“There is only one race: the human race.” -- Rita Levi Montalcini

     

I

Marking her 100th birthday, my 2009 translation of a manifesto by eleven Italian anti-racist scientists that begins with the words:

“There is only one race: the human race.”

These were the words of scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini (also attributed to Gandhi and Satyendranath).

My English translation (from a Spanish version) can be read below:

I.  Human races do not exist. The existence of human races is an abstraction that has come about from a false interpretation of the small physical differences that we feel we perceive. It comes from mistaken “psychological” associations: differences interpreted from a basis of secular prejudice. These abstract subdivisions are founded on an idea that humans are made up of groups that are, biologically and hereditarily, greatly varied.

This is pure invention that has always used arbitrary classification between men and women as better and worse and in this way discriminates against those at the extreme (always the weakest) after having blamed them for being the key to all evil in every moment of crisis.

  

II.  Humanity is not made up of large and small breeds. It is above all a network of connected persons. Certainly, human beings come together in groups of individuals, communities, ethnic groups, nations and civilizations. But this does not happen because we have the same genes but because we share life stories, ideas and religions, customs and behaviour, lifestyles and cultures.

These groupings are never established from the same DNA; in fact they are subject to profound historical changes. They are formed, changed, mixed, fragmented and dissolved with a speed that is incompatible with the lengths of times required by the processes of genetic selection.

 

III.  The concept of race has no biological meaning for the human species. Analysis of DNA has shown that genetic variation in our species – less than that of our ‘cousins’ the chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans – is represented above all by differences between people from the same population, whereas they are less than the differences between populations and different continents.

The genes of two individuals of the same population are, on average, slightly more similar than those of people who live in different continents. Precisely because of these small differences between populations even racist scientists never defined how many races make up the human species. They made estimates ranging between two and two hundred races.

 

IV.  There is a fake and deadly myth that has already been forged: the identification of the “Aryan race” with the image of a warlike people, the winners, ‘pure’ and ‘noble.’ Along with this, there is the theory that much of Europe, India and central Asia is the homeland of the basis of Ind-European languages.

History makes it apparent that it is extremely difficult to identify Aryans as a people in addition to the notion of an Indo-European language that stems from conventional classification. But on the other hand, modern archaeological data indicates that Europe was inhabited in the Palaeolithic era by a population of African origin and in Neolithic times other immigrants came over from the Middle East.

The foundation of present-day Italians is from the same southern African immigrants who today constitute the enduring fabric of life in Europe. Despite the dramatic originality of fascist racism the Italians allied themselves with the Nazi’s due to their identification with “Aryans.”

 

 V.  It is a legend that sixty million of today’s Italians are descended from families that lived in Italy a millennium ago. These same Romans built their empire by welcoming people from diverse backgrounds, giving them the status of Roman cives.

The phenomena of social and cultural mixing, which marked the history of the entire peninsula - also including Greeks, Jews, Africans, Hispanics and those seen as "barbarians" - produced the hybrid we call Italian culture. Even though they were dispersed throughout the world and living in small Italian states, Italians continued to be identified with this culture that was global, varied, humanistic and scientific.

 

VI.  There is no Italian race; there is only one Italian people. Italy was only unified as a nation in 1860. Many millions of Italian emigrants in the past often concentrated in foreigner areas. They were considered as, and are, Italian. One of our greatest assets is being mixed with so many people and our exchanges that "cross" physically and culturally.

"Purity of blood" and the "nobility" of the "Nation" have been ascribed to a country that has never existed. It has meant reducing the homogeneity of an alleged biological element in addition to the current populace of Italy’s thousand years of heritage and spreading of cultures.

 

VII.  Racism is at the same time both homicidal and suicidal. Empires became empires due to the coexistence of diverse peoples and cultures, and collapsed when fragmented. That has happened and is still happening in nations with civil wars. To cope with this crisis, they used minorities as scapegoats.

Racism is suicidal not only because it hits those belonging to different peoples but because it also strikes the same people who practice it. The trend of indiscriminate hatred that fuels racism is spreading infectious ideas about any “foreignness” or strange “otherness.” This comes from an increasingly narrow definition of "normalcy".

There are those that do not match up to standard human types. They are "out of line", the "mad", the "weak spirited," gays and lesbians, poets, artists, and alternative writers. All of them are attacked, though it is they who are actually allowed to live and incessantly transform mankind. Every living system is capable of continuing only if it is capable of change, and we, human beings, change with fewer genes and always more with the inventions of our generously disordered brains.

