Good Versus Evil, Film at 11

In the battle of Good versus Evil, who wins?

In Herman Melville’s works, Good and Evil often play a large role and they are pitted against each other. However, in many of his works, in the battle of Good and Evil, paradoxically, Evil somehow wins. This was one reason why his books were attacked as “immoral,” and “evil,” in his time. Melville was no Satanist. He was raised Christian, but his belief kept waxing and towards the end of his life, there was little remaining of it.

Nevertheless, he read extensively in the Bible, in particular, Song of Songs, Solomon and Ecclesiastes. All of these were written by or were about King Solomon, the son of King David. He also read extensively in the Book of Mormon. Biblical and other Christian religious allegories are sprinkled liberally throughout his books, in particular, the 600 page poem Clarel, about a journey to the Holy Land.

When Good and Evil go to war and Evil wins, this poses a serious problem for most religious people, in particular the Abrahamic religions which believe in an activist God. For if God exists and is an activist, when Good and Evil go to war, in most if not all cases, Good is supposed to win over Evil, as God is always thought to be stronger than the Devil. After all, no religion suggests that the Devil rules the world. All Abrahamic religions hold that God rules the world. The Devil tries to intrude and do his mischief of course, but when they go mano to mano, God ought to be able to deal with The Evil One quite handily.

Therefore, if there is a fight between Good and Evil and Evil wins, something has gone horribly wrong, and this poses a dilemma for most religious people. Melville interpreted this to mean either that there was no God at all or that if He existed, He was more or less sleeping on the job, and perhaps he ought even to be fired!

The religious have all sorts of explanations for how an activist God allows bad things to happen. They say he is testing us. They say that the Good people are not so good. This is reminiscent of how Puritanical feminists say Nice Guys (TM) are not really so nice after all, this is why women treat them like crap (and this is not the only way that feminists are similar to modern Comstocks). For instance, the Abrahamic Orthodox Jews said that the Jews rebelled against and defied God, and God responded with the Holocaust to punish Jewish rebellion. The solution is for the Jews to act better.

As you can gather, these explanations are quite weak when they are not grasping for truth and morally repugnant. I think we ought to just reject them all for now as lacking evidence and so strange as to seem false on their face.

So we move to Melville’s moral dilemma. We can either go towards atheism or agnosticism, or we go move into Deism. My father was actually a Deist, at least towards the end of his life, but he always hated Christianity and generally refused to go to church much to my mother’s chagrin. Deism was popular around the time of the US Revolutionary War, but it no longer has much popularity. After all, it is rather depressing to feel that you are on your own.

Another possibility is some sort of modified Deism. When I was working as a linguist for an Indian tribe, I asked a prominent anthropologist, Sylvia Broadbent, about the religious beliefs of the local Indians. They are now all fundamentalist Christians, but this is a modern thing. They also insist that they believe in a Great Creator, but this is another modern addition, as I deduced after a while. After the Indians became Christianized, many Indians across the US decided that they believed in a Great Creator, a notion that they took from Plains Indians tribes who apparently did have this notion pre-contact.

Yet pre-contact, there is little evidence that California Indians were much more than animists who believed that the world was alive with magic and spirits which could be manipulated by those who could do so. They did believe in life after death. Souls went to the West, to the Land of the Dead.

However, there was little belief in an almighty God. Broadbent felt that there was some notion of a Creator God, but this was more Deistic than anything else. Broadbent described the theory as Deux Obtusa, or the Lazy God. This was sort of the idea that God created the world, but He has not done a whole heck of a lot ever since. He mostly just sits up there in Heaven taking bong hits. Every now and then, when he is not too stoned, he wakes up and intervenes in our world a bit. Then he goes back to the bong. I like the notion of a lazy God, and even though I am a Christian, this is the sort of a God that I believe in.

How can we reckon that Evil often defeats Good? We can say that we live in a naturalistic world, and bad things happen to good people, by chance more than by design. And in a naturalistic world, a lazy God could indeed exist.

A Look at Ainu Genetics

Here.

This excellent piece on the genetics of the Ainu shows that they are in fact very different from Japanese, Koreans, Okinawans, Chinese and in fact all other East Asians. The best explanation for this is that the Australoid Ainu are the remains of the ancient Northeast Asians before they transitioned to Mongoloids 9,000 years ago.

Lonely leaf on a long branch. Look how remarkably different the Ainu are from all other East Asians.

They are now seen as Australoids and not as Caucasians as they were erroneously thought to be for a long time. The reason they were thought to be Caucasoids is because when you cross an Australoid with a Mongoloid, you often end up with a rather Caucasoid phenotype.

An old photo of a Hokkaido Ainu man, probably from the 19th Century. Note the Caucasoid phenotype. It was this resemblance that caused people to assign them to Caucasoids, but genetic tests later disproved this. Early anthropologists said the Ainu looked like “Norwegians”.

In fact, the Ainu may be the best remnants of the ancient East Asian race which may have had its beginnings around Lake Baikal 35,000 years ago. However, we know that the Ainu are related to the Jomonese, and the Jomonese can be traced all the way back to Thailand 16,000 YBP. Around that time, it is thought that the Ainu in the form of the Murrayan people journeyed to Australia, forming one of the main components of the Aborigine people. Around this same time, they may have gone to the Philippines, for their reports that one of the very ancient Filipino groups may have had an Ainu appearance.

The Ainu are the blue triangles trailing off the right. The Okinawans are the closest to the Ainu, and even they are not that close.

Interestingly, ancient Amerindians from 9-12,000 YBP have an Australoid appearance. The skulls from 9000 YBP appear Ainuid or Polynesian and the earlier skulls line up with Negritos, Papuans and Aborigines. This implies that the ancient Northeast Asians or Siberians from around the Altai region who immigrated to North America 9-12,000 YBP may have been an Ainuid people.

Bigfoot News December 8, 2012

Rick Dyer’s Tent Bigfoot Video was witnessed by a British documentary film crew. Morgan Matthews, a director with Minnow Films in the UK, has been following several US Bigfoot researchers around for several years now for a documentary called Of Monsters and Men.

Dyer himself shot the 1.2 second Tent Video with his cellphone. The film crew witnessed the shooting of the video in the next tent over. The two BBC camera were rolling away both before and after Dyer’s cellphone clip.

Rick Dyer is one of the researchers that they have been following around. In early September, they were on a 10-day expedition with Dyer’s crew near San Antonio, Texas. During this time, on September 6, 2012, the film crew filmed 3 minutes of a male Bigfoot eating meat from a bait station in a tree. The Bigfoot is then filmed reacting to the film crew emerging from their tent. Two shoulder-mounted cameras were running the whole time.  These are excellent state of the art film production cameras, which is why the film quality is so good.

The quality is quite a bit better than the camcorder that Sissy, the female owner of the Crittenden, Kentucky property was using when she filmed Matilda at the habituation site in 2005. This footage became part of the Adrian Erickson Project’s documentary which is probably now owned by Dr. Melba Ketchum.

The documentary is slated to be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2013, but some members of the Bigfoot community are urging Minnow to issue a pre-release of this footage or at least a teaser of it.

There is a possibility that Dyer’s team hoaxed the film production crew with a man in a costume, but that seems highly dubious to me. I always thought that this footage was genuine.

Initial leak from Dr. Brian Sykes parallel Bigfoot study looks good for believers and bad for scofftics. I have a tantalizing leak from the Sykes study out of Britain. Reports state that his initial findings agree with the results of Ketchum’s Bigfoot DNA study, but differ in terms of interpretation of those results. Unfortunately, I do not have the foggiest idea of what that means! It looks like he may be agreeing that there is an existing relict hominid called Bigfoot roaming about, but he may differ with Ketchum on what the exact nature of this relict hominid is. The source of the information is someone who is very close to the Ketchum study.

Sykes is still taking samples for his study. It is said that he stopped taking samples for his study a while back, but that’s not true. There are samples that are on their way to him right now. And indeed, a piece of the Bigfoot steak from the Sierra Kills will be part of the Sykes study.

Ketchum DNA study may still be in peer review at a US journal. There is much controversy over the recent revelation by Dr. Igor Burtsev of Russia who stated that Ketchum’s study had failed peer review at US journals, and hence he was going to publish it at a journal in Russia. That may or may not be true. This was followed by a flurry of pessimistic and Ketchum-bashing posts on how she had failed, etc.

My information from sources close to the Ketchum camp is that the paper is indeed still in review at a major US journal. In fact, I have received some comments from one of the peer reviewers themselves! The peer reviewers are simply holding to a very strict standard of science; they do not believe some of the allegations in the paper, and sensibly so. That’s all the hangup is all about. Just good, hard science.

One of the hangups was that the journal refuses to believe that real DNA evidence of an existing creature could exist without any good photos or videos of this creature. To them, that makes no sense whatsoever, so the paper has been held up for about the last six months while Melba’s team runs hither and thither trying to come up with any and all decent video and photo footage that they can find. There is another hangup that I will detail below.

Burtsev revelation was due to a leak on Ketchum’s team. A member of Ketchum’s study leaked some of the results to Burtsev in Russia, and then Burtsev went forward with his leak. The Ketchum team thought it was not Burtsev’s fault and instead it was the fault of the team member who leaked to Burtsev. The team member was subsequently dismissed. Ketchum then felt that she needed to clarify Burtsev’s leak with a public statement. It’s true that she is violating journal rules by doing this, and I don’t have any explanation for her behavior. Maybe the journal has given her the go-ahead to make some pre-releases about her paper.

I also feel that Ketchum is trying to force the journal’s hand by forcing them to finish up the peer review, pass the paper and publish it soon. If the journal doesn’t publish it in a month or so, the Ketchum team is threatening to go to Russia with the paper and publish it there, where it is sure to pass review.

Comments from a female peer reviewer on Ketchum’s paper. One of my commenters is friends with a man who knows a woman who is on the peer review team that is looking at Ketchum’s paper. According to the man, the woman was holding up the paper because she refused to believe that if Bigfoots were created in Ice Age SW Europe 15,000, then they could have somehow ended up in North America possibly soon afterwards.

The birth of Bigfoot would have to be somewhere in Asia, possibly Siberia or the Far East, for the Bigfoots to follow the Amerindians into the Americas. This is all based on the assumption that Bigfoots followed the Amerindians across the Bering Strait into the Americas. The Bigfoots would have had to have been in Siberia to do that. So how do the Bigfoots get from SW Europe to Siberia? To the reviewer, this made no sense, and Ketchum had no explanation for it either.

However, a recent study confirming what I had always suspected – that Europeans from 15-20,000 YBP are genetically close to Amerindians – apparently strengthens Ketchum’s case. Apparently the ancient Europeans and paleo Amerindians share a common ancestor in ancient Europe and ancient Siberia.

As you can see, there is apparently nothing wrong with the paper’s science itself; instead, it is questions like this that is holding up the paper.

The female reviewer also stated that people do tend to see patterns where none exist, and it was the concern of this reviewer that this is what Ketchum was doing with her paper.

The reviewer also stated dramatically in reference to Ketchum’s paper and proving the existence of Bigfoot, “This won’t be the end of the debate. It will only be the beginning.”

Ketchum’s sequencing of three whole Bigfoot nuclear DNA genomes prompted a major rewrite of her paper. That’s correct. Sequencing those genomes changed the whole ballgame and necessitated a humongous rewrite of the whole paper.

