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Mother nature gave us an advanced neurological framework so, at-least, take a deep breath and ask a simple question. “To say some one is a con or a fraud, do we know what the fraud is? Or the one calling it should at-least explain it and how it is committed? ” Without knowing what the con or the fraud is, how can we say he or she is fraud?Brainwash?If so, then its to plant trees, improve green-cover, revitalize rivers, sports and games for rural upliftment, learn Yoga, meditation, breathing techniques, reduce plastic and use natural fibers. I think the trees they’re planting and the rivers they’re cleaning up, maybe not me but, my kids and grand-kids will breathe the fresh air and drink clean water. So, many sport stars, business leaders, and movie stars are rallying for it. Those who don’t like it, please join some other environmental organization, or at-the-lease sit home and watch TV serials but, please don’t become a hurdle. Even if you have some divine knowledge and feel that river cleanup Is done for popularity reason, please don’t interfere because we really really need clean water. If those who still want to tarnish his reputation desperately by defaming him, please at least wait till the rivers are cleaned, greenery improves, natural fibers are used and farmers improve their lives, after that you can defame the guy, I am sure this is not new because many have started to defame freedom fighters (my freedom fighter is better then yours), so you can add him to your list. Not sure where their ego is getting hurt and what they are trying to prove. I see the true purpose of this advanced evolved human intellect is exploration? I think these ego tantrums will take us back in evolution to be a crude form of life, I don’t think they will ever realize, but its OK, world has room for all.His Yoga style?There is No one-size-fits-all concept in yoga. We both can look at the same mountain from different windows, one will see green slopes, the other might see snow mountain top but, the mountain is the same, it’s just the approach and the angle. For one Shiva is a Yogi, for the other He is a concept. They both are tributaries of the same River and the Destination of both is the same sea. Please don’t spread unnecessary confusion. Exploration is the true meaning of superior human intellect. Again if you have some divine knowledge please start your own organization to help people and clean up the environment.Usually they say his programs are expensive?They are cheaper then one doctors visit in USA or a gym membership, or paying a visit to theme park. Try buying Bowflex exercise equipment, they cost in thousands of dollars. Isha Surya Kriya 2 day program costs $150–200, Isha 4 day Inner Engineering is $280–$350, Isha Shoonya 4 days Residency program (food and boarding and amenities included) is $600, seriously in what comparison is it expensive. Have we practically considered the expenses like Venue, Technical equipment (Mic and speaker set), home cooked food (not catered), travel, electricity, insurance, phone calls, technology for website updates, technology used by support staff, where is the money for all this, lets be practical friends, who to pay for all this. Try doing a birthday party in one of these venues for your kid and see for yourself. But some people want him to magically rain gold. He recently accumulated enough donations so Inner Engineering Online is made free and its free in rural locations. Again, if you can do it better for a an efficient price please do it or start your own organization to help people improve their health and Mental well-being.Skeptic or a Pragmatic?A friend of mine, whom I have known my entire life to be practical and skeptic, met him after a lot of thought. He (my friend) learnt yoga from various institutions and have practiced it for many years. Finally, a year or two after listening to his videos and being skeptical about them decided to attend one of his workshops in Canada. He always was a strong critic about people who talk in the periphery and never go in detail. After the last day of workshop on his way driving back to home he called me. I asked him how things were and the workshop, and if he had a chance to meet Sadhguru in person or up close. He said “yes, I had a chance to literally shake his hand”. I asked him how his experience was and what he thought about all the preconceptions he had from the past. He simply said one thing. “Sadhguru is bigger than life, like an iceberg underneath the ocean”. the only reason he spoke in the periphery in most of the YouTube videos was just because the questions that were asked, and the people asking were at a certain level of comprehension. He said “his mission and vision was far monumental than what it seems”. I myself got to a see him up close in one of his programs. All I can say is people who are talking nonsense about him, are doing so out of ignorance or hate towards him, because of his recognition by United Nations, Universities, leaders, fashion and Economic forums, business leaders, Women’s organization, armed forces, sports and movie stars.Calling him Mayavadi?These haters also come from a small group of Vaisnava sect of Hindu population who think he is Shivait, and after looking at his popularity, started feeling insecure and jealous. Hence, started calling him mayavadi. These people are wearing a colored lenses and everything to them looks the same color. History says these small extremist Vaisnava sect used to throw Shiva lingas in the middle of the street and desecrate them. There are stories around such events and now we have to listen to their mayavadi claims, seriously !!! They never met him, they have not seen his work up close, they have not been to the Rural camps, they have not read the Patanjali Yoga Sutra or Vasista’s Yoga or Isha Upanishad to make a reference or derive a conclusion, they have not seen the amount of traveling and the interviews that he does while in cars and airplanes. The small group of people that travel with him work like machines. The amount of work they do, how meagerly they eat and sleep is surprising. People always see the glitter and glamour in the YouTube videos because he’s always meeting popular sports stars, film stars and affluent people. But, one has to understand that we are living in a capital world, driven by money, so if he’s meeting all these popular people its because, that’s where the funds are. These are the people whose Voice can influence the masses, these are the people who have the ability to donate funds that can support many charitable works like river cleanup or green-cover revitalization. But no, these ego filled people want to complain about what he wears, how he walks, what he drives, why he plays football or golf. These small group should open youtube and listen his speech on Krishna. He explained about Krishna more then they can possibly imagine. If you have so much of devotion to whatever entity, how come you guys have so much of time to throw dirt on others.Idealism or Devotion or Realistic?When we meet popular person in the airport we want to take their autograph or take a selfy, but the volunteers who work don’t wait to shake his hand or meet in person because they went beyond the notion of Devotion and idealism. They just do their work assigned to them with just a smile on their face, no expectations, no recognition, no Facebook selfies, no paycheck, just smile. Try influencing 2 people in the world who can work like that? I went to his retreat stayed there for a few days all I see are people waking up early in the morning doing yoga, Preparing wholesome food, attending classes of yoga, teaching them, and going back to rest. There is zero politics, no egos, no money and all are volunteers. Where is the money involved, where is the desire involved, where is the ambition to be rich, or be popular, or be recognized, they don’t even share their names or have a name tag. The fee to these programs are less than a general doctors visit in United States. Its less than a gym membership. Their organization collects millions but none of them even draw a paycheck or a savings account.Land issues?All gov and state departments confirmed there is not such encroachment of forest area. The courts also confirmed it. There were google and satellite images to prove it. All documents are make public with document and reference numbers. Even journalists did their research. The challenge made by Sadhguru still hold true for any team or organization to come and investigate. But, they keep asking the same question till the sky turns pink. When people don’t have anything credible the only think to do is recycle the same useless question over and over and over till the ego feels better.His Net-worth?Net worth of Sadhguru = 3 to 4 hours of sleep a day+ one meal a day + 5 days a week travel + few cloths to be presentable + recovering form hay fever and leg injuries + mind full of plans to uplift farmers and revitalize rivers and centuries old weaving techniques + sliding into old age + only child studying in a remote art school that doesn’t take donations. What on Earth will he do will riches and wealth. I guess ignoramus have mind too with questions like