Leslie Fish's Blog, page 22

Historical Essay Contest!

Well, for the second week in a row I'm posting somebody else's message, but I think this one is worth it too.  Here are the particulars:

Pro-RKBA group The Zelman Partisans is holding an essay contest. The
prize is an Israeli rebarreled Mauser,formerly Nazi-era German.

===

Win This Historic Israeli Freedom Tool
http://zelmanpartisans.com/?page_id=3342

Enter and tell us why you’d like to own this beautiful, rare, and
historic Mauser Karabiner 98.

http://zelmanpartisans.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/019.jpg

This rifle was born in 1940 in the factories of Nazi Germany. It was a
tool of hatred and oppression. But eventually one of those particularly
Jewish miracles possessed it.

Sometime later in that decade, after Hitler’s evil was crushed, this
rifle and others like it found their way to the hands of Jewish
liberators in Palestine. The Jews of America and Britain paid to
purchase the guns and smuggle them to their brothers and sisters in the
Middle East, defying a British embargo. Most of the Mausers that found
their covert way to Israel were Czechoslovakian. This rifle is one of
the rare few remaining that were made for Hitler and transformed by Jews.

===

I have no fiduciary interest.

Bear  The sheer amount of history tied up in this gun is amazing. Please do search it on the Internet.    

A Pagan Curse Upon ISIS/ISIL/Daesh

--Leslie <;)))><  )O(


I rarely do covers of other folks' blog-posts, but this one deserves it.  Written on World Heritage Day by Aedicula Antinoi, it's the "working" part of a few "formal rituals against the bastards who think their role upon earth is to destroy the history of the devotions of their ancestors. I will not say their name in my preamble statement here, because I think it is more effective to be silent about them whenever possible, and to reserve my saying of their name for the venom it deserves, which will be mustered below."

And a splendid Pagan curse it is, too.  Feel free to use it when and wherever you think it will do the most good:



Execration of the Impious

May the poisonous spit of ten million cobras
be heaped upon the name of Daesh
and upon the heads and eyes and hearts
of everyone who masses under their banner.

May they who destroyed Nimrud and Hatra,
and who have threatened to bring low
the pyramidal jewels of Egypt’s crown
have their name ground into the dust.

Eat dust for your bread, O Daesh,
and may your only drink be vitriol,
and may everyone who says your name
spit on the ground for its impurity in their mouths.

The armies of the sand fleas have heeded
the call to arms and have inflicted you
with skin diseases–may the fleas rise again
and continue to attack your foul bodies!

You tried to destroy the city of Ninurta,
but the crowned sphinx will live again
to stride over your corpses with his strength
and to grind your bones into meal fit for hogs!

You tried to destroy all knowledge of the past,
to erase the great accomplishments of your ancestors,
but they turn their mighty backs on you now–
you are a people with no roots, no strength.

A rain of three billion stones fall upon you
from Allat, Manat, and Al-Uzza, three pillars
of strength which will never support you,
three foundation stones of your enemies returned.

Inanna daughter of Sin will bring whirlwinds of fire
upon you to scatter your resolve and your arms,
and Ereshkigal will hang you on hooks
while Nergal pisses on your shriveled souls.

From distant places Anat will rouse her armies
and bring a flood of blood upon you,
and Qadesh will dance rejoicing upon your trunks
shorn of limbs and heads and blinded in the eyes.

Syria’s Thyandrites, from Damascus,
will come again to light with his spear,
and trade it for missiles exploding with fire
burning your vile forms into shadow forever.

And she whose name has been profaned by you
and by an ignorant world, Isis Great In Magic:
when her name is called in reference to you
may her strength multiply a thousand times!

May Isis bring the Eyes of Re to focus on you
and burn through your flayed skins;
May Isis steal the vigor of your blood
and blast your kidneys and burst your livers.

And may all of the Lilitu of the deserts
converge in your dreams to drive you from sleep,
and may Pazuzu vomit upon you in your retreat
and fill your waking moments with filth.

All of this, O Daesh, be upon you
for the vanity of your vainglorious desires;
all of this, O Daesh, be upon you
for the idiocy of your actions against the gods;

All of this, O Daesh, be upon you
for the offense you have become to your people;
all of this, O Daesh, be upon you
for the disgrace you have become to your ancestors.

And all of this, O Daesh, and much more
to the number of seventy-two billion curses
by every god in every land be upon you
until your name and life is cut from the earth.

May you be spat upon, O Daesh,
May you be spat upon, O Daesh,
May you be spat upon, O Daesh,
May you be spat upon with blood!

                                  --AMEN--

Where Did That Come From?

Awhile ago my brother Mike had enough curiosity and spare cash to sign up with Ancestry.com for a DNA test.  The results really surprised him, knowing what he did of our family history, so he sent me a copy, pointed out the anomaly, and asked if I knew wherethehell that had come from.

