In today’s social media saturated culture, it is easy to find comeback stories. Inspirational narratives of people, from all walks of life, who overcame crushing defeats to go on to glory and accomplishments are meant to motivate us. In this age of the cult of self-motivation, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and making something of yourself, is a mantra we can all abide by.

From the cranky uncle who loudly proclaims that young people today don’t know the value of hard work, to the self-appointed experts that populate talkback radio in Sydney, the self-made man is all around us – if we are to believe these stories. Hey, did not Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) American philosopher, environmentalist and self-help advocate, counsel his audience to build a self-sustaining community of individuals in Walden?

Yes, he did, and he built a paradise for himself and his cothinkers at Concord, Massachusetts. Nothing wrong with that, and reading Walden is all well and good. Except for one inconvenient fact; African Americans, formerly enslaved, were building their own Walden-type community long before Thoreau. Having the self-motivation to escape the violence of enslavement has not entered the Anglophone public consciousness in the same way as Thoreau’s social experiment.

Be that as it may, let’s get on with meeting the inspirational comeback character in our story – Uncle Otto. His full name was Otto Skorzeny, an Austrian-born German military officer. Achieving the rank of Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen SS, he made a name for himself as a daring, innovative commander, rescuing Mussolini from partisan captivity in 1943, removing Hungarian leader Admiral Miklos Horthy in 1944 when the latter’s pro-Axis sympathies wobbled, and was rewarded with high decorations from Hitler himself.

The Waffen SS, the military branch of the general SS, committed the most heinous atrocities in German-occupied territories, and were direct perpetrators of the Holocaust. A niche occupation and skill set, to be sure, but they did find gainful employment after the end of the Third Reich, as we shall see.

Before the war, Skorzeny had joined the Austrian equivalent of the Nazi party, and agitated for the installation of a pro-Nazi government in that nation. Growing to 6-foot 4 inches tall, a fencing enthusiast with a large scar on his face, he became a dashing, debonair achiever, and favourite commando of Hitler’s. The Waffen SS left burned out villages, piles of corpses, murdered POWs, and ethically cleansed territories in their wake.

Skorzeny’s rescue of Mussolini demonstrated his courage – he and his team used hang gliders to attack the Gran Sasso mountaintop where Mussolini was being held captive. Awarded the Iron Cross military decoration for his paratrooper mission, it seemed that Skorzeny’s career could only hit new and exciting heights.

However, his flourishing career as a licensed killer was coming to an end. Alas, Nazi Germany faced a crushing military defeat and combined Allied occupation. What was to become of our multinational murderer? Never fear, because our Uncle Otto found a new benefactor, who helped him repurpose his skill set for new outlets.

Captured by American forces, he was put on trial for war crimes in a military tribunal, and acquitted. In 1947, Uncle Otto escaped captivity, along with his fellow former SS officers – by dressing in American uniforms. It should have been within the intelligence capabilities of the American army to predict this tactic, after all, during the Battle of the Bulge, Skorzeny and his team penetrated enemy lines to wreak havoc, by disguising themselves as American soldiers.

Skorzeny’s commando tactics gained widespread popularity after the war, and were subsequently widely imitated by the imperialist powers.

Be that as it may, Skorzeny and his fellow ex-SS officers made their way to Franco’s Spain. General Franco, an Axis-allied commander, remained in power long after the end of the war. Spain became a sanctuary for Skorzeny, who reinvented himself as a businessman, with an eccentric habit of keeping Nazi memorabilia around.

It was a new world in the post-1945 Cold War. The new state of Israel, victorious over the displaced Palestinians, had a new worry. Egypt, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, posed a revolutionary and Arab nationalist challenge to the Zionist state. Allegedly, German rocket engineers were employed by Cairo to pass on their skills. Tel Aviv was concerned about the long range striking capabilities of Cairo.

