Veterans Day: In memoriam Hiroshi Miyamura

I grew up in Gallup, New Mexico, where the late Medal of Honor winner was born and lived all his life outside his military service time. As the feature part of a newspaper Veterans Day special, I did an "in memoriam" along with reminiscing about life there, aided in part by this great story by the LA Times.

The brick is from a Medal of Honor park where I currently live — which has a Medal of Honor weekend every year — but still has a Confederate statue on the county courthouse square and refuses to promote the Great Hanging site along with Medal of Honor events.

As you can perhaps see in column two, I note the "Nisei" angle. Further on, on the next page of the paper, I mention someone else slightly older, probably about the same age as Mr. Matsutani the postman. This person, while not from Gallup, was from the US Southwest. That would be Ira Hayes. I mentioned him because of racial takes on his alcohol abuse, after Miyamura mentioned racism in the Army, though not Gallup. (Given what I know of Miyamura as a person, I think there was some glossing there.)

I then talk about veterans and PTSD before wrapping things up with more reminiscing of my own childhood in Gallup a bit, picking up from the thread at the end of the first page. It's more than living in the same town. Miyamura lived in our neighborhood, and depending on my exact route of walking to elementary school, I would have gone by his house.

Obviously, this is not a takedown obit, as I often do with famous politicians. It's the real deal.

 

As for Gallup? I tell people that, it's about as close as you can get in the US to a stereotypical developing world, non-urban megalopolis. A lot of non-Southwestern Anglos who move out there (primarily for medical student debt forgiveness by working at the largest Indian Health Service hospital in the nation outside of Alaska) leave as soon as they can. Time issues are one thing. It's not that Navajos, especially, are late. Rather, it's that the conception of time is less precise. That said, in the non-Southwestern world, Country People (sic on spelling out the initials that way) was long that way. 

 

More seriously than that, though. Many Navajos may belong to the Native American Church, but that has just a thin veneer of Christianity over an amalgam of American Indian beliefs. Traditionalist Navajos still abound. Puebloan peoples, on the other hand, such as at Acoma and Zuni, practice in many cases Catholicism, but behind a deeper veneer of that is the religion of their pueblo. (No, different Indian tribes don't have the same religious beliefs; even within the Puebloan world, not all are the same.) Since the 1690s Spanish reconquista never came out to the Hopi mesas, there's not even a veneer of Western monotheism for them, in many cases.

 

Anyway, on that aspect? Miyamura's family went to a Japanese Methodist church in Gallup.

Science news roundup on human origins: White Sands footprints, Neanderthal hunting, Heidelberg man houses

Multiple new items on homo sapiens in the news, some directly or indirectly via Carl Zimmer.

First, we have more confirmation for those human footprints at White Sands National Park and their age. They do appear to date to 21-23,000 years before present. This is a final nail in the coffin of the already dead Clovis theory of humans in the "new world." Of sidebar interest? It may just be a hole in the rock next to a footprint, or maybe, one footprint demonstrates polydactyly.

I just don't get the push-back scientists. This all seems pretty solid now, and there's plenty of other evidence in both North and South America that goes back at least 5,000 years before Clovis. Clovis is dead. Be open-minded about the growing accumulation of pre-Clovis evidence.

At least to my mind, I can't figure out anything besides, if not a full Clovis, a "Clovis-lite" or whatever, that is driving the continuing, but lingering, animus toward the White Sands footprints.

Frankly, an older "entrada" also allows for multiple entradas. We have the post-Clovis-theory traditional American Indian one, pushed back, then the later Na-Dene one, then the later yet Inuit-Aleut one. If the original entrada is set 25K years before present, that allows room for multiple "American Indian" entradas. We have evidence for that with Homo sapiens' attempts to enter Europe, after all.

==

The newest evidence that Neanderthals were more like Homo sapiens than once thought? Their hunting skill, refuting earlier ideas:

An academic paper published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports proposes that our long-extinct ancestors not only were the first humans to kill and butcher large predators, but that they also used the hides for cultural purposes and perhaps even dressed in them.

Interesting.

Neanderthals are now thought to have been more sophisticated and multitalented than imagined. Evidence is mounting that they used a complex language and even, considering the ritual interment of their dead, some form of spirituality. They made sticky pitch to secure their spear points by heating birch bark; stalked bison, wild cattle and straight-tusked elephants, and ambushed hibernating cave bears as the animals woke from their annual slumber.

And, per the new story, add cave lions to the hunting targets.