Now a brief sidebar for our family history: my Dad was the son of Polish Jewish and Hungarian Jewish immigrants, and Mom was... interesting. First, she was a professional musician.  Second, her father was a ne'er-do-well third son of a minor British/Austrian aristocrat named (as far as my grand-aunt remembered) Von Schello.  Her mother, another professional musician, was -- and this was a big family secret -- a Metis:  that is, mixed Canadian French and Chippewa Indian.  Nothing was recorded about granny's father, but her mother was a Chippewa medicine-singer.  That, Mom recalled proudly, was where the female line of our family got their musical talent.  So, my brother and I are mixed Polish/Hungarian Jewish and Austrian/British/French/Chippewa -- in other words, typical American melting-pot.

What the DNA test showed was: about 30% eastern-European Jewish (expected, except for the proportions), another 30% western European (which would cover the Austrian and French) and then...  The that was 30% Scandinavian, 5% Asian, and 5% all over the map.  The all-over-the-map I could understand -- all of us have distant ancestors who wandered in from somewhere else, and everywhere on Earth is walking distance (or at least small-boat distance) if you have time enough.  What we couldn't figure was the complete lack of "Native American" blood, and wherethehell did "Scandinavian" and "Asian" come from?

I'm pretty sure that Mom's family wasn't lying about the great family secret of Chippewa ancestry;  in my grandmother's and grand-aunt's day a touch of non-White blood was something to be hidden.  "Indian" was the formal and honorable term, "Redskin" was no worse than vulgar, and the disparaging term was "Red Niggers".  In short, nobody would have invented a story like that about their ancestry.  So why didn't the DNA test show it?  And whereinhell did "Scandinavian" and "Asian" come from?

So I did some research about the Metis and the Chippewa (a.k.a. Ojibwa) and learned something interesting.  The Chippewa lived in what's now southern Canada and the northern US, on the eastern side of the Great Lakes, near Sault Ste. Marie.  They hunted into New York state, where my mother's family came from.  Nowadays we know that the Indian tribes were a mixture of early Asians, who came from across the Bering Straits about 12,000 years ago, and -- if ya please -- Europeans, the Clovis Point people, who came from northwestern France about 15,000 years ago.  Now that would account for the "Asian" genes, and a percentage of the "western European", but wherethehell did those "Scandinavian" genes come from?  Maybe a bit from the French (the "Normans" had been "Northmen" just a few generations earlier), maybe a bit from the Austrian side of Dad's family, maybe some from the British (Normans/Northmen again), but the percentages just didn't add up.  There was still too much "Scandinavian".

Then I dug a little deeper into Chippewa history, and found the answer. 

Eastern Canada and the northern part of the eastern US was the realm of Vinland.  That's where Leif Erikson's Viking colony was founded.  Although the colony was eventually defeated by disease and attacks of the "Skralings" (99% certainly the Iroquois tribe), there were some Indians that were happy to get along with the Vikings, to trade goods and services and... genes.  Those were the Chippewa, who mutually hated the Iroquois and would gladly befriend anyone the Iroquois fought.

So there we are;  I'm the great-X-granddaughter of Vinland Vikings and Chippewa sympathizers.  The fact that Ancestry.com couldn't read that from our DNA -- and didn't realize that all that made up a branch of "Native American" -- makes me giggle.  Didn't they realize that "primitive" people might have some complicated history?  Had they never heard of Lief Erikson and the Vinland colony?  Ah well, I suppose we can't expect microbiologists to study history too, eh?

--Leslie <;)))><         

Anti-Democratic Faith

I seem to have set off a small firestorm on Facebook, just by asking a simple question about the Orlando shooting.  The whole post is:

"I notice that in the wake of the Orlando Gay-bar massacre, MSNBC and the usual politicians are spouting the usual boilerplate about the awfulness of 'gun violence' and how we need to make it harder for people with no criminal record to buy guns. The more realistic types are asking why the FBI didn't keep better track of a suspected Jihadist, and others are asking what can be done to stop Jihadists from attacking innocent people.

"I also notice that one question nobody seems to be asking is: out of the 300 people in that bar, why did *not one of them* have a gun of his/her own, pull it out and shoot the killer? Not one of them! Not even the bartender or the bouncer. Yes, Orlando law forbids patrons (even CCW holders) to *bring* a firearm into a place where alcohol is served, but why didn't the *bartender*, or the bouncer, keep a firearm under the bar for emergencies? For that matter, what about tasers?

"That stupid law needs to be rescinded, the personnel of Gay bars need to be armed and trained to deal with terrorist attacks, and all bars should have a policy of welcoming CCW holders."

Well, that started it, 181 comments racked up in short order, and still going strong.  The pro- and anti-gun sides lined up pretty quickly, and I was fascinated to see the nature of the arguments.

