James M. Redwine

China

Broad Strokes

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When I was two years old, my Uncle Bud was in the Philippines training to be part of our invasion force into Japan when President Truman made the final decision to use our atomic bombs. My family never doubted the morality of the decision. Based on Japan’s military tradition of bushido and the fact they would be defending their homeland, it was estimated that America would lose a minimum of 250,000 and possibly up to 4,000,000 soldiers in “Operation Downfall”. From my family’s viewpoint, the loss of 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was justified by Japan’s “pre-emptive” attack on our naval fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 07, 1941. Of course, the average Japanese citizen played no part in and had no control over the Emperor’s and his government’s military strategy. In general, today’s nuclear weapons are estimated to be more than 3,000 times as powerful as either Hiroshima’s “Little Boy” or Nagasaki’s “Fat Man”, with concomitant increases in fallout.

According to a May 13, 2013 article posted on the Internet as authored by Nick Turse from Mother Jones, Politics, if Israel used a nuclear weapon against Tehran, Iran, an estimated 5.6 million people would be killed and another 1.6 million injured. That would be about the same total as the number of Jews the Nazis slaughtered in the Holocaust. Hitler justified the Holocaust by blaming Germany’s Jewish population for Germany’s economic woes after WWI. However, it was not the Jewish citizens but the draconian conditions foisted upon all Germans by the June 28, 1919 Treaty of Versailles that prevented Germany’s recovery. Hitler just used the minority Jewish population as a scapegoat to help the Nazis take power, much as the Zionists in Israel, as aided and abetted by President Trump, are using the Iranians as an excuse to invade Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. It is always helpful to have a group to blame and hate, especially if one can use differing religions to stir the witch’s brew.

President Trump has publicly threatened to bomb Iran and has just dispatched approximately one-third of America’s bombers to be positioned to protect Israel from a counter attack or to prepare for a bombing or land incursion of Iran by our own forces. Just as the United States chose to use its atomic bombs so that my uncle and our other military personnel could avoid the almost certain bloodbath of a Japan landing, Israel, or even the U.S.A., might seek to avoid losses by using nuclear weapons. If so, there are other countries with nuclear weapons who might see “pre-emptive” strikes as the most rational self-defense; China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan and India are nuclear capable. So are France and the United Kingdom. But even though we have fought two wars against England and a couple of war-lite fights with France, American war with either is currently unlikely.

And it is not just nuclear powers the United States might need to be cautious about. After all, President Trump has challenged Mexico, Canada, Greenland, Denmark and several South American countries, not to mention Turkey which has never been averse to a fight. America need not look hard if we want to turn words, or tariffs, into bombs.

Perhaps we should not assume we and/or Israel can just impose our desires on other countries with impunity. As has been proved for thousands of years, the “Glory of Rome” almost always ends up falling on its own sword or is hoisted on its own petard. Two hundred and fifty years is but a moment of hubris in the panoply of history’s irony.

The Crusade Charade

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The Crusades were the outgrowth of many factors but they are generally categorized as a series of wars between European Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims occurring from 1096 to 1291 AD involving competing claims over the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem. The catalyst for the first Crusade was a call to Christians made by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in France in November 1095. Urban declared that God had willed Christians to oust Muslims from the sacred sites. Urban promised remission of sins for any Christian who died in this vital service of Christ. Thousands of English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and others “took up the cross.”

Later in the New World, priests, clerics and politicians and plain Americans have spent from the 15th century to 2024 spreading the gospel at home and continuing to attempt to control the beliefs and behaviors of Middle Easterners. Manifest Destiny was based on the premise that the god of Christians had ordained that America must eliminate paganism and not commit the sin of omitting to develop the land. Such “crusades” as the Trail of Tears were the outgrowth of European immigrants and their descendants’ beliefs that their god had ordained that America was the Promised Land for Caucasian Christians and that Native Americans had to be evicted, killed or converted to Christianity. This ingrained racial memory from 1492 until today may influence the justification for our invasions into the Muslim Middle East. Just as Native Americans had to be destroyed to save them, Muslims are still the enemies of Christ who must be saved from their misguided faith.

