Today (10-25-18) I attended a presentation at the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction at Ft. McNair in DC. After undergoing a rigorous two week long security clearance procedure just to get on the military base where the Center is housed and none of the information given was classified.
The presentation was excellent in packaging a lot of information into the topic “Social Media and National Security” I learned nothing new. And none of it was encouraging.
Here’s s brief summary of what I knew going in and what was greatly reinforced during the talk. (surprisingly the expert and clearly knowledgeable key speaker never mentioned the influence and evolution of AI or Deep fakes).
Trust is the foundation of any working relationship. National security, government, and human security requires many.
Unfortunately Americans and other populations are learning rapidly not to trust government, if they ever did. Many Americans have also been rapidly losing trust in the media, science and even religion.
Distrust in government was their to begin with. Even before Trump was elected social media (Face-book, Instagram, Twitter…) has been amplifying distrust exponentially.
With our minds capable of believing ANYTHING, there was no optimism offered that things are going to get better anytime soon.
With the evolution of Cyber capacity merging with AI and creating “deep fakes” we can only anticipate trust in anything we see, hear or read probably being destroyed. And in the not too distant future the last shred of trust we have in any thing humans make, especially government, will be gone. What then?
Thursday, October 25, 2018
Saturday, October 13, 2018
Global Catastrophic Risks 2018
Global Catastrophic Risks 2018 https://globalchallenges.org/en/our-work/annual-report/annual-report-2018
Highly worth reading! Nothing short of a comprehensive effort to fund and achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals ASAP will allow us to address any one of the multiple threats bearing down on us.
Time is not on our side. Neither is nature. And nature always gets the last vote.
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Kavanaugh's Comeuppance.
A key word used by left leaning women and democratic policy
makers in the Kavanaugh chaos that we just witnessed is ‘survivor’. An intelligent, upper-class, American white
woman who was significantly traumatized sexually and violently 30 years ago as
a teenager is called a “survivor” and sees herself as such. And thousand, perhaps hundreds of thousands
of other women with a wide range of similar experiences see themselves as the same. Survivors.
No doubt, too many graves are filled with women who didn’t
survive such heinous assaults. My
mother was almost one of them. She endured multiple beatings and death threats
from my father for nearly 20 years. He
threatened to kill her if she ever left him. Luckily, he left her, and she died a free and
happy women. But before that, no matter
what he said or did to her, she never acted like a victim. Perhaps it was her tough upbringing with ten
brothers on a farm in Colorado or her Catholic faith that strengthened her
will…but she never expressed herself as a victim or a survivor.
Survivor is a lose word like love or terrorism. It has multiple meanings to different people within
different circumstances. Too often in
our world of social and political conversation a word’s user has a different
definition than those who hear it. And,
any proposed solution using such flexible words will likely be opposed. In such a flawed communication environment it
should be self-evident that virtually nothing will change, and conditions will
only fester. Sound familiar?
I don’t think it is an extremist statement that the
increasingly chaotic world we live in today is a direct result of good people’s
honest efforts attempting to resolve serious problems by using flawed words.
Imagine this. Would
you fly in an airplane designed by mechanical and electrical engineers who used
words that could have different meanings between them and even those responsible
for building the plane? Would you allow
a group of neurosurgeons to remove your brain tumor if the words they used
could be interpreted in various ways by every other doctor, nurse, and
equipment monitoring technician in the operating room?
How can we expect our government to work safely and effectively
when words and phrases like ‘justice’, ‘independence’, ‘health care’, ‘national
sovereignty’, or ‘rule of law’ can mean anything we want, or nothing real at
all?
My next assertions will not make me many friends but in the
context of the Kavanaugh appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court I cannot refrain
from expressing my own views and word definitions that were frequently used in
this mental national scarring event and actual outcome.
Anyone who has been
sexually assaulted against their will are only victims in the legal sense. They need not be permanently scared by the
experience. As Turia Pitt said “We are not defined by
what happens to us, but by how we choose to respond.”
I don’t believe women like Ms. Ford should use the word
‘survivor’ as a bonding agent to frame the crimes that have been committed
against them. It diminishes the word,
themselves, and the very argument they need to make and sustain.
Below are just three examples of conditions that created real
survivors…not imagined survivors.