The pros quoted facts and statistics (sometimes to laborious length):  1) The bar did have one armed guard -- a moonlighting local policeman stationed by the door -- but the shooter, Omar Mateen, had checked out the bar beforehand and knew where that guard was, and shot him first;  2) Since at least 1950, all but two mass shootings have taken place in "gun-free zones", where legally everybody was disarmed and nobody could shoot back;  3) There have been several cases where armed civilians have prevented mass shootings;  4) According to FBI statistics, Americans armed with firearms prevent crimes at least 900,000 times every year (and the figure could easily be twice as high, since many such are not reported);  5) According to data from the UN (http://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comp...) countries with low gun-ownership have higher homicide rates -- and the US ranks 111th in the world in homicide;  6)  Since 1993, when most states began allowing civilians to ear Concealed Carry of Weapons (CCW) permits, and gun purchases began climbing, the violent-crime rate in the US has dropped by almost 50%;  7)  Police have worse records of shooting innocent bystanders than CCW holders do;  8) Countries which have banned, or almost-completely banned, civilian gun ownership have subsequently seen their violent-crime rates climb, or at least stay the same -- and the same is true of American states and municipalities;  9)  The Constitution guarantees the right "to keep and bear arms" to all citizens, and its excuse -- the "militia" -- is comprised of all citizens over the age of 17;  10) Barring groups of people from that Constitutional right without conviction or at least clear evidence of a crime is "prior restraint", which is illegal;  10)  Government "no fly" lists are notoriously corrupt, and cannot be used to rob people of their rights without clear legal means of getting off the lists;  11) Given Mateen's past (examined by the FBI and written off, hired by a government-sponsored security firm, bought all his guns legally -- despite a history of bigoted and downright psychotic statements and behaviors, duly reported to the police), citizens cannot rely on the government alone for their protection from lunatics, bigots, terrorists or just plain crooks;  12) Intense firearms training for civilians has statistically reduced firearms accidents;  it should be made mandatory to everyone.  13)  "Mass shooting" statistics are exaggerated because the FBI defines "mass shooting" as any event in which four or more people are shot, not necessarily killed or even seriously wounded.  

The antis appealed to emotions, ideals, and "what everybody knows":  "Dancers and drunks with guns would have only increased the carnage in a dark, crowded space."  "I don't want untrained idiots all out there carrying all the guns they can. I personally would rather live in a civilized society where every person doesn't have to have a concealed weapon on them at every moment." "Do you think every yahoo with a gun and a couple of drinks in them is going to turn into Will Smith in 'Men in Black'? Three hundred panicked people running and screaming, shots being fired, loud music, strobe lights flashing,people falling and dying, and you think your imaginary CCW holders are going to be able to hit this shooter and not add to the body count of innocents?"  "Mass shootings are not a common event outside of a war zone anywhere outside the US." "Britain's violent crime rate has NOT been going up since the ban. Neither has Australia's. NO OTHER FIRST WORLD NATION has toddlers shooting themselves or someone else on a weekly basis. NO OTHER FIRST WORLD NATION has mass shootings (4+ more people shot in once incident) on a DAILY basis."  " so many Americans regard mass shootings as a perfectly acceptable side-effect of their right to own machine-guns."  "I heard the armed guard was also killed. But this nit-picking over details is distasteful, especially when used by NRA supporters as an excuse not to limit arms. Wake up America!" "Leslie, you are by far, the biggest jackass I've encountered in months. Let's just arm everyone, even schools and churches!  Deleted and blocked. Go suck a gun."  "More guns never make sense. Seriously, arm everyone? Even a lobotomized patient knows that's not only stupid but illogical and not ever going to happen."   "It's not that anti gun law people lost credibility. IT's Freudian psychology pure and simple. They're all holding onto their dicks. Preach abstinence only and this is the shit you get."

The patterns that emerge are very different from the usual political assumptions.  The pro-gun crowd want everyone -- including Gays and Latinos, in this case -- armed and trained, believe in common rationality, and trust the average citizen to behave reasonably.  The anti-gun crowd assume that the average citizen is ignorant, hysterical in a crisis, automatically gets drunk whenever alcohol is available, is likely to start and escalate violence, can't be trusted with weapons, and basically needs a keeper;  it's only a short step from there to assuming that the proper keeper for the masses is their own morally and mentally superior selves.  It's ironic that the party calling itself Democratic holds such anti-democratic beliefs.

By the way, the victims of the shooting themselves appear to have made their own decisions as to how to deal with the tragedy.  I've heard from friends that all over southern California there are signs popping up everywhere that show the familiar rainbow flag with the classic Don't-Tread-On-Me rattlesnake superimposed, and below that: "#Shootback".  

--Leslie <;)))><                        

Tempest in a Pee-pot

By now that incredibly stupid Carolina law -- forbidding people to use restrooms that don't jibe with the genders on their birth certificates -- has slipped off the front page, and doubtless the governor and legislature hope it stays that way.  Alas, while the law is still there, the opposition will be too.  There's no escape, you pious fools;  get rid of that law or remain a laughingstock -- as Tennessee was for decades after the Scopes "Monkey Trial". 

Not the least of the law's stupidities is the fact that very few people walk around carrying their birth certificate with them -- drivers' licenses or other state IDs yes, but not birth certificates -- so how is anybody supposed to check them out?  Second, who's going to do the checking, anyway?  Official Pee-Pee Police assigned to every public restroom in the state?  If you've got the tax money to pay for that, you'd be better off spending it on improving your schools.

