It is 0300 hrs (3 am civilian time) and I have been staring into the void of American foreign policy. And the worst case scenario is the situation in Afghanistan. Why is this taking so long?
Good question that few have an answer for when asked.
Then I found one that tries to justify this war…..
When I first learned about the Thirty Years War in a history class in college, I was both fascinated and amazed. How in the world could a war go on for 30 years? That just seemed incomprehensible to me.
Not anymore. The U.S. war on Afghanistan has now been going on for 17 years. And if the American people follow the advice of Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, it’s a virtual certainty that the United States will easily surpass the Thirty Years War and, maybe, the Hundred Years War, which needless to say, also amazed and fascinated me when I learned about its existence.
I can just see Americans 83 years from now breaking the 100-year-war record and exclaiming in celebration, “We’re Number One! We’re Number One! KAG! KAG! Keep America Great!”
Most of us questioners see the Afghanistan situation as just another Vietnam……
Senator George Aiken is famously misquoted as recommending that the United States “declare victory and get out” as a way of ending the war in Vietnam. In practice, the United States did something very different. It bombed North Vietnam into agreeing to a peace settlement, claimed that a rushed “Vietnamization” campaign gave South Vietnam a government and military forces capable of securing the country, and then pulled United States forces out of South Vietnam.
Any summary of what happened next has to be grossly oversimplified, but even a brief summary still sounds important warnings about the current United States policies in Afghanistan. The U.S left South Vietnam with a hollow, unstable and corrupt “democratic” government in charge. It left a country with serious economic problems the moment United States military spending and high aid levels were cut, and it left a country torn apart by deep divisions between its ruling class and its Buddhist clergy.
A case could be made that the US had a right to retaliate against AQ in Afghanistan…….but why not use the most effective tactic….Bomb…..Declare a win…..Go Home?
Now the saddest part of this 17 year war is that for the most part the American public has all but forgotten this “war”…….
Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and the other neo-con wild boys who came to power with George W. Bush in 2001 all shared a vision. In their minds, they saw a cowed, conquered Iraq as the stepping stone to a wider conflict that would, in the righteous fullness of Republican time, lead to broad regional transformation and the enforced peace of empire, all of it lubricated by “liberated” Middle Eastern petroleum.
Using Iraq as a jump-off point, they would knock off regime after regime, running up the stars and stripes as they went, and then watch as peace and prosperity unfolded like a desert blossom. That cauldron of seemingly endless conflict would soon become a happy democratic paradise filled to bursting with McDonald’s customers tying the laces of their new Nike sneakers with fingers stained purple from voting. All the wild boys needed was a catalyst, a “new Pearl Harbor,” to get the ball rolling. When the Towers came down, they took their shot, and we were off to the races.
War does not make sense any longer…..with that statement I do agree…..
America spends more on its military than all its enemies put together yet it still can’t win wars. Failed adventures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have drained America’s power and diminished its prestige. The bloated Pentagon budget actually makes us weaker.
Here’s the weird bit: nobody seems to care. If any other government department spent as much and accomplished as little, the populace would be in arms, complaining about wasteful government spending. Instead we mumble “Thank you for your service” and increase defense appropriations.
30 years ago very few Americans had evn heard of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)….it was ultra secret and a bit shadowy…but recently the former head of DIA has made the news and a DIA contractor has been killed in Syria….so once again…what the Hell is the DIA?
DIA, provides military intelligence to warfighters, defense policymakers and force planners in the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, in support of U.S. military planning and operations and weapon systems acquisition. We plan, manage, and execute intelligence operations during peacetime, crisis, and war.
Our diverse workforce is skilled in military history and doctrine, economics, physics, chemistry, world history, political science, bio-sciences, and computer sciences to name a few. We travel the world, and meet and work closely with professionals from foreign countries.
To this day few people know exactly what the DIA does…it came to be a thing when Obama fired the head of the DIA, Flynn…..but functions are still in the shadowy world of intelligence.
This is a new day and a new transparency…..
…the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lt. Gen. Robert P. Ashley Jr., gave a wide-ranging interview in which he discussed the DIA’s core mission. Ashley noted that the DIA is charged with producing foundational military intelligence for consumption by warfighters and senior leaders to avoid surprise and prevent or decisively win wars.
