DADDY DEAREST

I don't much like what genetics has to say about being a male. My growing disappointment sharpened when I read a 2003 paper in the “American Journal of Human Genetics”, which uncovered an “unusual linkage” on the MSY (the Male-Specific region of the Y chromosome) of some 400 million current male residents of Asia. They all share a distinct thousand year old chemical inheritance from an ambitious, foul tempered, cut throat, sex crazed Mongol named Temujin, AKA Genghis Kahn. Among the Great Ruler's favorite past times was killing his enemies and then “to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.” Through serial rape, Temujin scattered more sperm around than Secretariat. Genghis Kahn's successful evolutionary strategy was to treat women as if they were horses, and to treat horses as disposable breeding stock 

About 5,000 years ago, when traders first appeared in ancient Mesopotamia selling equines, the Sumerians had to borrow words from the Hittites to describe the beasts - calling them “akk asca”, literally “mountain asses ”. And as anybody who keeps horses can tell you, horses ain't cheap. They eat a lot and require a lot of land to run around on. By about 2,100 B.C.E., rich and royal Sumerian speakers were breeding horses to pull their war chariots. Horses were worth their weight in bronze for men like 20- something Shulgi, who became King of Ur in 2069 B.C.E.

The first bronze weapons were developed by the Elam people, Shulgi's southern neighbors, who lived on the Iranian plateau. Elam was lucky because their copper ore was naturally contaminated with arsenic, and it was the contamination which turned soft copper into harder bronze. But bronze also ain't cheap. Melting copper requires almost 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees C), which means burning a lot of wood. And trying to make the best bronze required technicians, and experimentation. When the Sumerians replaced the arsenic with tin, they produced a harder weapon, with which Shulgi could boast he “broke the weapons of the highlands over my knees, and in the south placed a yoke on the neck of Elam.”

Like a bronze age Donald Trump, the narcissist Shugli (above) described himself as “a horse of the highway that swishes its tail”. “Let me boast of what I have done!” And then he did. He claimed to be able to run a hundred miles, out fight, out quote, out cook and even out math everybody. “None of the nobles could write on clay as I could.” After he was dead his critics accused him of being “untruthful”. His claim to have defeated the Elam is instructive. Early in his reign, in 2065 B.C., he married his daughter to the governor of the Elam border town of Awan. Then when the locals overthrew his son-in-law in 2061 B.C., Shulgi crossed the border and sacked the town. But he did not linger, as Elam sent their own army to escort Shulgi home - thanks for the help, but really, Shulgi, don't do it again. And he did not, concentrating over the next forty years on expanding and defending his northern border. We read of no more boasts about beating the Elam. 

Curiously, our Temujin-want-a-be left no record of his sexual conquests. It was almost the only thing he didn't boast about. Maybe he was gay, or just sexually repressed, but Shulgi would not be a candidate for one of the three “fathers” of 64% of all living males in Europe. According to a 2015 study in the journal “Nature Communications”, a similar MSY mutation to the Asian G. Kahn one, indicates the first Euro Daddy Dearest was probably pater to the Vikings. About the same time a second Papa progenitor was spreading his sperm around the southern Atlantic coast of Europe, just before the last but not least forefather breeder-in-chief appeared in north-central Europe. And all these of guys throwing their sperm around correspond to the local arrival of bronze, and the use of war horses.

The latter study co-author, Dr. Chiara Batini, from the University of Leicester, explained the social-genetic implications. “We think that a social structure in which resources and power are more easily accessible to only some men may allow for a few paternal lineages to become very frequent in a short amount of time.” In other words, converging technologies created a few rich bronze age sires who controlled the sperm receptacles, i.e. women. Or, to the put this “jus primae noctis” in capitalistic terms, corporate management used unlimited secret political donations to create and protect tax loop holes for their bonuses, while preventing a raise in the minimum wage for the under classes. Do you detect that my Irish is up?

In truth the rise of Genghis Kahn had nothing to do with his sexual productivity, that was just a by product of his personal indecency. But you can't argue with success. And the name “Temumin” means “iron worker”, which was the next great technological advance after the invention of bronze. It was iron weapons that were the strength of “Harold Tangled Hair”, who, not long after the founding of the Mongol Empire, swore not to cut his own ginger locks until he had conquered all of Norway - which “Harold Fair Hair” then did, followed by the large scale forced impregnation of many of the females living in in Norway.