And without handy birth certificates or Pee-Pee Police, how are you supposed to tell a "transgender"/"transsexual" on sight, anyway?  Real transsexuals are quite rare;  it's a condition in which a person is born with the genes and/or endocrine system of one sex and the physique of the other.  It's a miserable condition, in which the sufferer's body just doesn't fit right, work right, or feel right until s/he gets treatment to bring his/her physique into line.  This is not helped any by the social roles expected from the different sexes in most societies;  a lot of people psychologically fit the "standards" of the opposite sex, which tends to muddy the waters.  But in any case, a real transsexual will do his/her best to look, act, talk, dress, and otherwise be like the sex s/he identifies with -- so a passing glance, or even a close look, wouldn't tell you which gender s/he originally was.  If someone who looks like a man walks into the boys' room and goes to a stall rather than a urinal, how is anybody to know that s/he isn't a born male?  Ditto for females.

The whole excuse for this squawk is the old standby, "to protect the children".  Supposedly, perverts will dress like the opposite sex so as to get into bathrooms and assault kids.  The classic cartoon shows an 8-year-old girl complaining that there's a 40-year-old man in a dress lurking in the Girls' Room.  Uhuh.  Well, what's to keep perverts from sneaking into bathrooms and assaulting kids right now?  A law about birth certificates won't help that.  The solution is to keep some sort of attendant in every public bathroom in the country, and how likely is that?

And even having attendants in the bathrooms, ready to perform "short arms" inspection on everyone who walks in, is no protection against perverts -- because the Pee-Pee Police just might be perverts themselves, using their jobs to get free ogles and gropes.  Twice, while traveling, I've had seat-mates and suite-mates pull this trick on me;  the perv notes my contralto voice and the rather large muscles in my arms and shoulders, insists that I'm really a man in disguise, and demands that I "prove" I'm really female -- by displaying my tits.  Uhuh.  I didn't comply, either time, but I know I can't be the only woman that dirty lads have tried this on.  The last thing we need is to make this game legal.

The only thing attendants in the bathrooms might prevent is actual assaults in the johns, if that.  The birth-certificate law won't do anything but create fights and lawsuits.  It deserves to be laughed to death, along with the fools who voted for it.

--Leslie <;)))><   

Report from the Battle Front

Apricot, Avocado and Pomegranate are gopher-resistant.  That would explain why, despite all the gopher holes on that side of the property, my Pomegranates have survived and thrived.  I suppose the presence of the big Eucalyptus tree hasn't hurt, either.  Gophers don't seem to like Eucalyptus.

Anyway, after a couple weeks of gas-bombing their tunnels, I'm seeing a lot fewer fresh gopher-holes.  It's too much to hope that they've given up the territory, so I'll keep on patrolling, digging and gas-bombing.  Also, I got 20 healthy Euphorbia seeds and gave them to Sharan to sprout.  She's as dedicated to the Gopher War as I am, and she has two green thumbs.  We intend to grow as many good sturdy Gopher Purge plants as possible, and plant at least one among the roots of our particularly vulnerable fruit-trees.  I'm working on a song for the plant to the tune of "Euphoria", but this is as far as I've gotten:

"When those gophers start a-diggin' and a-pokin'
It sends 'em off runnin', a-gaggin' and a-chokin',
Scamperin' around tryin' hard to get away
From the
Euphorbia!"

It isn't much, but I'm working on it.  Anyway, since we can't get our hands on gopher snakes, and ferrets would have problems with the dog and the cats, and poisoning is generally a bad idea, we're sticking to gopher-bombs for the short term and Gopher Purge for the long haul.  It's also good to know that the Apricots and Avocados will be fairly safe on their hook when we get around to planting them (in October, the nurseryman recommends, which is when the new black Arisia Pomegranate should arrive).

The interesting fact is that the Blackberry plants that survived the trip from Larry's place seem to be undamaged too.  I would have thought that Blackberry roots would be a feast for gophers, but it seems their roots are as well defended as the rest of the plant -- which can only be handled safely with thick ox-hide gardening gloves.  In their way, they're as prickly as cactus.

I'm trying to think of which trees should get a companion Euphorbia: the Scarlet Fig, obvously, but what else?  The citrus trees?  That's a Navel Orange, another Bearss Lime, and a Honey Lemon.  Maybe the White Guava too, and possibly the Papershell Pecan tree.  The Moringa should be safe;  it comes from Africa, and the local gophers wouldn't be adapted to it.  The grapevines don't seem to have suffered. 

Hmmm, or maybe I should just order more Euphorbia seeds.  They're a bit pricey, but if they drive away the goddam gophers they'll be worth it.       

--Leslie <;)))>< 

What Were They Thinking?

By now the disastrous effects of unrestrained "Syrian Refugee" immigration into Europe -- especially Germany -- are common knowledge.  All those military-age and rarely Syrian young men, who were supposed to thicken Europe's shrinking population of taxpaying workers, have turned out to be demanding welfare bums, shameless rapists -- of women, young (as young as 6) girls and young boys -- thoughtless trashers and rioters.  Perhaps the icing on the cake has been volunteer Muslim Morality police going around to German bars and ordering them shut down on threat of smashing their windows, and worse.  The "refugees" have made it clear (there are several accounts, including documentary footage on YouTube) that they're in Germany to take over.  Their misbehavior, and the Merkel government's placating acceptance thereof, has fueled civilian outrage and caused the rapid rise of right-wing political parties, and the former administration is unquestionably on its way to being voted out.  This pattern is repeating all over Europe, to a greater or lesser degree.  Growing numbers of the populations are actively grumbling for withdrawal from the European Union.