Sally Ramey, Ketchum’s former spokesperson, reportedly paid a visit to a dying Bigfoot friend to say goodbye to him. If you have read the incredible book, 50 Years with Bigfoot, by Janice Carter Coy and Mary Green, you know the unbelievable story that is told in that book. I won’t reiterate it, but the author discusses how she has been habituating with Bigfoots for most of her life. A male Bigfoot named “Fox” plays a large role in the story.

Janice’s grandfather rescued Fox when he was a baby. A tree fell on him and pinned him under it. The grandfather rescued the baby Bigfoot and nursed it back to health in his shed. The grandfather and the Bigfoot formed a lifetime bond. The grandfather is said to have taught the Fox some words of English and in return, Fox taught the grandfather some words of the Bigfoot language, whatever the heck that is. The family then fed Fox and the various members of his Bigfoot family for many years. At one point, when Janice was a 15 year old girl, Fox charged her when she was riding her horse. He knocked her off her horse, and she broke her leg.

There is much more to the Fox story, but I will let you read the book to figure that out.

At some point a while back, Fox was getting very old and nearing the end of his life. Apparently he sent for Janice and some of her friends to come visit him at the place where he was dying in the forest. Janice Coy, Sally Ramey and possibly other persons went out to the place in the woods where Fox was dying. They visited him there and paid their last respects to him. Fox apparently died about one week later.

Well, that’s a pretty incredible story, no? And this is Ketchum’s main spokesperson we are talking about now.

Erickson Project homepage updated. Since the release of Ketchum’s press release, the EP page has been updated. Erickson appears to be trying to get some recognition for being one of the first people to discover Bigfoot. This is also Ketchum’s goal, and David Paulides seems to be working the same angle. I think Adrian will deserve a lot of credit when the species is recognized, which should be soon.

Erickson notes that his early MtDNA studies of suspected Bigfoot samples kept coming back “East European.” The labs kept insisting that the samples were all human or contaminated by humans, but Adrian and Dennis Pfohl did not believe those findings. They also thought it was very suspicious that the samples were all coming back “East European.” Didn’t make a lot of sense.

It was then that Adrian contacted Melba Ketchum to do further DNA testing on his samples. Why was Ketchum chosen? Because she was the only one who would work with Erickson’s samples! Erickson asked quite a few other scientists to work on it, but they all refused because they thought Bigfoot was ridiculous. So they went with Ketchum. She was not their first choice!

Ketchum says she has HD video of Bigfoots that she will release with her paper. I have been saying for some time now that I think that Erickson sold out his documentary footage to Melba Ketchum. Ketchum is probably referring to Erickson’s footage when she talks about HD video. I believe that Wally Hersom gave her the money to buy out Erickson about one year ago. The footage then went to Hollywood for post-production work. Hence, Erickson’s video and Ketchum’s paper are no longer connected by NDA as they were before.

Erickson Project’s Matilda footage was shot from 40 feet away. The much publicized “Matilda” footage of an adolescent female Bigfoot shot on video by a woman named Sissy at Crittenden, Kentucky in 2005 was shot from only 40 feet away. Depending on who you talk to, it’s either the greatest thing since sliced bread, or it’s not even very impressive. 40 feet is about 10-15 yards away. The footage includes footage of the Bigfoot’s face from that distance. At some point in the video, the Bigfoot is alerted to the videographer’s presence and Matilda takes off running down the hill. Sissy and her husband were bow hunters, and Sissy was decked out in full camo gear when she shot the footage.

Bigfoot is apparently Homo heidelbergensis. David Claerr, one of the finest Bigfoot researchers in the field today, has informed me that he thinks that the Bigfoots are Homo heidelbergensis. Claerr has somehow managed to look at bones, skeletons and skulls of purported Bigfoots in both museums and private collections (How in the heck did he ever get a chance to view those things!?). He then compared what he saw with the existing fossil record. What he saw lines up best with Homo heidelbergensis, a rather primitive and ape-like ancestor of us, Homo sapiens sapiens.

Heidelbergensis appears to be a link between late Homo erectus and early Homo sapiens. Early Sapiens types would include Denisovans and Neandertals. Neandertal goes back about 500,000 YBP and Denisovans may go back as far as 700,000 YBP or more. Ketchum has stated that Bigfoot DNA on the NuDNA side goes back quite a bit further than either Denisovans or Neandertals. This would line up well with the notion that Bigfoot NuDNA is from either Erectus or some sort of a derived Erectus such as Heidelbergensis. Jeff Meldrum says that a skull of a purported Heidelbergensis specimen in China was dated to only 12,000 YBP.

Argument that there were no other Homos living with Homo sapiens sapiens (us or H.s.s.) 30,000 YBP, and therefore the premise of Ketchum’s study is nonsense. This is one of the arguments that the scofftics are using to dismiss the findings of the study.

However, Neandertal is known to have survived up until 10-15,000 YBP in Russia’s very far north. In addition, Homo floresiensis (which is indeed a valid species) survived until 12,000 YBP and possibly until the late 1800′s if local stories about Ebu Gogo are to be believed. In addition, Meldrum states that a Homo heidelbergensis skull is known from China 12,000 YBP. In addition, Solo Man (very late Erectus?) is known from Indonesia 27,000 YBP. A bit further out, Denisovans are known from Siberia 39,000 YBP. In addition, the recent Red Deer Cave People from China, thought to be a new species of Homo, are known from 11-14,000 YBP.

Red Deer Cave People may be Bigfoots. Looking at the drawings of the recent Red Deer Cave People discovered in China with a date of 11-14,000 YBP, I was struck at how much the skulls looked like the facial profile in Larry Surface’s Ohio Bigfoot video (proven by DNA via Ketchum). One of my commenters now feels that Red Deer Cave Man is Homo heidelbergensis. What she bases that on, I do not know. There is now a lot of argument about whether or not the Red Deer Cave People are a new species or an odd type of H.s.s. Assuming that the Red Deer Cave People are Heidelbergensis, they may indeed be good candidates for the Bigfoots.

Heidelbergensis DNA may be present in modern day Africans. There were headlines recently when geneticists reported that all modern members of the African race harbor a significant amount of ancient, non H.s.s. DNA in their genome. It’s not known what DNA this is, but it is said to be more ancient than either Denisovan or Neandertal. This means that African H.s.s. bred in with some relict hominid types in Africa at some point. I have noticed that recent references in paleontology on the web are referring to this African relict hominid DNA as “Heidelbergensis.” How or why they think that is what it is, I have no idea.

Bigfoot News Thanksgiving Edition, 2012

Dr. Melba Ketchum Bigfoot DNA study getting ready for the big reveal? Igor Burtsev released the following blurb on his Facebook page the other day, which set off a storm of speculation:

“International Center of Hominology (Russia)
Urgent!

The DNA analysis of the Bigfoot/Sasquatch specimen conducted by Dr. Melba Ketchum the head of DNA Diagnostics, Timpson, TX, USA has been over!

Team of American scientists led by Dr. Melba Ketchum for five years has analyzed 109 purported samples of such creatures. The study has sequenced DNA of a novel North American hominin, commonly called Bigfoot or Sasquatch.

There were a large number of laboratories associated with this study including academic, private and government laboratories in which blind testing was utilized to avoid prejudice in testing. Great time and care was taken in the forensic laboratories to assure no contamination occurred with any of the samples utilized in this study.

After 5 years of this study the scientists can finally answer the question of what Sasquatch really is. It is human like us only different, a hybrid of a human with unknown species. Early field research shows that the Bigfoot/Sasquatches are massively intelligent which has enabled them to avoid detection to a large extent. They are different than us, however human nonetheless.

The hybridization event could not have occurred more than 15,000 years ago according to the mitochondrial data in some samples. Origin of this hominin was probably Middle Eastern/Eastern Europe and Europe originally though other geographic areas are not excluded.

The manuscript associated with this study has been submitted to a scientific reviewed magazine.

For years people have refused to believe they exist. Now that we know that they are real, it is up to us to protect them from those that would hunt or try to capture them for research or for sport. They should be left alone to live as they live now. After all, they are our relatives.

At this time, analysis of the Sasquatch genomes is still ongoing. Further data will be presented in the future following this original study. Additionally, analysis of various hair samples purportedly from Siberian Wildman are being tested in an effort to determine if relatedness exists between the Sasquatch and Russian Wildman.

Dr. Igor Burtsev,
Head of International Center of Hominology,
Moscow, Russia +7(916)812-6253
inhomin@yandex.ru “

This was followed soon after by a Ketchum statement saying that she would elaborate on Burtsev’s statement. A couple of days later, Ketchum released the following her Facebook page, which then went out as a general press release.

‘BIGFOOT’ DNA SEQUENCED IN UPCOMING GENETICS STUDY

Five-Year Genome Study Yields Evidence of Homo sapiens/Unknown Hominin Hybrid Species in North America

DALLAS, Nov. 24–A team of scientists can verify that their 5-year long DNA study, currently under peer-review, confirms the existence of a novel hominin hybrid species, commonly called “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch,” living in North America.

Researchers’ extensive DNA sequencing suggests that the legendary Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species.

The study was conducted by a team of experts in genetics, forensics, imaging and pathology, led by Dr. Melba S. Ketchum of Nacogdoches, TX. In response to recent interest in the study, Dr. Ketchum can confirm that her team has sequenced 3 complete Sasquatch nuclear genomes and determined the species is a human hybrid:

“Our study has sequenced 20 whole mitochondrial genomes and utilized next generation sequencing to obtain 3 whole nuclear genomes from purported Sasquatch samples. The genome sequencing shows that Sasquatch mtDNA is identical to modern Homo sapiens, but Sasquatch nuDNA is a novel, unknown hominin related to Homo sapiens and other primate species.

Our data indicate that the North American Sasquatch is a hybrid species, the result of males of an unknown hominin species crossing with female Homo sapiens.”

Hominins are members of the taxonomic grouping Hominini, which includes all members of the genus Homo. Genetic testing has already ruled out Homo neanderthalis and the Denisova hominin as contributors to Sasquatch mtDNA or nuDNA.

“The male progenitor that contributed the unknown sequence to this hybrid is unique as its DNA is more distantly removed from humans than other recently discovered hominins like the Denisovan individual,” explains Ketchum.

“Sasquatch nuclear DNA is incredibly novel and not at all what we had expected. While it has human nuclear DNA within its genome, there are also distinctly non-human, non-archaic hominin, and non-ape sequences. We describe it as a mosaic of human and novel non-human sequence. Further study is needed and is ongoing to better characterize and understand Sasquatch nuclear DNA.”

Ketchum is a veterinarian whose professional experience includes 27 years of research in genetics, including forensics. Early in her career she also practiced veterinary medicine, and she has previously been published as a participant in mapping the equine genome. She began testing the DNA of purported Sasquatch hair samples 5 years ago.

Ketchum calls on public officials and law enforcement to immediately recognize the Sasquatch as an indigenous people:

“Genetically, the Sasquatch are a human hybrid with unambiguously modern human maternal ancestry. Government at all levels must recognize them as an indigenous people and immediately protect their human and Constitutional rights against those who would see in their physical and cultural differences a ‘license’ to hunt, trap, or kill them.”

Full details of the study will be presented in the near future when the study manuscript publishes.

There is now a great deal of speculation about where and when the study will publish. A lot of folks are saying that it will publish in a Russian magazine and not in a real scientific journal, but that may be a misreading of Burtsev’s Russian press release. Burtsev is not a native English speaker, and his English may have been misinterpreted.

