(Note to my readers. This is the tenth year since this newsletter first went into publication in 2011.)
BY NOW, everyone except political ingénues is aware that voting restriction laws are either being considered, or have already been passed into law, in 47 states. The purpose of these laws is to make voting harder, to skew the voting demography in favor of white, non-POC people, non-formerly incarcerated people, and against poor people, disabled people, normally the demography that tends to vote Democratic in our glorious rigged two-party electoral system.
Those of us who care are aware of this in all its grim and grimy details, and I see little reason to add to the steaming pile. One thing stands out however, and that is the deeper implications for the culture of this particular time in Earth’s political history we like to refer to as Democracy, and more particularly, the byzantine artifact we call American Democracy.
WHAT CAUGHT my attention in the recent Georgia law makes provision that, despite sleet, snow, or broiling hot sun, no water or food may be passed to anyone on the interminably long voter lines to ease their progress towards those pearly gates known as the voting booth. “As everyone knows,” to quote a Portside article, “the long lines occur in the dense urban areas—Democratic strongholds with large nonwhite populations.” But this very clause addresses something even more fundamental than what people in this country obsessively call “race.” (Full disclosure, there’s no such thing. Race is a construct designed by people in power to back up their power.)
Such a law as Georgia’s strikes at a very fundamental behavior which has characterized humans for a very long time—before the arrival of the dread Columbus, for example—among non-White people. It’s a thing called “sharing.” The more one ventures into the cultures and the histories of people world over who have either nothing (like the San of the Kalihari, or Juwasi as they call themselves) or very little (like the Innuit of the North) the more the behavior called sharing occurs.
Why does it occur? Is it a matter of doing the right thing? Academics, people like anthropologists, may very well lend it interpretations appropriate to literate, predominantly white cultures, but in that other world, the real one, where people have nothing or very little, sharing is a fundamental rule of survival. Among the Ihalmiut (eskimos) for example, you borrowed what you needed. If you needed a gun to shoot caribou for the next meal (and the next and all other meals were almost entirely caribou) you borrowed a gun. It was understood that now you had borrowed it, it was your gun, until such time as you might (or might not) chose to return it. And you would certainly think nothing if anyone else who hadn’t eaten in days borrowed it to shoot his and his family’s next dinner.
If a person was hungry, you gave him to eat, if a guest was thirsty you gave him to drink. Sharing even a glass of water (water, pure water, is less and less a thing to be taken for granted) that precious water was the way of welcoming the guest. If someone was needful of clothing or blankets in the freezing cold, you shared your clothing and blankets because there might very well be a time, when you too would be freezing, and that person—or someone else—might be there to recognize your want and share with you the clothing or blankets that would save your life. Call it sequential reciprocity.
And that is why the first White European settlers called the Indians they encountered thieves, because the White Man for all his evident superiority knew nothing of sharing, or communal property. For the White Man, borrowing was stealing. And stealing was not only morally repugnant, but a good way to enslave persons guilty of the White Man’s crime.
For me, being an apparently white person with indigenous (Zapotec) blood, sharing food and drink on the punishing long voting queue is a cultural sign. It speaks of a culture or cultures of people raised on the notion of sharing, and these cultures happen to be mostly those of non-white people. Hence, these laws (along with such actions by the Border Patrol as slashing bottles of water left in the desert for those making the dangerous trek to the border) reveal at their very roots—way beyond their intent of voter suppression—their cultural origins in white settler colonialism. They are the manifestation of a cultural trend dating back to where white Europeans originally come from. At last and only very recently, those origins have been exposed genetically through the study of ancient bones. The required text is Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich.
The book’s revelations come with the same import as Copernicus’s discovery of the solar system.
The Root of Evil
Never, never in the course of the nearly ten years I have been publishing this newsletter for my thousands of readers, never have I used the word evil because the word, although frequently abused by many, properly inhabits a philosophical level of discourse. I use it now to tell this story:
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| Marija Gimbutas |
In about 3,000 BC, so Gimbutas’s excavations in Eastern Europe discovered, an invasion of steppe-origin people (the steppe being located between the Caspian and Black Seas) invaded Europe. They were stockmen, keepers of animals, ever on the move, looking for new grazing lands for their cattle. Their tribe is known as the Yamnaya, and Marjia Gimbutas refers to them as “Kurgan” after their burial mounds. It is those mounds containing their grave offerings she has heavily investigated. Her many books consist of laboriously illustrated artifacts she unearthed there, rendered in painstaking detail, on which she based her claim that Kurgans brought 1) war 2)weaponry 3) hierarchy 4) patriarchy 5) sky gods 6) a world view of a life cycle ending in death (not rebirth) and 7) their language, proto Indo-European, from which all European languages but four (Basque, Hungarian, Finnish, and Turkish) originate. (Additionally they probably brought the plague being the first people to eat and live among animals) and during the course of the next 1000 years they would sweep across the face of Europe, killing and enslaving any indigenous people in their way, creating a reign of terror throughout the European continent.