Governments in general are not notable for high intelligence, but couldn't the European governments have foreseen that this would happen?  Didn't they learn anything from, say, the example of Dearborn, Michigan?  ...Well, remember that the governments of Europe learned nothing about the grim possibilities of modern warfare from the example of the American Civil War, but still, didn't their own history teach them anything?  Both before and well after the Crusades, Muslim countries made persistent attempts to conquer Europe -- efforts that ended as recently as World War One.  They might have ignored the Muslim countries' persistent attacks on Israel -- after all, those were only aimed at Jews, you know -- but did they forget the enthusiastic Arab support of Hitler in World War Two?  They might have felt sympathy for the Muslim victims of leftover-Nazi "ethnic cleansing" in Albania, but didn't they remember the way the Muslim members of Hitler's SS behaved in Hungary and the Balkans?  Surely not everyone in the assorted governments of Europe were ignorant of the past, or couldn't calculate what would happen!

So why did they do it?  Why did they take in any, let alone so many, of those not-so-Syrian-but-definitely-Muslim "refugees"?  Merkel's claims -- that they needed new workers (preferably low-wage), or that they needed to prove how "liberal", "global", and "tolerant" they were -- just don't hold water.  Even oil-blackmail by the Saudis doesn't explain it;  Europe could have bought oil from Russia, Venezuela, or the United States; they could also have made even greater efforts than they already have to shift to non-fossil fuels. Not even pressure from the UN can explain it;  all the countries of Europe (and their economic clout) can swing enough weight in the UN to outclass all the Muslim countries put together.  Not even thundering stupidity can explain it!  So why in hell did the governments of Europe invite this disaster on their heads?

The only answer I can think of verges on the fringes of way-out conspiracy theory: that the assorted governments of Europe, particularly Germany and Sweden, had grown very tired of the European Union -- and even the United Nations -- and of the Liberal policy of placating the demands and excesses of the Muslim countries, and decided on a radical policy to shed all of them.  This is hard to believe, since it would require political self-sacrifice on the part of a lot of politicians (who are not known to be a self-sacrificing lot).  Still, what else would give them excuse to break the European Union, deport all the Muslim immigrants who have been infiltrating their countries over the past few decades, and throw out the whole "globalist"/"multicultural" ideal for the next generation or two?  What else could reverse the effect of half a century of cunning Arab propaganda besides actual experience with a lot of not-so-subtle Muslim invaders?

So the question is, have the various governments of Europe been incredibly stupid, or amazingly cunning?

I can't think of any middle ground between the two.  Can you?

--Leslie <;)))>< Fish   

  

      

This Means War!

I have had it with those goddamn gophers!  I did no more than shovel dirt back in their holes when they burrowed up under the floor in the storage shed.  I only flooded their tunnels with water when they started digging up my grass.  But now that they’re eating the roots of my fruit-trees, I’m going to exterminate the little buggers.
The four trees that died in my front yard might have been victims of underwatering, or the neighbor’s carelessness with weed-killer (read Roundup), but now that my original 3-year-old fig tree is dying of obvious causes, I’m not so sure about those four.  There were gopher-holes around them, after all. 
That Turkey Brown fig tree was perfectly healthy at the start of the month, budding plenty of fruit, thick with leaves.  Then the leaves mysteriously began turning yellow and falling off.  I applied plenty of fertilizer and minerals and water, but all that happened was that the remaining leaves withered without even turning yellow first.  It also became very loose in the ground.  ‘Twas Sharan who figured it out – and found the gopher tunnel that led to that tree.  “It has no roots,” she pronounced.  The damned gophers had eaten the nice succulent roots of my fig tree.
So we spent yesterday afternoon hunting up gopher-holes, digging them out, finding which ones led to actual tunnels and which ones were shallow little one-night gopher motels (about one to three), stuffing gopher-bombs down the tunnels and sealing the holes with dirt after them.  The way a gopher-bomb works is that it burns phosphorus (which won’t harm the plant roots;  it’s an ingredient in common fertilizer) in the tunnel, thereby sucking up all the oxygen in the tunnel and replacing it with animal-fatal phosphorus smoke.  A small road-flare will do the same thing.  The problem is making sure you’ve found all the tunnels. 
So, tomorrow we’ll go down to the hardware store and get a bunch of gopher-bombs, or road-flares if they’re cheaper, and after that the search-and-destroy mission begins.  We’ll tramp up and down both our yards – which is no small feat, given the size of those yards – looking for gopher-holes and digging them up.  Wherever we find a tunnel, in goes a lit flare.  I’m also looking for a mail-order house where I can get Gopher-Purge seeds, and in every hole where we don’t find a tunnel I’ll plant those seeds. 
I expect I’ll also go out with the pickaxe and root up those weeds that Roderick missed, and plant Gopher-Purge there, too.  Of course, if I could have found anybody in the state of Arizona who sells live Gopher Snakes, this problem could have been solved a lot easier;  poke some hungry snakes down the tunnels, and let them do their thing.  Alas, no available snakes.  Damn.
I have reason to be anxious about the other trees, too.  The new almond tree hasn’t budded, and looks dead;  it’ll be expensive to replace.  The same with the one chestnut that I’ve got planted – but then again, the two that are still in pots haven’t budded either;  I may have to order new, older, chestnut trees from that same nursery, which won’t be cheap.  The new Scarlet fig looks healthy, but who knows when it’ll be attacked.  The little black Eight-Ball pomegranate is losing its leaves and dying, and I can’t get a new black Arisia pomegranate until September.  I’ve gotten a new Pakistani mulberry tree, but it’ll have to stay in the pot until the weather cools in autumn – the nurseryman recommended planting it in October.  Ditto with the apricot, macademia and avocado trees – and the avacados will need special planting to keep salt in the soil away from them (dig a hole at least four feet deep and eight feet wide, fill it with mulch and potting soil, mound it up in the center, plant the tree at the top of the mound, and then water from the top of the mound only so that the water will always flow away from the tree, flooding away the salt). 
All this is going to cost us, and we’re pinched for income.  The one thing we can’t afford is to keep replacing trees because the goddamn gophers eat their roots!  The Neem oil has done a fine job of protecting the trees from molds and bugs, but it’ll take serious war to get rid of the gophers.  So I’m appealing for donations again, to help us buy armaments as well as replacements.  Anyone who thinks that a war of extermination is always an Unthinkable Evil has never owned an orchard attacked by gophers.  Kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all: no mercy.  Maybe I should print up personal War Bonds.
--Leslie <;)))><        

