Nelson Lowhim; Writer's Muse

Climate Change Part N

2023-09-29T18:30:00.001-07:00

It's now the boring dystopia and we still have some people trying to hand wave it away. Here's one from Nyc: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/16vc42t/williamsburg_this_morning/

I did partially leave that beautiful city because after Sandy my take was if it was ever hit by a direct hurricane or decent storm it would suffer greatly. And no one was trying to fix anything. We'll see if that turns out to be right or not. Be safe out there.

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online art

2023-09-01T09:14:00.003-07:00

Some cover art for Pithead Chapel lit mag. Check em out. I'll have possible prints available soon enough. Take care everyone!

edit: oh and here

Lotsa shorts, no collection yet.

2023-08-19T15:43:00.001-07:00

Like the headline says, the short collection (this will be more conventional, no pics compared to the last one). I'll get it out. It might be a chapbook size (especially if I want it to be all new). Then there's going to be the one that comes which will have graphic tales (will it be a mix of the tales and written word? I don't know, tbf). We will see, dear reader. We will see. I'll keep you updated (also sorry about the web bots out here. I'm not sure why they'd come here to this random blog).

Looks like socal is about to get hit. And then some. I feel that, if it gets hit, it will be worse than anything we've seen, even if it is just a tropical storm. First, the people aren't ready for it. Second the land and buildings aren't. So the water will just flood at an even higher velocity than anything on the east coast. My two experiences are Sandy in NYC (where buildings I thought were solid dangerously shook for a tropical storm that didn't hit us) and another storm in a ME desert. In the latter, the rain just tore through the land and roads were left and made nothing.

So stay safe out there.

Calvin as a madman

2023-08-11T20:30:00.003-07:00

This here are the comics without Hobbes as a tiger. yeah seems pretty sad.

Cool

2023-08-11T17:30:00.007-07:00

Interesting to hear about planets that have been kicked out of orbit from their host star. Trillions of them in this galaxy alone. Just another example cosmic cruelty, sure, but also a spark for a story where aliens have moved from a hostile star (expanding into a red dwarf etc) and looking for a more suitable one. Soon they'll be here and nothing will be able to stop them.... or those are a lot of death stars out there.

New Publication Coming this Winter

2023-08-01T17:30:00.001-07:00

Which for a lit mag (and since I just approved the proofs) means anytime after summer, for some reason. But it's a story in a single panel. I hope you like it. Will link it when it comes through. Peace everyone.

The Great Peace

2023-07-28T20:30:00.001-07:00

Available as an ebook. Pay what you will for now and price to change later.

Propaganda?

2023-06-23T18:00:00.023-07:00

Plenty of things are basically propaganda from both sides these days (Ukraine war), but the latest on the internets is Prigozhi essentially calling out the MOD. Now, this video, assuming the translation is correct, would actually seem to point to western narratives being true[1], especially those about the Russian elites fighting and squabbling among themselves. A wayward general (or equivalent) successful of a major battle is certainly something to worry about, I would think. Hell, I've thought it for the Ukrainian side as well. We'll see, I suppose. But one should note that many of his most recent words have, by all accounts, pointed to an actual fissure among Putin's circle. [2]

Edit: well that escalated then deescalated really fast. suppose the main theories are: This was a real fissure in Russia. Prigozhin was speaking to the hardline faction's views that Putin was not going hard enough in this war. This would not align with some things Prigozhin said, such as Russia hasn't scored major strikes vs Leopard tanks and has had much higher losses than claimed. That doesn't seem to line up with a stated objective of fight this war much harder and right now. (note that some also claim that he is just nuts)

Then there's the Prigozhin was paid or manipulated by Western spies and turned on his own country. The likes of Ritter claim that FSB even uncovered Ukrainian plans to sow chaos with some terrorism in Moscow (to coincide with his march to Moscow). This doesn't entirely explain away why Prigozhin would stop and why Putin would negotiate. Makes no sense whatsoever. Sure Prigozhin might have seen that his situation was hopeless, but once it happened, why would you stop?