Enter the Mossad, the Israeli secret service, with a plan. Assassinate the German scientists. And guess who they employed as their professional hit man? None other than Otto Skorzeny, former Waffen SS officer. Several German rocket engineers were quietly killed by the new Mossad employee.

In return, Mossad claimed that Skorzeny’s criminal record, and his wanted status as a fugitive on the run by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal centre, was expunged.

Skorzeny got involved in numerous extreme right wing causes, helping to rehabilitate the reputations of Nazi collaborators and war criminals. His Mossad activities only came to light long after his death. Dying of lung cancer in Madrid in 1975, his funeral featured numerous ex-Nazis, giving the Roman salute and singing WW2-era German songs.

Ex-Nazi rocket scientists found long term employment in the United States after the end of WW2. For instance, Kurt Debus, former SS officer and rocket engineer, escaped from the chaos of war torn Europe, and found refuge in America, where he headed NASA’s Launch Operations Centre (later renamed the Kennedy Space Centre). A white immigrant had a good opportunity to restart their career in the racially segregated United States.

No, of course I am not seriously suggesting taking the example of a former Nazi officer as a basis for inspiration. I am suggesting that behind every story of a self-made person is an entire network of social and political relationships that provide an interconnecting basis for individual achievement.

When the United States (and Britain) rejected providing sanctuary for fleeing European Jewish refugees during the war, but went out of their way to covertly ensure sanctuary for Nazi collaborators and ex-SS personnel, such behaviour opens a window into the character of imperial powers.

In the popular 1983 gangster epic Scarface, one of the first things our antihero Tony Montana (played by Al Pacino) does when he hits the big time, is purchase a wild tiger. A pet in his mansion, the purchase indicates that Montana is now rich enough to indulge his fantasies, all part of the ‘American dream’. The small time street hoodlum is now a major drug kingpin.

That scene acquired contemporary relevance when learning of a particular ecological problem bequeathed to the citizens and government of Columbia by real life narcotrafficker, the late Pablo Escobar. Shot dead by Colombian police in 1993, his impact on the ecology is still being felt today.

In what way? By hippos which he imported while an ultrawealthy drug lord. Let’s have a look at what scientists have called an ecological time-bomb.

Founder and leader of the violent Medellin narcotics trafficking cartel, Escobar waged a war of terror against the Colombian government authorities, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group, and innocent people who got in the way. The cartel and the ultrarightist death squads – autodefensas – who acquired a cut of the cartel’s profits in exchange for eliminating political and law enforcement opponents.

Cocaine hippos

Escobar became an extraordinarily wealthy man as a result of his entrepreneurial spirit and self-motivation – a gangster capitalist. He built a luxurious hacienda, outside of a town called Doradal. Escobar built artificial lakes, airports, horse stables and – imported hippos. Yes, he imported four hippos, which are of course native to sub-Saharan Africa.

The hippo, while classified as a herbivore, will occasionally eat meat. Escobar built a menagerie on his estate, and employed people to look after them. Interestingly, he never imported lions, tigers or carnivores generally, stating that meat-eating animals were expensive and difficult to sustain. Hippos are semi aquatic mammals; but nevertheless they adapted to their new environment in Colombia. While spending much of their time in the water, hippos are not actually good swimmers.

Escobar opened his extensive collection of animals to the public, along with donating a portion of his profits to charitable works. He wanted to improve his image with the public. Being responsible for car bombings and blowing up airplanes does not endear you to the people.

In 1993, with Escobar dead and his hacienda in the hands of the authorities, the latter found homes for all the exotic animals in Escobar’s menagerie. Except the hippos – they were too difficult to move. So the Colombian government left them there, where eventually they would die. After all, his hacienda was located some 250 kilometres away from the capital Bogotá.

What could possibly go wrong?

The problem is that hippos breed. No, not as fast as rabbits, but they can breed at a steady pace.