this. Well, world has room for all. His yoga programs and workshops, plus the fundraising generate a lot of funds, mostly in millions. His team matches their fundraising gala like that of the other charity organization, like golf, dinners and more. But some ignoramus have created a template in mind and concertized how a Sage, or Yogi should look, walk, talk, wear and behave. When they see this guy, it shatters their fragile ego. They think the rich who own 40% of world’s wealth are going to open their wallets (or take a step towards his cause) by organizing a $19 all you can eat buffet. Say I am filthy rich and I tend to like what he is doing, and if I have a private collection of Cars or my own chopper, I would give the man a ride or at least gloat about it. However, these fragile egos start to resist and behave as if he is writing personal check out of the organization funds. These are people who haven’t spent a day with him or his team, know how they travel, how much they sleep, how many interviews they do on travel (in cars and flights), how they eat, and how they organize these events without a single paycheck not a savings account for themselves or their family. They haven’t been to their call centers which work for farmers, nor have they been to any of these extended workshops nor the on the ground efforts in remote places. These people haven’t heard his presentation on the water crisis at the United Nations summit, rather they are more concern on what he drives or wears or how he coughs. With their ego they sit in their privileged comfort homes and use their phones to write garbage questions, as they are more interested in controversy rather then the crisis in reality. They cant barely motivate 2 people to plant a tree or cleanup their own neighborhood. He could go to UN flying or hopping like a kangaroo, why do I care, what matters to me is the content and his spokesmen-ship that captivated the audience towards the urgency of nature’s crisis. But, boy these ego maniacs don’t care about all that, its just their fragile egos oozing all over. If he rides a motorcycle, or fly's a chopper, drives a formula 1 race car, walk on the NY fashion runway and grabs the attention of the wealthy and the powerful or for his own personal like, WHY DO I CARE!!!. With what he can, he is trying to protect and serve nature, what are these ego freaks doing for humanity or nature? At the best these ego freaks will drink the same water from the rivers he is revitalizing, they and their children will breathe the air from the greenery he is striving to regrow and live in a world with less plastic in earth and in their cloths. These ego freaks don’t talk about the billionaires who open philanthropic organization on their cousin’s name for tax write off. Again, world has room for all, including ignoramus.Pseudo science?Yoga is a very practical technology, but everything has a subjective base to it. So, yoga has a subjective background as well, but the good thing about yoga is, one can ignore the subject and practice yoga as a technique (or as a tool) to improve one’s health. Now, these subjective aspect do come out during various discourses, along with its concepts. The book called Vasista’s yoga is a piece of literature that is extensive in explaining various aspects of many universes, creation & time. These concepts are mind-boggling. Let’s remember that at one point, there were many theories about creation that we thought were impossible. 150 years ago can we imagine an Ipad with 128gb of memory and camera with facetime? Even today what we know is minuscule compared to the phenomena in creation. So, in one of the discourses, Sadhguru spoke about few theories, that are concepts within yoga. The issue is, the moment these theories were put forward, many jumped to disprove them or call them fake, lies or pseudoscience. For example, “water has memory”, this statement caused a lot of people to freak out. For them, the definition of memory is limited to what a human can store in his/her brain or what a computer can store on a disk or a chip. They fail to realize that every aspect in creation has memory. A tiny seed has the entire framework of the tree (the design of a leaf, stem, roots and more) stored inside it. A tiny strand of DNA has immense memory in it, that will define countless aspects of human. Each DNA has a membrane of water molecules around them which also has immense significance, but these ego filled haters are too quick to jump to conclusions and call it fake. Let me quote TEDed on Quantum Information“In the vital law of Physics, The total amount of Quantum information in the universe must be conserved. Even if you destroy an object beyond recognition, its quantum information is never permanently deleted ” (I am adding the link to this TEDed talk at the end)All this is mentioned in Yoga but, how would these guys know? Did they ever read at-least two books to understand how information and memory play a role in creation. Oh boy, if the same statements are said by someone else wearing a suit and a bow tie on TEDed they will listen drooling and eating popcorn, but if a yogi says it, it hurts their egos. The same freaks go to SIFI Hollywood movies and discuss all the aspects and theories with great enthusiasm. Even Einstein gave so many theories about the fabric of creation and space which is not in real application today but, I don’t see them freaking out to prove them wrong.There are two ways of looking at it, one, just say I don’t know or it may be possible and call it a theory. Second, ignore the subject and utilize yoga as a technology for well-being of body and mind. The west is very open and encourages these theories but, many in the east are reluctant and feels insecure towards the theories mentioned in their own literature. Sadhguru (a yogi without high degrees) made phenomenal achievements, gained popularity and created awareness in millions. Business leaders take his advise on so many forums, US Military is doing his Yoga courses, Harvard and other prestigious universities call him for discussions. Looking at this success, some guys freak out and feel insecure about their own degrees, which they achieved reading text books written by somebody else. Looks like, all this education got them degrees, at the same time quadrupled their egos and insecurities. If you don’t like this theories, just call it “ancient literature” and practice the techniques of yoga. If you don’t like yoga, please go play golf or join a gym. But, it seems some over educated insecure ego freaks who couldn’t achieve even 0.5% of his success, seem to have a lot of time on their hand to come online and write garbage.Finally, ignore all opinions including this article, try a program or visit their camps or centers and check their integrity, method of transmission and how they run the organization and decide yourself. Its your life, your health, your well-being, your future and your planet, don’t place it in the hands of opinions or egoists. Explore, utilize the techniques of yoga and breathing and natural foods given by ancient civilizations after thousands of years of experience. If you don’t like his yoga, please find another one. Don’t become a devotee, be practical and explore with honest and open mind. Before making conclusions, read a book on Yoga, like Patanjali Yoga Sutra or Vasista Yoga and then judge for yourself. Go spend some time and learn, then judge if these volunteers are qualified. Check the Harvard university video or the United Nations speech on water crisis, then reach your own conclusion. Life is too short to live on borrowed opinions. Pranam and have a good day.

Someone said it all as follows : “White people” [European powers] used “Christianity” as a cover for running all over the planet, stealing people’s land, resources, inventions, technologies, art, style, music, philosophy, scientific knowledge, and children while simultaneously destroying ancient texts, monuments, sacred objects, and burial grounds, and outlawing oral traditions, religious practices, languages, the right to self-rule, and the right to equality under the law.The White supremacy propaganda machine created at the height of European imperalism and colonialism and the Triangular Trade in the 18th century has produced and popularized countless racist stereotypes against non-European peoples.So much time (since 1492) has been used trying to paint other races as inferior.Some Whites will say : we are on top of the world because we are brighter, bolder and better than non-Whites.The main question is : Is it only because you have surpassed “Others” or you destroyed “Others” along the way to elevate yourselves?Unlike the Tasmanians or Ancient Peruvians, the West African will never be wiped off the face off the earth, but intercourse with the white man alters his beliefs, ideas, customs, and technology, and proper records of these should be made before we destroy them. The destruction is going on apace, one of the chief contributory cause being the unsuitable European teaching given to the native races generally—unsuitable to them on the wide differences between the white and black man.”