Ketchum’s spokesman seems to be Robin Lynne, a longtime Bigfoot habituator who lives in rural Michigan. She claims that there are up to 10 Bigfoots living around her property, and every day, she feeds them a variety of foods including Blueberry bagels, which they are particularly fond of. A lot of people have ridiculed her story, but according to information I have, there may indeed be Bigfoots on the property assuming some of the things she is relating are actually occurring.

For instance, one morning, Robin went out to her feeding box and found it locked! She heard noises inside, and when she opened it, the food was gone and there was an opossum inside!

She let the opossum out, but she was puzzled. Sure the possum could possibly have gotten into the box, but there is no way the possum could have gotten into the box and then locked the door to it afterwards. Shades of a locked room mystery here. Lynne concluded that the Bigfoots must have put the opossum into the box as a joke.

Burtsev is an associate of Lynne and has stayed at her place before. Burtsev released the initial PR release which Ketchum then relied upon. So Melba is in deep with Lynne, Burtsev and the rest of the Forest People crowd (Forest People is a group on Facebook). The Forest People group is widely ridiculed as being inhabited by Bigfoot kooks and idiots, but who knows? At this point, things are so insane in the Bigfoot world that anything is possible.

It is interesting that she has concluded that the hybridization event occurred not more than 15,000 YBP, and that it was a result of male subhumans breeding with female humans.

It is also interesting that both Neandertal and Denisova have been ruled out as the subhuman on the nuclear side. The report also says for the first time that the subhuman on the nuclear side is substantially more ancient than either Denisova or Neandertal.

As Denisova split from us 800,000 YBP, this means that the Bigfoot nuclear subhuman split from us before that. That leaves us possibly with Homo Erectus or one of his relatives like Homo Heidelbergensis.

This also means that a hominid more ancient than even Denisova was still roaming the Earth only 15,000 YBP. This is shocking, but it’s possible, as Homo Floresiensis was also roaming the Earth 13,000 YBP, and Flores Man is quite a bit more ancient than Denisova. Dr. Jeff Meldrum also states that we have a Homo Heidelbergensis skull from China from only 12,000 YBP.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the report is that Bigfoots have DNA on the nuclear side that is non-human, non-hominin, and non-ape. This, frankly, makes not the slightest bit of sense at all, but it lines up with what we have been hearing for a long time now.

For forever now, David Paulides has been telling people that the nuclear subhuman component of the Bigfoots is from aliens. He says they “can only trace it back 30,000 YBP, and then it stops.” This apparently means that the Bigfoot nuclear subhuman came from outer space. Wally Hersom has also been saying that there is something in the Bigfoot nuclear subhuman that is “not of this Earth.”

When Ketchum got on the phone to talk to someone about the results of the DNA study, she mentioned the Starchild skull for some reason. The Starchild Skull is a famous skull that Dr. Lloyd Pye has been working on for a long time that he claims is from an alien.

More below.

Original Ketchum paper mentioned “angel DNA.” A source tells me that Wally Hersom has discussed the initial version of Ketchum’s paper. According to Hersom, the paper is very well written, but its conclusions are hard to take.

Ketchum writes that there are aspects of the Bigfoot nuclear subhuman DNA that she cannot find in any DNA database, and according to her, this means that the DNA is not of this Earth. In the paper, she reportedly refers to this as “angel DNA.” Whether she is trying to say that it is from angels literally or whether this is her way of saying that it’s from outer space, I do not know.

Hersom was reportedly disappointed in the paper and averred that while this may be true, no scientific journal on Earth is going to publish anything about “angel DNA.” I would certainly agree with that statement. Sure, maybe there is “angel DNA” in the Bigfoots. For all I know, this may be true. But on the other hand, of course no journal will touch this with a 10-foot pole.

I do not know whether or not she has rewritten her paper to take out the reference to “angel DNA,” but I would certainly hope so.

Ketchum press release vindicates me as a source for Bigfoot information. My detractors say that I am a poor source of information and that nothing I say is ever true. However, this is not the case.

I was the first person to leak the news about the DNA results of the Ketchum study. Although my leaks were not completely accurate, they were substantially correct. Ketchum’s release lines up well with what I have been saying for a long time now.

Ketchum states that she did full sequencing on 3 separate nuclear DNA samples and that they were submitted blind to four different labs. I reported earlier that one of those full sequences was the Sierra Kills sample. I do not know from which samples the other two nuclear sequences were derived.

She said she has also done complete sequencing on 20 different MtDNA samples, presumably representing 20 separate creatures. This lines up with what I reported earlier, that Ketchum has DNA from 20-28 separate creatures.

She also says that she has 109 different samples, all of which apparently test positive for Bigfoot DNA. Actually, it is not clear from the text whether all 109 tested presumptive for Bigfoot or whether she had 109 samples in total, some from Bigfoots and others from known creatures.

This lines up with what I said earlier, that ~100 of her samples tested presumptive for Bigfoot.

Scott Carpenter verified as a successful sample in Ketchum’s study. I was the first one to report that Carpenter had a successful sample in with her study. That has now apparently been confirmed via a post by David Paulides. In addition, Carpenter has released a blog post with a photo of the possible Bigfoot that he believes left the sample. It’s a very strange photo, and I don’t know what to make of it.

Ketchum verified as doing genetic testing on strange elongated Peruvian skulls associated with the Genesis Project. The Genesis Project is an undertaking that is associated with some very strange elongated skulls dated to several thousand years ago that were found in Peru.

Though assumed to be Homo sapiens sapiens, no one quite knows what they are, to be honest, and they are very strange. It turns out that Ketchum is now doing DNA testing on these skulls. How do I know that? Brien Foerster reveals it on his Facebook page here.

Strange Bigfoot video out of Northeastern Ohio. This video came out just the other day, shot by a birdwatcher in the woods of NE Ohio. We get many sightings from that area.

It’s hard to say for sure what this is, but it may be a Bigfoot.

Possible Bigfoot on thermal in Vermont episode of Finding Bigfoot. This odd recent episode of Finding Bigfoot (which I did not watch) shows Matt Moneymaker and Bob Fay at night with a Flir camera chasing what they think are Bigfoots in the woods of Vermont at nighttime. Although they didn’t recognize it during the show, an astute viewer noted that a possible Bigfoot appears in the video. It can be seen around the 50 second mark in the footage.

What is it? Who knows? It’s a bipedal creature walking around in the woods at night in the freezing cold Vermont forest with no flashlight. It’s either a human or a Bigfoot, we can’t tell which. But how many humans walk around in the woods at night with no flashlight? I’ve been in the woods at night all my life, and I’ve never once seen a human walking around in the woods at night without a light. I would say that they nearly don’t even exist.

Ketchum Project has material from the Lovelock skulls of Nevada. The Lovelock skulls of Nevada are very strange skulls recovered from a cave in Nevada. The local Indians say that those are the skulls of an enemy of their people called “the giants” who lived in the area. The giants had started stealing Indian babies for food, so the Indians chased the giants into the cave, threw bushes in and set them on fire. All of the Indians died in the cave. The Indians describe the giants as huge and red-haired. There is speculation that the giants may have been Bigfoots.

The late, great Richard Stubstad told me that he went to this Nevada museum where the skulls are held. He convinced one of the workers there to let him steal a tiny bone from one of the skeletons. Stubstad took the bone and gave it to Ketchum to test as a possible Bigfoot. Last I heard was that Ketchum never tested it as she thought that the Lovelock skeletons are just Indians.

Arguing against the idea that the skulls are Bigfoots are that a number of Indian artifacts were found in conjunction with the giants, which suggests that they were Indians, not Bigfoots.

Here is a photo of the Lovelock skulls. They are very large.

The Provo Canyon Bigfoot video. A very interesting video was recently shot in Provo Canyon, Utah by a group of young people in their 20′s who were camping in the area. The original video is only 48 seconds long. They are photographing what they think is a bear on the hillside above them when suddenly it stands up on two legs, looking much like a Bigfoot. The shooters then flee in terror, even leaving much of their equipment behind.

Michael Merchant of Team Tazer then conducted a long 45 minute interview with the group. He concludes that the video appears to be real. The subject in the video is either real or it’s a man in a costume. I don’t think it’s a guy in a costume, and I don’t think these young folks hoaxed this video. In other words, I think it’s a Bigfoot.

The original video, now with an incredible 6 million views, is here.

Fulton County, Illinois trailcam Bigfoot. This very odd image below was captured on a trailcam in Fulton County, Illinois. The people who shot the photo say they do not have the slightest idea what it is. The woman who shot the photo is named Jean King and she lives in Fulton County.

She sent the photo into Prairie State Outdoors a while back. The photo had been languishing in the archives of the site unpublicized until a sharp-eyed researcher found it. It’s not a bear. It does look like a Bigfoot. It’s either a Bigfoot or a guy in a suit. So which is it?

Ok, so what the Hell is it? Does it look anything at all like the Melissa Hovey photo?

The extremely curious Rick Dyer camper Bigfoot video. This video has been taking the world by storm since it was released a month or two ago to much controversy. Dyer, of course, is the used car salesman who masterminded the Bigfoot in a freezer hoax out of Georgia a few years back.

After that, he was involved in some other nonsense, including what looks like hoaxed photos and a possible staged event where his camper truck caught on fire as he was leaving to go north to Canada to try to shoot a Bigfoot. One of my sources told me that he set the camper on fire on purpose to get publicity for his Canada stunt.

Dyer has somehow come into some money and has managed to attract a number of investors. He now has a significant team set up and has been running around the north of the country going on various Bigfoot hunting expeditions with his team.

This video showed up on Youtube and sat there for a couple of weeks, only garnering a handful of views. The Bigfoot was shot out of a tent, and the researchers apparently didn’t even know what they had shot a video of as it was uploaded either upside down or sideways. The Bigfoot occurs mispositioned at the end. The video was on a channel for the team’s personal use and apparently was intended to be viewed only by the team.

Somehow Facebook Find Bigfoot saw the video and figured out that the movie was inverted. They righted the video so the figure could be properly seen. A new video in color showed that this was an actual Bigfoot. Then the video went viral and a huge shitstorm ensued.

Although Dyer was not originally associated with the video, some excellent fieldwork by one of Bigfootery’s finest researchers, Steve Kulls, quickly discovered that the video was shot by either Dyer himself or a member of his team.

Then everyone piled on and said this proved that the video was a fake. However, it did not prove this at all. In a conversation with me, Kulls admitted that he never said that the video was fake. He is merely saying that since it is coming from Dyer, an extremely unreliable source with a history of hoaxing, Occam’s Razor would seem to indicate that the extremely hazy nature of the source means that we will never be able to prove whether or not this is a Bigfoot.

Facebook Find Bigfoot was involved with the video from the very start. They felt that the video was shot by a member of Dyer’s team, that the team had no idea what it was for weeks (it was shot upside down, the Bigfoot only appears in the last 2-3 seconds of a 30 second nearly nonsensical video, and after 2 weeks, it had less than 10 views.

According to Facebook FB, this seems to indicate that it is not a hoax. They also thought that the other team members had thrown Dyer out of the group after news broke that he was a member of their group. The team also said that they had more videos, possibly of this same Bigfoot, including one showing the Bigfoot eating something.

They planned to release these videos at a press conference in the near future, but the conference never happened. Of course, the Bigfoot in a freezer catastrophe had also featured a press conference, so this set off even more alarm bells. The community is now sharply divided on this video, with many saying it’s a hoax.