The hippos multiplied. An adult female hippo can produce a calf every 18 months, and over a life span of 40 or 50 years, she can successfully birth a calf 25 times. The river Magdalena became their main transportation freeway. Well, now the hippos number about 170, eating their way through tonnes of vegetation, and – apologies in advance – defecating tonnes of dung that can reach toxic levels in still ponds and lakes.

In their native sub-Saharan Africa, droughts regularly dry up the rivers, thus limiting the range and breeding of the hippos. Not so in Colombia, where they can travel over hundreds of miles all year round.

Hippos are not exactly cute and cuddly creatures; they are known to attack humans who encroach on their territory in Africa. While deadly encounters with people in Colombia have been rare, there have been numerous incidents involving wayward hippos. Car crashes, hippos pushing into schools and urban environments – their food requirements are substantive, and farmers face the hungry hippo menace to their crops.

There have been calls to simply cull the hippos, but that creates its own problems. Shooting them dead may seem like a simple solution, but hippos are classified a vulnerable species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Sterilisation is a better way to control their numbers. But that is not as simple as it sounds.

First, finding the animals is not easy. All the extra rainfall in recent years, due to a warming climate, means more grassland – an oversupply of food for hungry hippos. Second, each hippo weighs 3 tonnes, so it is not as easy as taking your pet cat or dog to the local vet. Third, sedating the hippo is dangerous. It takes a difficult darting process to ensure the animal is unconscious.

Chemical castration, while used successfully on many other species, is impractical in the case of hippos. It takes multiple doses, administered over months by darting, to even have a chance of being effective.

Fourth, the procedure is invasive, because the testicles are located inside the hippo’s body. The surgeon not only has to sedate the hippo, but cut through thick layers of fat to remove mango-sized gonads.

A Colombian team of scientists is steadily tracking and sterilising feral hippos – a thankless and laborious task.

It is easy for Hollywood to glamourise gangsters and narcotraffickers as a kind of gold-hearted antiheroes. The ‘good’ professional gangster, such as ones played by Robert De Niro, take steps to avoid violence against civilians, while only using violence against ‘bad’ criminals who are only getting what they deserve. The ‘bad’ gangster, sadistic and cruel, makes a useful foil to the ‘good’ Al Pacino/Robert De Niro gangster, who typifies the single-minded pursuit of wealth, with violence a morally ugly but necessary tactic in their chosen profession.

Escobar is dead and gone, but the consequences of his predatory actions are still being felt today. The public has to deal with, and pay for, cleaning up the harmful effects of Escobar’s malfeasance. There are corporate criminals today, whose enterprises involve a toxic culture, and whose actions must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Growing up as an Australian of Armenian origin (Armenians from Egypt), I became aware of the concept of genocide, and its impact on social identity, from an early age, I was the only Armenian at school, so explaining what it was to be Armenian to Anglo-majority kids was quite frustrating – especially when they couldn’t even pronounce my name.

Be that as it may, I dealt with issues of diaspora, identity and exile for as long as I can remember. No, I couldn’t articulate those topics as a child. However, the importance of genocide commemorative activities, the weight of history, and their role in forming ethnic identity has been a constant theme in my life.

That is why I am going to elaborate on a topic which may seem distant from me, but is actually close to my experience.

Ukrainian nationalism, Poland and the Volhynia massacre

First, a declaration; I have no interest in promoting or demoting Ukrainian, or Polish or any type of hyper-nationalism. It is of no interest to me to advance any nationalist agenda, or propagate the views of Kyiv, Warsaw or the Kremlin.

This does not make me indifferent to hypernationalism, especially when the latter has destructive impacts on interethnic cooperation.

Poland is a staunch supporter of Kyiv in its current conflict with Moscow. Poland has taken in thousands of Ukrainian refugees displaced by the Russian invasion. On the international front, Warsaw vociferously defends the position of Kyiv in defiance of Moscow and its allies. For instance, Warsaw has denounced the role of Tehran, viewing the latter’s close political and military ties with Moscow as enabling and prolonging the suffering of Ukrainians.

