At least We've got Delia Ramirez Going For Us

It's a good day for looking on the bright side of things. We are fortunate in Illinois to have Congresswoman Delia Ramirez representing our third district. Yesterday, she spoke against the obscene U.S. Defense budget that breezed through the House of Representatives.

In a statement posted on X, Ramirez said some things most lawmakers are too cowardly to admit. Specifically:

    "Billions of dollars go to make defense corporations and their investors  including Members of Congress, rich while Americans go hungry, families are crushed by debt, and bombs we fund kill children in Gaza,"

 Why I Hate Patriotism -- As Explained by Emma Goldman, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, and Bertrand Russell

I've always loved team sports, but whenever I go to a ballgame I try to be absent during the ritual playing of the National Anthem.

Also, fighter jets -- more literally bomb droppers -- roaring over stadiums before games almost make me want to vomit.

In other words, I intensely dislike patriotism.

My reasons for this have been articulated far better than I can by several people who write better than I can. So I am just going to turn this over to them.

Emma Goldman is a good place to start. She once said:

 “Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.”

 Here’s another one by Goldman:

 Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.

 

Leo Tolstoy was no fan of it either:

 Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, and conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power.

 

Then there was Albert Einstein, who said it this way:

    Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the     loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of             patriotism - how passionately I hate them!

Einstein also commented on "nationalism," which, for all practical purposes, is what most people mean when they refer to "patriotism" today:

 "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."

And it seems fitting to let Bertrand Russell have the last word:

    

    “Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial         reasons”

 

 

Good Riddance  Antony Blinken

Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently gave Ukraine leaders an indirect but stern talking-to. They needed, he said, to start conscripting younger Ukrainians to kill and die for the American Empire’s proxy war against Russia.

Right now, Ukraine does not force 18 – 25 years olds into its military, but Blinken wants that changed.

“Getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary,” said Blinken. (1)

The first thing to wonder is who, exactly are those “many of us” who think the way Blinken does.? They probably include some of the same millionaire war profiteers who joined Blinken and Biden in spearheading support for George W. Bush’s nut-job invasion of Iraq in 2003. (2) You know, the one that turned out to be – oh,snap -- based on some “faulty intelligence.”

 Several hundred thousand Iraqis died as a result of that little mistake, and their once very functional nation is still in chaos more than two decades later. You might have thought Blinken’s career as a high-level cheerleader for the U.S. war machine would have ended right there. But, as Medea Benjamin has observed, “In the U.S., there is no accountability for supporting the worst foreign policy disaster in modern history. Only rewards.” (3)

In any case, unfazed and unaccountable, Blinken soldiered on, so to speak. As Stephen Zune writes, 

He [became]a strong supporter of U.S. intervention in Libya’s 2011 civil war, [another complete disaster] even as Biden himself opposed it. Blinken also supported a far larger U.S. military intervention in Syria’s civil war [an even bigger human catastrophe]and has opposed a withdrawal of U.S. troops from that country. (2)

Then, in 2017, Blinken went on to do what any Washington player would do in his position. He started a consulting firm. He named it West Exec Advisors, and it had, Zunes notes “a secret client list believed to include aerospace and defense contractors, as well as a prominent Israeli artificial intelligence firm with close ties to that country’s military.” (2)

(No wonder, then, that Blinken has recently dismissed as “meritless” the decision by the International Criminal Court, Amnesty International, and others that Israel is conducting genocide in Gaza.) (5)

Returning to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there are very convincing arguments that the U.S./Nato did everything it could to provoke it. (for just one good example, go here:  Opinion | The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace | Common Dreams ).

Now, after more than two years of carnage, The Russia-Ukraine violence is finally being seen for what it’s always been: a proxy war in which the US “will fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.”(4) Mitch McConnel, in a speech late last year, admitted that “… the most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests.”(6)

 And last month, England’s former prime minister Boris Johnson stopped clowning long enough to tell an interviewer, “Man, let’s face it. We’re waging a proxy war.” (7)

 Incidentally, for the first time since the Russian invasion, more than half of Ukrainians (52 percent) now favor peace negotiations with Russia over continuing the war (38 percent). (8)

As for our war-happy state secretary, his term has nearly expired. He’ll be okay though. As Caitlin Johnstone notes:

‘You won’t see anyone in Tony Blinken’s family headed to the frontlines in Ukraine.” (9) Nor will Blinken go hungry, as hundreds of thousands of Gazans are doing, thanks in no small part to Blinken’s hard work. He can easily return to brokering bribes for the likes of Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.