However, I think this is either a real video or it’s the best hoax ever made. I don’t care if Dyer shot it. Just because Dyer has a history of hoaxing doesn’t mean he couldn’t shoot a real video sometime.

Interesting photo showing the Camper Creature next to a photo of Patty.

Camper Bigfoot lined up with Patty. Note the striking resemblance. I’ve yet to see a costume get anywhere this close to Patty’s real look.

Original video enhanced. This is the 2-3 second scene at the end of the original video, enhanced, in color, and played repeatedly.

A great breakdown by Facebook Find Bigfoot that proves this is real.

Bigfoot with love handles breakdown by Facebook Find Bigfoot. Very nice breakdown of an obscure video posted on Youtube and discovered with only a few views. This is definitely a Bigfoot; it has to be. I won’t go into why I think that either. Hoaxers are way too good as it is, and I don’t want to give them any ideas.

Clinton Township, Pennsylvania Bigfoot. Reportedly taken by Jamie T. It was sent into the Bigfoot Evidence blog. The photo is being widely ridiculed as either a guy in a suit or a bush in the forest. However, I rather like it. To me it reminds me of the Harley Hoffman Bigfoot video towards the end of the video. The overall shape of the Bigfoot looks similar.

The mysterious Bigfoot photo from Pennsylvania. Reportedly shot from the front sear of a car. The car had probably pulled off the highway after seeing something. The driver then whipped out his camera and took this shot. The property is posted so the shooter was not able to go on the land to look for tracks.

Canadian Bigfoot video. There is little information available about this very blurry video shot in the wilds of Canada. You cannot make out much of anything about the creature walking in the woods in this video other than the fact that it is bipedal. It’s either a man, a guy in a suit or a Bigfoot. The way it walks reminds me very much of the Penguis Back Road video. And the end of the day, inconclusive, but I do feel that this may be a real Bigfoot.

Is Israel a Racist State?

Repost from the old site.

Let’s look at this question from a strictly deterministic point of view, absent the avalanche of Zionist bullshit such a question usually provokes. Does Israel, or does Israel not, discriminate, as part of official Israeli state policies and not informal societal policies, against non-Jews?

Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

We can argue like Jewish lawyers about the nature and degree of the discrimination, we can compare the shitty little country of Israel to all the shitty countries of various sizes she delights in comparing herself too, but none of that changes the bottom line.

In Israel, discrimination is written into the very existence of the state. If you support Israel, this is the Jim Crow garbage that you are supporting, de facto.

Let’s suppose the US was run like Israel.

Actually, it was for much of its existence. Indians only became citizens in 1920, the year women finally got the vote. Indians were put in boarding schools until recently. Discrimination against Hispanics, to a Jim Crow degree, was rife in the West.

So was open discrimination against Jews in all of the US. And the war against Jim Crow led to open warfare, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the loss of the US South by the Democratic Party as the racists left and went Republican.

Nevertheless, in 2012, we can still make an interesting comparison. Let’s pretend for a moment that the US is Israel. Thanks to Charley Reese for the theme:
*****
Let’s say that the US is a White Christian state, and that this fact is written right into its Constitution. In fact, the US is defined not as the state of its citizens, but as the state of all White Christians everywhere on Earth. It’s Whitey Homeland.

Any White Christian anywhere on Earth can come to Whitey Homeland, the US, and automatically become a citizen. White Christian criminals wanted anywhere on Earth for any crime can flee here and we will protect them. Why? Because they are White Christians.

The White Christian homeland of the US was formed some time ago, when 80% of the non-White Christians were thrown out of the country in a war and their land was seized. Now, 93% of the US is reserved for Whites only, although 20% of America is non-White Christian. This 93% was purchased by an organization called the White Christian National Fund.

Its donors are Whites throughout the world who support the White homeland. Once the WCNF bought the land, they forbade the sale of it to anyone who was not a White Christian.

The non-White Christians who were evicted decades ago linger in refugee camps in Canada and Mexico, where they destabilize those countries and clamor for right to return, which the US refuses to grant. Almost all White Americans are living on land stolen from the non-White Christians, and many are living in homes that were previously lived in by non-White Christians.

In big US cities, a similar development reigned. White Christians were routinely approved for any development they wanted, while non-White Christians were usually denied all building permits, including merely refurbishing or adding on to a home.

Many US neighborhoods were designated, officially or not, as White neighborhoods. By official decree of the state, non-White Christians were forbidden by renting or buying land in these neighborhoods.

Many non-White Christians have refused to live the lands they and their ancestors have lived on for many years. US military jets fly over these lands and spray poison the non-White Christian crops. Non-White Christian towns on White lands are denied all government services.

When they still won’t leave, the US Army shows up in the non-White Christian village and gives the residents 10 minutes to pack up and leave. Then the Army bulldozers begin to destroy every structure in the town.

The US government, at federal and state levels, issues Whiteification Plans, meant to “Whiten” non-White Christian areas. This involves surrounding non-White towns with White towns in order to “Whiten” the area.

Just for a moment, imagine the reaction of every Jewish organization in the US, not to mention the Israeli government, if the US pursued such a course. Recall that the US government on all levels would brutally discriminate against Jews, who, though White, would be non-Christians, and subject to the full brunt of US government racism.

Does anyone doubt that Jews were be screaming about this racism til the cows came home? But then, why do these same Jews support the same racist nonsense in Israel?

Bigfoot News Halloween 2012

Was Melba Ketchum raped by a Bigfoot!? Yes, I realize that this is an incredible story, and it seems to strange to be believed. However, I have been told that Ketchum recently told at least 4 different people this story.

Here is what happened, according to her: Ketchum is leasing property somewhere in Texas, possibly in East Texas, where there is a Bigfoot habituation site. It is here that she says she has seen the Bigfoots and discovered that they braided the manes on her horses, among other odd things.

One day Melba went out to a part of her pasture “where the Bigfoots like to hang out.” This is an odd part of the pasture. She says that as soon as you open the gate to this part of the property, “you are likely to get zapped.” By this she apparently means hit by Bigfoot infrasound. Frightening! She apparently went out there to attend to her horses in some manner.

At some point while she was attending to her horses, she seems to have lost conscientiousness. Then she had some sort of a “lost time” event. Say she was with the horses at 7 PM. Next thing she knew, she woke up and it was say 9 PM. When she awoke, she became aware somehow (not sure how) that she had been unconscious for quite some time. Spooky!

She was lying on the ground in her pasture, possibly clad in a dress. At that time, she became aware that she was “sore” in her vaginal area. There was no reason for her to feel that way. She concluded that a Bigfoots may have somehow zapped her, rendered her unconscious somehow, and possibly raped her. Shivers!

The odd part of the story is that she was fully clothed, possibly in a dress. The problem is that if she was fully clothed, including underwear, rape is not really possible. The Bigfoot would have had to have removed her underwear and then put it back on, or else push the panties aside. I don’t think they do things like that. However, if she was panty-less, she could well have been raped. Spooky!

A female friend has told me that there are other signs that a woman has been raped. For instance, if ejaculation has occurred in the vagina, a woman is generally aware of this fact. I do not know if Ketchum had any other signs of being raped such as that.

I also do not know if Ketchum reported the incident to authorities or had a rape test done. I don’t know what good a rape test or reporting it to the authorities would do anyway, as no crime was committed, and at the moment, we have no way to determine Bigfoot semen from human semen.

The person who told me this story reported it as evidence that Ketchum has gone completely off the deep end. They have a low opinion of her anyway.

I would like to take a more charitable approach. I believe that Ketchum may well have some Bigfoots habituating on this property of hers. She may well have been interacting with them there in various ways for some time now. At this point, Ketchum is, for better or for worse, a habituator.

Habituators often report having a lot of very weird experiences while they are in close contact with the Bigfoots on their land. It appears that Ketchum may have already experienced some of this strange stuff, such as ultrasound.

It’s possible that Ketchum had a very strange experience out there in the pasture that day or night. Some odd things happened to her that she is trying to make sense of in whatever way she can. She is trying to piece together a plausible story to account for the bizarre things she is experiencing. This is her groping attempt at an explanation.

Although my source told me that they heard Melba tell them this story and that she also told at least three others, Melba’s friends are disputing the story.

Linda Sedlak, a good friend of Melba’s, released this statement to me about the rumored incident:

I have recently been made aware of a story going around regarding Melba Ketchum, and an encounter with a Sasquatch. This story is totally false with absolutely no basis in reality. Please do not continue to spread these hateful, hurtful, and horrible rumors.

In addition, a source close to Ketchum asked Melba about the rumors and Ketchum said that none of it is true, and that she never told anyone anything like this.

In closing, I would like to extend my utmost sympathy to Ketchum if she was indeed violated by a Bigfoot. If it occurred, I doubt if this is an experience she wanted to have. It could well be a very traumatizing experience for a woman. Rape’s no joking matter, and all female victims deserve our most profound sympathy.

So there you have it folks. You can believe whatever you want to believe here. No one knows what really happened, and we may never know.

I do believe that Bigfoots rape women sometimes. I have heard that nowadays these are the nasty-tempered or ill-behaved Bigfoots. In the Janice Carter story, which I believe to be a largely factual account, Carter reports that an evil minded young Bigfoot raped a 13 or 14 year old girl in the woods near the Carter farm. The girl was so upset that she spent the rest of her life in a mental hospital. Creepy!

According to Indians, Bigfoots can and do mate with female humans. In the Albert Ostman story, Ostman told John Green that he thought the older male Bigfoot had kidnapped him to try to get him to mate with his nubile teenage hottie Bigfoot daughter. Indian reports say that Bigfoots used to steal Indian women and take them back to caves where they had sex with the women. Scary stuff!

In some cases, the women would return a year or so later, pregnant. In a number of cases, half-Bigfoot, half-human babies were born out of these unions. Ostman says that male Bigfoots have a surprisingly small penis for their size, so sex with a human female should be easy to accomplish on the female human end. Lugubrious!

Whatever the truth of the story about Ketchum, it is surely one of the oddest stories that has come out of Bigfootery in a while. And it’s a pretty scary story for Halloween to boot!

Delays in Ketchum Bigfoot DNA paper explained. A source close to the Ketchum project informed me that there is indeed a paper, that it is apparently at a journal, and that it has gone through repeated rewrites. The source, a young man with a PhD, told me, They want to make sure that everything is perfect, I mean 100% perfect.”

This is due to the strange and wild nature of the subject. The journal wants to make sure that all the science is good so they will not be humiliated as the subject matter is so odd and controversial. The journal is doing this to ensure their own reputation.

The paper has already gone through four major rewrites and many smaller rewrites. After every major rewrite, the paper is delayed by 6-8 weeks. So you can see that the paper has already been delayed by 6-8 months by major rewrites. The source said there is a delay after a rewrite because “then the paper goes back to the end of the line for publication again.”

I reported recently that the best information about the paper is that it passed peer review and they are trying to get photo and video evidence available to add weight to the paper. That seems to be the best theory to date.

On the subject of the Ketchum paper, I would suggest that you read “Science Critic” in the thread about the Ketchum Report. He’s one of the best posters on there, and I think his theories about this paper are correct.

Yeti hair reportedly tests positive for a new hominid. Yeti hair gathered by my friend Igor Bourtsev in a cave in Kemerovo, Russia has reportedly tested as a new hominid via separate genetic testing in Moscow and Idaho. I am wondering if the Idaho testing involved Jeff Meldrum?