I was disgusted by the Kavanaugh hearing before it even
evolved into a ‘he said, she said’
contest where the ‘he’ was clearly caught telling lies. This confirmation process was important but
not deserving of all of the public and political attention it sucked away from
real catastrophic consequences that were taking the innocent lives of tens of
thousands men, women and children – as well as ignoring global chaotic conditions
(war, terrorism, global warming, preventable diseases, poverty…) that could
lead to the loss of millions more.
The “#me-too’ movement is justified and needed but it is
insufficient unless all of us, especially males, use our citizenship and
testosterone for defending the rights of all people (girls and women especially).
If our police and legal system is
unable or unwilling to take accusations of sexual violence seriously there is
nothing that could stop a “#We-help’ movement of males willing to listen to
complaints and step into dangerous conditions to ensure the safety and security
of all people regardless of their age or sexual identity.
Most important however is putting the protection of all
human rights, everywhere on earth, more important than the protection of
national sovereignty. Inalienable Human
rights are clearly defined in our Declaration of Independence and within the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (it’s 70th anniversary is on
Dec. 10, 2018). National sovereignty is
a 400-year-old concept that puts the freedom of every government to do as it
pleases, to whomever it wants, whenever it wants…especially if it has nuclear
weapons.
Few people survive the drone attacks that our nation
justifies without due process – all in defense of our national sovereignty. These lethal assaults only fuel the creation
of more people who hate us and are willing to die trying to kill us, fueling an
endless war we cannot win. The evolution of war and terrorism combined
with the profound evolution of weaponry ensures that in the long run there will
be few survivors on either side. And
even fewer governments capable of offering any real defense or the ‘rule of
law’ which our nation has always given lip service too but never followed.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy who Mr. Kavanaugh is
now replacing, once gave a definition of the ‘rule of law’ that should resonate
with any true red-blooded patriotic American who has pledged to our flag ‘liberty
and justice for all”. Nearly 20 years
ago on C-span he was sharing his experience on the bench and at the end of his
talk someone asked “What makes the Rule of Law effective”? He said he believed ‘it required “three essential” elements’. “First” the “laws need to be made and
enforced by a democratic process”.
People want to participate in the rules they live by. But, he insisted, that was “not enough!” “Second”, he said “the laws” must be
“applied equally to everyone”. But even
that wasn’t enough. Last he said “the
laws must be protective of a certain set of inalienable rights”. Rights that we have just because we are
born. Not because of where we were born,
or the skin, wealth, religion, or ethnic group we were born into.
This is what makes America Great. This profound idea of liberty and justice for
all. We should all be demanding that our
Constitution codify this “Self-Evident” truth expressed in our Deceleration
of Independence. Even
Abraham Lincoln agreed. He once wrote,
the Declaration is our “Apple of Gold” our Constitution is the “Frame of
silver” around it. It is the picture
that brings us honor and peace…not the frame.
Our nation has provided us with unprecedented comforts. Comforts that have spoiled us and made us
soft. To many hold unexamined expectations
that we should be pain free and any indignation or slight against us should be
harshly punished. These expectations
are literally killing us, the love of life inside of us, and a sense of shared
values among us.
Unprecedented opioid overdoses, suicides, mass shootings, and
preventable chronic diseases are evidence of a profound sickness within our
culture of excessive freedom (selfishness) without responsibility, independence
(individualism) without a sense of community, and tribalism (religious and
political beliefs) without humanity.
In fact, we are all entirely interdependent. Everyone on
this planet breaths the same air, will be ravaged by the same pandemic, war,
global warming, or economic collapse.
I am sickened that our once prestigious Senate confirmed
Kavanaugh. Many of us will never have
the certainty that Ms. Ford has that he was the one who assaulted her. And she may have feared for her life…which often
happens more as a result of our imagination than an actual existential threat.
But, until we find and agree on the meaning of certain words
that can solve real problems -- instead of using words to gain partisan
advantage -- our nation’s downward spiral into chaos will not end. United we stand. Flawed words will only divide us. If ‘we the people’ are to form a more perfect
union, we must use words that build bridges between political parties instead
of spewing words that inflame them.
Victims of sexual assault should be heard and have their day
in a court that can be trusted to be just.
Engraved in stone over the entrance to our Supreme Court are the wise
words “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.” About 16 months ago (6-3-17) Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said “I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to
know the value of justice.”
We must all value justice more than victimization. I hope Justice Kavanaugh does and remembers
we are not defined by things that happen to us, but how we respond. Right
now more than half of all Americans and I’m guessing most of the world will
forever remember how he responded to the assault of just or unjust words, on
him.
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