The Hun Sen regime

 

Israel, Pakistan and now Cambodia have all nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize. Yes, really. I suppose Rwanda is next. Something tells me these nations might get in big trouble if a RINO or Dem ever retakes the White House...

What a pity Greta supports Hamas, I mean, this would have been an excellent opportunity for Norway to give *her* the peace prize instead, LOL. 

Plan B: Microplastics forever?

 

An interesting article from "Japan Times" about an underreported UN-sponsored conference in South Korea. Yes, it´s about plastics and microplastics. Some quotes from the article (which is linked below):  

>>>The rising toll of plastic in the environment is impossible to ignore. In the developing world, plastic waste is clogging beaches and rivers and choking wildlife. A glut of trash in the Congo this month even shut down a hydroelectric dam, forcing power cuts. Plastics are also responsible for about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.N.

>>>As plastic items break down, they become microplastics. These have now been found in human breast milk, brain tissue and blood. Research has linked a chemical used in some plastics, bisphenol F, to lower IQs in children.

>>>Microplastics are ubiquitous across ecosystems, detected everywhere from the depths of the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench to the snow on Mount Everest. One recent study found that aerosolized plastic particles could even affect cloud formation and induce heavier rainfall.

>>>As renewable energy and electrification sap demand for oil, growth in petrochemicals is expected to help offset that, making the sector an important backstop for oil-producing countries and the fossil fuel industry. Petrochemicals’ share of total oil demand could nearly double by 2050, according to research firm BloombergNEF.

>>>"The oil and gas industry is looking at this as a Plan B, or an escape hatch, for surviving the energy transition,” said Dharmesh Shah, a senior campaigner for the Center for International Environmental Law, a nonprofit with headquarters in Washington, D.C., and Geneva.

>>>China is the world’s biggest producer of plastic and has a close trading relationship with Saudi Arabia, the source of much of its imported oil. State oil company Saudi Aramco is investing in plants in China that can process its crude into petrochemicals.

Plan B, indeed!

Could the world unite to end the plastic pollution crisis?

Folkmord, vilket folkmord?

 

Credit: Efe Ersoy (Pexels)

Har liberalerna slutat gulla med den auktoritära tutsi-regimen i Rwanda? Undrar varför...

Tidigare var ju kritik av Rwanda närmast otänkbart.  

Rwanda spionerar på den svenska ambassaden i Kongo-Kinshasa

Our Lady of the Nile

 

“Our Lady of the Nile” (or “Notre-Dame du Nil”) is a French film originally released in Canada in 2019. It´s based on a novel by Rwandan author Scholastique Mukasonga. Judging by Wikipedia´s somewhat confused entry, the novel is probably more interesting than the film (as usual). Wiki´s entry on the film itself is atrocious and was clearly written by somebody who never watched it.

The plot of the film is set in Rwanda in 1973. Most of the characters are Rwandan girls at an elite Catholic school, Notre-Dame du Nil, named after a cult statue of the Virgin Mary situated at the supposed source of the river Nile. Other characters include a White nun, a Rwandan priest and a crazy White land-owner obsessed with the history of ancient Egypt. The film probably contains a lot of Rwandan cultural references, making it part-incomprehensible to a non-native audience.

Unsurprisingly, a large portion of the plot revolves around the ethnic tensions between the Hutu and the Tutsi, the two principal ethnic groups in both Rwanda and neighboring Burundi. Mukasonga is Tutsi and the film has a clear pro-Tutsi slant. The villain of the piece is a Hutu extremist activist, Gloriosa, who invites an armed Hutu militia onto school grounds to massacre the Tutsi students! Gloriosa defaces the Virgin Mary statue, since she thinks it looks too Tutsi. 

The film also has an anti-colonialist slant. At one point, it´s strongly implied that the “unique” dark-skinned Madonna statue is really White. The Hutu regime tried to run Rwanda almost as a Catholic theocracy in close alliance with Belgium and France, so perhaps this is a veiled criticism of the Hutu, suggesting they are really being colonialist enforcers? Another colonialist holdover at the school is that the Kinyarwanda language is banned - the students must speak French even among themselves. And when the Hutu priest sermonizes, he quotes the Bible story about the curse of Ham, often used to justify slavery! 

