Sunday, March 17, 2024

DEFENSE ONE opinion piece recognizes things are getting worse.

Defense One:  IDEAS.  

"Authoritarians are playing to win. America can’t if we don’t show up."  Two retired four-stars lay out the case for the National Security Emergency Package currently being considered in the House.  PHILIP BREEDLOVE and SAMUEL J. LOCKLEAR III | MARCH 16, 2024

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2024/03/authoritarians-are-playing-win-america-cant-if-we-dont-show/395008/          The comments within the brackets are my own and highlighted yellow. 

[The following ideas are only half baked.  Security in the real interdependent world is an illusion.  And defense without ‘justice for all’  is simply unsustainable]

A global chess game is underway and America’s security depends on it [winning it in a sustainable way]. Congressional negotiators are counting votes to break gridlock and fund America’s national security. As they do, thousands of miles away, an opposite set of deliberations are afoot, from Moscow to Tehran to Beijing, not to build a secure America—but to work against the interests of our citizens. [Certainly not future generations. Given that both sides are in a perpetual struggle to protect their national sovereignty instead protecting human rights and the environment.  And neither side is considering the inevitable consequences of the escalating evolution of weapons, war, pathogens, environmental degradation, corruption, economic debt instability, political polarization, and dysfunctional political system – each causing disruptive problems that cannot be controlled by military power, diplomacy, hopes, or prayers...thing are not going to end well for anyone.  Cascading global failures are inevitable playing this zero-sum game between nations, corporations, and organizations.  It is simply unsustainable on this planet where everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable. And only a global effort like the eradication of smallpox can save us and the generations to come from hell on earth.   

 As military officers who [bravely] spent our lives in uniform and oversaw U.S. military operations at NATO and in the Pacific, we believe today’s world is more complicated, more threatening, and most of all more interconnected than any we’ve witnessed [because their minds believed that peace through strength between ‘independent’ nations in an irreversibly interdependent world could keep them free and safe.  But that is not the way reality works.  And wars lost by both the US and the USSR should have confirmed that.]

 In real time, Iran is seizing the opportunity to empower Houthi extremists in the Red Sea and Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. As North Korean-built missiles fall on Ukrainian targets, Putin welcomes this rising regional instability, distracting the world from the battlefield between Kiev and Crimea. All the while, Beijing watches closely to determine whether the invasion of Ukraine is either a cautionary tale or a greenlight when it comes to Taiwan.

 As the Senate passed the National Security Emergency Package last month, Senator Thom Tillis, R-N.C., aptly described this moment, “If we walk away, you will see the alliance that is supporting Ukraine crumble. You will ultimately see China become emboldened. And I am not going to be on that page of history.” As America’s national security hangs in the balance, the package now being considered in the House is essential to counter those who would do us harm. And with Putin making Ukraine’s economy another theater of war, the critical U.S. civilian economic and humanitarian assistance—alongside security assistance—will be just as vital to ensure Ukraine can continue to defend its territory and prevent Russian forces from pushing further into Europe.

 Meanwhile, other crises metastasize. Ukraine is known as the “breadbasket of Europe” and the invasion is one of the core reasons that 9 in 10 people face acute levels of food insecurity in hot spots already affected by fragility and conflict – countries like Sudan, Yemen, and Syria. The last time the world faced such a significant food crisis, it helped contribute to bloody conflict across the Middle East and North Africa and the rise of ISIS. Currently, 150 million people are facing “acute food insecurity” and 108 million have been forced to flee their homes worldwide.

Likewise, China is on the march, accumulating influence and economic riches across Africa and the Global South. Beijing has upped its global development investment more than fivefold over 15 years, and is already beginning to reap the dividends. From critical minerals in Africa to relationships in Latin America and southeast Asia, the race is on for the export markets that will define this century.

 In our country, meanwhile, isolationist [and some ‘peace’ activists] headwinds are animating our nation’s politics.  Some of our fellow citizens believe our nation should turn inward. But we’ve learned the hard way that our two oceans will not protect us from the threats of the 21st century. And while the notion that politics should stop at the water’s edge may no longer be quite as sacrosanct, it's why we are part of a group of more than 260 retired three- and four-star generals and admirals who continue to speak out around the country on why America has to engage in the world to stop threats before they arrive on our shores.

 Some argue that democracy is not suited to this moment. We disagree. We believe that the vibrancy of our democracy earns the United States a credibility that Putin, Kim Jong Un, and the Ayatollah can only dream of: admiration and allies, not just transactional relationships. But you can’t win if you don’t show up. [no!  we can only win this chess game if we can stop the growing assault on our national borders which are impervious to pandemics, violent extremists, acerating extreme weather events, the rapid extinction of species, and the economic and migratory consequences hunger, wars, genocides, corruption, and cruelty.}  

 The world is watching the chessboard to see whether the United States can deliver—on security, on economic competition, and on humanitarian crises—in the way that’s always defined and differentiated us from the competition. Over the last year, it’s no secret that our allies have been stepping up—as they should—with European countries now committing $3 for every $1 the U.S. has contributed to Ukraine. Yet the stakes for our own interests are too high for our nation to sit on the sidelines.

 We agree with Speaker Mike Johnson when he affirmed that “we can’t allow Vladimir Putin to march through Europe.” How can we get there? Passing the National Security Emergency Package in the House is critical, not just for the reinforcement it must bring to the Pentagon and our comrades in arms, but equally so to their partners at the State Department and USAID.

 These investments [plus funding and achieving the SDGs ASAP] are essential to meet the civilian security, economic, and humanitarian needs rapidly piling up before those too demand military solutions. Together, these agencies—defense and civilian—make up America’s team and they need our urgent support.

In national security, one may debate causality against correlation, but there are no coincidences. When Moscow hosted Hamas at the Kremlin after the barbaric October 7 terrorist attacks, and Xi Jinping hosted Putin in Beijing during China’s recent 130-country conference, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un toured Russian missile sites, the message was clear.

The authoritarians are playing to win on the global chessboard, and they’re acting in lockstep. [where our military, all political parties, and our nation's progressive movements continue act in their own mission’s interest.  United we are not. 

Passing a budget up to the challenge is the first way to put us on a path to check our adversaries and competitors—and to protect our national interests, our citizens, and our way of life. [our natural resources infrastructure that our future security depends on is not a priority]

 Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. Air Force general, commanded NATO Supreme Allied Command from 2013 to 2016.

Sam Locklear, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, commanded U.S. Pacific Command from 2012 to 2015.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Democracy. Freedom. Security. Pick two.

 It's been a long time since I've blogged. I've been doing the last edits on my book I started over 24 years ago.  Below are ten flaws of the US Constitution which is in the 7th chapter before I dive into the cognitive reasons collected to better understand why we don't learn to change our mind when our life and lives depend on it. Feed back is always welcomed.  Even anonymously. 

The fundamental principles found in the Declaration of Independence can lead us to a sustainable future.

It is our flawed Constitutional principles that dictate who and where we are now. 

Democracy.  Freedom.  Security.   Pick two.   

Nature holds all three as incompatible.  Because a majority of people still believe they are independent. 

FYI:  There is one way to have all three.  Just remember that Nature always gets the last vote.

The American people and the rest of the world need to make an urgent decision about democracy.  You might sense that with all the acerating chaos in the world that time is running out.  Your senses are correct.  Nearly everything humanity is doing as nations and collectively now is simply unsustainable.

With the evolution of weapons, wars, pathogens, environmental degradations, violent extremism, refugee flows, failing democracies, polarizing partisan politics, and economic gap are all connected, interdependent, and vulnerable - the solution must be global.  This is not my view. 

It was the assertion of Jen Easterly, the Director of CISA (the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency October 29, 2021).  CISA is the newest US Federal Agency, established by the Trump Administration in 2018.  “Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....”

This reality was echoed again this week on C-Span MARCH 11, 2024. everal high-ranking US Intelligence officials testified on Global Threats before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. Their introductory remarks are the most complete, accurate, comprehensive, and brief assessment that I've ever heard in the dozens of briefings of threat hearings I've listened to over the last two decades.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?534027-1/intelligence-officials-testify-global-threats-senate-cmte

 

Chairman Senator Warner (D) briefly summarizes the threat environment we have today and how threats are rapidly changing, increasing, speeding up, and connected -- in addition to traditional national security threats we still have.