America’s white supremacist worldview: proto-Indo-European-derived language as conveyor belt
Here it is necessary to interrupt this horrific story for some 4,400 years (until 1492) to take a look at the way language works.
Columbus sailed the ocean blue to extermination in 1492
Because the Kurgans lacked the technology that would carry their invasion across the seas, Europeans had to wait till 1492 to spread their joys westward with the slaughter and enslavement in the millions of indigenous people inhabiting the New World. Yes, you say, but these “explorers” and “discoverers” were White Europeans, not Kurgans. Indeed, but those White Europeans of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries are the descendants of the Kurgans. Their DNA is stamped by the Kurgen Y chromosome, and their languages, descended from proto-Indo European, perpetuate the Kurgan worldview handed down through many generations of transmission, parent to child.
Here our story comes to its bitter conclusion with the corroborating work of geneticist David Reich of Harvard, whose marvelously equipped lab has carried through research into the bones of our ancient ancestors stretching far back in time into pre-history, where nothing exists to tell us what came before, only myths orally transmitted, like the story of Cain the tiller of soil and Abel, the keeper of sheep.
I quote from the New Yorker article of December 14, 2020, “The Skeletons at the Lake” which describes his genetic research in an easily accessible way:
“Reich led a team of more than a hundred researchers who published a study in Science that examined the genomes of some two hundred seventy ancient skeletons [highlighting those] from the Iberian Peninsula….the DNA of Iberian skeletons…reveals what Reich describes as the “genetic scar” of a foreign invasion….The local type of Y chromosome was replaced by an entirely different type.., meaning that the local male line in Iberia was essentially extinguished.
“It is likely that the newcomers perpetuated a large-scale killing of local men, boys, and possibly male infants….The full genetic sequencing, however, indicated that about 60% of the lineage of the local population was passed on, which shows that women were not killed, but almost certainly subjected to widespread sexual coercion, and perhaps even mass rape. We can get a sense of this reign of terror by thinking about what took place when the descendants of those ancient Iberians sailed to the New World, producing human suffering on a grotesque scale—war, mass murder, rape, slavery, genocide, starvation, and pandemic disease.”
Conclusion
All white males of European origin (except the Basques. I have no information about speakers of the other 3 non Indo-European derived languages) bear the signature Y chromosome of the Kurgen Yamnaya. They carry the Kurgan DNA in their bones, and (with the exception of Basque) their original languages, descended from the Kurgan proto-Indo-European, carry the message of the Kurgan-Yamnaya world view down to this day, a world view inherited generation after generation from those original invaders of 3,000 B.C. foregrounding warfare, weaponry, hierarchy, patriarchy, misogyny, a life cycle ending in death, and worship of a sky god.
Over a long lifetime of inquiry, I have nothing more to add. Whether or not this turns out to be the very last issue of this newsletter in my lifetime, I will have no need to apologize to a whale or to anyone else.
Every one of these actions strikes at war, weaponry, and hierarchy. Please sign every one of them.
Invest in community, not war. Every $.24 cents of every one of your tax dollars goes to war.
Urge your reps to convert swords into plough shares: ICBMs into universal coronavirus vaccine.
Say you’re down: while millions of Americans are living in tents, hungry, dealing with despair by dying of opioids, time to stop investing in bombs and drones and killing everything that lives.
Oppose another 4 blighted years of foreign policy favoring war vs. diplomacy.
Tell the DOJ to investigate infiltration of local law “enforcement by White Supremacist groups.
Reduce military spending.
Co-sign into law: tax excessive CEO Pay Act demanding a country that works for all, not just-us.
Prevent PGE executives rewarding themselves, doubling their salaries after killing over 100 Californians thru criminal negligence.
Extinction Rebellion environmental activists break windows at Barclay’s Long HQ:
signs” “In case of climate emergency, break glass.”
250 groups urge WTO chief to ditch patent-friendly approach and embrace vaccine patent waiver.