 Blinken’s new replacement, Marco Rubio, will also be excellent for the war industry.  He likes to cite not just Russia but also China, Iran, and North Korea as reasons we must ratchet up defense and spy spending even more than ever. All those countries, he said recently, “want to weaken America, weaken our alliances, weaken our standing and our capability and our will.” (10)

Those are words that sound like the ringing of a cash register if you are in the right business.

 

Sources:

(1)   Blinken Says Ukraine Must Send Younger People Into War - News From Antiwar.com

(2)    Biden’s Pick for Secretary of State Has a Record of Militarism | Truthout

(3)   Medea Benjamin on X: "So we will have a president who supported the invasion of Iraq, and a secretary of state (Tony Blinken) who supported the invasion of Iraq. In the US, there is no accountability for supporting the worst foreign policy disaster in modern history . Only rewards." / X

(4)   Washington Will Fight Russia to the Last Ukrainian - The American Conservative

(5)   Blinken calls genocide case against Israel ‘meritless’

(6)   The Claim That The Ukraine War Advances US Interests Discredits The Claim That It’s “Unprovoked” – Caitlin Johnstone

(7)   Boris Johnson: 'We're Waging a Proxy War' in Ukraine - News From Antiwar.com

(8)   Ukrainians Are Changing Their Minds on the War - Newsweek

(9)   Blinken Is Pushing For Ukrainian Teens To Die For US Hegemony – Caitlin Johnstone

(10)                       What to know about Marco Rubio, Trump's pick for secretary of state | AP News

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Blogger's note: Taking a healthy break today from state-sponsored hypocrisy and mayhem. 

The article below was written a couple of years ago and was rejected by some of the glossiest fly-fishing magazines we have. 

Well, it's their loss, damn it. It's a fine piece of literature on an under-addressed topic!

 They Chum Catfish, Don’t They?

 “Catfish are jumpin, that paddlewheel thumpin…”  -- the Doobie Brothers

 

“Summer time, and the livin’ is easy…. Catfish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high” --Janice Joplin version of Scott Joplin’s “Summertime”

 

The seven-pound catfish I caught on a wooly bugger the other day didn’t jump like they do in those songs. But it did fight like an angry badger, resisting arrest for the better part of a half hour.

I’m no Larry Dalberg, hunting for trophies all over the globe, but that seven-pound cat on a six-weight rod almost made me feel like I should get my own show.

All of which begs the question: why do so few people fly-fish for cats?

A lot of it is the aesthetics, I suppose. They aren’t colorful, their faces are only pretty to other cats, and when you grab one it’s like squeezing a baggie full of mashed potatoes.

But what we might call fly angler anti-catism goes deeper, so to speak, than that.  It can be traced back at least to the early 1800s and the cat-fishing antics of one John James Audubon.  The famous bird painter lived for a while in Henderson, Kentucky, and his article, “Fishing in the Ohio,” published in 1835, helped popularize the sort of live bait industrial method of catching cats that still prevails in some quarters.  In the article,Audubon says that for a single outing he first gathered up a hundred live toads (“as good as ever hopped”). He then hooked each one in the back, tethered them all to a long trot-line, tossed them in the river overnight, and returned to harvest them the next day .

“I never could hold a rod for many minutes,” Audubon confesses, perhaps stating the obvious. And he goes on to deprecate the eastern fly angler who “stands or slowly moves along some rivulet… with a sham fly to allure a trout, which, when at length caught, weighs half a pound.”

No wonder people got it in their heads that you could hardly catch a cat without first terrorizing the local population of amphibians or go home smelling like chicken liver.

I wouldn’t blame just Audubon, though. The great fly fishing writers of Western Civilization also have some explaining to do.  Isaac Walton never waxed literary over catfish, nor did any of the other big-name literary fly-anglers I’ve ever come across.  From Hemingway to Lefty Kreh, and on down through the absurdly voluminous fly fishing lore, the literati have, to their everlasting shame, ignored catfish.

A couple of brave bloggers have bucked this tradition. One such is Stu Thompson, a Canadian fly-fishing teacher and multispecies advocate.  He thinks catfish are misunderstood. They are not, for example, mere bottom-feeders. Instead, Thompson writes, “They will actively feed from the bottom to the top of the water column.” Moreover, their diet “is a fly angler’s dream.” It includes “aquatic insects, mayflies, caddis flies, dragon flies,  … crawfish, leeches, forage fish, and frogs.”

On top of all that, catfish are smart. I’m no fan of standardized I.Q. tests, even for fish, but the results of a study at the University of Missouri are compelling. In it, cats finished first over all other species in their “learning ability.”