However, Poland has an ongoing dispute with Kyiv, one that derails Ukraine’s plans to join the European Union.

The Polish government insists that Kyiv must accept responsibility for the massacres of Poles in 1943 in the Volhynia region. The latter is a historic region of central-eastern Europe, occupied by Poles, Ukrainians, Russians and other ethnicities. In 1943, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its associated Ukrainian Insurgent Army massacred thousands of Poles, intent on creating an ethnically pure post-Communist Ukrainian state. Collaborating with German forces, the antisemitism of the Ukrainian nationalists found common ground with the Nazi occupiers.

In Zelensky’s Ukraine, these collaborators are venerated as heroes. Warsaw has demanded that the Volhynia killings be officially recognised as genocide by the Kyiv authorities. In exchange, Warsaw promises to drop its objections to Ukraine joining the European Union.

In post-World War 2 Australia, anticommunist refugees from Eastern Europe found refuge – as well as in Canada, Britain and the United States. They imported not only their respective languages and cuisine, but also their ultranationalist reading of modern history. Long distance hypernationalism found a home in Australia, with each community struggling to find acceptance in the wider Anglophone society.

Social cohesion

I am not a ‘voice’ for Poland against Ukraine, or Ukraine against Russia – I have no interest in recycling any kind of hypernationalist division. But I do have a number of questions pertaining to the implementation of multiculturalism, or to use an expression currently in vogue – social cohesion.

How does hypernationalism contribute to social cohesion? It does not. In fact, the hyperventilating nationalism of right wing communities sabotages the very social cohesion they claim to adhere to. Regurgitating migrant-based nationalist resentments has a corrosive effect on building a multicultural, socially cohesive society.

Solidarity with Palestine is not antisemitic

In junior high school, I had a ‘friend’ – a person who would be called toxic in today’s terminology – who constantly verbally bullied me in class. Knowing that I was a supporter of the Palestinians, he would constantly raise the topic of the Entebbe raid. The 1976 Israeli operation to free hijacked hostages was an obvious success for Tel Aviv, and while it was in the past from the vantage point of the 1980s, it was in the recent past.

His behaviour was intended to intimidate and demoralise me, and raising Entebbe was one of his ploys. The other, knowing that my background is Egyptian (Armenians from Egypt) was to loudly praise the 1967 Six Day War, during which Israeli forces defeated the Egyptian and Syrian armies. He was, as I realised later, a malignant narcissist, and mocking my ethnic heritage was his way of inciting others against me.

He disappeared from my life a long time ago, but there is a lingering misconception which still pervades the mainstream media. Palestinian nationalism, and the protests in support of a Palestinian state, are not antisemitic. Please stop circulating the tired old cliche that anti-Zionism, and criticism of Israeli state policies, is automatically antisemitic.

The false equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is designed to delegitimise the Palestinian cause, and smear Palestine supporters as deranged fanatics driven by irrational hatred. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Monuments to Estonian Nazi collaborators in Toronto, Canada

We should be worried about antisemitism, but not from the Palestinians. Jewish organisations in Toronto, Canada, demanded (and succeeded) in forcing the removal of Estonian Waffen SS personnel from a monument at an Estonian-Canadian children’s summer camp. Hailing the veterans of the Estonian SS as freedom fighters, the authorities were worried by the false heroising of SS personnel as ‘freedom fighters’ rather than antisemitic and racist killers.

What kind of example do we set when we teach children (and adolescents) that the violently antisemitic Waffen SS and their Baltic collaborators were high-minded and noble fighters for freedom? When we minimise the crimes and predatory ideologies of wartime Nazi collaborators, we are not only whitewashing history, but also helping to rehabilitate the doctrines of the ultranationalist Right.