Most recently the United States has continued the tradition of the Crusades by invading Iraq twice and belligerently engaging Iran and such groups as ISIS, Hamas, Taliban, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and others. America designates these groups as terrorists but they claim to be part of a resistance movement. These organizations are generally Islamic in their religion as were the native Arabs and Persians during the original Crusades. There were Jewish populations in the Holy Land during the time Christian Europeans were seeking to take over the Middle East, but they were a small minority and could not mount an effective resistance to the Crusades.

Today, due to the world’s post-holocaust revulsion of the Nazi atrocities and the beliefs of many American fundamentalist Christians, such as dreamers in the Rapture, the United States is defending Israel’s aggression and is allied with the Zionists against Muslims, especially Iranians. Many of our politicians and much of the national media are on a crusade to support the hegemony of Israel under the guise of its self-defense. Israel has nuclear weapons it developed by spying on the United States and has an extremely modern and powerful military. It has nothing to fear from the rag-tag Muslim militias even if they are backed by countries such as Iran, China and Russia. Israel does not need our military support. And its current aggression in Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere, to say nothing, as most media does, about Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, clearly proves Israel does not deserve our support.

Israel is conducting its own crusade against Muslim countries in the Holy Land. If the United States cannot find the moral courage to confront this decades long injustice, we should, at least, not supply it with weapons and diplomatic immunity. It is long past the time America atoned for its own sins against our native population and that we not repeat those sins in the Middle East. To do so, all we need is to be guided by those principles of our Constitution and the philosophy of that Christian faith many Americans profess. Perhaps, if we make a good faith effort to act in the Middle East as the country we claim to be, we will not be misled by the Zionists among the Israelis into the same type of disaster those holier than thou European Crusaders had to endure a thousand years ago.

 

Not That Long Ago

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My childhood friend and neighbor Gary Malone was killed in combat in Viet Nam July 28, 1966. On Sunday, September 10, 2023 President Biden stood in front of United States and Vietnamese flags and announced a strategic partnership with Viet Nam, more honestly identified as a pseudonym for military assistance. It is generally understood that this military realignment is to counter balance Viet Nam’s reliance on its neighbor China. China was North Viet Nam’s main supporter when the United States was fighting a 20-year war against it (1955-1975).

Gary cannot express his feelings about his country’s rapprochement with the people our government sent him to fight. But I may soon get to see his brother, Bud Malone, who along with Gary’s twin, Jerry, also saw combat in Viet Nam. Maybe Bud and I will discuss the war and Gary and Jerry or more likely, since Bud is Osage and we have been friends for almost 80 years, not much will need to be said. Perhaps a song from the musical Les Misérables can help fill the void:

♪….

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken
There’s a pain goes on and on

…

Oh my friends, my friends don’t ask me
What your sacrifice was for
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more ♪

When American young people were both fighting and protesting the Viet Nam War our government was issuing vague exhortations about the need to stop the advance of Communism in China and the U.S.S.R. (today’s Russia). In fact, as Gary and 58,000 more members of our generation were serving and being killed in Viet Nam, our government’s pronouncements then sound much like our government’s rationales for war today. We must fight China, Russia, Iran and a myriad of other perceived enemies there now so we will not have to fight them here later. The one constant we can rely on is that old people will do now what old people did then when 22-year-old Gary gave his life for what he believed in. That is, our government will send young people to pay the price.

My guess is Gary would support peace and even friendship now with Viet Nam and even China, Russia, Iran, etc., so other people on all sides might avoid an early death from armed conflict. Of course, I cannot ask Gary today what he would think as if he were an 80-year-old. We all struggle to understand how that puzzling young person we used to be would react today. I do remember I started out believing the government and supporting the war then slowly realized we had been misled by our leaders who were themselves misled by false intelligence and bad judgment. Gentle Reader, does that remind you of our recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and even, perhaps, Ukraine?

Peace and friendship with Viet Nam do not denigrate the honorable service of Gary and his fallen comrades. Rather they validate the ideals they stood for. The issue is not was their sacrifice in vain? It was not, as long as we do not forget it and as long as we learn from it. Rest in peace my young friend. Your former adversary and your beloved country have finally come full circle building upon your service. We must now guard against our new alliance helping to lead us into a new conflict with another old enemy. Your memory deserves better.

