Rebranding is a PR/marketing strategy that has taken the world by storm. Obviously the corporate sector is most impacted by rebranding. As the media-political world has become increasingly privatised and subject to shareholder interests, PR and marketing strategies have made their way into the political-media arena as well.

Today, we are all familiar with Amazon; do a quick Google search and you will seen thousands of results regarding the company. Funny how we have forgotten the actual rainforest in South America with the same name.

The purpose of this example is not to make us feel ashamed, but to emphasise an insidious effect of rebranding. It makes us see what the corporation wants us to see as consumers, and to forget those things that are important to us as people, but unimportant to the transnational corporation.

In Australia, and similar Anglophone nations, immigration is a hot button issue. It arises at every election time, and politicians make immigration – or rather anti-immigration – a political football. The mainstream parties attempt to outdo each other on being perceived as ‘tough on immigration.’ That stance usually leads to the conflation – and apportionment of blame – for crime on immigration.

Just as a matter of interest, conservative politician Peter Dutton, who is currently angling to be the next Australian version of Donald Trump, failed to stop criminal activities when he headed the relevant government department as its minister. Dutton, as head of the conservative coalition, makes securing our borders a top priority. He failed to achieve that as Home Affairs minister.

Diaspora existence

What gets lost in the noise regarding immigration is the sequel – diaspora communities and intermixing. Diaspora existence is the inevitable consequence of migration, and that experience requires further examination.

Across the world, successful examples of diasporan assimilation abound. Consider the nation of Brazil. In the Anglocentric nations, Brazil is hardly on the radar, yet it has numerous similarities with other settler-colonial nations. Outstripping its former colonial master, Portugal, in both geographic size and population, Brazil is home to the largest Lebanese community outside of Lebanon. It is also home to the largest diasporan Japanese community.

Lebanese in Brazil

Numbering around 7 million, more than in Lebanon itself, Lebanese Brazilians have established a bustling, thriving economic and social community. Arriving in Brazil in the 1870s and 1880s, these Syrians (today considered Lebanese) were mostly from the Maronite Catholic faith. These Lebanese/Syrians soon established themselves in the economic and political life of the nation. There are Lebanese-descendant Brazilians in the national parliament.

Let’s also highlight the two million Japanese-descendant Brazilians, who have also contributed to the melting pot culture of modern day Brazil. Arriving in the early 1900s from Okinawa, the Japanese descendant population has made its own imprint in Brazil. Okinawan language and culture has not only survived, but thrived in its new Brazilian home. Japanese influence is evident in the culinary sphere, technology, and the visual arts.

Ukrainians in Canada

Whenever a politician raises anti-immigrant sentiments, the most obvious and recent example being Trump’s claim that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs, a response from pro-immigrant parties is to raise examples of migrant and refugee success stories. Pointing to high profile examples of migrants who have ‘made it big’ in their adoptive homeland, it is hoped, will undermine the anti-immigrant attitudes and prejudice. Attacking xenophobia by highlighting the inspirational journey of successful migrants is one tactic in defending migrant communities.

Exposing the lies and fakery of xenophobic politicians is always commendable. Sharing migrant success stories is one way of uplifting the spirits of those who are marginalised by anti-immigrant parties.

Ukrainians in Canada are an example of a migrant success story. They have assimilated very well into the corridors of economic and political power in their adopted nation. Ukrainians in Canada were labour organisers and workers. After the end of World War 2, the Canadian government flung its doors open to members of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), an ultranationalist and Nazi collaborationist group, whose members fought for an ethnically uniform Ukraine.

Rebranding Nazi collaborators as ultra-patriotic freedom fighters

Ethnically cleansing those regions of western Ukraine occupied by their Nazi German allies, these ultrarightist collaborators were surreptitiously given sanctuary in Canada (and other Western nations) as a bulwark against the Left. Their crimes as members of the Waffen SS were overlooked, as they formed effective right wing shock troops in their adoptive homeland.

In a remarkable example of rebranding, Ukrainians who committed crimes against Jews, Poles, Russians and socialist Ukrainians were transformed into freedom-loving ultra-patriotic anti-Stalinists. Gaining control of community organisations, these Ukrainian ultranationalists, with the help of the Canadian authorities, established newspapers, sports clubs, folkloric dance, scouting groups and a historical perspective which whitewashed their previous criminal activities.

