Month: December 2019

Robo-Soldiers

Another Sunday and another day in the sun with Sue and MoMo….the problem there is it is cloudy and rain likely.

We all remember the movie and failed series, Robocop, right?

Well the idea of a cyborg is getting more and more traction….but it is not a cop but soldiers for our battlefields.

The reality of real cyborg soldiers on the battlefield is closer than you think.

A new Pentagon report, “Cyborg Soldier 2050: Human/Machine Fusion and the Implications for the Future of the DoD,” goes into detail about four cyborg technologies that are “technically feasible by 2050 or earlier” — including eye enhancements for situational awareness, programmed muscle control, auditory enhancement, and “direct neural enhancement of the human brain for two-way data transfer.”

You read that right — the DoD wants to connect your brain to machines.

Carried out from September 2018 to August 2019, the study was conducted by a DoD Biotechnologies for Health and Human Performance Council group and released on Monday by the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center.

https://taskandpurpose.com/army-cyborg-soldier-2050-study

What could possibly go wrong?

The U.S. military has ambitious plans to turn its soldiers into high-tech cyborg warriors by making them stronger, enhancing their senses, and wiring their brains to computers.

Pentagon brass thinks these cyborgs will make their way to the battlefield by 2050, Army Times reports. The Department of Defense just declassified a report from October that details its plans for “human/machine fusion,” revealing its bizarre plan to bring to life military tech that’s always been safely quarantined within the realm of science fiction.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/us-military-augmented-human-beings

The more I read the more I see the problems that could arise…..but will it be enough?

“In the next 30 years, you’re going to need to have to deal with these legal and ethical quandaries, and you’re not ready for it,” Peter Emanuel, an Army researcher and the lead author of a year-long DoD study, said.

In recent years, the medical community has made great strides in prosthetics and implants as technology has created new possibilities.

The US military envisions a future where in the next few decades, soldiers could become enhanced through ocular, auditory, muscular, and even neural augmentations, such as retinal overlays or neural implants that fuse man and machine in unprecedented ways.

https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-worries-the-military-about-future-cyborg-super-soldiers-2019-12

All this is just scary….plus could make war more and more likely of never ending…..if the losses are minimum and the profits keep rolling……why stop a good thing?

Is this what is truly needed?

Thoughts?

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

This Is How Lies Get Their Start

We have had a couple of years of accusations of “fake news” from one side or the other……and then I read an article that illustrates just how these goddamn lies get started…..

Just this year a new fad has begun with fast food outlets…those plant based burgers…..but there is a side effect…..

Ever hear the term “Man Boobs”?

Amid the growing popularity of the Impossible Burger, Beyond Meat products, and other plant-based meat alternatives, the meat industry has declared war.

Despite coming out with their own competing alternative and plant-based products, various meat industry-backed efforts have claimed that the vegetarian-friendly foods are harmful and “ultra-processed.” They’ve also compared them to dog food.

Now, there’s a new claim: that they’ll make men grow breasts.

As first noted by The Washington Post, an article labeled as “news” in the trade publication Tri-State Livestock News claims that eating Burger King’s Impossible Whopper—a new faux-beef menu item—could cause men to grow breasts.

Author James Stangle, a doctor of veterinary medicine in South Dakota, orders up some sizzling math, hold the evidence. He writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/plant-based-burgers-will-make-men-grow-boobs-livestock-news-reports/

There is nothing about this claim that is real….but if it is stated time and time again…..then soon it will become believed….

(I want to see how many actually read the article)

As I stated before……this is how LIES get started!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Jane Digby

My weekend begins and I am like everyone else…..trying to recover from the Christmas break….

For those that may have missed th first in this series……https://lobotero.com/2019/12/21/gertrude-bell-2/

Jane Digby….not to be confused with Elanor Rigby of Beatles fame.

This is Woman #2 of my series of the women that helped mold the Modern Middle East…..for good of bad….they made a difference.  Digby is the less known and even less written about of these women of the Middle East.

When Jane Digby was born in 1807, child of privileged English aristocracy, nobody could have predicted the course her life would take. She was the daughter of Captain Henry Digby, a sailor from a line of sailors who had fought against the Americans in the West Indies and against Napoleon at Trafalgar. He would go on to become, like his father before him, an Admiral. Jane’s mother was also named Jane, and she was the eldest daughter of Thomas Coke, a politician and landowner who would become the Earl of Leicester. Thomas only had daughters, and he was rich enough to allow them to marry for love if they wished. He himself was a widower at the time, though he remarried at the age of 68 to a woman fifty years younger. Henry Digby was actually Jane Coke’s second husband, her first having died in an accident, and they married the year before Jane was born. She was Thomas’ first granddaughter, and the apple of his eye. Between Thomas’ indulgence and the money that Henry had made through capturing Spanish ships as a privateer, Jane grew up wanting for nothing.

