Academic literature on the topic 'Pollen, Fossil – Western Australia, Southwestern'

The Proteaceae family is a large Gondwanan plant family with a major centre of richness in south-western Australia. Modern pollen–vegetation relationships in the two areas of species richness in the northern and southern sandplains of south-western Australia were investigated to calibrate fossil-pollen studies concurrently conducted on Eocene, Pliocene and Quaternary sediment. Results indicated that the Proteaceae component in modern pollen rain can be quite high, contributing up to 50% of the count. Some sites showed a dominant type (such as Banksia–Dryandra), whilst others had up to six different genera represented. Exactly how and when the biodiversity of Proteaceae in south-western Australia developed is unknown. This work provides a benchmark for comparisons with studied fossil material to unravel patterns of diversity of this family in south-western Australia.

AbstractA 5000-yr stratigraphic record containing fossil pollen, charcoal, and bones of the extinct Quaternary megafauna from Andolonomby, a hypersaline pond in arid southwestern Madagascar, shows evidence for climatic desiccation beginning about 3000 yr B.P. Pollen spectra shift at this time from primarily arboreal taxa characteristic of forests and woodlands of more mesic western Madagascar, to wooded savanna typical of somewhat drier localities. Between 3000 and 2000 yr B.P., the site became increasingly arid. Charcoal and pollen evidence indicates that increased fire and disturbance occurred at the site beginning ca. 1900 yr B.P., probably signaling the beginning of human settlement in the area. The fossil record suggests that various human and natural factors on the island may have interacted in the subsequent millennium to culminate in the extinction of the entire endemic megafauna.

Late Eocene proteaceous pollen assemblages of southern Australia containnumerous specimens of Conospermeae affiliation. As many of these aremorphologically confusing or nondescript, they have often been overlooked orgrouped within other fossil pollen species. In the western Eucla and MurrayBasins these fossil pollen types fall into two major categories: small speciesconventionally referred to unrelated New Zealand fossil taxa, and thoseincluded in Beaupreaidites elegansiformis Cookson 1950or Beaupreaidites spp. Integrated microscopy of singlefossil grains and a thorough investigation of extant Conospermeae pollen typesaided an investigation of the morphology and affiliations of these problematicgroups. Beaupreaidites elegansiformis was originallyillustrated by three dissimilar specimens, each from a different locality. Ofthese, two can be aligned with Beauprea Brongn. & Gris., and the other, the former lectotype, is an extinct form unrelated toBeauprea. The diagnosis ofBeaupreaidites Cookson emend. Martin is amplified;B. elegansiformis is emended and its lectotypesuperseded; B. orbiculatus Dettmann & Jarzen 1988 istransferred to Proteacidites; and five new species aredescribed (Beaupreaidites diversiformis,Proteacidites bireticulatus,P. carobelindiae, P. cirritulus,and P. marginatus).Proteacidites cirritulus can be positively aligned withpollen of the sclerophyllous genus Petrophile R.Br., inparticular with species now endemic to eastern Australia. The remainingProteacidites species, previously assigned toBeaupreaidites, were likely to have been shed by extinctproteaceous taxa closely allied to Petrophile. Therelative abundance of Petrophile-like pollen in thepalynofloras of the western Eucla and Murray Basins implies the presence ofsclerophyll communities akin to heath, woodland, and/or dry sclerophyllforests in coastal southern Australia during the Late Eocene. Fossilproteaceous genera are reviewed. The species referred here toProteacidites cannot be accommodated within any singlegenus as described in a recent revision of fossil proteaceous genera. Therehas long been quiet dissent among Australian Tertiary palynologists withrespect to revisions of fossil proteaceous genera and their subsequentinterpretation. Consensus, rather than individual determination and conflict,is overdue.