Of course the far right of yesteryear has changed; like all political ideologies, the ultranationalist mindset mutates and adapts to changing circumstances. Islamophobia is the preferred version of bigotry for the imperial powers, and we have all witnessed what decades of normalising Islamophobia produces. Let’s not ignore the role of mainstream political parties in encouraging and recycling Islamophobic talking points.

The most urgent task is to break down the divides between ethnic groups that hamper multiethnic cooperation.

Another Olympics – Paris 2024 – has finished. This particular Olympics has been extensively marked by social media conflagrations – whether it be the inclusion of breakdancing and the poor performance of Australian b-girl Raygun, or the manufactured controversy over the gender of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif.

Both these episodes demonstrate the dangers of social media hysteria. However, I wanted to focus on a lesser publicised yet important issue – the Olympics, and sport generally, cannot be separated from geopolitics.

Politics cannot spoil the Olympics, as Louise Guillot suggested in this article in Politico magazine. Why not? Because the Olympics and political considerations have always been inseparable. Guillot, writing prior to the Olympics, wished that this nasty thing called geopolitics and its attendant squabbles did not interfere with the lofty, noble pursuit of peacefully competitive sports between nations.

Unfortunately for Guillot, geopolitical conflicts always impinge on the sporting field. Indeed, the very foundation of the Olympics as we understand them, could not help but be impacted by competing geopolitical agendas.

Baron Pierre De Coubertin, the ‘founding father’ of the modern Olympics, was given over to fantasising about the diversion of warmaking energies by conflicting states into the peaceful arena of public sporting competition. Warring nations would at least temporarily suspend their hostilities, and compete on an equal footing in the sporting fields.

Whether he was idealistic or naive I do not know. What is for certain is the De Coubertin consciously co-opted the Ancient Greek Olympics, and revived them as a pan-European project, seeking a pan-Hellenic legitimacy to the burgeoning ideological currents of European colonial nationalisms.

European powers, undertaking their own colonial adventures in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world, required a globalising cultural project as well. No empire can survive on sheer force alone. Sporting competitions, while venerating the individualistic ethos of physical achievement, can also bring colonial nations together through a veneer of peaceful respectability.

British, German and French philhellenic supporters desired to build an imagined community. No, Europe is not imaginary, but its continuity with Ancient Greek traditions of philosophy, science, mathematics and sport is a synthetic history. Greek nationalism, fighting for an independent state in the nineteenth century, not only sought to break away from the Islamic Ottoman Turkish empire, but also to participate in this emergent club of powerful European states.

The modern Olympics were a demonstration of muscular European Christianity, drawing from the example of the Greeks and Romans of ancient times. Modern European nations appropriated the legacy of Ancient Greece. Reviving the Olympics was a practical way to construct an imagined continuity with the eastern Mediterranean, and the propaganda value of such games did not go unnoticed.

Sporting nationalism manifests itself in various ways, not just through competing methods for tallying medals. The Paris 2024 Olympics, depending on how you count the medals, was the most successful one for Australia. Counting according to gold medals, Australia was fourth with 18 gold – 53 medals in total. The US and China were equal on 40 gold medals each, but the US collected 126 medals in total, compared to 91 for China.

Episodes from Olympic history provide a window into the present. Understanding the past is an endlessly fascinating pursuit, and it helps us to comprehend the hidden world of powerplays and subterfuge which impacts public life until today.

What am I talking about? The 1960 Rome Olympics. Why is that important? The Smithsonian magazine, earlier this month, published an extensive feature by Erik Ofgang, which illuminates a hitherto unseen aspect of the interplay between geopolitics and sport. Both superpowers of the Cold War were obsessed with accumulating gold medals – fair enough. However, the United States went further, and ventured into ethically questionable conduct.

In an article entitled “At the 1960 Olympics, American Athletes Recruited by the CIA Tried to Convince Their Soviet Peers to Defect”, the article matter-of-factly explains how the Olympics is a perfect opportunity for espionage and intelligence gathering. Convincing high profile Soviet athletes to defect was a prominent propaganda tactic, designed to demonstrate the ‘superiority’ of American capitalism and the alleged American commitment to individual liberty.