Those Nordic tribes not wanting to carry Harold's genes around, scattered across the North Sea, looking for a safe haven, freedom, and easy loot and rape victims of their own. Their Celtic victims called them Vikings, or “Sea Rovers”, and they reached as far west as Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, and as far south as Normandy, Scotland and northern Ireland, where Niall Noigialallach (above) - in English “Neal of the Nine Hostages” - carved out his Kingdom of Tara.

For centuries scholars insisted King Neal was mythological. Then, in 2006, geneticists at Trinity College in Dublin found yet another MSY marker in 21% of males from north west Ireland - the core of Neal's “mythical” kingdom - and in 8% of Scottish males, just across the 20 mile wide North Channel of the Irish Sea, where Neal liked to do a little raping, er, raiding. Some 3 million Irish and Scottish men with two dozen family names are members of the “Ui Neil”, descendents of the clearly non-mythical “most fecund man in Irish history”, Neal of the Nine Hostages.

An Irish bishop would later describe pre-Viking Ireland as “Rich in goods, in silver, jewels, cloth and gold”, which may explain in part the island's attractiveness to the randy pagan, who could claim 12 “legitimate” children. And then there are what Irish schoolchildren are taught were the offspring of Neal's “romantic conquests”. Odd how rape becomes less vile when described by the rapists. Consider the treaty Neal reached with the Airgialla tribe, ( literally the "hostage-givers"). Rather than fight a bloody protracted conquest of the Airgialla's Sperrin Mountains, known for their dreary weather, Neal agreed to respect the borders in exchange for one hostage from each of their nine clans.  And it seems likely to me that many of those hostages were women.

During one of his Scottish raids, legend says Neal captured a 16 year old Celtic boy of Roman heritage, and after transporting him back to Ireland, sold the young man into slavery. It was the kind of business the Vikings were famous for.  It seems Neal was just participating in Celtic and Viking tradition. For six years the captive labored as a stable boy, until finally escaping and stowing away on a ship back to Scotland. The young man returned to Ireland 10 years later as missionary, now named  Bishop Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.  Or so says the Catholic legend, which is at least as believable as the pagan ones. Legend also says that Neal, first High King of Ireland, died on one of his Scottish raids, murdered by his own son. Such was the barbarous tradition among the pagans (see Macbeth) , and the following Christian English Kings, (see Henry II and Richard I, Edward II, Richard III, etc, etc - basically anything by Shakespeare.)

But nowhere in any of these legends and history, does anyone get an opinion from the women. For that we are reduced to the next best thing – investigating the lives of living women. Sometime during their life time, 20% of all women will be raped, 1,300,000 American women during 2010 according to the Centers for Disease Control. According to the F.B.I., 90% of all American murderers are male. And of all those murder/rapists, how many carry the MSY markers from a Daddy Dearest? Genetics is not only who we were and are, it is who we want to be. And I don't want to be that. Do you?

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WHO ARE THOSE GUYS - The John Birch Society

I would not have gotten along with Mr. John Morrison Birch.  Probably, whatever your politics, neither would you.  One of his college professors described Birch as “a one-way valve; everything coming out and no room to take anything in”. Honestly I think the odds were pretty good that eventually somebody somewhere was going to shoot him for shooting off his mouth.  Politics had almost nothing to do with it.  It just so happened that John Birch was a human bull who finally met his china shop on a road in northern China, and that the hot head who pulled the trigger happened to have been a communist. It was just as likely the shooter would have been a Methodist or a Mormon, or even a pacifist.  He was human tick, an irritant. An annoying loudmouthed fool who eventually drove everyone who knew him, to want him dead.