The tests indicate that the Yeti is about 99% similar to a human and closer to a human than to a chimp. As Denisova also shares ~99% of its DNA with humans, that sounds about right for Bigfoots. I believe that the results of the Ketchum study may find something along similar lines of 99-99.5% similarity with humans.

Sykes study ready to roll. Dr. Brian Sykes of Oxford, who is running a parallel DNA study to Ketchum’s, has now gathered 20 purported Bigfoot samples that he feels have good chain of custody. He is ready to start testing them soon. I believe that Sykes was told ahead of time of the results of Ketchum’s study and that is what led him to do his study. He probably would not have undertaken this study blindly unless he thought it might be fruitful.

Ketchum study worried about being upstaged by Sykes study. A source in the Ketchum camp, an older academic at a university, told me that there are people on Ketchum’s team who are worried about the endless frustrating delays in publication of her paper.

People are grasping at straws to come up with any story they possibly can to try to explain the delays. One theory, albeit a rather paranoid one, is that Sykes team at Oxford may be using their academic pull to delay Ketchum’s paper so Sykes can upstage her. However, there is no evidence as yet whether this is actually occurring or not.

Foolish nonsense of MABRC and whether or not they had a Bigfoot body. I reported that Ed Smith (kook) posted in the MABRC forum, “Good luck with your post-capture goals.” Whoa! That’s an odd statement. I then asked whether that meant that MABRC or Ed’s group had a body? Perfectly legitimate thing to ask. Never once did I say they had a body. I simply asked for clarification of a very oddly worded statement.

DW Lee (kook) then turned the whole affair into an idiotic attention-getting circus to drum up publicity for his Bigfoot group, which is widely loathed by the way. Idiotically, DW said, “We neither confirm nor deny that we have a body. We do say that Ed Smith is our friend.” Way to go clown! That clears up absolutely nothing for us!

DW then started a ridiculous thread on BF Forums being coy, evasive and generally whoring his group. Then he made a similar, totally ridiculous appearance on MBRT Radio which was one of the biggest wastes of 90 minutes I have experienced. At two points a long ways into the pointless interview, DW stated that he had no body. Finally towards the end, Ed came on nearly the 90 minute mark and said he had no body either.

The behavior of Smith and DW in this matter was deplorable, and both of them, but especially DW, behaved histrionically in the best male drama queen fashion. Yuck!

It later turned out that the whole publicity affair, the DW post on BF Forums and the interview, was a big charade in order to attack the “yellow journalism” (LOL) of yours truly. Whatever.

As it turns out, “post-capture goals” refers to several “live Bigfoot traps” that Ed Smith and his group have set up over a large area of property in Oklahoma. Chilling! How they expect to capture a live Bigfoot in one of these is beyond me. Smith and Lee are complete kooks, but perhaps their research efforts will be rewarded someday. In this field, the biggest kooks of all sometimes acquire some very good evidence, which is a pretty pitiful statement right there! Actually, it’s downright frightening!

Sykes study looking at a European (possibly Irish) resident as possible Bigfoot descendant. Apparently this person’s back story checks out very well as a possible part-Bigfoot descendant. Scary! For whatever reason, the person does not want to come forth and give their DNA to the study, but the Sykes people are still working on them.

This line of research may have been enabled by Rhettman Mullis, one of our finest Bigfoot researchers, who has done some superb work along these lines in the US. I understand that Mullis has been researching a possible part Bigfoot descendant in the Pacific Northwest, an Indian man who died around 1930. Frightening! The man had children, and Mullis is trying to track down his children. He is also trying to find the man’s grave so it can possibly be exhumed. Scary!

Ketchum closing her DNA testing lab. This has been the subject of much rumor and speculation from the Ketchum haters. It appears she is merely selling her veterinary DNA testing business and is moving to another city where she will focus solely on DNA forensic, academic and research projects. She is said to owe back taxes, and there has been much speculation about her financial affairs, mostly centering on the rumor that she may be broke.

I doubt if she is broke. A couple of years ago, it is true that she did not have much business and had a hard time even paying her mortgage. However, the Bigfoot study has been a huge cash cow for her, so much so that concerned friends of Wally Hersom worried that Ketchum and those around her were using Hersom as a personal ATM machine. Hersom has been singlehandedly funding the entire DNA project, and he has filled Ketchum’s coffers well.

Whereas before she did not travel outside the US much to my knowledge, she is now a woman who regularly travels overseas, especially to Europe. I would guess that she is doing very well financially and is probably at least upper middle class. She owes back taxes? I would guess that she is making good money but is spending more than she is making as many well-off folks do.

That will be all for now folks and Happy Halloween!

Boo!

Human-Bigfoot War of 1855!

Original link here.

In case you missed it the first time.

This is an old post of mine that is getting reposted all over the web in the past few days.

As legend has it, the humans and the Bigfoots fought a war in Oklahoma in 1855. The Bigfoots had first started out stealing crops from the humans, most of whom were Choctaw Indians. Then the Bigfoots moved on to stealing Choctaw children and eating them.

The Choctaw eventually organized a hunting party to track the Bigfoots down and kill them. The battle was vicious and the humans took many losses, but at the end, all of the Bigfoots lay dead. Indian sources to this day insist that this is a true story. Further, many other tribes describes the Bigfoots as cannibals and baby stealers. There are also other reports of wars between the Indian humans and the Bigfoots. The humans typically win and the Bigfoots retreat.

Human Bigfoot War!

“Canada At Ground Level: Observations of a US Refugee,” by Odin Crow

Warning: Long, runs to 51 pages. This is a fine piece by US expat Odin Crow. Relax and enjoy it.

Canada At Ground Level: Observations of a US Refugee

By Odin Crow

I am an American citizen living in Canada. I am not a sociologist, anthropologist, economist, linguist or any other ist. What I am is a middle class, late 40s working-guy who wishes to share with you what he’s learned about his adopted country from his own personal experiences and hopefully dispel a few misconceptions at the same time. But first, my take on the differences in basic character of these two countries and how they came about.

A Tale Of Two Siblings

If Canada and the US were brothers, the US was the one who said “fuck you” to the parents and left home as a teen. Granted, mom and dad were treating him like shit; he was a breadwinner, the loud, risk-taking one with big plans and ambitions and, to be honest, mom and dad were oinking up the fruits of his labors without giving him any say in how the household was run.

Sure, mom and dad got him started, set him up with everything he needed to be successful, but the dynamic didn’t seem fair to Elder Brother, who went indy.

Canada, on the other hand was the brother who just wanted to live his life and be left alone. He didn’t ask for much from mom and dad; they gave him very little to work with and neglected him for the most part. But Younger Brother never complained and did receive the benefit of some guidance and wisdom from time to time as he grew up as well as help when he really needed it.

So Younger Brother kept his nose to the grindstone, worked hard, minded his own business and slowly built a nice sane, stable life for himself.

Meanwhile, after a nasty spat with the folks, who started it out of sheer vindictiveness (and whose side was taken by Younger Brother, since Elder Brother lashed out at him and, to be honest, Younger Brother was still basically an extension of Mom and Dad) Elder Brother built a dizzyingly dramatic, risk-taking, get-the-fuck-outta-my-way life for himself, with stellar highs and deep, abysmal lows, being sometimes unbelievably heroic and idealistic and sometimes bewilderingly selfish, paranoid and self-righteous.

Over time, though, both siblings and parents’ relationship evolved into one of general support and respect, coming to each other’s aid, engaging in great endeavors and providing moral support to one another, even though one or more of them may not always have clearly been on the side of right.

So if the US is the “loud” one, the flashy, big-talking Type A, the stunning over-achiever who makes everyone else in the room feel inadequate (or at least tries to), the one who’s been out in the world reaping fame and glory, constantly striving always to grow his own wealth, power and influence, Canada’s the one that dresses down, doesn’t dominate the conversation at the dinner table, has his mortgage paid off and worries more about just being a good neighbor and minding his own business.

He’s the one who, through patience and consistency, has built himself a very comfortable, stable, relaxed life, and people generally find his company enjoyable. Others generally have mixed feelings towards Older Brother, being sometimes jealous of him, sometimes afraid and very often both. Older Brother wants everyone to be like him and feels the need to justify his choices constantly; Younger Brother’s the one who goes, “No thanks, I’m good, but whatever works for you.”

How I Got Here

I married a Canadian woman, it didn’t work out, and I stayed. I had applied for permanent residence with my wife as my sponsor, which involved paying around $900, submitting a criminal background check and medical examination, filling out a form and waiting seven months. During the interim, I was not allowed to work legally or receive any public services.

Once my application passed, I received my “landing papers”, a SIN (Social Insurance Number or Canadian SSN) and was then eligible to live permanently, work and receive health care. My status lasts 5 years between renewals, during which I must spend a minimum of 2 years on Canadian soil or abroad as an employee for a Canadian company. I cannot vote or serve in the military.

If I had applied for public assistance (welfare, etc) during my first 3 years, my sponsor (ex-wife) would have been responsible for paying it back to the government. I can and have received unemployment insurance.

What It’s Like To Be a Working Guy in Canada

I have no college degree and am actually a high-school dropout, though I’ve always lied about it, and it’s never been questioned (fortunately, they didn’t check on that in my residency application). I live in Alberta now, so I don’t pay provincial income tax.

Regardless, when I was in Nova Scotia, I still took home more of my wages than I did in California, despite paying both federal and provincial income tax. Canadian tax rates are lower for lower incomes, higher for higher incomes. If I were to make 100 grand a year, yes, I’d pay a higher tax rate, but I don’t.

The Canadian and US Dollars hover around parity for the most part, so for all intents and purposes, a buck is a buck. My cost of living is about the same as in the US. Rents are comparable and so are utilities.

Food can be more expensive, and smokes are over 10 bucks a pack for most brands in Alberta and more in some other places; the more liberal, the more expensive – same with booze. Gas is currently about $CN 1.12/liter., ($4.20/gallon.) in Alberta, which has the lowest gas prices in the country, naturally. It’s as much as $CN .50 more a liter in other places.

Canada has a federal sales tax of 5% known as the General Sales Tax (GST). Each province can add to that their own sales tax, the combined sales taxes being called a Harmonised Sales tax (HST). This can vary widely from province to province depending on their social leanings and economy.

Nova Scotia, being a notoriously liberal and socially-conscious province with higher unemployment than the national average, has a HST of 15%; the idea is that when more people are unemployed, social services and support become even more critical to maintaining quality of life.

Alberta, which is shoveling in oil revenues like there’s no tomorrow and has a thriving agricultural industry (grain and cattle) is probably the least socially-conscious of all the provinces, being somewhat the Canadian version of Texas. It has no HST, only the 5% GST.

So, in short, I’ve sort of made a deal with the devil by coming out here for work after having been laid off in Nova Scotia; I enjoy the economic benefits, but am slightly at odds with the social climate which is, to be fair, still more liberal than that of the US as a whole.

Here’s an example of the difference between the IRS and Revenue Canada: I get a check every 3 months for $CN 100 as a GST rebate because I make below a certain income level (I gross between  $CN 38k-45k/year). When was the last time you ever got anything from the IRS aside from something terrifying telling you you’re fucked?

Summary: Being an average, middle-class working person in Canada means you can actually have a good, comfortable life.