I am not here to attack multiculturalism; every ethnic group has the right to settle and live in peace. I am not interested in promoting one type of nationalism over another. I am highlighting the fact that in Canada, statues of Nazi collaborators did not emerge out of nowhere. They were erected in an ultranationalist conservative community cultivated by Ottawa in a cynical exploitation of multicultural sentiments.

Let’s draw a rough parallel example; if the main source of French migration to Australia were Vichy French Nazi collaborators, and statues of Marshal Petain popped up in Sydney, what kind of message would that send to the next generation? We cannot express our support for multiculturalism while at the same time denying the validity of other marginalised groups.

National self-determination is a fundamental principle of international and domestic politics. Every nationality has the right to determine its own future. Every politician pays lip service to national self-determination; even Adolf Hitler, in the 1930s, loudly supported that right – of the Sudeten Germans. Employing agents within that particular community, he used the Sudeten Germans as a cudgel to break apart Czechoslovakia.

Diaspora communities must not become transformed into political auxiliaries, but allowed to articulate their grievances without their cynical manipulation by big powers.

The Bermuda Triangle…..ships that disappear without trace…….the Loch Ness monster……the Kraken…..the Devil’s Sea. Maritime mysteries, whether they be ships that have curiously vanished without trace, or mythical tentacular squid-like monsters from the deep, have fascinated us for centuries.

It is impossible to comprehensively cover and debunk each and every maritime legend that has emerged throughout human history in one article. However, we can make a foray into the maritime mystery world with a basis of philosophical skepticism.

If there is a case to be made for convergent evolution in mythology, we can see it in the evolution of maritime folklore, due to time, migration, and living with an aquatic environment. Scandinavians have the mythical beast, the Kraken; the Japanese have Umibozu, a sea creature/spirit that swallows the ships whose crews displease it.

The Leviathan, originating in various Hebrew biblical references, has become widely known in the English-speaking nations. In the book of Enoch, included in the apocrypha, leviathan is a female sea monster, while behemoth, the male counterpart, is exiled to east of Eden.

The treacherous waters of the Bermuda Triangle are arguably the best known maritime mystery trap in the world. It does have its evil twin in the Pacific, the Devil’s Sea. Notorious for its dangers, the Bermuda Triangle has claimed its share of disappeared ships, and airplanes, throughout the decades.

Bounded by Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico, the Bermuda Triangle has been the subject of numerous TV specials, shockumentaries and pulp publications. But does all that hype match the reality?

The US Coast Guard does not actually acknowledge the putative triangle as a particularly distinctive or disturbing source of maritime hazards. They have analysed the physical losses of maritime traffic, and apart from natural causes, there are no mysterious nonphysical or spiritual-energy forces making the said triangle an unusually hazardous region.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in conjunction with the US Navy, have conducted extensive tests regarding maritime traffic in the alleged triangle. They have stated that there are no supernatural causes, no negative energy or demons, making ships disappear.

The fantastical speculations regarding the Bermuda Triangle trace their modern origins to the 1960s, with writer William Gaddis to first coin the term in 1964. Since then, pulp magazines and putatively scientific TV programmes have jumped on the bandwagon.

Most tropical storms and hurricanes in that part of the world travel through the region of the Triangle, making for dangerous conditions. But that is neither better nor worse than other seas and oceans. The Gulf Stream, a powerful ocean current which produces sharp changes in the weather, passes through the Bermuda Triangle. Once again, a factor that increases hazards for maritime traffic, but nothing extraordinary or unusual.

The depth of the ocean in the region of the triangle varies – some areas are 1500 metres deep; in others, such as the Puerto Rico trench, the depth is 8230 metres. However, that variation in depth is nothing unusual in maritime environments.

It is not just in the Atlantic Ocean that we confront maritime mysteries. In the Pacific Ocean, thanks to paranormal advocate and New Age spiritualist Ivan T Sanderson, we have the Devil’s Sea. A maritime region south of Tokyo, the Devil’s Sea became the Pacific counterpart to the more famous Bermuda Triangle. Known as the troublesome sea by Japanese sailors, the infamy of the Devil’s Sea exploded in the late 1960s and early 1970s – a maritime twilight zone.