 

VIII.  Racism discriminates, denies relationships, and it introduces fear into various thoughts and behaviours. To defenders of the Italian race, Africa appears as a terrifying threat. The Mediterranean Sea simultaneously separates and unites. From this, the racists claim that there is no "common Mediterranean race."

To reject Africa even further, racist scientists put up a barrier against "Semitic" and "camitas". Science indicated that there is a clear distinction between the genetics of Mediterranean Europe (occidentals) and on the other side, Oriental and African. From the paleontological and genetic point of view the theory that earth’s people originate from Africa is absolutely proven: we are all together in a single race.

 

IX.  Italian Jews are both Jews and Italians. Like all migrant peoples (nobody migrates from free choice, but many do so from necessity) Jews have been spread across the World and have been part of diverse cultures. At the same time they have still retained their people’s identity and religion.

So as in the cases of the Armenians, or the same Italian immigrants: the same thing is happening with migrants from now: African, Filipino, Chinese, Arabs from various countries, peoples belonging to Eastern Europe or South America, and so on. All these people had the painful need to emigrate, but also the luck in the best cases, of enriching themselves by combining their culture with those who gave them hospitality. All were equally enhanced, and where possible, neither one nor the other cancelled out each other.

 

X.  The ideology of the racist bigot is based on fear of "disruption" of their own race. This is totally blind to the fact that many societies recognize that getting married outside their community, even with their own enemies, is fine because they know that partnerships are more valuable than barriers. In addition, human physical characteristics are altered a great deal by the particular living conditions, just as the psychological characteristics of peoples and individuals are not written in their genes.

Cultural mixing is the foundation and basis of hope for progress stemming from the European Union constitution. A racist Italy fragmented into "ethnic" separation, as has happened in the former Yugoslavia, would be devastating now and in the future.

The consequences of racism are the loss of culture and self-expression, homicide and suicide, fragmentation and implosion. These end results are uncontrollable because they are caused by an indiscriminate revulsion towards those who are considered the "other" and not "us".

 

Signatories:

Enrico Allevi, Professor of Ethics, Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Rome
Guido Barbujani, Professor of Genetics of Populations, University Ferrara
Marcello Buiatti, Professor of Genetics, University of Florence
Lauradalle Ragione, Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist, Perugia
Elena Gagliasso, Professor of Philosophy and Science of Living, University La Sapienza, Rome
Massimo Livi Bacci, Professor of Demography, University of Florence
Alberto Piazza, Professor of Human Genetics, University of Torino
Augustine Pirella, Psychiatrist, Co-founder of Democratic Psychiatry, Torino
Francesco Remotti, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, University of Torino
Philip Temple, Professor of Physiology, University of Torino
Flavia Zucco, Director of Research, Association President of Women in Science, Institute of Molecular Medicine, CNR, Rome

 

Original version of the Manifesto in Italian.

"Street photographer documenting Madrid's invisible population"

"When Michael Damanti, a photographer from the United States, moved to Madrid five years ago with his Spanish wife and two children he expected to make a bunch of new friends in the new city...

'In 2015 I was an outsider in this country, trying to learn the language and find work. A chance encounter soon changed that, forming the beginnings of a long-term photographic series about Romani population in Europe,' he told The Local.

'Walking home one day from another disappointing day of cliche photos, I came across a Roma Girl sleeping on the ground holding an old change cup. Her name was Sibella. I knelt down to take her photograph and as I stood up I noticed another Roma-girl walking right towards me saying, "What are you doing? That is my sister!" That was the day I met the "Cobadin-Girls of Sol".

“Over the next four years I met with them every day, carefully documenting their story and gradually becoming absorbed into their lives. We have been through births, deaths, arrests, fights and the day to day struggles we all endure.”

What he has produced is a remarkable set of photographs of a group of people who are at best invisible to society and at worst, the frequent targets of abuse.

At first, he approached them with handmade signs with witty slogans, such as 'freewifi' and '#Brexit: Keep calm and give me money' to replace the ineffectual ones they had written themselves.

“This was the way into their lives, I noticed their signs were incredibly long (5-6 lines) and 100 percent trite and boring.  No one was reading them. So I offerend alternatives, lighthearted signs with quick simple messages in English for the tourists. This began the friendship.”