 

Vice Chair Mark Rubio (R) introductory remarks on various threats were long. His conclusion was short  ‘one of the greatest dangers we face is the inability to see how all these things are interconnected...and one of the greatest challenges we face is to deal with them as if they are interconnected...that’s what life will be like on this planet for the next generation.  It will be determined very much by what we do or fail to do here over the next 2 to 3 years ... with all the issues ... before us today.

 

So what two are you choosing?  Democracy, Freedoms, Security?

Or Freedom, security, and the Global Rule of Law?  With the RoL merging enforceable laws made by a democratic process, applied equally to all people, and limited to protecting human rights and the environment globally.

 

Democracy is an ambiguous word meaning different systems and priorities for different local or national governments.  So as a noun democracy always turns to tyranny of the majority.  Thus, Thomas Jefferson defined democracy as ‘two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for lunch.  And freedom being a well armed lamb contesting the vote.’   The Rule of Law is democracy as a verb, with liberty and justice for all.

The choice between these two options should not be difficult.  It is shocking how resistant people are having heaven on earth. And instead insists on an ambiguous word where a majority system dictates the laws. 

Ever wondered why our Constitution as a Democratic Republic has always had problems?   Or why no other democracy has ever been sustainable? 

 

The reality is that our US Constitution has at least ten serious flaws. And anyone of them make it unmanageable when competing in a rapidly changing and troubled world.   While there are rules for Amendments within it - at this stage of our polarized Democracy an Amendment won’t happen and a constitutional convention could lead at best to dissolution of our union. And at worse, to another civil war.  With the very real chance of another World War breaking out before that.

The greatest flaw with democracy is that ‘we the people’ of the US and the world are so different in beliefs, culture, religion, and wealth that it is would be highly likely to unite and form a consensus rule of law. As long as people hold in their mind different truths (political, religious, economic...) with the capacity to believe anything.  Literally anything!  And then kill or die to defend it .... partisan elections will always divide.  But the greatest barrier to people coming together is the belief that they are separate from other people and the environment.  And that separation will have harmful consequences in every aspect of life.  Because everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.  And a global system of liberty and justice for all is the only moral, ethical, and logical path forward.  United we stand a chance.  Divided we will continue into further chaos.

 

Forging unity was accomplished with the idealism expressed in our nation’s Declaration of Independence.  It started and remained a universal document.  And those who signed it failed to keep the spirit and intent of that profound document when the created the US Constitution.  The Declaration expressed self-evident truths.  Like everyone has natural inalienable rights.  And one of those rights is to say your opinion or deeply held beliefs.  No one has the right to make others agree to the same beliefs.   And that voice is everyone’s sovereign agency to decide what rules they want to live under.  But no one is obligated to subjugate their right to a different belief.  And if people want to disagree they can. But they must agree on some rules to live by...or serious problems will likely evolve.  And without an agreed upon means of settling such problems, violence will likely result.  And people will start picking sides and war will follow.  

 That is Democracy without the Rule of Law. 

Below is ten inherent flaws in the US Constitution.  And without amending them our nation will continue to implode.  Please provide your feedback.  I may have made errors or forgotten some.   Populist movements are rising.  What solutions or self-evident truths do you have that can change this? 

Remember three things.  1) the words Abraham Lincoln wrote ‘the Declaration is our “Apple of Gold” and our Constitution it’s “Silver Frame”.  Which is more valuable to you?  2:  The earth belongs always to the living generation…not the dead. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.”   Thomas Jefferson in a 1789 letter to James Madison    3.  Everything is connected, interdependent and vulnerable. 

Constitutional Flaws:

The earth belongs always to the living generation…not the dead. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.   Thomas Jefferson in a 1789 letter to James Madison

1.     It was framed on top of an illusion.  The human delusion that things are independent of other things.  They can certainly be separate.  But independence is a flawed mental construct that exists nowhere in the known universe.  Only as a risky concept in our mind our speech, and our documents.

 

2.     It codifies states’ rights over human rights.  The civil war mostly changed this regarding slavery.  But most voters are still restrained by the chains of a state’s right to Gerrymander Congressional Districts.  This strips many Americans of their representation to influence the outcome of a state’s electoral college law.  So until every state changes this system that rigs the power by one partisan political party to reside over the rights of others in that state, with the state’s electoral slate deciding which Presidential candidate wins the general election (as what happened in Florida in the 2000 election determining the final outcome for all US voters) and impacting everyone in the US and the world, that is simply wrong.

 

3.      It has no justice.  If you go to trial in the US, you would be better off being rich and guilty than innocent and poor.  The one time I experienced a legal problem and lost because I didn’t have a lawyer.  I complained to the judge that the judgment was not just.   He said “we have a legal system.  Not a justice system. “ 

 

The Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., features the following inscription on its exterior: "Equal Justice Under Law." This phrase reflects the principle of justice being applied equally to all individuals, regardless of their background or status.  This is laughable if you go to court without a good lawyer or against the US government.

 

Agent Orange was a herbicide used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War to clear vegetation. Its use has been controversial due to its harmful effects on human health and the environment.

There was a lawsuit filed by Vietnamese citizens against several chemical companies, including Dow Chemical and Monsanto for their role in producing Agent Orange. The lawsuit alleged that these companies were responsible for the health problems and environmental damage caused by Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.  In 2004, a group of Vietnamese plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. federal court against the chemical companies. However, the case was dismissed by the court, which ruled that the chemical companies were immune from lawsuits because they were acting under the direction of the U.S. government during the war.   Despite the dismissal of this lawsuit, the issue of Agent Orange and its effects on the Vietnamese population and environment remains a contentious and unresolved issue. 

There have been legal cases related to the use of Agent Orange by U.S. military personnel and its effects on their health. One significant case was the class-action lawsuit filed by Vietnam veterans against several chemical companies that produced Agent Orange. The case was settled out of court in 1984 for $180 million, which established a fund to compensate veterans and their families affected by exposure to Agent Orange.  The Supreme Court has not issued a ruling specifically addressing the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

“Equal justice under law is not merely a caption on the facade of the Supreme Court building. It is perhaps the most inspiring ideal of our society. It is one of the ends for which our entire legal system exists…it is fundamental justice that should be the same, in substance and availability, without regard to economic status.”  Lewis F. Powell, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. 

The Department of Justice building, also in Washington, D.C., bears three inscriptions:  JUSTICE IS FOUND IN THE RIGHTS BESTOWED BY NATURE UPON MAN.  LIBERTY IS MAINTAINED IN SECURITY OF JUSTICE. This is engraved into the exterior marble of the US Justice Department. 

"Justice is the great interest of man on earth.   Wherever her temple stands, there is a foundation for social security, general happiness, and the improvement and progress of our race." 

"The commonwealth endures only in proportion as the guarantees of the rights of the people are faithfully maintained."  This quote underscores the importance of upholding the rights of the people as a foundation for a strong and enduring society.  But outcomes in this court are more money dependent than just.

Summary This lack of justice in US laws (domestic and international) is simply unsustainable. 

 

4.        Zero-Sum budgeting between “Independent” agencies: Some agencies require secrecy and/or complete separation from other government agencies in competition with them.  With all agencies overlapping on different issues with different rules and priorities, this competition for the same limited financial resources essential to achieving its own departmental priorities – is simply sustainable.  And ineffective in addressing irreversible interconnected and interdependent problems with everything being vulnerable. 

 

5.       Dangerously slow weapons procurement process when competing militarily against an autocratic or dictatorial government that can change budget priorities on a dime.  This story in the Washington Post Opinion,   March 6, 2024   “Let AI remake the whole U.S. government (oh, and save the country)”    By Josh Tyrangiel      https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/06/artificial-intelligence-state-of-the-union/  Detailed earlier the growing national security threat of competing with other governments weapons procurement process (both ally and enemy). Especially enemy’s that are non-democratic and not inhibited by oversight safety or environmental regulations.  This problem is more serious, larger, and applicable to our entire government management and funding system.