As a DIA veteran, however, I’ve always worried that descriptions of the agency’s core mission have typically been overly broad and never been quite so clear cut. Ambiguity over the DIA’s responsibilities prompted Congress to probe more deeply into the specifics of how the agency is charged with supporting U.S. national security and defense objectives. Specifically, Section 2432 of the latest proposed Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 seeks “to prevent imbalanced priorities, insufficient or misaligned resources, and the unauthorized expansion of mission parameters” of the DIA. It further calls for “a repeatable process for evaluating the addition, transfer, or elimination of defense intelligence missions, roles, and functions, currently performed or to be performed in the future by the Defense Intelligence Agency.” Thus, a clearer explanation of what the DIA does and, more importantly, what it is supposed to be doing is in order, and I try to provide that here.
Paine is a hero to me…..I was given a copy of Common Sense by my grandfather when I was 10 years old……and later he gave me his book on the collective works of Paine……..so I was reading Paine at an early age and continue to do so today…..he is the one person on my list of famous people to have a beer with (if I ever get the chance). I am convinced that Jefferson wrote the DoI from notes given to him by Paine.
He is the original founder of the United States of America…..as a matter of fact he was the first person to use that title.
I have written several pots about Paine and his life…..
To say that Paine was a “Liberal” is an understatement as you have seen in the posts above…..so that is where I do not understand why many conservs and even Tea Party supporters use Paine as a icon or as their site name….he stood for the very things that they are always yelling about and condemning…..
Now that I have that off my chest….
The man that wrote the words that lead this nation to war with their mother nation is also a man that was later hated because of his views….confusing right?
When Thomas Paine’s ship pulled into Baltimore harbor on October 30, 1802, a large gathering of friends and admirers were waiting at dockside to welcome him back. Others stood by as well, some filled with loathing, merely to observe a famous figure. Since leaving the United States in 1787 to find a builder for his iron bridge, Paine had authored some of the most incendiary tracts of the 18th century, had been imprisoned and narrowly escaped Robespierre’s guillotine, and was widely reported to be a drunk and an atheist.
When he journeyed to Federal City on November 5 to pay his respects to the country’s third president, he found that he needed an alias and help from a presidential aide to get a room at Lovell’s, the city’s only hotel. As he later wrote a friend and future biographer, Thomas Clio Rickman,
“You can have no idea of the agitation which my arrival occasioned. From New Hampshire to Georgia (an extent of 1,500 miles), every newspaper was filled with applause or abuse.”
Paine will always be the person in history I most admire….so when I read about his treatment after the revolution just galls me….but it showed just how “one way” the American people can be.
The saga of the fate of Venezuela is on-going….I have been waiting to see the response of the Dems to the policies coming up around Trump.
So far nothing…..those wanting my vote in 2020 need to get their butts in gear and formulate a response to Trump’s war drums……so far Tulsi and Bernie are the only ones that have a voice.
As President Donald Trump’s administration backed the overthrow of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Democratic senators and representatives in Congress were largely silent.
Some influential Democrats sided with Trump and expressed support for Juan Guaido, the right-wing opposition figure who declared himself interim president of Venezuela on January 23. But only three Democrats—Representative Ro Khanna, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, and Senator Bernie Sanders—spoke out against the decision by the U.S. government to give a green light to Guaido and the opposition to oust Maduro.
Representative Julian Castro, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Senator Kamala Harris, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, all Democrats who have announced they will run for president in 2020, apparently had nothing to say about the right-wing coup attempt supported by the Trump administration.
The party that use to be a party that would buck any unnecessary wars….those were the days that are now dwindling with each new “war”…..
As the nation continued to reel from President Donald Trump’s shock decision last month to remove all U.S. troops from Syria, news came Wednesday that an unknown number of US soldiers were among at least 15 killed in a bombing in northern Syria. Amid such continued violence, one would think the president’s withdrawal would have ever more urgency. And yet, just about everyone in Washington has attacked his decision to pull out.
The reflexive hatred for Trump that dominates the national conversation is bad for the US, especially when it comes to foreign policy. This is not to say that the president isn’t a flawed figure; after all, I’ve spent the better part of two years critiquing most of his policies. Still, when the man demonstrates prudent judgment—as in his recent calls to pull US troops out of Syria and Afghanistan—he should be applauded. But that’s unlikely to happen in a divided America, as long as an interventionist, bipartisan consensus runs the show in Washington.
For years I have been writing about the “evils” of the military-industrial complex….how it controls our foreign policies….how it has a strangle hold on the members of Congress through massive donation to their election trunks……
Then I realized that I may not have given a clear definition of this situation…..yep a history lesson…..