Otherwise, I was struck by the bizarrely contradictory culture depicted in the film. The elite girl school, the purpose of which is presumably to give the students a modern education, is fanatically Catholic and gives a near-medieval impression. It´s anti-sex, anti-evolution and run by nuns and priests. Meanwhile, many of the students have African superstitions and believe in magic, spirit-possession, etc. One of the characters is instructed by an old witch how to exorcize the spirit of a dead Tutsi queen. Gorillas are said to be humans who returned to the jungle.

The film ends with one of the main characters (perhaps the author´s alter ego) stating that she is leaving for Burundi, at the time controlled by Tutsi. But this simply puts the spotlight on the problematic notion of the Tutsi being “good” and the Hutu being “bad” (a reputation these tribes got in the West during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide). In Burundi, the Tutsi oppressed the Hutu and massacred them in pretty much the same way as the Hutu massacred the Tutsi in Rwanda…

Perhaps the gorillas did the right thing, going back to the rain forest when they saw that humans simply can´t help killing each other. Maybe Our Lady of the Nile joined them there…

Where do White people come from?

Here´s a quote I just found:

"The first Caucasians were probably a mixture of 1/2 Africans (possibly Maasai and Tutsi types from Central Africa) mixed with ancient proto-Asians from China (who may have resembled the Ainu). From this strange mixture arose the original Caucasians, probably in the Caucasus and southern Russia, but maybe also in Iran. There is good evidence that the first Caucasians, including the Cro-Magnons, looked a lot like Black Africans, in particular the Caucasoid-appearing Africans such as the Maasai and the Tutsi. Cro-Magnon skeletons look like the Masai more than any other modern skeleton. Cro-Magnon skulls are more likely to be confused with Negroid skulls than any other."

From a very based blog I sometimes unfollow...

So the Hamitic theory is true...except that they had it completely backwards! The famed Cro-Magnon, who made the cave paintings, were dark-skinned Caucasoids, probably resembling Paul Kagame (the Tutsi president of Rwanda) in terms of looks, but without the suite, obviously. (Kagame is the man on the photo above.) 

Many feathers will be ruffled by this discovery. First, the Alt Right will be angry that the SJWs on Swedish TV were right when they said that the first Swedes were Black and blue-eyed, but had unusual (non-Negroid) features. Next, the Afrocentrists will presumably get mad, since it´s the Caucasoid rather than Negroid Blacks that settled Europe during the Stone Age (or maybe not - Afrocentrism is pretty elastic). The few remaining proponents of the Hamitic theory (presumably a small and rapidly aging band of Rhodesian expats somewhere in Australia) will be saddened to hear that the Hamites weren´t mixed race honorary Whites, but rather the ancestors of all Whites (including Rhodesians). Even the Tutsi will be disgruntled, since at the moment Kagame forces them to pretend that Tutsi and Hutu are the same people! 

But where on earth did Whites come from, then? Presumably we are the result of a slight genetic mutation that proved adaptive in the climatic conditions of Paleolithic northern and central Europe. Or maybe some of our Hamitoid-Ainuoid ancestors had a good night out with a wild Neanderthal girl or something... 

Stay tuned for further discoveries. Ashtar, over and out! 

The Wizard of the Nile

”Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda and the War on Terror” by Helen C Epstein is a shocking book about the regime of Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, with some excursions to neighboring Rwanda, governed by Paul Kagame, an old associate of Museveni. Both Museveni and Kagame are backed by the United States and “the international community”. The book was published in 2017.