 

6.       Catastrophically slow and troublesome law making - or amending – a democratic system engineered intentionally into the US Constitution from its creation.   The intention was to keep a balance between the three legs of government and prevent fast reactionary laws demanded by majorities without sufficient vetting.   In a world of exponential and rapid change, unpredictable superpowered enemies with hyper speed weapons systems, and our own legislative machine increasingly paralyzed by polarized dysfunction, and political parties more committed to protecting its power than the security of our people or defending the constitution.

 

7. Democratic Republic with Lawmakers elected by a majority of ignorant voters with most votes based their personal gut feeling, party affiliation, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theory, special interests, self-interests, or not voting at all out of protest.  And the likelihood that only half of the voters decide to turn out at all.  Then there is the issue of each Congressional district now having over 700,000 constituents when originally there were only 20,000.  This leaves each voter with the accurate feeling that their individual vote means next to nothing.  This enables those with big money to more easily rig the rules for themselves.  Which hurts most other constituents in a zero sum budget. 

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” - H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy

"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mold itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few."   -- John Adams  (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President.   Source: An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, August 29, 1763

8.  Secrecy: This makes it virtually impossible to know the truth about what our government is doing.  Or has done with our tax dollars.  This undermines the trust of voters and the value of voting when valid signs or even accusations of corruption or waste is reported.  Secrecy also prevents citizens from holding government agencies, their leaders/policymakers accountable in a timely manner or at all, if at all.

“Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show it can bear discussion and publicity.” - Lord Acton 

“The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.” - Patrick Henry, American colonial 

Read:  America’s Secret Government Crisis, by Patrick Eddington Posted on January 20, 2022, https://original.antiwar.com/patrick_eddington/2022/01/19/americas-secret-government-crisis

“It’s important to remember that the Constitution only mentions secrecy once, and not in connection with the executive branch but Congress – Article I, Section 5. Congress was the original arbiter of what should or should not be kept from the public, and if America’s governmental secrecy sickness is to be cured, it must reclaim that leading role.” Patrick Eddington

9. Ambiguous words and phrases in the Constitution - or with the meaning or context of those words changed over time. This has led to various altered interpretations over the years. Some of the most notable examples include:

1. "General Welfare": The Preamble of the Constitution states that one of its purposes is to "promote the general Welfare." Its meaning has been the subject of debate, with some interpreting it broadly to justify a wide range of federal government activities and others interpreting it more narrowly to limit the scope of federal power.

 

2. "Commerce": The Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. The meaning of "commerce" has been the subject of numerous Supreme Court cases, with the Court often expanding the definition to encompass a wide range of economic activities.

 

3. "Necessary and Proper": The Necessary and Proper Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 18) grants Congress the power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the enumerated powers. The meaning of "necessary and proper" has been debated, with some arguing that it gives Congress broad discretion to enact laws to achieve its goals, while others argue for a more limited interpretation.

 

4. "Cruel and Unusual Punishment": The Eighth Amendment prohibits the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishments." The meaning of "cruel and unusual" has evolved over time and is often subject to interpretation based on contemporary standards of decency.

 

5. "Due Process": The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that no person shall be deprived of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The meaning of "due process" has been the subject of numerous Supreme Court cases, with the Court interpreting it to encompass both procedural and substantive rights.

 

These are just a few examples.  There are many other words and phrases in the Constitution that have been subject to interpretation and debate. 

 

SUMMARY:  You wouldn’t fly in an airplane or spacecraft engineered and constructed using with ambitious words for systems and structures it depended on to bring you back to earth safely. Why on spaceship earth (thank you Bucky Fuller!) would you believe and trust this method of engineering to work at all? 

10.         The unstoppable partisan stacking of Supreme court appointees.  This increases the loss of trust in and stability of its decisions.

CONCLUSTION:  "America does not need another political campaign based on denial and avoidance of some of our real problems. It needs a crusade to reform and renew our country, its institutions and political system." - Richard Lamm   Reform Party's nomination for President of the United States in 1996.

"I would not use the US Constitution as a template if I was creating a new constitution."    Justice Ruth Bader Ginzberg

 

 

The Declaration of Independence is the foundation of thought that uniquely represents the original American ideal.  It has inspired billions of people globally.   It represents the simple yet profound concept that government exists to ensure people’s innate freedoms and inalienable rights.  In short, securing everyone’s “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” within the context of “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.

 

“We therefore believe in liberty because we believe in the harmony of the universe, that is, in God. Proclaiming in the name of faith, formulating in the name of science, the divine laws, flexible and vital, of our dynamic moral order, we utterly reject the narrow, unwieldy, and static institutions that some men in their blindness would heedlessly introduce into this admirable mechanism.”    George B. De Huszar

 

Sadly, many Americans have difficulty distinguishing between our Constitution and the Declaration.  Abraham Lincoln made it easy.  He wrote that our “Declaration of Independence is our Apple of Gold” and our “Constitution” its “Frame of Silver”.  A biblical reference with poetic and functional meaning.

 

"If all men are created equal, that is final.   If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions."  Calvin Coolidge   (1872-1933) 30th US President.  Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.


Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Four fundamental principles (AI generated from my notes) 3 min.

 

AI generated presentation https://ai.invideo.io/watch/K8m_Q5jVe2v of the information below. 

Below are four fundamental principles (self-evident truths) that I’m convinced 

will determine the future of humanity.  Followed by a solution to our Truth decay and 

declining trust in institutions (and each other) as a first step off this escalator to accelerating

 down into chaos.

 The three most complex and complicated systems in the known universe are nature (the environment), any living Immune system, and the Human mind!  To the degree human concepts fail to protect nature and living immune systems is the degree to which our own species is endangered!

 Humanities trilemma:  We cannot have freedom, security, and independence all at the same time. Independence is an illusion.  A delusional mental concept that exists nowhere in the known universe. It only exists as a word in our minds and communications.   And it was fatally engineered into our US Constitution and humanities global governance systems.  And enforcing this delusion will cost us our freedoms, security, prosperity, and posterity if we persist in ignoring our global interdependence - and humanities universal desires for both freedom and security to survive and thrive.

“Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” Jen Easterly. CISA director.  Oct. 29, 2021. [the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency is our nation’s newest federal agency established by the Trump Administration in 2018].   “A huge gamma-ray burst erupted 2 billion years ago.  It hit Earth’s upper atmosphere last year”... “showing how even faraway events can influence Earth.”  Washington Post, Science section Nov. 21, 2023.

 "There can be no health without mental health." Rawle Andrews Jr., Esq. Executive Director American Psychiatric Association Foundation.

The best solution to our era of increasing Truth decay and loss of trust in our institutions is understanding Neil deGrasse Tyson’s assertion there are 3 types of Truth:

These can explain the growing polarization and stiff resistance to the urgent changes needed.

The 1st is our personal truth.  The God we believe in, or not.  Nearly everyone has a different personal truth.

The 2nd is our political truth.  The concepts and ideas have we’ve grown up with, learned, or heard so many times from people we trust, love, and admire, that they must be true.  Groups of people usually have conflicting political truths.

The last is objective truths.  These truths are backed by empirical evidence -acquired by direct observation, experimentation, or experience – based on real world data (observed, measured, and verified by one’s senses or scientific tools/method.

Tyson asserted when two clearly objective minds disagree …there is only possible three outcomes.  1. I’m right. You’re wrong.    2.  Your right and I’m wrong.   3.  We are both wrong.  Let’s find the answer! 

Recently he suggested if an argument lasts more than 5 minutes... both people are wrong. 😉

And I’m certain that if two groups are warring for nearly a 1000 years... both are wrong.

Thursday, January 25, 2024

Pathogens change! Can we? Letter to WPost not printed.

 

Dear Editor, (sent 24th)

Tuesday’s Health section article [Jan 23rd] “Scientists fear potent avian flu could jump to humans” should have been front page, top of the fold news.  Until AI becomes sentient pathogens will remain humanity’s greatest threat.  The evolution of the Avian H5N1 virus, now causing massive die-offs in bird populations and some mammal species, will continue.  COVID19 and HIV/AIDS are both still evolving.  Any virus can mutate into a global pandemic equal to or greater than the 1918 virus that emerged from a viral exchange in a Kansas farm killing over 50 million worldwide and 670,000 in the US when our population was one third of today’s. 