Sanderson, a British biologist with a strong interest in the paranormal and cryptozoology, began writing essays and making media appearances regarding his favourite pseudoscientific hobbies. He expounded, for instance, on how UFOs can be piloted, and presented numerous theories on cryptozoology, the search for extinct and/or fantastical, legendary animals.

The Devil’s Sea, a tectonically and weather active region of the Earth, presented a wonderful opportunity for Sanderson to expand on his paranormal hobbies. To be sure, there have been maritime mishaps and accidents in the region known as the Devil’s Sea. A Japanese scientific research vessel disappeared in that region in 1952. The entire crew of 31 people died.

At first, Japanese investigators were stunned – how did an entire ship vanish? Was the Devil’s Sea aware of the original purpose of the mission, and deliberately target the vessel to protect its secrets? Actually, there is a physical explanation. An underwater volcano erupted, just as the ship reached its destination. The incredibly hot water caused the vessel to lose its buoyancy, and tragically the ship sank.

However, as with the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil’s Sea has an unlimited capacity for making facts, and rational thinking, disappear without trace.

I would be remiss if I did not include a section of this article on the world’s most famous cryptid, the Loch Ness monster. Nessie, as she is affectionately known, has fascinated the mystery-loving public for generations. Sure, there have been numerous cryptids in the past – creatures known only through eyewitness testimony and fragmentary ‘evidence’. The Sasquatch is one such creature, (Bigfoot) currently roaming the forests of Northern America.

However, it is Nessie, inhabiting the murky waters of Loch Ness, Scotland, who has exercised the imaginations – and drained the pockets – of the cryptid’s devotees since the 1930s. It is near impossible to prove something does not exist. You may believe, if you want to, that a leprechaun inhabits my refrigerator and is detectable only when the door is closed. I will go on my merry way, because there is no point in expending time and energy to disprove the existence of leprechauns, unicorns or martians.

There are Loch Ness investigators, who invite members of the public to submit any information or evidence they think they have to buttress the claim for a Loch Ness monster. However, there is no factual basis for Nessie; even the famed black-and-white photograph showing a dinosaur-like creature in the lagoon is a hoax.

In our age of social media influencers, it is easy to be influenced by memes, viral videos, and celebrity-endorsed products. Philosophical skepticism, while an ancient practice, still has modern day applications. The persistence of maritime mysteries is one area of population culture where a healthy dose of skepticism would provide an antidote to the highly speculative and fantasist stories that envelope the culture in which we live.

US President-elect Donald Trump has made his contempt for immigrants, particularly from nonwhite nations, explicit. His extreme nationalism provides a platform for the expression of anti-immigration sentiment in the most vulgar, ignorant terms. In October this year, prior to the US election, he recycled ideas about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ genes. Claiming that migrants from Latin American countries possess ‘bad’ genes predisposing them to murderous criminality, Trump made clear his proto-fascistic ideas about race.

Back in 2016, Trump, who never ceases to remind his audiences about his intellectual greatness, attributed his superior intellect to his German background. Expressing his pride in his German blood, he placed himself in the same camp as those Germans who share similar pride in their allegedly superior bloodline.

Overt racism, a central pillar of Trump’s worldview, is odious. In fact, his ideas regarding the purported genetic inferiority of nonwhite immigrants frequently find expression from his political allies and campaign supporters. His claims about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ genes have their origins in eugenics, a large body of beliefs which basically holds that humanity can be improved by breeding out the less desirable traits, while promoting those traits which improve the human stock.

Trump has spoken of how immigrants from nonwhite nations are ‘poisoning the blood’ of the country. However, we should not be too hard on Trump. His ideas, while reprehensible and reminiscent of eugenics, are not outside the mainstream in the United States.

Indeed, his ignorant rantings about genes are not his fault. If that sounds like a defence of Trump, well, in a way, it is. The United States (and Britain) have a long and tortured history of promoting eugenics – the educated classes have been the worst offenders. Trump and his supporters are the products of an political establishment, buttressed by scientific leaders, that has promoted and popularised the dubious theories of eugenics and race science for decades.