Then some think that Putin planned this all (hard to believe. There are other ways to do this, and if you had complete control all the time, you would let it linger just a little bit, wouldn't you? No, this one does not seem likely to me. Could be that Putin wants it to seem this way and to have people think he's masterminding it all (and maybe even use it against his enemies), but we'll see.

I'm thinking that the second choice above is the closest if I were to go by the bloodlust of the usual suspects who want war and war and war. Almost like they did calculate it, but maybe that's just their personalities coming through. Will note that some liberal lefties, like Jeet Heer claimed that crowds were cheering Wagner as they left. And yet those videos don't show many people (this reminds me of the right in America comparing literally any one of their protests to BLM or other ones what completely dwarf it. IOW A picture from the ground doesn't mean anything). So hard to make a call on that one (and taking into account that many people just want a civil war in Russia even though, unlike 1917, there are nukes involved, so how can you want that there or even here).

[1] He also mentions that the Russian MOD lied about an increase in attacks leading up to the SMO. So in that case his words go against what neutral observers have said.

[2] Some have claimed this is 64D chess and it's being said to draw the Ukrainians into battle. I'd say that's highly unlikely, but if Putin is half the dictator the West claims he is, why hasn't he squashed this yet?

New graphic Tales

2023-06-20T10:27:00.003-07:00

Though this one makes it seem like we've got a magazine that doesn't truly appreciate that the art panel is a story onto itself. So it goes. Here is more on issue 41.

On that note, we have a major strike against finding life elsewhere. A planet with little to help life along. Life as we know it, at least.

Daniel Ellsberg RIP

2023-06-19T10:20:00.005-07:00

A great man has died. Plenty of liberals are extolling his virtues and what he did. I think only with the cover of history do they dare to do so. None of his current views (our crazy first strike policies and our nuclear blackmail that goes on in most every diplomatic face-off, and I won't even start on the persecution of Assange) are even close to acceptable to the establishment (especially liberals, but even more so conservatives) and yet they will tout his name. But they won't. Not shocking, but it is tiresome.

On that note I present this video by Ray Mc Govern. Good stuff, if you ask me. But man does it bring up the issue of our current sad state of affairs.

Huh, I'm told by the internet liberals that it's all complicated.

2023-06-16T19:30:00.024-07:00

Ah, those Russians are at it again[1]:

https://www.jpost.com/international/article-746522

Apparently they just released these. I'd consider this true propaganda (after all, why release it now?). The thread I found it on was pretty even handed. Some pointed out the propaganda that it was, though others said we shouldn't focus on it (that's up for debate). Probably, like Bandera we're only talking about people enjoying the nationalist side of these early "heroes". But wait, now we have something like this:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/07/lithuania-and-nazis-the-country-wants-to-forget-its-collaborationist-past-by-accusing-jewish-partisans-of-war-crimes.html

Where Lithuanians are shown (in the last couple decades) to consider partisans, who had their families murdered and in turn fought the Nazis, to be war criminals. Yeah, you have that right. Which, btw, some people in the thread claim are entirely negated by the current (?) Lithuanian leader having a jewish last name. Right.

"In a new party line, institutions of the contemporary Lithuanian government now portray Nazi-aligned nationalists as anti-Soviet heroes and anti-Nazi partisans—in particular the Jewish ones—as traitors. "

Lithuania, as you know, completely supports Ukraine in its war against Russia. Understandable. I don't understand why Russia wouldn't release ("declassify") documents against Ukraine.

just to add some context from the second article:

"Since they ran a disproportionate number of businesses, newspapers, and civic organizations—the civil society institutions with no future in a Soviet utopia—they were natural targets for the Stalinists and thousands were deported to Siberia. At the same time, since there were also many Lithuanian-Jewish communists, Jews were blamed by their countrymen for the Soviet takeover. That Russian Jews had been wildly overrepresented in the generation that led the Bolshevik Revolution is indisputable. But by the time World War II broke out, Stalin had long since purged most Jewish Communists from the Soviet elite in Moscow. After the war, Jews would have only a minor role in running Soviet Lithuania, in part because of Soviet anti-Semitism but, more crucially, because nearly all of them would be dead."

will also note that I've recommended reading Second hand time to get some ideas on Russian minds, to include during WWII. And yes there was lots of anti-semitism among the Russians (even Russian Partisans who sometimes chose to kill Jews rather than have them help fight). But, again, being sent to a gulag is better than being sent to a death camp or killed by your neighbors.