These and other biosecurity threats will only accelerate given our unprecedented scientific capacity for bioweapons development and ‘gain in function research’ accidents that will occur as we try to find preventive vaccines and treatments for bioweapons plus the viral attacks nature will throw at us as we increasingly encroach into its remote areas, pollute the world with thousands of mutinogenic chemicals and nano plastics with their yet unknow impacts, while ignoring the basic nutrition, sanitation, and health care needs of nearly a billion of the world’s poor, and millions suffering in the chaos of expanding wars. 

To the degree our species ignores the fact that nature and the immune systems of all higher life forms are the most complicated and complex systems in the known universe-  and must be protected – is the degree to which humanities capacity to survive and thrive is increasingly limited.   Add sentient AI to this mix and all we can do is pray that it eventually takes our side in this evolutionary battle.

Pathogen’s change!  Can we?

Saturday, January 20, 2024

Uvalde DOJ report and Cascading failures

 

“Thou Shalt Not” might reach the head. But it takes “Once Upon a Time” to reach the heart.” Author Philip Pullman, Reform Journal.

Yesterday the Justice Department released its report regarding the Texas Uvalde shootings and the maligned police response to the May 24, 2022, shooting at its elementary school.  They gave a list of “cascading failures” leading to this tragedy. There was simply “no urgency”.

But this tragic event is consistent with a persistent government trend in response multiple urgent needs that our elected officials ignore regardless of any comprehensive evidence that thousands if not millions of people are going to die.

The Justice Department federal accounting cataloged a sweeping array of trainings, communications, leadership, and technology problems that federal officials say, contributed to the crisis lasting far longer than necessary.

But this same list of flawed elements can be applied the response to 9-11, the invasion of Iraq. The 20 year war in Afghanistan, the climate holocaust, Covid pandemic, the extinction of species, and now the evolution of war, weaponry and Cyber threats to our economy, democracy, and personal security.    

The Justice Department’s 600-page report faulted law enforcement at every level with failing “to prioritize, saving innocent lives over their own safety and how police made costly errors in assumptions that the shooter was barricaded - or otherwise contained, or dead, even as he continued to fire shots. WFT!!!

That mistaken “mindset permeated throughout much of the incident response” as police took nearly an hour to confront the gunman rather than rushing inside the classroom to end the carnage.  It was a costly “lack of urgency” to save innocent lives.

But what about the 12,000 to 15,000 children that die each day from easily preventable, malnutrition and infectious diseases, even when there is no war, pandemic, natural disasters, or extreme weather events?  How does the federal government explain what appears to be a simple lack of caring about those innocent lives?  Because they are not American?  White?  Or they pose no real threat to our nation -- unless child survivors of this hidden holocaust and their parents start crossing our borders as potential terrorists or drug mules?

I’ll put the blame on the inherently flawed American belief/concept that we are independent of those children’s death and family suffering.  Poverty and repression related deaths that have been credited as a US national security threat for decades.  If you doubt this read the summary of the 1980 bipartisan Presidential Commission on World Hunger.  Or the intention of those who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the reason nations endorsed it after World War II.  Or the CIA study conducted after “Black Hawk Down” and the slaughter of thousands in Somalia.

Yet there remains no urgency to address the 30 wars now raging.  More than any in the last 20 years due to a flawed global governance system based on the illusion of Independence just as our US Constitution is.  

Instead, our nation has two political parties swatting at bees while standing in a pit of vipers (growing Axis of China, Russia, N. Korea, Iran or the evolution of hypersonic missiles, AI, autonomous weapons, COVID19, or the next pandemic) and a Congress setting a historic record of passing the fewer bills than any previous Congress.  

At the root of this reactionary response to these global systemic threats is our mental resistance to the reality of our irreversible global interdependence.  

"Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think." - Thomas Edison

Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.  Friedrich Nietzsche.

Perhaps our resistance to deep thinking is in our evolutionary past. Our brain required hard to get energy, so we developed an energy conservation mode of reactionary thinking and resistance to changing our minds. Thus, we cannot overcome the flawed principles of different religions, economic systems, and politic priorities - instead of looking at reality and choosing what has been offered to us for millennia - the Golden Rule. 

Collective wisdom as offered again in the Declaration of Independence first paragraph “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”  This Blogger is getting sick and tired of saying the same damn obvious thing over and over again. What is so complicated about taking care of nature and taking care of each other?  Please! Someone answer this!  Enforcing the laws of nature and nature God is essentially enforcing the golden rule.  Do we love our freedom to do anything we like regardless of the global consequences?  Are we suicidal?

The Uvalde report mentioned there was no urgency in even establishing a command center at the scene. Thus, creating confusion among Police regarding who is in charge. This same flaw is found within any independent government agencies with an outbreak of war, infectious diseases, terrorism, or emergency response.   Confusion within each city, county, state and nation government independent agencies when any ‘national security’ threat arises.  

This confusion isn’t crippling autocracies.  Perhaps that’s why Trump and other autocrats are so popular in many failing democracies.  People are looking for solutions to their worries that existing democratic governments can’t quickly, efficiently, or effectively resolve.  Our elected officials swear to protect the constitution. And voters think it will keep us safe and free. WTF!?

When will we ever learn that the exponential growth in technologies is changing everything except our linear thinking capacity and flat lined government – which is now getting worse...

Those who continue suffering from the Uvalde shooting are divided on questions of accountability of the offices, their actions, or inaction.  And the same thing happens on the national level regarding responsibility for immigration, debt, crime, homelessness, drug related deaths, and mental illness.

Please read what Thomas Payne wrote in the first few pages of his “Common Sense” pamphlet.  No one can survive and thrive alone. In groups we can... but people are not angels and thus NEED government as evil as it might be.  And he insists that the only legitimate purpose of any government is to protect the freedom and security of people.

The Justice Department Uvalde report also detailed how early Police errors were compounded by Communication failures, connected to disturbing, inaccurate, and conflicting information thus sewing, rumors, and distortion between them.

Sound familiar?  The truth matters!  And the lack of truth destroys are trust.  Between people, and people’s trust in government and other institutions we must rely on to survive and thrive.  From education to health to environmental protection to law enforcement.

The original storyline of the officer’s actions was heroic. It was offered by spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public health.  What was their priority? Covering the governors butt?

The trillion-dollar question is will we learn anything from any of this? And apply it to everything?  Literally everything.  

Not just the inevitability of more mass shootings because we fail to address the root cause.  Which is not the guns. But our sick culture of disrespect for one another even within our own country, religion, political party, and sometimes family.  And rarely respect for those around the world who suffer needlessly because we believe we’re independent of their suffering and have other priorities.  

The late response to the active shooter was in direct violation of the standard established more than 20 years ago after the mass student columbine high school.  The cost in lives of waiting can almost always be document.

In Uvalde, some officers have lost their jobs including two department of public health officials and one on site commander.  But what about the hundreds of thousands of American lives lost from COVID19, the endless global war on terrorism, or increasingly extreme weather events?  At the heart of these cascades of failure is our persistence in resisting any real change in heart or mind – to transform our flawed governing systems.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Truth or Consequences! Humanities three future stories.

 

Truth or Consequences!  Humanities three possible future stories.

1.      We keep going the direction we are heading, believing what we do now, and continue experience the harmful consequences that are now accelerating.

2.      Wait until it all collapses and rebuild...if that will even possible.

3.      Be the landlord of our minds and gravitate back to the old story we never really took seriously.

TorC was the name of a popular TV program decades ago.  It should now be humanity’s mantra for our sustainable and civilized future.  Unfortunately, partisan politicians, religious extremists, corporations prioritizing profits, and organized criminals thrive on untruths, greed, and secrecy.  If the rest of us adopted TorC we could engineer a planetary system maximizing humanities’ most cherished freedoms and desired security -- for generations to come. 

Unfortunately, truth decay rules our world today.  And this is irreversibly linked to the accelerating of a lack of trust in government, religion, and other traditional institutions that has bonded humans with our faith in government and theology.   But now our polarization of beliefs and our actions (or inaction) tied to them are literally killing us and at the same time destroying our planet’s life support infrastructure systems.   Systems found nowhere else with our current transportation infrastructure, almost impossible to build new, and the very source of most of our wealth, health, and capacity to survive as a species.