Cookson (1950) erected the fossil pollen genus Banksieaeidites to accommodate palynomorphs with characters resembling those of the extant Proteaceae genus Banksia. One of the most commonly reported species, Banksieaeidites arcuatus Stover & A.D.Partr., is now known to more closely resemble pollen of the Proteaceae subtribe Musgraveinae, than that of subtribe Banksiinae. The late Eocene Mulga Rock deposits in the southern Officer Basin of Western Australia have yielded palynofloras that contain up to 7% of two new species that can confidently be aligned with pollen of modern Banksia. Banksieaeidites davidsonii sp. nov. and B. rugulus sp. nov. are formally described, and pollen from eight extant Banksia are described and compared with the two fossil species. The variation in extant Banksia L.f. pollen morphology, and that between the two Banksia subgenera (B. subgenus Banksia and B. subgenus Spathulatae A.R.Mast & K.R.Thiele) are discussed, and the changes in the morphology of Banksia pollen grains as they mature are reported.

Australian sites that are claimed to preserve evidence of fossil spores and pollen for Late Neogene (Late Miocene, Pliocene) climates, mostly lack one or both of the prerequisites, i.e. accurate dating and continuous preservation of plant microfossils. Nevertheless, the available data confirm that climatic gradients closely parallelled those of the present day in direction although not in strength: broad-scale vegetation successions are ecologically consistent with long-term cooling and (middle to high latitudes) drying trends in global climate. Although it is rarely possible to establish precise meteorological values for the individual sites along these gradients, climatic envelopes can be estimated for many localities. For example, during the Late Miocene–Pliocene, mean annual precipitation along the northern margin appear to range from 600 mm to 1500 mm in the Kimberley region of north-western Western Australia to above 2000–3000 mm on the Atherton Tableland, north-eastern Queensland. If these and other estimates are correct, then environments along the northern margin show only gradual (unidirectional?) change or did not fall below biologically critical thresholds during the Late Miocene and Early Pliocene but began to approach modern values during Late Pliocene time. Whether the observation implies that meteorological controls at this time were similar to modern synoptic scale systems is unknown. Climates along the southern margin were more labile. For example, there is unequivocal evidence that Early Pliocene climates in the Bass Strait region were effectively more humid and warmer than at present, possibly resembling conditions now found on the northern New South Wales and southern Queensland coast. This phase was preceded (weak evidence) and succeeded (strong evidence) by less temperate conditions during the Late Miocene and Late Pliocene respectively. Forcing factors appear to include changes in relative sea level, orographic effects and, speculatively, remote events such as the isolation and reconnection of the Mediterranean Sea to the world ocean. One promising direction for future research is provided by a recently located onshore basin in Western Australia which preserves an extraordinarily long (100 m), detailed sequence of Late Neogene palynofloras.

Two new sympatric species of Caladenia from relatively inaccessible, high lateritic plateaux in a high rainfall area in southwestern Western Australia are described here as new to science. The species occur in a restricted area, c 100 km southeast of Perth, south of Dwellingup and northeast of Waroona. The two species co-occur and are associated with putative floral model species that they are mimicking. Caladenia lateritica mimics Conostylis setosa (Haemodoraceae) in terms of flowering time, height, colour and fragrance. Caladenia rosea mimics the flowers of Hypocalymma robustum (Myrtaceae) in terms of flowering time, colour and scent. We assume that these orchids share a pollinator with their mimics and attract the pollinator via food deception as the ‘hosts’ are sources of nectar and pollen for visiting native bees. Because the species co-occur and exhibit a remarkable evolutionary ‘arms race’, they would make an ideal model for further study of the processes driving sympatric speciation. Unfortunately, both new species are under threat from mining activities and poorly informed burning regimes.

Fossil pollen and spores in organic-rich sediments in a side gully in the Linda Valley, western Tasmania, preserve one of the most detailed records of a Late Pliocene flora and vegetation available to date in Australia. This includes Araucariaceae, Beauprea Brongn. & Gris. and a number of sub-canopy broadleaf trees now confined to warm temperate-tropical habitats. Changes in community dominance are interpreted in terms of alluvial events and point to the existence of altitudinally zoned plant communities in western Tasmania-Microstrobos J. Garden & L. Johnson heathland on the higher slopes and Nothofagus (Brassospora) Hill & Read-Lagarostrobos franklinii (J.D.Hook.) Quinn evergreen rainforest with or without Dacrydium Sol. ex Lamb. emmend. de Laub. at lower elevations. The evidence demonstrates the survival of Nothofagus (Brassospora) spp in western Tasmania at a time when other published data imply the taxon was virtually eliminated from the south-eastern mainland. It is proposed that increasingly seasonal climates drove an 'ecological wedge' into a former continuum of wet forest types along the east coast of Australia, with Plio-Pleistocene glaciation being ultimately responsible for the demise, of what had become relict populations, of Brassospora spp. in western Tasmania.