==

Heidelberg Man or similar ancestor was creating wood structures nearly 500,000 years ago.

Texas Progressives talk wallbuilder hypocrisy and more

Reminder: Texas Progressives stand with Gaza despite Genocide Joe and despite an Israeli cabinet member's talk of nukes. 

BlueAnon may have thought I was talking about Wallbuilders' David Barton's hypocrisy, or that of followers. Nope.

Dade, Strangeabbott and Danny Goeb can't agree on exactly what to do on more border controls. That said, anybody with a legal brain CAN agree that House Bill 4, written by my Legiscritter, actual lawyer and House impeachment manager David Spiller, is unconstitutional and anything stiffer certainly will be.

Meanwhile, folks in the area of Sunland Park, New Mexico, are laughing at Strangeabbott's "state-line wall." 

And, speaking of walls, Wallbuilder Joe's new effort has the Department of Homeland Services stooping to even using the same company as Wallbuilder Greg and Wallbuilder Don. It also has Wallbuilder Joe's DHS doing the same environmental waivers as Wallbuilder Don's. One thing different? Wallbuilder Joe trying to bury the news that an actual contract had been issued. Biden and DHS jefe Alejandro Mayorkas have blamed a 2019 Congress (Dem controlled, BlueAnon!) for passing the funding and it not later being revoked. Environmentalists note that it still doesn't require the DHS environmental waivers. Neither responded to Observer questions, thus indicating their true colors.

In national politics, SocraticGadfly looks at how RFK Jr. is bringing new campaign bucks, big donors who previously were neither R nor D, to his 2024 presidential campaign, as well as the GOP lean of previously affiliated donors.

Collin County owes two prosecutors of weaselshit Warren Kenneth Paxton a bunch of money, and it sets a precedent as his case finally nears trial. Speaking of, it's funny as hell to hear hypocritical Kenny Boy object to this as some sort of planned stall tactic. Collin County indicates it will still refuse to pay; the Trib's story doesn't say what leverage the judge has in that case. 

Was Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell Jr. right before he retracted his original statement that election denialist Laura Pressley caused a poll worker's heart attack?

GenocideGreg joins GenocideTed in support of GenocideJoe by traveling to Israel.

ERCOT gets a budget bailout, but probably still isn't fixed. Joining the two national grids would help, but ...

Tex-ass hates Inflationmonger Joe's Inflation Reduction Act, until Wayne (Not A) Christian can leech off it, and all the better if it's leeching off antienvironmental carbon capture bullshit.

Off the Kuff presents the October campaign finance reports for Texas Democratic Congressional candidates.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said Republican plans to attack civil liberties if returned to White House in 2024 are very much an issue in Houston and Harris County electoral politics.

CultureMap reports on a new Rice University NSF-funded study on flooding. 

The Texas Living Waters Project lauds Houston's new building codes as a win for the environment. In the Pink Texas meets the new Speaker.  

El Paso Matters decries the harsh new anti-immigrant laws introduced during the special session.  

Texas Election Source announces its re-launch.

Another reason to "soak the rich" on taxes? Their effect on climate change. 

Dear Leader's call to modernize nuclear weapons pits is a disaster and boondoggle at Los Alamos.

Texas Progressives, education division: Dead vouchers, more

This week's Roundup is split into two parts, with this first part focused on the death of vouchers in the just-ended special session of the Texas Legislature and what the future might hold.

Reminder: Texas Progressives stand with Gaza despite Genocide Joe and despite an Israeli cabinet member's talk of nukes.

School vouchers appear dead in the House. And, in fact, Speaker Dade "Dade" Phelan essentially "faced" Abbott and his "we will have a bill" claim. AND, Abbott was politically inept enough to make that claim two days in a row! Strangeabbott's gonna piss Legiscritters off if he tries to get in another special this year as it would have to either cross Thanksgiving or push up against Christmas.

That said, a revamped House Bill 1 was released by Brian Buckley last Friday, and he said he'll file it in that next special. The big diff? Voucher recipients have to take a standardized test, a kiss of death to Strangebbott, Goeb and other hardline vouchers backers. But, public school supporters say a $530 increase in the per-student basic allotment isn't enough. And, it still won't sway Dems who want "delinkage."

Public school thought leaders attacked Abbott for holding public school teacher pay hostage to vouchers, and also for not addressing most other issues a task force recommended for the Lege's regular session. 