Let’s have a listen to the words of historian Barbara Keys from Durham University and an expert on international relations. She states that the Olympics provide a “terrific opportunity” for espionage. She continued; “You get lots of high-level people, high-level leaders, diplomats, businessmen, celebrities convening all in one place. It’s kind of a spy candy shop.”

There are no ethical qualms here, just a straightforward rationale; what’s wrong with turning the Olympics into a soft power battleground? One athlete from the 1960 Soviet team who was targeted by the athletes-turned-spies was triple jumper and sprinter Igor Ter-Ovanesyan. Ukrainian born, (Armenian father), he met athletes from the American team. They tried to convince him to defect – citing American supermarkets, cars, playboy magazine and movies as assets to be enjoyed by Soviet defectors. Ter-Ovanesyan said no.

A former CIA case officer and now academic, Doug Patteson, stated that it is naive to think that spying activities do not occur at the Olympics. The latter is not just a platform for international goodwill, but an opportunity to score geopolitics points. It seems that politics of a surreptitious and sinister kind is perfectly acceptable at the Olympics.

In fact, in the lead up to the 1960 Olympics, the CIA recruited a person for the job of encouraging defections from the Soviet teams – Mykola Lebed. Who was he? A Ukrainian ultranationalist and Nazi collaborator, he was guilty of gruesome torture and war crimes during World War 2, responsible for the killings of Jews, Russians and Poles. Deemed a useful intelligence asset in the opening years of the Cold War, he found sanctuary and employment in the United States.

Back in 1947, US army counterintelligence described Lebed as a well-known sadist. However, pathological sadism is no barrier for gainful employment by the CIA.

Given all this focus on intelligence gathering by the various colonial nations which participate in the Olympics, a question does occur. Why was intelligence gathering spectacularly unsuccessful in Munich 1972, when 11 Israeli athletes were kidnapped and murdered by the Black September terrorist group? Did not espionage agencies gather intelligence on the preparations for this specific attack on the Olympics?

Let’s conclude by returning to Paris 2024. A particular athlete – a wrestler to be exact – won his fifth gold medal at the Olympics. He’d won his previous four gold medals since beginning Olympic competition since making his debut in Greco-Roman wrestling at Athens 2004. In every Olympics since then, he won gold. His name is Mijain Lopez, an Afro-Caribbean competitor from Cuba.

His achievement is unparalleled, yet never received saturation publicity that accompanied the accomplishments of Phelps, or Thorpe, or Bolt. Staying loyal to Cuba, he has remained through all the trials and tribulations of that island nation against the punitive American blockade.

Resisting the shallow temptations of American mass consumerism, he decided that it is more important to be true to oneself and the background that made such achievements possible, in contrast to dissident celebrity athlete superstar Nadia Comaneci. May I venture a suggestion? Perhaps he did not want to migrate to a nation that practices the cult of violence overseas, rejoicing in the hyper-individualist pursuit of gratification that requires the suffering of others.

Ancient DNA is providing transformative insights into the journey of hominin evolution. Palaeontologists and geneticists have uncovered a branching mosaic picture of hominin ancestors.

No longer is the linear, single line from transitional forms to Homo sapiens the dominant image. However, digging up old bones and identifying fossils is still the sure fire way of advancing our understanding of human evolution, and steadily filling in the multi branching picture of our hominin ancestors.

Homo floresiensis, so-called ‘hobbits’, were first identified in 2003 from fossils in Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. The latter is an island between Australia and south east Asia. Approximately 3 feet six inches tall, they made stone tools, and while they had small brains, they coped with predatory pressures and may have even used fire. The findings were publicised in 2004.

Being diminutive, scientists were unsure at first if they were indeed a separate hominin species, or a badly deformed human. Some palaeontologists suggested they were descended from Australopithecus afarensis – Lucy’s species. (That discovery was made fifty years ago this year).