Health Care

If you live here, either as a citizen, on a visa or as a permanent resident, like myself, you get health care. Each province administers its own system, and it comes out of the tax base; there is no premium deduction from your pay, no check box on your tax return form. I hear Alberta (surprise, surprise) used to have a mandatory premium deducted from your tax return each year, but not any more.

Your provincial health card will get you care no matter where in the country you are. Emergency room, ambulances – no charge to the insured. Neither dental nor optometry are covered, and seeing a specialist requires a referral. My employers provide me with health insurance for things like optometry, dental, chiro, prescription plan, etc, as does everyone else’s, to my knowledge.

But if you’re a small business, one less burden of responsibility and concern has been removed. Even if you’re a cheap, mean bastard who cuts corners every chance he gets, you and your employees are still covered.

Here’s how my Canadian doctor visits have gone:

Scenario 1

Receptionist: Hello, dear, have you been here before?
Me: No.
Receptionist: Can I see your card, dear? (I hand her the card). Is this your current address?
Me: Yes.
Receptionist: OK, here’s your card back, have a seat and someone will call your name in a couple minutes.
10 minutes later: Mr. **********?

Scenario 2

Receptionist: Hello, dear, have you been here before?
Me: Yes.
Receptionist: Your name?
Me: **********
Receptionist: Is this your current address?
Me: Yes.
Receptionist: OK, have a seat and someone will call your name in a couple minutes.
10 minutes later: Mr. **********?

This is not a fantasy; I am not exaggerating. No co-pay, no multi-page forms to fill out, no pissed off, fat, black bitch in teddy-bear scrubs studiously ignoring me as I wait for her attention, all-but-daring me to interrupt her personal phone call by meekly saying “Excuse me”, no interminable wait, nothing.

Now, I’m sure a clinic in a huge city like Toronto or Vancouver would probably be much busier (though nothing like the Cinco de Mayo fiestas of Southern California, I’m sure) and its staff more unpleasant (my experiences are limited to Halifax and my small Southern Alberta town of 2,000), but seriously, anyone who can compare this with an HMO experience in the US and see no difference is an abject boob.

My ex-wife was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when she was 20. She had surgery, was treated, recovered fully and takes thyroid medication. Aside from the cost of the prescription, which was about 12 bucks a refill, her cost was zero. She had merely to show her Nova Scotia Health Card and her life was saved without any worries that she would face any complications when it came to receiving care or paying for it afterwards.

Summary: It is not a myth – the Canadian health care system works and it works very well. For everyone.

Politics

Quick primer on the parliamentary system:

Political parties elect a leader. General elections are for MP’s (Members of Parliament), the equivalent of House representatives in the US. Whoever gets the most MP’s in Parliament is the Majority – their leader becomes Prime Minister. You do not elect a Prime Minister, you elect a Party with whom you agree. As long as that party is in the majority, their leader is Prime Minister.

There is a Canadian Senate as well, but Senators are appointed by the Prime Minister – not elected – so they are all, inevitably, of the same party as the Majority (I’m sure there are a couple exceptions, but for the most part, who’s going to pick a guy from the Opposition?). I’m not clear what the Senate does, but I know that the lawmaking process is not bicameral.

The Majority party is the Progressive Conservatives (PC), colloquially known by the traditional English term “Tories”.

The Opposition are the Liberal Party (which held power for quite some time but has diminished in recent years due to lack of leadership), the New Democrats (which are the largest minority and surged suddenly in ranks at the last general election), the Green Party (a handful) and I think Bloc Quebecois still has a couple MP’s.

Bloc Quebecois is essentially an ethnocentric provincial party whose only real platform has been the secession of Quebec, and their place in national politics has been the subject of some contention; they have been, however, utterly decimated, many of their seats lost to the burgeoning ND Party in the last election.

There may be some stragglers from all-but-defunct other parties with a seat here or there, but I’m not sure and nor would be your average Canadian.

A Canadian Conservative is a lot closer to a US Democrat than it is to a US Republican. They are not trying to repeal universal health care, abortion rights, gay marriage or any of the other causes celebres of their Bizarro-World US counterparts. They object to things like making trans-gender public restrooms mandatory and legalizing pot and support things like privatizing government entities and easing up on business regulation, etc., for the most part.

Yes, PM Harper and his crew are trying to emulate some US Republican fashion trends, for example a “3-strikes, tough-on-crime” bill and building more prisons, but everybody’s response to that is generally, “Why? The crime rate is actually dropping.” Thanks to the Canadian Parliamentary system though, the MP’s are really not much more than what they should be, which is bureaucrats put in charge of keeping shit running smoothly, sanely and reliably.

Canadian politicians are also by-and-large not millionaires and lawyers as they are in the US. They come from a pretty wide demographic (a recently-elected ND MP from Quebec is actually a female bartender).

At the provincial level, Canada has Premiers instead of Governors (It always reminds me of some Communist Eastern European country when I hear that term – still doesn’t sound right to me). They attain office the same way as national PM’s: Parties field candidates as reps for the various provincial “ridings“, and the Party with the majority’s leader becomes Premier.

In Alberta, the Tories have maintained a hegemony over provincial politics for the last 40 years (PM Stephen Harper is an Albertan).

The current Premier, Allison Redford, was a constitutional attorney, a field of expertise rather uncommon amongst US Republican politicians, but not among Democratic Presidents it would seem.

Provinces sometimes have provincial political parties, limited to provincial politics, though Quebec’s Bloc Quebecois made its way into Parliament, concerned as they are with Quebec’s secession, though their position and influence in federal politics is marginal to say the least.

Alberta‘s further-right party, the Wild Rose Party, went balls-out during the last provincial election, and their gaffes were many and hilarious; one of their candidates mentioned in a mass emailing something about gays being “condemned to a lake of fire,” and another quipped that he would win his riding easily as he was the “only white guy“ on the ballot.

In true neocon fashion, the party responded not by asking either of the doddering farts to step down, but by making the statement that “there are many differing views within the Wild Rose Party, and all are tolerated.” Needless to say, they got their asses handed to them instead of winning a majority.

In Alberta, the Tories have been making noises about privatizing Alberta Health, giving the usual bullshit arguments about how the “private sector can deliver services more efficiently and cost-effectively than the provincial government can,” etc., but it’s not a position that seems to be gaining much traction with the electorate…..

To put it simply, Canadians are generally not stupid; they see what works with their own eyes, thus they are far less susceptible to specious arguments, panic-mongering and outright bullshit than their US counterparts. They know when something is working and aren’t obsessed with change for its own sake, not even Albertans.

Summary: Politics in Canada actually has more to do with working for the people than it does furthering ideological agendas or political careers.

Immigration and Race

Per the most recent census statistics, Canada is comprised of 80% Whites, 16.2% visible minorities and 3.8% Aboriginals.

One of the things I truly love about Canada is that there aren’t Mexicans all over the place. There are no undocumented aliens per se, since not only is Canada not conveniently within walking distance of Mexico, but an illegal alien isn’t able to get work or free medical care here. There are no mobs of day laborers in the Home Depot parking lot, nor have I seen massive, ethnically-homogenous ghettos in which an illegal can live and receive community support with impunity.

This may not be the case in the bigger cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, but the numbers of illegals must be so low as not to have much effect as a socioeconomic issue. Illegals aside, I don’t see Canada suffering the negative social and cultural impact of being overwhelmed by immigrants from one particular culture.

Canada has a policy of basing immigration approval upon needed skills. Since Canada is not suffering from a shortage of gardeners, pool cleaners or sidewalk ice-cream vendors, that would pretty much exclude the bulk of the Mexicans wanting to come in.

Canada has a foreign temporary worker program just like the US used to since there’s more work here than there are people who want to do it. A Newfoundland seafood processing plant that had shut down for awhile opened back up when the catches improved and couldn’t find enough locals for the jobs, so they imported a bunch of Thais along with an interpreter.

However, in most other circumstances, immigrants have to prove a functioning grasp of either English or French depending where they‘re going to be working and living. Children who cannot speak English are sent home by public schools, and the parents are informed that the school will be happy to teach their child once the parents have taught the child English.

Recently, the English requirement for citizenship was actually increased. Canada seems to feel, oddly enough, that two of the keys to properly managing immigration are ensuring that an individual not only can speak one of the official languages but that they can somehow contribute to the economy and society as a whole.

Absent giant ethnically-homogenous communities of immigrants, Canadian immigrants seem to assimilate much more quickly and willingly than in the US. Every first-generation-born Canadian I’ve met has no foreign accent; they say “eh”, and they seem to hang out with just about anybody.

I never get the vibe that foreigners and their kids here hate Canadians while enjoying the benefits of being Canadian. The mayor of Calgary, the biggest city in the most conservative province, is a Muslim – Naheed Nenshi – and you’d never know by hearing him speak on the radio. You see “people of color” scattered throughout the media and government, and they all seem to retain ethnic names, despite sounding and acting like Canadians.

Blacks in Canada are not ubiquitous. In Calgary, the Blacks I meet are invariably immigrants; there is no “Black” part of town.

In Halifax, which was, among other things, at the other end of the Underground Railroad, the Black population is mostly descended from former American slaves and is proportionally larger than in many other areas of the country.

This population in Halifax began in earnest following the War of 1812 during which “Black loyalists” (slaves willing to fight their masters in exchange for freedom) were deeded land on the outskirts of Halifax as reward for helping the Crown, which was named Africville.

Africville has a tragic and disappointing history which I’m going to expand upon in a separate piece, but suffice it to say that Blacks in Nova Scotia suffer from many of the same socioeconomic problems as do their counterparts in the US, though certainly not to the same degree.

I understand that there are Black communities in and around Toronto which are primarily Caribbean in origin, that there is public housing inhabited mostly by Blacks and that crime rates are higher in these areas, but I’m not aware of specifics.

I have never heard a Canadian say “nigger”. Oh, I’ve had friends say “What up, my nigga,” plenty of times, but as far as it being used as a pejorative, never. Much of what many Canadians believe about Blacks, since many of them have never spent much time around or lived around them, they get from US TV shows, so many of them are understandably scared shitless.

In Nova Scotia, where there is a Black population descended from American slaves and not immigrants, I often heard the general stereotypes bandied about by Whites: They don’t like to work, but they do like to commit crimes, do drugs, get bitches pregnant and split, etc.

My ex-wife was utterly petrified of them. She saw a Black kid walk down our street once and, since no Black people lived on our street, wanted to call the police, I shit you not. She did not, though, and the ensuing argument lasted about two hours.

Canadians are, however, very quick to characterize Americans as racists, despite the fact that Canada had Jim Crow “Whites only” bylaws in rural areas just like the US did. But, in fairness, the institution of slavery did not exist here, and that counts for rather a bit.

Aboriginals, still commonly referred to as Indians, seem to take the place, in many ways, that Blacks do in US society. They are disproportionately plagued by crime, poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction and prejudice and are distributed across Canada. They receive government assistance and are spoken of by most of the Whites I know as a “problem” and with little compassion. A disproportionate number of their males are in the prison system.

They are, in effect, the Blacks of Canada, and the origins of their problems are as convoluted and difficult to figure out as are those of US Blacks. However, to be real, they were doing OK before Whitey showed up.