—Henry Ling RothWhat was the whole purpose of the Tarzan image of Africa full of preliterate, prenumerate “jungle static primitives” or “bush savages” who never invented the wheel, paved a road, had mariners, made boats, wove a cloth, had buildings, founded a stone city, built a ship, produced a literature, suggested a creed?The following passage is taken for the best-selling book: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong is a 1995 book by James W. Loewen, an American sociologist.Historians have chronicled the rise of racism in the West. Before the 1450s Europeans considered Africans exotic but not necessarily inferior. As more and more nations joined the slave trade, Europeans came to characterize Africans as stupid, backward, and uncivilized.Amnesia set in: Europe gradually found it convenient to forget that Moors from Africa had brought to Spain and Italy much of the learning that led to the Renaissance. Europeans had known that Timbuktu, with its renowned university and library, was a center learning.https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1763687.pdfAfrica, Its Past and Future Source: Science, Vol. 13, No. 311 (Jan. 18, 1889), pp. 42-50 Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science Stable URL: Africa, Its Past and Future on JSTORAFRICA, ITS PAST AND FUTURE.1AFRICA, the oldest of the continents, containing the earliest remains of man, and the birthplace of European civilization, is the last to be explored. Long before the temples of India or the palaces of Nineveh were built, before the hanging garden of Babylon was planted, the pyramids of Cheops and Cephren had been constructed, the temples of Palmyra and Thebes filled with worshippers.Greece owes its civilization to Egypt: its beautiful orders of architecture came from the land of the Nile. The civilization of Egypt had grown old, and was in its decay, when Rome was born. Think what a vast abyss of time separates us from the days of Romulus and Remus! And yet the pyramids of Egypt were then older by a thousand years than all the centuries that have passed since then.….We know that Africa is capable of the very highest civilization; that it was the birthplace of all civilization. To it we are indebted for the origin of all our arts and sciences, and it possesses to-day the most wonderful works of man. I believe that Africa, whose morning was so bright, and whose night has been so dark, will yet live to see the light of another and a higher civilization.………..HistoriographyLeo Frobenius (1873-1938)Leo Frobenius, Histoire de la Civilisation AfricaineWhen they the first European navigators of the end of the Middle Ages arrived in the Gulf of Guinea and landed at Vaida, the captains were astonished to find the streets well cared for, bordered for several leagues in length by two rows of trees; for many days they passed through a country of magnificent fields, a country inhabited by men clad in brilliant costumes, the stuff of which they had woven themselves!More to the South in the Kingdom of Congo, a swarming crowd dressed in silk and velvet; great states well ordered, and even to the smallest details, powerful sovereigns, rich industries, -- civilized to the marrow of their bones. And the condition of the countries on the eastern coasts -- Mozambique, for example -- was quite the same.The idea of the 'barbarous Negro' is a European invention which has consequently prevailed in Europe until the beginning of this century."What these old captains recounted, these chiefs of expeditions -- Delbes,Marchais, Pigafetta, and all the others, what they recounted is true. It can be verified. In the old Royal Kunstkammer of Dresden, in the Weydemann colection of Ulm, in many another 'cabinet of curiosities' of Europe, we still find West African collections dating from this epoch. Marvelous plush velvets of an extreme softness, made of the tenderest leaves of a certain kind of banana plant; stuffs soft and supple, brilliant and delicate, like silks, woven with the fiber of a raffia, well prepared; powerful javelins with points encrusted with copper in the most elegant fashion; bows so graceful in form and so beautifully ornamented that they would do honor to any museum of arms whatsoever; calabashes decorated with the greatest taste; sculpture in ivory and wood of which the work shows a very great deal of application and style.What was revealed by the navigators of the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries furnishes an absolute proof that Negro Africa, which extended south of the desert zone of the Sahara, was in full efflorescence which the European conquistadors annihilated as far as they progressed. For the new country of America needed slaves, and Africa had them to offer, hundreds, thousands, whole cargoes of slaves. However, the slave trade was never an affair which meant a perfectly easy conscience, and it exacted a justification; hence one made of the Negro a half-animal, an article of merchandise. And in the same way the notion of fetish (Portuguese feticeiro) was invented as a symbol of African religion. As for me, I have seen in no part of Africa the Negroes worshipping a fetish."And all that came from countries of the African periphery, delivered over after that to slave merchants, . . .————————Here below are interesting links about some of the racial stereotypes created and popularized by the White supremacy propaganda machine, including Hollywood dubbed Hollywhite by its detractors.The Coon CaricatureWatermelon stereotype - WikipediaThe piccaninny stereotypeYellowface! - The History of Racist Asian StereotypesBlackface! - The History of Racist Blackface StereotypesBrownface! - The History of Racist Latino/Hispanic StereotypesRedface! - The History of Racist American Indian StereotypesArabface! - The History of Racist Arab StereotypesJewface! - The History of Racist Jewish StereotypesThe Theory of Yellow Peril | Study.comThe Yellow Peril: Dr Fu Manchu & the Rise of Chinaphobia by Christopher Frayling – reviewRacism and stereotypes in colonial India’s 'Instagram'………Racism, History and LiesRACISM, HISTORY AND LIESMax DashuSome doctrines of racial supremacy as classically taughtin Euro/American institutions, textbooks and media:PHYSICAL CALIBRATION DOCTRINE:In which white anthropologists treat people as racial specimens, measuring "cephalic indices" and attempting to prove superiority of the "white" brain. Ugly racist terminology: "prognathism," "platyrhiny," "steatopygous," "sub-Egyptian." Mug-shot lineups of "the Veddan female," "Arapaho male, "Negroid type," "Mongoloid specimen" characterize this approach. Out of favor in the mid-20th-century, it has enjoyed a revisionist comeback with sociobiology and works claiming racial differentials in intelligence, such as "The Bell Curve."TECHNOLOGICAL CALIBRATION DOCTRINE:Insists on forcing archaeological finds as well as living cultures into a grid of "development" based on whether tools, materials and techniques valued by "Western" scholars were in use. Example: "They were a stone age civilization who never discovered the wheel!" This model forces cultures into a progressional paradigm: Old and New Stone Ages, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Revolution, Space Age. This classification ignores the complexity of culture, and the fact that metallurgic technology and military might are not the ultimate measure of advanced culture.STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT DOCTRINE:The assumption that "primitive" cultures represent lower "stages" in historical evolution, and have yet to attain advanced forms of culture. One English scholar referred to "the child-races of Africa." Usually, social hierarchy, militarization and industrialization are taken as prime measures of "advanced" civilization. In the 19th century, scholars openly used the terms "savage," "barbarian," "civilized." Though these offensive words have (mostly) been dropped, the underlying assumptions are still quite influential.