Read more from Fiona Govan's article at the Local.es here.

"Women I admire" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

Neus Català

It took the love of an extraordinary woman for me to start becoming aware. Aware of the huge continuous struggle and achievements of women in a world that makes it all so much harder than it usually is for men.

The #MeToo movement was a badly needed poke in the eye for plenty of men, and I would include myself in that demographic of ignorance. 

I had the general opinion that my half of the species had evolved to be largely respectful and kind towards the other half, but it’s now as clear as the glass ceiling that I had overestimated male behaviour.

During Women’s History Month in March, I also started to think specifically about which individual women I have a strong admiration for or those that have inspired me. In the news very recently, there has been the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, teenage climate-crisis activist Greta Thunberg, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, as well as the youngest ever female US Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

They all have in common an energy, inner strength and brilliance that has been truly remarkable. These women offer great hope for the future in so many ways.

A bit further back in history, there were underrated figures, such as Mo Mowlam, who, working with a deadly brain tumour, was the UK government minister finally able to secure peace in Northern Ireland. (Her then Prime Minister Tony Blair recently completely neglected to include her vital role when he gave a public speech commemorating the 20th anniversary of these peace agreements.)

In the same area of study as the intellectual pioneer Ada Lovelace, there are many others who should be more well-known. Patri, an acquaintance of mine told me the other day about just one of these geniuses: Emmy Noether, a Jewish mathematician from the first part of the 20th century. Patri believes that in fact “most of what is done in the fields of modern physics and a huge branch of mathematics is based on something Noether came up with.” African-American Shirley Ann Jackson is another groundbreaking physicist who few outside the US would have heard of.

Closer to my own personal interests, I have been greatly touched by the work of writers such as Virginia Woolf, Helen Keller, Sylvia Plath, Joni Mitchell, Siri Hustvedt, Slavenka Drakulic and Joanna Bourke. Because of the quality of their work, these last three also deserve much wider recognition.

I also have a great respect for a black woman named Antonella Bundu (who has a Senegalese immigrant father) and is now running to be mayoress of Florence in the local elections at the end of this month. In an increasingly violent, right-wing part of Europe this kind of bravery and heart is both rare and wonderful.

But I don’t just admire women who are public figures. What about all the countless mothers, grandmothers, nurses, carers, teachers and women in the broader world of work who do what they do – and do it well – every day?

Sadly though, some are unable to fulfill their lives’ great potential and I cannot ignore this awful truth. Not long ago, a (male) friend sent me a poignant article that listed just eight young women aged between 16 and 27 who were killed by fanatical, extreme religious family members, all in parts of western Europe and the US. 

The reasons for their murders ranged from refusing an arranged marriage, to not covering their heads, to listening to American music, to getting a job. Here were true individuals. All died purely because they insisted on being themselves and to me, that too merits huge respect.

I would also acknowledge the life and recent passing of Neus Català, who will be well-known to many readers. Finally, I want to dedicate this article to all the victims of domestic violence across the globe.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2019.]

    

"Blurred lives" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

[Photo: Quim Puig]

Without barely noticing it, we are routinely doing two things (or even more) at the same time. 

I don’t mean having the TV on in our houses, as Juan Goytisolo called it, “Spanishing on” in the background like in a typical bar here.

What I continually notice is that our daily lives are an action movie of driving while texting, texting while watching TV, watching while screen-scrolling, scrolling while not listening to our companions.

Without questioning, our species silently changes what we do. Only 25 years ago, the phone had a fixed place in the hallway. Now it’s wherever we go. Some use it to shop at midnight or gamble and simultaneously watch sport. 

We experience a collective near-addiction to the stimulation that technology provides and this means that we are caught in our own man-made bubble of fixation, at work, at home and in between.

Piled on top of this, personal identities are more and more undefined. The more fashionable among us are flexitarian, pan-sexual. What was private is now openly public. We are selfie-supermodels: silicon titty down-shots and dick-picks for the under 30s. 

Even what was someone else’s body can now be yours. There are women you can find wearing hair extensions from an unknown Chinese stranger.

Some do the opposite and cling to identity. I’m my race, let’s leave Europe, get out of MY country, “walls are good things, barbed wire can be beautiful” says Trump, “eat my shorts” says Homer Simpson.