The French

As you may or may not know, the English defeated the French in the battle for supremacy in Canada but allowed the French to stay and maintain their own culture. Like any defeated people, despite the magnanimity of the victors, a lot of them are still sore about it.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are elements within Quebecois society who believe that Quebec should exist as its own separate country. Anglo Canadians love to point out that the federal government paid for and built their infrastructure, so if they want to pay back all of that, fine, go ahead; many Anglos are constantly irritated and annoyed by the French.

Despite this, however, Quebec and its French culture are clearly things that make Canada, well, Canadian and add an extremely cool flavor to the whole mix here. In 1980, Quebec held a referendum about whether it should secede from the Canadian federal government or stay.

Literally thousands of people from all over Canada came to Quebec to plead with the citizens to remain part of Canada. I’ve heard the old radio news reports from that time, and people were actually crying, “Please don’t leave.” Many Quebecois were also crying, saying, “How can we consider this? What does it say to the rest of the world?”. Fortunately, the results were 60-40 against.

I can’t help but imagine that if Texas tried to do the same thing, millions of Americans would show up saying, “Please! Do it! Leave and good riddance!” OK I was being a smart-ass with that one, but I think you’ll understand my point. Canadians seem to like other Canadians more than most Americans like other Americans, even when they’re French.

Summary: Canada is very White, its culture is Western European, and the people who emigrate to it seem to acknowledge and appreciate that, as such, it is a much better place to live than wherever they came from. Canada is a clear example of the superiority of Western Culture and the benefits of White Rule.

Religion

Yes, we have it here. I see churches all over the place, especially in Alberta, which I believe boasts more churches per capita than any other province (once again, proof that Alberta secretly wishes it was the 51st State of the US).

However, there is much less “religion” here. It is not part of the political conversation and seems rarely, if ever, to be part of polite conversation. Alberta is the province which boasts the most Evangelicals, and it’s the only one where I’ve seen occasional billboards in rural areas featuring Right-To-Life slogans.

However, when I tried to call the 800 number on one to tell them to suck my dick, the number was disconnected, and the website on the sign no longer existed; that’s the degree of religious fervor out here. In Nova Scotia, I did see an anti-abortion protest outside of a hospital: Two old ladies in camp chairs watching a portable TV on an ice chest, their picket signs leaning against the fence behind them as people walked by in both directions.

Summary: In Canada, religion is essentially no one’s business but their own, so shut the fuck up, and please don’t block the sidewalk.

Guns, Crime and Violence

Guns are not banned in Canada; they are regulated and controlled. Allow me to slack off for a second and quote a Wikipedia article for a brief historical background:

Registration of firearms in Canada has been an issue since the 1930s when the registration of handguns became mandatory. Over the past few decades, legislation had become increasingly restrictive for firearm owners and from 1995 until 2012, all firearms were required to be registered. As of April 6, 2012 the registration of non-restricted firearms is no longer required in any province or territory, except for Quebec, pending litigation.

Systematic auditing and criminalization of firearm owners and sports is implemented and enforced in most of Central Canada, and to a lesser extent, in Western Canada (in most cases firearm ownership regulations vary slightly in different provinces and territories, where some provinces have decided to mandate their own laws, such as the Quebec Law 9 course, which is mandatory for all owners of restricted firearms).

The Criminal Code of Canada provides recognition of self-defense with a firearm; The Firearms Act provides a legal framework wherein an individual may, acquire/possess and carry, a restricted or (a specific class of) prohibited firearm for protection from other individuals when police protection is deemed insufficient.

This situation is extremely rare, as evidenced by the fact that the (publicly available version of the) RCMP Authorization To Carry application refers only to protection of life during employment that involves handling of valuable goods or dangerous wildlife.

In short, you can have a gun if you have a good reason for it. “Personal protection” and just being afraid the government is going to show up and shove you in a FEMA trailer for re-education are not considered valid reasons. It is a matter of record that Canada’s rates of homicides and suicides using guns have further decreased as more and more restrictions have been put into place.

This has not eliminated crime, but it has clearly mitigated it. I’d rather have a guy come at me with a knife than a gun even if I’m similarly armed any day – I don’t know about you. To anyone in the US who maintains that lower violent crime can be achieved through an “armed society”, you need only look to Canada to see how absolutely shit-brained-stupid that is.

Canada has crime though. People get their cars stolen, there are rapes, there is drunk driving – all the usual. Canada even boasts some celebrated serial killers as well. Most Canadians do lock their doors when they leave for work and when they go to bed, despite what Michael Moore might want you to believe.

The difference between Canada and the US in this regard is the crime per capita. In a city as big as Calgary (approximately 1.4 million), which is about 30 minutes from me, the amount of crime compared to a similar-sized US city is ridiculously lower. There isn’t even as much trash on the ground. I’m not kidding – same goes for the rest of what I’ve seen of Canada.

What doesn’t exist are gangs to any great degree. In Vancouver you have some Asian gang stuff, some minor shit with Russians and some others in Toronto and Quebec, but nothing even close to what you have in the US.

Another thing I’ve noticed is the role of the “career criminal”.

In the US, being a criminal is an actual occupation for many, one which they pursue with great professionalism and acumen.

In Canada, most of the criminals I’ve seen and read about are basically stupid assholes. They steal some shit, maybe sell some drugs, and they get caught.

This one idiot drug dealer in Halifax lived in a trailer park, yet bought a bright yellow Hummer and parked it out front. After a few stray bullets zipped through his neighbors‘ homes courtesy of a rival “drug kingpin “ (yes, this is how the local news referred to him), the cops pretty much figured out that if they nabbed the guy in the yellow Hummer at the bridge toll-plaza, they’d get some answers.

Random acts of violence occur. Guys get dumped and kill their ex and her new boyfriend; a middle-aged loser who’s sponging off his grandmother’s pension checks decides he can smother her with a pillow and pretend she’s still alive; some guy hears Satan tell him he can fuck Avril Lavigne if he kills his whole family in their sleep, and so on.

But to be honest, most random, violent crimes I hear about around my neck of the woods, few as they are, involve immigrants. You can take the boy out of Viet Nam, but if you smile at his girlfriend during lunch time at the meat processing plant, he just might shove a fork in your neck.

The cops here are actually nice, at least the ones I’ve met. You’ve got your Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP’s), which function as the equivalent of the FBI and State police in provinces without a provincial police force (unlike Ontario or Newfoundland), the city police forces and the “peace officers” who enforce by-laws and do not carry weapons.

The only times I’ve dealt with cops, whether local or RCMP, they have said, “Hey, how’s it going,” introduced themselves and shook my hand, then calmly figured out what was going on. No twitchy hyper-vigilance, no hand on the gun as they approached. I’m guessing they may be a little different in the metropolii, but still, you don’t get Rodney King situations here.

If called to a bar in response to a complaint of a disturbance, a Canadian cop is more likely to say, “Hey, I think your friend’s a little drunk, why don’t you take him home?” as opposed to calling in six cars for backup and making the entire place lie face down with their hands behind their heads.

There are occasional stories of abuse, and there was a spate of deaths caused by tasering, but generally, since everyone doesn’t automatically hate them and want them dead, I think the cops are a bit more relaxed and less concerned with being intimidating. They are, after all, just guys trying to do their jobs, and I get that most Canadians understand and appreciate that.

Despite the fact that they seem less violent as a culture, do not make the mistake of thinking Canadians are pussies. Canadians drink, and they also fight. Hockey, the world’s most violent sport is, after all, a Canadian invention.

The difference, though, is the absence of ubiquitous and constant belligerence. If I go to a crowded concert or sporting event in the US, it’s a safe bet there will be more than one fight. My ex-roommate’s best friend from Northern California was jumped and had his brains beaten after a Dodgers-Giants game in LA; it put him in a coma, and he’s barely escaped being a vegetable.

It would be impossible to me to conceive of that happening here and actually is impossible to any Canadians I’ve spoken with about it. Can Canadians hold their liquor better, or are they just generally less angry, violent and belligerent? Maybe a little of the former and a lot of the latter.

Summary: Less guns, garbage, crime and violence, nicer cops, fewer incarcerated citizens and far less anxiety as a whole.

Weed

I smoke a lot of weed. I have been doing so for over 35 years. In Canada, medical marijuana is federally legal, but I can’t just go to a podiatrist and tell him I’ve been having trouble sleeping to get a license like in California. It requires multiple signed applications by several doctors and, like the gun licensing, the determining criterion is, “Why do you need it?”. Unfortunately, mild insomnia isn’t considered a valid reason.

Things like rheumatoid arthritis, cancer and serious medical conditions which require pain management are generally what are required. Once licensed, it means you can go anywhere in the country without getting hassled; you can even walk through an airport with a sack in your pocket, provided you have your license on you. You cannot, of course, burn one in public (legally). You can also grow some.

Despite the fact that I must, then, smoke weed illegally, there are a couple of benefits to doing so in Canada. First and foremost is that I can get a half ounce of good smoke for 120 bucks. Second is that the general attitude towards marijuana law enforcement is pretty relaxed. In most metropolitan areas, it is considered of “lowest priority,” officially, when it comes to enforcing pot laws.

In Vancouver, there are Amsterdam-style cafes where everyone’s smoking weed, and the cops leave them alone. In the case of illegal grow-ops, though, or significant trafficking, the cops, understandably, do not look the other way. But as far as normal people getting high and not causing any problems, the worst they usually do is take it away from you, tell you to “watch it”, and maybe smoke it themselves after work.

For the record though, Harper and the Tories have stated unequivocally that marijuana will not become legal as long as they are the majority. Fuck the Tories.

Summary: Canada’s a cool place if you smoke weed; just remember it’s still illegal (technically).

Civil Liberties

Gays can marry here – it’s been legal for quite some time – and, despite that fact, they are not running around having anal sex in the streets. Pre-employment and random drug screenings are forbidden as unconstitutional, yet people aren’t snorting coke at work or showing up baked to the gills.

Women can get abortions, and their health care covers it, yet there is not an epidemic of female promiscuity (much as I wish there were). Prostitution is, by certain definitions in certain areas, basically legal, or at least not criminal. Even the age of consent is much lower in some provinces, yet teenaged girls are not being incessantly fucked to death and discarded by middle-aged men.

The guiding principle behind Canada’s attitude towards civil liberties seems to be, “If they’re not hurting anyone or causing a fuss, leave them the fuck alone, it’s none of your business.” Pierre Trudeau wisely stated that the government has “no place in our bedrooms, period,” and he was agreed with by even the most right-wing politicians at the time, eventually.

I laugh my ass off every time I hear some Republican or Libertarian troll threaten to “move to Canada” if Obama gets re-elected. Not only would they not be issued a visa for such reasons, if they were, they would be forced to live in a place where fags can teach their kids, sluts can get abortions, niggers can get decent jobs, hippies can smoke weed and people claiming God speaks to them are not only banned from public office but they’re quite often placed under psychiatric observation.

Summary: I think my freedoms are more well-protected here than in the US.

Language

Canadians do not say aboot. Most commonly, the ow diphthong, which is broken down into the phonemes a (like cat) + oo in US English (and every English dictionary), is very often pronounced eh-oo in Canada, similar to how the Irish pronounce it.

In Atlantic Canada, it is common to hear the diphthong pronounced oh (I had a boss who actually spelled couch as coach because that’s how he pronounced it). They also usually pronounce sorry as soar-ee, been as bean, produce (n.) as prah-duce, project as proh-ject, process as proh-cess, schedule as shed-jule, missile as miss-isle and a slew of other British pronunciations.