Every life form is driven to be free and secure.  To survive and thrive.  Of the hundreds of millions of species that have ever existed on earth only about 8.7 billion has survived.  And ours has been the only one with a brain that evolved with a mind for solving big problems.  Problems we have overcome for surviving in almost any environment from the bottom of our deepest oceans to the surface of the Moon.  

It’s a profound story over the last 300,000 years that we have mostly influenced with our minds capability of abstract thought, language, the ability to reason mathematically, logically, and morally.  It has only been over the last 3 – 5 thousand years we have created cities with millions of inhabitants, dozens of religions, a couple economic systems, about two hundred nations, and a growing population of over 8 billion inhabitants – most with opposable thumbs. 

The technology that our unique minds and hands have assemble to date, could take us to other planets, wipe ourselves of this one, or reduce our world’s vital life support systems to the point where billions of people will die and most of the rest will live with nearly unbearable suffering. A rich and powerful few might escape the suffering but it will be at the expense of their own souls.   

Our reality at this point in the human story is that we are free like any other life form to do what we want and desire.  But human constraints are mostly mental.  Mental concepts we or others have created in order to live in larger and larger groups.

So biologically we are all free to do, or not do, whatever our mind or body wants, if we can get the resources.  But we will never be free of the inevitable consequences.  Consequences that can be good or bad for you. And likely have an effect on others around you, around the world, or nature. 
The hard part is understanding just what those consequences will do, to whom and what. And to what degree they will do good or harm.

There is almost always short term intended consequences.  These depend primarily on the heart and the mind of each doer.  But given the laws of nature and nature’s God in this universe, there will always be unintended consequences. And our brain’s limited capacity to understand reality will never have all the knowledge and wisdom needed to understand specifically what the long-term consequences will be. Or if they will be good, bad, or a combination of both.

Our minds might not agree with this fact but “Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” Jen Easterly. CISA director.  Oct. 29, 2021. [the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency is our nation’s newest federal agency established by the Trump Administration in 2018].   

Define “everything”!  The word is precicely what it means.  Everything!   No exceptions! 

“When you believe in things that you don't understand then you suffer”  Stevie Wonder, ‘Superstition ain't the way’.    

Reading the paper or monitoring the trends in the world it should be a self-evident truth that both our current Constitution and global governance systems are NOT working.  And our own government with its self-interest foreign policies are getting further and further away from each of the seven intentions clearly stated in our Constitution’s preamble.

  1. To form a more perfect Union
  2. To establish Justice
  3. To insure domestic Tranquility
  4. To provide for the common defense
  5. To promote the general Welfare
  6. To secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
  7. and our Posterity

In 2024 most democracies, theocracies, and autocracies around the world are increasingly troubled by their inability to address growing global economic, environmental, security, religious, health, immigration, crime, and corruption problems.  And each of these costly problems are connected, interdependent, and nearly impossible to stop with even the most elaborate border control efforts.  And nearly all these problems are the result of the unintended consequences of using ‘independent’ agencies within each so called “independent” government seeking to relieve the suffering of voters in democracies or subjects in autocracies or theocracies.

And it is the competition and fear within. and between. each of these systems of government that is edging the entire world toward another catastrophic world war.  And such a war won’t be like any war we have seen before.  It will be the consequence of ignoring multiple universal truths. 

Keep in mind the first fundamental truth.  Everything in the known universe is connected, interdependent and vulnerable. Nothing is truly independent. Any legislative or dictated solution that ignores this reality is most likely reactionary and economically unsustainable because it will likely fail to effectively address root causes that are global.  And the ‘solution’ which likely end terribly. And likely cause a cascade of other disruptive consequences on everything else – because everything is connected....   

Examples:
Fentanyl and its chemical precursors are now killing almost 100,000 Americas a year.   Using Cryptocurrency, criminals are funding, selling, buying, and transporting their chemical products and its chemical variants globally.  Cryptocurrency enables criminals or violent extremists ship boatloads of money, quickly, across borders, and with near anonymity.  Given the size and availability of this toxic ‘chemical weapon’ it is nearly impossible to block any supply chain without a significant amount of government funding and a significant loss of freedom/privacy within or between nations. Having information is said to be the key to finding these killer drugs and stopping them.  This has national security implications transcending political parties when “one pill can kill” anyone.   With organized crime cartels now linking with violent extremist groups (both inside and outside the US) that do not recognize national borders and can profit greatly - by generating more chaos anywhere.   These are all consequences of the domestic demand for both illegal and even legal drugs.  With the high costs of legal medicines, crime cartels are motivated to make cheaper counterfeit pills to boost their profits. These pills (or just dusting anything edible with the toxic mix) is already killing innocent people who take prescription drugs they bought off the internet.

Each year at the US border enough Fentanyl is confiscated by border control agents to kill the entire US population.  A fentanyl volume the size of a sweet-and-low packet is enough to kill 500 people.  In congressional hearings experts say “We are only putting bandages” on this hemorrhaging of American lives.  If we treat this killer and its distributers - only as a criminal actively it will kill our communities. Border controls, domestic incarceration, or foreign restrictions will NOT end it. We must address the demand side!  And the demand is basically a mental health problem, which is linked to multiple other health problems.  The belief that wea are always supposed to feel good and be happy.  Yet our selfish individualism and seeking happiness instead of health only drives us toward entertainment. And avoiding the discomforts of nature or physical exertion.  Our praise for being independent (which we are not) is driving personal loneliness and a basic mental disconnect from real life and the natural world where our species spend hundreds of thousands of years evolving.  Our modern culture leads us to believe that we are free to do what we want and there should be no consequences.  Think smoking, over-eating, suicide, divorce rates, and addiction to social media misinformation that validates our existing beliefs that are simply not true.  We want to blame Mexico, China, ‘open borders or the drug makers and drugs themselves.  But the real enemy is our mind’s flawed beliefs that we can do what we want or feel like doing...and there will be no consequences.  

Consider that the vast majority of our domestic drug demand is linked to various elements of our sick American culture.  Our addiction to ‘feeling good’ instead of doing and being good.  And that the American way of life is normal and virtuous.   We hope and pray.  And are optimistic things will get better if we just win this next election.  Yet roughly half of us vote. And most vote party line or gut feeling, or rarely studying a policy makers priority - or the flawed system he/she/they will be part of. Then we rarely make taking care of our own physical or mental health, our neighbors’ health, or the health of our environment a priority.  We dismiss the fact that our mental health and caring attitude is the gateway to a healthy body, spirit, family, community, environment, economy, and government.   

Illegal Immigration:  There are three places to address this problem/opportunity.  At the border, within our communities when they arrive, or at the source where they are coming from.  Consider that the most fundamental freedom of any life form.  It is to move itself and kin to a better place where their chance to survive and thrive are improved.  Remember that the US population is shrinking and there are many US jobs Americans won’t do.  Our nation’s falling birthrate means our current social security system is unsustainable. What’s the consequences to our nation as people age with increasing preventable health problems?  Preventable and profoundly expensive medical problems of elder American will predictably take an even a larger share of tax dollars each year.  Our national debt is already one of our greatest unsustainable national security threats even admitted by many military leaders. Genuine conservatives such as industrialist Charles Kock appreciate a more inclusive immigration policy to keep our nation in perpetual economic health.    

The cost of building walls and staffing security check points that can easily be defeated by anyone sufficiently motivated -- will not stop the flow of migrants -- if they are sufficiently motivated.  Trying to round them up within the US would also be expensive and violate basic privacy rights of many legal Americans.  This time and money could be better spent working to improve the means of immigrants living sustainably within their own nation of origin. This is where most migrants would prefer to live.

The border threat is not a problem. It is a consequence of failed US foreign policy related to our nation’s focus on short term domestic special interests.  Plus, the failing global governance system that puts the protection of ‘national sovereignty’ above the protection of human rights and the environment. Remember that our nation’s civil war was caused by our nation choosing states’ rights over human rights.  And that was only reversed after a war that kill more Americans than all the wars we have fought in since then, combined!!!

