday, April 21, 2008

COLUMBUS -- Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner kept her campaign promise to review Ohio's election system, a challenge that earned her a place among the 2008 recipients of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

Brunner is being honored for her "political courage by a distinguished bipartisan committee of national, political, and community leaders," according to a statement from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation...

"I was stunned" upon learning of the award, Brunner said. "I had not applied for it."

Even more stunning was the personal call that came from Caroline Kennedy, president of the JFK Library Foundation, offering congratulations, Brunner added.

Brunner's decision to review the system amidst "quite a bit of furor" was based on ensuring accuracy and reliability of the state voting system, not receiving accolades, she said.

"When a person is in public service, they do what they do because it's the right thing," she said.

The $1.9 million study found vulnerabilities in the system that could reportedly compromise the validity of results.

The review reflects the simple creed Brunner's parents taught her: "Be honest and work hard."

Here is Jennifer Brunner explaining the report:

This is one of the best things we accomplished in 2006. If you want to help re-elect Jennifer Brunner, you can contribute here.

In the immortal words of Team America, Fuck yeah!

ON THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of the Iraq Invasion, MoveOn held vigils all over the country at the same time. This video commemorates and captures the public vigil held in Eugene, Oregon to call for an end to the Iraq Occupation.

The latest video for my MTV Citizen Journalist gig.

Crossposted to The Unapologetic Mexican and OpEdNews.

Consolidated Indigenous Shadow Report. p. 34.

…the continuation and preservation of traditional Native American Religion is ensured only through the performance of ceremonies and rites by tribal members. These ceremonies and rites are often performed on specific sites…These sites may also be based on special geographic features…For most Native American religions, there may be no alternative places of worship since these ceremonies must be performed at certain places and times to be effective.

Such is the case at Pe Sla, “one of the five primary sacred sites in the Black Hills to the Lakota nation.”

Crossposted at Native American Netroots

Source

The Pe Sla is one of the five primary sacred sites in the Black Hills to the Lakota nation because of its position on their annual pilgrimage/journey of prayers and ceremonies. It is also the only one held mostly in private hands as others are within state or federal property. This prairie has only known cattle grazing by a handful of ranchers since the Homestead Act. Now subdivisions are encroaching upon this one pristine open space left in the Black Hills.

I can not speak for any tribe and here is my opinion. I think the ACLU should be seriously considered in terms of asking them to sue the appropriate parties over suffocating the religious freedom of the Lakota Nation to start with. I’m “seeking a way to protect this place,” so I didn’t mention cultural genocide.

(emphasis and underline mine)

Source

When the Forest Service was asked about a cabin being renovated as a memorial to the ranching history on the Pe Sla, the questioners reminded them that there was a much longer history of this site among the Lakota. The Forest Service representative told us that the Lakota elders with whom they consult told them no one wanted that information known. A few months later when an official from the county government was standing on Rochford Road that runs through the middle of the Pe Sla or Reynolds Prairie, he exclaimed with great satisfaction that “soon this road will be a black ribbon (paved with asphalt) and this prairie will be a sea of houses”.
Unfortunately, it is only a matter of time that further abuse and possible desecration will take place so that we must tell the story of this sacred site. Action must be taken to preserve this prairie for future generations.

• Please pray for its preservation and for the awareness of its spiritual significance to all people.

• Please tell the story to all whom you know.

Please show your support by seeking ways to protect this place. Some of those possibilities are outlined below.

Furthermore, I think Joe Garcia, President of the NCAI, should be contacted by the ACLU in order to proceed in the manner which would not damage tribal sovereignty in any fashion what-so-ever.

NCAI
National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)
1301 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 200, Washington D.C. 20036
Phone: (202) 466-7767, Fax: (202) 466-7797
Email: ncai@ncai.org

The ACLU could do a fund and membership drive revolving around this, which would hopefully increase their membership and help raise finances for the case. Everything considered, what are the other alternatives?