Fossil pollen and spores preserved in drillcore from both the upper South Alligator River (SARV) in the Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory and the North-West Shelf, Western Australia provide the first record of plants and plant communities occupying the coast and adjacent hinterland in north-west Australia during the Paleogene 66 to 23million years ago. The palynologically-dominant woody taxon is Casuarinaceae, a family now comprising four genera of evergreen scleromorphic shrubs and trees native to Australia, New Guinea, South-east Asia and Pacific Islands. Rare taxa include genera now mostly restricted to temperate rainforest in New Guinea, New Caledonia, New Zealand, South-East Asia and/or Tasmania, e.g. Dacrydium, Phyllocladus and the Nothofagus subgenera Brassospora and Fuscospora. These appear to have existed in moist gorges on the Arnhem Land Plateau, Kakadu National Park. No evidence for Laurasian rainforest elements was found. The few taxa that have modern tropical affinities occur in Eocene or older sediments in Australia, e.g. Lygodium, Anacolosa, Elaeagnus, Malpighiaceae and Strasburgeriaceae. We conclude the wind-pollinated Oligocene to possibly Early Miocene vegetation in the upper SARV was Casuarinaceae sclerophyll forest or woodland growing under seasonally dry conditions and related to modern Allocasuarina/Casuarina formations. There are, however, strong floristic links to coastal communities growing under warm to hot, and seasonally to uniformly wet climates in north-west Australia during the Paleocene-Eocene.

At the well-known fossil mammal locality of Fort Ternan in southwestern Kenya, radiometrically dated at about 14 million years old (middle Miocene), fossil grasses have been preserved by nephelinitic sandstone in place of growth above a brown paleosol (type Onuria clay). Large portions of grass plants as well as fragments of leaves have revealed details of silica bodies, stomates, and other taxonomically important features under the scanning electron microscope. The computer database for grass identification compiled by Leslie Watson and colleagues was used to determine the most similar living grass genera to the five distinct kinds of fossil found. Two of the fossil species are assigned to Cleistochloa kabuyis sp. nov. and C. shipmanae sp. nov. This genus includes one species from low fertility dry woodland soils of New South Wales and Queensland and a second species from “raw clay soils” in western New Guinea. A third fossil species, represented by a large portion of a branching culm, is assigned to Stereochlaena miocenica sp. nov. This genus includes five species of low-fertility woodland soils in southeastern Africa. Both Cleistochloa and Stereochlaena are in the supertribe Panicanae of the subfamily Panicoideae. A fourth species is assigned to Distichlis africana sp. nov. and provides a biogeographic link between the single species of this genus now living in coastal grasslands in southeastern Australia and the 12 species of dunes and deserts found throughout the Americas from Patagonia and the West Indies to the United States and Canada. A fifth species is, like D. africana, in the subfamily Chloridoideae, but its stomata were not seen and it could belong to Cyclostachya, Pogoneura, or Polevansia. This earliest known wooded grassland flora in Africa is taxonomically unlike the modern grass flora of fertile volcanic African landscapes, and may have been recruited from an archaic grass flora of Gondwanan desert and lateritic soils.