Encounter With a Cat-Hater

Understand that I've started up a club to promote my new breed of kitty-cats, which meets every Sunday noon in Kell Park, next to the Buckeye downtown library.  While waiting for interested cat-lovers to show up, I display three or four of my cats in a folding cage, set out cheap soft drinks and play cat-themed songs -- of which I have almost enough to make an album by now.

I hadn't realized that I, and especially my cats, had an enemy.

So I was sitting on the bench in Kell park, singing cat songs, when this woman came walking by.  She was middle-aged, with the kind of discreetly chic clothing and jewelry that whispers of money.  She gave me barely a glance, but she stopped to look at the cage with the three silver cats in it, frowned, and asked me what I was doing there.  I explained that this was a meeting of the Silverdust cat club, and I was waiting for the other members to show up.  She asked what sort of 'cat club' it was, and I explained further: that this is a new breed of cat, and I'm seeking out other cat-lovers to help develop the breed.

That set her off.  She launched into a tirade about how nobody should be breeding cats, we should be spaying and neutering them instead -- all of them, since cats are an "ecological disaster".  She claimed that "cats kill songbirds", that cats "kill billions of birds and mammals every year" and "have driven 35 species to extinction", and more, and more.  She was working herself up to a serious hysterical rant, and when she started arching her fingers -- with their inch-long red-painted nails -- into claws, I grew seriously afraid that she'd attack me or my kitties.  I didn't say anything, but I discreetly slid my hand down to my belt-purse and gripped my gun.  I don't know if she saw that or not, but she checked herself, gave me a poisonous smile and said "Think about all that," and turned and hurried away.
 

Well, that was upsetting enough to remember clearly.  After another hour with nobody else showing up, my husband helped me pack up and take everything home, and I went straight to my computer to do some research.  It turns out that there are a lot of people -- including, under their supposedly animal-loving exterior, the PETA people -- who believe all that vicious nonsense.  And nonsense it is, carefully crafted and spread by people who clearly hate cats -- including, if you please, some veterinarians!  Just why they hate cats I can't say, but their hatred is genuine enough to motivate them to some amazing lies.

For example, that one about "cats kill billions of birds and mammals":  depending on who you talk to, there are between 74 and 93 million cats in the US.  The vast majority of them (the 74 million figure) live in human households, where they get regular meals and have no need to hunt.  Cats, like humans, who hunt for sport don't kill very many prey.  As for stray/feral cats (probably the other estimated 20 million), they live around human settlements and mostly feed off what humans produce -- including large populations of rats and mice.  Now a billion is a thousand million, and there's no way that even 93 million cats could kill one billion -- let alone two or more -- birds and mammals.  The only way to get that figure is to add up, or estimate, the number of prey of every species of cat in the world:  not only house-cats but bobcats and lynxes, ocelots and margays, leopards and cheetahs, lions and tigers, jaguars and cougars, and a dozen species more. 


Then there's that one about "driven 35 species to extinction".  I couldn't find any solid proof of that statement, just claims of falling prey-animal populations with no proof that house-cats were the cause.  Also, some of those "species" turned out to be only sub-species -- breeds -- such as a local brown-footed variety of a usually white-footed mouse.  This is bad science.