And don't forget Stalin's own brand of anti-semitism (who knows where that would have gone, as he was ginning up some at his death):

"After the war, Lithuania was reincorporated into the USSR and Soviet authorities suppressed the truth about the significant Jewish role in the partisan resistance and the remarkable degree of local Christian collaboration with the Nazis"

and read a book called Neighbors that also details how Soviets had no desire to actually prosecute these killers.

"With independence, the remnants of the Lithuanian-born Jewish community abroad saw an opportunity to finally prosecute the Nazi collaborators who had escaped punishment in Soviet times. "

Anyways, sound familiar?

"The right-wing paramilitaries who had carried out the mass murder of Lithuania’s Jews were now hailed as national heroes on account of their anti-Soviet bona fides. "

But still, the misuse of the word "genocide" seems to have been in full use for a while:

"the institution is emphatically not a Holocaust museum. In what became a model for post-Soviet Lithuania’s new party line, the museum recasts the human rights abuses of the Soviets as the “genocide,” while the Holocaust is brushed under the rug, downgraded to what the permanent exhibit calls Gestapo “repression against Jewish and other populations of Lithuania.” Among the names carved into the museum’s stone facade is Jonas Noreika’s."

Note that the actual genocide is forgotten here. Oh and don't forget this gem:

"The Lithuanian ambassador to the United States, Zygmantas Pavilionis, sees things more conspiratorially. He claims the accusation against Arad was not the work of Lithuanian anti-Semites but rather the work of a Russian conspiracy to make Lithuania look anti-Semitic in the eyes of the world."

and then this:

"An academic paper published on the Genocide and Resistance Research Center’s website went even further than Burauskaite or the court, questioning whether the Holocaust meets the standard for genocide since “although an impressive percentage of the Jews were killed by the Nazis, their ethnic group survived” and later flourished. The Soviet repression, it argues, was indisputably genocide since the Lithuanian intelligentsia, eliminated by Stalin, has never regenerated."[2]

Anyhow, on further review, giving weapons to these Nazi-loving types will only result in good things. [3]

[1] When the war kicked off in full, there was immediate censorship of calling Ukrainians Nazis. now, the Times is running stories about "problematic" nazi symbols that keep showing up on Ukrainians. Huh. It and Bandera lovers are a bigger problem than our media is saying. And no, that doesn't mean Putin's invasion is actually helping the matter. But what it does mean is that these stories are now being published. Why? Are our elites going to throw the Ukrainians under the bus (and if that happens, what happens to the weapons in the hands of extremists?)? Much like the new info that Nordstream 2 was blown up by errant Ukrainians, this kind of info makes for interesting theorizing.

[2] Note that I think the Russian (and the new west's use for Russia etc) use of the word genocide is also pretty bad and only furthers making the word useless (each side engaging in a worthy victims race).

[3] Finkelstein shared a link about Nazis getting Ukrainian weapons (and it would seem that the attack on Russia was by Nazis, an attack much lauded by our media in a "look what's happening to them" way). There have been a few more of these: https://declassifieduk.org/revealed-russian-neo-nazi-leader-obtained-uk-missiles-in-ukraine/

Japan

2023-06-07T21:29:00.002-07:00

Loved Japan when I went there. This is an interesting look at it and the demographic crisis there.

Craziness

2023-06-07T20:00:00.026-07:00

A dam has been breached in Ukraine. A complete disaster. As with after the nordstream bombing MSM seems to be blaming Russia. How long before we find the truth? All I want is a full international investigation.

Snyder with some "Russia did it"-itis. Again, we don't know, and I've heard the likes of Scott Ritter say otherwise, but the narrative here is ridiculous.

But online and on the MSM the drumbeat of "Russia bad" keeps on going. I'm arguing with people who think that Russia is the only nation ever using nuclear blackmail. We do it (read Doomsday machine by Ellsberg).

But here's proof.