(For a good discussion of how the insistence on talking about "tribes" distorts African history, see)http://www.africaaction.org/bp/ethall.htm.SPREAD OF CIVILIZATION DOCTRINE:Credits all achievements to conquering empires, assuming their superiority in science, technology, and government. Adherents are usually incapable of perceiving advanced earth-friendly systems of land management, agronomy, medicine, collective social welfare networks, healing, astronomical knowledge, or profound philosophical traditions among peoples considered "primitive" by dominant "Western" standards.PASSING OF THE TORCH DOCTRINE:Claims a chain of cultural transmission from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Greece to Rome to western Europe to the USA, leaving vast gaps where the history of the rest of the world should be. (And the discussion never returns to Egypt or Iraq to consider what happened there after the fall of their ancient empires.) Most of the planet's cultures are discussed only in relation to the European conquest, if mentioned at all. As a result, few people have any idea of the history of Sumatra, Honduras, Niger, Ecuador, Mozambique, Ohio, Hokkaido, Samoa, or even European countries such as Lithuania or Bosnia.IF IT WAS GREAT, IT MUST HAVE BEEN WHITE:If advanced science, art, or architecture is found in Africa or South America, then Phoenecians, Greeks, Celts, Vikings (or, in the extreme case, space aliens) must be invoked to explain their presence. (Here, whiteness often functions as a relative concept, as "lighter than.") This bias gives rise to a pronounced tendency to date American or African cultures later than warranted, and as a result dating for these regions is constantly having to be revised further back into the past as evidence of greater antiquity piles up.Corollary:IF IT WAS WHITE, IT MUST HAVE BEEN GREAT.Thus, the conqueror Charlemagne was a great man, in spite of his genocidal campaign against the Saxons, but the Asian conquerors Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan were simply evil. Stereotypes of head-hunters picture Africans (in the absence of any evidence for such a practice there) but never Celtic head-hunters in France and Britain -- much less Lord Kitchener making off with the Mahdi's skull in Sudan, or U.S. settlers taking scalps and body parts of Indian people. This doctrine also underlies the common assumption that European conquest must have improved life for subject peoples.A 19th century French engravingimagines the conquest of Algeria as ashowering of the benefits of superior civilization on abject, genuflectingNorth Africans.IF IT WAS NOT WHITE, AND ITS GREATNESS IS UNDENIABLE, THEN IT MUST BE DEPRECATED IN SOME WAY:Example:The Epic of Man, published in the '60s by Time/Life Books, says of the advanced civilization of ancient Pakistan: "It is known that a static and sterile quality pervaded Indus society." It used to be the academic fashion to call ancient Egypt a "moribund" civilization which "stifled creativity." Similar writings dismissed the "Incas" (Quechua) as "totalitarian," or the Chinese as "isolated" and "resistant to change," ignoring their interchange with steppe societies as well as Southeast Asian cultures.The AFRICAN GAP DOCTRINE:After examining the first humans hundreds of thousands of years ago, this historical approach completely skips over most of the African archaeological record. It discusses ancient Egypt but ascribes its civilization to "the Middle East," denying its African identity and archaeological connections with Saharan and southern Nilotic civilizations. Saharan civilization, Ile-Ife or Mwanamutapa are not discussed at all. Africa is simply dropped from historical consideration until the era of European slaving and colonization, when it is portrayed as culturally and technologically deficient. The existence of female spheres of power in Africa is ignored.The BERING STRAIT DOCTRINEinsists that all indigenous American peoples came across a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, filtering down through Central America into South America. Problem: numerous archaeological sites in the Americas predate any possible Bering Strait migration by many thousands of years. Access from Alaska to the rest of North America was blocked for millennia by two great ice sheets that covered Canada. An narrow opening that might have allowed passage appeared much too late (about 13,500 years ago) to explain the growing evidence that people were living in both North and South America much earlier than these "first" migrations.By 1997-98, the tide of opinion began to turn: several scientific conclaves declared that a majority of attending scholars rejected the Bering Strait theory as a full explanation of how the Americas were peopled.The long-doctrinal hypothesis of Clovis hunters as the first immigrants is crumbling before the new dating, as hundreds of pre-Clovis sites pile up: Cactus Hill, Virginia (13,500 BP); Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania (14,000 - 17,000 Before Present); Monte Verde (13,500 BP); Pedra-Furada, Brazil (15,000 BP, and possibly as old as 32,000 BP).Bering Strait diehards discount the oral histories of indigenous Americans. In spite of the huge diversity among the American peoples and differences between most Americans and east Asians, all are declared to be of "Mongoloid racial origin." After the initial press stampede declaring "Kennewick Man" to be "white," study of the genetic evidence shows something entirely different. Instead, it appears that there have been several waves of migration: from central China, from the ancient Jomon culture of Japan, from south Asia or the Pacific islands. And "Luzia," an 11,500-year-old female skeleton in Brazil "appeared to be more Negroid in its cranial features than Mongoloid," in the stodgy anthropological terminology of the New York Times (Nov 9, 1999). (Actually she most closely resembles aborignal Australians.) But there is also a uniquely North American X-haploid group of mitochondrial DNA, which has yet to be explained.THE POWER OF NAMINGSTEREOTYPINGentire peoples as mad, uncontrollable threats: "Wild Indians," "Yellow Hordes" or "the Yellow Peril." As inferior nonhumans: "primitives," "savages," "gooks," "niggers" -- this last term used not only against African-Americans, but also by 18th-century English colonizers of Egypt and India. Even the word "natives," which originally meant simply the people born in a country and by extension the aboriginal inhabitants, took on heavy racist coloration as an inferior Other.POLARIZATION:"Scientific thought" vs. "primitive belief"; "undeveloped" vs "civilized"; or "the world's great religions" vs. "tribal superstitions," "cults," "idolatry" or "devil-worship." Depending on where it was created, a sculpture could either be a "masterpiece of religious art" or an "idol," "fetish," or "devil." Few people realize that "Western" scientists did not match the accuracy of ancient Maya calculations of the length of the solar year until the mid-20th century.Indians who resist colonization and land theft are commonly portrayed as evil in popular media, which applies negative labels such as "Renegades." Here indigenous people are Other; the intruders in their country are The Good Guys. The white hero is named after the Texas Rangers, systematic killers of Indian families.His Indian sidekick's name, Tonto, means "fool, stupid person" in Spanish.RENAMING:Dutch colonists called the Khoi-khoi people "Hottentots" (stutterers). Russians called the northwest Siberian Nentsy "Samoyed" (cannibals). These are blatant examples, but many nationalities are still called by unflattering names given by their enemies: "Sioux" (Lakota); "Miao" (Hmong); "Lapps" (Saami); "Basques" (Euskadi); "Eskimos" (Inuit). European names have replaced the originals in many places: Nigeria, Australia, New Caledonia, New Britain, etc. (But "Rhodesia" bit the dust, after a revolution.DEGRADATION OF MEANINGS: "Mumbo jumbo" has become a cliché signifying meaningless superstitions, but it comes from a Mandinke word -- mama dyambo -- for a ritual staff bearing the image of a female ancestor. (Look it up in any good dictionary.) "Fetish" now connotes an obsessive sexual fixation, but originated as a Portuguese interpretation of sacred West African images as "sorcery" (feitição). The holy city of Islam is often appropriated in phrases like "a Mecca for shoppers."DOUBLE-THINK:Conquest becomes "unification," "pacification,""opening up," and conquered regions are dubbed "protectorates." The convention is to use Europe as the standard, writing texts from the viewpoint of the conquerors / colonizers. Thus, a Rajasthani rebellion against English rule was termed the "Indian Mutiny." A peculiarity of this thinking is the tendency to refer to times of bloody invasions and enslavement with respectful nostalgia, as in "The Golden Age of Greece" and "The Glory That Was Rome," or "How the West Was Won."British subjugation of southern Nigeria is recast as The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.A contributor to Men Become Civilized, edited by Trevor Cairns, explains it all to children:"When the king of one city conquered others, he would have to make sure that all the people in all the cities knew what to do. He would have to see that they all had rules to follow, so that they would live peacefully together."Double-think finds ways to recast genocide as regrettable but necessary, due to failings of the people being killed, who are somehow unable to "adapt." Distancing the agent is key here, obscuring the violence with the idea that some kind of natural process is at work: "vanishing races," "by that time the Indians had disappeared."THE POWER OF IMAGESHollywood tomtoms beat as fake Indians jump up and down, uttering brainless cries and grunts. There's the "squaw" complex in literature and cinema, the faithful Indian sidekick, and Robinson Crusoe's "Man Friday." John Wayne as the Western movie hero, saying: "There's humans and then there's Comanches." Or in real life, the actor tried to justify the settler theft of Indian countries: "There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."This picture appeared in an insurance ad.Advertising is an important transmitter of historical misrepresentation. It draws on colonial mythologies such as the notion that the Dutch "bought" Manhattan for the equivalent of $24 in trade goods --in spite of the fact that the Indians did not think of land as something that could be sold. The role of violence is completely obliterated. Even history books do not go into the massacres of Native people. On Staten Island