That that said, the Observer notes that Strangeabbott had caved on STAAR testing and more. Per that piece, rural House Republicans whom Strangeabbott hoped to flip have largely been quiet, but Drew Darby said in a TV interview that testing accountability, like Buckley's bill, might do the trick. The Observer quotes a couple of Baptist pastors unhappy with Abbott trying to co-opt the pulpit, too.

So why beat this dead horse? Cal Jillson and others speculate there that it's for electoral politics, as Abbott still wants that primarying club.

And, the more ...

So far, Texas' version of a Crown Act hasn't protected Darryl George, in part because Strangeabbott and Weaselshit Ken aren't working on that protection. Also, Barbers Hill ISD appears to be a bunch of liars.

Palm Grove Elementary in Brownsville ISD says "hold my beer" to Barbers Hill.

 

Jones Soda lost a customer

For me, there's no reason for sodium in soda, whether as salt or as sodium benzoate used as a preservative. Livestrong has more, starting with that it can be antifungal, and this may, theoretically, be of more benefit with a high-fructose corn syrup sweetener. 

Problem? All Jones Soda is cane-sugar based. Plus, HFCS users Coke and Pepsi don't use it.

That said, beyond not needing extra sodium, I'm not found of potassium benzoate as a substitute. Yes, some benzene occurs in some of our foods, but do we need to add to it?

And, if  Jones' orange soda has any Vitamin C from the orange (which it likely doesn't, not using actual juice AFAIK) then it can combine with sodium benzoate, or, I presume, potassium benzoate, to produce benzene. That FDA link says higher temperatures can accelerate this. And, I live in Tex-ass; Jones Soda being shipped in summer is certainly subject to higher temperatures.

Livestrong also notes that it's an "acidity gooser," so, bumping tartness and flavor. And, for Jones, which pushes itself as a "premium" brand, this itself should be seen as a bit of a marketing black eye, along with none of its fruit-flavored sodas having actual juice.

Poor Zelensky: NATO pushes peace talks and he's in a corner, even as NATO seems clueless over negotiating

He's basically up shit creek on further big bucks from the US government, as Israel-Gaza sucks the oxygen out of the room. Plus, if new wingnut-squared Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is holding new money for Israel hostage to the rest of Genocide Joe's budget, that applies in spades to new money for Ukraine, no matter how much Biden doubles down on linkage.

So, it should be no surprise that NATO officials are pushing peace talks now. NATO and the EU don't say boo without running it past Washington first, first of all, so everybody holds this line. Second, as a possible recession looms, especially in Russian gas-less Germany (guess in using the Minsk Accords as appeasement, Iron Ass Chancellor Angela Merkel forgot to diversify the German energy economy more) there's other reasons beyond Ukraine to look for peace. Of course since somebody blew up Nord Stream 2, Russian gas will be harder to come by anyway.

Meanwhile, on the cluelessness? NATO is reportedly also going to start the formal accession process for Ukraine. Unless this is anything more than a negotiating ploy stick, this is idiotic indeed, and quite arguably idiotic even with that caveat.

On the Realpolitik side, referencing the sausage grinder etc., anybody wtih a foreign policy brain knows Ukraine's been running out of troops for months. And, terrorism expert Malcolm Nance hasn't offered to deliver 10,000 mercenaries, and all the NAFO fellas, I mean NAFO Nazis, are still just Fighting 101st Keyboarders. And, it continues to be funny to petard-hoist them, as the American portion of them is surely primarily BlueAnons who, if they're 35 or older, were applying that to BushBloggers during Shrub's Iraq War salad days. People who know how to Google demographics aren't surprised by the shortages. Despite the NAFO Nazis talking about Russia facing a demographic crisis, it's worse in Ukraine by shorter life expectancy and greater rate of decline in population.

He's also in a corner as his own top commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, says the war is deadlocked, drawing an official Zelensky rebuke and shitcanning of one of his top aides. Zaluzhny's crime? Admitting that use of drones by both sides had stalemated mechanical force advances. In other words, those new high-dollar Western tanks can't do anything.

In reality, I suspect the rebuke, and the firing of Gen. Viktor Khorenko, happened as PR moves to keep things like this contained away from NATO. Reality? They know fair chunks of this already. And, the possibly political nature of the firing only hurt Zelensky more.

Now, per the piece at top, is Putin going to be that reluctant to make a deal? Depends on what's offered.

The post-invasion sanctions have to be lifted, of course, first of all. Frozen  Russian bank accounts have to be unfrozen. Previous, post-Maidan sanctions have to be at least lessened.