As for the charge that "cats kill songbirds", that can be disproved just by observing birds.  Except for the raptors -- owls, hawks, eagles -- birds have eyes on the sides of their heads, so that they can see almost completely around them without moving their heads.  And they do move their heads!  It's very, very difficult to sneak up on a bird;  the only animals that seem to manage it consistently are snakes -- not any kind of mammal.  For another thing, 99% of all birds on Earth can fly.  In a split second, a bird can thrash its wings and be ten feet up in the air -- and I've never seen a cat that could jump higher than eight feet up.  Third, birds are fast.  Their metabolism and reaction time is faster than any other order of animals.  In fact, the fastest-moving animal on Earth is a bird -- the hummingbird, to be precise, which usually beats its wings twice a second.  A bird can easily fly faster than a cat can run -- or jump.  Now some people worry about cats climbing trees to get at nests and eat the eggs or baby birds, but consider that most birds raise their young as pairs -- one parent to tend the eggs or babies while the other hunts for food.  That means that the nest is always watched by at least one bird, who can quickly call the other for help if a predator approaches.  Two angry birds attacking one cat, who also has to worry about falling, is no contest.  The result is that cats very rarely manage to kill birds, and then only those too sick or injured to fly.  The chief predator of birds is other birds -- hawks, owls, eagles -- with snakes coming in second and mammals (all mammals) a distant third.

Now the chief prey of house-cats -- or other small cats in the wild -- is small rodents: mice, rats, voles, moles, gophers, ground squirrels, sometimes tree squirrels, and even small bats.  Snakes and raptor-birds also prey on rodents, and in the wild they keep the populations of rodents under control.  In the human-ruled part of the world though, the ratios are different.  Tree-squirrels may live in our suburbs and other rodents out in farming country, but in our cities the most common rodents by far are mice and rats.  Likewise, the closer you get to urban areas, the fewer the species of predators are.  In fact, the only serious predators of urban or suburban rodents are -- guess! -- small dogs and cats.  Get rid of the cats, and the small dogs (as the PETA people love to do), and it will be a race between the rats and the mice as to which species takes over the city first.  Once the rats or mice have moved in, it will take a lot of cats and small dogs -- and snakes, if you can get them -- several years to drive them out again.  Just ask the city of Apopka, Florida.

So there are not too many cats -- or dogs -- in the world.  There are too many rodents, and that is the doing of man -- and has been, for the last 10,000 years: ever since humans started farming, and provided rats and mice with a reliable smorgasbord.  The ancestors of house-cats, following the mice and rats, moved in with humans not long afterward.  We've had a good working relationship ever since. 


As I said, I don't know why the cat-haters hate cats -- Chinese legend says that such people were rats in a former life -- but they do us no favors with their lies and half-truths and attempts to get rid of cats. 

If that crazy woman comes back on Sunday, when I'll be out in Kell park with my guitar and my cats, I really don't know what I'll do -- but I know I won't let her harm my little creatures.  And I always wear my gun.

--Leslie <;)))>< Fish

Socialism, Shmocialism

Since Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign has brought the whole issue up again, we really should put this old squabble to rest.

The dictionary defines "socialism" as: "A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of land, capital, etc., in the community as a whole."  When the idea began, back in the early 19th century, that really did mean "community": the local town or village;  by the turn of the century, Britain at least was studded with towns that boasted municipal water-systems, municipal garbage-collectors, municipal bus systems, municipal farmers' granges, and so on.  Often these community organizations -- like guilds and labor unions -- were entirely self-grown, with no government connection whatever.  'Twas the Russian Revolution which brought about the system of national socialism, with its concept of government-managed economy, and we've all seen how well that worked out.  Government-managed economies, like corporate-managed economies or aristocracy-managed economies, have reliably ended in disaster.

On the other paw, this doesn't mean that group-owned or group-managed property doesn't work.  In fact, there has never been a human society which didn't have both both group-owned and individually-owned, both "public" and "private" property.  Among even Stone-Age societies, the individual might own and control his/her own spears, club, baskets, furs, and so on, but the whole tribe owned the hunting territory.  In that sense, we've always been at least partially socialist.  It doesn't help to try to draw divisions according to "the means of production", because almost anything can become a "means of production";  a simple length of string can be made into a hunting-snare or a fishnet, and nowadays a single 3D printer can become a whole factory. And never mind how an individual -- or a group -- can create services.  No, group or individual ownership of property isn't the problem, and never has been.

What causes the trouble, and what created the very concept of "socialism" in the first place, is control of property, and the economy -- backed up by force.  Whenever one person (king, high priest, company boss) or even small group (aristocracy, priesthood, corporation) claims control over a whole industry, or economy, or all the productive land in a community -- and backs up that claim with an army (soldiers, cops, private guards, or whatever) -- the result is oppression under any name.