Let’s pause the discussion about eugenics there for a moment, and make an observation about immigration. Sonali Kolhatkar, wrote an article responding to the many untruths circulated by Trump about immigration. She makes the point that yes, dumping newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers into small towns with no plan for resettlement creates resentment and anxiety among people already struggling with unemployment, poverty and lack of access to services.

Kolhatkar notes that this is precisely what current US President Joe Biden has done to migrants from the Caribbean, Latin American and Asian and African nations. That procedure left the door open for anti-immigrant politicians like Trump to walk through. There was one exception to that policy – the handling of Ukrainian refugees. White European migrants from Ukraine were not simply taken by bus and left in a town to fend for themselves.

The US government coordinated with local authorities, provided a pathway for absorption and resettlement, and were allowed to work immediately. This made the assimilation of Ukrainian refugees smooth; in contrast to the demonisation of Hispanic and African migrants, who were denied work permits and abandoned once they arrived.

It is remarkable that immigrants, much like Schrödinger’s famous cat, can occupy two states simultaneously; they take jobs from ‘real’ Americans, but also lazily parasitise the welfare system, collecting unemployment benefits.

Eugenics has a long history in the US and Britain. If you think that eugenicist beliefs are confined to the idiotic bigots like Trump, think again. Nikola Tesla, (1856-1943), the famed Serbian American engineer and inventor, was undoubtedly a genius. He was also an advocate of eugenics. By 2100, he believed, eugenics would be universally accepted, and the ‘feeble-minded’ sterilised, thus improving the quality of the human race by eliminating the undesirables.

Tesla was not alone this view; conservative US politicians, judges, police officials, science fiction writers Robert Henlein and H G Wells – eugenics cut across political lines and occupations. Julian Huxley (1885-1975), the noted evolutionary biologist and geneticist, was a firm advocate of eugenics. The first head of UNESCO, who pleaded for the inclusion of science in the remit of the fledgling UN agency, was known as a eugenicist.

The point of the above examples is not to provide a list of notorious villains to be condemned; not every eugenicist was a Nazi or a fascist. However, the main point to make is that eugenics was firmly baked into the scientific and philosophical outlook of Anglophone societies.

Were there scientists who opposed eugenics? Absolutely yes. The Russian scientists, such Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay (1846-88), coming from a society that had a collectivist philosophy, rejected the ultra competitive individualism inherent in eugenicist ideology.

You may read about the details of Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay in my prior article here.

Miklouho-Maclay rejected the race science of his European counterparts, in particular that of evolutionary biologist Ernest Haeckel (1834 – 1919). The Russian scientist had worked among indigenous people, and refuted the supposed genetic inferiority of what were termed ‘lesser races.’

The topic of eugenics and discredited field of race science is not just a matter of historical curiosity.

I wrote about the resurgence of race science in this article in 2020. Earlier this year, The Guardian in cooperation with the English organisation Hope Not Hate, published an exposé of an entire network of far right activists and intellectuals, funded by a tech billionaire, reviving eugenicist and racial science beliefs.

Calling themselves the Human Diversity Foundation (HDF), the group aims to resuscitate outdated and obsolete ideas regarding eugenics, and make palatable to the public. Rehabilitating the ideology of race science – the allegedly biologically inherent differences between races – has real world political implications.

When Trump speaks about good and bad genes, he is not regurgitating anything new or original. He is drawing from a longstanding reservoir of eugenics. His administration is sure to translate these ideas into official anti-immigration policies. Let’s be sure to know the nature of the enemy so we can confront it.

Over the last few months, I have referred to the importance of the 1974 discovery of Lucy, the australopithecine that revolutionised our understanding of hominin evolution. The fact that Lucy was bipedal is significant, because it indicates that the freeing of the hand was crucial in the emergence of modern Homo sapiens. I referred to the fact that Frederick Engels, collaborator of Karl Marx, made the critical observation regarding the freeing of the hand from locomotion duties in his 1876 pamphlet The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.

In a previous article, I stated that paleontologists and archaeologists will fill in the blank spaces, long after Engels death. The liberation of the hand made possible the beginning of practical labouring activities. That is the basis of what makes us uniquely human.