TikTok

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Photo by Peg Redwine

Congress and President Biden have decided to save America from the disclosure of state secrets by the Kardashian wannabees of our society. Peg and I do not do TikTok but occasionally some marginally functioning teenager will create a TikTok post that is so lacking in taste and talent that the main stream media airs it as a parody. Those are the only TikToks I have seen; that’s plenty.

Physically unattractive people gyrating to two-beat music while wearing too small bikinis is not my choice of leisure listening and viewing. Fortunately, the shameless exhibitionists who are totally lacking in true self-images almost never say anything. So, at least, we only are assaulted by their physical repugnance.

Why we are paying our leaders to spend countless hours on the foibles of misguided or unguided youths while Congress is profligately spending 100 billion dollars per year arming every country from Ukraine to Israel is a mystery to me. Perhaps they should concentrate on such issues as war and the environment or even why our banks are failing and why inflation is wreaking havoc on our 401(k)s. Regardless, the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, is going before Congress’ House Energy and Commerce Committee this month to explain the First Amendment to people who should already know it.

When our Constitution was adopted the very First Amendment provided:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The great English legal philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), helped lead the Enlightenment. The American legal philosopher, James Madison (1751-1836), owed so much to Locke in Madison’s drafting of our Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. Both Locke and Madison strongly believed Freedom of Speech was essential to preserving all other freedoms.

It is ironic that our leaders of today cite fear of Russia and China as they call for restrictions on free speech. We have long rightfully complained that China and Russia severely restrict their citizens’ right to freely express themselves. Now we want to make federal law based on that same fear of American citizens that the Chinese and Russians enforce as to such patriots as Alexei Navalny. At least, Navalny actually has something to say that Putin should fear, that is the truth. TikTokers pretty much simply wish to share their irrelevant and boorish behaviors.

My guess is our leaders are as clueless about the workings of TikTok as I am and that they are simply knee-jerking to baseless fears of the very people who put them in office. What about such public policy as the 1966 Freedom of Information Act that was enacted to guarantee the people could monitor their government? Then there is the 2014 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act that allows taxpayers to track government spending. Have our current leaders decided too much information in the hands of Americans is dangerous, at least if that information can be accessed by foreign governments, as they can easily do with a simple request for data?

Of course, Congress and the President say they fear China and Russia and other countries will mine the internet data and use it against us. But every credit card transaction, every online post such as filing a tax return, every cell phone use is already “mineable.”  Any hostile foreign country can already legally obtain more information than they would ever need via our own legal system. I ask you, Gentle Reader, is there anything on TikTok that could be used to start a lawnmower much less build a nuclear weapon?

I would like for our leaders to revisit Joseph Goebbels who was evil but prescient when he said, “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” In other words, our government is making its own reality and using that as the basis to restrict our rights under the First Amendment.

Another author that should be considered is Franz Kafka whose hero, Joseph K in The Trial, pointed out that the enacted laws made it impossible for anyone to rely on what the law truly is. This is much like George Orwell’s “Newspeak” in 1984 where the only true purpose of governmental language was to control the populace.

In other words, instead of taking Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as our free speech guides, perhaps we should look to our Constitution and our history and rationally analyze TikTok and its mainly pathetic users. I point out that just last year (2022) the European Union, which we look upon favorably, passed the Data Act (Digital Accountability and Transparency Act) that was designed to standardize international contracting and commerce by standardizing digital and internet language. Should we not also want to clarify by expanding instead of restricting internet usage even if the usage may be frivolous?

I call upon Congress and the President to not put the means as Kafka might say, “to exercise discretionary moral judgment” by the lone U.S. Secretary of Commerce to determine “freedom of speech” when it comes to foreign technologies and companies. That is how the proposed anti-TikTok law is structured. Instead, let’s have faith in ourselves and also recognize the banality and futility of trying to draft laws that defy human nature and common sense and by the way, are most likely unconstitutional and unenforceable.

Amazon, The New Tower of Babel

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In Genesis, Chapter 11 God observed the tower that King Nimrod and his Babylonian people had built to reach heaven and the gods and said, “Behold the people is one and they have one language … now nothing will be constrained from them.”