Terrorism: The official “Global War Against Terrorism (GWOT”) has actually created more ‘terrorists’ alive today than there were before Sept. 11.  Know that ‘terrorism’ is a political tactic; A tactic can never be defeated militarily.  This fact was recognized by many national security experts within 10 years of the GWOT draining our budget and politically polarizing our nation.  These specialists finally decided “terrorism” or “terrorist” were not useful words.  And impossible to define. In fact, the most terrifying of all human experiences is the loss of a child.  And when the CIA did a comprehensive study after “Blackhawk Down” Mogadishu battle in Ethiopia, they found that the best way of predicting future nation state failures where US troops might be called in to risk their lives is a nation’s infant mortality rate.

Those tasked with addressing the threat created a far more useful phrase “Violent extremism” and started calling “counterterrorism” measures “Countering Violent Extremism (CVE)”.  The GWOT acronym was abandoned by the wise.  Shockingly most of today’s media continues using the “T” words driving the world closer to sparking a middle east fire that could burn the world down with another world war.

Humanity has two basic paths forward.  Continuing with the strategy of peace through strength – the law of force- with it’s unjust tactics and budget busting evolution of war and weaponry - leading the word quickly toward Armageddon.  Or the civilized pathway of the ‘Force of law’.  Where ‘liberty and justice for all’ becomes the global goal.  A pathway committing all people and nations to the “golden rule”.  As two Pope’s have said, “No justice, no peace!    

Only when the world is unanimous in putting the global protection of human rights and the environment - above the protection of nations (to do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want, within their own borders. Or beyond their borders if they have nuclear weapons and believe they can deter other nations from using their nukes). 
Remember that ‘Terrorism’ as rich nations see it now, is only tactic that poor nations use because they can’t afford more expensive weapons.  Know that with the future evolution of weaponry and its increasing lethality, lower cost, and global availability - there will be no end to violence in the absence of justice.  Security is an illusion!  Because everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable...and nations heavily dependent on technology are far more vulnerable than those who are not.    And the freedom to abuse anyone, in any nation, or destroying the environment will always have unintended, uncontrollable, and catastrophic consequences.

Infectious Diseases:  From Smallpox to Covid19 to HIV/AIDS - and all the new and reemerging infectious diseases that will come. Remember that we are all bathed in a sea of microbes.  Most of those exist on and inside our bodies.  They are essential to our health and survival.   Occasionally we will come into contact with a unique pathogen that our body’s immune system (which includes the trillions of microbes in and on our bodies protecting us against most others) can’t handle.   Viruses, bacteria, and fungi have always been humanity’s greatest threat.  And when we mistreat nature, our bodies, or other people, this only increases the types of dangerous pathogens we will be exposed to – including biological weapons.  Global travel and trade expose us all daily to any new bio threat.  And now, with advances in biotechnology, pathogens can be engineered to target one gene, a genetic characteristic, or an entire species.  Our only defense against these is our immune system, our personal habits, and our government policies.  Policies that can go broke economically attempting to develop counter measures in anticipation a bioweapon that could be used against us or our agricultural system.  And thus, research on a defense must be done before an attack - which means developing the specific weapon first!  Now remember the number of lab accidents just in the US around the time of Covid19. This could happen with any such “gain of function” defensive research effort.  Or we can do our best to inhibit most pathogen evolution by not exacerbating the wars, sanctions, failed democracies, or environmental disruptions that exacerbate most pathogen’s natural creation.

The greatest of all human achievements was the global eradication of Smallpox.  A disease that killed more people in the last century than all the wars, revolutions, genocides, and homicides combined during that same century. Eradicating that virus took a global vaccination effort that cost the US $32 million over a ten-year campaign ending in the 1970s.  In 1995 a GAO analysis calculated that US taxpayers saved over $17 billion with that one-time investment.   Unfortunately, we must now consider the consequences if smallpox is weaponized - with more than 20 times its normal killing capacity) if it is ever used or modified further - to target a population once the enemy’s population has received the special vaccine to protect only them. 

DEMOCRACY:  Autocrats and dictators can change things quickly. Democracies usually can’t.  And our government was considered “dysfunctional” by our own national security experts even before Donald Trump ran for President.  The current US congress now has the dismal record of passing the least amount of legislation in US history.  Time magazine and the World Economic Forum predict things will be getting worse in 2024.  And most interconnected disruptive factors growing.  Having a truly united nation would be helpful. Divided nations will falter one by one...or crumble as alliances quickly as fear and corruption continue to undermine truths - and with that - the trust needed to hold people or nations together. 

OVER-POPULATION:

It’s not the number of people consuming resources on earth.  It’s the number of people consuming them irresponsibly and wastefully.  And ignoring solutions that already exist.

 

Hunger and starvation have never been the result of too many people and not enough food.  While our global food production methods are certainly unsustainable, the fact is humanity has always had the technological and financial capacity to sustainably produce enough healthy food if there were the political will to do so.  Unfortunately, our global economic system has always resisted this because it would ‘cost too much’.  In other words, ‘profits’ are more important and valuable than infants and their parent’s lives.  The cost of this flawed simple thinking has been catastrophic to global security.  Myths about overpopulation are much cheaper and easier to sell to the public than convincing those with cognitive dissonance who would rather die than use logic and deeper thinking to change their mind. 

 

Here’s the latest advance in technology that makes feeding the world even cheaper and environmentally sustainable:   https://newatlas.com/science/coal-protein-feed/

Coal-to-protein livestock feed uses 1/1000th as much land as farming.  By Loz Blain   January 09, 2024

 

Responsibility is key.  And if one is honest and serious about reducing population growth by civil means they would be very responsible and use their freedom, time, and money to pursue solving the fundamental causes of high birthrates.  Which are:

  1. High infant mortality rates.  For some reason parents are very unhappy about their children dying prematurely from cheaply preventable causes like malnutrition and infectious disease. And these high IMRs are the greatest cause of nation state failures and a primary driver of global instability and other national security problems. (See summary of the 1980 bipartisan Presidential Commission on World Hunger and the 1996 CIA report on the #1 cause linked to nation state failures)
  2. Female illiteracy rates.  Even very literate women can be grossly misinformed about issues unless they consider the underlying causes.  Each year of female education results in postponement of childbearing by about a year.
  3. Female poverty.  Selfish single-minded men would rather spend money on booze, hookers, and ghetto blasters. Most women spend their earnings on family nutrition, education, and protection.
  4. Lack of female political power.  Women simply don’t grasp the power they have [Watch movie musical- Chi-raq.  There are things that men need besides sleep, food, and fun. And women are the majority of voters in the US and other democratic nations of the world. 
  5. Excess availability of family planning services…but insufficient health and nutrition services to protect infants and children already born - from easily preventable and affordable malnutrition and infectious diseases.  Plus simple minded people’s success in lobbying Congress to fund birth control measures resulting in funding cuts child survival services like ORT, birth charts, micronutrients, and vaccines. 
  6. Racist beliefs that those poor dark-skinned people don’t deserve the same level of wasteful development that we rich folk can foolishly afford.
  7. Ignorance of Americans believing 5-25% of the US budget goes to foreign aid…when in reality - it is less than 1%.
  8. The American illusion that our military and border walls will protect us against the global problems exacerbated by US foreign policy that empowers corruption (see Pandora papers), repressive regimes (see long list of failed states), murderous occupations (see Iraq, Afghanistan), undeclared wars (see Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan…), covert operations undermining democracies (see Chile, Iran, El Salvador, Nicaragua…), and a domestic drug policy connected to all of the above…because our government and culture fails to address the underlying causes of drug addition, depression, loneliness, gun violence, poverty, domestic violence, obesity, and ‘conspiracy theory’ creations. 
  9. In summary…Because US codifies laws that mostly ignore “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” …then law makers swear to protect a fundamentally flawed U.S. Constitution…instead of fundamental principles (those self-evident Truths that our Founding Fathers signed off on…in our Declaration of Independence…) we keep addressing the symptoms instead of the disease. We are NOT independent from the health status of people around the world.    Our “Declaration of Independence” should have been called our “Declaration of Separation from the not-so-Great Brittan.