“Oh, we're meetin' at the courthouse at eight o'clock tonight. You just walk in the door and take the first turn to the right. Be careful when you get there, we hate to be bereft. But we're taking down the names of everybody turning left. Oh, we're the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society. Here to save our country from a communistic plot. Join the John Birch Society, help us fill the ranks. To get this movement started we need lots of tools and cranks.” (lyrics and music by Michael Brown) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG6taS9R1KM

His commanding officer in the forerunner of the CIA, Major Gustav Krause, described the situation rather simply; “Militarily, John Birch brought about his own death.” Birch was a life long missionary on a military mission on 25 August, 1945, when he and a few other people ran into a patrol of Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army.  The commander asked Birch to hand over his revolver, and, surrounded by nervous soldiers, the other members of the group handed over their weapons. Birch decided to argue about it.  Eventually, embarrassed, frustrated and pissed off, the officer shot him. The other people were held for a few hours and then released unharmed. But the role of the missed opportunity for the application of common sense in John Birch's death did not stop candy-king Robert Welch from building an elaborate conspiracy theory around Birch’s death,

Welch, who never met John Birch, saw Birch as the first hero of the war against the international communist plan for world domination. Welch's vision of Birch as a hero evolved until it became a virtual black hole of paranoia and invective that eventually sucked into it everything Welch came in contact with, including the Republican Party, tooth decay, the Republican President and American hero Dwight David Eisenhower –whom Welch accused of being a “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy” - and, believe it or not, the entire state of Alaska.

I’m not kidding about the Alaska thing. Conservative deity William F. Buckley even mentioned it in a column posthumously published in March of 2008, entitled “Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and Me.”  In discussing how to distance conservatism from the John Birch Society, Buckley described Welch's belief that "the state of Alaska was being prepared to house anyone who doubted his doctrine that fluoridated water was a Communist-backed plot to weaken the minds of the American public.” I guess Alaska was supposed to be the new Texas.

The John Birch Society is and was part of a long line of paranoia  that stains the American psyche, from the anti-French and anti-Irish ‘Alien and Sedition Acts’ of 1798, through the “Order of United Americans”, the “Know Nothing Party”, the Immigration Restriction League, the anarchists scare, the “Yellow Peril”, the imaginary Pearl Harbor betrayal, the Black helicopters hiding in our national parks, the militia movement and the mythical bombs planted in the twin towers on 9/11. In fact the John Birch Society cemented all that lunacy together on a firm foundation of anti-Semitism and white supremacy. And this legacy of lunacy and head-up-your-exclusion-duct thinking officially began in Indianapolis on 9 December, 1958.

Robert Welch organized and financed that meeting. He could afford to do that because a fortune by selling “Sugar Babies”, “Junior Mints” and “Pom Poms” to children. And that wealth built on the little holes in children's teeth gave Welch the authority to lecture to 12 true believers for two days straight, about the worldwide communist conspiracy to steal Welch's millions by inventing the myth that fluoride prevents tooth decay, much in the same way that "liberal environmentalists" have invented the myth of global warming to steal the Koch brothers billions.. 

That day in Indianapolis, Welch spewed out such run-on gems of wisdom as, “When Woodrow Wilson, cajoled and guided...by the collectivists of Europe, took us into the First World War, while solemnly swearing that he would never do so, he did much more than end America's great period of happy and wholesome independence of Europe. He put his healthy young country in the same house, and for a while in the same bed, with this parent who was already yielding to the collectivist cancer. We never got out of that house again. We were once more put back even in the same bed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, also while lying in his teeth about his intentions, and we have never been able to get out of that bed since.”  You might notice a disturbing repetition of bed and parent analogies throughout Welch’s theology, whether the parents and commies are in the bed or under the bed, alone in the bed or sharing the bed, there are a lot of beds and parents and Commies. And cancer - he refers to cancer a lot.

Warned, Mr Welch, “…both the U.S. and Soviet governments are controlled by the same furtive conspiratorial cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians. If left unexposed, the traitors inside the U.S. government would betray the country's sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist New World Order, managed by a 'one-world socialist government.'” Did I mention that the John Birch Society was anti-Semitic?  Ayn Rand, no Semitic lover herself, complained, “What is wrong with them (the JBS) is that they don't seem to have any specific, clearly defined political philosophy.”  She might have been talking about the Tea Party, who, in fact, were encouraged and funded by the JBS - or Donald Trump., whose politics are a sort of slow thinking man’s Klu Klux Klan, while the KKK remains a sort of the idiot's version of  the John Birch Society.

In 1966 the New York Times described the John Birch Society as “…the most successful and 'respectable' radical right organization in the country”, which, if you think about it, is the equivalent of being named Miss Congeniality in a mental institution -  she even brings smiles to the invisible people.  Robert Welch died in 1985 and his creation is now watched over by the Koch brothers, whose father Fred attended the very first meeting of the Society.  He funded the group for many years. Each year the John Birch Society continues to produce cadres of indoctrinated Johnny Apple Seeds like Steve Bannon,  planting fear and ignorance in every dark nook and cranny where it might take root – sort of like tooth decay.  And they have now taken over the entire Republican Party.