According to the propaganda still touted by many Western media outlets, Museveni´s administration in Uganda, while of course not perfect, is nevertheless better than the African average. It´s less corrupted, less repressive, more free market oriented, even slightly feminist. Museveni is pictured as the savior of Uganda from the brutal dictatorships of Idi Amin and Milton Obote. Above all, Museveni is fighting Hutu genocidaires in Rwanda and the mysterious cult “the Lord´s Resistance Army” (LRA) in northern Uganda. In the same vein, Museveni´s allies in Rwanda, the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) are always pictured as the good liberal or slightly leftist guys fighting the already mentioned Hutu extremists. I readily admit that I used to believe all this myself once. Well, almost. It *was* difficult to believe that Paul Kagame in Rwanda did not rig the elections which gave him essentially all votes, especially since his tribe (the Tutsi) is a small minority hated by the majority Hutu…

Clearly, I didn´t know half of it.

Judging by this book and its scholarly sources, Museveni is not much better than Amin and Obote, only smarter at rising “democratic” Potemkin villages and promoting them to a gullible Western audience. Uganda is really a one-party state with rigged elections and widespread repression against the political opposition. The ruling party, the NRM, is civilian in name only, actual power in the state being in the hands of the military and the secret service. As for being less corrupted than other African nations…well, no, not really. Museveni and his cronies systematically steal millions of dollars in aid money, take hefty bribes from foreign companies, and loot the national treasury (most of Uganda´s civil service is financed by the World Bank and other foreign donors). While the NRM is officially anti-tribalist, most political conflicts in Uganda seem to revolve around ethnic affiliation. Museveni comes from the southern Hima tribe, which is related to the Tutsi in Rwanda, thus explaining why the Ugandan leader is so adamant in his support for Kagame and the RPF. He is simply aiding his ethnic cousins across the ex-colonial borders. Museveni´s two main domestic targets are the Baganda, the erstwhile dominant ethnic group in Uganda, and the northern tribes, who backed Amin and Obote (both northerners themselves). The northern Acholi have been subjected to repression of near genocidal proportions by the NRA or UPDF (the Ugandan army). Sorting out who´s who in the many-sided Ugandan conflict isn´t always easy, one reason being the propensity of the NRA to carry out false flag operations by attacking civilians dressed in the uniforms of their enemies…

Museveni was originally a Marxist firebrand, but seems to have flip-flopped even before the Cold War properly ended. Shortly after taking power in 1986, Museveni became a prime US asset in Central and East Africa, even being invited to Ronald Reagan´s private ranch in California. The Tutsi RPF, then still in exile in Uganda, were also trained in the United States. Interestingly, RPF leader Paul Kagame was trained in the art of “psy-ops” (propaganda), something he has put to good use after becoming acting Rwandese leader in 1994. Museveni has intervened militarily in Rwanda (through his RPF proxies), the Congo (alongside the RPF), South Sudan (through the SPLA of John Garang, an old friend from his Marxist days) and even Somalia, always with the full knowledge and backing of the United States. In Somalia and Sudan the fight was against Islamists, making Museveni´s Uganda part of the US-led War on Terror (in the Ugandan-Sudanese border regions, the NRA also fought Joseph Kony´s bizarre cult LRA). 

In Rwanda, the Ugandan-backed RPF supposedly stopped the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were brutally murdered in a matter of months by extremist Hutu militias. Epstein believes that the RPF killed almost as many Hutus in “revenge”, many of them innocent civilians, and that the Hutu had good reasons to fear the return of the Tutsi to power, the Tutsi being the traditional aristocracy of Rwanda which for centuries treated the Hutu as virtual slaves. Most sensationally, Epstein claims that the airplane of Rwandese Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down, not by Hutu extremists critical of the president´s concessions to the RPF, but by the RPF themselves. If so, the RPF had no intention of sharing power with Habyarimana – note also that it was this assassination which triggered the genocidal violence in the country. 

Uganda and the RPF then invaded the Congo, overthrowing Mobutu Sese Seko, an old US ally who had become a nuisance after the end of the Cold War, replacing him with ex-Marxist and ex-petty warlord Laurent Kabila, destroying the democratic opposition to Mobutu in the process. Uganda and the RPF looted the mineral riches of eastern Congo, hotly coveted in the West, while supporting various marauding militias with a taste for murder, rape and plunder. Literally millions of people have been killed in the Congolese war, a war originally triggered by the Ugandan-RPF invasion of the country in 1996-97.