See how this worked out in modern history.  In the early 19th century the beginnings of modern industry, based on steam-power, made the existing urban middle-class amazingly rich.  This had two effects: 1) the landed aristocracy noticed, and despite its horreur of being "in trade" (and thereby possibly doing, yuck, physical labor) wanted to get in on the act;  2) the working-class and poor now had choices;  they could stay in the country and work on the aristocracy's farms, or they could move into the big cities and work for wages in the burgeoning factories -- it was just a question of which paid better.  The aristocracy, which used to make its money from tenant farmers on its land, began using that land for mines (particularly iron and coal) wherever possible, and for factories (and never mind how this spoiled the land for farming), both of which required increased labor, so that now the aristocracy was in competition with the middle-class for labor -- and that meant increasing pay.  The working-class and poor benefited from this situation, but neither the middle-class nor the aristocracy liked it.  The next major change was the invention of mechanized -- therefore more efficient -- farming methods.  This meant that the aristocracy could work the same land more efficiently, with much less labor.  That was a blessing for the upper two classes, because now the farming aristocracy could get rid of their ancient armies of tenant farmers with the Enclosure Acts -- dismissing the tenant-farmers and closing off the open lands which the peasants had used in common -- and those former peasants now had nowhere to go except into household "service" or to the mines and factories. With the stroke of a pen, the labor shortage was gone;  now there were more poor seeking jobs than there were jobs to accommodate them.  Wages plummeted accordingly, and don't even ask about working conditions.

Now there had been rebels against the excesses of the aristocracy clean back into Roman times, and the working-class and even the poor were aware of the medieval Diggers, and Ranters, and the legends of Robin Hood.  And, contrary to what the aristocracy liked to believe, the working-class were not stupid.  They knew very well that one power they had was numbers, and with it the threat of withholding their labor.  What they lacked in theory was supplied by sympathetic idealists from the middle-class.  There had been guilds and less permanent labor unions and strikes before, and the working-class began expanding on these.  Out of this stew of ideas and need grew the first concepts of socialism, particularly from the memories of those lost common lands and the observed power of the organized and unified working-class.  In that sense, it was the 19th-century British aristocracy who invented Socialism, or at least brought it on themselves.

In America the situation was a bit different, since there was abundant land -- and, thanks to Thomas Jefferson's Homesteading Act, it was available to anyone willing to work for it.  All through the first half of the 19th century, American lands were steadily filled with small ranchers, trappers, hunters, miners, and especially farmers -- plus small towns filled with small shopkeepers who catered to those small-holders.  An individual didn't need to unite with fellow-workers to survive, or succeed;  s/he did need to be minimally competent at his/her particular trade, and at his/her own maintenance and defense.  Besides, the Constitution guaranteed the individual a certain amount of political power without need to organize into guilds or unions.  Nonetheless, a certain amount of group effort was necessary for survival -- against natural disasters, bandits,  angry Indians or, increasingly, political raiders as the Civil War approached.  Besides, labor unions weren't unknown.  Printers, cabinet makers, carpenters and cordwainers were organized enough to go on strike in the 1790s, various unions along the east coast began uniting to demand a 10-hour (rather than 12-hour) work-day in the 1820s, and when the steam-powered factory system began growing in the 1830s the early unions began forming city-wide federations.  The National Labor Union, formed the year after the Civil War ended, managed to persuade Congress to give federal government workers an 8-hour day.  In this fashion, American Socialism developed from the concept of group action rather than common ownership.

Ironically, the concept of group ownership was developed in America primarily by the upper-class and the government, rather than the working-class.

Before the Revolution corporations had been allowed only by royal charter, and after the Constitution was ratified corporations were still distrusted -- because they were seen as playing with "other people's money" and suspected of trying to override states' rights.  Throughout the 19th century, especially after the Civil War, corporations gained more rights and powers until the federal government felt obliged to pass the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.  Various laws passed since then have not reduced the power of corporations, leading to the old labor-organizers' description of the American economy as "Socialism for the rich, and Free Enterprise for the poor".

The federal government began by claiming ownership (which various Indian tribes contested) to the land all across the continent to the west coast, and the surrounding waters, and throughout the 19th century it used the lands for military bases and otherwise to sell or grant to settlers.  In the 20th century the government did an about-face, keeping large tracts of the lands for parks, restricting the means by which citizens could buy or claim the non-park lands, and managing the lands' resources with varying policies.  By calling these commons "public lands" the government pushes the idea that all of the American people own the lands and the government only "manages" them for us.  The nature and quality of that management has come under considerable criticism in recent years, especially since the Bundy case.

Small and low-level group property experiments have cropped up repeatedly through American history -- business co-ops, church communes, trusts and partnerships of various sizes -- without annoying the neighbors, but in general the large-group property concept of Socialism has never been popular in the United States.

The concept of national Socialism, the idea that the federal government should regulate and control all aspects of the economy, is even less popular -- and has been ever since the end of the Revolution, when the assorted new states began arguing over the Constitution and the amount of control the federal government would have over the states.  Eventually this tension would lead to no less than the Civil War, whose scars haven't yet faded, more than a century later.  This is why socio-economic experiments -- like legalized marijuana, legal gambling, different forms of Welfare and public health-insurance -- are usually tried in individual states first.  Even those which succeed in becoming federal law remain subject to constant scrutiny, and may be repealed years or even decades later.

Altogether, the assorted components of Socialism have always had only limited popularity in the US.  As a unified system, it'll never catch on.  We can stop using it for a political scarecrow and deal with elements of its components rationally, one by one, as individual reform experiments, as they come up.

--Leslie <;)))><