Those slanted eyes...

 

An interesting YouTube clip about "Asian eyes". Apart from actual East and Southeast Asians, many other peoples around the world have "Asian eyes" or at least somewhat "Asian looks": Polynesians, American Indians and the Inuit are obvious examples. Here, the explanation seems pretty straightforward: these ethnic groups are distant descendants from East Asians (or somewhat less distant in the Inuit case). 

But why do  some Europeans (yes, including the Sami - deal with it) have "Asian" eyes and/or looks? In some cases, genetic influx from Asians is the best explanation, in others, it´s something of a mystery. Why do some people in Britain have "Asian" eyes? Why does the Icelandic pop singer Björk look "Asian"? One explanation is that already the ancient Indo-Europeans had an Asiatic admixture, and that this particular lineage ended up among the Celts at the British Isles. Another possibility might be admixture with Americans Indians or Inuit. After the video was posted, Icelandic writer Bergsveinn Birgisson wrote a book about one of his medieval ancestors, a "Black Viking" whose mother may have been Siberian.

More unexpected are "Asian" eyes in Africa - except at Madagascar, where the population is partially descended from long-distance Asian seafarers. But why do Nilotic and Khoi-San people have "Asian" eyes? Perhaps here, we finally have a case of convergent evolution...

Surprisingly interesting for a "nerd video".      

 

The toll of the transition

 

The grizzly toll of the Green transition.  

Aftonbladet´s investigation into child labor and the electric car industry

Grönkapitalismens pris

 

Den gröna omställningens pris. 

"Ingen exportör kan garantera barnfri glimmer"

X varnar för Aftonbladets Tesla-granskning

Skalbaggar, helt enkelt

 

Credit: Bugboy52.40

Lite lustigt att *den här* sajten skriver om skalbaggar på Madagaskar. Djupekologi? Metafor? Något om "generalister" versus "endemiska arter"? Fast ibland betyder "skalbagge" faktiskt "skalbagge"...

Femton nya arter hittade på Madagaskar

The oldest island

 

"Earth´s Tropical Islands" is a 2020 nature documentary in three parts, co-produced by the BBC and PBS. I just watched the first episode, covering the weird and wonderful wildlife of Madagascar, the world´s oldest island. Formed about 88 million years ago, the first animals somehow managed to reach the island around 60 million years ago. Today, there are about 25,000 endemic species of animals and plants on Madagascar. An enormous mountain range cuts the island in several distinct bio-geographical regions. The climate of the southwestern part is extremely dry, while lush rainforests grow in the eastern part. 

While parts of the documentary deal with the people of Madagascar (the first humans only arrived about 2,000 years ago), the emphasis is on the unique wildlife. In the "deserts", the ring-tailed lemurs eat plants that are deadly to humans. The national park Tsingy de Bemaraha, with its bizarre Mordor-like cliffs, is home to Von der Decken´s Sifaka, which climbs and jumps the rock formations with surprising ease. We also get to meet a chameleon that only lives for four months - the shortest known lifespan of a terrestrial vertebrate species (their eggs last longer). In the rainforest, the tenrec can have up to 32 young per litter. The "pelican spider" catches and eats other spiders by mimicking the movements of an insect caught in the other spider´s web. And so on! For some reason, I found the locusts to be particularly absurd. After eating everything in its wake, their enormous swarms are stopped by the Madagscar mountains and rains, simply dying?!

One problem with the docu is that it treats Madagascar as a self-contained unit. This becomes problematic when discussing the island´s environmental destruction. Yes, it´s caused by humans, and yes, the natives exterminated the local mega-fauna alreday at arrival (we are shown an underwater cave with skeletal remains of extinct animals). Still today, those darn natives cut down the forests to grow food. But "Earth´s Tropical Islands" says nothing about timber, cash crops or French colonialism. Are the Malagasy solely responsible for the deforestation?

Unfortunately, the endemics (including most of the iconic lemurs) at the world´s oldest island are threatened by extinction at the hands of *some* sub-branch of Homo sapiens. Still, they experienced 60 million years in the sun. Or the rain shadow. That´s probably longer than we will ever be around, so I say the flora and fauna wins... 