Finally, some observations of my own. During the 1990´s, even radical leftists swallowed the Museveni-Kagame psy-ops. Many Trotskyists supported the RPF when it invaded Rwanda and overthrew the “pro-Western” Hutu regime and its extremist militias. Well, the Hutu regime was pro-French and pro-Belgian, but since the RPF were pro-American, I have to say that the “anti-imperialist” angle feels somewhat moot. Another leftist argument in favor of the RPF was that they were multi-ethnic and tried to stop the anti-Tutsi genocide. One particularly dogmatic Trotskyist group in the UK argued that the RPF had both Tutsi, Hutu and Twa in its leadership. Since the Twa were Pygmies living in the rain forests, that would indeed be sensational – I would love to shake the hand of this Pygmy commander of the “Revolutionary” Patriotic Front! Even more leftists supported Kabila, apparently in the belief that they were witnessing a genuine socialist revolution (led by an old comrade of Che Guevara, to boot), rather than a CIA-Uganda-Tutsi psy-op/black-op of *major* proportions. To give the devil his due, Kabila later broke with his Ugandan and Tutsi patrons, instead accepting aid from “leftist” regimes in Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, so I suppose the local anti-imperialistas were on somewhat firmer ground here…

As for myself, I used to believe all the above (except the “Twa” and “socialist revolution” stuff – I argued it was a democratic revolution), so reading “Another Fine Mess” wasn´t a very pleasant experience. I probably won´t take leftists seriously ever again after this! That being said, I have to say that Epstein sounds awfully naïve in some parts of her book. I happen to think the old fox (or was it hare) Museveni is right about Western-style democracy not working in Africa due to the fissiparous nature of tribalism. That may be a self-serving truth, but it´s a truth nevertheless (it´s also a truth honored only in the breach by Museveni, whose political party is just as tribalist as those of his mostly banned opponents). Also, Epstein´s criticism of the War on Terror is absurd – should the West simply accept that Sudan or Egypt falls to the Muslim Brotherhood and even worse groups? The only alternative to using proxies such as Museveni (or some altogether nicer guys, say the YPG in northern Syria) is to send hundreds of thousands of American troops to the Middle East or darkest Africa for an indefinite time…

“Another Fine Mess” isn´t a pretty story, and unfortunately I don´t think the future of Africa will be any better. In fact, I strongly suspect that we´ve only seen the dress rehearsal for the *really* brutal conflicts of the future. Let´s just hope we don´t have to take sides in those ones…

In God´s country

“In the Name of God” is a Swedish-produced pro-Tutsi documentary about the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and its aftermath. It was released in 2004 and has been shown 12 times on Rwandan national television, suggesting it´s approved by the Tutsi-dominated administration of Paul Kagame. This is the English-narrated version.

Rwanda is a small nation in Central Africa ethnically (or perhaps quasi-ethnically) divided between two groups, known as Tutsi and Hutu. When Rwanda was a Belgian colony, the traditional Tutsi elite were favored over the majority Hutu population. This changed when educated Tutsis began demanding independence and express support for socialism. Belgium quickly switched its sympathies to the Hutu, and permitted them to carry out a bloody “social revolution” against the Tutsi, many of whom fled to neighboring Uganda. Note the irony: the traditional landed and pastoral elite embraced socialism, while the plebeians had the backing of the colonial power!

After independence, Hutu-dominated Rwanda was transformed into a weird mixture of military dictatorship, one party state and Catholic theocracy, backed by the Belgian Christian Democrats and the Christian Democratic International (CDI). The regime was seen as a firm Cold War ally against international Communism. By this logic, the Tutsi RPF guerillas were seen as Communists, not entirely incorrectly, since they supported Yoweri Museveni´s NRA in Uganda, which originally claimed to be a leftist movement. For some reason, the documentary doesn´t point out that Uganda and the RPF became pro-American after the end of the Cold War, instead implying that the RPF may still have been socialist when attacking Rwanda in 1990. I assume this means the producers are leftists (many naïve leftists actually supported the RPF). On the level of great power politics, this was the United States trying to extend its sphere of influence at the expense of other Western nations such as Belgium and France. (The later overthrow of Mobutu in the Congo also fits this pattern.) We can discuss whether this was good, bad or simply BAU, but it should be pointed out.