Thompson, who has fly-fished for dozens of species around the world, thinks the Missouri study is onto something.    Channel cats, he concludes, “are the smartest fish that swims. They are smarter than the most prized fish sought by fly fishermen, trout, which ranked in the lower third of the species tested.”

I would hazard a guess that where I live --Southern Illinois -- is as great a region to fly fish for catfish as there is in the world.  The climate is perfect for channel cats, and the area is loaded with ponds and lakes with catfish in them.  And since, as we’ve seen, they feed on much the same items as bass, bluegill, and crappie, you don’t have to target them too specifically.

One way you could target them, though, if you were so inclined, is with a bit of chum.  I haven’t tried it yet, but keep intending to.  I’ve heard that corn, canned mackerel, or almost anything smelly will work.  I don’t see any shame in it. It’s a lot easier on the toads, and Dollar General’s got mackerel at around a dollar a can.

End

.

 

Hey, We Need That Money for War

 

An acquaintance of mine is schizophrenic and addicted to drugs. The last time he was left on his own he got hit by a car and was badly injured. His physical wounds are mostly healed, so he will soon be released from the hospital.

However, he is unable to function on his own. He needs to be in a residential facility or halfway house. But those are all full around here. Our country simply does not have enough money to care for people like him.

My wife, meanwhile, was on the board of directors of the local Boys and Girls Club for several years. They did very important work providing after-school structure and guidance for some of the local kids most in need of it. But their facility got too old to maintain and they had constant difficulty getting enough donations to stay in business. They had to close for many months, though they do hope to reopen eventually and provide services from the basement of a church.

Our country, in other words, doesn’t have enough money for minimal youth services either.

Fortunately, though, we have billions (or trillions, depending on how you measure such things) to subsidize a “defense industry” that can barely keep up with the demand for fighter jets, one- to two-thousand pound bombs, new and improved napalm (white phosphorus), tanks, machine guns, and other materiel needed by our allies in the defense of freedom and human rights all around the world.

It does seem odd, though, that those allies are governed by some of the very worst murderers, torturers, homophobes, and misogynists in the world. They include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel, plus various psychopaths in Central and South America.

One of the ways this works is that the weapons manufacturers set up “think tanks” to advocate for more war spending. The think tanks pose as enclaves of dispassionate scholars carefully analyzing complex issues. Then they issue reports and “white papers” explaining why more and more money needs spending on “defense.” You might have heard of some of them. They include The Hudson Institute, the Rand Corporation, and the National Center for a New American Security (NCAS).

That last one, the NCAS, is quite the player. An article at “Responsible Statecraft” observes that it is: “one of the think tanks leading the charge in highlighting the threat from Beijing.” And, by no coincidence:

They [NCAS] also received at least $8,946,000 from 2014-2019 from the U.S. government and defense contractors, including over $7 million from defense contractors like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Huntington Ingalls, General Dynamics, and Boeing who would stand to make billions if the 500-ship fleet [it recommended] were enacted.

These war-happy think tanks are also very good at getting their recommendations into the news. A recent study looked at who the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal turned to for citations on the Ukraine-Russia war. One result:

…85 percent of the think tank citations they made went to those bankrolled by the weapons industry. Since the conflict started, the stocks of corporations like Raytheon, Lockheed martin, and Northrup Grumman have spiked as the West has spent more on arms. ( Revealed: How Arms-Industry Think Tanks Push America to War )

One final observation: This arrangement between the war industry, their think tanks, the press, the U.S. lawmakers, and the Pentagon appears to be completely isolated from two-party politics. It purrs right along no matter who is in the White House or Congress.

 

 

 

 

 

Palestinian Nakba vs. American Trail of Tears

 

I recently browsed some black and white photos of The Nakba, the Palestinian term for the violent removal of some 800,000 Palestinians from their homes by Israeli militias in 1948.

The photos show long lines of refugees walking, sometimes with a few donkey carts and usually with a woman or two carrying bundles on their heads, men carrying trunks or suitcases. In one classic image a blown-out old truck sits beside the dirt road, ignored by the homeless pilgrims with blank looks on their faces.

The photos reminded me of paintings I had seen depicting the notorious “Trail of Tears” – -the forced removal of several thousand indigenous people from their ancestral homes in the American south to reservations in Oklahoma in the 1830s.