Second, even though Putin knows in reality that they won't be worth the paper they're written on, IMO, he had to get real security guarantees. And, real ones, not the fake ones the West proffered in pre-Maidan days.

Now, the biggie?

First, the West accepts Crimea is Russian.

Second, it accepts the Donbas lands are Russian.

Third, Putin accepts the plebicites held elsewhere are a nothingburger and those lands remain Ukrainian.

Now, "poor Zelensky."

Just as he, like previous Ukrainian leaders, refused to implement Ukraine's side of Minsk, he stands a good chance of being a dead man with such a treaty. That's made worse by him being Jewish. No other way to put it. That said, he lied down with the Bandera-Azov dog and got their fleas in the first place.

Would there be a way to implement this?

A UN peacekeeping force, even if not of fun interest for many.

Stipulations on that? 

No Russians, Ukrainians, or any NATO or EU member states can have troops in that force. Nor China. Ideally, it all comes from General Assembly states that never condemned the invasion in the first place.

PsyPost: Weaponizing psychology against anti-Zionism

PsyPost is often interesting, sometimes good. And, occasionally crap. And, on my blogroll. (For now.)

When I saw the piece Friday morning with the header "Left-wing antihierarchical aggression emerges as as the strongest predictor of antisemitism, study finds," I clicked. I'm a leftist, at least for Merika. I'm generally antihierarchical. I'm not antisemitic, but I thought, I'm curious as to what the signs are.

The "signs" are nothing.

Other than the usual bullshit of conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism, with a nice dollop of strawmanning in the second half:

The Antizionist Antisemitism subscale focuses on extreme and irrational anti-Israel positions that are, in essence, a form of disguised antisemitism. For example, holding Israel to different standards than other countries or assuming that supporters of Israel have undue influence over global affairs.

As I told PsyPost on Twitter, just for an opener:

I call bullshit on PsyPost conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism while pretending it's not. YOU .@PsyPost — this piece is bullshit and an insult to leftists, including liberal and leftist Jews.

And, after seeing this, knew I had to google the authors, beyond their listed academic affiliations.

And a hit, right on Wikipedia, on Hirsh!

David Hirsh (born 29 September 1967) is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and co-founder of Engage, a campaign against the academic boycott of Israel.

So, he's fighting against what is, essentially, a British academia version of Boycott, Divest, Sanctions, or BDS.

But wait, the details get better, or worse, and DIRECTLY pertain to PsyPost's piece.

In 2005, he co-founded the Engage website, a resource for those working to oppose the boycott of Israel.[4] Hirsh took a leading role during 2005-07 in opposing boycotts of Israeli universities proposed by British academics.[6][7] Hirsh told The Guardian, "It may not have anti-semitic motivations, but if you organise an academic boycott of Israeli Jewish academics but no-one else in the world, that is an anti-semitic policy".[8]

His 2017 book, Contemporary Left Antisemitism, which combined narrative and case study with sociological analysis and theory to understand the controversial and contested phenomenon of antisemitism on the left, was published in 2017.[3]

He developed, with Daniel Allington, the AzAs (Antizionist Antisemitism) Scale, for quantitatively measuring antisemitism as expressed in relation to Israel and its supporters.[9]

One more tidbit.

Hirsh originated the term "Livingstone Formulation", named after Ken Livingstone, as the claim made by those accused of antisemitism that the accusation is made in order to delegitimise their criticism of Israel;[11] he says it is accusing Jews of playing the race card.

In other words, Israel can do no wrong and saying it can is racism. Including, I presume, if Jews say that.

In other words, PsyPost is either ignorant dupes or willing participants with a skilled and devious practitioner of hasbara, and probably, reading between the lines, willing to propagate the British version of the "self-hating Jew" meme. He's the type of Zionist in the UK who I'm sure that was affiliated with the campaign to hound Jeremy Corbyn out of Labour leadership and replace him with Der (Keir) Starmer. Der Starmer ... think about it, think about it.

And, given the amount of explanatory material around direct quotes and references to Hirsh's studies, explanatory material like this:

The study challenged the simplistic notion that antisemitism is exclusive to either the left or right ends of the political spectrum. Instead, it highlighted the complexity of political ideologies. Antisemitism is not limited to any particular political group but can be found among individuals across various ideological spectrums.

I'm filing PsyPost under "willing participants," not "ignorant dupes." You have to go looking to run stuff like this. Especially since it was written by founder Eric Dolan, not someone else. (PsyPost has four other "contributors" listed on its website.)