“In the Name of God” accuses the Catholic hierarchy in Rwanda and their Christian Democratic backers in Belgium of complicity in the genocide. The CDI called upon the Hutu leadership not to sign the Arusha peace accords with the RPF. They supported the Hutu government throughout the genocide, during which an estimated 1 million people were killed, most of them Tutsi. One of the radio presenters in Rwanda calling for genocidal violence was Italian national Georges Ruggiu, who was sent to the country by Christian Democratic interests in Belgium. After the victory of the RPF, the CDI sent a delegation to the Hutu refugee camps in southern Rwanda, still expressing their support for the Hutu leaders. Some of the Christian Democrats interviewed admit that they acted wrongly, while others seem unapologetic.

The documentary concentrates on the role of religion as a propaganda tool in the conflict. Hutu Rwanda was supposed to become God´s kingdom on Earth and a model Christian state. Catholic hierarchs were integrated into the state apparatus. The military held regular prayer sessions when training. The Old Testament was used to deadly effect during the genocide, as several OT passages talk about the Holy Land being threatened by invaders “from the north”. In context, presumably the Assyrians or perhaps Gog and Magog, but in Rwanda, this was seen as a reference to the RPF, which was based in Rwanda´s northern neighbor Uganda. Thus, killing Tutsis and resisting the advance of the RPF were seen as Biblical injunctions. (It would be interesting to know if the Hutu militants also used the Book of Joshua!) A curious fact never explained is that several of the hard-line Christians interviewed are Pentecostals, not Catholics, yet the narrator constantly attacks the Catholic Church. The most sensational part of this production features interviews with the Army of Jesus, an extremist Hutu militia based in eastern Congo from which it makes incursions into Rwandan territory. We get to see the militia as they try to recruit a lonely farmer to its cause. The heavily armed militia men sound like Christian missionaries and end their session with the farmer in joint prayer! The whole thing does look...weird. (Apparently, the Army of Jesus is officially known as the FDLR.)

Despite its rather obvious anti-Christian and anti-Catholic slant, and the annoying naïve leftism (compounded by the heavy Swedish accent of the female narrator), “In the Name of God” is nevertheless worth watching and pondering. Also available on YouTube!

A brilliant genocide...or the lesser evil?

“Rwanda´s Untold Story” is a controversial 2014 BBC documentary which questions the standard narrative about the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. According to that narrative, one million innocent Tutsi were massacred by Hutu extremists in full view of the UN and the world community. Fortunately, the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) intervened and put a stop to the genocide. Under the presidency of RPF leader Paul Kagame, Rwanda has become an African success story with economic growth, clean streets and no ethnic divides (indeed the ethno-designations “Tutsi” and “Hutu” have been banned). And presumably some kind of democracy, too, since Kagame is the elected president of the country. Most people still believe this narrative and its corollary: that president Yoveri Museveni of Uganda (RPF´s main backer) is also one of the good guys. To question the official story is tantamount to “Holocaust revisionism” or “genocide denial” in the eyes of many. Indeed, in Rwanda itself, such wrong-think can land you in prison for considerable time.

Perhaps the Kagame faction of the Tutsi is right. And then, perhaps not. Either way, “Rwanda: The Untold Story” is worth watching.

The BBC reporter Jane Corbin has interviewed two US scholars, Allan Stam and Christian Davenport, who after doing research “on the ground” in Rwanda drew the disturbing conclusion that most people killed during the Rwandan genocide were Hutu, not Tutsi. There weren´t one million Tutsi in the country at the time. 200,000 of the victims were Tutsi while 800,000 were Hutu massacred by the RPF in revenge killings. Also, the RPF didn´t stop the genocide – it stopped by itself before the RPF troops reached the areas in question. Unfortunately, I haven´t seen the material these conclusions are based on. Two possible objections: the standard Western narrative at the time was that Hutu extremists killed *both* Tutsi and moderate Hutus, so on that reading of the events, Hutu victims would be no surprise (although hardly as many as 800,000). Second, that RPF didn´t literally stop the Tutsi genocide-in-progress is hardly an argument against the RPF, unless you believe that they deliberately avoided doing so, and even that can have reasonable explanations (such as logistical problems, etc – the Allies never bombed Auschwitz during World War II). More disturbing, of course, is the conclusion that the RPF´s revenge killings were *worse* than the Tutsi genocide.