What drives me nuts though is their insistence on pronouncing virtually any a they see as the short a in cat. It’s difficult for me to represent graphically, but go ahead and say to yourself the following words with that short a and see how lame it sounds: pAsta, tsunAmi, drAma, mAzda. Ugh. Sonically, it makes me fucking cringe.

And I know it’s a matter of taste, but to me, mispronouncing names and proper nouns from other languages in that fashion just seems ignorant. I guess that’s a vestige of the famous British contempt for other cultures giving a last, dying twitch.

I have adopted the Canadian forms of spelling; I think it’s cool. They use the British forms here almost exclusively: colour, centre, defence, and so on. They do not use the spelling aluminium. They do, however, use the silent h in herb.

But while Canadian spelling I may have adopted, most of Canadian pronunciation I have not. The exception is when I play “I’m pretending to be Canadian.” I have at various times when doing this been pegged as a Maritimer (someone from Atlantic Canada), since I have a good grasp of the accent and “isms“ I absorbed while in Nova Scotia.

Though I am functional in French, I rarely have occasion to use it. Canadian French, though, is far more dissimilar to its parent than Canadian English, and volumes could be written about Francophone (French-speaking) culture in Canada, and I haven’t enough experience to do so with any credibility or thoroughness.

Summary: Someone could drop you in the middle of any major Canadian city outside of Quebec in your sleep, and it’d take you a bit to realize, just hearing people speak, that you weren’t in the US.

Civility

This is, to me, the single most important difference between Americans and Canadians, and I believe this trait informs all the positive ones I’ve previously outlined. Canadians are civil. They are brought up holding doors for other people, apologizing if they think they’ve offended or been a nuisance and just in general trying to be kind and decent to everyone else, even if they don’t like them.

The concept that your negative personal feelings towards others should not inform your actions towards them, that it’s right and beneficial to society to be polite to everyone regardless of whether you hate their guts or not is so obvious to them that it doesn’t bear mentioning.

Canadians’ default mode is “nice”. When in doubt, just be nice. Don’t understand something? Be nice and ask what someone meant, don’t just immediately go “Oh, yeah? FUCK YOU!” and start swinging if you aren’t sure whether you’ve been insulted or not.

Canadians don’t automatically assume the worst motive for the actions of others. If a guy’s going off and making a fuss about something, the first thought is usually, “Wow, he must really be having a bad day.” One of the keys to civility is cutting each other some slack, being easy on each other, at least the first couple times.

Canadians seem much better at this “a mile in my neighbor’s moccasins” philosophy than most Americans. They’ve been inculcated with good behavior through example; they don’t even think about it. As a result, even the immigrants get in on it within a generation.

Of course, there are those who recognize this tendency towards civility and understanding and try to subvert it for their own purposes. These types will invariably either adopt a disingenuously oblivious mien (“Oh, did I cut in front of you? Gee, didn’t see the end of the line.”) or will behave blatantly aggressively in the hopes of causing others to back down and avoid any type of confrontation, something that seems bred into most Canadians from birth.

I am at times frustrated by what I sometimes perceive as a pathological need to avoid confrontation of any kind. I see people allow others to take advantage of and inconvenience them without saying anything, and it pisses me off.

Some ass-wipe the other day at a movie theater, in which one joins a single line while waiting for the next available cashier, was standing near a particular window which looked as if it would free-up next, clearly intending to head straight for it while avoiding the line.

I, of course, ever-vigilant to such things and being a self-appointed Guardian of Civilization and Warrior against the Americanization of Canada, moved forward immediately when the register became available, shoving in front of the asshole and saying, “I was here first. The line’s over there.”

He muttered something under his breath as he walked to the line. Coincidentally, he was quite swarthy and spoke with a thick Middle-Eastern accent. Fuckers who style themselves “wolves among sheep” in this country fill me with cold rage. Despite the fact that your average Canadian finds my attitude and actions inappropriate, I will gladly suffer their disapproval, kinda like Batman has to.

Canadians are also far more respectful, in general, of people’s privacy. I hear less gossip and less mean shit behind people’s backs than I did in the States. People don’t pry as much, they aren’t as obsessed with going through your laundry, and are far less likely to share something private they may have learned about you.

For example, I was a porn actor in the US for a time; I got some press, and my stuff shows up on cable every now and then (gotta love Canadian cable; when they show porn, they leave in the penetration), so I am infrequently recognized.

A guy I worked with, when I confessed about my former occupation after having known him a few months, told me he already knew. When I asked why he didn’t tell me he knew his response was that if I’d wanted him to know, I would have told him, and it was none of his business.

In a similar situation in the US, a guy I worked with was so excited to know that he told everybody I worked with, including my bosses, and from then on, every time I spoke with them, though they never let on they knew, there was this weird awkwardness, like they couldn’t look at me without seeing me naked.

On the flipside, an Iranian immigrant kid I was in training with at this call center in Halifax sat down next to me one day, grinning. “Hey, hey, do you have tattoo? Show me”.

I lifted my sleeve and showed him, and he all-but shouted “Ha! I knew it! I see you, I see you on TV!” I convinced him to keep his mouth shut, but I’d catch the weird little fucker staring and grinning at me from across the room fairly often, and he’d give me the thumbs-up if I looked up at him.

Summary: The more civil you are, the better everyone gets along and the better your civilization.

In Closing

A banking system under control, sane gun laws, lower crime, universal health care, a thriving middle class, no illegal immigration problem, cheap weed, way less garbage all over the place, fewer assholes per capita, a strong federal government with excellent social programs…isn’t this sorta what Obama’s America would look like?

Are Asian Women Nicer Than American White Women?

Bhabi wrote:

I hear that White American men have a huge fetish for East Asian women and looks wise I don’t get it, though there are some very pretty East Asian women, I think the American men just expect that they are in general “nicer” than White American women, and who knows, maybe they are, but somehow I doubt it.

Asians, and that includes South Asians like my people too, are more upwardly mobile obsessed than Americans and can be totally merciless gold and status diggers.

Pick your poison, boys!

Oh Hell yeah!

Asian women are way nicer than White American women! If you get with an Asian chick from another country who has no money (makes an average salary in that land) she will not be a gold digger at all. You will seem like a millionaire to her anyway even if you are poor.

Asian-American women, it is true, can be merciless gold-diggers. They are extremely materialistic to the point of insanity. My brother married a Vietnamese woman who is an outrageous gold digger. Her gold digging is so out front that it would seem offensive to most Americans. She’s into MONEY bigtime.

Jewish women have a reputation for being gold diggers, but it is not that well earned. Instead, they badger and pester you to be successful and make money. Not that they marry for money per se. A lot of Jews are kind of nerdy, leftwing and not particularly materialistic types nowadays.

Hispanic women are very low on the materialism scale. Especially if you get one from overseas, she will think you have a million bucks because she is just poor. Plus, Latins in general are more relaxed and not obsessed with money.

Hispanic women are also generally very nice and sweet, especially if you treat them well. But once they dump you if they think you mistreated them (as in cheating on them for example) they go cold as ice too just like Asian women. The legend of the hot and cold ranting and raving Latin bitch is in my opinion largely illusory.

I was hanging out with a Brazilian woman here in the US for a while, and she was friends with an older Brazilian woman. The young one, a 19 year old, basically cut it off with me for some reason that I don’t recall. The older one said something like, “Well, she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. We Brazilian women are raised not to challenge men or hurt men’s feelings. We avoid confrontations with me.” I thought, this is one cool culture!

American Indian women can also be pretty nice in a deferential sort of way.

I have known many, many Asian women, and especially immigrants are extremely nice, way, way, way nicer than American White women. They’re basically trained to be submissive and deferential to men and to not start shit with me.

All women must be like this!

I was involved with a Taiwanese woman at university, and even when she was being a total bitch, it was almost laughable, because her Taiwanese megabitch mode was about the same as how most White women act normally! As far as how White women get when they are bitchy, well, she just didn’t go there. I dumped her though and then she turned into an extreme hater evil Chinese Dragon Lady from Hell.

The coldest and meanest icewomen you have ever seen on the face of the Earth! I see why Chinese guys keep them under control! They have a hidden bitch factor that’s colder than the North Pole.

Is Morality Permanent and Inflexible or Temporal and Fluctuating?

Atheist Indian appears to take the philosophical stance that morality is permanent and for all time. The opposite position would be that there is no absolute morality (unfortunately!) but that morality instead is rooted in Time.

I would argue, flexibly, that morality is both absolute (to some extent anyway) and also temporal. That is, while people in the past may have done things that seem deplorable to us, at the time, this was in complete accordance with the morals of the time. So while they sinned, they really didn’t know better.

That is why witch trials and whatnot were unfortunate at the time but would be an utter outrage now, when we ought to know better and learned our lessons so to speak. The people of the past, morally, were as children. We don’t expect kids to embody the morals of a grown man or woman. Kids truly don’t know any better. As we grow and mature as individuals and as cultures, we become “better men” and are hence quite properly held to different standards.

Dota: “The Euro settlers were victims of their time, the Zionists were not. They had a clear moral choice and chose to disregard morality.”

AI: How do you justify that? The Euros had as much choice as the Zionists do. As GSG said, both were indoctrinated to believe that their point of view if just and fair.

The founders of the West were victims of their time because settler-colonialism, the White man’s burden and the need to colonize and pacify savages was in tune with the times.

Settler-colonialism in its most pure form ran out here in the US in the 1890′s. After that, little or no Indian land was stolen. The last Indian War that stole lots of Indian land was in California in 1890. I suppose it has continued and continues in some form in Latin America. One could also argue that it’s ongoing in Indonesia, India and lots of other places where the indigenous are having their lands stolen.

However, the Zionists engaged in settler-colonialism in 1947 in its most brutal form – conquest of the natives, theft of their land and stuff (even their houses and farms!) and on top of that, throwing the natives off the land with no right to come home again.

That’s much worse than was done to the natives even here. Sure, native land was stolen, but we also gave them a lot of free land to live on. If they ever get enough money, they can buy all their stolen land back! A lot of the stolen land was turned to public land, and Indians as well as everyone else can go use it anytime they want to.

Indians around here are not too angry about the stolen land thing. They didn’t have land ownership concepts anyway, so it’s arguable whether we even took it. Many to most Indians today continue to live on or near their ancestral lands, albeit on small lots. They didn’t really get thrown off their land and deposited in some foreign place with no rights to return, so a Palestinian analogy is problematic.

Certain things were products of their times. Columbus, burning witches, on and on, all such things are rooted in their times. It’s much more of a crime to commit these moral transgressions today when we know better and the moral climate is different than it was in the past when the moral weather was a lot cloudier.

At some point, the moral compass must change, and we must draw up new moral laws and a new Moral Disposition of Things. This is right and proper and is in accordance with the Marxist theory that humans move towards progress.

If humans evolve physically, theoretically we should also evolve morally and societally. Onward and upwards is a progressive creed. Only a reactionary says that what was ok in 1490 or 1890 is still ok today. This is one more reason why Zionism is inherently reactionary – the sins of the past are apparently operative for all time, at least as far as Zionists are concerned.

These things rightfully ought to be handled as they would be in a court of law. “But those guys used to do it a long time ago, and they got away with it,” won’t fly with any US judge, and properly so.

Law also exists in temporal space and thankfully not for all time. Like humans and societies, law also evolves, hopefully onwards and upwards if we are progressive people. If not, law reaches back towards an atavistic mirage (See American Constitutionalists and Islamic Sharia Law advocates).