Madagascar mystery

This one is hard to believe...

A species of ant in Madagascar apparently lives in a kind of symbiosis with a snake, more specifically a snake that eats ant-eating snakes! This weird relationship was then misinterpreted by the natives and turned into a mythological story about "snake-eating ants". 

The world, agent Cooper, is a strange and wonderful place.

Madagascar´s snake-eating ants: Forgotten fable or fascinating fact?

Gorillas against guerillas

"Primates" is a 2020 BBC mini-series about apes, monkeys and prosimians. Some humans (mostly primatologists) have been thrown in for good measure, too! Most of the documentary is standard fare: spectacular footage of non-human primates from all over the world, and calls to save them for posterity. Good for a boring Christmas holiday, but perhaps not *that* interesting...

However, I did notice a few things. 

In the Congolese hills, the Virunga National Park - with a rare population of mountain gorillas - is protected by "park rangers", actually a heavily armed uniformed militia. The park rangers have been repeatedly attacked by rebel groups operating in the region. But why would humans volunteer to protect gorillas against guerillas, risking their lives in the process? The BBC interviews a ranger who claims to have a spiritual bond with the gorillas. Maybe he has. 

However, there is a much more mundane explanation. The rangers are recruited from the local population and paid by international organizations. Eco-tourism from Western nations is another source of income. Also, the local communities get a share of the profits. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but it *does* mean that the rangers have a very vested *human* (Homo sapiens sapiens) interest in protecting the gorillas. They are simply protecting their own sources of income. Since the rebels are presumably Hutu expats or expellees from Rwanda, some kind of ethnic dimension can´t be ruled out either. The people in the Virunga area are literally defending their homeland against foreign intruders. See how I managed to de-romanticize the whole situation? When the Western money stops coming, the mountain gorillas are bush meat, if you ask me...

Another uncomfortable fact. As I have repeatedly pointed out on this blog, even Native peoples deplete their resource bases if given half the chance. Research carried out at Koram Island off the coast of Thailand shows that monkeys, specifically crab-eating macaques, do exactly the same thing! The monkeys are tool-users: they use heavy stones to crack open oysters. The tool-use leads to over-exploitation of the oysters, which tend to become smaller and less abundant as a result. Imagine what would happen if some primate started to use tools consistently...wait... 

Edenic ecological balance doesn´t even exist among tool-using freakin´ *animals*, it seems. 

"Primates" does contain other interesting information, to be sure. We get to meet a team of animal rescuers trying to "retrain" young orphaned orangutans for a life in the wild (the orphans are used to human "foster parents" and have therefore lost these skills). As part of their project, the human trainers have to take climbing lessons in really tall trees! Another team tries to reintroduce pet gibbons into the wild. Gibbons are popular as exotic pets, but many of them are snatched from the wild and essentially trafficked as part of the illegal animal trade. The gibbons shown in the docu are rescued and taken back to their original habitat. 

So perhaps there is some hope, after all. However, I have to say that what really caught my attention was the somewhat more pessimistic facts, some of which BBC doesn´t really want the viewers to confront...  

Sociable omnivorous feeders

"Collins Field Guide: Mammals of Africa including Madagascar" is a book by Theodor Haltenorth and Helmut Diller, translated by Robert W Hayman. The German original, "Säugetiere Afrikas und Madagaskars", was published in 1977. The English edition is from 1980. My copy is a reprint from 1992. 

The book comes across as a hybrid between a field guide in the proper sense and a reference work, with the two German authors (with Teutonic efficiency) cramming as much information as possible into a small space as possible. The species presentations are divided into Identification, Distribution, Habitat, and Reproduction. The Habitat section has information on Daily Rhythm, Toilet, Voice, Sociability, Enemies, and Food. Vernacular names in German and various Africa-related languages are given. All subspecies are described. The book also contains a long introductory chapter on African geology and mammal fossil history. The range maps are somewhat confusing, and I was bewildered even by the color plates. Many of these mammals really do look pretty similar to each other! 