Jane Digby, English Adventuress

As usual to help those that cannot spend the time to read the information I post a short video on the the subject……

In early June 1853, the English adventuress Jane Digby left the city of Damascus to set out on what she later called ”the greatest adventure, probably, of all my journeys.” She wore an aba, or cloak, over a djellaba, and a square white kaffiyeh, or scarf, folded into a triangle and fixed on her head with strands of colored silk. On her feet, she wore lemon yellow kid ankle boots with pointed toes. Her guide, Medjuel el Mezrab, a Bedouin sheik, wore what he usually wore, which is to say, a scarlet cloak over a striped djellaba, a bright silk kaffiyeh and red leather boots with upturned toes. He had tied several silk scarves in a wide sash around his waist, which served as a holster for his knives and pistols, and around his neck hung a sword on a silk cord. He wore his final accessory, a hooded hawk, on his wrist.

Not as well known as Gertrude Bell but still just as important to the history of the Middle East.

Class Dismissed!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–27Dec19

It has been a busy week but now it is at an end…..I hope everyone had a good Christmas….lots of fun, family and food……

Speaking of food….the New Year brings about all sorts of  “resolutions”….one of the the more popular are those that deal with our diet…..so this ism a good story to end one year and wait for the new….

The idea of intermittent fasting is gaining popularity, and newly published research will please advocates. A review of existing studies in the New England Journal of Medicine finds evidence that fasting can lead to a range of health benefits, from decreased stress to lower blood pressure to improved cognition and blood sugar regulation, reports CNN and USA Today. Lead author Mark Mattson, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins, explains that intermittent fasting generally applies to two different methods: eating only during a six- or eight-hour window each day, or the 5:2 approach, referring to five days of regular eating interspersed with two days of limited calories, usually 500 max. One of the studies cited in the review notes that three men with type 2 diabetes were able to stop taking insulin after dropping weight thanks to fasting.

“We are at a transition point where we could soon consider adding information about intermittent fasting to medical school curricula alongside standard advice about healthy diets and exercise,” says Mattson in a news release. The big caveat: Successfully following such a diet is much easier said than done in a society with a strong three-meals-a-day culture. And USA Today talks to a doctor not involved in the study who cautions that it’s not for everyone. For example, older patients who fast might wind up with hypoglycemia, which can cause falls. Mattson’s study maintains that our forebears fasted out of necessity in times of food scarcity. He suggests our modern bodies can benefit from reverting to the practice thanks to “metabolic switching,” in which our cells begin converting fat into energy in a slower process

Just something to think about as we approach that time when we make idle gestures that make yourselves feel better about our lives…..

Enjoy your weekend……

Be well, be safe

“lego ergo scribo”

Where Have All The ____ Gone?

As a young man just returned from service in Vietnam I found myself protesting for an end to that war and all wars.

For me war is an obscene show of force….”mine is bigger than yours” sort of thing. There is nothing romantic or heroic about the destruction of life and limb.

After several trips to the local jail for defying a police order and the life caught up with me and I became a father and had tom get a “real job” and slowly my activism got less important but the feelings about war stayed with me and I wrote about them whenever I got the chance.

Somewhere in the absence from the movement and it died….and now all our wars, endless, senseless wars, go on and on unchallenged…..a sad thing indeed for the US had a proud history of pacifism and protests…..

Resistance to war is as old as war itself. The first recorded instance was a Christian, Maximilian, who was executed in the 3rd century AD for refusing to join the Roman army. There have been many other individuals who have refused to serve in war throughout history. But for the beginnings of a coherent peace movement, rather than individual resistance, we have to look to the 19th century.

In America, the first pamphlets calling for an organised anti-war movement were distributed in 1814, and the first meeting of the New York Peace Society followed a year afterwards. Soon there were chapters all over America, and similar societies in Europe too. The American Peace Society was officially founded in 1828.

During World War I, a large number of men resisted conscription on the grounds of conscientious objection to war. Some were made to pay fines, and many others were sent to prison. The No-Conscription Fellowship was formed in 1914, and grew into a substantial movement once conscription was introduced in 1916. Some of these objectors went on to found War Resisters’ International in the aftermath of the war. The War Resisters’ League, its American branch, was set up a couple of years later in 1923, and both groups are still actively campaigning today.