And who still has a 20th century-style job? The blurring of life-lines has of course crossed over into the world of employment. Oh, you’re a consultant? He’s freelance, she’s a temp/intern/trainee and that kid makes big money from playing computer games. The rest of them all have zero-hours contracts.

In fact at this moment in time, my own income comes from seven different sources. I’m a teacher/journalist/translator/author and occasional recipient of parental financial help...at age 50. 

I currently go to how many different work locations? 

Apart from my own home, which is also a workplace, the answer is: 10. That is over five days. Imagine, too, how many more it would be for a truck-driver, a Deliveroo bike-rider, a home-shopping deliverer or an Amazon door-to-door courier.

Added to creeping uncertainty and the old ways being so far gone, across this fragmented society there are “a million mutinies now,” as the author VS Naipual once wrote. 

To unconsciously fight against the disappearance of any real certainty in our lives, internal reactions are made into actions. Gay bashing, wife-bashing, woman-hating, immigrant-hating, Muslim-hating, Jew-bating, tail-gating, restaurant-rating, bomb-making, piss-taking, muck-raking, reality-faking. 

All with the momentum of a mudslide that doesn’t want to stop.

And what are we now scared of? Not the bullies. Plenty of people are frightened of the failed-economy’s victims. People with next-to-nothing: refugees, the homeless, beggars. 

We are not afraid of the unknown (giant multinational companies, faceless billionaires. They are all too abstract). We are fearful of The Other.

One of the ironies here is that as a result of this ‘loss of separation’ and things being so indistinct (possibly because of it) we are probably further away from each other emotionally and physically, even when we eat.

The French are continuing to be an exception to this trend but research has shown that more than one in five [British] families “only sit down to eat a meal together once or twice a week. 40% of them only sit down together to have a meal three times a week.” The average American eats one in every five meals in a car!

All this has made me tired now. I suspect you are too.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2019.]

"Brexit blues" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

[Protesters in London, January 2019. EFE] 

My wife and I are just a few weeks away from being what amounts to illegals in a country (in fact, an entire continent) where we have lived for the last 4,600 days.

Both of us having a British parent has meant that we’ve been able to have most of the rights and responsibilities of a European citizen and our (Australian only) teenage son has had no legal problem either.

With Brexit this is all soon to change for us and an estimated 308,000 Brits in Spain.

Another million or so across the rest of the European Union are set to face the same uncertain status unless the British government finally delivers on its promise to fully safeguard its passport holders living in the EU. 

Quite simply, there is growing alarm, anger and feelings of abandonment across this very disparate group of individuals.

But how and why did we get to this point in the first place?

It’s worth remembering that the cause of Brexit was an advisory referendum. 

It was a public vote called by former Conservative prime minister David Cameron more than two years ago. 

He made the referendum happen purely (in his mind) to prevent the growing popularity of UKIP (right-wing anti-Europeans) and to shore up his own leadership in a party with a range of strong opinions on Britain being an EU member.

Cameron did not design this referendum because of public pressure in the United Kingdom. 

In fact, only 37% of the voting population ended up choosing to cast their vote in favour of leaving, though this was almost 52% of the total vote.

As senior EU officials have in fact recently confirmed, Cameron believed that his then coalition partner, the Liberal-Democrats, wouldn’t agree to an in/out Brexit referendum. 

When Cameron won an election and then found himself governing without the Lib-Dems, his hand was forced by powerful elements in his party and the business sector, despite Cameron being publicly pro-Europe. Also mistakenly, he expected a victory anyway.

So, the awful mess we are in now was started by the Conservatives and is being continued to this day by the Conservatives. I am not going to talk about those who promoted Brexit with, what Donald Tusk rightly called “not even a sketch of a plan to carry it through safely.” 

I am not going to talk about the countless thousands of working people who have already lost jobs to Brexit-era closures and relocations, or about a likely 750,000 more unemployed to come.

I am also not going to talk about the loss to UK schools, hospitals and service industries of EU nationals, forced out by a government pursuing a “hostile environment” policy toward immigrants. 

I could also mention those Europeans who felt it necessary to leave Britain because of the greatly increased bigotry and discrimination against many of them that Brexit has unleashed.

Instead, I am going to identify the single biggest reason why the pro-Leave forces won the referendum. Apart from blatant lies, scaremongering and running a campaign that spent illegally, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and others took clear advantage of their own government’s austerity policies.