Source

The Pennington County Highway Department held a meeting regarding the reconstruction of South Rochford Road at Hill City, SD, on Monday, March 3, 2008, at 6:30 pm. This project runs from Deerfield Lake to the village of Rochford passing through the middle of Reynolds Prairie, or the Pe Sla, one of the most important and sacred Lakota annual pilgrimage sites. Currently it is a gravel road but the plans are to asphalt eleven (11) miles of road with $7.5 million dollars. If the road is blacktopped, housing development and increased traffic will occur. The Hill City Chamber of Commerce is pushing this project.

If they were considering condemning hundreds of churches for the sake of “development” or uranium for that matter, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion; a discussion that both Obama and Clinton should have in South Dakota and Montana.

Letter: Clinton, Obama should debate Indian issues

"Montana and South Dakota are scheduled to hold Democratic primaries June 3. No other state is having a primary that week. In fact, there are no Democratic state contests in the two weeks leading up to June 3. With more than 125,000 citizens who identify themselves as American Indian in these two states, I believe we should urge the Obama and Clinton campaigns to come to an Indian reservation in Montana or South Dakota to debate Indian country issues.

To conclude and once again, “It is only a matter of time that further abuse and possible desecration will take place so that we must tell the story of this sacred site. Action must be taken to preserve this prairie for future generations;” and, if they were considering condemning hundreds of churches for the sake of “development” or uranium for that matter, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.

No Sweat Apparel is a company I have plugged before and which I purchase clothes from. I have shoes, flip flops, shirts and pants from them. Their products are all fair trade and/or union made. Most of their stuff is good quality (though occasionally shoes wear out fast) and their flip flops are really cool, designed by Indonesian children with some of the proceeds going to fund the education of that child. All in all, a good company with cool products that are fair to workers.

They are starting a new project that ideally will help peace between Palestine and Israel. This appeals to me because during my one trip to Israel I had the chance to talk to many people and it made me realize that one major key to peace is economic prosperity. While my wife and I were there (between the assassination of Rabin but before violence broke out...and on the same trip we got engaged on Santorini in Greece and where we almost got caught in the big Turkish earthquake...) everyone, Arab and Israeli, was tensely optimistic. Everyone we talked to WANTED peace. Why? "Because it's good for business." This is the key. If people feel they have stake in peace, they will work for peace. I have written about this before and discussed companies and organizations that work to further economic cooperation and prosperity in Israel/Palestine. I also have written about another important facet of peace in the Middle East: environmental projects that can help the prosperity of all concerned.

Now No Sweat Apperal has a new project that fits the Fair Trade, Union centric, peace in the Middle East kind of projects that appeal to me. So, here I introduce a You Tube intro to their new project:

Depending on who you ask, the Iraq war costs anything from a low $200 million, to a moderate $411 million to a whopping $720 million a day.

The American Friends Service Committee calls for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and they have put together this video describing in numbers the financial toll the war is having on the country's ability to deal with its domestic issues. When you spend $720 million in a failed war, you can't spend it in health care, schools, jobs or the current housing crisis.

Watch the video.

Here's the list of US Senators who dared to say "NO" to the war in Iraq:

Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wellstone (D-MN)
Wyden (D-OR)

[NB: Emphasis mine]

In case you need a refresher, here's the list of Democrats who voted to give George W. Bush the power to spend $200 million a day in a war that gave us no "weapons of mass destruction" yet which has displaced as internal refugees more than 2 million Iraqis and forced another 3 million refugees to move to places like Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and Gulf States.

Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Breaux (D-LA)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carnahan (D-MO)
Carper (D-DE)
Cleland (D-GA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Daschle (D-SD)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Edwards (D-NC)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Hollings (D-SC)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Miller (D-GA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Schumer (D-NY)
Torricelli (D-NJ)

I've bolded some names for ponderable emphasis.