settlers slaughtered the people they called "Wappingers," and afterward played football with their severed heads.Tarzan goes up against witch doctors and eye-rolling African chiefs. The Caribbean is shown as full of fearful, superstitious natives and zombies, Arabs who have nothing to do all day but loll around in harems, or cheat the white hero. Seductive Suzie Wongs, thieving Mexicans, and shiftless and sexually insatiable African-Americans. Movies commonly depict the Chinese as obsequious and deceitful, Arabs as treacherous, Africans as ignorant and barbaric.COUNTERPOINTThe Mande were farming millet and other crops in West Africa in 6500-5000 BCE.Temples in Peru and Sudan are much older than the Parthenon.People in Mississippi, Illinois and Mexico traded with each other and exchanged ideas and symbols, as the the sea-faring Ecuadorians did with Costa Rica and western Mexico.A small-statured Black people built the oldest civilization in southeast Asia, leaving megalithic temples and statuary in south India, Cambodia, Sumatra and other Indonesian islands.Archaeology shows that the earliest formative influences on ancient Egypt came from Sudan and the Sahara, not the "Middle East."The oldest megalithic calendar in the world has recently been discovered in the Egyptian Sahara, dating back to 7000 years ago.European megaliths may have an African origin.Polynesian mariners had begun navigating by the stars and settling the vast ocean expanses of the Pacific islands before the time of Moses.WHAT GETS DEFINED AS HISTORY?In the last half century, the boundaries of "acceptable" history have been expanded by a multidisciplinary approach, including sources previously dismissed: orature (oral tradition), linguistics, anthropology, social history, art, music and other cultural sources. More recently, the social locations of historians have come under consideration as a factor shaping their perspectives, along with a sense that there is no absolutely "objective" view of history. Past claims of objectivity have biases clearly visible today, notably in siding with European settlers and slavers against non-christian cultures, and the almost total eclipse of female acts and experience from historical accounts.A reader who might react negatively to a blatant expression of racism often misses perceiving one cloaked in scholarly language, in assumptions, judgments and misinformation most people have not been educated to catch. It does not occur to many people to question a pronounced overemphasis on Europe, the smallest continent (actually, a subcontinent of Asia.) If a chapter or two on African and Asian history is inserted in a textbook, publishers go ahead and call it a world history. Typically, media depictions of history have not caught up with information now available in specialized academic sources, and continue to present the old stereotypes and distortions as fact.More on Racism, History and LiesBARBARIANS AT THE GATESIn the early '90s a hue and cry was raised in the national media against "multiculturalism." It threatened the very foundations of Western Civilization, explained an outpouring of magazine articles and newspaper columns which shed much heat but little light. A Newsweek cover blared: "THOUGHT POLICE: There's a 'Politically Correct' Way to Talk About Race, Sex and Ideas. Is This the New Enlightenment -- Or the New McCarthyism?" As if this wasn't heavy-handed enough, it adds a warning, "Watch What You Say." (December 24, 1990)"In U.S. classrooms, battles are flaring over values that are almost a reverse image of the American mainstream. As a result, a new intolerance is on the rise." William A. Henry III, "Upside Down in the Groves of Academe", Time Magazine, April 1, 1991"'It used to be thought that ideas transcend race, gender and class, that there are such things as truth, reason, morality and artistic excellence, which can be understood and aspired to by everyone, of whatever race, gender or class.' Now we have democracy in the syllabus, affirmative action in the classroom. 'No one believes in greatness.' Bate says mournfully. 'That's gone.'" Gertrude Himmelfarb, Op-Ed in New York Times Magazine, June 5, 1991"If there is insufficient authentic African culture to meet the demands of self-esteem, then culture must be borrowed from ancient Egypt. No black pharaohs? A few must be invented. Not enough first-rate women poets? Let second-raters be taught instead." --James Kilpatrick, "Poisoning the Groves of Academe," San Francisco Chronicle, April 15, 1991The assumption that were are no great women poets, no black pharaohs, no other greatness than the usual diet of "Western Civilization" is so ingrained that it is regarded as incontrovertible. Protesting the monochrome, all-male landscape of classic pedagogy becomes "intolerance." But what then are we to call the refusal to open up media and educational horizons to the full spectrum of human achievement?A response to John Baines' review (August 11, 1991) of Cheikh Anta Diop'sCivilization or Barbarism and Martin Bernal's Black Athena:To the Editor, New York Times Book Review:Mr. Baines' review of Diop and Bernal express alarm that their books "attack modern conceptions of the origins of Western Civilization" by showing the anteriority of African (especially Egyptian) achievements. It seems to me that he would like to deny the context of the whole discussion, which has been centuries of exalting the Greeks as the fount of Western Civilization and denying the role of Africa in the ancient world. Egypt is treated as part of the "Middle East," and her relations with the rest of Africa ignored. In this context, to demand an "intellectual contribution that will stand without reference to issues of race" is to perpetuate an injurious status quo.This denial is especially ludicrous in the frequently-heard claim that because Egyptians were "ethnically mixed," they were not black. Southern African peoples are ethnically mixed, yet it would occur to no one that they are other than black. More to the point, if an ancient Egyptian were to find herself in the United States, she would fall within the range of colors we describe as "black." This business of reddish-brown-skinned men and golden-skinned women was a convention in Egyptian art (and one adopted by the Cretans, Greek vases, and Etruscans, bearing out the hypothesis of Egyptian influence). If Mr. Baine wants to take the golden women as a racial marker for light-skinned Egyptians, is he also willing to concede dark-brown-skinned Etruscan men? His claim that considering the race of the Egyptians is "unhelpful"--and the many others who declare it irrelevant--is coy and evasive.Max Dashu, Suppressed Histories Archives[The Times did not publish this letter.]See Ibrahim Sundiata's excellent article, Afrocentrism: The Argument We're Really Having, for more discussion of the African-ness of the Egyptians and racialist agendas of denial.Here is a recent example of how the pernicious ideas described in this article percolate into popular consciousness. An October 18, 2005 post to an Illinois Museum site reacted to the one of the greatest sculptures in Indian America (known as the "Birger figurine") falls back on the Technological Calibration model:"The Cahokia Indians never made it out of the stone age, not even to the primitive level of metal working found in the Mayan, Toltec, and Inca societies further south... [If they had left a written record, we would know more] but since they never made it that far, we have to rely on their works." [from the site Indian History: Unearthed artifacts from Cahokia]More food for thought from Peggy McIntosh, who wrote White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (1988)“I have met very few men who were truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me [meaning white feminists concerned with male domination] is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn’t affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see “whiteness” as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation….“Disapproving of the system won’t be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a 'white skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.”Peggy McIntosh, Ph.D. from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent School© 2000 Max Dashu ... Updated 2008————————————————————-……Racism is so much more than wordsGood understanding: Willie Mathebula (above) was chosen to appear at the Zondo commission because of his grasp of procurement policy, but two sources said his testimony did not hit the right notes. (Oupa Nkosi)When it comes to something as insidious, old and dangerous as racism, it may be wise to pause and consider the eloquence with which some victims of racism have been silent or silenced, or both.Sometimes the unsettling outcome of the unbearable urge to scream one’s lungs out in anger and exasperation is a deafening sound of utter silence. This is the first example of silence.Another type of silence is that of the beneficiaries of racism. Consider the fact that, for more than 21 years at least, we have had a severe drought of outspoken people, black or white, who champion the strug-gle against white racism. Gillian Schutte is an outstanding exception in this regard.But the compelling message and meaning of persistent incidents of racism may lie not so much in the eloquent articles or social media postings of the chattering classes, but rather in the loaded silences of the victims and the tenacious silences of the beneficiaries. As well as reading and interpreting the textual subterfuge that often erupts (alongside genuine commentary) after incidents of racism, we ought to learn to read the silences as well.There is a problem of an inability to appreciate racism in its historical context. Racism against African people is a global system whose roots go back to the approximately 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade – a global economic system built on African people as property. To facilitate the trade, Europeans constructed what Chinua Achebe calls “a vast arsenal of derogatory images of Africa” and Africans, essentially suggesting that they were less than human.Classical chattel slavery may no longer be here, but the reservoir of derogatory images remains to facilitate modern forms of slavery.No sooner had slavery ended than colonialism started, unleashing the next stage of the global economic system built on the subjugation of peoples of colour. If the main rationale for slavery was that Africans were less than human, the main rationale for colonialism was supposedly “scientific”, based on the theories about various and hierarchical species of human “races”, as well as Social Darwinism. In terms of these, black people were not only supposed to be a different species but, in line with a bastardised form of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, they were also part of the “dying races” to be naturally selected for elimination on account of their unfitness.This was the main idea behind the “colonial shows” staged in many European cities in which Africans, such as Sarah Baartman, would be paraded “in their natural habitat” before entranced European audiences. Members of these soon-to-be-extinct savage species had to be seen and even preserved in museums.Scientific racism has since been thoroughly debunked, but its effects continue.A terrible consequence of Social Darwinism was the German genocide of the Nama and the Herero of present-day Namibia. Ironically, part of the reason for their extermination, was that the Nama, especially the Witbooi Nama, and the Herero showed no signs of being either unfit for survival or eager to surrender to an allegedly superior race.Given the terrible history of racism, to reduce racism against black people to words and phrases is a gross travesty. Racism is not just what people say, it is what people do to fellow human beings with a view to diminishing their humanity in order to facilitate either their exploitation or their extermination.Schutte has pointed out that, once verbal racists realise that it is inappropriate to speak of black people in explicitly racist terms, especially in public, they quickly establish a “new linguistic code no longer peppered with derogatory apartheid terms”. The result is a “new form of non-racist yet racist discourse … manifested in a colour-blind Rainbow Nation discourse [that] … insinuates racism rather than blurt(s) it out”.Although racism lives on in the hearts and heads of individuals, its most productive habitat is in social and economic structures, practices and cultures. Once it is well embedded, it can proceed on virtual autopilot for hundreds of years. Policing racism in the verbal statements of individuals is inadequate as long as the structural, economic and cultural incarnations and incubators of racism are left untouched.To put it differently, if the social media racism of the Penny Sparrow kind existed only in her mind and was expressed only on the social media, she could be roundly and justifiably ignored. The problem is that, in this country, there is resonance between online white racism and real-life white racism.Look around you and you will see that, despite the overhyped growth of the black middle class, despite the rhetoric of transformation, racist apartheid social and economic structures remain largely intact: white men and white women remain on top, followed by the rest, with black women at the very bottom.Contrary to a recurrent sentiment most eloquently expressed by Mbembe in a recent article, it will not be enough merely to make the lives of individual racists in our midst uncomfortable. We must disrupt the deeply embedded and automated processes of racist institutions that ration out economic and other forms of advantage. We must unmask what Schutte calls “the veiled racism that wears a polite smiling façade”.Current racist outbursts must be understood against the backdrop of a country, having emerged out a divisive and racial past, that has opted for a cultural model that privileges whiteness in a hundred and one ways. Nowhere is this more apparent than in matters pertaining to languages, English accent, education, dress and economic opportunity, to name but a few.Twenty-first-century racism is mutating and not dying. Nowadays, racism seldom drives alone. Sexism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, classism and other forms of exclusion often accompany it. To understand and track racism, we must not look only at places in which it once lived but also at intersections between racism and other forms of exclusion.We must maintain a critical albeit courteous regard for everyone who suggests we deal with the problem by ignoring it or by not prioritising it.………….Though we have largely spoken about racism as something done to humans by fellow humans, and something done to humans by external forces and structures, there is a dimension to the blight that is underestimated. I refer to internalised racism.The first victim of internalised racism is its bearer. These are the people who, despite appearances, may have believed and internalised the lie of racism about the inferiority or superiority of races, including what they consider to be their own “races”.Last year, Nobel Peace literature laureate Toni Morrison was asked what, in her view, will signal the end of racism in the United States. Her response was as instructive as it was disturbing. She said: “I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back. And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then, when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes.”

Okay - the background to this is that nobody has proved that Morgellons is delusional, despite many journalist articles and even the wikipedia page on the topic saying definitively that it is a delusion. Also there is new research which suggests that it is actually related to digital dermatitis, a disease of cattle. The few remaining researchers are all converged on this as their main hypothesis. I will go into this in a bit more detail in a moment.If this is right then the precautions are the same as for Lyme disease though the details of the disease are different. The main thing is to be careful to remove ticks immediately if you are bitten by them. If you do it within a few hours of getting the tick, apparently the chance of getting Lymes is minimal. I use the O'Tom tick twister myself - its a really easy way to remove them far easier than tweezers.Watch out for a spreading circular rash like this.If you see anything like that, go to the doctor right away. Lyme disease - and Morgellons also if it is connected - can be stopped right in its tracks so long as you get a strong dose of antibiotics - and not just any antibiotic, it has to be a particular type of very strong antibiotic, as soon as the rash appears. I actually live in a tick area myself and got a rash like this earlier this summer. I went to the doctor, got my medicine and it vanished quickly, within a few days. Of course then you continue to the end of the course of antibiotics.Also, you can’t be infected by others with Morgellons, if this is the right answer.For anyone who has Morgellons - if this hypothesis is correct - you may have been in a Lyme disease tick district in the past. If it is right, Morgellons doesn't start up immediately after the tick byte. The spirochetes have to get into the fibroblasts first before they start generating the fibres that cause the problems. It is easy to forget a tick bite and you don't always get the red rash (though I think you usually do) and it is also easy to get a rash and not think much of it and not notice that it is that circular shape or just not know its significance.So now more on the background.MEDICAL CAVEATSince this is an answer on medicine, I feel I need to give a medical warning. First there are many other conditions that are easily confused with Morgellons (putting aside for one moment the question of whether Morgellons is a disease or a delusional condition). I suggest that if you think you have the condition, that you talk to your doctor first and go through all those tests. Morgellons is an extremely rare condition, just a few in a hundred thousand have it. The chances are you have something else, which the doctor will be able to treat.Then, if you get no success and think you may have the condition, there's the Morgellons Disease Foundation which is a patients advocacy organization for this condition. I'd get in touch with them or