Massive social welfare cuts, hospital privatisation, school budgets slashed, starving local councils of funding and large scale vital infrastructure being left in ruins. 

All this together created sections of the country who were itching to make a protest vote and punish the government, Europe, immigrants: these were who Leave leaders identified as being at fault for what was in reality the everyday results of the harshest forms of austerity. 

This was why Britain needed to “Take Back Control”. This finger-pointing was enough. That simple slogan.

And now today, look at the result.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2019.]

In Catalonia: "Major rise in politically motivated hate crime"

"The number of incidents of politically motivated discrimination reported to the police has shot up in Catalonia, rising to 121 cases last year (of a total of 393 reports of hate motivated offences) compared with 54 in 2016. 

The 124% increase is attributed to “the major politicisation of a part of Catalan society” arising from the independence process, according to the prosecutor for the Hate Crimes service in Barcelona, Miguel Àngel Aguilar.

Aguilar yesterday pointed out that political affiliation is the second most important motive for hate crimes in both police and judicial reports. Of the 291 legal cases begun in 2017, some 59 were politically motivated. This number is greater than the record number of 35 politically motivated hate crimes in November 2017.

The main causes for discrimination offences in Catalonia are ethnic (34%), followed by political (31%), with sexual orientation (22%) coming third.

The prosecutor also pointed to a rise in discrimination against the Muslim community, a rising trend in recent years, and one that spiked following the terror attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils last August.

Injury and threats are the main offences committed, with discrimination a growing problem. Most of these offences are committed in person (87% of cases), followed by those on social media (8%) and then the internet (5%)."

MAYTE PIULACHS - BARCELONA IN catalonia today news (from el punt avui.)

"In Spain, there is a fear of talking about race"

[Photo by Maité Escarria and courtesy of Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio. Used with permission.]

Journalist Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio talks about racism and Afro identity in Spain...

"Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio is a journalist from Spain, the city of Madrid to be more exact. She is the daughter of a woman from Segovia, Spain and a man from Niefang, Equatorial Guinea in central west Africa.

Among other things, this multi-faceted reporter has published a Spanish-language novel titled “The Women Who Dared” (“Las que se atrevieron“), collaborated with multiple organizations such as Global Voices‘ partner Afroféminas, an online community for Afro-descendant women, and runs her own YouTube channel.

Global Voices spoke with Mbomío about her contributions to the fight against racism in the context of Spain, her thoughts about blackness, and her work as an activist.

Global Voices (GV): What are the risks or challenges of embracing the Afro or black identity in a society like Spain?

Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio (LM): In Spain, there is a fear of talking about race (acknowledging that races, from a biological perspective, don't exist and are a socio-economic construct), or let's say of dealing with certain topics that are uncomfortable or that, as photographer Rubén H. Bermúdez would say, ‘prove to be awkward,’ among other things, because it's assumed that it's something bad.

So it's not uncommon to hear phrases like ‘I'm not racist, but,’ as if that preamble were to invalidate the racist remark that usually follows.

For this reason, Mbomío says an important part of the fight against the injustices caused by racism depends on making the discrimination visible. And that in turn largely depends on the spaces in which those affected by it can be heard:

LM: Not long ago, Luis Castellví, a professor at Cambridge, wrote in an article: ‘For the white majority of Spain, racism is invisible, just like male chauvinism is for certain men, homophobia is for many heterosexuals, and a big etcetera. But obviously that doesn't mean that these kinds of discrimination don't exist. To know how much racism there is in Spain, the minorities who are affected and those who live with them must be given a voice.’

Well, this is what often happens in this society, that various -isms are discussed by those who have the privilege of not experiencing them and when we, the affected, offer an opinion, we are automatically accused of having a victim mentality without the understanding that listening to us is an opportunity to alter behaviors and, therefore, to contribute to the improvement of a country that we too belong to."

Read more from Sandra Abd'Allah-Alvarez Ramírez' original article at Global Voices here.

"Competing for victimhood: Why eastern Europe says no to refugees"

[Slovenia, 25 October 2015. Photo: Janossy Gergely / Shutterstock.com. Source: Shutterstock]

A thoughtful and balanced piece of writing from Slavenka Drakulic that helps explain bigotry in that part of the world...