Did you know that the Sassaby (alias Korrigum, Tiang, Topi, Hirola or Hunter´s Antelope) has 9 subspecies, respond to alarm calls from Guinea Fowls, often associates with zebras and ostriches, and marks territory by standing conspicuously on termite hills? I admit I had no idea. I would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a Sassaby and, say, a Senegal hartebeest. 

All bat species have been excluded from this volume. Likewise with most rodents and insectivores (they are too small and too many). Exceptions to the rule are the elephant shrews and otter shrews (which are unique to Africa) and certain highly conspicuous forms such as the Giant Gambian Rat or Beecroft´s Flying Squirrel. 

The translator didn´t always see eye-to-eye with the original authors concerning taxonomy. No surprise there - that´s always a tricky subject! Hayman doesn´t believe in the existence of the Pygmy Elephant, and regards the Common Chimpanzee as monotypic. The original writer treats the Tschego as a subspecies. (It seems the current Wikipedia consensus is that the chimp really does have several distinct subspecies.) Weirdly, the field guide also include the Quagga and the Barbary Lion, both of which are extinct! In case they suddenly return from the dead? 

Not sure how good this field guide was from the backseat of a land rover, or whether you could identify herds of majestic antelopes outside a Torquay window, but since I review everything, I obviously had to put my teeth into this one, too... 

Come and see the leiothrix

Leiothrix, a bird from Himalaya introduced at Réunion?!

“Birds of the Indian Ocean Islands” is a field guide written by Ian Sinclair and Olivier Langrand, with illustrations by Norman Arlott, Hilary Burn, Peter Hagman and Ian Lewington. First published in 1998, this is the fully revised 2013 edition. Sinclair is apparently the grand old man of African field birding, and have written over 20 books. Langrand is a French conservationist. The book is sponsored by the hardware business Chamberlain and is devoted to conservation efforts.

The area covered by the field guide includes Madagascar, the Mascarenes (i.e. Mauritius, Rodrigues and Réunion), the Comoros and the Seychelles. In other words, the island-nations and colonies off the east coast of Africa. It also covers seabirds from the same general area. 502 species are included, all illustrated in color. Illustrations, species presentations and range maps are on facing pages, making the guide easy to use. It reminds me of Heinzel-Fitter-Parslow.

The introduction describes the major bird-watching hotspots on the covered islands, and how to reach them. Curiously, the guide says next to nothing about the political situation in the area. Surely, both Madagascar and the Comoros are extremely unstable? Was the text simply taken over from the 1998 version of the book? Nor is the political status of the islands mentioned. Isn´t it relevant that Mayotte is a French dependency, while the rest of the Comoros form an independent state? The introduction also include a long list of endemic species, and a ditto of “new species”, although most of these seem to be previously known populations promoted to species status (and in some cases, to conservation efforts c/o the international community).

Many of the birds are virtually unknown even to an arm-chair bookish amateur ornithologist such as the Ashtar Command, I mean, what on earth are tetrakas, jeries, newtonias, couas or the leiothrix? Only currently living or recently extinct bird species are included, so no dodos or elephant birds in this one! By contrast, European migrant birds passing the Seychelles on their way to and from the African mainland are included, including the corn crake. Strindberg would have been surprised, LOL.

With that Swedish in-house joke, I end this review of “Birds of the Indian Ocean Islands”, 2013 edition, which I got for a discounted price when buying CDs from a local vendor (sic). Swedish local, that is.

Red Admiral over Madagascar

A review of a photo of Communist leaders sold by Amazon.

Good heavens, it's the president of Madagascar Didier Ratsiraka together with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev (the smiling guy to the right) and Soviet foreign secretary Andrei Gromyko, better known as Mister Nyet (and non-smiling as usual). Well, in case anyone wondered about the political course of the Malagasy Socialist Revolution, this should dispel all doubts, ha ha. I'm sure Juan Posadas had this vintage photo at his work desk, together with a copy of "UFOs from Red China" and "The Mental Telepathy of Crows"...

Yeah, really.