visit their facebook page or go to their conferences to find out more - it's a whole lot better than getting advice from strangers on internet forums or science blogs or quora at least.So this answer is not meant for patient support. It is just about the scientific aspect of this. Could it be that the researchers are right, and that there is a connection with Lyme disease? How did we get into this situation where the medical establishment is sure that there is no connection, and yet this group of researchers and many patients are convinced that there is?I don't have Morgellons myself and at the time I first wrote this material I didn’t know anyone with it. Since then of course I have been contacted both via comments and privately by Morgellons suffers. This is from an article I wrote on Science20CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL (CDC) SURVEYAt first, you get the impression that it was all cleared up by a big survey published in 2012. Their conclusions were so definite you wonder why anyone could doubt it.This was an initiative of the Obama administration. Before 2012, then there was a variety of views on this, with several different scientific hypotheses being explored, and it wasn't yet considered a "closed book" by the medical establishment. After a lot of agitation by patient advocacy groups, then a large study begin, in 2008, concluding in 2012. But when this came out, it was a great disappointment to those who thought it is a real disease, because the researchers came out conclusively in favour of the delusion hypothesis.This is what they wrote:"This comprehensive study of an unexplained apparent dermopathy demonstrated no infectious cause and no evidence of an environmental link. There was no indication that it would be helpful to perform additional testing for infectious diseases as a potential cause. Future efforts should focus on helping patients reduce their symptoms through careful attention to treatment of co-existing medical, including psychiatric conditions, that might be contributing to their symptoms."You can understand that this seemed to close the book on the subject for the medical establishment.However if you look at the study a bit more closely, then it's not quite so clear a matter as it first seems.The main problem the CDC study faced is the low prevalence of the disease, only 3.65 cases per 100,000 of the population they studied. Also at the time they did the study there were many different competing hypotheses about what caused Morgellons, so they didn’t have a single hypothesis to test.In that four year period, after spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on the survey, they found a total of 41 patients with the condition. More than ten thousand dollars per patient was spent on this survey - doing something like this is an expensive undertaking.They themselves point out several limitations to their study. Also some of the researchers who were already researching into the condition at the time of the survey offered several criticisms of it.Harry Schone summarizes these criticisms in one of the sections of his University College Londonthesis "Learning from Morgellons" (for a History and Philosophy of Science Masters)"It is indeed true that the CDC were being cautious, that they found no positive evidence for the claims made by Morgellons sufferers, but it does not mean that the study can go without critical appraisal. Although expensive and lengthy, the research only clinically evaluated 41 people. Furthermore, since the population was selected by criteria other than self-identification it has been argued by critics of the study that some of those included did not have or even consider themselves to have Morgellons. The validity of these criticisms may rest on somewhat pedantic points, but what is certainly true is that an awful lot of reading between the lines has been passed off as something more substantial."See Learning from Morgellons, Harry Quinn Schone, Masters thesis for UCL (University College London), see Harry SchoneAnd if you go and read the report itself, then they also point out limitations in their own report. Amongst other issues they point out that there was no clear diagnostic test for the condition or established tests for it, so leading to possibilities of reporting biases and misclassification. Also, they weren't able to follow the patients over a long period of time.The paper itself is not nearly so conclusive in tone as the summary of it might suggest.This is what they say at the end of the discussion section:We were not able to conclude based on this study whether this unexplained dermopathy represents a new condition, as has been proposed by those who use the term Morgellons, or wider recognition of an existing condition such as delusional infestation, with which it shares a number of clinical and epidemiologic features. We found little on biopsy that was treatable, suggesting that the diagnostic yield of skin biopsy, without other supporting clinical evidence, may be low. However, we did find among our study population co-existing conditions for which there are currently available therapies (drug use, somatization). These data should assist clinicians in tailoring their diagnostic and treatment approaches to patients who may be affected. In the absence of an established cause or treatment, patients with this unexplained dermopathy may benefit from receipt of standard therapies for co-existing medical conditions and/or those recommended for similar conditions such delusions infestationThat doesn't read to me like a paper that completely closes the book on the topic, leaving no possibility for any future research on it.For details see the discussion section of the Plos One paper.THE NEW HYPOTHESIS, A CONNECTION WITH CHRONIC LYME DISEASEAt the time of the CDC report, there were many competing scientific hypotheses for Morgellons. So the CDC were quite right to say that there was no single clear diagnostic criteria to use, or tests.However, now it seems that the researchers have converged on a single hypothesis. Which seems, scientifically, quite a reasonable one. The Mayo Clinic Page page about Morgellons refers to this group of researchersThere are maybe a dozen or so researchers involved in this research. But one of the main proponents of this hypothesis is Marianne J. Middelveen, MDes, a Veterinary Microbiologist from Alberta, Canada. She made a connection with a disease of cattle, called Bovine Digital dermatitiswhich has similar symptoms - and in that case, it is well established that there are microfilaments of keratin and collagen which form beneath the skin.She analysed the filaments that form beneath the skin of sufferers, and found out that these also are made of keratin and collagen.She also found spirochetes, which are usually associated with Lyme disease in humans.These get their name because of their spiral shape:See Borrelia burgdorferi NEU2011 on MicrobeWikiYou can listen to her talk about her researches in the One Radio Network morning show with Patrick Timpone here: Marianne Middelveen, Morgellons DiseaseAnd the main paper is here: "Exploring the association between Morgellons disease and Lyme disease: identification of Borrelia burgdorferi in Morgellons disease patients"It turns out that Borrelia burgdorferi has a preference for infecting fibroblasts and keratinocytes which are cells in your body, in the epithelium, that create keratin and collagen - components of your skin. So they are a part of a healthy skin.Her hypothesis is that the spirochetes hides from the antibiotics inside the cells that produce these materials and this can influence gene expression (which genes get turned on or off), so something goes wrong with gene regulation, leading to these cells producing too much collagen and keratin, creating these fibres in the skin, which then cause the irritations and sores. They may be able to hide in these cells for many years on end, before something changes and triggers an outbreak of Morgellons.But some patients continue to get symptoms for many years afterwards. The suggestion is that the spirochetes can sometimes hide from the antibiotics, and then continue to cause problems long after the disease is normally considered to be cured.This has the same issue as Morgellons, that the treatment for chronic lyme disease is a long term course of antibiotics. Most medical authorities advise against this method of treating it. See Lyme Disease Controversy (wikipedia)..The problem here is that though the mechanisms of persistence in Lyme disease are well established in animal studies, dogs mice and rhesus macaques, there is a lot of controversy about whether the same processes happen in humans.There are two views here, the view of the CDC that humans are different from the animals, and one month of antibiotics will get rid of Lyme disease, and the view of ILADS (the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society) that persistent lyme disease is a problem.Marianne Middelveen says she has chronic lyme disease herself (though she doesn't have the symptoms of Morgellons). As a microbiologist she can culture it in a special growth medium, and (after maybe a month) she can see the Lyme bacterium swimming around, and do DNA studies, and