The term “Military-Industrial Complex” was first used by Ike in his farewell speech…..
Now that you have heard the first use….let us go to the history books….
The term the”military-industrial complex” was made famous by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address. Eisenhower warned:”In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Eisenhower (or his speechwriters) did not coin the phrase, but its previous usage referred to physical connections between industrial and military production, not political relationships. Eisenhower referred to a novel set of challenges facing the American polity in the Cold War, while other definitions refer to more general relationships between the military and industry.
One use of the term MIC refers to any set of relationships between military policy and industrial production. For example, scholars have examined the MIC in the former Soviet Union and in Latin American countries. Their concern is usually with the reciprocal influence of the military and industry on each other’s policies, rather than the hijacking of foreign policy by a collective interest in maintaining military-related production.
The only good to come out of this is jobs……everything else is just making a few extremely wealthy and use to start conflicts worldwide.
This is a slightly different look at the infamous M-IC…..
Military-Industrial Complex is an unofficial phrase used to signify the “comfortable” relationship that can develop between government entities (namely defense) and defense-minded manufacturers/organizations. This union can produce obvious benefits for both sides – warplanners receiving the tools necessary for waging war (while also furthering political interests abroad) while defense companies become the recipients of lucrative multi-million or multi-billion dollar deals.
“War for profit” is not an exclusive approach for modern times as it drove the best and worst of old Europe for many decades – perhaps best exemplified by the naval arms race seen between France, Spain and Britain. The driving force behind these initiatives was generally in out-doing a potential foe and, therefore, forcing the establishment of a large standing military force to counter the moves of the potential enemy. The modern interpretation of this, as it relates to the Military-Industrial Complex, is only slightly altered in that the established military force is now utilized to further global interests – the enemy is no longer another nation per se but any organization not in line with presented ideals.
To illustrate how far the M-IC tentacles reach…..just look at the news of troop withdrawals issued by the president…..and the Dems are pretty silent even war-like in their response….
One month after President Donald Trump abruptly ordered thousands of troops to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan, only a handful of the Democratic Party’s likely 2020 presidential candidates have taken a stance on one of the most important U.S. foreign policy decisions in years.
The drawdown in Afghanistan and total withdrawal from Syria is expected to significantly alter the fight against the Islamic State militant group and potentially leave American-allied militias vulnerable as the U.S. begins to extricate its forces. The decision has also triggered backlash from the U.S. security establishment, including the resignation of top officials like former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.
The party use to be a reliable source of accountability…that has vanished.
The assault on the M-IC has gone into the land of activism…..
The MIC maintains itself through support from politicians across the right and the left enabled by policies and lack of accountability to public. Public awareness raising about the existence and harm of this system is step one. We have seen awareness raising and education turn the tide of war before, when it drastically shifted public favor against the Iraq war and propelled it to be a key voting issue in the 2008 presidential primaries. Important progress was achieved then but the wars continue and it’s time to organize for structural policy changes. Some examples include
While I was watching the Neocons go after Iran…….Venezuela appeared from behind the curtain…..
Before the US can move into violence mode they need to generate sympathy for such a move….we have done it for Iraq in 1991, Iraq in 2003, Libya, Syria, etc etc……
And now the US is got Venezuela in its sights….that is nothing new…they have been in those sights ever since the people of Venezuela elected Chavez as their leader.
Let me digress a bit…..we have this thing called the Monroe Doctrine…..a document that was released in 1823…. four basic points: (1) the United States would not interfere in the internal affairs of or the wars between European powers; (2) the United States recognized and would not interfere with existing colonies and dependencies in the Western Hemisphere; (3) the Western Hemisphere was closed to future colonization; and (4) any attempt by a European power to oppress or control any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be viewed as a hostile act against the United States.
Interesting and yet the US seems to be free to interfere any time they dislike the doings in the countries f the Western Hemisphere.
Okay digression is over……fast forward to the last couple of years….
Now that you are caught up…..after the most recent election in the country and the US has a message to the winner…..
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the US is going to ignore Nicolas Maduro’s demand for all American diplomats to leave Venezuela within 72 hours—because the US no longer considers Maduro to be the president of Venezuela. Pompeo said in a statement after Maduro’s ultimatum that the US will conduct its affairs through Juan Guaido, who declared himself to be interim president on Wednesday. Reuters reports. “The United States does not recognize the Maduro regime as the government of Venezuela,” Pompeo said. “Accordingly the United States does not consider former president Nicolas Maduro to have the legal authority to break diplomatic relations.”
