Putin Owes Biden a Thank You Note

By holding a summit with Putin on June 16, 2021, President Biden restored Russia's position on the world stage. China lacks world class music, ballet and literature, but, unlike China, the USSR and Russia failed to monetize funds and know how invested in military and space projects that provided a commercial return on their investment. President Biden recognizes Putin as the only other world leader who has protected the universe from MAD use of nuclear weapons and who understands the need to prevent nuclear weapons from getting into the hands of those with no experience with nuclear controls. If Putin is smart, he will invest less energy in being a disrupting, corrupt authoritarian and more in making Russia worthy of investment and respect as befits a guardian of the galaxy.

Origin of Human Life

Everyone watching the George Floyd trial this morning (April 8, 2021) heard a witness testify that the DNA of a person is collected because it is distinct from a person's parents and even his or her siblings. This statement dispels the notion that, because a mother has a right of privacy over her body, a mother has the sole right to choose to destroy another human life that is not her own. Rather than plan another "March for Life" on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, planning a one-day conference on the scientific origin of human life would generate publicity at a prime time when COVID-19, climate change and a landing on Mars shine a focus on science. Nearly a half century has passed since Justice Blackmun wrote in Roe v. Wade: We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. When the highest court in the land could not speculate on the origin of human life, recognizing a woman's right to choose an abortion seemed reasonable. However, what research has discovered about DNA in the first human cell conceived no longer justifies ignoring the State's obligation to protect human life, supporting abortion with taxpayer funds and giving a mother the sole right to choose to destroy another human life unless, in self defense, this life presents a physical or mental risk to her own. Clearly, a new understanding of abortion has ramifications, many inconvenient, that will lead to additional conferences, legislation and legal decisions.

Human Nature Foils Authoritarian Bloc

China and Israel peddle surveillance equipment to willing authoritarian regimes around the world. An University of Toronto report, mentioned in the February 23, 2021 issue of AFRICAN ARGUMENTS (africanarguments.org), found Israel's government authorized export licenses for a telecom company, Circles, to provide spying equipment to at least 25 foreign governments, including those in Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya and Botswana. A current exhibit at MoMA should give pause to those who rely on constant scrutiny. The MoMA exhibit reveals what artists created while under the watchful eyes of guards at a federal US prison. One inmate not only transformed 39 prison bedsheets into the monumental collage of heaven, earth and hell pictured in THE ATLANTIC magazine (March, 2021) but also mailed his masterpiece home sheet by sheet. The stability strongmen represent and their lack of accountabiity for corrupting bribes make them attractive allies to some. During the Cold War, for example, the US identified Iran's Shah as a bulwark against Communism in the region. Known as Persia until 1935, Iran practices Shia Islam, different from its Sunni Muslim Arab neighbors like Iraq, which Iran fought in a bloody 20th century 8-year war. Earlier in the 19th and 20th centuries, when Britain and Russia vied for control of Iran, Tehran invited a US attorney to help straighten out its finances. But in 1953, the US Central Intelligence Agency protected the Shah's growingly repressive rule from a coup staged by a popular prime minister. By 1979, when President Carter's administration invited the ailing Shah to come to the US for medical treatment, the Islamic Revolution was ready to take over Iran. Supporters stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and held US officials captive for 14 months. China and Israel currently both have reasons to make friends in Asia and Africa. Beijing views a coalition of authorian countries as a hedge against UN sanctions for its human rights' abuses. Meanwhile, Israel is willing to help authoritanian rulers stay in power as a way to wean their support away from Palestine. As tempting as it is in the short run, assuming authoritarian regimes can maintain permanent control is not a safe bet. Facial identification systems cannot reveal what people are thinking. Smiles conceal as well as reveal. Given enough time in prison, under a dictator or anywhere, the impossible becomes possible. Dental floss was once woven into an escape rope. Muslim women sneak out of China's slave camps; male North Korean workers loaned to Russia disappear. Somethings are innate to human nature. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, truths, such as liberty, are self evident.