But the thing about Johnny Appleseed was that the all the apples which grew from his seeds were sour. Edible apples are possible only through a science of grafting – but then the John Birch Society never believed much in science - too many Jews.  Sounds like the Republican party today, doesn't it?

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THE NEED FOR SPEED

I believe the original source of the problem was the placid river. Stained with plant decay, the south branch of the Black River – and its tributary, Eastman creek - begins by slipping quietly from Great Bear Lake (above), in west central Michigan.

The stream meanders northward through gently rolling woodlands before pausing at Breedsville, where a mill dam provides the only sense of drama in its course. Once the middle and north branches join the south branch the river abruptly jogs back south 3 miles before slipping quietly into Lake Michigan at the port of South Haven.

In 1861 the channel at South Haven was dredged to a depth of six feet to accommodate lumber haulers. It was the lumber shipped through South Haven helped build the metropolis of Chicago across the lake. With the woodlands cleared, the land was converted to fruit orchards, to feed the newly built metropolis. To accommodate the fruit carriers, in 1867, a light house was built at the exit to the lake (above), and the channel at South Haven was dredged to a depth of twelve feet. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stopped there.

By the turn of the century, each fall steam ships would leave the docks at South Haven, their holds crammed with peaches, apples and blueberries. 

Not wanting to return empty, the shipping lines promoted South Haven as “The Catskills of the Midwest”.

By 1900 the returning ships were carrying 75,000 tourists a year to South Haven’s 215 hotels.

The town boasted theatres, a casino, an amusement park and public gardens.

And for 12 years the S.S. Eastland (above), plied her trade between South Haven (and other ports around the rim of Lake Michigan) and docks on the Chicago River, merely one of a fleet of lake steamers, narrow of beam and fast to carry freight and tourists, and always carrying in their design the legacy of the quiet, un-dramatic and shallow Black River.

The Eastland was built to fit the Black River. She was 265 feet long and only 28 feet wide. “Fully pumped out” she drew only 10 feet of water. Once christened in May of 1903, she quickly became the “Speed Queen of the Great Lakes”, able to slice through the water at over 20 knots. Speed was profit because it allowed the Eastland to make two transits a day between Chicago and South Haven.

However, during her first summer on the lake, while carrying 3,000 passengers, the Eastland listed so badly that during the winter of 1904 ballast tanks and pumps were installed to control her wild swings. But no gauges were installed to measure the tilt or the ballast. Worse, an extra deck and heavy air conditioning units were also added, making the Eastland’s narrow wedge shape even more top heavy. In 1906 her maximum passenger load was reduced again, to 2,400 souls.

And then, in April of 1912, the Titanic sank. One thousand and five hundred people died because there were not enough life boats on board. In America the legislative response was the Seaman’s Act of 1915, requiring a life jacket and a seat aboard a life boat for every single passenger. Installed on the Eastland, the new life boats and rafts added 14 tons to the upper decks.

Shortly after three A.M., 24 July, 1915, the Eastland tied up at the “Chicago and South Haven wharf”, between Clark and LaSalle streets, along Whacker Drive in downtown Chicago. Directly across the river was the Reid Murdoch office building, with its distinctive clock tower, the office windows looking down on the river dock. The Eastland was scheduled this day to be part of a three ship excursion flotilla taking Western Electric employees to Michigan City, Indiana for a company picnic.

Shortly after six A.M., as the sun rose into the cool morning air above Lake Michigan, the Eastland’s ballast tanks were pumped empty. At 6:30 passengers began to board the Eastland; most moved directly below decks to get warm.

Over the next half hour, as 50 passengers a minute boarded the Eastland, the ship began to list, first to starboard and then to port. Each time water was pumped into side ballast tanks to right the vessel. At seven A.M. the tug boat Kanosha cast a bow line to the Eastland. Five minutes later the Eastland’s engines were started. 