It wasn’t until the Vietnam War, however, that the anti-war movement began to really take hold in the public imagination. Opposition to the war became less individual and, inspired by the Civil Rights movement, took the form of widespread, large-scale demonstrations attended by people from all walks of life. Starting with small demonstrations on university campuses around the United States in 1964 the movement grew quickly, with several marches of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the USA and in Europe over the following years. In 1969, the November 15th Moratorium March in Washington, D.C. was attended by over half a million people.

http://www.ushistory.org/us/55d.asp

So I asked….what happened to the antiwar movement?

Years ago, most Americans decided that the war in Iraq was not worth fighting. That judgment helped elect Barack Obama president in 2008. Last year, for the first time, a majority of those polled said it had been a mistake to send forces into Afghanistan as well. Support for both wars has been steadily declining since Obama first took office.

So why, given the unpopularity of American involvement, is there not and has there never been a sizable movement to demand that the U.S. military withdraw from either nation? This absence is an extraordinary phenomenon: two of the longest wars in American history entirely lack the kind of organized, sustained opposition that emerged during nearly every other major armed conflict the United States has fought over the past two centuries.

Why Is There No Antiwar Movement?

There are other theories and articles to why there is no substantial antiwar movement anymore in this country…

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/where-has-the-antiwar-mov_b_815073

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/peace-pass%C3%A9-why-pacifist-movement-died-90321

We need a strong antiwar movement to keep the power brokers honest (as honest as they can ever be)…..we have had enough wars and far way too long…..

Just a musical interlude after a somber post…..

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

The Ghost Of Henry Cabot Lodge

Who?

US foreign policy nerds know the name…..a GOP senator from Massachusetts….over 100 years ago……but that is not the topic here regardless the title.

This is actually about the days after WW1 when Wilson offered up his 14 points to include the League of Nations…..

Summary of the Fourteen Points

  1. No more secret agreements between countries. Diplomacy shall be open to the world.
  2. International seas shall be free to navigate during peace and war.
  3. There shall be free trade between the countries who accept the peace.
  4. There shall be a worldwide reduction in weapons and armies by all countries.
  5. Colonial claims over land and regions will be fair.
  6. Russia will be allowed to determine its own form of government. All German troops will leave Russian soil.
  7. German troops will evacuate Belgium and Belgium will be an independent country.
  8. France will regain all territory including the disputed land of Alsace-Lorraine.
  9. The borders of Italy will be established such that all Italians will be within the country of Italy.
  10. Austria-Hungary will be allowed to continue to be an independent country.
  11. The Central Powers will evacuate Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania leaving them as independent countries.
  12. The Turkish people of the Ottoman Empire will have their own country. Other nationalities under the Ottoman rule will also have security.
  13. Poland shall be an independent country.
  14. A League of Nations will be formed that protects the independence of all countries no matter how big or small.

This is where Lodge enters the picture…..Republican Congressman from MassachusettsHenry Cabot Lodge led a battle against the treaty. Lodge believed both the treaty and the League undercut U.S. autonomy in international matters.

The idea of a League of Nations that could head off any chances of another world war…..Congress did not ratify the treaty, and the United States refused to take part in the League of Nations.

All that background leads to the guts of the post…..

The world that Pres. Wilson envisioned is coming to a close…..

Liberal internationalists insist that American engagement abroad be on liberal or Wilsonian terms. But the Wilsonian internationalist vision, especially in its post–Cold War iteration, contains some very serious flaws that helped lead to Donald Trump’s election in the first place.

The first U.S. liberal internationalist wave developed during and immediately after World War !. Woodrow Wilson’s vision was that U.S. entry into war against the Kaiser’s Germany would usher in a new world order characterized by global democratic government, economic interdependence, mutual disarmament, and collective security. This last feature, in particular, was to be secured through a new League of Nations, in which every member state would promise to protect the independence of every other state by force if necessary.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/end-wilsonian-century-78426