Everything about Madagascar

Madagascar isn't a country Westerners know much about, except that it has an unique fauna. I therefore found this book extremely interesting, although dated. Maureen Covell's “Madagascar: Politics, Economics and Society” was published in 1987. The author is a scholar of political science based in Canada, and seems to know virtually everything about the island-nation. The book concentrates on the Marxist or pseudo-Marxist regime of Didier Ratsiraka, who took power in 1975. It also contains chapters on the frequently violent history of Madagascar.

Uniquely in Africa, the people of Madagascar speak languages related to Malay and Indonesian. Madagascar's Merina Empire had been internationally recognized by the great powers, but was eventually awarded to the French during the 19th century Western scramble for Africa. The French abolished slavery, but the goodwill this may have created was lost soon afterwards as the colonial power introduced forced labor and extortionate taxes. In 1947, France brutally suppressed a nationalist uprising, killing 100,000 people in the process. After independence in 1960, “Social Democratic” President Philibert Tsiranana continued a pro-French and anti-Communist course, maintaining good relations with Taiwan, South Vietnam, South Korea and Israel. Domestically, Madagascar was nominally a multi-party democracy, but Tsiranana pulled all the strings to make sure he was reelected. The economy was dominated by French companies plus Indian and Chinese middlemen. The education system was so Francophile that geography lessons were about the environs of Paris while Madagascar literary journals published articles about Provencal poetry!

In 1972, a series of crises led to the fall of the increasingly erratic Tsiranana, an event known as the May Revolution. Indeed, it really was a genuine revolution, with as much as 100,000 people marching on the presidential palace! After a series of ineffectual transitional governments, Didier Ratsiraka took power in 1975, turning Madagascar into a “Marxist” state. His main goal was to break the dependency on France through nationalizations, expansion of the civil service, educational reforms and a “non-aligned” foreign policy. With the country's economy in free fall (to some extent because of bad advice from the World Bank), Ratsiraka was forced to gyrate back and forth, while playing off various political factions against one another. In the end, the new regime had to accept the IMF's harsh conditions in order to get Western loans. The story ends with Ratsiraka's military brutally massacring a suspected opposition movement (the “Kung Fu” groups mentioned below)…

It was apparently a topic of some discussion, both among political scientists and diplomats, how “Marxist” Madagascar's new leadership really was. The country's political and social landscape certainly had some intriguing traits. An important role in the May Revolution was played by the Zwams or Zoams, gangs of youth who loved “spaghetti westerns” and tried to mimic the manners of Clint Eastwood's character in “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly”. The “w” in Zwam actually stands for “Western”, as in the film genre, not the political concept! The Zwams or Zoams were later turned into a kind of storm troopers for Ratsiraka's regime, until the new leader got tired of them and had them killed en masse by a competing network of gangs, based on Kung Fu and the Bruce Lee fandom. Later, Ratsiraka got rid of the Kung Fu adherents, too. Ratsiraka himself was hardly an orthodox Marxist, sprinkling his speeches with Biblical references and calling on his supporters to read Pythagoras and Descartes alongside Marx.

“Madagascar” is a very detailed book, with the author discussing the intricacies of patron-client relationships and Malagasy ethnicity in the same breath as the role of the gendarmerie or the expansion of the black market. The May Revolution is described in some detail. I sometimes wonder how she knows so much about this country? Sure, she lived there, but I probably know less about Sweden than she does about Madagascar! Despite being dated, the book is an excellent introduction to the subject, and I therefore give it five stars.

Dead as a dodo

Birds of the Indian Ocean Islands: Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, Rodrigues, Seychelles and the Comoros (Chamberlain) by Sinclair, Ian, Langrand, Olivier (2013) Paperback (Paperback)

An excellent guide to the birds of the Indian Ocean islands. Those left after crazy sailors consumed the others...

The Real Lemuria

"Madagascar" is a mini-series co-produced by Animal Planet and the BBC. It gives us a unique peek into the flora and fauna of Madagascar, the large island-nation off the African coast. The creatures at Madagascar have evolved in isolation from the rest of the world for millions of years, and many of the species can't be found anywhere else.