Opposition wins elections in Greenland, casting c=doubt on future of rare-earth mine
Network of Defense Of Humanity rejects aggressions by armed groups in Colombia crossing into Venezuela
Farmers block expressway in Indian State of Haryana to protest against farm laws
IMF’s planned special drawing rights allocation called a good first step by CEPR co-director.
Pentagon orders “immediate actions” to tackle extremism in armed forces.
36 groups to Biden and Congress: reduce oversized Pentagon request
Afghanistan: Biden pledges to end nation’s longest war yet, by 9/11 after decades of bloodshed and destruction.
As Biden pledges $20 billion to dismantle highways separating their communities, racial justice advocates cautiously celebrate
Biden creates commission to study Supreme Court expansion, other reforms
New bill would add four seats to Supreme Court, to combat right-wing assault on Democracy
Biden’s spending proposal provides historical investments in public education
Biden budget seeks aid for unaccompanied kids, backlog of asylum applications, no new cash for mediaeval wall
Coalition tells Biden White House any further fossil fuel projects incompatible with Paris goals.
Coalition calls for ban on private, corporate use of racial recognition as “too dangerous to exist.”
Federal court ends #45 effort to open 128 million acres of Atlantic, Arctic Oceans to drilling.
Stating goal of making change permanent FDA lifts abortion pill restriction during pandemic
Agencies working with federal government resettling refugees had welcomed Biden’s pledge to restore admission numbers to 125,000 but admit their work is cut out for them.
Sen. Chris Hollen and Rep. Joe Courtney introduce bill to stop the U.S. from pouring an absurd amount of money into its nuclear arsenal
Sen Markey and Rep. Khanna introduce bill curtailing current plans to sink $$ in new ICBMs, reallocating sums into developing universal coronavirus vaccine.
Gillibrand and AOC call on congress to help rebuild USPS with postal banking pilot programs.
Sanders and Omar unveil bill to end absurd corporate handouts to fossil fuel industry
Sanders, Senate Dems call on Biden to support COVID vaccine patent waiver at WTO
D.C. statehood bill on the move in the House with committee markup scheduled for the 14th
Jayapal, House Dems propose constitutional amendment ending corporate personhood.
Jayapal calls for crackdown on wealthiest after IRS chief says tax evasion costs U.S. $1 trillion a year.
House committee advances bill preventing a future presdent from enacting another Muslim ban
Yellen calls for global minimum tax on corporations to end 390 year race to bottom.
Iowa nears 60% of power from wind turbines
Interior Department to reconvene council on Native American issues
Sec. Haaland secretarial orders help restore integrity to Interior, U.S. leadership on climate.
Bill poised to make Native American history required teaching in N. Dakota schools.
Indigenous group launches campaign against new voting bills
Four Anishinawbe grandmothers walk cross country carrying sea water from four cardinal points in Machias, Maine, Gulfport, MI, Olympia, WA, and Churchill, Manitoba to reassemble later at Wisconsin lake.
Virginia passes first-ever state-level voting rights act
Apple Studios takes on peace state, exits Georgia production citing voter suppression law.
Colorado’s independent redistricting commission removes its chairman for posts on election rigging and coronavirus.
Voting rights groups across country condemn state-level voter suppression, urge Senate passage of For the People Acct.
After 23 days of fasting, Ana Ramirez and her fellow hunger strikers win after N.Y. State lawmakers announce agreement on historical $2.1 billion in pandemic relief for excluded essential workers, many of them undocumented immigrants.
Alabama miners reject tentative agreement, continue strike.
Union to file charges against Amazon over blatantly illegal conduct in Bessemer election
Movement to end “at-will” employment gets serious
Ain’t gonna take it no more: truck drivers and workers strike at So Cal ports
Union members expel national guard from St. Paul Minnesota Labor Center
Self emancipation continues to rise at the St. Louis City “Justice” Center.
Climate groups cheer Keep it in the Ground Act of 2021.
Citing climate and investment risks N.Y. State fund to ditch tar sands
New study claims all new U.S. car and truck sales can be electric by 2035
Progressive Charles Booker considers Senate run
Protests erupt after cops lynch yet another back man during Minneapolis traffic stop
Minnespota lynching officer surrenders, faces second-degree manslaughter charge in Daunte Wright murder
Virginia cop-goon who pepper sprayed army officer fired after damning video released.
Veteran officer wo=ho stopped white officer from brutalizing Black suspect wins pension after 13 years
CDC releases statement recognizing structural racism as the public health threat it is, outline steps they are taking to address it
Maryland repeals police bill of rights, enacts historic accountability measures
New Mexico second state to ban qualified immunity