I guess I can be said to hold Wilsonian beliefs in international relations…..Americans have generally seen the principles and objectives proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson during the First World War as having continued relevance for United States foreign policy. However, they have often differed over their application to specific situations, particularly because there is likely to be a tension between a drive to establish democratic values across the globe and commitment to a universal system of collective security. Rather than seeking a pure, abstract definition of ‘Wilsonianism’, it is more illuminating to examine its origins and evolution in relation to the development of American foreign policy over the years. Tracing this historical process reveals that Wilson committed himself to a postwar league of nations during the period of American neutrality, but it was only as the United States became a belligerent that the spread of democratic government became a policy objective, and then only in a partial and qualified way. A similar pattern has been discernible in subsequent decades. It has been during conflicts, or the run-up to them, that the more ideological and revisionist aspects of Wilsonian principles have come to the fore, whereas it has been in the aftermath of conflicts that there has been the greatest interest in the potentialities of a universal collective security organization. There has also been a broad shift of emphasis over time. As confidence in America’s power position has grown, the core of Wilson’s legacy has more often come to be seen as the promotion of democracy rather than the strengthening of international institutions. The persistence of both themes may be seen as reflecting basic and enduring elements of the policy-making context—on the one hand, the interests of the United States as a status quo power, and on the other, the demands of domestic American opinion.

I still firmly believe that world problems can be solved with diplomacy and mediation……wars should be the last resort not the first thought.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Wrote, You know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Blame Privatization

It is absolutely NO mistake about it…I think the idea of privatization is and was a colossus brain fart.

In case anyone doubts my words of condemnation of the idea of privatization…..

https://lobotero.com/2016/06/22/the-history-of-privatization/

https://lobotero.com/2019/06/17/privatization-sucks/

Now that I have filled in a few blanks…..a little personal history…..

in 2005 after Katrina I fell off a ladder a broke my right leg in 4 places—two surgeries and 13 screws and I had my leg back….not mas good as it was but I could walk with a limp…..I was prescribed 2 opioids to help with the pain…morphine and oxycodone…..so I have an interest in the whole opioid abuse thingy that the president and the country is so involved in these days.

Let me say here….Blame Privatization!

The opioid abuse epidemic is one of the worst public-health crises in American history. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 1999 and 2017, almost 400,000 people died in the U.S. from an overdose of either prescription or illicit opioids. In 2017 alone, opioids, more than one-third involving prescriptions, killed more than 47,000 individuals. And today, on average 130 people die each day from opioid overdoses.

The root cause of most cases of opioid addiction, particularly prescription-initiated addiction, is pain, a devastating but sometimes overlooked symptom. As a recent American Industrial Hygiene Association paper argues, “the opioid crisis should be seen primarily as a pain crisis, much of which is related to work.” Addressing that crisis precipitated another: treatment regimes that relied heavily on opioids. Today there’s little awareness that almost two decades ago, conservative members of Congress, in a burst of anti-regulatory zeal, championed the fight to eliminate the very ergonomics standard that was designed to reduce the high incidence of a number of common workplace injuries.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/01/how-deregulation-led-opioid-epidemic

Let us be honest!

Privatization and deregulation has caused more problems than it has cured…….and yet the GOP and some Dems keep pushing the for more of both

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Closing Thought–26Dec19

Lots has been written about the problems we all suffer if we use the internet….the tracking of our visits, etc….

If you are worried then you need to read this article I found….

Here are some mildly terrifying things I learned when I recently did an online privacy checkup: Google was sharing my creditworthiness with third parties. If you want Target to stop sharing your information with marketers, you have to call them. And, my favorite: If you would like Hearst, the publishing giant, to stop sharing your physical mailing address with third parties, you have to mail a physical letter with your request to the company’s lawyers.

Cool cool cool.

I was inspired by this story my colleague Kashmir Hill wrote this month about the company Sift, which collects your consumer data and analyzes then scores your transactions.

Me?

I do not care that they track me.  I do no business on-line that could be used against me…..I am an old radical so I am use to watching what I do or say for the government is listening. (COINTELPRO).

Bernie is doing what all politicians do….promise.

Vowing to take on the telecom giants that have monopolized the web for private profit, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday unveiled a $150 billion plan to make the internet a public utility, break up and tightly regulate corporate behemoths like Verizon and AT&T, and provide high-speed broadband for everyone in the United States.

“It is outrageous that across the country millions of Americans and so many of our communities do not have access to affordable high-speed internet,” Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said in a statement. “Access to the internet is a necessity in today’s economy, and it should be available for all.”

Sanders vowed that, if elected president in 2020, he will ensure that every American household has affordable and high-speed internet by the end of his first term.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/06/vowing-deliver-high-speed-broadband-all-sanders-plan-would-enshrine-internet-public

I like the idea….but this is a non-starter…..big business will, never allow such a move.

Just thought you might like to know.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Why Do They Hate Us?