Other scientists have more plausibly suggested that Homo floresiensis is a descendant, dwarfed in stature, from the nearby Asian Homo erectus, from Java. Short and stocky in stature, the fossils of the now extinct homo erectus have largely been found in Indonesia and China.

Ok, let’s pause here and get a pet peeve out of the way.

Let’s stop calling Homo floresiensis ‘hobbits’. The fictional characters from the Lord of the Rings trilogy are very entertaining, to be sure, but they are a distraction from the serious issue of ancestral hominin evolution.

Africa – and China – have a wealth of hominin fossils. East African nations, such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania became famous in the 1970s for the multiple fossil finds that threw open the doors, so to speak, on early hominin evolution. The Leakeys, both Louis and Mary, became celebrity fossil hunters of sorts, giving lectures and writing books about paleoanthropology. Their son, Richard Leakey, who passed away in 2022, followed in his parents’ footsteps, and became a prominent anthropologist in his own right.

Indonesia is not a place you would think of as having fossils of interest to palaeontologists, but yet it does. The discovery of Homo floresiensis was significant because it further buttressed the picture of humans sharing the world with other hominin species.

The floresiensis find also demonstrated a singularly interesting case of island dwarfism. Did the floresiensis species arrive on the island as dwarves, or did they undergo endemic dwarfism? Numerous researchers have sought to answer this question, by examining how an isolated species with no predators to defend against on an island, could undergo rapid dwarfism.

This question is steadily being answered, and while interesting, represents a first step. This brings us to a recent and important fossil discovery on the Flores island.

East of the original 2004 findings in Liang Bua cave, a region called Mata Menge, a tiny upper arm bone was discovered in the So’a Basin. The adult humerus, along with fossilised bones and teeth found in 2016 in Mata Menge, indicate an adult of no more than 100cm in height – an ancestor shorter than Homo floresiensis.

Along with the upper arm bone, two fossilised teeth were discovered, and this dentition ties the floresiensis species more closely to Homo erectus ancestors. Teeth provide all sorts of information about the taxonomy of the ancestral species, as well as evidence of function.

It is worthwhile to note that the original researchers of 2003-04 did not actually set out to discover a new ancestral hominin species. They were attempting to answer how ancient people traveled from mainland Asia to Australia. Digging in caves, such as Liang Bua in Indonesia, provides essential clues as to how and by what route the migration occurred.

Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence from West Papua – specifically the Raja Ampat archipelago – which indicates the route of ancient seafarers from Asia into the Pacific islands. These mariners became the ancestors of indigenous people across West Papua to Aotearoa New Zealand.

Homo floresiensis is extinct, but its impact is still being felt today. That is because it helped revolutionise the way we think about human evolution. It is not a simple, linear progression, but a multi networking branching web of life. Ancient DNA has only added to the complex mosaic of ancestral hominins. There was no single ‘garden of Eden’, not in Africa or the Middle East. It is the ongoing and changing story of migratory ancestral hominins that makes human evolution the greatest story ever told – one that is currently unfolding.

I try to avoid writing too much about American politics. Not because it is uninteresting, but because we should focus our energies on the rest of the world, where the majority of the world’s people live. The Anglophone club of nations is overwhelmingly dominated by the North Americanisation of culture, and this skews our understanding of global politics. As American media companies have gone global, they have promoted a vision of the world that asserts the primacy of US politics and culture.

Let’s consider the following; Brazil, India, Russia and China combined constitute the majority of the global population. Their economic and cultural assertiveness is increasing, and we in Australia would be foolish to ignore it.

Having acknowledged the above, we can say that we cannot be indifferent to the American elections and their choice of leadership. The United States financial oligarchy exerts an inordinate influence on the global financial architecture, and the persons who make economic and political decisions have consequences for the rest of us.