So the gods destroyed the tower, convoluted the one language into many and stopped human progress toward godly status. The Tower of Babel was the ultimate example of the axiom, “Pride goeth before a fall.” Now I do not understand why God would not want people to reach for the heavens, but He certainly devised the perfect way to stop us. Of course, in Exodus Chapters 20 and 34, He warns us He is a jealous being and in Isaiah Chapter 55 He tells us not to try to figure Him out as His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Just a few frustrating moments of trying to understand what the jangling television commercials are saying or an attempt to make sense out of the song lyrics mumbled and slurred into multi-million dollar sound systems designed to make sounds intelligible, will remove any doubt that our contemporary cacophony of colliding incoherent babel surpasses all understanding. Human progress has been hoisted on the effete petard of the universal response to all attempts to communicate, “Huh?”

It is as if the gods have become overly concerned about humanity’s movement back to a universal language, Amazonia perhaps, and have come down to earth to stop us from “all just getting along” by shopping over the Internet. After all, if we can communicate from sea to shining sea via a few simple electronic clicks, there is much less likelihood of a major miscommunication and ergo a misunderstanding that might escalate to conflict. Heck, we might even learn to work together on all sorts of projects, world famine, global warming, the World Cup, who knows what heights we could reach?

Well, if Jeff Bezos is the new King Nimrod and if Jeff really does simply work full-time giving his billions made from Amazon away to charity, I can foresee the Old Testament gods getting concerned. And one way to staunch human progress is to release upon the world Satans of the communications world, you know, movies, cable tv, commercials and what passes for contemporary music.

The goal of the gods might be to attack human progress by having leaders of competing countries such as China and the US of A rely upon translations of news broadcasts in which snippets of the highly paid but incomprehensible speakers instead of enunciating important concepts, peaceful coexistence for example, mumble a leader’s language so that the words come out as threats of nuclear war.

Now I realize this whole column may be based on a false premise of my being personally challenged. Maybe you, Gentle Reader, have no difficulty making sense out of what is muttered during TV, radio, movies, plays, concerts, sporting events, and even sermons. If my failings are simply my personal problem, good, and amen. However, if the whole world is being prevented from understanding what the heck is truly being said and meant, I suggest this new Tower of Babel may soon come tumbling down.

On the other hand, there is a cure to this polemic pandemic, could everyone please slow down and speak up?

Shanghaied

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On February 04, 2022 Russian President Vladimir Putin, on an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping, attended the China Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. Twenty days later Russia invaded Ukraine. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, in response to an invitation, visited Taiwan over China’s objections on August 2, 2022 and China immediately responded with massive military maneuvers around Taiwan.

Russia has now been at war with Ukraine for over six months. Ukraine has been supplied with many billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware by America before and during the war. Taiwan has recently received a pledge of over one billion dollars’ worth of military aid from the U.S. The U.S. has long supported Taiwan’s independence from China which claims Taiwan as part of China.

Russia and China share some common borders on the eastern and western edges of both countries and share one main nemesis, America. On September 15 and 16, 2022 Xi and Putin will meet face to face at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in the city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The United States is not invited.

It is possible Russia and China just want to confer on the relative merits of their national ballet companies and the ten billion cubic meters of national gas Putin promised to Xi in their February meeting. Or perhaps Putin and Xi want to compare notes on how each can continue in power beyond the traditional terms of prior Chinese and Russian presidents.

On the other hand, I suggest the two leaders may be getting together to discuss their largest common problem, us. Not much information was released from their conference in Beijing in February and almost no advanced agenda has been published for their Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit. My suspicion is the name “Shanghai” was not chosen idly. It may be that China is reminding the United States of the practice of tricking or forcing sailors to serve on merchant ships sailing to Shanghai in the 1800’s as was often done by American, British and French merchants. Perhaps it is meant as an otherwise inscrutable warning to America to butt out of Ukraine and Taiwan.

As for me, I think Pelosi or anyone else ought to have the right to visit Taiwan and, I think, Ukraine’s territorial integrity should be respected. Of course, I find it difficult to analyze the motivations of China, Russia or even my own country when it comes to engagement in foreign wars unless one is attacked. It seems to me our Constitution’s provision for military defense, not offense, makes sense. But then I am not in charge of our foreign policy. If I had been, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan might have unfolded differently and maybe Ukraine and Taiwan too. Those are matters our elected leaders are much more informed upon, I hope.