2022 Winter Olympics: China Loses

Beijing is looking forward to welcoming the world's elite athletes and hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Winter Olympics next year. Hard currency will be flowing in for hotels, food, merchandise and event tickets, but Chinese companies also are counting on profits from collecting and selling the facial characteristics of the world's population, algorithms able to connect a person's face with his or her activities and global DNA samples. Using technology to take advantage of a situation is nothing new. Social media sells information about what we spend time watching to advertisers who benefit from targeting potential consumers. When COVID-19 made shopping in stores deadly, ecommerce profited. There is, however, a difference between being used by social media and an ecommerce giant or being exploited at China's 2022 Winter Olympic Games. The games profit a country that holds up to one million Uighur Muslims in so-called re-education camps, and, according to a BBC report, uses the captives as slaves to pick cotton for China's textile industry. Besides what has been called a form of cultural Muslim genocide, China also has arrested, among others, Hong Kong's political activists, two Canadian journalists and Zhang Zhan, who was attempting to document the origin of the coronavirus in China. China's secrecy regarding COVID-19 focuses attention on the health dangers associated with attending the 2022 Winter Olympics. Just this January, 2021, a new coronavirus outbreak occurred in Shijiazhuang, a city of 11 million. The city's airport, located on a main road into Beijing, is positioned to transport visitors to the Olympics from the south. Since the SAR-coV-2 coronavirus caused the first COVID-19 case at the end of 2019, China's government has done everything possible to prevent a full understanding of what caused the global trauma that has killed over 2.3 million people and undermined economies in at least 170 countries. No one knows if a lab accident or wild animal meat in Wuhan's Huanan market initiated the pandemic. China fostered rumors about the origin of the virus, financed research papers never allowed to be published, closed Wuhan to outsiders and, as late as January, 2021, delayed a team of World Health Organization (WHO) scientists from inspecting Wuhan. Even before the virus posed a health threat to Olympic visitors, Beijing's officials recognized the dust and dirt blowing south from the Gobi Desert north of Olympic sites in Yanqing and Badaling would mix with pollution from fossil fuels heating winter homes and factories to cause irritation to the lungs and eyes of athletes and onlookers alike. Also, pollution was likely to prevent attendees from seeing the Great Wall from a tower constructed for that purpose. In 2018, the military was called into action to plant a tree wall to block desert winds and absorb pollution. Of course, the scrub brush and cactus that grow in desert soils do not provide the kind of barrier China hoped to provide, and the growth of tall, fast-growing trees not native to the area suffered from a lack of sufficient water. In addition to the health risks China's Winter Olympics present, facial identification surveillance is able to track every move athletes and other visitors make. Attendees from around the world offer China a global sample of colors and characteristics that enable surveillance technology to fine tune the potential to recognize every person on Earth. At the same time, the Winter Olympic population would help China develop algorithms capable of connecting facial identifications with the activities of likely domestic dissidents and other troublemakers. China's economy thrives on an ability to monetize every potential income stream, such as sales of new technology to foreign governments determined to monitor and control their populations. Beijing seems all too willing to lead and support an alliance of like-minded, state-dominated authoritarian regimes ready to claim equal status with the governments of countries that value the rights of individuals, an independent judiciary, and, in short, derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Not content with using existing methods to pursue world domination, China is now intent on weaponizing a new technique. After seeing how the COVID-19 pandemic crippled the world, William Evanina, the recently retired director of the Counterintelligence and Security Center, reported China is poised to create a data base of DNA samples used to predict a new disease capable of infecting the world. In reality, a single mutation rarely causes a disease; more often diseases are influenced by a variety of genetic DNA factors, each having a small, but significant, effect. Since identifying the cause of complex physical and psychological disorders requires a vast number of sample cases, countries, such as the UK, the Netherlands and Estonia, pool cases in biobanks designed to help rearchers prevent medical problems and find cures. China's BNG biotech giant had a different purpose for trying to establish COVID-19 testing labs that could collect DNA samples in the United States. China planned to use these samples to be first to predict a new disease and to provide the medicine, vaccines, equipment and supplies vulnerable countries would be willing to pay and do anything China wants. At China's Winter Olympic Games, anything anyone from around the world touches, and anything that touches him or her, could add to China's DNA collection. Skiers, skaters, hockey teams, snowboarders and curlers can test their skills at other competitions. No mandate requires any country's Olympic athletes to serve as lab mice for Chinese experiments and profit. (Also, see the earlier post, "All Work and No Play Unmakes China.")