I recently wrote a post about something the president stated…that the Saudis love Americans….I disagree and it is a blatant LIE!

But read it for yourself……https://lobotero.com/2019/12/12/saudis-love-americans/

But then we should ask why do they hate us?

I read a piece for explaining this in the Future of Freedom Foundation, a Libertarian leaning site…….the lie that they hate us because of our “values and our freedom” is crap…it is a spin on the real reasons we are hated in the Middle East.

The recent shootings of three U.S. soldiers in Florida at the hands of a Saudi citizen raises a standard question in the U.S. government’s perpetual “war on terrorism”: “Why do they hate us?”

Soon after the 9/11 attacks, the official mantra began being issued: The terrorists just hate us for our “freedom and values.” No other explanation for motive was to be considered. If anyone suggested an alternative motive — such as “They are retaliating for U.S. governmental killings over there” — U.S. officials and interventionists would immediately go on the attack, heaping a mountain of calumny on that person, accusing him of treason, hating America, loving the terrorists, and justifying their attacks.

It happened to me and other libertarians who dared to challenge the official motive behind the 9/11 attacks. Shortly after the attacks, I spoke at a freedom conference in Arizona consisting of both libertarians and conservatives. When I pointed out that the attacks were the predictable consequence of a foreign policy that kills people over there, another of the speakers was filled with anger and rage over such an “unpatriotic” suggestion. Then, a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, FFF published an article by me entitled, “Is This the Wrong Time to Question Foreign Policy?” in which I pointed out the role that U.S. interventionism had played in the attacks. FFF was hit with the most nasty and angry attacks I have ever seen.

Why Do They Hate Us?

Please if you disagree aim your insults and vitriol to the FFF and the author of the article.

Other than that please let the comments roll.

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Our Endless Wars

A brand new year (almost) and a new opportunity for me to bitch and moan about our continuous and endless wars.  (Yes I am a staunch antiwar writer)

I appreciate the new opportunities.

We, the U.S. A., have been fighting one war for damn near two decades, 2020 will be the 19th year of the war, and there seems to be no way out of the quagmire we have created for ourselves.

Those endless conflicts are having a toll……

Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer was fired last month, a consequence of President Donald Trump’s foolish decision to pardon three servicemen who were either convicted of or awaiting trial for crimes committed in combat. The president has been rightly excoriated for these pardons, which dishonor the U.S. military and may degrade good order and discipline. But amid this uproar, Americans should note the bigger lesson: Endless wars, especially endless counterinsurgency or counterterrorism wars, slowly chip away at both a military’s ethics and its critical war-fighting skills.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-defense-endless-wars-trump-20191204-3sehviyiibhktlyyowzfbvv3ru-story.html

It is time for us mere mortals to start taking command to the rhetoric…..like how much are these endless wars costing the American people?

Wars cost too much.

That’s really not a surprise. The surprise is how much more they cost than we’ve been told.

It might help to think of the nation’s post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq like a pair of icebergs. The Pentagon has a web page that tells us how much we’ve each paid for the wars. But that only tells us how much of those icebergs we can see above the waves. While it includes totals for war fighting, it doesn’t track the Pentagon’s bigger war budget, interest paid on money we’ve borrowed to fight the wars, veterans’ care, and other ancillary costs. There’s a whole lot more hidden beneath the waves. The real issue isn’t whether the cost of war is high; the issue is why the U.S. government keeps under-estimating it, and why U.S. citizens and taxpayers keep tolerating it.

https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/12/adding-up-the-cost-of-our-never-ending-wars/

Now ask….is it possible to get out of all these endless wars?

Donald Trump in 2016 ran in opposition to the Iraq war and more generally to massive US commitments around the world. His denunciations of “endless wars” resonated enough that many voters ignored his documented early support for the Afghan and Iraq wars. Indeed, areas where casualties in those wars were highest voted more heavily for Trump than other demographic and economic factors would have predicted. Voters, with plenty of justification from her record as Secretary of State, thus pegged Hillary Clinton as a warmonger.

Trump, at least so far, is a militarist too. He has yet to withdraw the remaining troops from Afghanistan or Iraq. In Syria, he ended up merely redeploying soldiers from the border with Turkey to further within the country, if anything deepening American involvement. In the rest of the world, Trump has yet to close a single base or return home any troops stationed abroad.

Can the US Get Out of Its Endless Wars?

We can get out of these wars….but it will take courage and a spine from the voter….

I am not sure the American voter is ready for a change….especially in foreign policy……when there they WILL make a difference.

I Read, I Wrote, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”