At ten minutes after seven the gang plank was closed. The Eastland had on board her full compliment of passengers, 2,400 souls.  At eighteen minutes after seven the operator of the Clark Street draw bridge informed the Captain of the Eastland that he was ready to raise the structure. The captain ordered the stern line cast off.  At twenty minutes after seven  the Eastland began to list so strongly to port that water began to pour into the ship. 

The Captain ordered the engines stopped. A crewman hit an alarm whistle. At twenty-eight minutes after seven A.M. the Eastland rolled over onto her port side. Her bow was still tied to the dock. 845 passengers, men, women and children were trapped below decks and drowned in 20 feet of water 20 feet from the dock. Many people above decks simply walked onto the side of the ship, and then crossed the Kenosha, not even getting wet.

Jack Woodford watched from an office building across the river. Years later he wrote in his biography; “As I watched in disoriented stupefaction a steamer large as an ocean liner slowly turned over on its side as though it were a whale going to take a nap…lashed to a dock, in perfectly calm water, in excellent weather, with no explosion, no fire, nothing. I thought I had gone crazy.”

Miss Ina Roseland told one of the Chicago newspapers, “My brother Karl and I were standing near the rail on a lower deck when the Eastland tipped over. I lost Karl as the boat carried me down, until I felt the muddy bottom….Then I began to rise...As I touched the slippery wall that was about me, my hand struck something soft…I screamed and felt myself fainting, but…(I) heard an answering shout. I could not believe my ears. It was my brother's voice. He told me to be brave; that he had come up in the state room next to me….

"Several bodies, all of them women or little girls, would keep knocking against me, however much I tried to climb higher. Then I heard the hammering and cluttering as the men worked to cut away the plates. 

As a piece came away a little light filtered through and as I started a prayer of thankfulness, it was choked in my throat, for it fell on the upturned staring faces about me…Brother Karl was there urging them on as I was pulled outside.”

From another Chicago newspaper appeared this tidbit. “Joseph A. Forrester, who holds a Mississippi river master and pilot’s license, declared the Eastland never should have been used for passenger service. Forrester, who is visiting here and was early on the scene, continued: “There were not enough holds below the water line. The Eastland was built too high. When she started listing nothing on God’s earth could stop her, because there was more above water than below, which is contrary to all ideas of boat construction.”

The Chicago Daily Herald recorded the story of Charles Williams who was crossing the Clark Street Bridge when the Eastland rolled over. “"I leaped into the water and the first person that I reached was a man who was choking and crying for help. I swam to him and when I came up to him he threw his arms around my neck in a death grip.

"I knew that the only thing to do was to shake him off…I came up behind him and hit him in the neck. He became unconscious and I swam to shore with him, where spectators on the dock helped me get him out of the water. Next I pulled out a young lady dressed in a pink suit. A patrol boat then came along and a man on it yelled to me that a young lady had just gone down for the third time at a certain spot. I dived, got her and took her to shore, where she, too, was revived…

"I swam to the Eastland and worked my way up on top of the hull, where I assisted four firemen in taking bodies out of apertures that had been chopped through several places. We took out at least fifty bodies, mostly women and children, although there were about a dozen men.”

The bodies pulled from the hulk of the Eastland were transported to a cold storage warehouse, which is now occupied by Harpo Studios, and contains the sound stage for the Oprah Winfrey Show. 

Six investigations were made into the Eastland disaster. No one was ever indicted, no one was ever convicted of a crime in this matter. A marker commemorating the Eastland disaster was not erected on the spot until 1989. The sinking of the Eastland remained the single worst civilian loss of life in American history until September 11, 2001.

In 1915 a Coroner Juries’ inquest came to the conclusion that, “…the steamship Eastland was both improperly constructed for the service employed, and improperly loaded, operated and maintained…”. The jury recommended that, “…the state's attorney and grand jury investigate carefully the condition of the construction of this boat, to ascertain if there can be found legal methods by which those responsible can be held accountable.” Eventually it was decided there were none.

As if suspecting that this would be the case, the cornor's jury also observed that, “…the federal government system of permitting the construction of vessels for use by common carriers is unscientific and a menace to the public safety. There is not now nor has there ever been an inspection service maintained by the federal government for the purpose of determining the stability of boats offered for passenger service. It is the judgment of this jury that the present method of determining the passenger-carrying capacity of vessels is not founded on any proper basis.”

http://www.eastlanddisaster.org/default.htm

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