I was looking for a way to elaborate these points in an article. Well, you know the old saying “ask and ye shall receive”? Well, over the last few weeks, ample evidentiary confirmation of that proposition has been provided.

Dominic Alexander, writing in Counterfire, examines this very topic in an excellent article. It is labouring activity that is the basis of consciousness, tool making, and the emergence of modern humans. No, all these features did not emerge in a singular, explosive event. Bipedal locomotion preceded tool making behaviour by millions of years.

Be that as it may, Engels was correct to stipulate labour activity as the crucial component in the development of intelligence. It is through labouring that we modify and use our environment. The environment in turn influences our activities and ideas. No, humans do not ‘triumph’ over nature. Engels plainly stated that each supposed ‘victory’ over nature rebounds on us in the form of harmful ecological consequences.

To quote from Alexander’s article, he elaborates, beginning with Engels’ words, in the following manner:

Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us.’ Engels goes on to detail a number of environmental disasters in human history, starting with deforestation in ancient Mesopotamia, the impacts of the same in Greece and Italy, and their serious consequences for climate and soil fertility: ‘Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature … but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature.

The australopithecine fossil known as Lucy – Dinkinesh in Amharic – was discovered fifty years ago. Surely there are more recent findings that shed light on hominin evolution and bipedalism? Yes, there are.

Kenya’s Turkana region is well known for its rich fossil history. The Conversation magazine reported that a team of paleontologists have uncovered fossilised footprints of two bipedal hominin species. Homo erectus, one of our direct ancestors, and Paranthropus boisei, a distant and now extinct relative, walked and interacted with each other in the same region.

The Turkana region in East Africa is the place of numerous fossil discoveries. Since the 1970s, paleontologists have excavated the geologically rich soils, documenting the findings in the sedimentary trenches.

Why is this dual footprint discovery so important?

Finding the footprints of two different hominin species walking along the same lakeshore in Kenya provides evidence that human evolution was not a simple, linear progression. It was a branching, complex mosaic of interacting streams – a delta, if you will. Some streams rejoin, others eventually dry up.

No, we cannot discern the level of interaction between the two hominin species. Did they talk to each other? Just eye each other off? Use their hands to make signs? What is known is that they walked within hours of each other. At the very least, they cohabited. Paleontologists have found the fossilised footprints of other animals, including horse-like creatures and cow-like animals.

Our hominin ancestors coexisted with each other for thousands of years. That may seem like a bland observation, yet it is important for a good reason. In our billionaire-dominated society with its cult of individual entrepreneurship, we have allowed the billionaires (and the media they own) to define human nature. Surely hominins are inherently selfish, grasping creatures, willing and able to crush competition in the rise to the top?

Prehistoric findings such as the one above overturn our viewpoint of humans as naturally greedy, self-centred creatures. Cohabitation and cooperation were part of the evolutionary picture for thousands of years. In fact, we would not have evolved cognitive and intelligence faculties if it were not for social cooperation.

Do paleontologists know the intellectual capacities of Lucy? No, of course not. Do the latest footprint discoveries mean we can draw definitive conclusions about when and how consciousness emerged? No, it does not.

The emergence of tool making is marked by disagreements and controversies. Tool making, while a sign of cognitive development, underwent numerous stages – the Oldowan culture being an important example. Culture does not evolve in a one way, linear fashion, but in a weblike projection of various cumulative yet uneven trajectories.

The origin of consciousness as self-awareness is still a mystery, subject to disputes between psychologists and neuroscientists. We can make a number of pertinent observations here. Labouring activity is the prerequisite for the eventual development of tool making, intelligence and cognitive abilities. The mind, and its achievements, are not independently arrived at without a material basis.

The mind is definitely a creator – of ideas. The embodied self awareness of the mind has led us to invent multiple instances of disembodied minds – gods if you will – that possess and exercise the features of mind without a physical brain. The spiritual is a product of our minds, a projection of our self-conscious awareness into the non-physical realm.

Findings such as the fossilised footprints referred to above can help us discover our hominin roots, and fill in the picture of our emergent humanity.