"Senior U.S. officials said that Biden has decided not to follow through on his 2020 pledge to declare that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack against the United States or its allies. Instead, he approved a version of a policy from the Obama administration that leaves open the option to use nuclear weapons not only in retaliation to a nuclear attack, but also to respond to non-nuclear threats."

It's insane what people are willing to believe. Also the Times has an article about Nazi symbols in the Ukraine Army. They have always been there, it's just that if you said anything before it was Putin speak, while now it's okay to talk about it. The article kinda soft pedals the whole thing (to include okaying why the Ukrainians would side with the Nazis) but I'm wondering if it's part of a scheme by our elites to slowly present Ukraine as unreliable and so we can dump them without too much back pedaling. We'll see. I've always said that the right wing there is troubling and the Banderites are especially an issue. And giving them weapons might blow up in our face (like Afghanistan, though maybe worse as they can be everywhere in the west). Case in point.

Been a minute

2023-06-06T00:02:00.003-07:00

Since I've posted. Working away on that new kind of story. Just working on it has expanded some ideas. But I've also had a little more in terms of flash fiction. Old school. Might mix those two together more than ever.

Anyhow, was listening to some music and this oldie but goodie came up. Well done, algo, well done indeed.

I remember being new to the country that was Cold Michigan. Breaking apart from economic forces no one was entirely certain of Michigan. A changing place for sure. And me? Unsure of many things, but learning, as only children can. And how I bonded with some other kids over a Getto Boys cassette. Us minorities. Treated differently by teachers and students. But this song was solid then and now. Yeah, those were good times.

Coolest cop chase I've ever seen

2023-05-08T22:00:00.004-07:00

IRL trumps hollywood, at least in this case. 5min, but well worth it.

Google Search and the Zeitgeist.

2023-05-04T21:30:00.024-07:00

Been thinking about google search and how hard it has been to find the things we need. So seeing this thread and how many use reddit as a bypass for the useless google results (people talking still wins). SEO was just another way to spam us and soon there will be yet another way. And at the same moment examples of SCOTUS justices being essentially bribed are still coming out. And one shouldn't care if it's a GOP or Dem judge being bribed (I think it's all of them, and it includes our reps who don't want the gravy train to end). Only goes to show how badly off the system is. Makes one wanna vote third party just to say f-it.

Then we have Biden pushing for WWIII and arresting black socialists (MSM not covering it). Sigh. I was gonna add a mega church pic where they have a tank crushing cars, but I decided not to. Instead enjoy this very large map of mars. And maybe visit your nearest hardware store, that's where you can regain hope for humanity. Stay safe out there people.

A couple more

2023-04-28T21:58:00.003-07:00

Pieces of Art accepted in a lit magazine from OK. Will be posting links soon enough. Good times. Will be posting more and more as I get the links. Be safe out there.

Was avoiding the stream slide dopamine hit of the internet for a good bit. But they got to me, dear reader. So I saw the latest from a Hersh-hater who claims that Denmark has info that Russia did it. This person isn't completely full of it. He seems to be a good faith for the most part and I can follow his arguments well (thinks it's Russia but doesn't have a cogent idea of how, which is fair). Some of his arguments have credibility, but much of it doesn't.

That is when it comes to this one topic. When it comes to other issues, it really seems like he's trolling or working for elites in our country. Could be me, of course.

And ofc, points like this can't be dismissed out of hand, but I'm still thinking odds are leaning to the Hersh story rather than not (for example he thinks the Times published a theory on the ND explosion without a single bit of influence from the State Dept, and all I have to ask is how can that be anyone's view after seeing how the Times follows State worldviews for decades straight?

And views like the comment imaged above seem to apply too much thinking to our leaders. I don't think anything has been well thought out (why wouldn't they allow a UN investigation to happen and just stonewall from there?). Maybe I'm wrong though. We'll see.

New Piece.

2023-04-17T22:42:00.003-07:00

Out there in the zine land I've got a new story out. Bar bar Literary Magazine has Corsican tales out. Check it out and if you like it, share it.

peace.

Doctorow On the SVB Bailout

2023-04-15T14:06:00.002-07:00

Yep, socialism for the rich and a hard market capitalism for the poor. Doctorow shows how the rich were bailed out and things like affordable housing were not. It's all just nuts.