The 1994 genocide was triggered by the murder of Rwandan Hutu president Juvénal Habyarimana, who had signed peace accords with the RPF (which had began to invade Rwanda four years *before* the genocide). Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down over Rwanda´s capital Kigali. Hutu extremists were widely believed to be responsible, but according to “Rwanda: The Untold Story”, the RPF downed the plane. If so, the RPF never had any intention of sharing power with the old Hutu leadership. The killing of the president was in reality a coup d´etat, a coup the Hutu radicals tried to botch by unleashing a wave of indiscriminate anti-Tutsi terror, met with equally brutal counter-measures by the RPF. 

The counter-killings continued after Paul Kagame and the RPF had firmly installed themselves as the new government, now directed at Hutu refugee camps in southern Rwanda and eastern Congo. The RPF claimed that the camps harbored Hutu genocidaires (which is, of course, true) but independent observers regard the RPF attacks on the camps as indiscriminate. The documentary features an interview with a Hutu girl who survived the slaughter by hiding for several years in the Congolese jungle. As noted, the RPF didn´t rest content with controlling Rwanda. Backed by Uganda, they soon extended their reach into the Congo, charging the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko with genocidal designs against the Banyamulenge, a Tutsi tribe. Mobutu´s support for the Hutu was another point of contention. The RPF and Uganda essentially invaded the Congo, toppling Mobutu and installing the government of Laurent Kabila in its place, thereby triggering a decades-long conflict which may have killed up to five million people.

Jane Corbin interviews Carla Del Ponte, the UN-appointed special prosecutor at the ICTR, the international court charged with prosecuting suspects involved in the Rwandan Genocide. When Del Ponte wanted to investigate RPF war crimes (which she suspected had taken place), Kagame made sure the UN removed her. According to Del Ponte, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had told her. “I agree with you, Carla, but it´s all politics, you know”.

“Rwanda: The Untold Story” argues that Western support for Kagame´s presidency (former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is one of his chief advisors and promoters) has convinced the regime that it can act with impunity, including on foreign territory. Several high-ranking defectors from Kagame´s government have been killed abroad, and the BBC had to interview other defectors in secret. They used to have high positions in the government or military, and clearly fear for their safety. Their exact reasons for “turning” are never explained. All of them are Tutsi, interestingly enough. (I´m a bit too cynical to believe that they favor “democracy” in Rwanda. Perhaps they simply had personal fallouts with Kagame.) The easiest part of the documentary to believe is that Kagame is really a dictator. Of course he is – it´s *very* hard to believe that a Tutsi (the Tutsi only being 15% of the population) can get 95% of the votes in a Hutu-majority country. Sounds like election-rigging to me…

Even this anti-Kagame documentary admits that Rwanda has made progress under Paul Kagame´s (authoritarian) rule. Foreign investment and economic growth is part of the picture, the country is stable, and the capital of Kigali actually does look neat and tidy. Health care is free (sic) and there is free Wi-Fi on the buses. Of course, this raises a question “Rwanda: The Untold Story” can´t raise, with its “liberal” perspective on things. What if Paul Kagame, despite everything, is the lesser evil in Rwanda? Democracy doesn´t work everywhere and at all times, despite what woke Westerners like to believe (I used to believe it myself).

Perhaps the real choices in Rwanda are between mono-ethnic authoritarian regimes or a bi-national authoritarian regime…

Great wrong righted

The Man Who Met Mao 

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

This is a stamp souvenir sheet I could well give to Western neo-Buddhists, New Age believers and, I suppose, the Neo-Neo-Advaitins as a gag gift when the Moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars. Or was it Lilith the Dark Moon? And then, perhaps not. I suppose that depends on how "integral" their humor might be! Why Rwanda, of all places, would issue a stamp sheet like this (showing the Dalai Lama's visit to China in 1954) is beyond me, but perhaps some smart business man from Frisco tipped them off about the commercial possibilities...? I'm sure Osho would have loved this one, though. Ha ha ha.