 

But most people will keep using their mind to defend their delusional hypothesis that the world is overpopulated - while it continues to spiral into more chaos - the consequences they see and refuse to think deeply about the real unsustainable problems:   A lack of compassion, accountability, global justice, and the personal will to seek root causes instead limiting one’s thoughts to direct consequences.  

 

“2% of the people think; 3% of the people think they think; and 95% of the people would rather die than think.”  George Bernard Shaw,

 

“There are some persons who, by habit acquired in youth, or by ill guidance, or foolish desire, or perverse inclinations, are so strongly attached and bound to an error or false view that they refuse to relinquish it, and it is grievous to them to hear any notion to the contrary, and they become unpracticed in hearing the truth.”  Aristotle, Metaphysics.

“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree, and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks.
But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.” 
 Leon Festinger, When Prophecy Fails: A Social & Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World

2024 & Beyond:

Disruptive consequences are predictably ahead in 2024 with both major wars (Ukraine/Russia.  Israel/Hamas expanding in Middle East) and many of over two dozen smaller conflicts happening now.  Not to mention the continued evolution of Covid19 stains and increasing extreme weather events with the expected El-Nino factor coming this season.  Without making transformational changes in both these governing systems ASAP don’t expect much good news. 

Curing Truth decay:  The greatest challenge humanity faces.

 

“The vulnerabilty of a nation divided by the very meaning of the truth can’t be overstated.”  Kathleen Parker,  In politics, there’s liars and then there’s better liars  Washington Post op-ed, Jan. 1, 2024

 

Neil deGrasse Tyson offers a significant possibility of bringing people, religions, polarized tribes, and nations together.  He offers the classification lens of 3 types of Truth.  In reality there is only one functional truth.  And reality would be the most useful approach for engineering a sustainable world where faith in governing systems could build trust.   

Its factual that nearly everyone has a personal truth.  What God do they believe in, or not?  But nearly everyone’s personal truth is different.  Most people also have a political truth that bonds them into a political party or movement.  Truths that they’ve grown up with and heard from others they love and respect, and view these truths as a means of achieving their groups goals (prosperity, survival, and happiness?)   Last are objective truths backed by dependable empirical evidence.  Evidence acquired by direct observation, experimentation, or experiences based on real world data (observed, measured, and verified by everyone’s senses or scientific tools/methods).  If two clearly objective minds disagree – there can be only three possible outcomes.  1. I’m right. You’re wrong.   2.  Your right.  I’m wrong.   3.  We’re both wrong!  Let’s find an answer!   Later Tyson added “if an argument lasts more than 5 minutes... both people are wrong.”  Thus, it should follow that if two groups are warring for over 1000 years...both are wrong.

Objective truths do NOT come from government or a majority opinion.  Governments and majorities must adopt them.  Objective truth exists regardless of who or how many believe it.  And like a blueprint, it uses words and concepts that engineers worldwide could use to create any system or structure that has worked so far.

So, what is it that allows any mechanical human engineered system to work consistently and globally regardless of any religious, political, or economic beliefs?   It is a system constructed using precise words and phrases understood globally.  Unfortunately, people have been using words like; peace, sanctions, rights, democracy, terrorist, conservative, equality, or development – which each can having multiple meanings.  This has not worked well when engineering systems of government, religion, or economics.  Such systems are usually inherently flawed and unsustainable.  Nearly six decades ago R. Buckminster Fuller emphasized our need to use precise words if we were seriously committed “to be the architects of tomorrow.  Not its victims.”  

Intellecuals of claim “we need a new story”.   But we already have one that could work!  A simple, inspiring, and  true story based on fundamental principles instead of the ideas of one or more people with power.   This old sensible story still has the potential to maximize humanities freedoms and security for generations to come - thus avoiding most of the lethal and destructive conseqeunces we see today.   Most that are irreveraabbly linked to stories not founded on self-evident truths. 

What is so complicated about the obvious need to take care of nature and each other? This was advised in pre biblical times and reference again less than 300 years ago in the American Declaration of Independence.  The logical wisdom of abiding by “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” was simple and true.  Yet our nation’s founders agreed to a compromise and engineered a US Constitution that ignored the Golden Rule by codifyed slavery into the law of the land.  That error led to a war and a waste of over 600,000 US lives.  We’ve not lost than many lives beyond our own borders since then.  

The Declartion of Independce was and remains an appeal to humanity.  For the first time in human history It was a calling to bring forth a nation established on the universal ideal that all people are created equal and endowed at birth with certain inalianble rights.  Rights that no king, emporor, dictator, or majority vote could take away.   Abraham Lincoln wrote that the Declaration of Independence was our “Apple of Gold” and the US Constitution its “Frame of Silver” (a biblical reference).  Yet the US voters continue to elect policy makers that swear an oath to protect the Consittuion.  A systemically flawed document that is incapable of achieving any of the seven intentions in its preamble – without major amendments that are unlikely to happen without a change in American minds.  

What is urgently needed in the US is a Consitutional Convention intended to create a more perfect union globally.   Not just a collection of a majority of US states within one nation which is a plan the Heritage Foundation is now championing with an impressive list of wealthy and powerful traditionalist entities.  [Find and Insert list of supporters and weblink to their plans].  This cabal is proposing  amendments that will only strengthen the Constitution’s regressive ideas. 

What ‘we the people’ must urgently do is clearly understand and champion the words and phrases within the Declaration of Independence.  Then use these to engineer a sustainable future for all humanity and our posterity. 

Remember that even before Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration, Thomas Paine published his pamphlet “Common Sense”.   Within its first few pages he offers seven self-evident truths. 

First, beliving something for “a long time” only gives it the “appearance of being right.”   

Second, “suffering” spurs questions. 

Third, “The cause of America is...a great...cause of all mankind.”  It is “not local, but universal...principles of all Lovers of Mankind...” and should “Concern...every Man to whom Nature” has “given the Power of feeling...”.  

Forth, the “Doctrine itself” is “but the influence of reason and principle.” Philadephia, February 14, 1776. 

Fifth, no individual can survive and thrive alone. The perptuation of the human family requires cooperation of others.    

Sixth, people are not angels.  “Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness”.  And “government even in its best state is but a necessary evil”. 

Seventh, some fundamental rules are required to sustain harmony in any group/government.  With “security being the true design and end of government”...”to ensure” ... “the least expense and greatest  benfit..preferable to all others.”  And “freedom” being that greatest benefit.

Our species urgently requires a governing body that benefits most of humanity that only a dimwit would resist.   The governing body’s only purpose would be the global protection human freedoms and security via “Liberty and justice for all” -  a phrase every American has already repeatedly pledged to do before the US flag – dozens if not hundreds of times.

What is needed now is the mental matururity of our species to grasp this fundamental realty of the urgency of our era.  Then move beyond other believable but flawed stories and use our minds’ logic, our spiritual faith in justice, the golden rule, and our heart felt compassion to take care of each other and the nature that sustains us, our prosperity, and our posterity.

This old story has been confirmed by the wisest spiratual leaders of our species over the last few thousand years.  Check out the primary principlle of every major religion.  [Insert my list if needed!]  We must adopt it if we truly intend to “secure the Blessings of liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” as stated in last intention in the US Constitution’s preamble.

Until then, the best “we the people” can do is advocate for those with unprecedented wealth to invest in achieving the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals.  Indepted governments and over streched charities cannot do it.   If those in power want capitalism and profit making to be sustainable, then those with excessive economic wealth must invest in the health of people, their communities, protecting/restoring nature, and functional non-corrupt political systems.

Here's a false fishy story hopefully open minds and prioritize budgets. 

As two  young fish swim by an older fish, the elder asks “How’s the water boys?”  They answer “fine!” They swim past, then one askes the other “What’s water?”.  

Humanity (and each of our 8 billion minds with opposing thumbs and profit seeking entities) are now swimming through this modern era in an ocean of imperfect words, misinformation, untruths, hundreds of  langauges, ununited populations/nations.  With growing polarized natonal democratic alliance vs an autocractic Axis - both  with an unprecidented quantity and quality of killing capacity. 

There are now more wars and conflicts on earth than in 20 years, the hightest global temperarues, growing hunger/food insecurity, and authoritarian governments all merging into an Axis...creating the spirit numbing possilibty of humanities current trajectory toward inceasing chaos, mass species exctinctons, or even our own.

