Category: Culture and Religion

When I was preparing for my research among the Yebámasa Indians of the Piraparaná in Colombia in 1977, I was given a research permit by the Colombian Government for the Curripaco Indians of the Comisaría del Vichada. My first step was to fly to the jungle town Mitú to speak with the Apostolic Missionaries and to find out from them who else was doing research in Vichada.

When I mentioned the “Curripaco Indians” the missionaries fell silent as if I had touched on a taboo. “Not a place you want to go,” one of them warned. It took a bit of poking and goosing but I finally found out why they were so apprehensive.

There was a civil war going on among the Curripaco Indians of the Vichada. They were killing each other, the missionaries, anthropologists, and white Colombians; and the situation was one of violence, chaos, and mayhem. I asked what had caused the Curripaco Indians, who were known to be quite peaceful, to suddenly become so aggressive and violent and was told the following story:

By now, you will have heard about the riots in France. As I write these lines, violent and chaotic conditions still prevail in almost all major French cities. According to my AI friend, approximately 1,300 protesters and 270 policemen have been injured or killed thus far plus an unknown number of civilian bystanders. Many cars burned.

These riots were sparked by the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old Algerian immigrant named Nahel Merzouk in Nanterre. Allegedly, Nahel was performing weird antics with a yellow car in front of a school building. Allegedly, the officer feared Nahel might hurt somebody and tried to stop him. When Nahel would not stop, the officer shot him.

For years, I believed that Mr. Trump had been hounded by the Left for no justifiable reason. I believed that left-wing ideologues weaponized the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Justice, including the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court system in order to prevent Mr. Trump from becoming President and, when he became President anyway, to prevent him from governing effectively. For believing this, I was called a right-wing fanatic, a NAZI, a white supremacist, a racist, and a political nut by the cool-aid drinkers of the Marxist globalist left.

Over the past three years, facts emerged one by one that showed that the Mueller investigation was a fraud from its inception. No there there. And Mr. Mueller knew it. Two impeachments, one paradoxically when Trump was already out of office. And nothing. No evidence. No impeachable offences.

Politics, I said, is a pig-wrestling event and if you wrestle with pigs you may get dirty. And what is more important – that a president accomplishes the right things for his country or that he speaks in mild-mannered and polished ways while inflicting disaster upon his country – like Mr. Obama, for example?

I reminded him to consider how Trump was treated by his political opponents. Two impeachment attempts, the freely invented Russian Collusion hoax, investigation after investigation, false accusation after false accusation. The entire deep-state government was weaponized against him, never mind the Constitution or the rule of law.

Falsehood after falsehood. And then you condemn the man if he uses a cussword? Seems to me like accusing a rabbit of running against the one-way street while trying to escape a wolfpack.

Both Louis and Schmeling became political figures when the Nazis came to power in Germany. Hitler tried to placate Schmeling as proof of the superiority of the Arian race, while Joe Louis was seen, by black and white Americans alike at the time, as the litmus test that a democracy was better than fascism.

On June 19, 1936, Joe Louis and Max Schmeling faced off against each other in New York’s Madison Square Garden. The fight had to be postponed for a day due to bad weather and the New York Times wrote: “Schmeling’s execution was delayed.”

Recently, I have been involved in repeated discussions about whether or not Russia (Putin) is justified in invading Ukraine. The main arguments (mostly propagated by Tik Tok, CTV, and RTV for obvious reasons) why Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is justified are. . .
The Ukrainians are actually Russians and they speak a Russian dialect!

The Ukrainian government is corrupt!

Putin is fighting globalism!

Below, I will discuss the validity or lack thereof of these arguments.

Napoleon Bonaparte was certainly a very intelligent, creative, and energetic personality, a great statesman, and an ingenious military leader. He did much good for many people in Europe. My wife’s grandma Anna grew up in a part of Germany that later became the “Département Ruhr”, the administrative unit of the Eastern Ruhr region under French occupation from 1806 through 1813. Anna and all her siblings never learned much of anything until the French came. They started a public-school system and taught all children to read and write – French, of course.

Napoleon also personally participated in writing a new civil code for France, which was a huge step toward civil liberty and public safety. His “Code Napoleon” is still today France’s civil law. It also became the model for the civil code of many other nations. And it is still amazingly “modern” today.