A postcolonial deconstruction

A positive review of an anti-Jared Diamond book I wrote in 2011. I would probably be more negative to a book like this today, since its real message seems to be "Diamond isn´t PC enough", which is like yeah whatever. I´m also less optimistic than when I wrote this. That being said, the book does raise some interesting points, for instance about Easter Island and the Natives in the US Southwest.

"Questioning Collapse" is a criticism of best-selling author Jared Diamond and his books "Collapse" and "Guns, germs and steel". The authors have a left-wing, "postcolonial" political agenda, which presumably explains the negative reviews of the book on this product page. Personally, I liked the sacrilegious character of this book!

The contributors' main objection to "Guns, germs and steel" is the book's determinism and implicit Euro-centrism, in which the success of Europe at the expense of the rest of the world is seen as a consequence of pure geography. In this scenario, the downfall of non-European cultures at the hands of Europeans is an unfortunate but inevitable process which simply couldn't have been otherwise. Nobody is guilty, especially not Europeans. Diamond has simply revamped the colonizer's view of the world. An over-simplified and exaggerated critique of Diamond? Sure, but Diamond's book *could* be given this particular spin, despite the anti-racist agenda of its author.

As for "Collapse", the authors question whether it's meaningful to view the history of the world as a series of collapses at all. Rather than "collapse", many societies simply change to cope with changing circumstances, making "resilience" a more meaningful term, or even "success". While this sounds like a more optimistic view of history than the quasi-Spenglerite view of Diamond, the contributors seem mostly interested in absolving Third World peoples from the charge of ecocide. Still, they have a certain point when accusing Diamond of subconscious Euro-centrism in "Collapse", as well. Diamond, it seems, never regards Western civilization as having collapsed. But why not? What about the fall of the Roman Empire, for instance? Or the Greek Dark Ages? Or the plagues and general mayhem of the late medieval period? Westerners tend to look at their own civilization as...well, a story of successful change and adaptation, rather than as a "collapse" (the fall of Rome being the only exception to the rule - and we seem to have survived that one, too!). Why not look at the Maya, the Hohokam or other non-European cultures in the same way?

The bulk of "Questioning Collapse" deals with some of the examples of collapse described by Diamond: Easter Island, the Norse settlements at Greenland, the Anasazi and the Hohokam in the American Southwest, the Maya, the Inca, Mesopotamia, and modern Rwanda and Haiti. China and Australia are also discussed. Of course, only sharp critics of Diamond have been invited to the show, and they often claim that what actually happened was pretty much the very opposite of what Diamond narrates in his books. Since archaeologists and historians tend to disagree on almost everything, the reader should study the issues further before making up his mind. Still, "Questioning Collapse" does raise many interesting points.

According to Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, the ecocide at Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is largely a myth. The forests at Rapa Nui were destroyed by rats, not by humans. (Of course, since the rats were introduced by humans, I suppose a deep ecologist *would* see it as a case of human-induced ecocide. Diamond, however, isn't a deep ecologist.) Hunt and Lipo also claim that the population collapse at Easter Island took place *after* the European colonization, while the ecocide hypothesis claims the opposite - crazed natives died like flies after cutting down the last palm tree already before the arrival of the colonists.

Joel Berglund questions whether the Norse settlements on Greenland really failed. His alternative hypothesis is that the settlers simply emigrated when climactic conditions became too severe. He also points out that the settlements lasted for 500 years - longer than many modern nation-states. Of course, Diamond might retort that this is beside the point, since the settlements *did* fail during the 14th century, perhaps because they were culturally conservative and refused to adapt to changing weather conditions by choosing a different lifestyle. However, I don't think this is merely a terminological squabble. Sure, the Norse settlements "failed", but perhaps they adapted by simply leaving Greenland? And shouldn't a culture that lasted for 500 years in *Greenland* be thought of primarily as a success story, rather than zooming in on its eventual disappearance?