"The constant meetings of EU leaders concerning the refugee crisis in Brussels have not so far yielded any solutions. Decisions and documents, yes, but the question remains how many of these are going to be implemented in reality. One of the reasons is that former communist states in eastern Europe are more or less openly defying a common approach, in particular the sharing of the burden of refugees through quotas.

Until recently it seemed that eastern and western Europeans were getting closer, that the new EU member states were slowly adapting to western democratic standards not only in form, but also in practice and mentality. 

But the refugee crisis has demonstrated how deep the division among Europeans still is. Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia reject quotas, Bulgaria was first to build a fence along its border with Turkey, Romania is not offering refugees safe havens either, and Slovenia and Croatia claim lack of capacity, while also lacking the will to keep them. 

It looks as if Poland, with its newly elected government, will reinforce this defiance. Not to mention countries outside the EU: if Serbia and Albania are willing to perhaps show a kinder face to refugees while guiding them towards western borders, it is with an eye on possible membership of the Union. Macedonia is in the worst situation, penniless, overrun and desperate. It is obvious that these states are not very eager to, or capable of, demonstrating solidarity, to say the least." 

Read more from source at Eurozine here.

"'Swindler' Gypsies slam Spain's new dictionary"

 

[Two members of Spain's Gypsy community cast their ballots in European Union elections in 2009. 

File photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP]

"Roma rights groups are to protest against the decision by Spain's Royal Language Academy (RAE) to include a definition of a 'gypsy' as a 'swindler' in their new official dictionary..."

Read more from source here.

"I don't think,...therefore I am" - My latest article for Catalonia Today magazine

"Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars."

This is "probably a true statement" according to one in four people across the entire planet, a recent global survey has found.

It would be easy to dismiss these kinds of stereotyped opinions as the ill-informed ignorance of a small minority, except that nearby events of the last few months show that discrimination and prejudice of many kinds are seemingly much deeper and more widespread than we might like to think.

At a Brussels Jewish museum in May a lone gunman shot dead three people, including two Israeli citizens on holiday. Only hours later, two Jews were attacked and beaten in Paris as they left a suburban synagogue.

In fact, following from another public slaying of three Jewish children and a Rabbi in Paris in 2012, more than 1,400 Jews left France to live in Israel in the first three months of this year, now making it probable that 2014 will see the biggest exodus of French Jews to Israel since that country was established in 1948.

The results from France's municipal elections in May seem to prove that getting out of the "land of liberty, fraternity and equality" is a prudent decision for those minorities without that promised equality.

The far right National Front party there has just received it's best ever voter support in municipal elections and actually won the European Parliament elections with 25% of the vote.

Further East the situation is also disturbing.

In the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Jews leaving their local synagogue were handed leaflets from the new pro-Russian military that ordered them to pay a fee and register their property. They were threatened that failure to comply would lead to their assets being confiscated or even deportation.

One resident of the city said that she had never experienced anti-Semitism until she saw the leaflet but it reminded her of when the Nazis occupied the area in 1941. In that part of the world and across wider Europe we know that there has been a long and terrible history of violent "pogroms" against Jewish people.

But it is not just religious bigotry that is increasingly finding it's way into the light.

If you have a dislike of homosexuality then you can be comforted by having entire national governments that share your intolerance. Apart from Russia's new anti-gay "propaganda" laws, in the continent south from here homosexuality has become a criminal offence in Burundi, South Sudan, Uganda and Nigeria.

Even Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott has come up with more than 200 million dollars in new funds in a bid to push his anti-gay attitudes into schools through so-called "emotional and spiritual support" chaplains.

Meanwhile, another survey has discovered that a staggering 43% of Americans would not vote for any presidential candidate who declared them self to be an atheist.

Just as surprising was that 40% would also not cast their vote in favour of a president of who happened to be a Muslim.

Equally, the possibility of a lesbian or gay president of the "free world" would almost certainly be blocked by the 30% of Americans who openly admitted that they would not support their commander in chief being of that sexual orientation.

But where do these attitudes come from?

I think that purely and simply they can be a result of collectively identifying ourselves as different from others. If we are X and they are Y, then oh, that is a relief because now I know who I am.

As George Orwell wrote, this is "the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects," and something that I believe is done instinctively by extremists and others who don't have what is needed to create their own beliefs.

At it's core, this mindset of segregation and separation tips 17th century philosopher René Descartes celebrated phrase "I think, therefore I am" on it's head.