Engineering a sustainable future with least amount of bloodshed, economic, and environmental costs requires we begin communicating with words with specific meaning or appliation.  And with the intention of systaining our planet’s natural systems- in coordination with reengineering our  human infrastrucure systems and structures - to protect both nature and our immune systems.

Reading the news is depressing when everything appears as a problem.  In reality most problems are conseqeunces.  Once a mind understands the root causes of a problem there is nothing but opportuity to address it.  Missing that, there isn’t enough money or material on this planet to sustain such stupidity.

“Ignorance can be cured but stupid is forever.” - Miriam Defensor-Santiago

Our collective failure in clearly seeing that both our national and global governing systems are irreversably dysfuntional will not end well.  In the reality they can never work because they are founded on the illusion of independence in our irreversably interdepend reality.   There is a clinical medical and mental health term for a mind unable to grasp reality.  Anosognosia.  It normally applies to people with Alzheimer’s or dementia.   In this case the mind is so committed to an illlusion it’s delusional.   If someone  keeps doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result they are either crazy, addicted to their insanity, or perhaps determined to keep their government paycheck.

We are living in our delusional story that the things are independent of one another. And we are free to do what we want as people or nations and not suffer any conequncees.  This continues to be a monstrously destructive and unsustainable.   

Covid19 exposed our profound mental disconnect from everything and everybody.  The cost of that blindness in lives and treasure is still accumulating.  As of January 2024 the new subvariant JN.1 is killing over 2000 Americans a day while we continue to think the pandemic is over while it is still raging.  There are many things we can learn from it.  Like it will continue to mutate and

and at some point a more lethal varient may emerged.  Covid changes!  Can we?  Most shocking and dangerous however is our mind’s capacity to believe anything.  Literally almost anything about everything.  Even when our lives and the lives of those we love are endangered and negative conseqeunces are clearly predictable.   One antivaxer called all vaccines the “antichrist of all products”.  

More pandemics will come.  And other disrupting consquences like war, genocides, hunger, mass murder attacks by violent extremists, enviornmental losses  simply because we will keep ingoring, denying, debating, and trying to avoid the global need to address root causes.  Again, these costly conseqeunce are simply unsustainable. 

We must find a way to break down the truth decay and begin investing in modes of prevention.  Prevention is the foundation of health.  And who is opposed to healthy mind, body, spirit, family, community, nation, economomic system, environment, and global governance system.  
If we make health, instead of happiness, wealth, or power, our highest priotity we have the best chance of  sustaining human progress.  

 

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is ”There can be no health without mental health!”  Rawle Andrews Jr., Esq., Executive Director, American Psychiatric Association Foundation. 

That may be our final era and arena for curing truth decay.  And only by grasping the insanity of the flawed truths that our mind possesses.  The greatest power is our mind’s capacity for solving the vast number of unsustainable consequences we are now experiencing.   In essence our mind, thoughts, and feelings are NOT who we are. You may have a religion!  And any political ideas. But those are not your true nature or your true self.  Our mind is a tool we were blessed with for solving problems and preventing consequences.  As a personal identity it threatens our very survival.  Its true purpose must now be focused on solving the unintended consequences we have collectively created.   Our species’ health, wealth and future depend on us being the landlord of our mind.  And training it away from defending the untruths it has been addicted to that creates the harmful and too often lethal feelings that drive so much of the violence and human suffering we see today.    

As tragic and lethal consequences continue to accelerate all around us and abroad, we can no longer double down on personal and political stories and truths.  We must become connected to reality and the fundamental truth that “United We Stand” and divided – what civilization we have now is simply unsustainable.   

§  Trump is not the problem. He’s a consequence. …

§  Climate change isn’t the problem. It’s a consequence.

§  Unprecedented obesity rates, opioid deaths, mass shootings, and suicides rates are not health emergencies. They are consequences.

§  The continuing violence and expansion of war in Ukraine/Russia, the Middle East, China Sea, Haiti, Mexico, India, the rise of ISIS in Niger, the Sahel, Myanmar.... are consequences.

§  The rise of superpower tensions between the West (US, UK, EU, Australia...) and the East (China, Russia, N. Korea, Iran...) likely to spark World War III -- are a consequence.

§  Radical extremism in the US and abroad coming together with crime cartels in trafficking of people, weapons, and WMD or launching cyber hacks to undermine democracies creating more opportunity for illegal profits and extremist takeovers... are consequences.

§  Growing economic inequality, fake news, misinformation pushed by advances in AI are ultimately consequences.

§  Our US $34 trillion-dollar debt is an inevitable national security threat.  But also another obvious consequence related to the chain of other consequences.  The possible re-election of Trump or Biden as a threat to our democracy.  That is a consequence of flaws in our democracy and culture that would yield either Trump of Biden as President again!  We may experience a civil war if either is elected. Again, these would be consequences.  And we fail to understand that our most important natural resource is a well-informed public then we have lost our minds.  With most citizens consistently making judgments based on objective truths instead of fearful feelings, things can change!  We need wise souls aware of the consequences of groups with varying personal or political truths sparking political violence.  Sparked by hateful rhetoric and their fear of losing their county to the communists or to the capitalists.  We must turn this problematic era to one of transformational change of systems. 

 

Like most other problems we are creating at a breakneck pace due to our flawed beliefs, some are not inevitable.  We must stop believing everything we think!   And stop choosing the wrong thing.  This would mean overcoming our strong desires for comfort, wealth, distractions, popularity, and freedom from consequences of our actions...that will happen.  Especially if our higher priority isn’t surviving and thriving. 

Advances in technology are accelerating exponentially while our linear paced minds simply can’t keep up.  Worse yet, our government is not just flatlined.  It’s moving backward in some ways.  This will not end well.  

The illusion of Independence underlies most of our short-term thinking which undermines long-term planning - leading to slow policymaking, and mostly reactionary activities.  The climate holocaust isn’t coming. It’s already here.  And its consequences are only going to get worse as violent weather patterns exacerbate political instability in nations, forcing refugees to migrate where they won’t be welcomed.

In the view of this author the most practical action would be creating a ‘justice for all’ global governance system.  This would not be welcomed by most policymakers or main political parties because it would require legal protection for all inalienable human rights for all people and our environment.   

We need the force of money.   To flat out fund of human rights without the force of government decree. President Roosevelt offered the basics in his four freedoms speech; freedom of speech and worship, and freedom from want and … fear.”  Eleanor Roosevelt led the passage of a detailed list known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Like our nation’s Bill of Rights on steroids- but without any means of government enforcement.   Seven decades ago (December 10, 1948) this Declaration was offered in the context of world security. Those who had experienced World War II, the holocaust, and a new weapon that could vaporize 100,000 people in a second understood the essentials of ‘justice for all’ and these fundamental human rights.  But the UN’s lack of democratic power left it useless in preserving states’ rights over human rights.  This structural flaw in the UN resembles the original flaw in the US Constitution that led to our catastrophic Civil War.

Some of the UDHRs were intended as a foundation for peace.   Universal access to clean water, safe sanitation, adequate food, access to basic health services, basic education, and an equal opportunity to earn a living wage are good starters.

Fortuitously, the fastest, most affordable, practical, and effective means of maximizing this movement of ‘Liberty and Justice for all” (both here and abroad) thus laying the foundation for maximizing humanity’s freedom and security globally is the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  These have already been approved in 2015 by every nation.  Targeting 2030 for achievement.

“Today the most important thing, in my view, is to study the reasons why humankind does nothing to avert the threats about which it knows so much, and why it allows itself to be carried onward by some kind of perpetual motion.  It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions.  It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world.  Only such an understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties, and institutions with a new spirit and meaning.”  President Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic.

Here’s a video of optimism if you dare watch it  https://www.rethinkx.com/videos

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security."   -Albert Einstein.  As quoted in Quantum Reality, Beyond the New Physics, p. 250.

“The sad truth...is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.” Hannah Arendt quoted in The Bulwork.

What are you doing to ensure the funding and achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by or before the year 2030?   Connect the dots!  See the web of life!  Achieve ‘justice for all’.  Or, prepare for the catastrophic consequences.