Yin and Yang; Ox and Spacecraft

Valentine's Day nestles between the beginning of the Chinese, or Lunar, New Year of the Ox on February 12, 2021, and the landing of NASA's "Perseverance" rover in the Jezero Crater on Mars February 18, 2021. Fittingly, their interacting negative and positive yin and yang forces both propel mankind forward. According to Chinese, Korean and Japanese folklore, the ox is an earthbound symbol of hard work and patience, plowing a fertile field free of flooding to produce a good harvest. For a visit to Mars, the legendary ox might provide nourishment to help the enginers at NASA's Jet Propulson Lab in Pasadena, California, design and assemble the 3000 parts in "Perseverance." In the minus 76-degree temperature on Mars, "Perseverance" also needs nuclear batteries and solar energy to power the rover's three little arms that scoop up and shuttle soil and rock samples back and forth between Mars and NASA's spacecraft. As a special feature, "Perseverance" will carry and drop a little, 4-pound helicopter drone named "Ingenuity" on Mars, where it took off on April 19, 2021 and flew around to explore the red planet. Plowing a field and exploring the universe both rely on the yin and yang forces of hard work and perseverance.

Job Hunt Clues for Recent Grads

Current surveys indicate business activity is expected to rebound in the third quarter of 2021, and recruiteers expect to begin hiring this spring. Therefore, now is the time for optimism and for focusing on a job hunt. Not long ago, Bill Gates gave an interview telling how he would answer typical job interview questions. What impressed me most was the way he tailored his responses to match the kind of position he wanted with the kind of person a company wanted to hire. In response to what always is a tricky question about salary expectations, Mr. Gates suggested expressing interest in the entire package: not only an entry salary, but, in his case, stock options. He felt stock options would indicate his interest in helping a company grow. Asking about opportunities for advancement or corporate compensation for graduate school might also indicate attractive qualifies for companies that value ambition. Nowadays, some companies and organizations include their mission statements and employee benefits on their websites. In other words, you can learn if your expectations fit company objectives. At the same time, if a company is not union-friendly and does not offer flex time, childcare, transfers to other States/countries or the virtual work options you want, there's no point in asking for them in an employment package. Both students about to graduate this spring and those who were graduated a year ago need to put a positive spin on their experiences. Organizations that have mastered the challenges of remote, virtual work are likely to continue working this way, at least in part. They will value those who have spent the past year taking virtual classes, handling technical problems themselves and developing effective communication techniques to keep in touch with professors, other students and administrators. On the other hand, graduates who had their career plans dashed when everything shut down last March, have an opportunity to impress potential employers with their willingness to learn, flexibility and how well they are able to adapt to new trends in today's fast-paced business climate. Therefore, be ready to describe how you switched from what you expected to be doing by finding other employment, volunteering, working in unusual protetive garments, reading books on diverse subjects, writing a blog, joining and becoming active in a professional association, helping younger siblings/neighbors with their virtual learning experience or starting your own online business. Sometimes the question of why a firm should hire you is asked in another way: what are the strengths and weaknesses you bring to an organization? Bill Gates said he would give examples of his self motivation and how he liked to work on big problems and set ambitious goals. He also said it was important to maintain a pleasant expression that shows you can convey your opinions, listen to others and keep your temper while working with a team. Knowing what you want and like to do prevents an employer from putting you in a job you'll hate. When describing weaknesses, for example, say, given your choice, you'd prefer not to do the same thing every day, not to work alone with few opportunities to interact with others, not to perform tasks requiring fine hand work or lifting heavy objects. A white, female friend of mine was asked in a job interview if the company should hire a more diverse work force. She responded by asking, "How do you expect me to answer that question?" She was hired. It's not possible to anticipate every job interview question. Before responding, take a moment to hope for inspiration.

Alexei Navalny Arrested on Russian Return

Navalny reminded Russians who will take to the streets to protest his arrest on January 23, 2021, that they are demonstrating not just for him but for themselves. The strength of Navalny's anti-corruption movement derives from its nationalist identity rather than being a construct of the United States or another foreign intervention. As soon as Alexei Navalny returned to Russia on January 17, 2021, after a 5-month recouperation in Germany from Moscow-ordered nerve agent poisoning, he was arrested for violating the terms of a suspended sentence for a questionable offense. Russian President Putin is threatened by public support for Navalny's anti-corruption movement and the size of his YouTube audience. Just as the plane carrying Navalny from Germany was about to land in Moscow, it was diverted to another airport away from the group of supporters waiting to greet him. Back at Vnukovo airport in Moscow, police officers detained Novalny's supporters and associates. Also see earlier posts: "Putin's Private Siberian Project Excludes Alexei Navalny" and "Alexei Navalny's Sudden Siberian Illness."