Michael Wilcox claims that virtually everything we ever heard about the vanished Native civilizations of the U.S. Southwest is a gigantic hoax. There never were a people called the "Hohokam". The ethnic group living on the territory in question are know as O'Odham or Pima. They didn't vanish. The real collapse of their culture took place during the 19th century, due to actions taken by White European settlers and the federal government. The "Anasazi" are equally problematic. Wilcox believed that the abandoned towns of these vanished Native cultures were really a kind of ritual, religious centres (something like a Native Mecca). Their abandonment didn't spell the doom of an entire civilization. Somewhat disappointingly, Wilcox says very little about the lurid stories concerning Anasazi cannibalism.

The chapters I found most interesting deal with the Maya and the Inca. According to McAnany and Gallerta Negron, the Maya culture *didn't* collapse. In fact, it didn't even cease to be a high culture. Rather, the Maya transformed their "Classical" culture to a more commercial, maritime culture at the coasts of Central America and southern Mexico during the "Postclassical" period. While some areas were depopulated, others experienced a population growth. The society may have become less "complex", but it certainly didn't collapse. More as a sidebar, Mel Gibson's film "Apocalypto" is in for a good whipping for its terrible portrayal of the Maya.

As for the Inca, David Cahill points out that Diamond's narrative of the Spanish conquest is grossly over-simplified. The Spaniards arrived at a particularly propitious moment, since the Inca Empire was going through a civil war between two pretenders to the throne. Many non-Incans felt oppressed by the empire, and were more than willing to enlist on the side of the Spanish. After the conquest, the Spanish took over the imperial infrastructure and ruled with the aid of local elites. Also, it took the Spanish about 50 years to really pacify Peru after their initial (and swift) conquest. Obviously, "guns, germs and steel" did play a role in the Spanish conquest - the guns at the start, and the germs later on. However, without various chance events and the enlistment of native support, Pizarro might very well have failed. Cahill also gleefully points out that the Inca Empire was more centralized, well organized and prosperous than Spain - nobody in Tawantinsuyu (the real name of the Inca Empire) starved, due to food distribution by the state, while famines were common in Spain. Pizarro himself came from an impoverished Spanish province.

The weakest chapters in the book are those dealing with Rwanda and Haiti. In fact, the Haitian chapter says very little about the actual problems mentioned by Diamond: the deforestation of Haiti as compared to the better situation at the Dominican side of the border. Drexel Woodson opines that Haitian peasants cut down trees to meet fuel needs in the cities and for export. Which proves...what? Why don't Dominican peasants do the same thing? The Rwandan chapter argues against Diamond's Malthusian take on the Rwandan genocide, but most of it is devoted to an eye-witness account of the chaos in Kigali during that terrible year of 1994. Of course the Rwandan genocide has political and ethnic causes, but you don't have to be an orthodox Malthusian to realize that relative overpopulation and scarcity can happen. What about the Irish potato famine? Further, a kind of "Malthusian" catastrophes can take place in a world marked by colonial and neo-colonial relations of exploitation and dependence. Perhaps the Rwandan disaster wasn't "Malthusian" even in this qualified sense, but if so, author Christopher Taylor hasn't proved it. He didn't even try.

To sum up, I like "Questioning Collapse". But yes, I somehow liked "Collapse", too. Diamond's book does indirectly disprove some of the more romantic strands of eco-radicalism, since he mentions both egalitarian cultures which didn't live in complete harmony with nature, and hierarchic societies which did. I wonder what the contributors to this volume think about that aspect?

I cannot vouch for every single fact in "Questioning Collapse", and the debate about the merits and demerits of Jared Diamond's magna opera will surely continue. I didn't mind the contributors' "politically correct" deconstruction of Mr. Diamond's subliminal Euro-centrism, but what I found most inspiring was the idea that our history is one of resilience and change rather than "collapse". If the Maya and the O'Odham could survive their supposed "collapses", so can we.

I hope.