Maduro, who was inaugurated for a second term Jan. 10, said the opposition leader’s claim to the presidency was part of a US plot, the New York Times reports. “I am the only president of Venezuela,” Maduro said Wednesday. “We do not want to return to the 20th century of gringo interventions and coups d’état.” The US recognized Guaido as the troubled country’s new leader Wednesday, as did Canada and numerous Latin American countries, including neighbors Colombia and Brazil.
(Is the US using our diplomats as fodder against Maduro?)
The US says that Juan Gauido is the president of Venezuela……who?
Let’s meet “el presidente”…….
(GPA) — Now that the latest term of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has started and the western powers and their proxies refuse to recognize the Bolivarian government, the imperial states are in a mad dash to find a new face for the Venezuelan opposition. Now it seems that man has been found and the race is on, with state after state anointing the 35-year-old engineer Juan Guaidó.
Guaidó, now being called the “interim President” by everyone from Jair Bolsonaro, the Organization of American States (OAS), to Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, is the current president of the Venezuelan National Assembly. However, according to the states looking for a regime change in Venezuela, Guaidó isn’t just head of the parliament but also the rightful leader of Venezuela.
Now that the US has chosen who will lead Venezuela they start with the chest thumping (a typical neocon tactic that Trump is embracing)……
It’s to the point where President Trump says “all options are on the table” against Maduro, with the immediate focus being some way to divert Venezuela’s money from oil exports to Guaido, instead of the Maduro government.
John Bolton was setting that out as a priority earlier in the week, though he conceded that officials weren’t clear yet how that would be accomplished. Citgo, Venezuela’s main foreign energy asset, is already gearing up for a fight, envisioning attempts at the company being taken over on behalf of the Guaido government, or otherwise trying to hijack their revenue stream before it gets back to Venezuela.
(antiwar.com)
Battle lines being drawn……a video is call for…..
But for real the battle lines are being drawn…..
Below is a summary of support for the rival leaders.
And to make this a neocon threat of regime change Trump has sent a Ultra warhawk as special envoy…..
Elliott Abrams, a controversial neoconservative figure who was entangled in the Iran-Contra affair, has been named as a Trump administration special envoy overseeing policy toward Venezuela, which has been rocked by a leadership crisis.
Abrams’ appointment, announced Friday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, is something of a surprise — President Donald Trump nixed his 2017 bid to be deputy secretary of State after learning that Abrams had criticized him.
What gives the US the right to decide who leads a country in South America? The Monroe Doctrine has been used many times by the US for regime change….Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Haiti, etc etc…….
The problem for the US is that other powerful country are not in the boat with the US……..Maduro still has the support of powerful countries including China, Turkey, Russia, and Iran, the AP reports. China urged the US to stay out of the crisis Thursday, saying it “opposes external intervention in Venezuela.”
All this faux bravado may be just idle words…..
Events in Venezuela shook the world on Wednesday, with many left wondering if January 23 was the beginning of the end for the government of President Nicolas Maduro and the beginning of a new chapter of U.S. interventionism.
Here are five reasons why it’s unlikely that this latest drama in the South American nation is the “endgame” that the mainstream media is hyping up.
But one cannot keep an accurate scorecard…..the players pro and con….
Below is a summary of support for the rival leaders.
MADURO
* The top brass of Venezuela’s military has shown no sign of leaving Maduro’s side. Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino reaffirmed his support in a Tweet on Wednesday, saying Venezuela’s armed forces disavowed any self-proclaimed president.
* The Supreme Court, stacked with Maduro loyalists, has remained solidly behind the socialist leader, ruling earlier this week that all actions taken by the congress – led by Guaido – are null and void.
* Russia called Maduro the country’s legitimate president and accused the United States of trying to usurp power in Venezuela, warning Washington against military intervention.
* President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey stood by Maduro, urging him to “stand tall”, Erdogan’s spokesman said.
* China voiced support for Maduro, saying it opposed outside interference in Venezuela and backed efforts to protect its independence and stability.
* State oil company PDVSA [PDVSA.UL], which accounts for most of Venezuela’s export earnings, stood by Maduro. “We have no other president” besides Maduro, said PDVSA President and Oil Minister Manuel Quevedo, a career military officer.
* A few left-leaning governments in the region, including Cuba and Bolivia, continue to back Maduro. Mexico, where leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office last year, has dropped the previous government’s opposition to Maduro and said it will follow a policy of non-intervention.