Of course we must evaluate US candidates by the policies they advocate. However, there are decisions in the US political process which expose the kind of priorities that undergird American capitalist society.

There has been a tsunami of commentary on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, and I do not wish to recycle all that information here. In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, Trump was asked by African American journalists what he thought of Kamala Harris.

He questioned her identity – ‘is she Indian or black?’ He went on to ask ‘when did she turn black?’ Gasps from the audience indicated the outrage at his sneering comments. But this incident indicates a deeper malaise.

His obnoxious remarks about a mixed race person are woefully ignorant. But they are not out of place in American society. Trump is uninformed about race and racial politics – but that is not his fault. His idiocy is the product of American capitalism’s obsessive quest to compartmentalise people into fixed, allegedly immutable biological categories called races.

Races are definitely are real, and part of the wider society, but they are not genetically based. Races are socially and ideologically constructed divisions, and racism is all too real.

Let’s unravel this multifaceted topic.

Harris is an intelligent, confident strong biracial woman – a refreshing change from the obnoxious MAGA cesspit, which consists of has-been faker celebrities, washed up ex-actors, white supremacist weasels and vacuous talking heads who substitute political analysis with conspiracy theories.

Kamala has discussed and written about her background on numerous occasions. Her father was a Jamaican born man, who came to the United States to study economics at Berkeley campus. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, from the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, arrived at Berkeley to study biochemistry. She became a biomedical scientist.

Harris spoke about the intellectual impact on her parents of both being born in former British colonies. Berkeley campus was a melting pot of student activism and radical politics. This was a place where the working class Left and radical black antiracist civil rights movements overlapped. Political discussions about racism, imperialism and anticolonialism were common.

There was no artificial debate or barriers erected between ‘class vs race’ into which the contemporary Trotskyist Left frequently deteriorates. (For the record, I have decades of experience in the Trotskyist Left, so apologies in advance to comrades and friends).

The 1960s was an era of the One drop rule – a policy which dated from the anti-miscegenation laws of the early 1600s, when America was still a series of British colonies. Preserving whiteness was an obsessive concern of the slaver-plantation squattocracy, so a person was considered black if they had even one African American ancestor.

Race, a purely subjective perception, became encoded into the legal and economic framework of American capitalism. Being of mixed race, or biracial, presented a problem. How much blackness makes a person black? One parent? One grandparent? This is the mess US capitalism has got itself in, because it cannot handle the reality of mixed ethnicities.

Halle Berry, the famous actor, is herself biracial, and chooses to identify as black. No one can question her choice, but then a question arises – what about her daughter Nahla? Is she 75 percent white? Or should she be pigeonholed into the category of blackness?

Harris’ parents divorced, and Kamala was raised by her mother, in conjunction with friends and neighbours in an extended network of support. Gopalan taught her children the importance of education, integrity, cooperation, respect for people regardless of ethnic background, family values.

Here is another talking point that MAGA Republicans fail to understand – a single mother understands the importance of family, and taught family values to her children, in a web of community relationships. The term family values need not be a code word for social conservatism.

With the selection of Tim Walz as Harris’ running mate, now we can begin the difficult and rigorous discussion about the policies for which Kamala stands. Let’s not descend into a lovefest for the Harris-Walz campaign ticket. Harris has the backing of venture capitalists and Silicon Valley tech giants. This undoubtedly will influence her political decisions.

Harris has spoken about building bridges with big business, policies that continue the practices of the Biden administration. Being friendly to hydraulic fracturing (fracking), an environmentally destructive process of mining makes Harris appealing to the large energy companies. As attorney general in California, Harris continued to incarcerate African Americans in huge numbers, and defied attempts to reduce the overall prison population.

Another Trump presidency is a horrific scenario to contemplate. His racism makes him reprehensible. We can defend Harris against the obnoxious and insidious attacks against her background and character by the MAGA Republicans, and maintain a vigorously critical examination of her party’s policies.