The most iconic animals on the island are, of course, the lemurs. Brace yourself for a lot of those! The ring-tailed lemur is something of a generalist, and can even be found living on mountains, while other species are extremely specialized. The bamboo lemurs live almost exclusively on bamboo, which they somehow manage to digest, despite high levels of cyanide in this particular plant. The lemurs known as indris look eerily human-like as they jump from tree to tree in near-upright position. I also noted, with some childish satisfaction, that many of the lemur species look like cuddly toys!

Other more or less weird creatures featured in "Madagascar" include a fish that swims upside down, a turtle that can become almost 200 years old, beetles which use their long necks to fight, insect-devouring plants and a small lemur that acts as a pollinator of flowers. We also get to meet the world's ugliest parrot, the Greater Vasa Parrot. Looks like a vulture!

The only problem with this documentary is that it shows no humans, as if Madagascar was some kind of pristine Eden. Or is it Lemuria? In reality, the island-nation has a population of 22 million people!

That being said, I must nevertheless say that "Madagascar" is one of the more interesting and well-produced wildlife documentaries I've seen for a long time. Five stars!

The East is lemur

Amazon actually sells a whole string of pretty bizarre postage stamps. Naturally, I had to chime in...

A stamp souvenir sheet from Madagascar (!) showing, wait for it, Chairman Mao?! I sure hope the proceeds from this portrait in perfect mint condition of one of the worst genocidal butchers in recorded history goes to some charitable and worthy cause. Say, saving the lemurs...

Whatever you do, don´t mention the aliens

Juan Posadas was a Latin American left-wing activist, originally from Argentina. He claimed to be a Trotskyist, and founded an international organization in 1962, sometimes known as the Posadist Fourth International. Originally, the Posadists were one of many Trotskyist or left-wing currents competing for the minds of radical students, and perhaps even some workers (Posadas was a labour union organizer at one point).

Then something happened. What is anybody's guess, but the Posadistas rapidly developed into *the* most bizarre leftist current ever spawned. They became a kind of lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe. And let's face it, the competition is pretty stiff: David North, Lyn Marcus, Bob Avakian, Hardial Bains, etc. The ultimate article on J. Posadas can be found on the website of Fortean Times (you heard me). Pick up your smart phones, comrades, and search for "Fortean Times. Profiles. Juan R. Posadas". You won't be disappointed.

However, you just might if you read "Cambodia, Vietnam and the problems of the construction of socialism". It gives a wholly new meaning to the expression "rambling speech". Frankly, large parts of it are incomprehensible.

For your benefit, I nevertheless read the entire pamphlet. Posadas wants Trotskyists to support the Soviet Union, a hard sell if there ever was one. His argument is that Stalinism died with Stalin, and that the Soviets are once again at the centre of world revolutionary developments. One should also strongly support Soviet allies Cuba and Vietnam. Posadas never mentions the salient fact, that the Vietnamese Communists murdered prominent Trotskyist Ta Thu Thau, nor does he mention that his own supporters in Cuba were suppressed by Fidel Castro!

I also got the impression that comrade Posadas doesn't believe in the revolutionary capacity of the proletariat, instead extolling the virtues of technocrats and scientists in true Saint-Simonian fashion. But yes, I might be out on a limb here.

The ostensible point of J. Posadas' ramblings is the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979, which toppled Pol Pot's murderous regime. Posadas defends the invasion, hotly denies that Pol Pot's regime was a "Workers State", and condemns both the Khmer Rouge and the Chinese leadership in Peking (which supported Pol Pot) as counter-revolutionary cliques. He also expresses belief in the claim that one million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge during their reign of terror, while being sceptical to the Vietnamese claims of three million. Well, at least Mr. Posadas have a point here. "Brother Number One" in Cambodia definitely had it coming.

The pamphlet ends with a call for a united front of all Workers States, Communist and Socialist parties, and all Revolutionary States, including (wait for it) Libya and Madagascar.

Madagascar?

OK.

The pamphlet also contain one illustration, a photo of smiling women comrades of the National United Front for Salvation in Kampuchea (FUNSK).

I don't think "Cambodia, Vietnam and the problems of the construction of socialism", dutifully published by European Marxist Review, is particularly interesting. But then, it never mentions the UFOs, the surprisingly long life span of elephants, or the need to nuke America hard.

Stay tuned for further developments.