* A diehard core of “Chavistas” in Venezuela, including armed gangs in poor urban areas, remain core to late leader Hugo Chavez’s exhortation to support Maduro come what may.
(ONe point “stacking the Supreme Court with loyalists…..is that not what the parties in this country do?)
GUAIDO
* The United States recognised Guaido shortly after he proclaimed himself president, saying it would use its “economic and diplomatic power” to restore democracy in Venezuela.
* Numerous right-leaning Latin American governments, including Brazil, Colombia and Argentina, also recognised Guaido.
* The European Union’s executive called for new elections but declined to explicitly recognise Guaido as president. An EU statement urged authorities to respect his “civil rights, freedom and safety” and allow Venezuelans to freely determine their future.
* French President Emmanuel Macron saluted the courage of Venezuelans marching for freedom and called Maduro’s 2018 election victory illegal.
* A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said Maduro’s election was neither free nor fair, and expressed support for Guaido as national assembly head.
* The German government said Venezuela’s parliament had “a special role” to play in securing Venezuela’s “free future”.
* There are some signs that support for the opposition is expanding beyond its traditional middle- and upper-class areas. Several protests against Maduro have broken out in working-class neighbourhoods and slums this week.
* Some low-ranking military officers have expressed discontent with the government. The government on Monday said it suppressed a military revolt after a group of officers stole weapons, kidnapped officers, and demanded Maduro’s removal.
Watch This Story! It will get worse before it gets better.
Before I begin…this is the look I get when I tell MoMo that she has to wait to go outside…..
IT is a lazy Sunday and I have even more AI stories for your mental consumption…..
AI is predicting that we have a “missing link” in our evolutionary trip….society has been conned for years of a “missing link”….could there actually be sucha creature?
Using artificial intelligence, a number of European evolutionary biologists now believe that humans have an ancient ancestor whose identity is unknown to modern science. The ancestor, based out of Asia, would have been a hybrid of Neanderthals and Denisovans, a subspecies of archaic humans.
The Denisovans are less well-known than the famous Neanderthals, but the two were separate groups who split off from their common ancestor around 744,000 years ago. While Neanderthals settled in Europe and parts of western Asia, Denisovan remains have been found in central Asia and Siberia—their name comes from the Denisova Cave in the Siberian Altai Mountains, where a Denisovan bone was first discovered in 2008.
The groups were genetically independent from each other. They also likely both cross-bred with modern humans. But when researching the demographics of species nearly 800,000 years ago, scientists have struggled with their complexity. That’s where A.I. comes in.
More on the possibility of that long sought “missing link”……
Two early humans found in Africa 10 years ago appear to represent a “missing link” with our ape-like ancestors, CNN reports. A new study broke ground this week by saying the two-million-year-old partial skeletons are from a new species called Australopithecus sediba that walked upright but spent time in trees—a transition between the ape-like genus Australopithecus and the genus Homo that apparently began using tools. Seems Australopithecus sediba had hands and feet that were good for both climbing trees and grasping tools. “This larger picture sheds light on the lifeways of A. sediba and also on a major transition in hominin evolution,” says lead researcher Scott Williams of New York University.
In nine papers in PaleoAnthropology, leading anthropologists analyze various parts of the fossils and refute critics who either doubted the new species existed or said the skeletons were of two different species, per Phys.org. They also recall the fossils’ incredible 2008 discovery by a nine-year-old who was walking his dog in South Africa when he tripped over a rock. “Imagine for a moment that Matthew stumbled over the rock and continued following his dog without noticing the fossil,” they write. “If those events had occurred instead, our science would not know about Au. sediba, but those fossils would still be there, still encased in calcified clastic sediments, still waiting to be discovered.” The authors call it a reminder that “there is still so much to discover about our evolutionary past.”
Some people say the ‘missing links’ have been elected and are now in control of the country….interesting thought.
Sunday is done….time for some snacks of fruit nuts and a beer….enjoy your day…..
It is Sunday and I hope the weather holds up and I can return to the garden and contemplate the universe with my eyes closed……
I am a fan of the silliness that is given to me by those “Ancient Alien” folks…..as a historian I just get amazed how they twist history to fit some crazy theories….like aliens came to Mesopotamia in the early days of civilization to mine gold….the closest gold would be in Sudan…a point they overlook to make their point.