BJG Knocks it Out

2023-04-14T15:24:00.002-07:00

That our twittering verse and twittering classes are talking about Nazi memorabilia and one Justice, they ignore the pervasive corruption (legal and otherwise) in our system. Shame. Anyways, BJG has a good interview with Corey Robin about the Justice himself. Troubling, of course, But good stuff:

I think I've whined on here before that I was looking for either spaces (liberal blogs etc have turned out to be useless, and I"m sure as Biden continues many Trump policies, they have no improved) where there were good discussions. Now, I would like to join in on these, but even podcasts or interviews with people I like and agree with have looked like little more than "let this guy lecture" circle jerks where not a single tough question is asked.

Sure, that sometimes means a decent amount of rapport is built, but never anything incisive.

BJG manages to get past that and asks questions that manage to dig deeper than normal. A seriously needed voice out there. Check it out.

Cool article

2023-04-12T16:01:00.002-07:00

Interesting stuff on heaven and hell. Enjoy it.

This slaps

2023-04-06T22:54:00.004-07:00

First, another slew of spam. Still makes me wonder what for and how do they find this site. But for now, a really good song I just heard (first time for me):

New Visual Tale (also: Lowhim Slapdown)

2023-04-06T22:52:00.003-07:00

Was just thinking of how I named something before fake news was everywhere, and how that ended up being a much better name (the slap down is my inability to do some twitter level copy). Sure, I didn't sell it as non-fiction when it was just that, but that's just my morals. Or what I think it is. But pseudo-essays really doesn't have the same slap, does it?

So now I'm thinking that naming this visual tales or whatever isn't the way to go, but so be it. If I come up with something better I will. Be safe out there. Here it is. Not sure I entirely approve of the story being put up next to another story, but its time will come. (links to prints will come)

Edit: Prints are up, right here. Check out the storefront for other versions (canvas etc)

huh?

2023-04-05T23:46:00.004-07:00

Ok, so for some reason, looking back (8 years!) I found this gem of a short story (about a video game):

[1]

Well, all I can think is... damn nice idea.

[1]

An Amazing Video Game

I’ll be the first to admit that my video gaming skills are far below the average (as it were, it would seem that I should be one of those who would watch rather than play the damn sport/job) with my hand-eye coordination and speed below most people twice my age. Perhaps I need to stick to downing some vitamin B tablets, or perhaps I should stick to board games such as go and shogi. But I have a knack for running away from where most evidence points.

Recently, I visited a website of suspect makeup, wanting to unload my handful of bitcoins, and I started to play what was a most interesting video game. The last time I played any games—Turok, GoldenEye and Mario 64—was on the old Nintendo system of a previous millennium. I would eventually bore of these games. This game, however, kept my interest. You play a character who has just crashed onto an unknown planet, memory gone, and needs to survive.

Period.

There is no perfect end, there is no drive towards something better. There are local aliens of middling technological abilities, but that doesn’t matter as you are limited to a new level of physics and new elements. Bit by bit you make choices: you travel in whichever direction you want, and for the most part the world ignores you. You are limited by human necessities; you need water and food, you need to talk to the locals, who all have their own issues.

Meanwhile, you slowly learn your own history, and the history of what/where you came from, as you see and learn about the pieces of the craft you jettisoned from, that locals keep as prizes from the sky. Since you have no idea about the local politics, let alone the rivalries, you must be careful about who you trust, about what actions you can trust, if that. You have the choice of being friend or foe or neutral to all you meet, of being a great man or a not so great man (almost everyone you meet allows you to have a certain amount of missions to help and gain help, though there are certain tribes or groups you will come across who will give you the shirt off their backs; yet use them too much and they fall into disrepair and die of hunger, or other such ailments, or they learn not to trust when you break promises, or simply are taken over by another group). And all that you do resonates. Act violent (it turns out that you’re quicker/more powerful here... that you’re nothing short of a super-being) and too many people start conspiring against you.

There is some element of allowing evil to happen. I’ve played this game all the way through a handful of times already: it’s that addicting and the story/world changes each time. The biggest turning point (or decision making point) that I seem to come up against is the choice of, assuming you make friends here on the new planet, helping the people, or fighting your own people when they finally come to this planet, albeit in massive ships as numerous as the Spanish Armada. Turns out that you find out that you were part of a recon unit, sent out here to scout the place for precious materials. And it turns out that you can stab your new friends in the back, or help them to fight.