A cytological survey, using root tip mitotic cells and supplemented by some crosses and pollen fertility studies, was carried out on plants of 55 populations of the Australian annual Bulbine sernibarbata s.1. (Liliaceae). There are 4x, 8x and 12.x populations.The 4x forms are almost completely confined to eastern Australia and comprise populations of two kinds: (1) 28-chromosome types, corresponding in morphology to B. alata Baijnath, which to date has had limited taxonomic acceptance; (2) 26-chromosome types with the morphology of B. sernibarbata s. str. The alata form occurs in arid, the sernibarbata in more mesic, areas. The eastern 8x populations are mainly 2n = 54 and are intermediate between the other two taxa in both range and morphology. This suggests an allopolyploid origin based on hybridisation between the alata and sernibarbata types. The western 8x populations are nearly all 2n = 52, with much interpopulation variation in karyotype and a mesic distribution similar to that of the eastern 26-chromosome types. The karyotypic diversity parallels the species richness of other genera in southwestern Australia and indicates that the complex may be older than the corresponding polyploid complex within the perennial B. bulbosa s.1. The 12x (2n =78) populations are confined to arid and transitional rainfall areas of Western Australia. The identification of a distinctive 28-chromosome karyotype for the alata group gives support to the recognition of B. alata Baijnath, and, by providing a logical euploid bridge between the chromosome numbers of the African (2n = 14) and Australian species, strengthens the arguments for treating the two groups as congeneric.

South-western Australia is a globally significant hotspot of plant species diversity, with high endemism and many rare plant species. Proteaceae is a major component of the south-western flora, though little is known about how its diversity developed. This prompted the present study to investigate changes in the abundance and diversity of Proteaceae, in south-western Australia, by concurrently studying three sediment sequences of different ages over the Cainozoic and a modern pollen rain study. Modern pollen-vegetation relationships in the two Proteaceae species rich nodes of the northern and southern sandplains were quantified. It was found that Proteaceous genera can contribute up to 50% of the total pollen rain. Banksia/Dryandra pollen was the most abundant with Isopogon, Petrophile and Lambertia also commonly noted. The vegetation and environmental setting during three pivotal periods of the Cainozoic: Holocene, Pliocene and Eocene, were investigated. Eocene sediment from Lake Lefroy confirmed the presence of a Nothofagus dominated rainforest in the Middle to Late Eocene. At this time Proteaceae species were at least as diverse as today, if not more so, contributing up to a maximum of 42% of the total pollen rain. Taxa recorded included: Banksieaeidites arcuatus, Propylipollis biporus, Proteacidites confragosus, Proteacidites crassus, Proteacidites nasus and Proteacidites pachypolus. Several taxa remain undescribed and unnamed. This study also identified that Proteaceae pollen representation varies across small lateral distances. Thus as samples varied spatially and temporally, single core samples are not sufficient to identify spatial patterns in Proteaceae or other low pollen producing taxa. Some 7.91 cm of laminated Pliocene sediment from Yallalie, south-western Australia, was also examined. It covers 84 years of record and confirmed other regional reports that south-western Australia was covered by a rich vegetation mosaic consisting of heathy and wet rainforest elements. Although Proteaceae species were a consistent component of the pollen counts, diversity and abundance (maximum of 5%) was low throughout the studied section. Banksia/Dryandra types were most commonly noted. A 2 m core was retrieved from Two Mile Lake, near the Stirling Ranges and provided an early Holocene vegetation history. Geochemical and palynological evidence recorded little change, suggesting the environment of deposition was relatively uniform. Proteaceae species were noted throughout the core, though in low numbers, at a maximum of 3.5 % of the total pollen rain. Banksia/Dryandra was the most abundant while Isopogon, Lambertia, Petrophile and Franklandia were also noted. A regression model was developed through the modern pollen rain study to predict the number of Proteaceae in the vegetation. This was also applied to the fossil pollen records. The estimated number of Proteaceae species in the Eocene suggests a maximum of 20 and a minimum of 10 taxa. For the Pliocene record, an estimated 7 - 9 species was found and for the Holocene pollen, between 7 - 8 were present. Thus the Eocene was similar in Proteaceae diversity to today. The results from the Pliocene and Holocene suggest that Proteaceae diversity was lower than today. Findings of this research indicate that Proteaceae species are an important and consistent component of vegetation in south-western Australia over the Cainozoic. It is likely that both changing pollination mechanisms and changes in associated vegetation are important in the determining the dispersal of Proteaceaous pollen. By understanding how the vegetation has changed and developed in south-western Australia, present vegetation can be managed to include intra-specific variation and ensure the majority of species are conserved for present and future generations to enjoy.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.