Remember the old tale that the earth was flat and it took Columbus to prove it was not…remember that fairy tale?
I do not know if you, my readers, realize that there are still those residents of the Blue Marble that still believe the old line about the earth being flat….no really!
Read what happens during an eclipse according to Flat Earthers…..(a fun read)…..
The Flat Earth hypothesis is one of the wackiest conspiracy theories out there, but seeing flat-Earthers come up with nonsense explanations is such Olympic-level mental gymnastics that you can’t help being entertained by their work. My favorite lately has to be their explanation of lunar eclipses.
In the real world of facts, lunar eclipses are caused by the Moon passing through the shadow cast by the Earth. During totality, the Moon becomes reddish in color due to the light from the Sun filtering through the atmosphere before reaching the Moon.
Obviously, this wouldn’t work in the fantasy land that is Flat Earth. The Sun and the Moon float above the pizza-thin planet so there is no possibility that eclipses could be caused by the alignment of Earth, the Sun, and the Moon. The cause of the eclipse is (cue dramatic music and flickering candles): the Shadow Object!
I thought you would enjoy something different this Sunday….thanx for stopping by and leave your comments…it is always a pleasure to hear from my readers.
It is the weekend and I will attempt to be FYI today.
Us old farts have to keep a close eye on our BP (Blood Pressure) and most of us have a monitor at home so that we can make regular observations….and I would like to say here that ***I am NOT a medical person and that the information I give you should be checked with your medical professional.***
There are some things we must do when checking the BP or we will get a wrong reading (that could lead to minor panic)…..
Having a full bladder – This can add 10-15 points to your reading. You should always empty your bladder before measuring blood pressure.
Slouching, unsupported back/feet – Poor support when sitting can increase your reading by 6-10points. Make sure you’re in a chair with your back supported and feet flat on the floor or a footstool.
Unsupported arm – If your arm is hanging by your side or you have to hold it up during a reading, you may see numbers up to 10 points higher than they should be.
You should position your arm on a chair or counter so that the measurement cuff is level with your heart.
Sitting with crossed legs – While polite, it could increase a blood pressure reading 2-8 points. It’s best to uncross your legs as well as ensure your feet are supported.
Talking – Answering questions, talking on the phone, etc. can add 10 points. Stay still and silent to ensure an accurate measurement.
Normal blood pressure is typically less than 120 for systolic (the number when your heart is contracting) and less than 80 for diastolic (when your heart is relaxed).
I hope this will be helpful….
My day is going to be iffy…..rain predicted and much cooler temps….so my snacks and wine will be had indoors….MoMo has decided that bed is the best place to be since she has taken a liking to my favorite blanket…..and I let her have it…..she plays me badly…tee hee
Saturday cooler temps and a MoMo that is ready to go outside and chase something…matter not what….
Many people have been showing how AI will effect our society in the future……the one that most concerns me is the loss of jobs….
To begin with the prediction that half of all jobs will to lost in the future….
Almost half of all current jobs will become obsolete in just 15 years, according to one of China’s leading experts in artificial intelligence (AI).
Kai-Fu Lee, a writer, venture capitalist and technology executive who has over 30 years’ experience in AI, claims the world of employment is facing a crisis. He’ll appear on CBS 60 Minutes on Sunday to spread the word and warn those most at risk so they can start retraining for the new world. Lee also warns that education will need to adapt to prepare younger generations for the new landscape.
AI may be the future, but it can’t do everything, claims Lee, who says certain professions are safe from the revolution. Especially those that involve empathy or human to human interaction like therapists, nurses, teachers or doctors. Innovative and creative professions are also safe because AI generally struggles to do the work of scientists or to deal with the unknown.
That is worldwide…but what will the predicted impact of AI will have on US jobs?
Robots aren’t replacing everyone, but a quarter of U.S. jobs will be severely disrupted as artificial intelligence accelerates the automation of existing work, according to a new Brookings Institution report.
The report, published Thursday, says roughly 36 million Americans hold jobs with “high exposure” to automation — meaning at least 70 percent of their tasks could soon be performed by machines using current technology. Among those most likely to be affected are cooks, waiters and others in food services; short-haul truck drivers; and clerical office workers.
“That population is going to need to upskill, reskill or change jobs fast,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings and lead author of the report.
Muro said the timeline for the changes could be “a few years or it could be two decades.” But it’s likely that automation will happen more swiftly during the next economic downturn. Businesses are typically eager to implement cost-cutting technology as they lay off workers.