And, since he's on Twitter?

So, per your Wikipedia page and many other things, are Jews who call out Israel's wrongs, instead of conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism like you do, racists? Is a Philip Weiss, founder of Mondoweiss, a racist? A self-hating Jew? What about Norman Finkelstein?

There you are.

More about Hirsh, from Wiki?

His parents were Trots, it says. I'll bet dollars to donuts that like US Jews with similar parentage, he became a full-on neoconservative.

And, "congrats" to Dolan for getting me to add "hasbara" as a tag to this post and to the blog, as it's the first use, though I will "backtag."

Neither Dolan nor PsyPost has responded on Twitter.

More Israel-Palestine thoughts: 'Nobody's hands are clean'

Dear Leader has said "nobody's hands are clean." He didn't explicitly include his own, and like some fellow leftist types, it would be easy to scoff at him talking around an issue, as the podcast excerpt at least doesn't have him offering a solution, or even explicitly calling for a cease-fire. But, it's more than either Genocide Joe, Fatuous Fetterman, or St. Bernard of Sanders have said.

And, speaking of that sheepdogger, gotta "love" how many Berners like "Beth: An Alien" are only just now freaked out by St. Bernard of Sanders' visceral hatred of Gaza, despite him having people arrested 30 years ago for protesting the bombing of Serbia, having hated on Gaza before, and having a long history of lusting for F-35s. Also, note to David Klion, re this piece: Norman Finkelstein has the same Holocaust family heritage as Sanders.

Reality or wishful thinking? I'll take the under, so to speak on David Rothkopf's claim that Biden and Netanyahu are near a "breakup" on how genocidal Israel gets in Gaza. Rather than wishful thinking, let's call this what it is: #BlueAnon hopium. That said, Mondoweiss wonders somewhat the same.

"A Textbook Case of Genocide" at Jewish Currents, by Jewish academic Holocaust scholar Raz Segal, is BIGLY stirring the shit within the Jewish world. And, uh, no, it's not referring to Hamas as that textbook case.

Nathan J. Robinson has a good backgrounder on what led to this point. But, as I, Sabby Sabs and others know, unless his feet are held to the first nine months from now, he may still go off Democratic sheepdogging. In other words, your hands aren't clean either, Nathan, as I believe you sheepdogged in 2020. And, they won't at all be clean if you push "safe states OK, tight states sheepdogging" or something next year.

Ditto in spades for The Nation, David Klion and all others. (Since The Nation is sheepdoggers, they'll stay that way.)

You're especially a sheepdogger given that a now-suspended Israeli Cabinet minister mulled nuking Gaza. (Eliyahu is NOT "ex-cabinet".)

Meanwhile, CNN has officially agreed to be IDF's hasbara-peddler.

And, PsyPost's hands certainly aren't clean, trying to psychologically weaponize a deliberate conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

House Dems' hands certainly aren't clean, not any who wind up supporting an attempted gag order against Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a censure that since went through.

And fuck Twitter Security, which has a "thing" about the word ZioNazi, whether directed at a person or not. (It eventually allowed that, after the #ZionismIsNazism hashtag started trending.)

Green Party 2024: More than ever, Just.Another.Political.Party™

In the wake of Cornel West announcing a month ago that he would abandon his bid for the Green Party nomination and instead run as an independent because Jill Stein and friends wouldn't clear the path for him enough  ....

I wonder just how much "lane-clearing" Stein promised West. I wonder who else she had roped in. I'd love to find all this out, but, like with some of the machinations in the 2020 Green Party nomination battle, which haven't come out despite my (and others, I presume) asking, or like Stein's head-fakes with her 2016 recount fund, I'm not holding my breath.

Don't forget that before Howie Hawkins gained steam to the 2020 finish line, Stein also reportedly entertained pushing Jesse the Body Ventura (his suck-ups hate him being called that) as he was looking at tagging RFK Jr. as his veep. (That's why I refused to cosign bullshit any more and openly called her an antivaxxer.)

Another reason to call the Just.Another.Political.Party™.

Of course, West, with this gambit (like Jesse in 2020) deserves the Just.Another.Politician.™ label.

==

Update, Nov. 9: It's worse. Although Stein and her 2016 Veep, Ajamu Baraka, had pledged to beat the bushes for new Green Party prez candidates after West did his Lucy van Pelt and pulled the football away from the GP, the "bush-beating" has yielded ...

Two-time retread Stein filing to run again.