Either way you are considered a traitor. And even if you should pick the double agent route (hedging bets, or perhaps you’ve decided to pretend to be friendly to your people and sabotage them or vice versa to the new people), you have no guarantee of not being a traitor to at least one side. There is talk of some players choosing not to pick a side. But, as in most cases with humanity, this has not worked out. These players claim that, even if they have died (thus not surviving, the main point of the game), they have achieved something, that perhaps that idea will live on in the game itself, through the other characters you’ve come in touch with.

That seems a little childish, if you ask me. Even if the game, assuming the battle is still on, allows you to watch after you’ve died, I have yet to hear of influencing the outcome with one’s own martyrdom. Or at least it appears that, given the multiple branches from similar actions, that no one can say that with any great certainty that any meme in life will give certain results. And the rules of the game are rules of the game: survive. Why add to it?

Another great feature: once you’re finished can be watched via a camera (you can edit this, if you’re so inclined) as in a movie. It’s not a great movie, but it works, and is probably better than most movies out there (it runs at half an hour, so it’s not too much time lost, if you want to give it a try). On Youtube, you see hours and hours of these movies being put together (people making the wrong decisions and setting up harder obstacles than is needed just to have a climax, just to have the three parts to a movie, just to have pretty much everything). There is even talk of the possibility that one will be nominated as an animated movie for an award in the future.

The AI of the world is truly the greatest aspect of this game, and shows how well designed it is. There is minimal “hive” thinking amongst the people or individuals you come across—or no more than is realistic. All of them are given certain ways to think and react, and from the moment you set foot on the planet this changes. This in itself is amazing.

That the game only truly ends when you die (old age or sickness or something violent), also makes it unique in many ways. It was initially available with one life alone. But when that didn’t work, too many complaints, they added a handful more.

There is a contest, among a few players, about who can become the oldest character. They claim that this is the best way to play the game, simply learning enough to stay old. They have gone on quests to find a fountain of youth (rumors that I’m sure the game makers have started to increase interest in the game itself).

The controversy of what one is meant to do at the end of the game, meant to have accomplished, is both the games strongest and weakest point. How can one say that a game about merely surviving is any good? And it’s not like WW where one gets stronger and stronger. There is a mortal limit to your strengths, and to gain any more strength, there is no miraculous tech (though it doesn’t hurt it’s usually short lived because the knowledge travels fast), but rather an organization that you must create and allow to become powerful. This will, of course, challenge other organizations, and, again, you will perish in a bloody war if you grow too powerful, because the game follows reality (a rather human one, it must be admitted): that which is divided must unite and that which is united must fall.

There are rumors that the next game will continue from the last point of the best rated movie made about this first game. I wonder whether they're giving too much power to these games. I also wonder about rumors that the next world will allow you to play multiple generations (unless you die before reproducing), because it will detract from some strengths of this game.
That being said, I highly recommend this game to everyone out there.
The End

r/AskHistorians

2023-03-30T22:56:00.006-07:00

Has another solid reply on Florida's wars against the Seminoles:

Yes, it's true to an extent. Like with all Indian Wars, the causes are complex and hard to trace to any one or two single elements. But the reality of a large population of formerly enslaved black men and women living alongside or even as part of Seminole communities was a burr in the saddle of many plantation owners. Before the First Seminole War, American authorities had tried to secure the return of runaways both with the Spanish as well as the Creeks. The 1796 Treaty of Colerain, for instance, included an agreement with some Creek leaders to not only surrender any runaways in their possession, but also to take responsibility for all those in Florida under Seminole control. It was preposterous, of course, but was a provision that at least the American authorities took very seriously.
Conflict between militias and other irregular forces from Georgia and Tennessee and the Florida Seminoles occurred during the War of 1812, and the United States took some Spanish territory as a result of that war. The defeat of the Creeks in the southwestern theater of the war also gave Americans more confidence in their ability to take Florida by force, if necessary. But there was more than just the typical settlement-creep going on, as well, though many Georgians and other southerners had wanted to take Florida for some time; in 1816, an abandoned American fort had been taken and manned by a band of "free negroes," many of whom were formerly enslaved.
The mere existence of an armed fortress on the southern border of the United States was considered a threat to the safety of American slave owners. The belief was that its existence would stand as a lure to otherwise passive slaves, and would encourage escapes and other acts of resistance to white authority. Even John Quincy Adams, hardly thought of as a friend to slavery, described the fort as "a seat of banditti and the receptacle for runaway slaves." By 1816, the fort was a threat in other ways, too. as its location prevented the easy resupply of another American fort nearby. Several supply transports were fired on from the fort, proving that it was a credible threat to the security of the new fort.
In what may have been the very first federally organized slave-catching expedition in American history, a small expedition under General Edmund Gaines made up of American regulars, armed ships, and allied Creeks, bombarded the fort, and a lucky hit with a heated cannon ball blew up the fort's powder magazine, killing 300 men and destroying the fort. The survivors were rounded up and many of the captured weapons and ammunition were passed onto the allied Creeks.
While the population at the "Negro Fort" was separate from the Seminoles, the loss of so many allies weakened the Seminoles. The black men and women who sought out a new life in Florida often acted as interpreters and guides, go-betweens for the Seminoles and American and Spanish authorities. Their loss was significant.
The next year, a newly arranged alliance of Seminole bands under Neamathla, a Mikasuki chief, threatened to kill any Americans who ventured past the Flint River. In response, Gaines, still the local American commander, sent a detachment of 250 men under Major David Twiggs to arrest Neamathla. After an inconclusive gunfight in November, 1817, a second detachment of 40 men was ambushed by Seminole forces, killing all but six men, including several of the soldiers' wives, which gave a much more widely popular cause for what became known as the First Seminole War. In addition to luring away otherwise docile slaves, despoiling good farmland, and killing American soldiers, Andrew Jackson drew the old reliable card of "foreign agents" to further grow support for the war. Fear of foreign - especially British - direction of Indian hostilities dated back to before the War for Independence. Of course, no such interference existed; the Seminoles who came into conflict with the Americans were doing so for their own reasons under their own leaders. The United States won the First Seminole War and under the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, the Seminoles (at least those at the treaty signing) agreed to withdraw into a reservation in central Florida. One of the stipulations of the treaty was that the Seminoles would act in accordance to US law, which included a proviso that they would return any runaway slaves to their owners.
The Second, or Great, Seminole War was started as a result of the Indian Removal Act. The federal government dissolved the Seminole Reservation in Florida and demanded that the remaining Seminoles relocate to a reservation in modern-day Oklahoma. Between 1823, when the Moultri Creek treaty was signed, and 1830, when the Removal Act was signed, there were of course continued hostilities, and the Seminoles continued to ignore their obligation to return runaways. Of course, the major cause for the renewal of the war was that the United States renegged on several elements of the treaty, and had been slow or totally uninterested in abiding by their responsibilities for supplying farming implements, annuity payments, and food and repair for their tools. One aspect of the treaty for the Seminole relocation stipulated that the Seminoles had to be satisfied with the new territory, and after several representatives traveled to their intended reservation and saw the parched, worthless land they were allotted, many refused to leave. There remained, too, a sizable group of "renegade" blacks in Florida, which drew white slavecatchers to the region, as well. By now, pressure from land speculators and slave owners in the southern states reached a fever pitch, and the refusal to relocate was taken as a cause to open hostilities.
To wrap up, while the causes for the Seminole Wars were complicated, involved international politics of at least three countries and a hugely diverse group of American Indians, and black folks both born free and "renegade," a central factor was the fear from slave owners that existence of a community of free blacks was an intolerable lure for their own slave populations. Removing that community was thought of as an act of self-preservation. Memories of the somewhat recent Haitian Revolution were very fresh in the minds of white slaveowners, but it was the combination of those fears along with the Indian Removal Act and the impatience of white land speculators that led to the Great Seminole War.
Ken Mahon's The Great Seminole War remains probably the most comprehensive work on the Seminole Wars to date, and much of this answer was sourced thereby.