molecular stains and techniques to definitely identify it as Borrelia Burgdorferi (they use antibiotics to eliminate other microbes).WHY DIDN'T THE CDC FIND THE SPIROCHETES?In their 2015 paper, Middelveen and her co researchers say that the CDC study had limitations which could explain why they didn't find the spirochetes"The search for spirochetal pathogens in that study was limited to Warthin-Starry staining on a small number of tissue samples and commercial two-tiered serological Lyme disease testing as interpreted by the CDC Lyme surveillance criteria. It should be noted that only two of the patients in our study group were positive for Lyme disease based on the CDC Lyme surveillance criteria and yet Borrelia spirochetes were readily detectable in this group of 25 MD patients."They attribute their success in detecting Borrelia burgdorferi and closely related spirochetes to several factorsClear diagnostic criteria for patient selection: fibers visible underneath unbroken skin or embedded in or projecting from skin, documented by a healthcare providerAbility to culture spirochetes in vitro to increase opportunity of detectionHigh spirochetal load for the lesions, similar to lesions in cattle with BDDUse of molecular hybridization and PCR methods, able to detect spirochetal DNA in picogram range.WHAT ABOUT THE COTTON FIBRES FOUND BY THE CDC?The authors agree that the cotton fibres extracted by the CDC are unrelated to the disease, and are probably from clothes and swabs. However they say that the fibres they study are a different phenomenon. They are almost microscopic in many people, 10 microns to 40 microns wide. They may require 60 times magnification to be seen clearly, and can be found beneath unbroken skin. The fibres they found were made of keratin and collagen, not cotton. See Exploring the association between Morgellons disease and Lyme disease: identification of Borrelia burgdorferi in Morgellons disease patients,WHAT ABOUT THE DELUSIONS?Some of the patients do start to get many different ideas about their condition and may think they are infected by insects, or other things.Here I'm summarizing some earlier papers on the topic. The researchers agreed with the CDC that these incorrect beliefs can occur, but differ in their understanding of the cause / effect connection. Based on patient reports and observations, they believe that the physical symptoms occur first, and the psychosomatic disorders follow later.Lyme disease is also implicated in some neurological conditions so that may also be a factor. In more detail, the ILADS chronic lyme disease checklist for preliminary diagnosis for physicians lists amongst possible symptoms of chronic lyme disease including confusion, difficulty thinking, poor short term memory and attention, disorientation, speech errors such as wrong words and misspeaking, mood swings, anxiety and panic attacks, also:Psychosis (hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, bipolar)"(Note, there are many other symptoms in the check list such as joint pain, fevers, etc and some patients will have some and some will have others.To be diagnosed as chronic lyme disease according to these guidelines - the illness also has to be present for at least a year, must have major neurological effects such as encephalitis, meningitis etc or active arthritis - and the patient must still have active infection with B. burgdorferi even if previously treated with antibiotics)In particular, in support of their view that the condition may cause the higher prevalence of delusions rather than the other way around, these researchers say that they found no evidence of a higher occurrence of pre-existing psychosomatic disorders in this group of patients than there is in the population at large (0.03%), which in their view distinguishes this group of patients from usual cases of delusional parasitosis.LEADING EDGE RESEARCHIt is leading edge research. Just a few studies by a small group of researchers. Following standard scientific practice, then researches like this need to be confirmed by other researchers in other studies. And at this stage, it could as easily be refuted as confirmed.But - with most researchers convinced that the CDC report has "closed the book" on this topic area, research in this area is bound to be slow.Perhaps their report has sometimes been used in ways that suggested it is more conclusive than it really was.In this situation, surely we need to continue this research. If it did turn out that these researchers are right after all, then it is awful if patients who have a real disease are just being treated for anxiety and neurosis.On the other hand it is also pretty bad I think that some patients feel they have to self medicate with antibiotics made for animals, without the precautions needed to make sure they are not harming their health in the process.Long term use of antibiotics has potential to harm your internal organs. It is not something to do on your own, you must get a doctor to do it for you, and monitor the effects closely to make sure you are not being damaged. But the doctor faces the issue of possible malpractice if it is not an accepted treatment. Some doctors are willing to do this kind of treatment for chronic lyme disease even though it is controversial.And if this treatment is actually not doing them any good, this also maybe can be shown conclusively in future research. The CDC reports has enough caveats in it that you can understand patients and researchers not being convinced that it has totally closed the book.And maybe some other treatment found in its place if it is a real condition, once they understand it better. Hopefully more research will help with all this.ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON MORGELLONSFor those who are really keen to find out more, there's an annual three day conference for researchers to present and discuss their findings, including investigations of this hypothesis of a Lyme disease connection. It is held in Austin, Texas, and the eighth conference in 2015 hadtwelve presenters.This is sponsored by the Charles Holman Morgellons Disease Foundation, which is a 501(c)3nonprofit organization committed to "advocacy and philanthropy in the battle against Morgellons Disease" Its director is Cindy Casey-Holman and the organization is named after her deceased husband Charles Holman. It also has a facebook page.The Morgellons Research Foundation was the primary patient advocacy group in the 2000s. This was founded by Mary Leitao, a biologist from Pennsylvania, but is no longer active.See also:Marianne Middelveen, Morgellons Disease Marianne Middelveen talking about her researchFIND OUT MOREMystery Of Morgellons - Disease Or Delusion - Scientific Hypothesis Of Connection With Lyme Diseasewhich also has many other cites.DON’T BELIEVE WIKIPEDIA ON THIS TOPICIf you go to the Wikipedia article on Morgellons then it just says categorically that it is delusional parasitosis. Do be aware that articles on wikipedia are sometimes very biased. (Though many others are excellent).I’ve been trying for some time to get them to change it. I tried to get them to add this paragraph somewhere in the article:"Not all scientists agree that the CDC closes the book on Morgellons. There is research still continuing by a number of scientists based on the hypothesis that it is a disease similar to bovine Digital dermatitis which is a known disease of cattle. These researchers report discovery of spirochetes in the wounds and fibres containing a mix of keratin and collagen as for bovine dermatitis. [cites]. This research is minority view and controversial."But they were having none of it. You can see the discussion on the talk page if you want to see how it went. I stopped this time after another wikipedia editor (not an admin) threatened to get me topic banned if I continue to present my reasons for changing the article.WARNING - PLEASE DON’T TAKE PART IN THE MORGELLONS TALK PAGE DEBATE IN WIKIPEDIA AS A RESULT OF READING THISIf any of you reading this feel tempted to try to join in that debate, please don’t. Wikipedia has a strict rules against canvasing and if anyone joins in as a result of reading what I say here they will fall under canvasing also perhaps proxy editing, getting both you and me in trouble. So I have to warn all readers of my articles not to get involved.But - I can without any problems just tell you that in my view the Morgellons article on Wikipedia is very biased, presenting the CDC report as if it closed the book when it certainly didn’t, as you can see from this answer.SEE ALSOThe material in this answer comes from my Science20 article: Mystery Of Morgellons - Disease Or Delusion - Scientific Hypothesis Of Connection With Lyme Disease which has many cites to the academic medical literature which you can follow up to find out more.That in turn originated as an article I wrote for wikipedia but they merged it away and after trying very hard to get them to include some of the material, I gave up and then I wrote this article instead - of course in a more entertaining science blog fashion.I’ve also copied this answer with some editing as it is a different question, to my answer to What research is being done on the potential pandemic of Morgellons?