 It occurred to me that I might get a better feel for the scale and degree of trauma of the Nakba – and thus of the Israel/Palestine “conflict” today – by comparing the Nakba to the better-known (in the U.S.) Trail of Tears event. The results follow, but two specific details stand out:

Eight times more Palestinians were driven from their homes in the Nakba than were Native Americans in the Trail of tears. And the Palestinian removal occurred in one-tenth of the time.

 

Some Numbers

 

Table:  1948 Nakba vs, 1830s Trail of Tears

 

	Trail of Tears	Nakba
Date(s)	1830-1840	1948
Land Ceded	39,000 Sq, Miles	10,000 Sq. Miles (72% of Historic Palestine)
Number Removed from their Homes	100,000	800,000
Number Died	15,000	15,000

 Land Ceded. As you see from my little chart, the land ceded by the so-called five “Civilized Tribes” in the U.S. was about four times larger than that ceded by the indigenous people of Palestine.  It was also much more vastly spread out, consisting of five separate sections across Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

 Deaths. A very similar number of refugees died in the two events, roughly 15,000 in each case. The manners of death, however, differed greatly. Most of the Palestinians who perished were killed by Israeli militias, often in massacres that did not discriminate between combatants and civilians, or between adults and children. In the case of the Trail of Tears, nearly all the deaths were from various combinations of dehydration, starvation, hypothermia, and infectious disease.

Number Removed from their Homes. The big difference between the Nakba and the Trail of Tears is in the number of people removed from their homes. As already noted, nearly eight times more Palestinians were removed in the Nakba than were Native Americans in the Trail of Tears: 800,000 versus 100,000.

Moreover, the 800,000 Palestinians were all removed in one year, as opposed to the 100,000 indigenous Americans being removed over a ten-year period. And the Palestinians were removed from a much smaller and more concentrated physical space than were the native Americans.

The point is not to declare one ethnic cleansing as worse than another, Both are inexcusably cruel. The point is to gain a better understanding of the more recent trauma in the Middle East by seeing it in relation to one in our own country’s history. And what we see is an extremely traumatic event that might help us better understand the Israeli/Palestinian “conflict” today.

Implications

As shameful as the Trail of Tears incident was in U.S. history, the Nakba was even worse.

Eight times more indigenous people were forced from their homes in about one-tenth of the time.

Since 1948, Israel has continued to displace the people who had been there for centuries, often using tactics that are illegal under international law and should rightly be recognized as terrorism. Yet the word – terrorist – is almost exclusively assigned to Palestinians.

 

Sources 

Trail of Tears - Wikipedia

Trail of Tears | Facts, Map, & Significance | Britannica

Frequently Asked Questions - Trail Of Tears National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)  

 Palestine and Israel: Mapping an annexation | Infographic News | Al Jazeera

Nakba Day: Palestinians aim to keep the history of al-Nakba alive | CNN

 

 

 

 Caitlin Johnstone Rocks

I have become an admirer of a blogger named Caitlin Johnstone. She lives in Australia but mainly discusses the U.S.'s military/economic empire, of which Australia is a big part.

She's not for everyone. She has a minority point of view that would probably be labelled radical or "far left." And she can seem rather shrill at times in expressing it. But here are some reasons I like her:

1. She has done an enormous amount of reading on the topics she discusses, and will not opine on ones she has not had time to look into.

2. She comes from the point of view of the downtrodden, the underdog, the oppressed. In this regard (and some others), she has, despite the occasional shrillness, a deeply spiritual foundation.

3. She is deeply suspicious of all the major "news" agencies -- and good at explaining why. 

4. She's a true truth-seeker.  And in that sense she is reminiscent of Thoreau, who once wrote "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." 

(A quick digression: Fortunately, it seems to me, love and truth don't have to be mutually exclusive. I doubt, though, that you can pursue the other two things --fame and money -- and still bother much with Truth.)

Here are two small samples of Johnstone's writing:

Sample one (On Australia recently banning social media for children):

        "I don’t want the Australian government to ban kids from social media, I want    the Australian government to stop supporting Israel’s genocidal atrocities and  stop turning this country into a giant US military base in preparation for   Washington’s war with China."

 

Sample Two (On dealing with the unhoused):

 "It should be illegal to force homeless people to relocate. If a rich neighborhood  is the best place to sleep rough then the rich should be forced to look at a daily         reminder of the dystopia they live in until the underlying problems which cause  homelessness have been fixed. You shouldn’t be allowed to hide such things to make people comfortable.”

The two quotes above can be found here: 

They Lied About Gaza, And They’re Lying About Syria – Caitlin Johnstone

Johnstone’s blog can be accessed at caitlinejohnstone.com.au